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Top court ruling offers new hope for victims of parental child abduction
The Constitutional Court has urged the police not to hesitate to charge parents who abduct their child from the child's legal guardian.
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Stock illustration of child abduction. (Courtesy of/Shutterstock)
I
t has been almost five years since Angelia Susanto, a 50-year-old mother from Bogor in West Java, last saw her only son, who was allegedly abducted by her ex-husband following their divorce over domestic abuse.
Angelia won custody of the child upon her separation with Philippine citizen Teodoro Fernandez Carluen in 2018. However, two years later, the boy, identified as EJ, was taken on the way to school in Bogor.
The school bus driver, she said, called to inform her that EJ had been forcefully taken by someone claiming to be his father. She immediately reported the incident to the Jakarta Police, but the officers said they could not charge Teodoro with abduction as he was EJ’s biological father.
"Instead they imposed a lesser charge of child abuse and neglect," Angelia told The Jakarta Post recently, adding that she had not known anything about EJ’s whereabouts since then, as Teodoro and his family had severed all ties with her.
"I don't know what country EJ is currently in, I don't know what he looks like now, and I don't even know whether he is still alive. Who is putting him to bed? Who will take care of him if he's sick? I have no idea,” she said.
Although she had been feeling like a “zombie” since EJ’s disappearance, Angelia said she continued to do everything she could think of to get her 11-year-old son back.
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