Broken Lives Broken Minds

With special guest:

• Pamela Roche

The attitude of politicians towards International Parental Child Abduction seems to be “It ain’t broke and I ain’t gonna fix it.”; Our guest today is Pamela Roche who tells us how the system is broken and we need to get the word out to politicians, judges, lawyers and professional therapists.

When the father of her children breached English Family Court orders and refused to return them after a visit to the USA Pamela expected that she could rely on the legal system and the various institutions to restore order. She discovered that the USA is a signatory to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Parental Child Abduction. This is a multilateral treaty developed by the Hague Conference on Private International Law that provides an expeditious method to return a child internationally abducted by a parent from one member country to another. Pamela naively believed that with the USA being a first world country and part of the Hague Convention this should have been straightforward once she established the facts and got local advice.

Unfortunately all that Pamela discovered at great financial and personal cost to herself is that when it comes to children abducted by one of the parents the authorities look the other way. After a battle that went on for years and involved the totally unprofessional input from an array of consultants, Pamela had no choice other than to return home without her children. Then came the realisation that she had to rely on the children themselves as they got older to overcome the barriers put in the way of a reunion. Next came her passion to put this experience in her book Broken Lives Broken Minds so that others could learn about this diabolical practice that has become more common over recent years. And Australia has the highest rate of International Parental Child Abduction in the world.

Pamela is speaking in this program with Ken Thompson who founded the Australian organisation COPAC (Coalition Of Parents Against Child Abduction). Ken’s advice has recently been sought by television and radio regarding the aborted Lebanon abduction attempt and he has a wealth of experience in this area. This is a story that is at once heartbreaking and unbelievable and yet it is all true. You will be moved by listening to Pamela’s story.

This is our program for International Missing Children’s Day May 25.

Pamela Roche

Pamela Roche lives with her husband in Dorset in the United Kingdom. As she says in Chapter One of her book Broken Minds Broken Lives, she is not a writer. This is not fiction. This is her true story. Because of the underlying passion and the skilled assistance of Maggie Allen this book is hard to put down and has received favourable comment from the acknowledged authorities in the field of Parental Alienation such as Dr L F Lowenstein, Amy Baker and Bill Bernet.

Song selection by our guest: The Greatest Love of All by Whitney Houston

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