It is hard enough for a child to be shuffled back and forth for scheduled stays like a puck over the ice that separates divorced parents. Difficulty turns to tragedy when one parent takes it into their head to abduct the child and keep it out of reach of the other.
Added to that, when the parents have different nationalities or religions, the child may be caught in a particularly invidious, long-running parental snare.
The recent case of a father from the U.S. state of Tennessee who came to Japan to wrest his children from their Japanese mother highlights a worldwide problem. This American father of a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl was arrested in Fukuoka on Sept. 28, but released with a suspended indictment on Oct. 15. His wife, who took the children from the United States to Japan in defiance of a U.S. court's instructions, apparently refuses to give them up.