THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 30, 1996 TAG: 9607300248
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 185 lines
In January 1993, Orpheus and Sonja Woodbury packed their bags, left their Virginia Beach home and moved to Costa Rica.
The change of address would not be news, save one thing: They took their 6-year-old grandson with them.
In so doing, they broke a court order involving visits with the boy's father, with whom they had locked horns many times on the issue of visitation.
The Woodburys, who were awarded custody of Mark when he was 22 months old, say they moved because they didn't want to wrestle with the boy's father anymore.
``We were tired of the continual harassment,'' Orpheus Woodbury said in a telephone interview from Costa Rica. ``We were getting very little sympathy from the court for the legal rights of grandparents who cared for this boy all his life.''
But the battle over Clayton Mark Saunders II, called Mark by his grandparents, did not die that January day when the Woodburys left Virginia Beach. Rather, it moved from a local to an international arena, from a dispute involving lawyers to one including embassy officials, private detectives and professional abductors.
Clayton Saunders estimates he has spent $130,000 trying to get back his son, who is now 10 years old.
Now it's reached Congress.
Saunders asked Rep. Owen Pickett, a Hampton Roads Democrat, to propose legislation to forfeit the pay of military retirees who flee the country to avoid prosecution. Since Orpheus Woodbury is a retired U.S. Navy commander, he stands to lose his retirement pay if such a law passed.
Saunders believes the legislation, in the form of a rider on a Department of Defense appropriations bill, will flush the Woodburys back into the United States, where they face prosecution on charges of international child abduction.
``It's ridiculous that someone can be living in another country and avoiding the law here,'' Clayton Saunders said. ``It's appalling.''
The provision, which asks the Pentagon to write regulations and report back to Congress, is currently in conference between the House and the Senate.
It's a proposal that Orpheus Woodbury hopes never becomes law.
``This pension is something I earned many years ago,'' Orpheus Woodbury said. ``It's a debt the government owes the veteran.''
Although this case is unique in circumstance, international child abduction is a phenomenon that has become more common with the rise in custody disputes.
The U.S. State Department handled more than 600 cases in which children were taken out of the United States by relatives in 1994, the latest statistics available. Those numbers do not include ongoing cases from previous years.
To deal with the problem of children being taken to other countries by relatives involved in custody disputes, the United States joined a pact called the Hague Convention in 1988. Countries that sign the pact agree to honor one another's custody orders. Forty-one other countries belong to the Hague Convention.
Costa Rica is not one of them, which has made Saunders' battle more difficult.
``Dealing with a non-Hague country can be extremely frustrating for parents,'' said Elizabeth Yore, the international director for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. ``Most people believe if your child has been abducted, U.S. Embassy officials can just go pick them up and put them on a plane. They are shocked to find out how little can be done.''
Extradition in such cases is usually difficult because the abductor is not someone legal authorities consider a threat to residents.
The case involving 10-year-old Mark dates to his birth in July 1986.
Saunders and the boy's mother, Patricia Woodbury, married when their son was 6 months old, but the marriage lasted less than a year.
Mark and his mother went to live with the Woodburys when the boy was a year old. The grandparents assumed care of him and were awarded custody of Mark in February 1992. The Woodburys said their daughter didn't pursue custody at that time because she was not financially able to care for the child alone.
Saunders said he didn't apply for custody of the child in 1992 because he had a job with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that required him to be out of town for long periods of time. He now works as a USAir flight attendant.
But Saunders said just a simple visit with his son often turned into a battle with the Woodburys. He said they often refused to let him see his son and fought him at every step. Saunders was supposed to have visits with his son one week during the summer, several holidays during the year and two weekends a month.
The Woodburys say Saunders was continually asking to see the boy on short notice, disrupting other plans. He would sometimes ask other family members to pick him up if he were out of town. The Woodburys felt Saunders didn't care for the boy properly.
Saunders believes the Woodburys fled because they knew he was thinking about applying for custody of Mark. He had remarried in October 1992 and was going to seek custody once he was settled in his marriage.
But the Woodburys say they left because they tired of Saunders continually taking them to court over visitation problems. They felt the boy was being torn between them and his father.
``It was disrupting his whole life,'' Sonja Woodbury said.
The Woodburys also felt the quality of life was better in Costa Rica, where Orpheus Woodbury spent nine years as a boy.
``With gangs and crime, the lifestyle in the U.S. was deteriorating,'' Orpheus Woodbury said. ``There is a strong sense of family values here. We wanted to have a more peaceful life.''
Once Saunders realized his son and the Woodburys had left town, he launched an investigation.
