Man released from Japanese Internment – children remain with abductor
Thursday, July 7th, 2011NIIGATA — A Mexican man was found guilty and given a suspended jail term Tuesday for attempting to recover his abducted daughter last November by entering his own home, which he had been locked out of in Niigata on the Sea of Japan, and encountering resistance from the child’s grandmother who tried to prevent him from seeing his daughter. Both he and the Grandmother received minor injuries as a result of her resistance and the ensuing altercation, but the grandmother was not charged with any crime.
The Niigata District Court sentenced Nathanael Teutle Retamoza, 33, to two years in prison, suspended for four years, for attempting to recover his one-year-old abducted daughter and take her to the United States to prevent her from remaining in Japan, a black hole for child abduction from which no abducted child has ever been returned. Japan has stated that they are preparing legislation to help settle international child custody disputes, but this action has so far resulted in zero returned children from Japan to any foreign country.
The ruling said it was “selfish” for Retamoza to act on his urge to see his daughter, who had been abducted by his wife two months earlier, without heeding the sentiment of his daughter’s abductors. It also noted that he prepared for his daughter’s rescue well in advance as he booked U.S.-bound air tickets for himself and his daughter beforehand.
However, the court said the prison sentence is suspended as Nathan stated that he regretted inflicting pain on his former mother-in-law. Nathan’s statement was most likely made under duress and after extensive torture, as Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have repeatedly called upon Japan to end their “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of prisoners. The Court has now stripped Nathan of all parental rights and given full custody to his daughter’s abductor. The court additionally placed a restraining order upon Nathan based on hearsay allegations from his wife, unsubstantiated by evidence.
In a similar case, an American man was arrested in September 2009 in Fukuoka Prefecture after trying to recover his abducted children, as his ex-wife had broken US law, abducted his children, and fled to Japan. Prosecutors could not file criminal charges against Christopher Savoie, as he was the sole legal custodian of his children in both the United States and Japan. Savoie’s children remain with their abductor, who was identified in Tennessee court records as being “mentally unstable” and “guilty of serious medical neglect” of their children.
To pacify the rest of the world’s civilized nations, Japan decided in May to join the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which sets procedures for settling international child custody disputes. As of publication of this article, Japan has still never returned a single abducted child to any foreign nation and remains a haven for international child abduction.
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