A Call in the Night: She Took Their Child : Family: Jon Ramirez’s ex-wife brought daughter to the Netherlands. Similar cases are increasingly common.

On a Friday evening in July of last year, Jon M. Ramirez drove to the home of his ex-wife to pick up their 2-year-old daughter for the weekend. But neither the girl nor her mother was there, and for 48 hours, a panicked Ramirez heard nothing.

In the restless quiet of a Sunday night, the phone call finally came. The voice on the other end was that of Roswita Olejniczak, the mother of their daughter, Tanyta. She told him she had flown to her native country, the Netherlands, and would not be returning to California. And neither, she said, would their child.

Thus began a harrowing and expensive ordeal for Ramirez, 33, an insurance underwriter whose mission to bring back his daughter, now 3, has taken him from the Orange County district attorney’s office--which has kidnaping charges pending against the mother--to the U.S. State Department to the Dutch courts.

Dealing with a foreign government is maddening enough, he said, but “when the fate of your 3-year-old girl hangs in the balance, the fear and frustration--the terror--take on a whole new meaning. Suddenly, your life comes apart, and you feel incredibly hopeless.”

As the international divorce rate rises, cases like that of Ramirez multiply almost exponentially. There are at least 50 like it in Orange County alone, according to the district attorney’s office. Some have been on the books more than 20 years, while some of the “children” involved are now in their 30s.

Figures from the State Department show that 441 children were taken unlawfully from homes in the United States in 1993 to the 32 countries that honor the Hague Convention, a 1988 treaty designed to create a worldwide standard in mitigating such cases.

The treaty stipulates that, when a child is wrongfully removed from one member nation to another, “the child should be immediately returned to the place of habitual residence”--meaning the country from which the child was taken, said State Department spokesman Gary Sheaffer.

But officials say the Ramirez case points up obvious flaws in a treaty that at times seem to defeat its very purpose. The situation is complicated by the ways in which member countries interpret the treaty, Sheaffer said, which leads to the heart of the predicament involving Tanyta Ramirez.

“First of all, a U.S. custody order has no legal grounds outside the United States,” despite the existence of the treaty, he said. “And generally, you end up fighting an all-new custody battle in another country just to get the child back.”

Foreign courts have the option of granting an exception to the treaty if, in their view, it would be “psychologically or physically harmful to return the child”--which is why Tanyta remains in the Netherlands, even though Ramirez was granted sole physical custody of her by a California court after she was taken by her mother. .

“The courts there ruled that it would be damaging to return the child to the U.S.,” because state and federal kidnaping charges are pending against the mother, Sheaffer said.

He said that a Dutch courts made its ruling “only because it feared that the mother’s arrest would do lasting damage to the child.” Tanyta has lived with her mother since birth.

Statistics bear out the point that the Hague Convention has stopped short of accomplishing its desired objective. The numbers show an increase in child abductions each year since the pact was signed.

In 1992, 268 children were taken from the United States to Hague Convention countries and 247 were taken to countries that haven’t signed the treaty. The preceding year, 207 were removed from the United States to other Hague countries, with 245 going to non-Hague countries.

The flow of children from Hague countries to the United States is even higher, with 357 ending up here in 1993, compared to 178 in 1992 and 148 in 1991.

Parental child abduction occurring within the United States alone has become a staggering problem, according to a recent Department of Justice study that says such abductions reach 350,000 a year.

Although most children are returned to their homes within a week or so, as many as 160,000 remain missing for longer periods of time, according to the study. The longer a child is missing, the less likely he or she will be returned to the custodial parent.

For Ramirez, the seemingly endless hours of phone-calling, letter-writing and lobbying--and more than $9,000 in legal and travel expenses--have failed to reunite father and daughter. At the time she was taken, Tanyta lived with her mother and saw her father on weekends. But both parents shared joint legal custody, meaning the law required them to agree on all major decisions. Ramirez said he had “no inkling” his ex-wife would flee.

Since then, he has written to President Clinton, U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and the Dutch Ministry of Justice. No one, he said, has offered help.

Courts in the Netherlands--including its Supreme Court--have ruled against Ramirez and in favor of the mother, citing the welfare of the child.

Reached at her home in Land-graaf, the Netherlands, Olejniczak, 31, said she left the United States because she feared her temporary green card, which expired in June, 1993, would not be renewed. And if she had been deported, “I felt I might never see my daughter again,” she said. “Tanyta . . . she’s my everything.”

Olejniczak met Ramirez in 1987 in the Netherlands, where he was stationed in the Army and she worked for the American military. They were married in August, 1990, celebrated the birth of Tanyta in March, 1991, separated in October, 1991, and were divorced by July, 1992.

She said it was a difficult and often volatile marriage and life afterward was even harder. Ramirez paid $385 a month in child support, but no alimony. Having trouble making ends meet, Olejniczak approached county welfare authorities for assistance.

She received $627 for one month, just before expiration of her green card, but said welfare officials told her that, without a valid visa, she could no longer qualify.

“Here were these welfare people telling me I was an illegal alien,” she said, “so I thought, ‘I better get out of here.’ ”

Ramirez disputes her version of events, saying her green card had been extended to last December. Olejniczak claims to have learned about the extension only recently.

In an effort to resolve the matter, Olejniczak says she would allow Tanyta to return to the United States, but only for a visit and only if all criminal charges are dropped and the courts award her sole physical custody. Neither appears likely.

“There’s just an emptiness,” a tearful Ramirez said recently at his home here. “At night, I look up at the sky and wonder if Tanyta sees the same stars I do--and misses me as much as I miss her. It’s just a feeling of doom I have, wondering if anyone will ever expend the effort to help me bring my daughter home. How can you explain losing your child?”

The problem is, such cases often drag on for years, and many are never resolved, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kelly MacEachern, who handles the Ramirez case and more than 50 “just like it” in Orange County. Many of the children involved are now in their 20s and 30s and often don’t see the abandoned parent until they make the effort themselves as adults, MacEachern said.

Ramirez said he wants only “reasonable contact” with his daughter, who he says is losing the ability to speak English in favor of Dutch. He recently sought to have criminal charges dropped in an effort to bring about her return, but prosecutors declined. Only an order from the U.S. attorney general would erase the outstanding warrants, and, officials say, that isn’t likely to happen.

Since last year, Ramirez has been allowed to see Tanyta only once, in a supervised visit in April, after a contentious hearing in the Netherlands. Olejniczak’s brother, father and uncle huddled nearby, Ramirez said, apparently concerned that he, too, might try to take her away.

“We fell into the same sweet routines,” he said. “Watching TV, she put her arms around me, held me tight and called me Daddy. Having to leave her there was gut-wrenching. She looked out the window and blew kisses at me. She waved that little wave of hers . . . “

Suddenly, his eyes filled with tears.

“Sometimes, I feel I just can’t go on,” he said. “You have no idea how awful this is. It’s the scariest nightmare I could possibly imagine. It consumes your life. I’d give anything to see it end and have her back in my arms again.”