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Kennedy Kembo spent weeks filing missing persons reports and contacting friends
IN 2010, Kennedy Kembo took the train home from his job at the Department of Transport in Melbourne to find his wife Karina was not waiting to drive him home from the station as usual. When he found she and his daughter Kayla weren’t at the house either, he was horrified.
He spent weeks filing missing persons reports and contacting friends and family to try to track them down, until a month later, he received an email from his wife, with photos of their daughter. She wrote that she needed time to think and had gone back to her home country of Indonesia.
Kennedy Kembo learned to ride a motorbike before heading from Melbourne to Jakarta to find his daughter.
Over the next five years, Kennedy sent endless emails asking to see his daughter, as well as money for her maintenance. He received more photos in return, and was able to speak to her over Skype three times. His wife divorced him from overseas, and he was left with just a few pieces of clothing to remember his daughter, and a handful of possessions, including a handprint painting he treasured.
“When I look at it I see her hand reaching out to me, and when I touch it, it’s like I’m reaching out to her,†he told the documentary-makers.
Four hundred children are abducted by a parent or family member every year in Australia, accordingto a documentary Bringing Them Home at 8.30pm on 101 East tomorrow on Al Jazeera English.
Australia has the highest rate per capita of international parental abductions in the world, averaging two a week. That’s in part because parental abduction is not a crime in this country, unlike in the US and UK. While it’s an offence to remove a child from Australia without the permission of the court or the other parent, it’s not a criminal offence if there are no court proceedings or orders preventing it.
It means parents whose children have been taken overseas have little legal power to retrieve them, and there are many stories of bereft mothers and fathers unable to see or contact their children, including Patricia Nunez, who hasn’t seen her two sons since they were kidnapped and taken to Taiwan by their father a year and a half ago.
Parental kidnapping is not a crime in Australia, and we have the highest rate of international parental abduction in the world.
Longing to see his only child, Kennedy Kembo spent $50,000 on his quest to find her. His last attempt was paying notorious “child recovery specialist†Colin Chapman to find her. After months of surveillance, there was a lead, and Kennedy and the filmmakers headed to Jakarta to look for his family.
Chapman’s espionage techniques led them to Kayla, capturing footage of her at her primary school. But there were grave concerns among the filmmakers about what many see as the private investigator’s vigilante techniques, and it started to look as though Chapman wouldn’t be able to simply whisk the little girl away under the eyes of the authorities.
“My personal struggle was how potentially traumatic this could be for Kayla,†director Steve Chao told news.com.au
“The fact that a father she hadn’t seen in five years would try to get her back, the idea of stealing her back. When things started falling apart it was a struggle seeing Kennedy.â€
In a last-ditch effort to help the desperate father, the film crew went to Karina’s home with her family and banged on the door. They showed her a court order giving Kennedy custody in Australia, and she agreed he could come in and see Kayla.
After an hour together, she finally consented to allowing him access to his little girl. In heartbreaking scenes, Kennedy shows the filmmakers photos of his delighted daughter posing with her daddy.
The lost children of Australia.
While there are still question marks over why Karina vanished, this family’s story may have a happy ending. Other parents in Australia face never seeing the children who mean everything to them again.
“Having a child cut out of your life is so difficult,†says Chao. “This is time you don’t get back. Kennedy struggled with the court system and depression. He became a loner, his friends didn’t understand why he couldn’t move on. It’s the same for Patricia Nunez.â€
The people most at risk of suffering are the young children whose brains are still developing. Perhaps surprisingly, many of them don’t want to see stricter laws against parental abduction brought in.
Instead, some have suggested the government should provide more concrete assistance in reuniting devastated families.
Separation from a child is one of the worst things that can happen to a parent, and the emotional toll on those left behind is heartbreaking. But it’s the children who most need our protection.
Watch the full documentary Bringing Them Home online or Friday 9 October at 9.30am and 8.30pm on 101 East on Al Jazeera English.