Amber Nicklas Found After 7 Years, Alleged Abductors Want Custody

[SageDad]

Not so international but not so uncommon.  With the way family law is progressing it won't be long till you can just grab a kid in a supermarket, hide out for a few years and claim that you've bonded with the child and it's their "best interests" to not be moved and "child experts" will congratulate themselves on how effectively we've divorced ourselves from barbaric notions of "parental rights" that treat children like property... then help the abductors sue the biological parents for child support.

Amber Nicklas Found After 7 Years, Alleged Abductors Want Custody
By Laura Fishman on July 20, 2010 12:04 PM
http://phoenixfamilylawnews.com/2010/07/amber-nicklas-found-after-7-years-alleged-abductors-want-custody.html

An Arizona couple could be facing criminal charges related to the alleged abduction of Amber Nicklas, who is now 7-years-old. However, The Independent reports that the couple in Phoenix that have been accused of abduction are still fighting to keep custody of the child.

The story of Amber has been striking to many people across the U.S. and gives parents of long-term missing children some hope. Amber Nicklas was placed into foster care after California officials found that her living arrangement with her drug addict mother and biological grandmother unsuitable. The girl was placed into foster care, but was abducted from her foster parents when she was 13 months old at a Chuck E Cheese restaurant in Norwalk, California. The abduction took place while the girl's biological aunts were on a supervised visit with the foster parents.

The Arizona couple that have been accused of abducting the girl reportedly knew at least one member of Amber's biological family. Up until last week, Amber thought that her name was Sandra and that she was living with her true family. News reports say that it looks as though she was well cared for by the couple in a clean and tidy house. Yet she was probably surprised when she was recently taken away from the only family that she could remember and placed with a foster family in California.

The couple that looked after Amber for almost seven years now have an attorney named John Blischak, who is saying that Amber's grandmother gave them the child and that they were told that the girl's mother was not able to care for the child. The attorney also claims that the couple was told that the girl's name was Sandra.

Amber now remains in protective custody of California authorities. Authorities will investigate what role, if any, the Phoenix couple had in the abduction of Amber. The Arizona couple also plan to get a Phoenix family law attorney that can help them regain custody of the child.

[Bree]

How crazy!  I do hope that they will work to place the child with whoever is in her best interest to be with.  I can't imagine the confusion she must be experiencing.  Poor little girl!  I am thankful that she was raised in a decent home though.


I've posted here before that my nephew is in foster care in CO and because DSS and the GAL has drug their feet, they have deemed it in my nephews best interest to remain with, and ultimately be adopted by, his foster parents.  He was set to be transferred to us (we even have an approved Interstate Agreement) until the foster parents showed an interest in him.  He's now 5; he was 3 when he entered foster care.  We have filed a Motion to Intervene and the GAL requested that our Motion be denied (in fact, she "prayed that it would be denied" -- her words in her response to our motion).  She is in full support of him never being returned to his bio family.  However, his half brother and two half sisters were sent to family in Washington state. The foster family wasn't interested in them.   :madgo

[Diane]

Bree,

You know, it isn't hard to see the reasoning for removing a child from a home where true abuse and neglect occur.   Much more difficult to reconcile with a system that allows a child to be given to a foster care home when loving family members want to provide a home where extended family who qualify and will keep the child with actual siblings, aunts, uncles, etc are eager to provide a home.  As for the gal, she is so unprofessional in her language, that alone, should disqualify her as a reliable witness.

I have seen so many terrible decisions, made by the courts, the "gals" etc, that nothing comes as a big surprise.  I hope you are successful with your motion to intervene"  on your nephews behalf.
I know how difficult this must be for you and the anguish you are feeling at the possible loss of your nephew.    Diane

[SageDad]

How crazy!  I do hope that they will work to place the child with whoever is in her best interest to be with.  I can't imagine the confusion she must be experiencing.  Poor little girl!  I am thankful that she was raised in a decent home though.


I've posted here before that my nephew is in foster care in CO and because DSS and the GAL has drug their feet, they have deemed it in my nephews best interest to remain with, and ultimately be adopted by, his foster parents.  He was set to be transferred to us (we even have an approved Interstate Agreement) until the foster parents showed an interest in him.  He's now 5; he was 3 when he entered foster care.  We have filed a Motion to Intervene and the GAL requested that our Motion be denied (in fact, she "prayed that it would be denied" -- her words in her response to our motion).  She is in full support of him never being returned to his bio family.  However, his half brother and two half sisters were sent to family in Washington state. The foster family wasn't interested in them.   :madgo

Yeah, reading this again it's not as outrageous as it seemed at first.  Sounds like the abductors knew the biological family and they only "abducted" the child from the foster family she was placed with by Child Protective Services.  Almost all the foster parents working with CPS are in it for the money or trying find a child to adopt through the backdoor.  Both cases have massive problems, the first because they don't really care about the children and the second because they always fight to keep children away from their natural family (where the overwhelming presumption should be that the children should go) by arguing "best interests," "adaptation" and a bunch of psycho-babble BS by "child experts" and GAL's with no real qualifications, accountability or liability.

[Jeanne M Hannah]

Not so international but not so uncommon.  With the way family law is progressing it won't be long till you can just grab a kid in a supermarket, hide out for a few years and claim that you've bonded with the child and it's their "best interests" to not be moved and "child experts" will congratulate themselves on how effectively we've divorced ourselves from barbaric notions of "parental rights" that treat children like property... then help the abductors sue the biological parents for child support.

Amber Nicklas Found After 7 Years, Alleged Abductors Want Custody
By Laura Fishman on July 20, 2010 12:04 PM
http://phoenixfamilylawnews.com/2010/07/amber-nicklas-found-after-7-years-alleged-abductors-want-custody.html

 This is just the point I made in December 2009 in my blog article "Sean Goldman kidnapping | Let's Thinklogically" http://tinyurl.com/ygguuto when the Brazilian family was claiming that they should keep Sean because he had been with them so long. I was responding to an inane post by someone who called himself/herself "Thinklogically." My thought, too, was that so long as people are going to make such incredible claims, we give strangers a license to grab kids from a cart in the supermarket and to later claim that since they are "the only family the child knows" the child should not be returned. The image I used in my blog illustrates the point.

[SageDad]

Good article.  I was traveling a lot during Dec. or I probably would have read it on your blog (which I subscribe to.)  As much as I'd like to say great minds think alike though, I read the analogy in "Taken into Custody," by Stephen Baskerville (himself a LBP who followed his children from Europe to the US) and it really resonated with me as the logical conclusion to the way family law seems to be progressing.