Todd Hopson does not come across as the sort of person who would hire a kidnapper. His idea of excitement is watching Seinfeld reruns. He is quick with a one-liner if conversation flags. He clears his throat repeatedly, a nervous tic that may be related to his fondness for cigars. During most of our time in Costa Rica, he wore the same outfit--a khaki shirt with lots of pockets, jeans, and bright-white sneakers. But while Hopson may seem like a softie, his resolve is strong: he would rather break the laws of Costa Rica than his word to Andres.
In late August, even before Todd filed a Hague application, he contacted Gus Zamora, who was feeling the pinch of the recession. It had been nine months since his last recovery. "If somebody asked me to find his dog or cat on a roof, I'd do it," he joked. Gus offered to do the job for $25,000, including expenses--about a third of his usual rate. Still, Todd had to borrow money against his house to pay the fee. Gus planned to take two trips to do the recovery, and Todd agreed to pay him $10,000 before the first and $15,000 before the second.
In September, Gus flew from Tampa to Costa Rica to rendezvous with Helen and do reconnaissance in Siquirres. From the start, Helen resisted doing a recovery; she didn't want to break any laws and possibly jeopardize her ability to return to Costa Rica. Todd felt he needed her cooperation, however, because she had access to Andres--and Andres's passport had her last name on it. (A child traveling with adults without the same last name might raise suspicion.) At Todd's insistence, Helen agreed to meet with Gus.
One day, while doing surveillance with Helen, Gus saw an opportunity to grab Andres. But Helen called him off, deciding instead to rely on the local lawyer she'd hired to regain custody. By February, however, Helen was fed up. She had just returned from a visit with Andres, and she was furious that she could not take him anywhere--not even an ice-cream shop--on her own.
"After I go through all the pain and drama of childbirth, they come and take my son away," she told me. "Hell, no. I decided, 'Gus, come here. I'm not waiting for the law, for Jason, for nothing.'"
It's a really good piece, and it's important to recognize that a lot of the cases apparently come about when mothers flee abusive husbands. In the other cases, the story strikes at something elemental in all parents. A child kidnapping is a violent act perpetrated against the parental bonds. I never understand people who get it in their head that thier child doesn't "need" the other parent. I understand when their issues of, say, abuse. But I've seen this a lot in my life, where parents use custody as a weapon. It's an incredibly selfish act, and in the cause of raising children, it's sabotage.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
that was a really interesting piece. glad i subscribed. these situations become so entangled, all i can say, lamely, is that it's so critical to keep the family together if possible, and consequently marriage or conception has to be entered to with so much caution and some luck. i.e. my takeaway is 'i will do all i can to avoid getting into a situation like that in the first place', which of course only decreases my chances to a lower non-negligible value. there's just no obvious compromise other than genuine cooperation and ego-swallowing between all the parents / step-parents involved, and i can't see how that could be possible after something like this.
according to the article the kid seems happy and well-cared for back in FL, so that is a happy ending.
Yeah. And honestly, I don't have a lot of sympathy for biological fathers who only decide they want to be biological fathers years into the game.
That was my takeaway, too--the one person for whom custody was uncomplicated, the birth mother, was the person least qualified or interested in raising the kid. It was mostly an illustration about how the abstract right thing immediately runs into real world complications of people who are having and raising kids in a non-abstract, non-ideal way.
And the stepfather being a lawyer but not thinking to do an adoption, that's the sort of thing that seems to happen all the time with lawyers. (e.g. Chris Christie is a lawyer who didn't get Monty Python's permission to use their copyright material.)
At the same time, I don't think mental illness should disqualify someone from having a say about where their child lives.
Honestly this piece really irritated me. There are so, so many unexplored race and class dynamics at work that I really question how objective the author's account is.
These situations scare me. I know someone who does not see his child due to a similar predicament.
I have one divorce under my belt and there is nothing like a volatile breakup to add some much-needed clarity.
I watch people in bi-national marriages (this happens in DC) who think it is cute or a lark to attain dual citizenship for themselves and/or children and to live abroad (not saying that this happened here or that it's dispositive). The pragmatist beats the romantic in me and I will never knowingly hand someone the legal tools to enable them to separate me from my kid.
I would love to know where the $ went. If Andres needs to be kept away from anyone I'd say it's Helen. Todd needs to go ahead and get that kid some help. He needs it.
The child in such a case becomes only an object, albeit a very valuable one, over which adults are battling. The last thing in anyone's mind, so far as I can tell, is the welfare of the child (with the exception, of course, of cases where there has been abuse).
I once heard a program on NPR about divorce cases, specifically cases which reach the courts. The therapist being interviewed reflected that the most important things are, first, that the parties behave like adults themselves, and second, that the welfare of the children be paramount, and I'm thinking, "Yeh, but those are the cases that never reach the courts at all. People who can behave like adults and who consider the welfare of the children to be the most important consideration often don't divorce at all, and if they do, they do so in such a way that doesn't involve court intervention (or, God forbid, kidnapping!)." Almost by definition, court cases fail one or both of these standards.
The most important consideration in the minds of genuine adults in any situation whatever is the welfare of any children involved (for obvious Darwinian reasons). We seem to have a lot of tall, elderly children walking around, people who never reached adulthood.
A good point about which cases reach court.
My cousin works in an after-school program and has had the exciting experience of both parents showing up with court orders demanding that the other parent cannot take the child. This creates a situation of endless fun for the teacher who is not allowed to just leave the kid, but must wait, brokering, while a person the courts and/or parents can agree on is located and dispatched to the school.
