Cross-Border Custody Fight Leaves Mom, Child Torn

On the morning the authorities came for her youngest son, Ruth Vega Solis was well on her way to Las Vegas for a weeklong vacation with two girlfriends. She had left her oldest boy in charge of his three siblings at the family’s rented Fullerton home. But she didn’t even have time to unpack before the teenager delivered the alarming news over the phone.

“Mom,” said the 19-year-old, “they took Jorgito.”

Vega made a frantic dash to catch the first flight back to Orange County. Back home, the cocktail waitress and former secretary found a business card left behind by a D.A. investigator who had taken custody of her cute, bespectacled boy.

Vega soon located young Jorge, who had been living with her for almost a year. But she never got him back. On that Monday, July 27, he had been put in protective custody at Orangewood Children’s Home, the county shelter for abused and abandoned children.

By Friday, Jorge was gone. The boy was turned over to his natural father and quickly transported back to his hometown near Mexico City where he had lived most of his nine short years.

The boy’s fate was decided after a one-day court hearing in which the stunned mother finally realized what she was up against. Arrayed against her were Jorge’s father, a low-level Mexican government lawyer, and an army of allies backing his effort to recover his son.

Present in court were an Orange County deputy district attorney and the Mexican consul of Santa Ana; behind the scenes were the attorney general of California, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and, finally, the U.S. Department of State.

“The only thing missing was the celestial court,” said Vega, who barely speaks English. “They would all speak and I thought they were talking about some other person. I couldn’t believe it was happening.”

Vega scrambled to hire a local attorney and mount some sort of counterattack. But she didn’t have a chance, for she was the respondent in one of the rare child abduction cases in Orange County invoking an international treaty known as the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction.

Governments on both sides of the border were united against the wiry woman who had come here alone, and illegally, eight years ago after separating from Jorge’s father. Two years later, she had smuggled in the three older children from her first marriage. Then last year she went to Mexico and brought Jorge back with her, again illegally.

The problem, authorities say, is that Vega took Jorge from his father the same way the boy was later taken from her--by surprise and without permission. Vega denies that. She told the judge, and she told me again last week, that Jorge’s father had agreed to let the child come live with her in Orange County.

But the judge didn’t believe her.

Under terms of the Hague treaty, signed by 47 nations, children under 16 who are unlawfully removed from the country where they normally live must be returned to that country. A judge hearing a Hague petition doesn’t have to decide who’s right and who’s wrong, the mom or the dad. With the exception of personal abuse or extreme national dangers such as famine in the home country, the judge doesn’t even have to consider what’s in the best interest of the child.

If evidence shows the child was abducted, and if an appeal for his or her return is filed within a year, the child goes back home. Period. The treaty leaves it to courts in the home countries to sort out the messy custody details.

And details sure are messy in the common-law marriage of Ruth Vega Solis and Jorge Hernandez Pacheco. In written court filings, he attacks her character and fitness as a mother. In her interview with me, she accused him of lying and questioned his motives.

Bitter breakups are universal, I guess. So are the consequences: The children are the ones who suffer most.

What’s striking in this case is that the matter was settled across borders the civil way--by the rule of law.

It’s now up to Vega to return to Mexico and fight for custody there. That’s the way the law works, though she said it would force her to abandon her other kids to go back and fight.

“I’ll lose three to save one,” she said.

It’s been seven months since Jorge was taken from Vega’s home. She says she hasn’t talked to him since, even by phone because the numbers in Mexico have been changed.

My efforts to reach the father also failed.

When I visited Vega’s spotless home this week, she was still railing against the law that claimed her son in the name of international cooperation.

“How criminal, unjust and sadistic is that law,” said Vega, speaking in the staccato, stinging Spanish typical of the feisty residents of the Mexican capital. “It seems so arbitrary, so unprofessional. It doesn’t even give you time to get your guard up and figure out what’s going on.

“Why do they insist on coming after people who don’t have the power to defend themselves?” she said, drying tears on her sweatshirt from the mountain resort area of Jackson Hole, Wyo.

Vega had harsh words for almost everybody involved in her case. The deputy D.A. was arrogant and heartless. The Mexican consul was an old busybody. The court translator was incompetent. Her lawyer was lame and she had to keep elbowing him to speak up.

The only one spared her acid assessments was Commissioner Salvador Sarmiento, the family law jurist who ruled against her. He at least gave her three days to prepare an argument.

Vega quickly gathered dental and medical records to try to prove that Jorge was in bad shape when she brought him here. She took X-rays to court to show a severe sinus condition and bad teeth.

On the other hand, the boy’s father had amassed his own evidence to prove how well his son was doing at home.

Perfect attendance and almost perfect grades in his first two years of grammar school. A 1996 certificate for excellence in his first-grade computer class. A 1997 state diploma for top honors in dance in second grade.

Jorgito had been living with his father and grandmother, his beloved abuelita, in Ecatepec, in Mexico state. But Sarmiento, the commissioner, says the boy seemed to be doing fine with his mother in Fullerton too. He had quickly learned English and appeared bright and well-groomed.

But that wasn’t the point.

“The intent [of the law] is so people don’t snatch children and go to another jurisdiction to try to get a better custody deal,” the commissioner said. “It’s sort of a reciprocity among nations: We’ll respect your [custody] orders if you’ll respect ours.”

In the United States, the National Center has been designated to handle the Hague applications. In cases where abuse is suspected, the missing child could be returned to a child protection agency in the home country, said Cathleen MacDonald, the D.A. in charge of parental abduction cases.

“The other country is as capable as we are of deciding the best interests of the child,” she said.

MacDonald stressed that the Hague cases are civil, not criminal. In Orange County, the D.A.’s office has handled 24 such cases in the last five years, acting as a friend of the court, not an advocate for either party.

Commissioner Sarmiento said he was pleased that Mexico signed the treaty a few years ago. It brings some balance to international custody battles.

“Before, all you had to do is snatch a kid and go to Mexico y ya ganaste [and you won],” he said.

Sarmiento said he believes he made the right decision in the case of the bright Mexican boy named Jorge. But he understands the pain it caused.

“Oh, it was awful,” he recalled. “It was a tear-jerker.”

The boy was torn.

“I like the United States because the police here protect you, not like in Mexico,” he told a court mediator, according to the commissioner. “But I really miss my friends from school and I miss my abuelita.”

After making his ruling, Sarmiento allowed Vega to spend some time alone with her son in his chambers. It was the first time she had seen him since the boy was removed from her home and her care.

Vega said the boy was crying so hard he couldn’t breathe.

And she recalled his last words:

“I don’t want to go without you. Let’s take everybody back home.”

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.