Kristopher on vacation out of the country for one month. She had to leave a $100,000 bond as insurance they'd return. She took Kristopher and never looked back. She'd analyzed the treaty. If she stayed hidden from Cyprus authorities with her son for a year, she might convince the courts that Kristopher was established in a new life and shouldn't be uprooted.
"It was a desperate loophole," she says now.
Karin and Kristopher eventually hid in Coeur d'Alene with Karin's new husband, Richard Stevens, and younger son, Kieran. Authorities found them seven months into their fugitive year. The Hague Convention required their return to Elmos in Cyprus within 48 hours.
Kristopher was taken from Karin without any belongings, not even a toothbrush. The federal marshal wouldn't tell Karin where he was taking her son. Karin frantically called her minister, who passed along the nature of her call to Beth Barclay, Project Safe Place director in Coeur d'Alene.
Beth offers help to children in every imaginable situation, but she'd never heard of the Hague Convention. She called Karin.
"I could hear the fear in her voice," Beth says.
She instinctively trusted Karin's story that she hadn't abducted her son but had escaped with him. Beth found Kristopher at Children's Village and convinced the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department that his case wasn't the kidnapping they believed.
"She was monumental in slowing the process down," Karin says. "We owe our lives to Beth."
Karin called Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, Idaho's congressional delegation and anyone else she believed could help. The U.S. State Department enforces the Hague Convention in this country and was prepared to send Karin and her son to Cyprus with no questions asked.
Under the Hague Convention, Kristopher belonged in Cyprus because he had lived there 11 of his 12 years.
Karin cried foul.
"Since when does a foreign country have jurisdiction over an American citizen in her own country and since when is an American citizen deported in a non-criminal case?" she says.
Forty-eight hours passed and Karin and Kristopher remained in Coeur d'Alene. Karin grabbed 10 year's worth of records she keeps in a plastic blue file basket and visited Coeur d'Alene attorney Glen Walker for help. Her attorney, Stella Stephani, in Nicosia, Cyprus, stood solidly behind her.
The Hague Convention was a learning experience for Glen. The United States backed it because it returns to American parents children abducted from the United States by foreign parents.
But Hague works the same way for the 71 other countries that pledged to abide by it.
Glen prepared to argue that Kristopher wasn't a voluntary resident of Cyprus, but more of a prisoner.
For the next month, Karin held her ground and Children's Village and Glen got to know Kristopher. Kristopher understood well the details of his turbulent history. He also expressed his wish to live with his mother in the United States and was willing to testify in federal court.
"He's a brilliant child of brilliant parents," Glen told North Idaho College instructor Tony Stewart on "NIC's Public Forum," an interview show. "He's subtle, quick, witty. He knew where he wanted to be."
The case was headed to U.S. federal court for a hearing when Karin and Elmos reached an agreement. Karin would continue to have full custody of Kristopher and they'd live in the United States. Elmos was granted visiting rights.
Karin insisted the new court orders include a clause that the United States will retrieve Kristopher immediately if he's abducted to another country.
And, she pledged to help anyone in similar straits.
"When I was looking for help before I escaped, there was nothing," she says. "I can tell my story while others on the run can't."
She found Seattle University's Hague Convention project on the Internet. Sudha Shetty, an attorney with the university's law school, started the project after she'd helped represent two women facing Hague Convention extradition orders.
Both women were domestic violence victims and had fled to the United States with their children. The law's immediate extradition rule left her no time to prepare a case.
Sudha began studying Hague cases heard in U.S. courts to learn how often domestic violence and child abuse were used as defenses. The Hague Convention doesn't address the reasons why one parent takes a child away from the other parent.
"It was created with the best intentions, but it's had unintended consequences for women trying to protect their children," Sudha says.
With the help of about 60 law students, Sudha started a Web site -- www.law.seattleu.edu/accesstojustice/hague -- with case information and the names of lawyers who have worked in Hague cases. She posted information she could have used for her two cases.
Karin called Sudha as soon as she read about the project.
"She challenged habitual residence. That hasn't been challenged before," Sudha says. "It's one more avenue for us."
At Sudha's request, Karin shared her experience with students on the project.
"They were so moved with her courage and guts that none wanted to quit working on the project," Sudha says.
The Web site is in its infancy and Sudha wants any information she can add to help other people facing Karin's dilemma.
Ideally, Sudha would like to amend the treaty so domestic violence, child abuse and sexual assault are considered before children automatically are returned to a parent invoking the Hague Convention. But the 72 countries that recognize the law are unlikely to agree.
Instead, Sudha hopes to convince U.S. courts to include the issue of grave risk in any Hague Convention extradition hearing.
Karin supports the effort wholeheartedly.
"We're the lucky ones," she says. "We can be a voice for everyone out there."
To share international child custody experiences with the Seattle University law school's Access to Justice Institute, call (206) 398-4173 or e-mail atji@seattleu.edu.
