It has been widely acknowledged that there is a growing trend of primary caretakers abducting children in order to avoid domestic violence. Increasingly, domestic violence has been recognized as an important factor in many Hague Convention cases. See Lady Brenda Hale (President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom), Taking Flight—Domestic Violence and Child Abduction, 70 Current Legal Problems 1, 10 (2017). As such, the role of forensic mental health experts in assessing the risks of harm associated with returning children to an environment of domestic abuse has become integral in Hague Convention cases.

The Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction done at the Hague (Hague Convention) was implemented in the United States in 1988 pursuant to federal statute, International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA), now codified as 22 U.S.C. §9001 et seq. (formerly codified as 42 U.S.C. §11601). Its purpose is (1) to discourage parents from abducting children across international borders as a means of forum shopping and (2) to provide an expeditious procedure to secure the return of children to their country of habitual residence for the adjudication of custody issues. (Far too often, the Hague Convention’s purpose is oversimplified to state that it determines which country will have jurisdiction of the underlying custody claims. However, the Hague Convention does not override custody jurisdiction pursuant to the Uniform Child Custody and Jurisdiction Enforcement Act (UCCJEA) which is in effect in 49 states, including in New York enacted as Domestic Relations Law §§75-77.)

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