Emmanuel comments

@Gogogo, @Serrano and @many more here (in particular @John Zendano),

Your words warm my heart and give me a lot of strength.

If I decided to react here on the Japan Today website, it's because I know people like you are aware about what's going on in Japan. You understand a situation that is incomprehensible...

This AFP article is published worldwide is in different languages. Some will say (and they are right) that this problem does not only affect Japan. However, Japan has signed all the international conventions that prevent these situations from happening. In spite of this, parental child abduction in Japan is institutionalized and the right to visit your child after a divorce is impossible (unless the parent who has custody of the child allows it).

3 million children abducted in 20 years in Japan (mostly between Japanese couples). 71% of the children of divorces parents, do not see again their other parent ...

Who fights for those kids ? Those kids have no voice and when they will have a voice (at adult age), it will be too late because their childhood will be behind them.

Last but not least, parental alienation is probably the worst thing in this nightmare. And that spares no country in the world.

@Hiro, I am Emmanuel the father who his mentioned in the article. What do you know about our stories? My daughter was kidnapped from abroad to Japan suddenly by the family of my Japanese wife. The reason why my wife abducted my child ? Because she knew that Japanese law allowed her to do it and she would win everything in case of divorce in Japan. And because she knew that I loved my daughter so much, she could blackmail me in exchange of some time spent on Skype with her.

Do I need to specify that my wife was under psychiatric treatment for wanting to kill my daughter? And this is one of the reasons that led her family to abduct my daughter: The dishonor my wife put on her Japanese family was such that her own family wanted to control her by forcing her to stay at home, while forcibly taking over the guardianship of my daughter

You say we should have mediated rather than publicized this story. Do you know that's the first thing we did? That my own parents who were 74 and 66 came from France to Japan, to try to find an amicable solution. As I knew that in Japan it was lost cause to return my daughter to her home, I proposed to pay the French-Japanese school, to pay support money, and in exchange I could see my daughter the times I will go to Japan and she can come one month a year to France. This was refused, everything was refused by the Japanese family. And you allow yourself to judge and give lessons?

It's been four years since I saw my daughter. Overnight, she disappeared. Don't you think it's kidnapping and parental alienation that are the real mental destruction for my daughter? She can't see her father for years, she is told that I have abandoned her, that I do not love her, and so on.

Her grandfather will never see her again until his death. Her great-grandmother has died without seeing her for 4 years! And you say to me that it is the mediatization which will cause to my daughter of the distress? Do you realize that your words are abject?

There are millions of Japanese children over the last 20 years who have been separated from one of their parents without seeing him again. There are thousands of binational children who have been abducted to and from Japan. And there are so many families destroyed by the iniquitous and inhumane practices made in Japan regarding the non-application of family laws and international conventions, including the Convention of the Children Rights. He is the problem and the drama.