Newfoundland girl’s disappearance prompts calls for tougher laws to stop abductions

The girl’s disappearance underscores long-standing concerns about the ease with which a parent can take a child to another country without the other parent’s knowledge or consent. 

Bouchra Marbouhi says she last saw her young daughter more than two months ago, when the girl left with her father for a routine sleepover.

The five-year-old never came home, she said.

Instead, Marbouhi said she got a series of texts the next day from her estranged husband, her daughter’s father, saying he had taken the child to Egypt. The Canadian Press has viewed the messages.

“I was shocked, I started crying,” Marbouhi said in a recent interview. “I honestly felt like I was dreaming.”

There was a temporary court order in place, forbidding the father from taking his daughter outside of St. John’s, N.L. But it wasn’t enough to prevent her daughter’s disappearance, Marbouhi said.

“I trusted the system to protect (my daughter) and I found out too late that how many gaps are there — no exit checks, no coordination between courts and borders,” she said.

The girl’s disappearance underscores long-standing concerns from women’s groups and family lawyers about the ease with which a parent can take a child to another country without the other parent’s knowledge or consent.

They have called for stronger systems and policies to prevent international abductions, especially for those involving children taken to countries that have not signed onto The Hague Convention, a global agreement aimed at curbing abductions.