ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 22, 1996 TAG: 9606240051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL CROAN STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Strip
THE WALLS WERE STRIPPED and his wife and kids were gone when Walter Benda, then living in Japan, came home from work. That was 11 months ago. Yoko Benda was indicted this week by a federal grand jury in Roanoke on a charge of international parental kidnapping.
Walter Benda can see his two young daughters any time he wants - but only on a fragmented videotape.
Benda's wife, Yoko, sent him the home video after leaving him and taking their children, Mari and Ema, nearly a year ago.
"It's kind of like a hostage video," Benda said of the tape, which was carefully edited so as not to reveal location or other personal information. The girls "obviously have no idea that they were being filmed for me."
Benda last saw his children, now 7 and 5, on July 21, 1995, before leaving for work in Japan. That morning was normal, he said. "Each gave me a little hug and saw me off."
When Benda came home from work that evening, he knew something was wrong.
"All the bicycles were gone. All the shoes were gone. In Japan, you usually leave your shoes outside the door. But they were all gone," he said.
The walls were stripped and household valuables were missing. There was a note on the table that began, "Dear Walter, Please forgive me for leaving you this way."
Benda knew his marriage was over, but that wasn't a major surprise.
"We had a perfect marriage, as far as I was concerned, up to 1992," when Benda lost his job as manager of statistics for Northwest Airlines, he said. The family then moved to Japan, partially for his wife's benefit.
Soon after the move, Benda said, his wife "kind of seemed to look down on America more and criticized America more." She became increasingly active with the followers of a man who claimed to be the human reincarnation of a Hindu god.
Yoko Benda's expanding religious beliefs included firm faith in UFO abduction and channeling, her husband said.
"It wasn't something we argued about, but it created kind of a void in our relationship," Benda said. "She started getting very involved with these things, and I didn't have any interest in them."
What Benda didn't know, however, was that his wife had made it impossible for him to contact his children.
Benda soon found out that his telephone account had been canceled and that he had been assigned a new number. "The children knew how to dial home, [but] there was no way for them to call me," he said.
He said he discovered that Yoko had withdrawn more than $100,000 from their bank account over a 21/2-year period.
In the months that followed, Benda said he sent out more than 300 letters and faxes to relatives, friends and various organizations searching for any sign of his family.
He went to his children's former school but was unable to obtain any updated information concerning their whereabouts, he said, even after enlisting the help of the U.S. Embassy in Japan.
He went to Japanese police stations with interpreters but said the authorities did nothing to help him.
Benda said he even tried to get old phone records from his home, but that his wife had them erased monthly without his knowledge since the account was in her name. "I did everything I could think of," he said.
After months of searching for any sign of his children and nearly a year without direct contact or communication with them, Benda came back to the United States and turned to the law for assistance.
On re-entry papers submitted to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Yoko Benda had listed her expected address as Max Meadows in Wythe County, the home of Benda's parents and the town to which Benda expected his family to relocate.
Consequently, as a "permanent resident" of the United States according to her re-entry permit, Yoko Benda was indicted this week by a federal grand jury in Roanoke on a charge of international parental kidnapping.
If arrested, she faces prosecution under a 3-year-old federal statute applied in situations where parents either intentionally leave the United States with their children or who, as alleged in this case, keep children in another country in order to deprive the other parent access to them.
The Hague Convention, an international treaty formulated in 1980, was designed to prevent such situations, Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen B. Peters said.
Peters said that Japan helped put together the treaty but never signed it.
In 1993, she continued, Congress recognized there was a hole in trying to address and resolve international parental kidnapping.
The result was the statute under which Benda was indicted. The law is designed to be "a last-ditch effort to resolve parental abduction situations," Peters said.
Yoko Benda faces up to three years in prison and/or a fine of $250,000 if convicted.
However, she will escape prosecution unless she is either extradited to the United States or is arrested while voluntarily on U.S. soil. That could be a state, a territory or the U.S. Embassy, Peters said.
Peters plans to refer the case to the Office of International Affairs in the Justice Department to see what international efforts can be made. This is the first time the law has been used by Roanoke prosecutors.
"It's new and different to me," she said, "and I've been here a long time."
Peters doesn't expect much assistance from Yoko Benda's native country. Current extradition treaties are far too old to provide for the new statute under which Benda is being prosecuted.
"I would suspect Japan would not extradite for an offense of this type," Peters said.
Members of the Japanese Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed Peters' suspicions.
First Secretary Tatsuya Sakuma said the likelihood of extradition is slim, especially if physical force or deceptive measures were not used to take the children.
"If there is ... no physical violence used in the abduction of the children, I think that it would not fall under the conditions of dual criminality," he said. "Japan has not criminalized such conduct."
Walter Benda found that out the hard way. The Japanese police "won't step in in family matters," he said, even in cases of domestic abuse, child abuse or sexual abuse.
In recent months, Benda has been active in assisting the Children's Rights Council, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.
He helped establish the first chapter of the Children's Rights Council in Japan, and the organization aims to pursue changes in international laws, treaties and policies in order to advocate its slogan, "The best parent is both parents."
"I'm very disappointed in the Japanese system," Benda said. "Their constitution says parents have equal rights, but I found out that's not really true."
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Ema Benda and her sister, Mari, on a family clam-diggingby CNBouting near Tokyo in May 1995. At the time of the photo, Ema was 4
and Mari was 6. Walter Benda last saw his daughters in person before
leaving for work July 21, 1995. color.