THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 28, 1995 TAG: 9504280497
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 121 lines
Four-year-old Jan Blackwell doesn't look like a prisoner.
The tow-headed boy in jeans and a Bugle Boy T-shirt has done nothing wrong, broken no laws. But he's bound within the borders of Virginia for the duration of his childhood.
He's at the center of a dispute over whether a summer vacation to Europe with his mother would be a simple pleasure trip or a carefully planned abduction.
His mother, Ania Blackwell, wants to take Jan to visit her ailing parents in her native Poland. His father, Charles Blackwell, doesn't want to take a chance on losing his son if his ex-wife decides not to return.
The matter has landed in court, and Jan isn't going anywhere soon.
The playful, blue-eyed boy ponders whether he wants to go to Poland to see his grandparents.
``It's a long way from here,'' he says, popping Rice Krispies into his mouth by the handful. ``I might get tired.''
Jan's case shows the lengths parents go to these days to prevent children from being abducted by former spouses.
And not without reason: Last year, the State Department handled 620 cases involving children who were kidnapped by their parents and smuggled out of the United States, up 57 percent from five years ago.
Because of high-profile cases in which left-behind parents struggle with foreign governments to get back their children, parents are taking precautions to keep their children from being taken in the first place.
They're drafting stronger custody agreements. Getting blocks put on passports issued to their children. Hiring attorneys to help them find legal ways to safeguard their children.
``Once a child gets taken out of the country, it's not hopeless, but it's a long, arduous task to retrieve them,'' said Teresa Klingensmith, manager of legal and legislative affairs at The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, an advocacy group.
The dispute over Jan goes back more than a year, to when Charles and Ania Blackwell signed a joint-custody agreement saying neither parent would take the child from the state without consent of the other parent.
At the time, Ania didn't worry about the clause because she didn't have money to travel anyway.
Recently, though, she has saved enough money to go to Wroclaw, Poland. Her parents are too sick to travel here, she says, and she wants her son to meet his grandparents.
``I want my son to know his grandparents, not just from pictures and stories, but to know them personally.''
Ania has not been back to Poland since she moved to the United States 14 years ago, and she wants to see her homeland again.
She hoped her ex-husband would give the trip his blessing.
He did not.
Charles, who until recently was a general manager of a Virginia Beach motel, adamantly opposes Jan's leaving the country. He's worried his ex-wife will abduct the child. He says she has threatened in the past to take Jan away from him.
``Once you've been threatened with that, you can never put that away,'' Charles said. ``I have to work off a worst-case scenario. I have to err on being skeptical because the loss of my son is something I can't fathom.''
Charles also has asked the State Department not to issue a passport for his son.
Ania contends she has no intention of moving to Poland, and that if she did, she would have just picked up and gone instead of sticking around to ask permission.
When Charles would not agree to the trip, Ania took the case to court. On March 16, a Virginia Beach judge ruled that Ania could take Jan to Poland. But only under three conditions:
One, she had to sign a one-year rental lease to show she intended to return to the United States. Ania agreed to that, even though she had planned on moving to a smaller, less-expensive home.
Two, she had to turn over full custody of Jan to Charles during the time of the trip. That would make retrieving him easier should Ania try to keep him there. Ania agreed to that as well.
Three, she had to put up a $10,000 bond that would be forfeited to Charles if Ania didn't return. That's where Ania's willingness turned to anger.
``If you're a single mother of two, with part-time employment, a $10,000 bond is automatically saying you can't go.''
Ania, a teacher for home-bound Virginia Beach students, had been saving for months for the plane tickets for herself, Jan and Lillian, her 12-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. She had no money left to put up a $10,000 bond, nor did she have anything of value to secure a bond.
She thought about appealing the judge's ruling, to at least lower the amount, but then realized she couldn't afford a lawyer.
``If I appeal it, I won't have the money to make the trip,'' she said.
Charles, meanwhile, isn't taking any chances. He's appealing the judge's decision, asking that Jan not be allowed out of the country under any circumstances.
``I don't want to hinder my son's development,'' Charles said. ``But I don't want to expose him to a situation where he might be abducted.''
He realizes his ardent stance on the issue will keep his son from seeing the world, and even the country, at least until Jan is old enough to make decisions on his own. ``It's a tradeoff I need to protect him, and I'm prepared to live with it.''
Charles points out that he lives by the same rules. Instead of taking his son to visit Jan's paternal grandparents in Maryland, they visit him in Virginia.
One reason Charles worries that his ex-wife might take his son is her lack of roots here. She doesn't have a full-time job or extended family here.
``Even if she's not planning on staying there now, she might get over there with her Mom and Dad, her family, all the familiar surroundings, and it will be difficult to come back,'' Charles said.
Ania, though, says she has two very important reasons to stay in the United States: The fathers of her two children. Both pay child support, and Charles sees his son five days a week.
``We have roots here,'' she said. ``My daughter was born and raised here; my son was born and raised here. They are Americans.'' MEMO: Related story on page B3.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by TAMARA VONINSKI, Staff
Ania Blackwell, with daughter Lillian Preston, 12, and son Jan
Blackwell, 4, says she can't afford to post a $10,000 bond.
KEYWORDS: CHILD CUSTODY PARENTAL ABDUCTION by CNB