A man must serve five years in prison for kidnapping his then eight-year-old son.
That’s what the Public Prosecutor’s Office demands. The incident occurred in Eindhoven in June 2018. The man appeared in court on Monday.
He was finally apprehended last month. More than two years ago, he kidnapped the boy in Kruisstraat. A family member had a car ready for their escape.
Intense custody battle
The abduction was the result of an intense custody battle between the child’s parents. They were at great odds, with the father repeatedly violating his visitation rights. The conflict led to the man being evicted from his home in early 2018.
Mother and son were housed at a secret address. But the father manages to track down his son. He then snatched him.
They fled to Spain. Police found the boy in Barcelona in February 2019, and he was reunited with his mother. Another man – not the boy’s father – was arrested. But the father disappeared.
At the time, the father had sent an e-mail to Studio040. In it, he wrote that he had taken his child to protect him from his mother. “I did it for his own safety.”
“He’s not safe with his mother. But because of the failure of [places like] youth care, he remains with his mother.’
The police, however, describe the man as ‘dangerous and violent’. He is suspected of several violent crimes. “Everyone keeps talking about my past, which is also far in the past,” said the man in his email.
The man finds it strange that there is no mention of the mother’s past. “Especially since she was convicted in 2018 for attempted manslaughter of her own child and his father,” he alledges in his mail. He said that the mother had tried to stab both him and the child in 2013, when the boy was three, at most.
Arrested
The authorities arrested the family member that assisted him in the kidnapping. And last month, the father was caught. He was right here in the Netherlands.
A second man was also arrested. He’s said to have helped to keep the suspect out of the police’s hands. He did so doing things like booking holiday homes for the man under a false name.
The court found that the man had taken things too far. “He didn’t adhere to the set agreements,” says a court representative. Instead, he intimidated his ex-wife, her family and those supporting her.
Even after the incident, the man turned up at another secret location. The boy’s mother had also found a tracking device under her car. She had to pull her son out of school and relocate again.
‘Difficult situation’
“Mother and son are currently in an unimaginably difficult situation. They’ve had to break off all contact with family and friends. Again.”
“It’s exhausting for them. They don’t know when this ongoing terror will truly end,” the Public Prosecutor says. The court official, therefore, thinks the kidnapping should carry a substantial nonsuspended prison sentence.
“I hope mother and son will be able to spend a few more peaceful, formative years together.”
Source: Studio040
Translator: Bob
Editor: Melinda Walraven
