Prisoners of Trans-Border Custody Wars : Families: When a child is unlawfully taken abroad by a parent, the legal and cultural difficulties can become insurmountable. Despite a treaty designed to set a worldwide standard, the problem is growing.

On a Friday evening in July 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.”

Cases like that of Ramirez have increased sharply in recent years. There are at least 50 like it in Orange County, according to the district attorney’s office. Some have been on the books for longer than 20 years, and some of the “children” involved are now in their 30s.

The figures are also rising in Los Angeles County, where Deputy Dist. Atty. Linda Acaldo says the trend of parents moving children from one country to another unlawfully is creating an almost insoluble legal and cultural problem.

In Los Angeles County in 1992-93, investigators opened 11 such cases and resolved eight of them, Acaldo said; in 1993-94, 20 were opened, with 15 resolved, and, based on pending reports, investigators estimate opening 35 cases during the 1994-95 fiscal year.

In San Diego County, 25 cases have been resolved over the past year, with 10 pending, according to Caryn Rosen, chief of the county’s child abduction unit. More than half the cases in San Diego County involve parents taking children from the United States to Mexico, Rosen said.

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 flaws in a treaty that at times seems 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.

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 her sole physical custody 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 a Dutch court 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 show 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 have not signed the treaty. For the previous year, the figures were 207 and 245, respectively.

The flow of children from Hague countries to the United States is 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 has become a staggering problem, according to a recent Department of Justice study that says there are 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, 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. Both parents shared joint legal custody, meaning the law required them to agree on all major decisions. Ramirez said he had “no inkling” that 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 that 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 U.S. 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 the 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 December. Olejniczak claims to have learned about the extension only recently.

“There’s just an emptiness,” Ramirez said recently. “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.

“How can you explain losing your child?”