Parents' fight spans continents

Web posted August 13, 2000

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By Margaret N. O'Shea
South Carolina Bureau

Mike Jordan has kept a bedroom ready for the time his two daughters return. He has carried on an extensive effort with the U.S. State Department and the government of Mauritius to get them back. RON COCKERILLE/STAFF

EDGEFIELD, S.C. - In fitful sleep, Mike Jordan throws out an arm across the sheet of miles between his bed and the tropical island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar.

If he is lucky, he will touch his little girls' faces and stroke their hair before he wakes up crying again. The tears come every night, he says - and often during the day.

He dreams about the infants he knew. But a Mickey Mouse photo album of the girls they've become is his only image of 3-year-old Raie and 2-year-old Rachelle, despite a South Carolina judge's order awarding him custody in March 1999. Their mother took the girls to visit relatives on her native island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa 22 months ago, then refused to bring them home.

Eight time zones from Edgefield, the children probably are having lunch as their 33-year-old father wakes from restless sleep and walks into their room, where teddy bears lie on the girls' bed. On most days, by the time he goes to work as an inmate counselor at Edgefield's federal prison, he has done something to try to get his daughters back.

``This year's notebook,'' as Mr. Jordan calls it, is a three-ring binder stuffed with documents - court records, correspondence and bills from lawyers in three countries and some of his letters to all 435 U.S. House members and 100 senators, to President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the Mauritian attorney general and ambassador, and the prime ministers of Mauritius and England, where Mauritian court cases sometimes can be appealed.

Mr. Jordan also has written to the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, trying to get economic sanctions against Mauritius for violating international treaties his lawyers say should have resulted in the children's return months ago.

Handwritten notes record painful progress - or lack of it. On Feb. 2, 1999, he wrote, ``I vow today to not let this happen to me.''

There are three binders now. Stacked, they measure more than a foot high. Mr. Jordan is on his third case worker at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which consults on instances of international child abduction.

Raie and Rachelle are still in Mauritius, where Marie Martine Charoux Jordan has filed for divorce. In the 20 months since she announced her plan to stay there, her husband said, he has seen the girls a total of three hours.

He is frustrated that the U.S. government does not do much to help people like him. The State Department's handbook for parents of abducted children who are taken out of the country bluntly says ``you, as the deprived parent, must conduct the search and recovery operation yourself,'' and it refers to such cases as ``fundamentally private legal matters between the parents involved, over which the Department of State has no jurisdiction.''

``They were perfectly willing to spend $1.5 million to return Elian Gonzalez to his father,'' Mr. Jordan said of the 6-year-old Cuban boy whose Miami relatives tried to prevent his return to his Cuban father after he was found floating in the Atlantic, a survivor of his mother's failed flight to freedom.

``In my case, they've done nothing,'' he said. ``In one of my contacts with the Mauritian ambassador, I asked why he wouldn't help me. He said, `If your own State Department won't help you, why should I help you?' ''

Opposing sides

A hard rain fell in early August in Edgefield, where from his porch Mike Jordan has a view of Pendarvis Chevrolet across South Carolina Highway 19. Half a world away, sun shimmered on the turquoise water that flows over coral reefs around Mauritius, former home of the extinct dodo bird and birthplace of the about-to-be-extinct marriage of the Jordans.

Even though he is estranged from his wife, Martine, Mike Jordan keeps a framed picture of her on a table in his living room. Mrs. Jordan took the couples' two daughters to her homeland of Mauritius and never returned, instead filing for a divorce and permanent custody. Mr. Jordan is trying to get the girls back. RON COCKERILLE/STAFF

They met in Port-Louis, the capital, a decade ago, when Mr. Jordan was a Marine colonel assigned to guard the American Embassy on the tropical island. She was three years younger than him, and, when they married in 1993 after a two-year courtship, an exotic vision in filmy white tulle, holding a bright coral rose.

That is the picture her husband still keeps on an end table, despite all that's happened since. In it, she is the bride he brought home after leaving the Marines. The couple lived first in his home state, Florida, but moved where his work with the Federal Bureau of Prisons took them.

Raie Roxane was born in 1997 in Pueblo, Colo. Rachelle Dominique was born 13 months later in Augusta.

