Canadian judge struggles with kidnapping sentence

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 2006-12-04 20:24

Story here.

"The judge sentencing a French woman who fled Canada with her children and sparked a bitter international custody battle said on Friday the true victims in the case were the youngsters.

Judge Marvyn Koenigsberg said she believes Nathalie Gettliffe did not intend to remain in France permanently when she kidnapped her children, but that did not diminish the harm the case had caused.

Gettliffe fled to France with the children in 2001 after a Canadian divorce court rejected her request to take them there for 10 months. The court had ruled that would violate their father's right to have access to them.
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"I don't think the greatest harm that happened to the children is not the five years (away), it's that they learned to hate their father," Koenigsberg said, admitting she was struggling with how to handle the case.

Gettliffe, 35, a dual Canadian-French citizen, pleaded guilty to a kidnapping charge this month before her trial was scheduled to begin."

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She got six months plus time served (16 months in all). In France, she carried out a campaign of public denigration of her ex husband, turned the kids against him and, get this, started a campaign to become President of France. The woman is clearly off the deep end but has the sympathy of a large chunk of the French public (largely motivated by her ex's membership of an evangelical church). Given this and that it cost her ex 5 years and CA$500,000 to get his kids back can we still say that the system worked?

-- Silence is the voice of complicity.
http://disenfranchisedfather.blogspot.com

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Submitted by JD on Tue, 2006-12-05 01:14