International Parental Child Abduction

1:15 P.M. (EST)

Real Audio of Briefing

MR. DENIG: Good morning, and welcome to the Foreign Press Center. We're delighted to have you today for a briefing on the topic "International Parental Child Abduction."

This is an issue that appears every now and then in the press, and then sort of disappears again, but it is an issue that is of ongoing concern, particularly for the families involved.

So we're very pleased today to have two people here today to brief us who have dealt very closely with this issue for some time. To my immediate left, we're delighted to have with us Lady Catherine Meyer, who is president and CEO of an organization called PACT, which is Parents and Abducted Children Together.
I'm sure you have seen in the media that Lady Meyer herself is the victim of such an abduction in the sense that her two children are no longer with her and she does not have access to them. In 1999, she co-founded the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and following that, a year later, she set up her own organization, PACT.

With us today also is Michelle Bernier-Toth, from the Bureau of Consular Affairs of the State Department. She's the director of the Office of Children's Issues and Overseas Citizen Services.

Both of them will have opening statements and following that, they'll be glad to take your questions.

Lady Meyer.

LADY MEYER: Hello. How do you do?

MR. DENIG: Fine, thank you.

LADY MEYER: As you explained, my own children were abducted quite a few years ago, and at the beginning I thought this was just an issue that had happened to me.

I then published a book, and when I came to America with this book, I was on Barbara Walters, and there were several articles in the newspapers, and many American parents wrote to me with a similar situation, and this is when I realized, to my great horror, that my case was not unique, but that this is happening more and more often.

In effect, if you just looked at numbers, in the USA alone, 354,000 children are abducted by a parent every year. Many children are returned, but unfortunately, some are not, and when these children are taken abroad -- we do not know the exact figures, but we reckon maybe 10 percent -- unfortunately the situation is that it is very difficult to get them back.

The reason for that is that, although there is an international convention that regulates these matters, unfortunately, many countries do not necessarily abide by the terms of the convention. There are internal problems. Each country has its own legal system. Sometimes there are problems of enforcement of orders.

And the net result is that, when the child is taken abroad, and it is not returned quickly to their country of habitual residence, time works against the left-behind parent; and the more time the child is in the foreign country, then a new argument comes: oh, well, now the child is happy in its new situation and let's not send it back.

The main problem that I have encountered is not only that many children are not returned, but the tragic situation is, then, when the left-behind parent no longer has access to his or her children, and this is what happened to me, and this is what is happening very often in many of the cases that I've been seeing.

So all this led me, as it was explained to you before, that Ernie Allen, who is the chairman and CEO of the National Center, and I decided many years ago to create an international center.

Then, a year later, I created my own organization, called PACT. PACT is not a help line. We are an advocacy and research group, and our main mission is to fight parental child abduction and to help the police retrieve missing and abducted children. The charity is based -- it's registered in the United States and it's registered in the United Kingdom.

And so since all this, I have started a lot of advocacy work. I have been invited, very kindly, to testify in front of the Senate and in front of the House of Representatives.

And I personally think that five years ago this was an issue that very few people knew about. They all considered, well, child abduction yes, but usually it happens with very far-away lands where the laws are different, and I think it was a little bit of a surprise for the politicians in America and everywhere to realize that this is something that's happening more and more often in our European and inter-European with US-Europe countries.

But I have seen a lot of difficulties and yet a lot of willingness to try to improve the system in the EU, and there is new legislation that is going to be, hopefully, in place in July of 2004. This legislation, under the umbrella of Brussels 2D (phonetic) is going to regulate access and custody order in the EU, meaning that one order made in one country is automatically going to be recognized in another country, because this is the point I think most people do not realize. They think that if you have a custody order in one country, it will be automatically recognized in another, but it isn't.

And so these are the types of things that I'm working on. I'm working on them also at The Hague level, working very closely with the State Department, with politicians, with other authorities in other countries, trying, really, to use my terrible situation and what happened to my poor children to try, instead of crying about it, to give a voice to other children and tell the world that this is not actually just a question of a child being taken away from one parent and the child is all right with the other parent.

I'm trying to tell the world this is a really serious issue. We're doing research on the long-term effect on the children that have been abducted, and it is a fact, which I'm going to try to prove even better, that children who are separated forcibly from one of their parents will have traumatic psychological effects, and I think in our society, or in our civilized society, this really should not happen.

