The loving mother hunted by FBI

[Alison J Stevens]

The loving mother hunted by FBI

By adam wakelin

Claire McNulty kissed the ground when they cleared passport control. Actually physically bent down and kissed Birmingham Airport's Tarmac.

"I really did do that," she says. "My kids were like, 'What are you doing Mum?' I was just so glad to be home."

It had all been so easy. Or so it had seemed on that bright, hope-filled early morning of September 8, last year.

Claire thought her all-American nightmare was behind her. She had escaped her hated soon-to-be ex-husband and planned to start a new life with her three children back in Leicestershire.

Little did Claire know that she was going to lose her kids and could face up to 10 years in a US jail for what she had just done.

When America woke up a few hours later, Claire was an international fugitive. The FBI were on her tail for kidnapping her own kids after they didn't show up for school. Scotland Yard had been informed.

"Never would I have dreamed I was going to be in trouble," she says. "How could I kidnap my own children?"

In the eyes of the law that's exactly what the 38-year-old from Thurmaston had done. Claire had taken nine-year-old Meghan, six-year-old Liam and three-year-old Andrew to live in another country without the consent or knowledge of their father.

After a High Court ruling, they are now back in America with him. Claire might not see her children again until they are grown up. If she returns to the US they could lock her away.

It's destroying her. You can see that. She's on medication for depression and is seeing a therapist.

"Sometimes it takes me a long time to get out of bed in the morning. Some days I don't," she says, tears rolling down her cheeks. "I stay in bed all day because that's how depressed I am without my kids. What's to get up for?

Breaking down again, Claire brings out photographs of her children. "I want to show you what I'm fighting for," she says. Meghan looks just like her mum. Little Liam takes after his dad, apparently.

"The day before I had to let my daughter go, I took her out and bought her a heart ring," says Claire. "I said, 'If you ever doubt how much I love you then look at that ring. That's my heart crying for you'."

She mouths a silent "sorry" between the sobs.

"You have to let your kids go when they're older, but not now."

It didn't take long for the authorities to catch up with them. Her parents' house in Thurmaston was probably the first place the police looked. The kids were asleep upstairs in their new bunk beds when the knock on the door came.

It had been a dizzy couple of days of tearful family reunions and frantic shopping trips. They left America with suitcases stuffed with clothes, photographs, the odd toy and little else.

No-one knew Claire was coming. Her parents didn't know, her friends didn't know, even her kids didn't know until they were on the way to the airport.

She couldn't take the chance of her ex-husband Patrick finding out. He wouldn't have let them go, says Claire, and he wasn't a man to be crossed.

The two policemen were almost apologetic when they asked Claire to wake the kids up and bring them downstairs.

It all seemed fairly routine. They had a chat with the two older children and left when they were satisfied they were safe. Two weeks later, with Meghan and Liam settled in school, the police were back to serve a court order on Claire.

It said she was in breach of the Hague Convention, an international treaty agreed to return abducted children to the country of their birth.

Claire says it was never her intention to steal her kids away from their father. She knew there would be a custody hearing. Bringing the children here, she assumed, simply meant residency and contact would be decided by an English court.

"I didn't even know what the Hague Convention was until I looked it up on the internet," she says. "Then I realised, hey, I'm in a lot of trouble here."

Her kids wanted to be here with her, not their father, says Claire. That's what they told the court welfare officers over here, she claims.

Patrick's lawyer argued that they had been brainwashed against their daddy by Claire and her family. She denies it.

"Meghan told them she wanted to be with Mummy. Liam said the same. I thought they would listen to my children. I really believed they would go with what they wanted."

The case was heard in the High Court on December 13. The judge delivered his verdict a day later. The children had to go back to America. What happened next would be up to the US courts.

Claire met her ex-husband while she was working as an au-pair in New Jersey. She went to the US as naive 19-year-old hooked on the glamour of Beverly Hills 90210. Life lived up to the TV show for a long while.

Things were good. Claire later got a job with another family who had a plush apartment in Manhattan. When they were away, which was most weekends, love's young dream had the run of place.

Patrick was always controlling, claims Claire, but she loved him. She thought she could change him.

