Bizarre Irish Kidnapping case

Has this story registered a blip on the US news radar?

A pair of grandparents in Ireland flew to the states and kidnapped their grandson. I have heard on the radio that the grandfather’s daughter reported that her father promised that if he was able to retrieve his grandson from the states he would kill him rather than have him returned and raised as an American. Whether he said that or not, the grandparents certainly did feel strongly enough about their grandson being raised by him mother in Chicago that they kidnapped him, leading the US courts to issue a warrant for their arrest with $2million bail. Had they been convicted, the grandparents would have faced a manditory 6 years in prison with a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

But there’s more to the story. The grandparents had raised their grandson until the age of 4 in Cobh, County Cork. When they paid a visit to their daughter, the boy’s mother, in Illinois in 1999 with the boy, she refused to let him return with them. The grandparents returned to Ireland without their grandson and, in 2001, managed to receive legal guardianship of the boy from the Irish authorities. Unfortunately for them, they were unable to get the US courts to agree to their custody. The boy had since been adopted by his new stepfather and was living with his mother, stepfather and 5 siblings in Chicago.

So, in 2004, the grandparents returned to the states by telling their daughter that her father was dying. She agreed to see them if they surrendered their passports. They did so, but using another set of passports and a complicated escape plan involving false airline bookings and an Irish passport for their grandson they dramatically escaped with the boy back to Ireland. After the warrant for their arrest was issued they sent him back to the states.

They were in court today in Dublin over the affair to see if they were going to be extradited to the states. The Irish courts decided not to send them, apparently not for any other reason than because they disagreed with the punishment the grandparents would face from US courts.

As an American in Ireland this story resonated with me. I’ve watched while Ireland has expanded with the celtic tiger, one eye on the movies and television coming from the states to see how “modern” life should be lived. I’ve watched as US dotcom companies moved in for tax reasons, pumping loads of money into the economy and bringing technology to the forefront of the Irish mentality. I’ve also watched as Irish people lined up at Shannon airport to protest their country’s tacit involvement as a refuelling station for the US war machine. I’ve seen anger at US influence go hand-in-hand with admiration of the states’ way of life.

For many people in Ireland the US is both a beacon and a bully. Without the US many Irish would have had no place to turn to for escape from persecution and misery over the last 200 years. This has bred a way of thinking here of the states as a promised land of milk and honey – an image that is slowly tarnishing as Ireland’s economy leaps forward and, for the first time in hundreds of years, people are lining up to emmigrate HERE.

At the end of the day, Ireland is a small country and the USA a goliath. In many Irish hearts a fear and frustration is swelling as the influence of the US irrevocably changes this once quiet, parochial country into something they don’t recognise as their own.

I think, for one set of grandparents, that struggle was embodied in a little boy. Reading the headlines today, I was struck with a profound sense of sadness by their desperate attempts to get him back.

I’m not sure if these emotions are about their case or what I feel it represents. Whatever legal perambulating the courts in Dublin may do, yesterday’s Ireland, just like little Dylan Blake, has gone for good.