The baby was not quite 3 months old and her sister was 16 months old on Sept. 6, 1998, when the family flew to Mauritius for a two-month visit. Mr. Jordan couldn't stay long because of his job, but Mrs. Jordan planned to remain with her parents until early November, court records show. On Nov. 4, she telephoned her husband and said she wanted to stay another month. On the day he expected his family home, Dec. 4, Mrs. Jordan called to tell him they weren't coming - ever.

``It was the last thing I ever expected to hear,'' he said, insisting their marriage was no rockier than most. ``I couldn't believe she meant it. We didn't have any problems we couldn't have worked out.''

Mr. Jordan flew to Mauritius on Jan. 17, 1999, expecting to patch up the situation and bring his family home, he said. But on Jan. 22, his wife obtained a court order preventing the children from leaving the island. On Feb. 3, the Mauritian Supreme Court granted her ``immediate care and control'' of the girls. The same day, she filed for divorce, seeking permanent custody.

Also that day, Mr. Jordan's Mauritian lawyer, Thierry Koenig, filed a Hague petition seeking the children's return to the United States under an international treaty intended to prevent children from being uprooted during parental disputes that cross national borders.

Mr. Jordan also asked the Family Court in South Carolina's 11th Judicial Circuit, which includes Edgefield County, to grant him custody. Judge Peter Nuessle did, a month later.

The storybook couple who wed after a tropical romance were clearly in a fight to the finish over the children born during their 5´-year marriage - a fight that has had ugly moments despite a court record that was surprisingly bland.

``I'm not sure how a father should behave when he's told he'll never get to talk to his children again. They threatened to cut off the only method of contact I have - when I'm allowed to have it. I'm guilty of being depressed and frustrated. If it's wrong to keep trying, sure - I'm guilty of that.'' - Mike Jordan, whose two daughters are in Mauritius with their mother

Mrs. Jordan's petition says they argued often, that she was not happy but felt powerless to deal with the legal system in a foreign country - her husband's, not hers. It says Mr. Jordan refused to have sexual relations after their first child was born, except when he'd been drinking - a claim he says is not true.

And she says he struck her once with a folder of papers. He says he pushed the file across a tabletop, and it hit her hand.

With an international kidnapping warrant pending against her, Mrs. Jordan refers questions to her attorney, Christine Sauzier. Ms. Sauzier refers them to a colleague, Maxime Sauzier, who said Thursday that Mrs. Jordan's affidavit for the Mauritian court ``makes it very clear that she has fears that the children would not be safe with their father in the United States because of his drinking,'' a practice Mr. Jordan says he has stopped.

``Nor does Mrs. Jordan plan to return to the United States with the children,'' Mr. Sauzier added. He said ``it would be fair to say that she was not happy there,'' depressed by the sharp contrasts between Edgefield and her home. She's also lonely, knowing hardly anyone but her husband. Mrs. Jordan returned to Mauritius soon after having two babies in 13 months and ``upon her reflection, she believed it would be best for them all to stay here,'' Mr. Sauzier said.

He said he did not know whether Mrs. Jordan ever responded to a letter from a social worker in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, urging her to negotiate an agreement ``that will first and foremost meet the needs of the children.''

A struggle that spans continents The island of Mauritius is half a world away from the South Carolina city of Edgefield, where a father is waging a desperate war to get his daughters back from the tropical republic. Mike Jordan is trying to get the United States to levy economic sanctions against Mauritius for refusing to honor international treaties. He is convinced that may be the only way to force Mauritius to take action. The girls went there with his wife, a native Mauritian, 22 months ago, and he wants to see them again.

``It is unfair to ask Raie and Rachelle to separate from their father and move forward with their lives as you have done,'' social worker Marsha Gilmer-Tullis wrote in May. ``The time has arrived for all parties to put aside their hostilities and anger to move forward in the best interests of these children.''

Ms. Gilmer-Tullis said professional confidentiality prohibited her from saying whether Mrs. Jordan ever answered.

Fighting city hall

It is a testament to Mr. Jordan's determination that people recognize his name at the U.S. State Department, where the Office of Children's Issues tracks at any given time an estimated 1,000 cases of ``left-behind parents'' like him - more than 13,000 of them since 1977. His case is also familiar to the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, which has dealt with 12,389 family abduction cases in the past decade, 1,476 of them with children yet to be located.

