Mum's 15-year hunt for children ends in anguish

Klingon Hamlet

Article here:

A MOTHER'S 15-year desperate search for her son and daughter whom she feared she had lost forever to her estranged husband ended when she found them on Facebook.

They had been taken by their father to his native Mexico.

All of Prince Sagala's prayers appeared to have been answered when she typed her daughter's name into Facebook on a library computer and discovered that her children, now 16 and 17, were safe and with their father. She soon learned they were living near Disney World in Florida.

But in just a few days her joy turned to heartbreak. Hopes of a happy reunion turned instead into a nightmare as her children now don't want her.

Traumatic

And the experience has also been traumatic for the children, whose father is now suddenly in jail and their life outside Orlando has been turned upside down.

"She thought I was a stranger woman," Ms Sagala said, with hurt and frustration in her voice. "I wrote back and she deleted it. Then she disappeared."

Police tracked down the children and arrested their father, Faustino Fernandez Utrera (42) on kidnapping and child custody charges on May 26.

Ms Sagala (43) is now fighting to regain custody of her children before they turn 18 and she loses them to adulthood.

Florida police have temporarily placed the children with a non-relative whom the pair know and set a hearing for later this month.

"This has been so traumatic for them. The father, the only person they've known as a parent, is now in jail. When they have children of their own, when they're 25, 26, 27 years of age, it's going to dawn on them what their mother lost," Montclair police detective Debbie Camou said.

Yesterday police revealed details about the couple's marital problems and how Ms Sagala used Facebook to achieve what experts say was a rare success in the search for missing children online.

The couple were contemplating divorce in 1995 when Ms Sagala returned from work to find the children, then aged three and two years old, gone, Det Camou said.

Ms Sagala later learned that her husband was in Mexico City with the children. "At that time, she was afraid to go to Mexico because he had threatened her," Det Camou added.

Police eventually referred the investigation to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office, following the department's policy, but the probe stalled. Police followed up with Ms Sagala three times in the intervening years. During this time Mr Utrera had moved to Florida with his children.

Meanwhile, Ms Sagala raised two younger children she had with a man she said she married after Mr Utrera fled and with whom she now lives in Montclair, California.

Ms Sagala had one of her children enter her daughter's name into Facebook and her page popped up.

On March 10, she began exchanging e-mails and chatting with her daughter, and hoped to get her to reveal where she lived.

Ms Sagala said her daughter then broke off the communication, saying in an e-mail that she was happy with her family and that she'd heard bad things about her.

Ms Sagala alerted police, who used the names of friends on the daughter's page to track the girl to central Florida -- and her high school.

Mr Utrera was arrested as he waited at a bus stop to bring his son from school.

The Florida attorney handling Ms Sagala's custody case did not return repeated calls for comment.

For now, Ms Sagala is trying to sort out the pieces of her children's past. Her younger kids, she said, helped her stay strong. Then, with a sad smile, she summed up what she's missed with the older ones:

"Every single day."

Very sad. Hurray for Facebook! This is a prime example of Parental Alienation: cutting them off from their mom, and bad-mouthing her. Their father has moulded their minds so that they distrust her immediately, and do not wish to know her. Very sad indeed. Here's hoping they'll meet her and re-learn to love her.

enniscorthy

you said it mate there is no way any body can win

Klingon Hamlet

enniscorthy wrote: »

you said it mate there is no way any body can win

It's so sad.I mean thank god for facebook or she wouldn't have found them...but now they don't want to know her because the dad told them "bad things" about her...:(

Ickle Magoo

What a big sad mess.

She's lost so long with her kids and them her, he's heading for jail, they don't want to know her now....awful situation for everyone. I'd hope the no matter how acrimonious the split that I wouldn't do that to my parter or kids.