It all started to go sour after Meghan was born. Claire says she stuck it out because that was how she had been brought up. You worked things through, you didn't run away.

The sticky patch didn't get better. It got worse. The arrival of Liam and then Andrew only pushed them further apart. It was a volatile relationship.

Claire took out three restraining orders against Patrick after making allegations of domestic violence. None were made permanent by the US courts. That was because the accusations were unfounded, says her ex-husband's lawyer.

Patrick left the family home. He also fell behind with his child maintenance payments.

Despite working full-time in a bank, Claire says she couldn't pay the mortgage on their New Jersey home. They had no running water and the mortgage lenders were foreclosing on the house. She says was at the end of her tether when she packed for England.

If Claire and the children were to have any future, it had to be back in Leicestershire, she believed.

Her mum Maureen defends her daughter's decision. "Claire is a totally devoted mother. She worked like a tigress, 55 hours a week, to support herself and the kids," she says.

"She had reached the end of the road. It had become intolerable for her."

The verdict of the High Court left them all numb with disbelief. "The court literally disregarded what my children had said. They didn't want to go back to the US. They wanted to stay here with their mummy," says Claire.

"I had always been really open with my daughter. She was the only one of my children old enough to understand.

"When I went to court I said, 'I'm trying to fight for you'. When I lost, I told her: 'I'm fighting a big battle and I've not won it yet."

The High Court decreed that her kids would go back to America on January 4.

Their last Christmas together was pretty hellish. Every happy moment was overshadowed by what the new year would bring. Claire faked a smile for the sake of the kids, but she seemed to spend most of Christmas crying in her parent's kitchen. "Many a time I had to walk out of the room for a cry and then get my composure back," she says.

January 4 arrived in a heartbeat. Claire got her children up as normal, gave them a bath, got them dressed, made breakfast and waited.

"Meghan cried the whole night before," she says. "She didn't sleep. She just held me. My daughter had told her dad she didn't want to live with him."

Her mum and sister took the children to the airport. Claire couldn't face it.

There was a hand-over in the departure lounge. "The kids refused to go to my ex-husband and his brother," claims Claire. "They were clinging on to my mum and my sister."

Claire tries to talk about what happened next. The words won't come.

She's not seen or heard from her children since. Neither have Claire's parents. The US courts will not even allow Claire telephone contact with her children until she has undergone a psychiatric assessment to demonstrate her "emotional wellbeing". She is on a four-month NHS waiting list for that.

Her parents are also not allowed to speak to their grandchildren until they have proven that contact will be "beneficial" to the kids. "I just want to know they are all right," says Claire.

Claire had held tight to the possibility of getting custody of her children back in the New Jersey courts. Then she was hit by another unexpected blow.

The US authorities were still pursuing the kidnapping case, something she thought had been dropped. A letter from the Essex County Prosecutor in New Jersey rattled though her parents' letterbox last month. It stated that she was being indicted with three counts of "second-degree interfering with child custody". The charges carry a maximum penalty of between five and 10 years.

The case will be heard on April 15.

Such an aggressive course of action is unusual, according to a solicitor from the International Child Abduction and Contact Unit, the legal authority and judicial advisory body on such matters in England and Wales.

Normally, he explains, criminal charges against a parent such as Claire are dropped once the Hague Convention has been complied with.

Not in this case. Claire is adamant that she can't go back to the US. She claims she fears for her safety.

Kathleen Lyons-Boswick, assistant prosecutor for New Jersey's Essex County Prosecutor, says she could be tried in her absence. A warrant will be issued if Claire fails to show up in court, warns Ms Lyons-Boswick. That means she would be arrested if she ever put a foot on US soil again.

The authorities are not seeking Claire's extradition "at this moment". That prospect isn't ruled out, however.

It looks like game, set and match to her ex-husband. A court is unlikely to award custody to a mum facing a prison sentence and she'll never be able to visit her kids.

Claire has not given up hope of one day winning her children back in the American courts.

"She's on a knife edge," says her mum. "She's been to hell and back. She has no idea what's going to happen next and if her kids are all right."