Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Melinda Thompson’

Parental Abductor Melinda Thompson Arrested in Amsterdam

September 12th, 2010 17 comments

Melinda and Andrew Thompson

On September 9, 2010, law enforcement finally caught up with parental child abductor Melinda Thompson, formerly Melinda Stratton. On April 24, 2008, she had disappeared with son Andrew Thompson after leaving Australia to go to Germany on a Singapore Airlines flight from Sydney to Frankfurt. Her professed intent was to keep the boy away from his father, Ken Thompson of New South Wales, Australia. After more than a year searching for his son, in mid-2010 he traveled to Europe to do a bike tour across the continent in search for his son. He biked over 3000 miles across nine countries raising awareness of his missing son. He wore clothes covered with pictures of Andrew.

Ken discussed in an interview with BBC news about how he discovered Andrew had been found. He had stopped cycling in Germany between Nuremberg and Stuttgart to check his email. There was an anonymous message stating that Andrew had been found and Australian authorities would contact him.
Read more…

Australian Mother Commits International Child Abduction

February 19th, 2009 No comments
Update: Andrew Thompson was found on September 9, 2010. Please see Parental Abductor Melinda Thompson Arrested in Amsterdam for more information.

Melinda Stratton of Sydney, Australia, has abducted her 4 year old son Andrew Thompson and fled Australia to go into hiding. She was unhappy her son was seeing his father at all even in supervised visitation because she claimed he was an unfit parent. She made allegations against him that were investigated and dismissed, making this look like yet another case of a parental alienator bent on using any means to prevent a child from having contact with the other parent.

Stratton fled to Germany with Andrew in April 2008. Her current whereabouts are unknown.

On January 15, 2009, she recently wrote a letter stating that she claims “the appalling failure of the Family Law Court and Child Protection Services” is why she’s run away with the child. She claims that he’s an unfit father because of depression and anxiety. He denies that he suffers from these mental illnesses. Even if he did, depression and anxiety are very common especially during divorce and hardly justify a parent being judged as unfit unless they are unusually severe.

Read more…