I was meeting with a client at 5:30 p.m. yesterday when I received my wife Nhungs frantic call ... Someone just called and gave me Phuongs address! (where my two kidnapped children are being held). (They) said theyve seen the kids and know Phuong and Tan (her common-law husband) very well and that the way she is handling the kids makes her very concerned for their welfare. While waiting for Nhung to arrive in District 1, where I was working, I contacted several friends to ask about who they might know in the police. Within moments, we had five friends in addition to us, a map (the apartment was in a part of the city not known to any of us), and an action plan. We arrived by taxi before 7 oclock, expecting to find Morgan and Ly Ly still in the apartment. The informant had told us that people on site were helping with security to delay Phuong from being able to get her moving truck under way to the next hiding place. Told that the police were on the way, I could not wait to see my children, so our party followed a security guard up the elevator to the eighth floor apartment and I knocked the door. There was no answer, but a moment later, a familiar woman and a young man came to the door and used a key to open it. The small apartment was dark and dingy ... and recently abandoned. The woman told us the power had been cut off, because Phuong had not paid the bill. There were a few boxes hastily left behind along with some clothes, the washing machine I recognized as Phuongs and some signs of her baby. My heart sank when I looked into a corner to see two little study desks. The woman who let us in pointed out which boxes belonged to Phuong. With her assistance in opening them, I discovered one of them was full of photos ... and luckily, the two albums on top contained ample photographic evidence to prove much of what I have maintained in my statements about this case: the first was Phuongs wedding album with the Canadian-Vietnamese man she married on 17 February 2005 ... just a couple of weeks before she started dating me ... about two months before she started living with me ... and just a little over 13 months before Morgan was born. By the way, for those idiots who might try to claim this man to be Morgans father ... A. He apparently returned to Canada prior to her beginning the affair and B. the photos clearly show him to be wheelchair bound (and according to Phuongs later statements, sterile). The second album contained photos of Morgan after birth, his one month party, several photos of him as a baby with Phuong and with me ... destroying her claims that I am not the father and that I was never around the children ... that she has supported them all by herself these past several years (which also does not go together well with her false accusations that I abused the children). When police arrived, we were back downstairs waiting. We turned the albums over to them. While we were talking with the officers, two of our friends had gone back upstairs to ask questions of the lady who had opened the door for us ... they were verbally assaulted by a drunk man who threatened them and claimed to be Phuongs brother. He then tried to call in other low-lifes to try to come and help him attack us. While we were talking with police, they called in more officers upon learning that someone on Phuongs side was trying to incite violence. The woman tried to slip past the police and out the gate. She was arrested and taken to the station, where we met the police to make statements. The reason the woman had looked familiar to me was that she had come to help Phuong when her youngest son was born ... she is the sister of her common-law husband, Tan. This helped us connect him officially back to the case, after he had gone to great lengths in the beginning to come to us and tell us he had no idea where Phuong was or what her intentions might be. The police told this woman that she would not be released until she called Phuong and compelled her to turn herself in to the police. While waiting for her to come, the police took our statements and presented the photos and facts to the sister. She stated that living conditions were not good for Morgan and Ly Ly and that Phuong would force them to tell everyone around them that their father beat them ... she said food was withheld from them if they did not comply and so Ly Ly (the younger and weaker) would follow her mothers orders, but Morgan would just remain silent and sad, often crying. This sister told us that Phuong often threatened Morgan that if he did not do as she told him, she would abandon him and he would die! Phuong showed up at nearly midnight, screaming for everyone to hear that she was a good mother and had been taking care of the children all these years without ANY help from me and that now I was coming out of nowhere to try to take them from her. She went on and on about how I was never there for Morgan and Ly Ly! Then she contradicted herself by saying she removed them from my house because I was beating them and that if the police didnt believe her, they could ask the children. I looked at her from across the room and could hold my tongue no longer ... I said, Hey! Stupid! You cannot even keep your lies straight! You really think that the police or the courts will believe you with no evidence, especially when your story keeps changing and contradicting itself?! Do yourself and the children a favor ... show that you have anything good inside you and bring the children back to their safe home, the home where they have plenty to eat, friends to play with, the home where they receive an education. If you persist with this, I will never quit until you have been brought to the courts and forced to face justice for these terrible things you are doing to your own children! If I must persist until the moment I die, I will never give up! You still have a baby to raise ... be a good mother for a change and think of that child ... do the right thing for Morgan and Ly Ly and let them come back home. If you do this voluntarily, I will not press the issue with the police or the courts ... if you demonstrate that you can be trusted, I will permit you to visit the kids ... if you decide to run or to see this go to the court, you will lose ... all the evidence and reliable testimony is against you. I will be forced to pursue the strongest remedies under the laws of Vietnam to protect the children! She shut her mouth and would not look me in the eyes. She brought with her the report she tried to file against me and Nhung back in December ... the one with the false accusations that contradicted each other and her stories. I asked the police officer if she was intending to file these in this case and he replied that she was. I asked him if filing false police reports in Vietnam was a criminal offense, he replied that it is. He warned her of this, yet she stubbornly decided to proceed. He rolled his eyes and told me to follow the procedures of the law. We were so close to seeing Morgan and Ly Ly last night ... I am encouraged by this and my efforts will be many more times stronger now that I have seen with my own eyes the horrible conditions in which she keeps them and heard with my own ears the types of threats she makes against the children to keep them on her program. This morning, I was also encouraged by two phone calls from the American Consulate, demonstrating their strong concern for these two little American citizens who are being held in deplorable conditions ... physically, emotionally, and every other way. Thank you to all of our great friends, to the valiant and just efforts of the Vietnamese police in Binh Tan District, and to the American Citizen Services of the U.S. Consulate of HCMC. We will see this through to the very end!
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 03:32:18 +0000
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