'I will always find you'

Litwiller recently returned to International Falls from Washington DC, where he participated in a rally to bring attention to the issue of international parental abductions, and to promote freeing Savoie.

Like Litwiller, Savoie’s ex-wife took the children to Japan, making virtually certain that the father would have little to no recourse to return the children to the U.S.

Japan, which has not signed the 1980 Hague Convention on International Child Abduction and therefore does not recognize international parental abductions, is seen by many left-behind fathers as a safe haven for abductor mothers.

And while noting that the details of the two cases are different, Litwiller explained that there is a problem in the system that allows this to happen — and not just once or twice, but up to 200 times each year.

“I would like the U.S. public to better understand the magnitude and gravity of the current situation regarding illegal parental abductions to Japan. It happens far too often. An estimated 200 American kids per year are parentally abducted to Japan. It is nearly hopeless for the left-behind parents and grandparents because of current Japanese and American laws. It is horrific and devastating for the kids ... with common potential lifelong consequences and problems,” he said.

“It was hard for me to imagine. Japan is a civilized country that we trade with every day. In some ways they’re more advanced than we are. But in this regard, they’re just unbelievable. They just snub their nose at us. They don’t care.”

The abduction

Litwiller’s now-12-year-old daughter, Kaira, was abducted by her mother, Ritsuko, in 2003, not long after the child’s sixth birthday. Lance and Ritsuko had been married and lived together in the United States for 15 years, and America was all that Kaira knew, he explained.

Kaira had just finished kindergarten in Littlefork, he said, before she went to visit her mother in Ohio over the summer.

The Litwillers had undergone a custody battle in conjunction with divorce proceedings. Litwiller said that after gaining custody of Kaira twice, his ex-wife decided to leave with their daughter. Litwiller had suspected that his wife would leave with Kaira, because Ritsuko had threatened to do so. A Minnesota court had even confiscated the child’s passport in an attempt to keep her in the country.

Ritsuko was granted visitation with Kaira for two weeks in June 2003 in her home in Ohio. The first few days of the visit proceeded normally, with daily phone calls between the father, who lived in Borderland, and daughter. After that, he was unable to reach his ex-wife and daughter. Litwiller said that he asked a friend who lived in Ohio to investigate. The friend found a note to the landlord saying that Ritsuko had moved. At that point, Lance informed police in both Minnesota and Ohio. The FBI was also brought in to investigate. But nobody was able to help, Litwiller said.

He remembers the FBI said, “We found out she’s with her mother. You told us her mother wouldn’t harm her. We’ve got better things to do. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. We can’t be dealing with you. She’s gone to Japan. They’re not a signatory of the Hague. There’s no way for us to get her back. There’s nothing we can do. Basically, you’re outta luck, pal.”

Returning from Japan

Like Savoie, Litwiller tried to recover his daughter. About six weeks after Kaira was taken, Litwiller hired investigators, went to Japan, and tried to reestablish contact with his daughter and ex-wife. With the investigators’ help, he found them.

He remembers an emotional reunion at a school in Okinawa, where his daughter flew into his arms and he promised her that, “I’ll always find you no matter what.”

After leaving the school to regroup, he returned to find that Ritsuko had taken the child and again fled. From tracking devices in her car, Litwiller was able to again find his ex-wife and daughter.

“I figured by then she would have realized how awful what she did was for our daughter and I figured we would be able to find a way that we would both be able to see our daughter again,” he said. “Even if it meant me moving to Japan. Whatever it took.”

He said that after a brief confrontation, Ritsuko took the child in a car and drove off.

That was the last time he saw Kaira.

Litwiller said that he later devised an elaborate plan to recover his daughter, including escape boats and a plane stationed outside international waters. And even with the threat of his own arrest, he said that he made the difficult decision to try to return his daughter to the U.S.

But by the time the plan was in motion, the mother and daughter had moved and everything fell apart.

In the U.S., Ritsuko faced federal warrants for her arrest. Litwiller said that he has since dropped the abduction charges against his ex-wife in an attempt to get her to return to the States.

He said he has received six e-mails from Ritsuko since she left in 2003, four coming since May. He said that he sees the increased contact as a positive sign, and hopes to pursue that path to having a relationship with his daughter.

“Kaira deserves unfettered access and contact with both of her parents. That’s all I want. That’s really all I’ve ever wanted,” Litwiller said.

But if Ritsuko will not allow contact, Litwiller said he hopes Kaira will look online, Google her own name, and find out about him through the media. But he said that he also does not want to remove Kaira from her mother’s life.

“Kids’ parents are their heroes. They can learn about that stuff when they’re an adult maybe. But when they’re kids, their mom and dad mean everything to them. I would never keep her from her mother.”

Parental abductions today

Savoie’s case had a much different outcome.

On Thursday, Japanese police released Savoie, held in a Japanese prison for 18 days, pending an investigation into accusations he snatched his children from his ex-wife.

While prosecutors have not pressed charges against Savoie, they haven’t yet dropped the case either, and an investigation is continuing, police official Kiyonori Tanaka in the southern Japanese city of Yanagawa said in an Associated Press story. He was released on grounds that he was not a flight risk, he said.

Savoie, of Franklin, Tenn., was arrested Sept. 28 after his Japanese ex-wife, Noriko, called police to say he grabbed their two children, ages 8 and 6, as she was walking them to school, forced them into a car and drove off.

Litwiller explained that he was warned by many officials about this exact scenario.

“It is documented in lots of other cases ... that all a Japanese person like my ex-wife would have to say is, ‘No, he forcefully took her, or no, he did this or, he hit me or this and that,’ and the Japanese come and arrest you and throw you in jail.”

The U.S., Canada, Britain and France have urged Japan to sign the Hague Convention. The convention, signed by 81 countries, seeks to ensure that custody decisions are made by the courts of a country of abducted children's original residence and that the rights of access of both parents are protected.

Tokyo has argued that signing the convention may not protect Japanese women and their children from abusive foreign husbands, but Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada recently said officials were reviewing the matter.

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently reviewing legislation, House Resolution 3240 known as the International Child Abduction Prevention Act of 2009, which would strengthen the U.S. position in dealing with international abductions with countries that have not signed the Hague Convention.

“(HR 3240), presently in the first step of the legislative process, is aimed at stopping international abductions before they happen and giving our government the means to return abducted children and their abductors back to the U.S. I encourage all to learn more about HR 3240 and urge their representatives to help make it become law,” Litwiller explained.

“If they knew when they got there that Japan was going to say, ‘Nuh uh uh, we’re turning you around. You broke the law in the U.S. You’ve got court orders against you. Your husband has custody. We’re turning you right around and you’re going back,’” Litwiller said. “Do you think they’d do it if they knew that was the case? No, They’re doing it because they know it’s a safe haven.

“HR 3240 could change all of that, along with the signing of the Hague. And it could stop abductions, grind the majority of abductions to a halt. My ex-wife never would have done it if she knew she was going to get arrested and sent right back.”

Litwiller urges people to contact U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken in support of the bill.

And that is one of the reasons that he and his current wife recently went to the Capitol to rally for the cause with the Children’s Rights Council of Japan in front of the Japanese embassy. He hopes that the national media attention on the Savoie case will put a spotlight on the issue and bring about a change in the law.

And while he said that he has no experience with politics, and rarely follows the news, he hopes to become more active in advocating for the pending legislation.

Oberstar, who serves as chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, would be a prime official to push the issue, Litwiller said. Litwiller advocates both HR 3240 and rules that would require notarized, signed consent forms from both parents before minors would be allowed on an international flight.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.