The center began consulting on Hague Convention cases in September 1995. Since then, it has been involved in 1,862 of them. The Jordan children account for two of the center's 389 current cases in which left-behind parents are seeking children's return under the Hague treaty. One child is one case.

Mr. Jordan's name also is familiar in Mauritius government offices because of communications like the angry fax he sent the prime minister on Raie's third birthday in May:

``Today your time, I called to speak to my oldest daughter on her birthday! I was denied access even to speak to her on the phone! What kind of government do you have that denies me like this? Today I am again contacting each and every senator and congressman with an update of your noncompliance! I wish to speak to my oldest daughter today! Make it happen!''

He says the ambassador did make it happen, and if the fax didn't win him any friends in Mauritius, he had none anyway.

The 24 pictures he has of the children came through the American Embassy by way of the State Department. And the phone call he arranged through the ambassador's office was just another chapter in an ongoing argument over whether Mrs. Jordan is allowing her husband to speak with the girls.

About two weeks before that call, case records show, the American Embassy had inquired on Mr. Jordan's behalf about his inability to speak with his daughters. Deputy Attorney General Feroza Maudarbocus-Moolna responded that the Jordans' attorneys had an agreement that allowed phone conversations.

Mr. Jordan fired off an angry letter to the attorney general's office, saying Mrs. Maudarbocus-Moolna did not have all the facts. Referring to his wife by her maiden name, he said, ``Ms. Charoux and her family over the past several months have threatened me, told me that I will never talk to them again and also turned off their phone so that I could not contact my children.''

He attached a four-page record of calls, most a minute or less, for nine months of 1999, up to the point he says the phone was disconnected in the Charoux household. Among the final entries were 19 calls in less than 45 minutes Nov. 29, beginning at 7:43 a.m., Mauritian time. The record showed several similar spates of rapid-fire calls.

Protocol Here is what two international bodies call for in cases involving parents trying to get their children out of foreign countries: Hague Convention: Requires assenting countries to return an abducted child to his home country while the courts deal with parents' disputes over custody and other issues. Vienna Convention: Requires countries that assent to international treaties to abide by them. What's at stake Here's a look at the African Trade Bill: What it does: Makes it easier for sub-Saharan countries to sell their goods in the United States. This would be a boon to Mauritius, which has no natural resources, relies on tourism and sugar plantations for its economy, and could benefit from exporting manufactured goods. Sanctions: Would exempt Mauritius from benefiting from the bill because it refuses to comply with international treaties. Benefit to United States: Would force Mauritius to consider compliance and would possibly save American jobs in textiles and other industries that might be affected for foreign imports.

To Mr. Jordan, the calls reflected numerous failed efforts to speak with his daughters. From another perspective, they suggest a household where a ringing telephone shattered the early-morning silence over and over again until it finally stopped.

Two weeks after the ambassador intervened, Mrs. Jordan's attorney, Christine Sauzier, wrote one of Mr. Jordan's attorneys, Mr. Koenig, saying, ``My client has always been prepared to grant access to the children over the phone provided that the said phone calls are made within reasonable hours and that your client can behave himself properly.''

``I'm not sure how a father should behave when he's told he'll never get to talk to his children again. They threatened to cut off the only method of contact I have - when I'm allowed to have it,'' Mr. Jordan said. ``I'm guilty of being depressed and frustrated. If it's wrong to keep trying, sure - I'm guilty of that.''

Politics and treaties

The couple's fight grew uglier this spring when the FBI issued an international kidnapping warrant for Mrs. Jordan. She hasn't been arrested. The State Department hasn't decided whether to push extradition.

``I never thought I'd have to go to that extreme to see my children,'' Mr. Jordan said. ``I never thought I'd try to have my wife arrested. But nothing else has worked.''

In her own country, Mrs. Jordan has the law on her side. Three times, the Mauritian Supreme Court has ruled Mauritius is not bound by the Hague Convention, a treaty it signed in 1993, because Parliament never made it a part of the island republic's law.

The 1980 treaty recognizes the growing incidence of marital disputes that go global when one parent takes children against the other parent's will, although both share custody. The Hague Convention states those children should be returned to the country that had been their home while the adults sort out the civil issues, including which should be the custodial parent.

