Global Future: The Parents Council on International Children’s Policy is an organized group of parents across America whose children were kidnapped from U.S. soil and taken to Japan in violation of criminal laws and previously established jurisdiction, custody, travel ban and passport surrender orders of U.S. courts. The children remain in the legal custody of these parents and under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.
Global Future’s founder and chief executive officer is Patrick Braden,who alone and together with other parents has lobbied over 300 days on Capitol Hill and held over 1,000 meetings with Congressional representatives, executive departments, law enforcement and NGOs for over the past four years. Mr. Braden is the father of Melissa Braden,now age 5, who was criminally kidnapped from Los Angeles and taken to Japan in 2006.
Global Future’s Accomplishments
After over two years of lobbying on Capitol Hill alone, with only a stack of Congressional letters to show for the time, the watershed moment came on March 11 2009. House Resolution 125 was brought to the floor for debate and a roll-call vote. It passed 418 to zero.
Global Future’s carefully planned strategy and work reached another significant milestone in February 2010, when Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, Dr. Kurt Campbell traveled to Japan and gave a historic and powerful statement on the issue.
In 2009, several Global Future parents attended Campbell’s U.S. Senate confirmation hearing and met privately with the then-nominee. Twelve members of Global Future worked in unison with influential Senators prior to Campbell’s confirmation hearing. The result was that the first question Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) asked of Campbell in the hearing pertained to the kidnappings of American children to Japan. Campbell promised at his confirmation hearing to maintain regular contact with the Global Future parents and to hold meetings with the large group of U.S. parents whose children remain in Japan. Secretary Campbell’s February 2010 statement in Japan followed the second such face-to-face meeting with U.S. parents, held January 29, 2010 in Washington. The statement also follows Braden’s personal meetings with Secretary Campbell, U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos, Japanese Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki, and former U.S. Ambassador to
Japan Thomas Schieffer.
Global Future parents and their relatives regularly meet with Congressional
representatives and work with Congress on legislative action. The work of Mr. Braden and Legislative Counsel resulted in the introduction of the International Child Kidnapping Prevention Act, introduced in Congress by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) on July 16th 2009.
Secretary Campbell’s statement also follows Global Future’s securing the commitments of 22 U.S. Senators to sign on a letter to President Obama in November 2009, urging the chief executive to advance the issue at the recent U.S.-Japan summit in Tokyo. Global Future parents worked closely with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who co-authored the letter with Senator Bob Corker and then submitted it to Obama.
Campbell’s groundbreaking statement also follows inquiries from the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives on December 2, 2009, where Mr. Braden and other parents representing abduction cases to Japan, Brazil and Austria testified.
There is much work to be done by government at all levels, to rectify these kidnappings and to prevent future ones. We thank Dr. Campbell and the many members of Congress who have worked diligently on this difficult issue. We look forward to continuing to work with them and to someday soon introducing them to our children, on U.S. soil… the site of their rightful homes.
Recovering these children from their captivity in Japan is a daunting struggle, but dedicated American parents are making progress.
