Is it safe to bring our children to the States?

February 2010 - This question comes to the mind of Canadian parents as word spreads through the internet of one Canadian mother’s plight to get her son back, after he was picked up in September 2008 for riding his bike without a helmet.

Although this violates the tenants of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, which the US became a signatory of in 1994, Child Protective Services in Oakridge, Oregon continue to hold Lisa Kirkman’s son Noah in their custody twenty months later, despite her every effort to return this eleven year-old boy to his native Canada.

This case is unprecedented in Canadian-US history. On our side of the border, Lisa Kirkman has been declared a fit parent and has been seen to have done nothing but lovingly care for her son, who struggles with severe Attention Deficit Disorder and requires much of that love and attention. On the American side of the border, Lisa Kirkman has also undergone psychiatric evaluation, in which she did well, but was found to require some emotional control. Wouldn’t you?

Meanwhile, Noah has been shuffled from foster home to foster home and school to school. He was even once placed with a devout Christian family, in spite of his Jewish-Canadian heritage. During their supervised telephone conversations, Noah has complained to his mother that others refer to him as “Beaner” because he has dark skin, due to First Nations ancestry, and has been called a “Dirty Canadian Jew.”

As this little boy suffers, the Governor’s Office and the DHS refuse to have their lawyers speak with experts on international custody cases. Our Canadian MPs have basically told Lisa that they would come to her aid, if there were more media attention.

In the meantime, the US government seems to be getting away with kidnapping a Canadian boy and telling our government that their system knows better how to raise him.