Father Sentenced to Jail for Abducting His 2 Children

A Moorpark man who touched off a nationwide search last year after abducting his two children and taking them to Tennessee was sentenced Friday to less than a year in jail and five years’ probation.

Patrick Sean Carty, 36, was also ordered to have no contact with his 7-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son until remaining child-support issues in his case are resolved.

Carty, who pleaded guilty to child abduction in December, appeared before Municipal Court Judge Herbert Curtis III during a sentencing hearing in which his former wife testified about seven months of agony she endured after her children disappeared.

Although Carty faced up to four years in jail, Curtis handed down a lighter sentence because of a mix-up in child-support payments that prompted Carty to flee the state, his attorney said. “The judge recognized that there were substantial mitigating factors,” defense attorney Louis Samonsky Jr. said. “I think the judge believed he was driven out of desperation to do something drastic.”

Carty, an installer of heavy machinery, fled the state in May with his daughter, Marlena, and his son, Daniel, after being ordered to pay $4,000 a month in child-support payments.

Although Carty’s annual salary fluctuated between $35,000 and $50,000 depending on his contracts, the amount he was ordered to pay was in excess of someone who made $300,000 a year, Samonsky said.

The attorney said the misunderstanding appeared to have come when a family law judge based the $4,000 payment on $20,000 Carty paid his ex-wife, Allison Oliver, 31, of Thousand Oaks, over a five-month period last year.

Carty fled after exhausting various legal avenues that left him feeling frustrated and desperate, Samonsky said.

Although Judge Curtis recognized that the child-support issue was a mitigating factor, he also heard a statement from Oliver about the agony of wondering what had happened to her children, Deputy Dist. Atty. Pam Grossman said.

“She kept waiting and waiting,” Grossman said. “She did everything she could do.”

Oliver discovered her children were missing when her ex-husband failed to return Marlena and Daniel after a routine weekend visit May 12. When she went to Carty’s home, she found a rambling note explaining that he had taken the children and was leaving the state.

A nationwide search was launched by the Ventura County district attorney’s Child Abduction Unit, the FBI and the National Center for Missing Children, which distributed fliers. Oliver appeared on a national talk show to ask for help in finding her children.

After seven months, a resident of Monroe County, Tenn., recognized the children from a poster and contacted the local sheriff’s department. Authorities found Carty and his children living in a log cabin at the rural Trail of Tears campground in Madisonville, where Carty had been working as a manager.

Carty still owes $78,000 in back child-support payments, Samonsky said after the sentencing.

“He has lost his entire business,” he said. “He is terribly in debt.”

Whether he serves 210 days in jail or significantly more time in prison, Grossman said Carty’s relationship with his children has been severely damaged.

“Their relationship will always have this to overcome,” she said. “They were very, very traumatized.”