JEFFERSON CITY — One of a parent’s worst nightmares is to have a child go missing.
What can be even more terrifying is if a biological parent is the individual who kidnapped them.
In the summer of 2013, Gaila Trusty knew her ex-husband and two children were in Russia visiting his parents. What she said she didn’t know was her children weren’t coming home anytime soon.
“A day before they were supposed to come back to the states and I asked my daughter how things were going, she told me at that time ‘well, Dad said there was a change of plans,'” Trusty said. “They weren’t going to be coming home.”
Trusty found out her ex-husband, Gennadiy Ivanov, had already contacted the schools in Jefferson City to get Aleksandra and Nicolai’s records, in order to enroll them in a Moscow school.
“That was just like somebody had taken their fist and hit me right in the center of my chest,” Trusty said.
She went to the police.
“The initial investigation was Russia?” Jefferson City police detective Mark Edwards said. “What were we going to do with somebody in Russia?” “I went ahead and filed a report that he had kidnapped my children, taken them out of the country,” Trusty said. With the children in Russia, it was difficult for Trusty and her lawyer, Gaylin Carver, to get them home.
Dozens of countries are part of the Hague Convention, but Russia is not.
“The Hague Convention on child abduction basically says if a parent takes a child to another country against what the court order was in the place or the country or the state where the child had been previously living, that court order is enforceable in that country,” Carver said.
“I didn’t really have any rights,” Trusty said. “They didn’t recognize any of our divorce decrees or anything so I was pretty much going to be out of luck no matter what happened.”
In cases like this, the legal system can test a parent’s patience.
“They treat it as a brand new case,” Carver said. “So the kids are now in Russia, they ignore any [or don’t] recognize any other country’s orders, or our court order. So, she had the option of hiring a Russian attorney and basically starting a custody case all over again in Russia.”
She said Russia also does not recognize parental kidnapping.
“So pretty much what it boiled down to was I had to go down there and basically steal and kidnap my kids back,” Trusty said. “So I thought, ‘well ok, I’ll go and kidnap my children back.’ Which is what I did.”
Trusty hired a private investigator to follow Ivanov and her children so she would know their daily routine before she flew over.
“Basically, we were going to get my kids before they went into their schools,” Trusty said. “Then we were going to go into another area, pay off some border guards to get across the border and into another country that we could leave.”
Trusty grabbed Aleksandra before she walked into the building but Nicolai had already entered his classroom before she could get to him.
“Through a chain of events, they tried to stop me from leaving with my daughter,” Trusty said. “We ran [and] got to my son’s school. I was able to get him out of the building, but then we were stopped in the courtyard that surrounded the school building.”
The struggle continued.
“People were stopping us and blocking the exit so we couldn’t get out of the courtyard,” Trusty said. “So at that time, there were lots of teachers, the police were called and they don’t mess around over there.”
Trusty was determined.
“I was not coming home without my kids,” Trusty said. “Whether it meant that I was going to have to stay there longer than I anticipated or I was going to be there in their jail.”
After meeting with the school staff, Russian police and the U.S. Embassy, the children were finally allowed to leave.
“He was mad at me, and I think this was his way of getting back at me,” Trusty said.
Carver said spite plays a big role in custody battles.
“I would say 20 percent of the cases, we have some situation like that – where one party picks up out of spite or doesn’t return the child out of spite,” Carver said.
Edwards said it’s a tricky gray area.
“I would say that on an early stage level, yes, there are a lot of misunderstandings,” Edwards said. “There’s also a lot of animosity maybe between the parents in these types of situations.”
In the years since, Trusty said she and her children have adjusted well.
“Thank goodness I did have a positive outcome and had a happy ending to my story,” Trusty said.
As for Trusty’s ex-husband, as of February 6, 2017, he still resided in Russia.
He had no contact with his children and had a warrant out for his arrest in the United States.
In the summer of 2016, Missouri passed a new law which specified every child custody judgment must include a written statement, notifying the parties that if a provision of the judgment is violated, the injured party may file a family access motion.