He tracked them to Costa Rica, because he knew Orpheus Woodbury had family ties there. Local authorities advised Saunders to pursue a felony warrant on charges of abduction. To do that, Saunders had to have custody of Mark. After four custody hearings during which the Woodburys failed to appear, a Virginia Beach judge awarded Saunders custody in March 1993.
Once that was done, Saunders hired private detectives and Costa Rican attorneys to help him get his son back.
The Woodburys say Costa Rican officials accepted their 1992 custody papers during their first year there. But since then, there's been a flurry of court activity, with legal custody going back and forth. The father received custody at Costa Rica's superior court in December 1994. Another family court overturned that decision, however, in November 1995, returning custody to the Woodburys.
Saunders claims he has legal custody now, since he has the approval of Costa Rica's superior court; the Woodburys say they do, since the latest decision overturned the superior court ruling. In the U.S., Saunders continues to have full legal custody.
Saunders also filed a lawsuit against the Woodburys in 1993, alleging the international custody battle caused him ``mental and emotional suffering, fright, anguish, shock, nervousness and anxiety.''
The Woodburys did not appear at hearings regarding the case, and Saunders was awarded $310,842 in December 1993. The Woodburys' Virginia Beach home was sold at public auction as a result of that suit. Saunders said he received only $15,000 from the sale because of a mortgage on the house.
Still, the money helped him continue his fight to get back his son.
In 1995, Saunders hired Don Feeney, an internationally known investigator famous for retrieving children involved in international kidnappings. Feeney and his company's associates employ tactics such as using disguises and taking children from school buses to get the job done. Feeney served a year in an Iceland prison after a botched attempt to counter-abduct a child involved in custody dispute.
Feeney, his associates, and an ABC camera crew went to Costa Rica with Saunders in October 1995, to try to retrieve Mark. The cost to Saunders: $50,000.
With the assistance of embassy officials, they tried to pick up the boy from the school he was attending. However, Sonja Woodbury works at the school and got wind of their arrival through the boy's teachers. She and Mark fled through a window and hid in nearby coffee fields until they were gone.
``They got away,'' Saunders said.
The proposal to withhold retirement pay for veterans who live outside the country and who have charges pending in the United States is Saunders' latest attempt to force the Woodburys back to the United States.
``We're going after Social Security next,'' he said.
From the Woodburys' perspective, the attempts by Saunders to retrieve Mark are an invasion of privacy.
In a letter Orpheus Woodbury sent to U.S. senators and representatives earlier this month to ask them to vote against the retirement pay provision, he wrote: ``The father's history of continual harassment in both the legal and physical sense has caused the child, Mark, to have very deep emotional fears of Mr. Saunders. Several cases of attempted abduction, the surveillance of our home, as well as cars following us when we go out have served to deepen these fears.''
But Saunders feels differently. ``They're the ones who are hurting him,'' Saunders said. ``They're the ones who are fugitives from justice.''
The Woodburys said even if the retirement pay law passes, they will not return to the U.S. ``We could support ourselves without it,'' Orpheus Woodbury said. ``I'll go to work if I have to. But it will make life harder on Mark.''
Meanwhile, Mark, the subject of the long-running and expensive dispute, is going into fifth grade. He is fluent in Spanish. He plays violin. He's on a soccer team. ``He's a wonderful boy,'' Sonja Woodbury said.
The Woodburys turned down a request for a reporter to interview Mark, saying the subject of the custody dispute upsets him.
Saunders said he knows that if he eventually wins the battle to get back his son, the boy will not be overjoyed to see him.
``I'm sure he's been brainwashed by his grandparents after all this time,'' Saunders said. ``I fully expect him not to want to come back. He doesn't realize he's being held prisoner down there. But he's young, and I think he'll adjust.''
He believes the standards of living and opportunities are better here and that the boy shouldn't be forced to hide from his father.
``That's no way for a child to be raised,'' he said.
The Woodburys, on the other hand, believe the best life for Mark is without his father. They said the boy's mother, who still lives in Virginia Beach, supports having her parents raise her son, and visits them in Costa Rica several times a year.
``I think this is for the best,'' Sonja Woodbury said. ``Mark knows we are his grandparents, but in his mind, we are his parents.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photos
Grandparent vs. Parent
Orpheus and Sonja Woodbury, top, left their Virginia Beach home for
Costa Rica in 1993, taking their 6-year-old grandson with them. The
boy's father, Clayton Saunders (shown with his second wife) is
charging his in-laws with international child abduction.
KEYWORDS: CUSTODY BATTLE GRANDPARENT COSTA RICA CHILD
ABDUCTION by CNB