PRINCE SEGALA has spent the past 15 years wondering what happened to her two children, who went missing from her Californian home in October 1995, presumed kidnapped by their father. They were aged three and two.
The police in San Bernardino, west of Los Angeles, put out a search warrant for Faustino Utrera, but he and the children were never found, and the case lay in a file gathering dust.
In March, Ms Segala had the idea of searching for her children on the internet. She typed their names into Facebook, and up popped a page apparently created by her daughter, who would be 17.
She contacted the girl, and began a correspondence with her. She e-mailed her daughter an old family photograph showing the two children with both parents before the alleged abduction.
Ms Segala explained that she had always hoped for a reunion, and that she wanted to renew her relationship with her daughter. But at that point the girl baulked, telling her mother she wanted no more contact, and within a few days the Facebook page had disappeared and the link was broken.
However, those few exchanges were enough to revive the investigation. The San Bernardino prosecutors’ office filed charges of kidnapping and violating child custody orders against Mr Utrera, and issued a warrant for his arrest. Information led police to the Palm Beach area of Florida, where Mr Utrera and his children were living in a trailer park.
Then, 10 days ago, as Mr Utrera waited at a bus stop to meet his son, now 16, after school, he was arrested and taken into custody.
The children were placed in the care of the state of Florida and are with a family known to them. The intention is to reintroduce the pair to their birth mother, but any reunion is fraught with difficulty.
The local prosecutor, Kurt Rowley, told the San Bernardino Sunthat when the daughter broke off communication with Ms Segala, she had insisted she was happy with her life and that she had been told bad things about her mother. "According to the Facebook conversations, they regarded another woman as their mother," Mr Rowley said. "You can imagine the feelings she's having, not seeing her children for so many years and knowing they've bonded with another family. But at the same time they're almost within her grasp."
Detectives are trying to piece together the case before an extradition hearing in July, which could see Mr Utrera sent to California for trial. It is not known how he made his way to Florida as a fugitive with the children.
Social workers are considering how to reintroduce the children to their mother. Carrie Hoeppner, of the Florida Department of Children and Families, told NBC television: “There is no relationship there, you don’t have that immediate joyful reunification. If in fact that is what will progress, it will take time.”
The case shows how social networking sites could be used in child abduction inquiries. Every year more than 200,000 children are kidnapped in the US, usually by a parent. – (Guardian service)