Children should not be taken to court and asked, "Which parent do you want to live with," because a child can't make that decision. A child doesn't realize when a child loses one parent, it becomes completely dependent on the other parent. A child is frightened. And I think that, often, judges don't like those types of cases, and they rely, and they put the onus and the responsibility on the shoulders of the children, and this is, in my opinion, a form of child abuse. I think our children should be better protected. I think that children everywhere would say, "I want my mommy and my daddy." A child doesn't want just to be completely separated from one parent.

And so this is basically what I'm trying to do, is to give a voice to the children, who really can't speak for themselves on this issue.

MR. DENIG: Thank you very much. Michelle?

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: Well, thank you. It is a pleasure to be here, and a particular honor to be here with Lady Catherine, who has done so much over the years, and continues to do so much on behalf of children and their parents.

I think, as Lady Catherine says, these cases cannot fail to move you. Any one of us who is involved on a professional basis with left-behind parents and their children, I quickly came to realize what a serious problem this is and what devastating impact an abduction has on the child, just as Lady Catherine mentioned.

In my 16 years as a consular officer and most particularly in the year that I've been the director of the Office of Children's Issues, I've seen the really awful toll that these abductions in these cases take on parents and children alike. I've met parents who have done everything asked of them. They've done everything by the book, and yet they have minimal if any access to their children, and no chance of maintaining a meaningful relationship or contact with them. I've met parents who are terrified at the prospect that they will soon lose even the ability to communicate with their children in the same language, because they have been separated from a child.

I've met children, or have known of children who have been forced to lead a life of deception and hiding, either because they were taken to a foreign country by a parent who was trying to evade location, or even upon their return to their custodial parent, who now fears the possibility of a re-abduction.

And so the impact long-term, the study is going to be very interesting, because I think we have to look at these kinds of issues in a very broad way.

What is it that we do? The Department of State, recognizing that the international parental child abduction was a very serious and growing problem, established the Office of Children's Issues under the Bureau of Consular Affairs in 1994. This allowed the Department, and the bureau, in particular, to focus resources, attention, and expertise in one office where we could assist parents whose children have been either abducted abroad by another parent or retained there against the custody order or the wishes of the other parent, or, in some cases, who fear the possibility of that abduction. We also handle prevention cases, and I think we all agree that if we can prevent an abduction, it's such a relief, because then we have spared that parent and the child such agony over the long term.

As Lady Catherine said, these cases are not easily resolved. We do what we can. Our primary goal is to work with the parents, to explain, in realistic ways, the challenges that they're up against in trying to seek the return of their child or seek access to their child, if that's what they're trying to do, and in doing that, we want them to understand what the challenges are, but also, most importantly, what the resources and tools are, what they have to work with, and that's where it does become complicated, because each case is unique; any abduction case is complex.

And there are a host of players who get involved, from the law enforcement authorities to the courts to the lawyers to the social services people to the Department of State. Across the board, there's a host of players. And one of the things we try to do to help parents is identify who those people are, what the resources are, and how to put it together in a team strategy to work to redress the problem. So it's a lot of providing information and facilitating parents' contacts with different entities, different agencies, and working with those agencies to try to find a solution to each individual case.

We aren't always successful in the short run. Sometimes we're not successful in the long run, but we keep trying. For some parents, The Hague Convention does prove a viable tool. When the Convention works, it actually can work well.
It determines where -- basically, The Hague Convention is good, because it says a child should be returned to its place of habitual residence to determine custody. That's where the best interests of the child can be most accurately determined by a judge. And so I think what it does is, it rolls back the situation to the pre-abduction status and makes it -- and the basic principle is that the taking parent should not be rewarded for having abducted the child, so there's no benefit to doing so, and perhaps in that way we can not only resolve these cases, but also deter future ones. So where it works, it works well.

We do have some cases, for some countries, where we are able to return a child to the United States within a matter of a few months, but we always recognize that even a few months can seem an eternity to a parent whose child has been taken from them, who does not know what the outcome of a Hague return proceeding might be.

Unfortunately, The Hague Convention, as Lady Catherine said, is not uniformly applied in all jurisdictions. Some countries do, frankly, have problems enforcing those orders. This is something that we raise with those countries on a regular basis. Other countries, for a host of reasons, have not fully implemented the Convention, perhaps for lack of resources or other reasons, and in those countries you might have situations where judges who are hearing Hague cases are not even aware of what their responsibilities under the Convention should be.
And so they are family law judges, typically, who are going to treat these cases as custody cases, not looking at the issues of habitual return and whether the child was taken from the country of habitual residence.

