Straight talking from Union’s tug of love mediator

Date: 10/04/1997

Leyla Linton meets Mary Banotti, the European Parliament's go-between in child abduction cases, and discovers how the recent paedophilia scandal in Belgium has helped to change attitudes towards the well-being of children throughout the EU.

“I NOW understand how wise Solomon was. We are trying to give Solomonic judgements in a much more complex world.”

MEP Mary Banotti speaks with a down-to-earth directness about her job as a go-between in cases where children have been abducted by one or other parent. Her favourite adjectives are 'useful' and 'helpful'.

It is tempting to imagine the no-nonsense former nurse and social worker confronting estranged couples and banging heads together in the search for an end to custody battles between parents.

In reality, most of the Irish MEP's time is spent at the end of a phone trying to locate abducted children or using her influence to speed up cases. She often intervenes where there are serious problems in getting local police to act. “By bringing in my role and the European Parliament, people tend to respond to us,” she says.

Since her appointment as the Parliament's mediator on abducted children in 1995, Banotti has tackled more than 30 cases - and resolved four in the past five months alone.

In some instances, the children have been missing for more than six months. “We tend to get the really, really difficult cases which have fallen through the net,” she explains.

Most EU countries, apart from Belgium, have ratified the Hague Convention, which stipulates that children abducted by one of their parents should be returned to their country of 'habitual residence' while long-term custody arrangements are agreed.

Although the situation would be worse without the convention, in practice, not all EU member states implement it with the same effectiveness.

Banotti says justice ministers would do well to examine this issue. One of the biggest problems, she explains, is that child abduction cases tend not to be heard in specialised courts with specialised lawyers who have the necessary expertise.

“With the exception of Ireland and England, these cases are generally heard in local courts, very often in small seaside places where tourism has led to relationships being formed and children being born.”

Banotti singles out three EU countries which pose specific difficulties.

“Spain has a particular problem because it is so big. It has 55 million people and in the context of tourism it is very difficult to protect the borders. It is often very difficult to find these children. Greece has constitutional problems with sending children back. The central authorities in Germany work extremely well, but the problem is that there is a worrying tendency on the part of the local courts to review previous judgements where somebody from another country has been given custody,” she explains.

EU action to strengthen the fight against child abduction is still in its infancy. “We are still too far behind in our legal and police cooperation,” says Banotti, suggesting that one way forward would be for member states to sign a convention recognising each other's custody agreements, in the same way that the Brussels Convention allows for mutual recognition of divorce.

She feels strongly that the Union could take a tougher approach with Muslim and Islamic countries through the Euro-Mediterranean initiative, which aims to increase social and economic ties with partners in the programme.

“A huge amount of EU money - millions and millions of ecu - is going into these countries and I think it is about time they began to react to our very real concerns about the huge number of children who have been abducted from the European Union and into these countries. Very often you never see the children again. This is an issue,” she insists.

Banotti cites the ongoing problems faced by Pamela Hamilton, whose twin boys aged nine were abducted and taken to Tunisia in July by their father.

“We had remarkably little success. Here you have a woman with few resources who goes to Tunisia, hangs around, has to find money for a hotel. She goes to court and the case is heard between some about people being beaten up in the streets. It lasts 20 seconds and her husband screams, 'I will have you killed' and that is it. She has travelled all that way for that.”

In contrast, Banotti was ecstatic when a court in Western Samoa recently ruled that nine-year-old Tom should be returned to his mother, Christine Wagner, who was living in Ireland. The MEP was all the more delighted by the outcome of the long and difficult case because Western Samoa was not a signatory to the Hague Convention.

During her time as a mediator, Banotti has seen attitudes towards children change radically in the wake of the paedophilia scandal in Belgium.

“There was a general kind of indulgent approval for what I was doing before, but it became a real hard-edged political issue after the Dutroux case. The best memorial to those little girls who died in Belgium is the way it changed political will,” she says, adding: “I am appalled at how dangerous the world is for children. Maybe I am naïve about the past and it was always a dangerous place, but I think that it is dangerous in a particularly nasty way now.”

It was Banotti who proposed a database of missing children, possibly within the framework of Europol and with links to a similar one in Washington which has recorded up to 367,000 missing children every year.

“We do not know how many children in Europe are missing,” she says. “They just disappear.”

The Dublin MEP's approach to her case-load is very hands on. She takes pride in her role and is careful to emphasis the support she gets from European Parliament President José María Gil-Robles.

Perhaps surprisingly, she believes the fact she is not a lawyer is a help rather than a hindrance.

“I have learned a lot. In an ironic way, it has been useful that I am not a lawyer. As a social worker and a nurse and a campaigner, I had a particular kind of background. I have used the law and the European Parliament networks and sometime old contacts from a different life altogether, and it has all helped to get a rounded picture,” she explains.

Banotti hints also that she has had “personal experience” of the problem of parental abduction in her own life, but refuses to elucidate.

She agrees that her work has changed her as a person. “I feel a very strong sense of responsibility and ask myself all the time, 'Am I doing the right thing? Do I know everything? Do I know all I need to know about what is happening here?'” she explains.

Essentially, Banotti is a one-woman band, with support from her special adviser Anne Hennon. She has no budget for her work, no back-up staff dedicated to child abduction and would like a special unit to be set up.

“All my staff just plunge in to help. I think there is a place for an EU children's unit. You would have to have someone with some kind of social background,” she says.

Banotti's work as mediator is undoubtedly time-consuming, with two new cases coming in each week.

“Every time we come to a happy ending of a case, I always say I have to get back to the rest of my work, and then, by golly, within a week it seems to start again. The trouble is that success breeds more interest and more people get in touch.”

Given the enormity of the task in front of her, it is not hard to see why.