Father Pleads Guilty to Child Abduction

A Moorpark man who kidnapped his daughter and son and took them to Tennessee after a divorce earlier this year has pleaded guilty to felony child abduction.

Patrick Sean Carty, 36, made his plea Monday before Judge Herbert Curtis in Ventura County Municipal Court. He is being held at Ventura County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail. Sentencing is Feb. 14.

Carty faces up to four years in state prison for the abduction, although his attorney, Louis Samonsky of Ventura, said the industrial machinery installer probably will be sentenced to a year in County Jail.

“There has never been a person sentenced to prison for child abduction in this county,” Samonsky said. He said his client stayed in contact with the Ventura County district attorney’s office and law enforcement using a telephone debit card to avoid being traced.

Carty fled the state with his 6-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son after being faced with child support payments amounting to $4,000 per month.

“You’d have to make $300,000 per year or more to justify that,” Samonsky said, adding that a family law judge based the amount on $20,000 Carty paid to his ex-wife, Allison Oliver, 31, of Thousand Oaks, over a five-month period.

After failing to get the amount of child support reduced, Carty panicked and ran off with his children, Samonsky said.Authorities tracked them down earlier this month at a rural Tennessee campground, where Carty had been working as manager. The children, found unharmed, were returned to their mother.