Ex-Wife Abducts Two Children, Disappears to Japan - NewsChannel...

I don't know whay everyone here is so surprised...men have no rights when it comes to their children. They are sperm donors and then the ball is in the woman's court, 100%

men and women have equal rights until it involves an issue women feel strongly about, then men have no rights.

Of course, its men (lawmakers) paving the way for this, so I guess men have noone to blame but themselves.

If a man had taken his kids to another country, the whole world would get thier panties in a wad trying to get them back...I guarantee you, nobody will care about this in the long run...too bad, I feel for the dad, I really do.

Did you know that the children and their parents lived in Japan until about a year ago??? The children were born there and only after Father filed for divorce against Mother did Mother move to Nashville with the children.... Then Father remarried immediately thereafter and kept his ex Wife from returning to her and the children's home in Japan.

i guess it didn't occur to you that the story may have been skewed and spliced in a certain way....for whatever reason. there were many video clips and photos but only some were used in the story. only a fraction of our life's anecdotes were mentioned in a 20 minute interview spanning an entire year of life as a blended family. rebecca would have been too young to understand "get to an embassy" so my husband spoke to the child with a better capacity to comprehend the tragedy that has befallen him.

Nurse1 wrote:

I feel sorry for all children of divorced parents, not just the ones in this story. It is such a shame parent make life decisions on a whim, decide it's just not going to work out, then leave innocent children to pick up the pieces. And our society thinks thats okay.

I too feel sorry for these children and other children of divorced parents as well as those of mixed race. This isn't the 1st parent who fled with their children back to the home land for protection against US laws and by doing so these children won't be accepted there. WAKE UP PEOPLE, OUR CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE!!

thank you to those who have realized that we, of course, love our daughter as well. we could have spoken about rebecca's singing and dancing and how I taught her how to swim in the neighborhood pool, and how she used to like to put makeup on me with her little makeup kit. but that wasn't even brought up in the clip, for whatever reason.....but we're in the midst of trauma. and in the midst of trauma, we are haunted by that one phone call where my husband begged isaac to get to an embassy.*haunted* by it. ie, did he understand what that meant? could he even hear us over his grandparents' yelling in the background? etc etc etc Haunted by wondering if it did any good....or if it will do any good...ever

Has the Father ever gone to Japan to retrieve his children?? Is he going to sit at home in Franklin and wait for them to come to him?? He is a Japanese citizen too....

Dear Sally,
The children are US citizens and Isaac was born at Stanford University in California. so what you posted above is not correct. BOTH children are US citizens and Noriko is a permanent US resident. Noriko worked in Silicon Valley and was completely bilingual. How could Christopher prevent her from returning to Japan ("home), as you contend, when she actually returned? It was only the children's passports that were held so that the children would not be kidnapped. She could go to Japan whenever she pleased....

Dear all,
This will be my last post! Thank you all for your support and prayers!!
-Amy

I live in Japan just now, I also lived in Nashville for over a year. I grew up in NZ.

Traditionally when parents in Japan divorce, the mother and children go to live with the grandparents and the father keeps the house and continues doing whatever he his is doing. This break is considered necessary so that the children's life isn't interrupted by any ill feeling and so parents can get on with their lives afresh. I don't think all fathers feel positive about this but many would see it as necessary and others would probably appreciate the chance to begin a new life while hoping to reconnect with their kids at a later time.

Few people in Japan would be jumping up and down upon hearing that a wife had taken her children to live with their mother's grandparents.

Nameless for No Reason wrote:

->Michelle; What matters is the entire story not one side of it. As someone else pointed out in an earlier post he seems to be only concerned (really concerned) about his son. That alone makes me wonder whether he cares about his children or is it about who "wins" in this situation. The parents never suffer like the children do, they are the only victims in a divorce.

You realize they only take sections of the conversation and put it in the article? Did you watch the whole special on it last night? He odes talk about his daughter. That was just bad editing on News Channel 5's part. Obviously he would ask for the son when on the phone because the son was older and have a better chance of remembering what he was saying... It just makes sense

Kanji, Chinese Characters. The kids are 6 and 8. And how long have they lived in the U.S.? Isn't it time that they lived in Japan now? After all, are they not also Japanese as well as American, despite what their citizenship papers state? At their age it is important that they start learning Kanji characters and that's best done in Japan. It is a really steep learning curve to pick up later on. 80 for 6 year olds. 440 for 8 year olds. Need to be read different ways and written too. Few public schools in Japan will properly support a child's bilingual ability with English however. But Japanese public schools are truly great schools in many other respects.

The Savoie family abduction case is only another in a long string of cases (FBI estimates 15,000 to 20,000) of children disappearing into the "black hole" we know as Japan. The US Dept of State and Natl Center for Missing and Exploited Children have both repeatedly publicly stated that Japan is the ONLY COUNTRY ON OUR PALANET, where the US can NOT return even 1 single illegally abducted US citizen child. These children are US Citzens, born with Constitutional Rights that are now in effect stripped from them by a nation that appears to be defiantly unwilling to cooperate with the US. It is my suggestion that if Japan will not cooperate on issues of our CHILDREN, they are not our strategic ally in Asia.

