Kidnapped Kids Found on Facebook 15 Years Later

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And justice is once again served with a mighty vengeance. I am sure the kids are elated with the concept of being forced to move to california away from all of their friends, the 18 year old being treated like a minor, and their dad they loved thrown in jail. A dad who kidnapped/raised/supported/loved them. The mom a drug induced zombie hooked on xanax and late night infomercials finally found them a shade under 15 years as she trolled facebook looking for that love of a 17 year old she could finally call "shorty". Oops she found her kids.

P.S. I hope the dad gets 15 years of child support payments.
 
You can tell most of the people posting are guys are don't have kids.

1st the kids were taken away from their mother. She NEVER got the chance to raise them, be with them and watch them grow up. All the things like going to soccer games, school plays/Band or helping with the PROM. All are VERY important part of raising your kids and believe me (being a father of 4) you WANT to be a part.

2nd You CAN NOT just take your kids where ever you want and KEEP them from the other parent. That IS kidnapping and the guy deserves what he gets.

It might suck for the kids but the mother deserves a change to be with her children even if they are 17-18. You people need to go out and have some kids of your own. Think about what it would feel like if your other half just up and left and you couldn't find them for 15 years.

Most of the comments on here make me sick.
 
Stupid Americans!
They just know how to make an already bad issue even worse!
Seemingly the children where doing fine, why take their dad away,and make their life miserable?
 
And justice is once again served with a mighty vengeance. I am sure the kids are elated with the concept of being forced to move to california away from all of their friends, the 18 year old being treated like a minor, and their dad they loved thrown in jail. A dad who kidnapped/raised/supported/loved them. The mom a drug induced zombie hooked on xanax and late night infomercials finally found them a shade under 15 years as she trolled facebook looking for that love of a 17 year old she could finally call "shorty". Oops she found her kids.

P.S. I hope the dad gets 15 years of child support payments.
 
i feel more for the kids than the mom i guess.those kids even though dad is an ass and stole them still have a life there.and friends/school and now they will have to uproot to live witha mom they never knew.
so mom now gets her children back and bad dad goes to prison but the kids will get totally screwed.
not a happy story.
 
[citation][nom]tburns1[/nom]Do any of you actually have kids (that you love)? He deserved to go to jail. The mother was waiting for 15 years, not knowing the fate of her children. He deserves to be thrown under the jail. I'm sorry that the kids are torn up in all of this. I wonder what stories they were told about thier mother over these 15 years?[/citation]

[citation][nom]eatmeimadanish[/nom]And justice is once again served with a mighty vengeance. I am sure the kids are elated with the concept of being forced to move to california away from all of their friends, the 18 year old being treated like a minor, and their dad they loved thrown in jail. A dad who kidnapped/raised/supported/loved them. The mom a drug induced zombie hooked on xanax and late night infomercials finally found them a shade under 15 years as she trolled facebook looking for that love of a 17 year old she could finally call "shorty". Oops she found her kids. P.S. I hope the dad gets 15 years of child support payments.[/citation]

I can't believe the selfish parents posting on this. Yes the father was wrong and 'deserves' to be punished. That doesn't mean that punishment is what's best for the children. All this has done is make the mom happy, the children got screwed. There is no win/win for this situation, but what happened is certainly not the best option.
 
There is a lot of information- both old and new – that we don’t know.

We don’t know what type of parents that each were back in 1995. What the father did was wrong, and legally, taking the children out of state on his own without the mother’s permission was a crime. We don’t know the state of the mother at the time and we don’t know the father’s reasons and motivation for what he did. In a more perfect world the disposition of the children in a troubled marriage would have been handled through a more orderly process designed and implemented in the best interests of the children. But that takes a lot of hard work, discipline, and probably a lot of money.

Even today, the solutions sought are far from those in the best interest of the children. Before the father was incarcerated and the children were placed in the care of the FDCF, the mother should have communicated with the father in an attempt to reestablish a relationship with the children. If the father would not cooperate, only then should the mother have taken legal steps. This approach would have been better for the children and increased the likelihood of acceptance of the estranged mother by her own children. How can you blame the children for hating their mother when she had the only parent they have known put in jail?
Would not the model of two parents now attempting to work together for their children be the best for those children? I guess there is not a chance of that happening now. Too bad and sad for all of them.
 
[citation][nom]sliem[/nom]His fault. He should have filed for a divorce and somehow hope to win custody.[/citation]

Hope to win custody 15 years ago? Let me tell you as a single father it's an up hill battle for men to get custody now and things have gotten far better then they used to be! Even with my ex charged with assult with a weapon (which she did infront of our child) I still wasn't able to get full custody. The system is horribly sexist I can understand why the father did what he did and I hope he just gets a slap on the wrist.
 
[citation][nom]victomofreality[/nom]Hope to win custody 15 years ago? Let me tell you as a single father it's an up hill battle for men to get custody now and things have gotten far better then they used to be! Even with my ex charged with assult with a weapon (which she did infront of our child) I still wasn't able to get full custody. The system is horribly sexist I can understand why the father did what he did and I hope he just gets a slap on the wrist.[/citation]
+1
 
[citation][nom]sliem[/nom]His fault. He should have filed for a divorce and somehow hope to win custody.[/citation]You realize he had like a 3.2% chance of getting custody, right? Maybe she was a closet nutcase and he had to get the kids far away from her, so she could never hurt them. Based on her actions, I'd say there's a good chance she's a nut. She used her own daughter to get information, to get her husband locked up and to take two kids that don't want to have anything to do with her.
 
sounds like the mom was cheated in the beginning but in the end pulls a double burn by messing up the life of her ex-husband and 2 children. I see no benefit in this and i see the both of the kids moving to florida as soon as they could. There seems to be no positive in this story
 
[citation][nom]bfstev[/nom]So what if the kids wanted to stay with the father? You just used the daughter for information to get your ex-husband imprissoned and snatch back the kids? At this point you were probably better off leaving them with the father than forcing their removal from what was their home and all their friends. Why would you do that? spite? Was he abusing them or something? If he wasn't, then you just emotionally scarred your daughter into probably never trusting you or anyone else ever again.[/citation]

This is 100% what was on my mind, that mother probably just ruined the entire lively hood of those kids, they probably were getting a good upbringing, great schooling and were almost on they're way to working and becoming adults. They won't be able to see they're friends, teachers, or anyone else from Florida ever again.
 