One of many reasons I think a good litmus test for a romantic partner/spouse/parent of your child is to ask, "Is this someone I would want as an ex?" Sure, often you can't predict whether that's true. But I think that usually you know, deep down, if the person would be reasonable, or if he or she would be vindictive, manipulative, abusive, or otherwise unstable.
There but for the grace of god go any of us, under the wrong circumstances. I hope that if that ever happened to my kid (god forbid), I would have the strength of will not to do what Todd and Helen did, assuming that I believed/knew that my son wasn't in any danger. But it would be very hard to stand back, knowing that it would be years before I'd be able to see him again, if ever.
I don't know what I would do, but the kid calling and asking when I was going to come get him would really do me in--I think the "sit and wait, he's with non-abusive people" approach would be very hard in this circumstance.
There were some compelling stories in that article, but the featured one with Todd, Helen, Jason and Andres bugs me. Todd is not the biological father. He lived with the kid and mom together for only a few years. I think he may have been the only one featured in the article who went to "recover" a kid who was not his biologically.
Andres has a mother and a father. They may not be ideal parents, in fact they may kind of suck, but they are his blood. Reminds me of the end of Gone Baby Gone. I reluctantly choose blood ties, unless of course there is actual abuse. It feels to me like Todd is basically buying this kid back because he can. Is that really okay? I would hate to think that my motherhood could be jeopardized by someone who could provide a "better" childhood to my kid by bringing her to spring training and signing her up for private school. I didn't hear anything bad enough about the boy's father to warrant his child being taken away from him after he had (finally) stepped up to the plate to take responsibility.
Well, but you have been raising your own child; according to the article, the boy's biological father had not been involved in raising him at all, so apparently the boy had always related to Todd as his father and to Todd's home as his own home. I'm not saying that makes what Todd did right, but he wasn't merely the stepdad-with-more-money.
Well what sort of involvement should the biological father have had? Todd flew Helen to the US before the child was even born.
Jennifer,
Not to be a stick in the mud, and I mean no offense, but the person who raises a child is more important than the person who fathers one. Blood while thicker than water is thinner than upbringing.
I hear you both, and I totally believe in "it takes a village' - I've used that model for my own child. That said, look at it from the biological father's perspective. Let's say he made some mistakes when the boy was born, didn't trust the mom, felt inadequate in comparison to the stepfather when he went to visit them right after the boy was born, and decided at that time to let the boy stay with his mother and her new husband. Later on, he shapes up, decides he should take responsibility for his child, and does so. He did win temporary custody legally in Costa Rica. Then, Todd pays someone a massive amount of money to come kidnap Andres. This just doesn't seem right to me. Nothing in the story indicates that Jason is putting his son in danger or is really a bad guy - just irresponsible or passive early on. If anything, it looks like he was trying to protect his son from his drug addict mother when they visited Costa Rica (remember, she lied and told him they were moving there permanently). And he is still trying to regain custody now, so he obviously cares. I just don't think it's right to kidnap a child from his own parent.
I'm with you Jennifer. The biological father doesn't seem like a bad guy, he never signed away his parental rights, and the home he provided for Andres seemed really stable. He was (I think) a teenager when Andres was born and it seems like he is now finally ready to be a father to his child. He should have that chance.
Yeah, that was my reaction as well, and kinda what I was getting at upthread when I mentioned the unexplored race and class issues. I mean, here we have an apparently wealthy white American man vacationing in relatively impoverished Costa Rica, where he picks up a pregnant hispanic girl half his age and flies her back to the US, despite the fact that they have to use an interpreter to communicate because neither speaks the others' language. Now, I guess one way to read that is as a testament to the overriding power of love--but to me, it's frankly a little creepy. And then to hire a mercenary to go kidnap the boy from his biological father? Come on. That's pretty fucked up. But the author barely even acknowledges that--she's rather obviously biased in favor of Todd, which isn't surprising, since it's presumably by Todd's money and good graces that she has this story in the first place.
At the same time, you have a little boy who's grown up in a certain place, with a pair of people who are functioning as his parents. No matter how skeevy the circumstances that got them there, the situation was that Todd was the most stable parent in the kid's life.
Which isn't to say that your right about the race and class issues; I just keep thinking 'but the kid had a happy home.' The kid was certainly old enough to decide where he wanted to live, and he wanted (as long as Todd's stories about the phone calls are true) to live with Todd.
Well, I also question how stable it was, and again, I think the author was just taking Todd's word and not questioning or reading between the lines. I suspect Todd was the primary source for most of the material on this matter, and he has an obvious interest in portraying himself as positively as possible, and the others as negatively as possible. How thoroughly did the author check out his stories? There's very, very little material in the article that seems to have been sourced from Helen or Jason, for instance, not to mention a language barrier, some conflicting interests for Helen, etc.
But even assume what he said was true. They were married for 3 years, then divorced, but continued to live together. What were the circumstances of the divorce? What was it like for the child to live in that situation? The mother was disappearing for days on end to get high and party. Was she bringing other guys home? Was Todd bringing other women home? What did the kid think of the frequent trips to see his biological father? Was that healthy? Etc.
The author doesn't get into any of this. We're treated instead to a lot of stories about Todd's money. Todd spent thousands here. Thousands there. Paid for medical bills. Bought the kid private baseball lessons (?!?) and imported mitts from Japan. Etc. There's a clear implication threaded throughout the story that Todd deserves this child because he's spent a lot of money and that's just sort of sickening.