So those are some of the problems that we have to work with in looking at how The Hague is implemented by different countries and how it affects individual cases; and it's not easy, but it's something that we are committed to pursuing, because we think it's very important that it is applied consistently and uniformly by all the member states.

To that end, for example, we have in the past year or so hosted a number of groups of judges and others involved in implementing the Convention in their own countries, hosted them on trips to the United States where they have had the opportunity to meet with their counterparts, judges, lawyers, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which, under a partnership we established in 1995, handles all of our incoming Hague cases on our behalf, and this kind of interaction is extremely important in helping, I think, people appreciate and understand how The Hague can be implemented and applied.

So when it works, it works; when it doesn't, we deal with that. What do we do in cases where children have been taken to non-Hague countries? Obviously, the Convention is not an option in those situations. There we have other tools at our disposal, but it is going to be a tougher hill to climb. As in any country, our first responsibility is to the welfare and safety of the child, and so the first thing that we will seek to do is to, one, locate the child in that foreign country, usually looking through local law enforcement or the local government. Two, we will seek to obtain consular access to the child, which is usually covered under the Vienna Consular Convention. And based on that visit, once we have obtained access, three, we'll do regular meetings with the child so that we can report back to the left-behind parent on the child's welfare and safety, and we understand that not only is this important for us as consular employees and consular officials in ascertaining the welfare and safety of our citizens, but it's also extremely important to the left-behind parent.

This may be the first time that parent has received any information about this child in years. This may be the first time they've found out what sports their child likes to play at school, what their favorite foods are, who their friends are. This is the first time, perhaps, that we are able to send back a photograph to the parent, the first time they've seen their child since the child was taken, many years before, and so that's extremely important. It's an extremely important function that we can provide to the parents, and it's always very exciting when we can provide not just a photograph, but actually take a cell phone and hook a parent and a child up so they can have direct communication.

In seeking access, one of our goals is to facilitate direct communications between the parent and the child over the long run, and it's not always easy. We need the cooperation, often, of the taking parent. That doesn't always happen. Sometimes we do go to local governments and ask for their assistance in trying to achieve that. We think that, and we fully believe that every child does need contact with both parents, and any parent would want to maintain a meaningful relationship with their child, and we want to try to see what we can do to facilitate that.

We are not attorneys and we cannot provide legal advice, but because US custody orders are not going to be recognized in a foreign country, the left-behind parent has to think about whether they will seek to have their order recognized, which is possible in some countries, or whether they are going to have to pursue custody anew in that other country, and if they do that, what are the chances they will obtain custody; what are the odds against them?

In many countries, the legal system is very different than that of the United States, and we try, to the best of our ability, to provide information on the legal system and, more importantly, provide the left-behind parent with information on attorneys, preferably family law attorneys who can deal in these sorts of issues, who can assist them and help them wend their way through that local legal system.

We will monitor each and every case, and very often, we will also attend court hearings to ensure that the rights, the legal rights of the parents under that local legal system, are respected and protected.

We raise cases on a regular basis with foreign governments when we feel that there can be something -- there's something that should be done that hasn't been done, and particularly when we feel that, for example, local orders have not been carried out, that the local courts haven't done what they're supposed to do. We will raise those, and often at very high levels.

These aren't easy cases to resolve, but I think if you ask anyone in my office, they would never give up. If the parent is not going to give up, then neither are we.

Before I came, I got a message from my abduction unit chief who said, "Tell them that we have a lot of volunteers here and that nobody quits," and that's true, because they don't give up, they don't give in, and they believe in what they do.

And I think, at the end of the day, as frustrating as it can be for us, we know how much more frustrating it is to the left-behind parent, and to the extent that we can assist them and support them, it's a wonderful thing, and when we do have a child returned to their custodial parent, it's such a thrill. We celebrate each and every one of those cases, and that's what makes it all worthwhile.

MR. DENIG: Thank you both very much for that good introduction. We're now open to questions. We would ask you, as usual, to please identify yourself and your organization and use the microphone.

QUESTION: Arthur Landwehr, German Public Radio, ARD. Question for Lady Meyer.

In 19 -- if I remember right, I think it was in 1999 or 2000, your case made the headlines and briefly affected German-American relations, also, and Joschka Fischer, the Foreign Minister, and Madeleine Albright found an agreement, and the system in Germany was changed in the aftermath of that.

