Posted on 06/08/2010 8:33:24 AM PDT by MissTed
A Southern California mother whose two children were reported missing 15 years ago has tracked them down in Florida using Facebook.
The children's father, Faustino Utrera, took off with them in 1995 when they were ages 2 and 3, said San Bernardino Deputy District Attorney Kurt Rowley. The mother had found her daughter's Facebook profile after searching for her name on the social networking site in March, Rowley said.
An official said Saturday that the now 17-year-old girl and 16-year-old boy have been placed in the custody of the state of Florida.
"You can imagine the feelings she's having, not seeing her children for so many years and knowing they've bonded with another family," Rowley said about the mother. "But at the same time they're almost within her grasp."
The two teenagers are being cared for by a non-relative in Florida with whom the pair have an existing relationship, said Florida Department of Children and Families spokeswoman Elizabeth Arenas, who did not identify the mother.
She referred further questions to the woman's lawyer, who did not return a phone call.
Osceolla County Sheriff's deputies detained Utrera on an arrest warrant last month obtained by San Bernardino County prosecutors who were contacted by the missing children's mother, Rowley told the San Bernardino Sun.
He was charged with kidnapping and violating child custody orders.
Rowley said that when the daughter's profile was found on Facebook, she initially told her mother that she did not want to re-establish their relationship, but the contact helped prosecutors file two felony counts each of kidnapping and child abduction against Utrera.
Rowley said he expected Utrera to fight extradition at a July 17 hearing in Florida.
Oh, apparently some earlier than that too.
“I’d rather completely disrupt their way of life, thrown into turmoil, and hassle my ‘children’ who are basically grown adults (who—at least one—have said they don’t want a relationship with me), for their own good, and so we can have a fmaily I never got.”
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Wow. Are you a parent? Not a knock at all, but I have a difficult time grasping the notion that a parent whose kids have been kidnapped, and who obviously have had some kind of brainwashing (de facto, they had no idea who their mother was) would just let them stay with the kidnapper.
JDW11235 0perates the slippery slope ride at the local carnival.
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Thank you very much for posting that. I is a much more detailed, and much more illuminating argument. I’m starting to wonder if the Mexican father (It appears both mother and father are Mexican nationals) is an illegal alien, further complicating this mess, since he is/was allegedly using a false name. The plot thickens.
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