If it was my kids, I could never give up looking for them, even after 15 years- (Facebook can hardly be blamed for the vast amount of internet information available today, either.) The jerk of a father deserves to be arrested and worse.
However the sudden moving of two kids across the country (leaving behind their home/friends/schools/jobs/etc) would be a horrific and devastating loss to them, (equal to death on the stress meter) in spite of the circumstances. Surely there would have been social workers/counselors available to assist this family in the midst of the most devastating turmoil? There must have been a better way to reunite this mother with her children.
 
[citation][nom]mattclary[/nom]For those of you morons who seem to think think the mother is wrong, you obviously don't have kids, or aren't good parents. My daughter is 6. If she were to disappear today, be it with her mother or a stranger, it would leave a HOLE in my life. I have loved many people in my life, none of them, not even my own mother, can begin to compare to the love I feel for my daughter. You don't "just let go" of a stolen child. I'm dumbfounded anyone could even say that.[/citation]
And being a good parent, you should always wish for your child to be happy, even if it means sacrificing something. In this case, that sacrifice would be your revenge.

Let's face it, this woman is a stranger to the kids. The father is their only real parent, kidnapper or not. She might be the mother, but they have no mom.

As a parent, you would have basically 2 choices:

1) Forgive the husband and try to forge what relationship you can with the children.

2) Get your revenge, tear away the kids' only parent, force them to move across the country and leave their friends behind, and make them live in a house with the stranger who did all this to them.

Any idiot can tell you which choice will be better for the kids, and she probably destroyed any chance of relationship.

She should have let go of the past and tried to do what she could to start over. Instead she's trying to force a relationship and turn herself into a mom she'll never be.
 
Seems to me there is a lot of presumption on this site, with just a few facts reported it seems this families life is an open book and everyone knows exactly what happened, from reading the comments it would seem the father is knight in shining armour saving his children from their alcoholic abusive crack ho mother, and after 15 years the wicked witch has finally plotted her revenge, incarcerated the saint and no offering her children in sacrifice.

But the reality is, there is no such information here, all we know for sure is, some 15 years ago a man drove of with his two toddler children saying to their mother you will never see them again, without any knowledge of the reasons behind it, so people please lighten up, I am all for discussion but all this hatred throw to either side when we have no real facts is pointless.

The man was arrested and thrown in jail, to me that would indicated he has broken the law, he wouldn't have been incarcerated and had his children taken unless the charge was serious, if it was just a custody issue he would of been granted bail and the child welfare protection people would of negotiated between parents, that is my assumption anyway.

Secondly everyone is screaming how the woman was cruel for having the husband thrown in jail, that may not of even been her intention, she may well have just wanted to see her kids, she couldn't approach the father (remember he already hid these kids from her for 15 years) she was probably afraid if she did speak to him he would bolt again, so she did the right thing and called in the authorities, events probably over escalated from there.

As for the kids hating their mother, how do you know what has been told to these kids? they were bound to ask about her, it could well be they were told all sorts of rubbish about her, it wouldn't be the first time estranged parents have waged a hate campaign against the other via their children would it.

So please guys, there will be two sides to this story, try not to presume to much. All I see here is tragedy for the kids and 15 years of misery for the mother. I am a father and no way can I justify in my mind what this man has done, braking up the kids life is not the answer, but he stole 15 years of this woman's life, stole her kids, he also stole the mother from his own children, took away their chance to know her and make their own mind up about her.
 
Faustino Utrera is being charged with two counts of kidnapping and two additional counts of violating child custody orders.

This is something that SHOULD have been included in the article. In the end he broke the law so he went behind bars for it by the looks of it. Though more background info is needed.
 
From reading around elsewhere it sounds like the father gave the law a fair chance, and the law failed him as a father, as it does most fathers in these situations. Anyone who has seen just how badly a father gets abused in these situations can understand the decision the father took here, it might not have been "legal", but he did to his wife what she would have done to him anyway.

It sounds as if he only had his childrens best interests at heart. All those years later he was arrested waiting to pick his 16 year old up from school - sounds like a dedicated good father to me, long term proof of good intentions towars his childrens best interests.

Ive seen what happens when the courts side with the mum as they almost always do, Ive know guys who are perfectly good guys, just wanting to care for their kids, not able to see their kids with no legal recourse.

I know a guy whos wife is a nut bar literally delusional he was unaware what the medication she was taking was for before they married - and was unable to convince her to keep taking it after), she makes sure he cant see his kids more than once a year, and he has to live in fear of the day she kills those children in one of her bad spells. But the law says shes the mum so she gets the kids until such a time as she actually hurts them. She already put him in hospital before he eventually left her!

Ive seen so many cases where women use their kids as nothing more than a weapon to batter their ex with, with full support of the law. Until the law stops discriminating on the grounds of gender men are going to continue being placed in a situation where moral and legal are completely at odds. IF the law was fair, and gender wasnt taken into account before deciding whats best for the kids then Id agree with punishment for such kidnapping, but as it stands many fathers everywhere have their children legally kidnapped from them.
 
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