Could you just update us on your case? What happened since 2000? Did you get contact, receive any contact to your children? What happened since then?

LADY MEYER: The situation has changed in itself, because my oldest son is going to be 18 quite soon, so I think after he's 18, he is independent and maybe he will try to seek to have contact with me.

But as far as my own case on the legal side, nothing has changed, unfortunately, and it was very, very depressing, not only for me, but also, I think, for a lot of the parents that had problems with Germany and had the same situation, because when we finally, you know, through my work with PACT, when we finally reached the President and President Clinton raised the issue with Chancellor Schroeder, I think everybody was very excited, saying, "Now, you know, something really is going to happen."

Things have improved. The State Department will tell you there is a, how do you call it, a commission that has been created between the Germans and the Americans, a year before that, because I also raised the issue how I could talk to [Chancellor] Kohl before then.

There is also a Franco-German Parliamentary Commission, and they are trying to look together at how they can improve the system. So I think in new cases, i.e., in future cases, I am convinced that the German authorities have taken it seriously and that new cases will be dealt in a better way, but unfortunately, on what they call old cases, like mine, like other parents -- French, British, and American -- whose children have been taken to Germany a long time ago, unfortunately, nothing has improved.

So I have not had any visitations to my children. In fact, the latest court decision canceled all my rights altogether, and the reason for that, the court said, is because now the children are, first of all, adapted to their new environment after so many years, that they don't want to see me, and that, in fact, for me to see my children would be too traumatic and psychologically damaging for them to have contact with me, which, of course, in many other aspects, we all find this quite odd.

But the point was that all my rights had been canceled, and that after the age of 16 -- Constantine, my youngest, is going to be 16 very soon -- I can't apply for access anymore.

My situation -- I am an optimist. I believe that my children still know that I love them, and I believe that one day they will have contact with me, and I don't know in how many years, and I hope they haven't been too damaged.

MR. DENIG: Follow-up question?

QUESTION: Yes, Arthur Landwehr, for Michelle Bernier-Toth. If we look at German-American relations at this point, and what it has done in the aftermath of 2000, is the State Department happy in the way you deal with the German authorities, just leaving Lady Meyer's case apart, aside right now?

But the system, how it is implemented right now, are you happy with the system?

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: Well, I think we, just to put it into perspective, and just to let you know what we're doing, beginning in 2000, we did establish the US-German or German-US -- doesn't matter which way -- Commission or Working Group, which has been meeting ever since on a regular basis to look at not just individual cases, some of these older cases that are very difficult to find a solution to, that we are still working on those, but also to look in a more general way at some of the bigger pictures and what we can do, what each side can do to improve our records and our handling of cases. I think that dialogue has been extremely useful. It has gone on to a point now where we have very open communications with our counterparts in the German central authority in particular, and has allowed us to, I think, be creative in seeking solutions to some of the very most difficult cases.

Have these solutions always worked? No, they haven't, and that's something we continue to press on.

MR. DENIG: Other questions?

MR. DENIG: Let me ask one, if I may, for both of you or either one of you who wants to answer.

About what percent of cases are resolved in a positive way so that the children and the parents are brought back together again?

LADY MEYER: I would say it depends on the countries. I think the system works very well with some countries, and children are returned often; and I think there are problems with other countries, where the rate of return is low.

But it also depends on the way the country's system is organized. For instance, with the UK -- and I'm not saying that because I come from Britain -- but in the UK, the system works well, because when a Hague Convention case is put forward, it is answered by only 19 specialist judges, and the case goes immediately to the higher court, and they deal all the time with Hague Convention cases, and returns are very, very often, and I think the statistic is 96 percent of abductions to the UK are returned under The Hague Convention.

In other countries, such as in Germany, one of the main problems, which now has improved, is that 863 courts in Germany could actually hear a Hague Convention case, and so if your child was taken to a very small town, the judge there, who never heard of The Hague Convention, who maybe had sort of a more restrictive view of the world -- and that happens often in America, actually. In America, there are many, many courts that hear Hague Convention cases.

And when you deal with a small place, people can say, "Oh, well, I'm not going to return the child to a foreign country." You know, they see it as very negative, and the system doesn't work well.

So that's really the work we're trying to do. We're trying to, and I think The Hague Permanent Bureau has been very helpful. This is the people who are overseeing the functioning of The Hague Convention.

And we're trying to improve this, and she was saying also with regard to cooperation between judges, for judges to speak to each other directly, and so hopefully, things are going to improve.