The United States and 50 other countries signed the treaty, but some have not complied with its terms. The State Department recently reported to Congress that some nations, including Mauritius, have ``a pattern of noncompliance.'' The others were Austria, Honduras, Mexico and Sweden.

In June, when President Clinton was in Germany, he talked about international child abductions with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who said that country would alter its approach to such cases. But almost immediately, a New York grandmother's case, published in The Washington Post, suggested nothing changed, South Carolina's senior Sen. Strom Thurmond said in a letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Failure to take a firm stand would suggest to noncompliant countries that the United States does not consider child abduction to be a pressing issue, Mr. Thurmond said, specifically citing Mauritius:

``I have witnessed how easily Mauritius' disregard for the principles of the Hague Convention can devastate an American parent,'' he wrote. ``Mr. Mike Jordan of Edgefield, S.C., has tried desperately to bring home his two daughters from Mauritius after they were illegally kidnapped in December, 1998. Although the Federal Bureau of Investigations has issued an international parental kidnapping warrant for the arrest of Mr. Jordan's wife .ƒ.ƒ. the children still remain in her custody.

``I am deeply concerned that Mauritius will delay any proceedings on the Hague Convention after recognizing its defiance by the German government to honor their promises.''

South Carolina's junior senator, Fritz Hollings, also has become an ally in Mr. Jordan's battle against the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, more commonly called the African Trade Bill. It makes it easier for sub-Saharan African nations, including Mauritius, to sell their goods in the United States.

Rachelle Dominique Jordan SPECIAL

An informal projection worked up for Mr. Hollings before the bill passed suggested as many as 20,000 American jobs could be affected. One section of the bill recognizes that possibility with provisions for re-employment of those who are displaced. But Mr. Hollings' opposition was based on the potential impact on the textile and apparel industries, particularly those in South Carolina, which already have been hard hit by foreign competition.

Mr. Jordan's opposition is that the legislation promotes trade with countries that wink at international treaties - in effect rewarding places such as Mauritius. If the rewards were taken away, the Mauritian government would have to take its international obligations more seriously, he said.

``It was a knife in my back when President Clinton signed the African Trade Bill into law,'' he said. ``That bill might have been the leverage that I needed to get my daughters back to this country.''

On the day he vowed ``not to let this happen to me,'' he had added in his handwritten notes, ``and I will kill the African Trade Bill.''

Because that didn't happen, he wants economic sanctions, stripping the benefits of the bill, from Mauritius, which has no natural resources, relies on tourism to maintain its economy and looks toward increased foreign trade as a boon.

Mr. Jordan's letters to every member of Congress were intended to drum up opposition to the bill before it passed in addition to calling attention to the problem of international child abduction. But his binders are full of responses showing most lawmakers barely read what he had to say. Once they saw he was from South Carolina, they forwarded his letters to Mr. Thurmond or Mr. Hollings, depending on their own political party, or to 3rd District U.S. Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Although Mr. Jordan now has a designated contact in each of those offices, he knows there's little they can do except light occasional fires under the State Department to push his case.

All three lawmakers have had their staff write letters and make telephone calls on Mr. Jordan's behalf, trying to cut red tape. And Mr. Hollings' office is asking Mr. Clinton to impose sanctions on Mauritius, aide Dabney Hegg said.

Raie Roxane Jordan SPECIAL

Last week, Mr. Jordan was waiting to hear whether the Privy Council in England would take his appeal, which he hopes to combine with the case of a Pennsylvania man, Judge Pierce.

Mr. Pierce's Mauritian-national wife booked a round-trip flight home with their infant daughter but never used the return ticket, said his attorney, Linda Gardner. He also tried to use the Hague Convention to bring his child back to Monroe County, Pa., but was turned down by the Supreme Court in Mauritius.

Barristers in London are researching whether the cases can be combined, partly because both fathers are running out of money to fight with. Mr. Jordan has declared bankruptcy.

He also may be running out of time. His daughters already have been in Mauritius much more than a year, and even under the Hague Convention, the place a child has lived a year or more can be considered home.

``Time is very definitely working against Michael,'' said Guillermo Galarza, his case worker at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The passage of time makes it harder to say what's really best for children in such cases, Ms. Gardner agreed.

``What is clear is that a unilateral decision by one parent caused harm to the child,'' she said, ``and nothing that happens afterward can justify that.''

Reach Margaret N. O'Shea at (803) 279-6895.