The children are Japanese citizens as well as U.S. citizens

To answer a few questions posed by other comments;
There is no chance for recovering your children from Japan, cameras on every building, police on every corner, extremely tight border exit-points...you could never get out...But especially because Japan makes child abduction illegal in Japan IF you are taking the children away from Japanese soil. And the US will extradite Americans who face those charges in Japan. But reciprocity...no way. Japan continually refuses to extradite Japanese parental child abductors back to the US or any country. Please look at the FBI's most wanted pages for several of the most aggregious transgressors are. The main point is that even when jurisdiction is established in the US for a custody or divorce case, and even with previously established custody rulings from that US court(such as in the Savoie case) The Japanese Govt gives Japanese citizens a get-out-of-jail-free card to abduct the children. And reciprocity does not exist with Japan. The children will not leave Japan, and the non-Japanese parent will probably never see the children again!

For the comments about whatever is traditional or whatever is cultural in Japan: That discussion might be more relevant if we were discussing a case of wrongful retention of dual nationality children where the separation took place in Japan. But we are not.

These children had their custody case heard and ruled on in a US court where all of the details were hashed out, and both parents put their best foot forward and a judge ruled....Then the US laws and US court rulings VIOLATED by one of parties to that agreement and court order. This is now a rule of law issue...this is a civil society issue, not a discussion about what is "traditional in Japan". Either everyone who submits themselves to the courts jurisdiction is responsible to follow the law and courts order, or we will have chaos around the world with parents snatching children everywhere.
And PS ...all of the Japanese child abductors have signed an agreement (visa, green card, emigration, etc..)to abide by the US laws of the land when they come here...not to mention all of the paperwork signed off on in the court case.

Unfortunately both the U.S.A, and Japan have terrible laws dealing with this situation.

Up until recently, a divorced man or woman in Japan of another nationality would revert back to illegal status, even if they had children in Japan. This law was in the last 2 years amended somewhat, but I'm not sure how it applies to a father who is not currently in Japan. 4 years ago I met an Israeli man in Kyoto, he was in Japan on a tourist visa (his spousal visa having expired) he was selling silver on the streets in Osaka while trying to reconnect with his kids living with his ex-wife and new partner in Nagoya. The cities are a few hours each apart. Foreign parents in Japan need equal rights.

On the other hand. We can read in this story and from the comments that America and it's legal system is not very considerate of bi-cultural children's needs. The Judge instructed that the kids should stay in the U.S. did he not? Why? Is he their mother? Does he also represent the opinion of a Japanese Judge? Did he consider the issue from the point of view of a Japanese person or from the point of view of someone who thinks America is the Utopia where everybody wants to live? And with many comments given people seem to ignore that the children are also Japanese, it is wrong to apply laws designed for mainland Americans to children strongly connected to two different countries.

A tangled web these Chris and Amy characters did weave. Leaving a wake of destruction as they pursued their own selfish wishes. Perhaps their well hatced plan did not go as they thougt Sounds like they met up with someone who is as manipulative as they are. The judge? Who knows. The story did not give us enough facts to know. Maybe tonight Poor children.

When will it end, everytime I read about another child abducted to Japan I remember my own two children having their American identity and father stolen from them. It is shameful how Japan as a society has played on their own backward legal system to deprive children of their true identity.
Stay strong Chris, we have a long road ahead of us until we see our children again!

It is also wrong to apply laws considering whether children have dual nationality or not in deciding which country they stay in. What's in their blood is more important than laws made for adults that can't get get along. What's traditional in Japan also happens to be that country's interpretation of their own law in this case. So if anybody wants to put their foot down and say...this is the law, this is U.S. law, everyone in the world has to follow it or the sky will fall down well...It's not Japan's law, is it?

response to Brett;
I couldnt disagree any more with your assessment of the American legal system, as compared to the Japanese legal system.
The US system allows for so many opportunities for someone of another nation to fairly address any issue. Virtually anyone can get fair representation here. There are cultural community centers offering free legal advice and everything under the sun.
In Japan,(a country where sex shops sell child porn legally, and you can buy a 9 year-old girls soiled panties from a vending machine in public)(and furthur, the J-Govt cant even ratify a law making the production of child porn illegal)...A non-Japanese citizen basically stands no chance in the Japanese courts...but even the Japanese v Japanese cases have huge problems that we have evolved way past...like the simple fact of courts orders are enforced here and failure to comply with them is dealt with seriously. In Japan, there is no enforcement of Family Court judges orders, and no consequences for failure to comply with those orders...that basically renders the courts and their orders meaningless and a complete waste of time and money. But before we get to that, we just need to look at how racist the Japanese courts are. The US Dept of State has had a warning on their Japan page for many years...basically it says that US Citizens will never get a fair shot at justice in a Japanese Court...any non-Japanese will be discriminated against there. That is a fact proven thousands of times in Japanese courts.47