But there are still a lot of old cases, and mine is maybe a high profile one because I've been speaking out, but there are many, many other parents who have absolutely no contact with their children.

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: Yeah. I think, just to add to that, one of the things that we have found useful here in the United States, given the number of judges -- and it's not just a few hundred, it's thousands of judges -- who can hear these cases in a court, because it is handled by the states as well as the federal courts, is that when we are aware of, through the national center, an incoming Hague case, we provide that judge and the attorneys involved in the case with a packet of information about the Convention, about its operation and its principles, so that at least they know what their responsibilities under the Convention are.

And we have found this to be very useful, and a very easy way, actually, of reaching out to the judges and to the attorneys involved so they understand what the Convention is all about.

LADY MEYER: Eight years ago, that wasn't really done, and that's an improvement.

MR. DENIG: Would you both say that, let's say over the last five years, that the situation of the world has improved as a result of the information that you provide and the pressure that the State Department puts on other governments?

LADY MEYER: I would hope so. I think a little bit, yes. I think that there are two numbers that go against each other.

I think there are more abductions, because there are more international marriages, but there are also even -- I mean, I have cases, for instance, that i know of, of two American parents, one didn't like the custody decision, takes the child and goes to another country, and they usually would go to the countries where they know The Hague Convention doesn't work properly.

And so it's not necessarily just international marriages. It is also the ease of travel and the results of globalization. And so numbers on one hand are increasing, and this is why, really, we are here to say this is a really, really important issue and yes, there have been some changes.

I also have to talk a little bit on behalf of all the other parents who are left behind; but I can tell you, for a parent who is left behind, the changes are not quick enough. You know, for a parent to have no contact with your child for a week is an eternity, and so, you know, for me to sit here and say yes, the system is improving, things are going to work out better for this next generation of children, it's fantastic, but it's not very comforting for people who don't have access to their children.

And I think personally that there are two issues. There is the abduction, but the real issue that needs a lot of work, and things have not improved, is access.

There is no system. Under The Hague Convention there is an article that protects you, Article 21, but this system is not working, and so if your child is not returned, you know, what do you do next?

And that's also where, you know where we're really pressuring the Permanent Bureau and trying to talk to people and say, you know, that needs to be improved, because that's not right. It's not right for the children.

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: Article 21 calls upon the central authority of each member's party to facilitate access, but it doesn't give you mechanisms to do that, and so then it falls back to the local court and local law, and that varies widely from one country to the other, and so there's no sort of common denominator in terms of what access should be, and that's something I think we're looking at.

LADY MEYER: And unfortunately, in some countries, you can have an access right, but there are no ways that that country's legal system can enforce that right, and unfortunately, actually, Germany is one of those countries. You can have an order giving you access, but if the other parent decides, "No, I don't want to let my ex-wife or my ex-husband see the child," actually, the court can't do very much about it, so in effect, the piece of paper is worth nothing. And that's where -- and where I feel very badly is that people who look at a person like me get so depressed that what's happened is there is more incidence of re-abduction.

I have heard of parents who decided, "Well, I've heard about Catherine Meyer's case and other cases. The Hague Convention doesn't work properly, so I better hire some bodyguards and go and re-abduct the child." And this is, in my opinion, the worst solution, because the children can get hurt, and the point is, we're talking about children. So that's why I really think the system should work to deter abductions, to give a message to parents, "Don't abduct your child in the first place."

MR. DENIG: Over here again, please.

MR. LANDWEHR: Maybe you could give us some figures about child abduction into the United States and how these cases are handled here.

I mean, as far as I know, you have the same thing, with each and every judge in the United States is allowed to deal with Hague cases.

First of all, how many cases are there, how many children were abducted into the United States; and secondly, how do you deal with that as the State Department?

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: We know of those cases -- just to clarify one point, is that in some instances, parents who have a Hague case can file directly with the court or through other means. And so we are -- not all of the cases come through us, or in this case, actually, through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, with which we have a partnership that they handle the incoming cases for us and we handle the outgoing cases. They have told me that within the past year they've had approximately a few over 300 or so incoming cases that they have handled on our behalf.

MR. LANDWEHR: In a year?

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: In the past year. And --

LADY MEYER: I thought there were more.

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: Well, there are ones in California, too, that go through the California system. That are more, but those are the ones that we know of.

LADY MEYER: Okay.

