With Holidays Comes Rise in Abductions by Parents

It’s Christmas time and that means child-stealing season is with us once again.

Take the case of Eugia Edwards Morse who, according to authorities, boldly snatched her three children from the sidewalk in front of their school in this suburb east of San Diego.

The aspiring actress hired a singing-telegram service to create a distraction one morning while she hustled her children, ages 10, 8 and 5, into a car and sped off into hiding. The operation went off without a hitch and even the principal, who was standing nearby, was caught unaware.

Now the children’s father, Robert Morse, who had been given custody of the children by the Family Law Court, is frantic to keep his ex-wife from whisking the children to France, as she has threatened to do.

“This isn’t the Christmas we envisioned,” said Morse, 36, a former film student who makes a living as a dry-waller.

The method used to accomplish the children’s abduction may have been unusual, but the case falls comfortably and unhappily within a common phenomenon: Instances of children being abducted by “noncustodial” parents increase at holiday season. In the custody wars that lead parents to steal their own children in defiance of court orders, there is no such thing as a holiday truce.

“It’s my busiest time of the year,” said Ed Sousek, the investigator handling the Morse case for the San Diego County district attorney’s child abduction unit. “Not only does the caseload go up, but the sense of urgency, that we get the kids back immediately, also increases.”

The National Center for Exploited and Missing Children issues warnings tailored to the season: Keep tight control of your kids at the mall. Make sure you know who is chaperoning those Christmas parties. Don’t let the good cheer of the season lull you into a false sense of security.

“Don’t let down your guard at Christmas,” said Kathy DePeri, executive director of the California branch of the national center.

A U.S. Justice Department study estimated that upward of 350,000 children a year are stolen by family members. In about 46% of the cases, the abduction involves an attempt to hide the child permanently or flee out of state.

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Geoffrey Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Social Welfare and coauthor of “When Parents Kidnap: The Families Behind the Headlines,” considered to be the definitive study of child stealing, said child stealing is most common over summer vacations and around Christmas.

It is common for parents who do not have custody to get extended visitations during the summer, Greif said, giving them a head start if they decide not to return the child. At Christmastime, the reasons are more emotional than tactical.

“Divorced or estranged parents look around and see all the happy Christmas scenes of parents and children being displayed on television and the media, and it pushes them over the edge of despair and into action,” Greif said.

Robert Fellmeth, a law professor and director of the Child Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego, said the increase in abductions by parents at Christmastime is another sign of the “total self-absorption” that grips some parents in messy divorce and custody battles.

“I don’t think they do it [child-stealing at Christmas] for the sake of the kids,” Fellmeth said. “They do it for their own need to have family around or to relive previous associations at Christmas. There is a certain melancholy to Christmas, and it can stir up memories.”

Robert Budman, the deputy district attorney in charge of the Los Angeles district attorney’s child abduction unit, said it is not unusual to get Christmas Eve calls from parents complaining that their ex-spouses have taken the children.

“Christmas is a period of incredibly heightened tension in cases where custody of children is divided between parents,” Budman said.

The tension between Robert Morse and his ex-wife was at a heightened state even before the holiday season.

The court file tells a tale of accusations, counter-accusations, altercations, police interventions and a continual tug of war over the three children since the couple divorced in 1994.

On Oct. 10, Morse had succeeded in getting full custody of Aja, 10, Syna, 8, and Alixander, 5, after a court-appointed psychologist expressed dire concern for the children if they remained in the custody of Morse’s ex-wife.

A hearing was set for today to determine what visitation privileges, if any, should be extended to the 33-year-old Eugia, who, according to Sousek, has been living “more or less as a transient.”

Robert and Eugia met in the early 1980s while both were part of a summer theater troupe in El Cajon. He was a college student and part of the stage crew; she was an actress and singer.

Their passion for theater kept them together despite their differences in background and temperament. Eugia is the daughter of the late James Edwards, an actor who appeared in “The Caine Mutiny” (as a mess steward) and “Patton” (as an aide to the general).

Since their 1994 divorce, Robert Morris has remarried but Eugia has not. Robert and his wife, Tracy, live in a spacious home in a tree-shaded neighborhood in La Mesa with their 2-year-old son, her two sons from a previous marriage, and, until their abduction Dec. 12, Robert’s three children.

The family--two adults and six children--had planned to leave after today’s hearing for a reunion-style Christmas with relatives in Santa Fe, N.M.

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“It was the dream we had been talking about for years,” said Tracy Morse, 33. “We finally had our family together.”

Instead of preparing for the trip to New Mexico, Robert and Tracy Morse have been distributing fliers with pictures of Aja, Syna and Alixander, visiting Lindbergh Field lest Eugia try to board a flight, and appealing for help from child advocacy groups, including the Polly Klaas Foundation.

“It’s a bad situation,” Morse said, “but at least I know who has them.”

Court records show that Eugia has threatened to flee to Bourdeaux, France, where a cousin lives. Investigator Sousek has called Interpol for assistance and clamped down on airports in this country.

Along with following the Christmas pattern, the Morris abduction is part of a national increase in child stealing cases that involve mothers who have lost custody.

Greif sees no end to that trend as more courts give custody to fathers, breaking a long tradition of favoring mothers in nearly all disputed custody cases. A mother who has lost custody of her children suffers far more societal scorn than a man--a fact that may contribute to the mother’s decision to break the law, Greif said.

Despite the raw emotions involved, child stealing by parents rarely results in physical harm to the children, experts say.

“Parents who steal are rarely violent,” Greif said. “The danger to the children comes in living a life on the run in which, sooner or later, they’re left with someone, a boyfriend or a baby-sitter maybe, who doesn’t know how to provide good care.”

In many custody cases, the children become more vulnerable to abduction the longer their parents are divorced. The Department of Justice study found that in 40% of child stealing cases, the act occurs two or more years after the divorce. That’s no surprise to Robert and Tracy Morris.

“We always expected a kidnapping to occur,” said Tracy Morris.