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: And again, the way that it works is when they -- and the National Center does all this for us, which is wonderful -- when the case comes in and the application is filed with the National Center, the first thing they do is to, of course, try to locate the child, because until you've located the child, you don't know which state you're dealing with, you don't know what the parameters are.

And of course, they have an extensive network that they have used successfully for both domestic and incoming international cases to try to locate the child, using law enforcement, using other mechanisms.

Once the child is located, they also work with the parent to try to obtain pro bono or reduced fee legal services. The United States does not have, as you know, an national legal service system so that parents would automatically qualify for legal aid, but where a parent would qualify, they work to try to find them an attorney who is willing to take on the case, either pro bono or for a reduced fee, and have had some success in that area. They have a network that they have established of attorneys all through the country to do that.

And then, of course, the case has to go to court, and that's where we will provide information to the attorneys on both sides, as well as to the judge, so they know what The Hague is all about, and what their responsibilities would be, and they monitor the case, we monitor the case with them to see what the outcome is, and to follow it up from there.

MR. LANDWEHR: But you, as a federal organization, are meeting with states? Okay. I put down that microphone again. So you're a federal organization, but usually you have to deal with local authorities or state authorities, right?

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: The National Center would take the lead in these incoming cases, in working with the courts, the judges, the attorneys, primarily, involved in the cases, because the case is going to be taken to a court probably by an attorney, and we will monitor that.

MR. DENIG: And just to clarify, the National Center is an NGO?

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: Yes, they're a non-governmental organization.

QUESTION: If I can maybe follow up, Lady Meyer, you used the figure, I think, at the beginning, of 354,000 children abducted. Is that over a one-year period? Is that abductions both within the United States and from the United States to overseas and from overseas into the United States?

LADY MEYER: Those are figures that are from the Department of Justice, 354,000 parental abductions in -- those are US figures, so they are either within the US, and in the US you also sometimes have problems of different jurisdictions with different states, and some of those children are taken abroad, but unfortunately, there are no exact figure. We think it's probably 10 percent, but we don't know.

It sounds like a huge amount. It is a big amount. However, a lot of children are returned quite quickly. I mean, the ones we are talking about are really the very bad cases. But one child is one child too many, and when it's your child, 354,000 or one child, it makes no difference.

MR. DENIG: Michelle, is there any interest in this issue on the part of Congress?

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: Absolutely. I think Congress has taken a very active interest. I mean, again, Congress represents the American people and the American people are interested in this. I think you only have to read the media to see that it is a front-page issue, very often, thanks to efforts of people who, like Lady Catherine, have raised it and made their cases known. So certainly, Congress is interested, and it's also something that the Department is very interested in. It's a very high priority for us, and it's, I think, one of the major issues that's on our radar screens, on our front burners these days. Secretary Powell has taken a very personal interest in it, and that's wonderful.

LADY MEYER: And the President.

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: And the President, absolutely.

LADY MEYER: The President raised it (inaudible) quite recently.

MS. BERNIER-TOTH: Mm-hmm.

LADY MEYER: It was an unknown thing, I would say, five, six years ago.

A PARTICIPANT: I agree.

LADY MEYER: But I mean, I personally found a huge amount of support in the US with lawmakers.

There were several Senators who took on the issue and constantly fought for us, same with Congress, Representatives.

So I think it's something that people were unaware of it, and now people are aware of it, but for a system to change, it takes a long time, and that's what's frustrating for parents.

MR. DENIG: Are there any final questions?

(No response.)

MR. DENIG: All right. In that case, I want to thank you very much, Lady Catherine Meyer and Michelle Bernier-Toth, for coming, and thank you ladies and gentlemen.

LADY MEYER: I'll put my newsletter here if anybody wants it.

MR. DENIG: You have copies of your --

LADY MEYER: Newsletter.

MR. DENIG: -- newsletter. Okay. Very good, if anybody wants that.

And we'll end the official program now, and I'll just use this opportunity to give a quick advertisement for a briefing we have tomorrow on a not totally unrelated subject.

You may know that the Department of State is organizing a conference starting on Sunday the 23^rd, lasting through the 26^th, on the problem of global sex trafficking, trafficking in persons, and so forth, and we are fortunate enough that we'll have a briefing here tomorrow, Friday, at 10:30, by John Miller from the State Department's office that combats international trafficking in persons, and this will be an indication of what the agenda is of the conference, what we hope to achieve with it, and a little bit on the situation of the global problem of trafficking in persons.

Thank you very much, and hope to see you tomorrow.