New Documentary: Teen in Hiding Caught, Extorted to Rat on Moms' Network

The new documentary “In the Interest of the Child” tells the story of a Dutch mother whose three children were taken away from her and made to live exclusively with the father. It centers around her eldest child’s escape into hiding and her subsequent capture and confinement. The teen was tortured and extorted to give up the mothers’ network that had helped hide her and threatened she would remain incarcerated until she ratted them out.

The documentary is set in the alluring Dutch countryside with lots of sublime horse scenes, since riding was the teen’s passion and she stayed for a time on a pony ranch. The film starts with the teen’s arrest and unfolds in a series of flashbacks to the time of the mother’s divorce from her abusive husband.

It is a story that is both uplifting and bitter. A brave, young girl rises up against the system, while the mother fights for the return of her beloved children.

It is well worth watching to see how the drama plays out. However, keep in mind that the filmmaker puts forth flawed narratives. The theme is gender-neutralized as “high conflict” divorces in which parents’ interests are prioritized over children’s, hence the satiric title “In the Interest of the Child”. The blame is placed on juvenile-centered bureaucracies in which GAL’s [guardians ad litem] and social workers play the villain roles.

The real culprit—the Family Court system responsible for switching custody to the father in the first place via the divorce case—is barely glimpsed. Instead, the focus is entirely on the aftermath of the already paternally-entitled status quo which is being upheld by successive patriarchal brown-nosers. More on that in a bit.

But first, a look at this heartfelt story.

[SPOILER ALERT: You may want to watch the film before reading this column. You can access it on their website. The trailer is embedded above.]

TEEN ON THE RUN

The film begins with 17 year-old Myrthe being captured after a stint in hiding from her emotionally abusive father. She had run away many times over the years to her mother, with whom she desperately wanted to live, but she was always forced back to him.

The last time she runs away, the father procures an official “removal order” and Myrthe learns they are coming to take her. But she is 17 now and has the courage to rebel. She goes into hiding rather than live with her father any longer.

The removal order expires after a few months but is reinstated since she has not been found yet. At the end of the next order, her 14th GAL (a record!—and there will be even more) informs her by email that it has expired and will not be reinstated this time, so she can go back to her mother.

Myrthe ecstatically returns from hiding believing she can finally live with her mother for the rest of her short remaining childhood in peace.

But it was a trick. [Coalition followers could have guessed this!]

Myrthe and her mother, Ilona, blithely unaware it is a trick, are in town together the next day when Myrthe is apprehended in a scene resembling a major drug bust playing out in public. Ten cops descend upon them, arresting and handcuffing Myrthe. Ilona watches helplessly while her daughter kicks and screams and cries for her mother as they drag her away and force her into the police car.

On the way to the lock-down facility, policemen pressure her to say who had helped hide her. That is the only thing these law enforcement officers care about, not that she may be escaping an abusive father. That is of zero concern to officers who are there to serve and protect.

GAL #14 resigns immediately after his success in the ploy to capture his own client. GAL #15 is appointed to continue the dirty work. He interrogates her repeatedly about her whereabouts while in hiding and informs her she will not be released until she tells where she has been. However, try as he might in these POW-like interrogations, the latest GAL is unable to get Myrthe to spill the beans on the women who risked prison to help her.

Despite what is clearly torture for a 17 year old—isolation from her mother, friends, and anyone who she knows or loves and being unable to go to school or to do anything fun—Myrthe does not break. After a couple months, the father apparently realizes she will likely choose to stay locked up until she turns 18. So she is offered a deal: she’ll be allowed to live with her friend and her mother (with the horses)—on the condition she will visit with her father on weekends.

FLASHBACKS

In the flashbacks we learn that Ilona was a stay at home mother to her three children.

Her husband was emotionally abusive and she was having a hard time coping, so a friend recommended she use some anti-anxiety medication. After she consulted a psychiatrist for the prescription, the father had her involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. They released her after a few days, but from then on she was portrayed her as being mentally unstable, and later as uncooperative.

Protective Orders were eventually taken out against her and she was placed on supervised visitation. Eventually even the supervised visits were eliminated for bogus reasons and she was prohibited from seeing her children at all. To date, Ilona has not seen her two younger children for over three years.

After being given the option by the latest GAL, Myrthe agrees she will visit her father once a week so she can be released from lockdown and live at her friend’s house with her horse.

She is only allowed one visit a month with her mother, but that’s better than nothing. GAL #16 informs Ilona that her visits are contingent on how Myrthe’s visits go with the father. This is a common tactic: use a mother’s contact with children to get her to comply with encouraging her children to have a good relationship with an abusive father.

SURPRISE ENDING

There is a surprise ending. On a visit with her father, he informs Myrthe that his girlfriend will be coming over that evening.

It turns out his girlfriend is Esther, the social worker who had brutally removed her and her siblings from their mother’s house years earlier. She had told the kids they would have no more contact with their mother and dragged them into her car to personally deliver them to the father.

Myrthe makes it clear to her father if Esther comes over, she leaves. And Esther comes so Myrthe leaves. Never to return. Her father chose his social worker girlfriend over his daughter.

Although Myrthe escapes visiting with her abusive father, she is still under his custody and control, unable to live with her mother. But there are only months left until she turns 18 and is free forever from her father and the court. Children are obviously still, in practice, their father’s property until they age out of the system.

But the only way Myrthe can see her younger brother and sister is if she visits her father so she is left with that dilemma. She says she still hopes that someday, somehow they will be free to come back to, or at least visit, her mother and her before they turn 18. A nice dream, but, unfortunately, in a patriarchal system, unlikely if the father wants to continue to keep them away.

THE TAKEAWAY

Basically the filmmakers have taken the safe route. The theme is the best interest of the child, which is not being upheld in Ilona/Myrthes’ case and of course that is a terrible thing. The subtitle states it is a “Dutch story about a global problem”.

Nobody can argue with that.

But there are problems with the entrenched narratives about what exactly is happening and why. Cases like Ilona’s are characterized as products of “high conflict” divorces.

When high conflict meets best interest, who’s interest is really being served?

This gender neutralizes the problem as two parents who don’t get along and court actors who uphold parents’ interests rather than children’s. There is no real recognition that the “conflict” is often caused by the father’s emotional abuse, even though Ilona says her husband would often get really nasty, so much so that she needed medication.

A gender-neutral parenting expert is interviewed whose solution is that children need to think for themselves and create a separate identity from the fighting parents. This is ridiculous and harmful. It encourages a sort of dissociation, when children should be encouraged to stay securely connected with their safe mother. But the patriarchal system is served by children dissociating from mothers.

Ilona is distressed by GAL’s not listening to the children and giving judges false information about her. But that is not the problem. Judges do what they do—empower fathers—with or without accurate input.

Another problem is that the blame is placed on a Kafkaesque-like nightmarish system in which GAL’s and social workers are the purveyors of evil in this supposedly complex and surreal world parents and children find themselves caught up in.

The film is set in scenes of the peaceful, pristine and wholesome Dutch countryside which is juxtaposed with the bureaucratic banality of a Kafkaesque evil.

But the evil that is occurring to both women and children is not a result of bureaucratic banality or surreal complexity. It is really very simple: the systems that deal with post-separation power over children are designed and purposed to aid men in maintaining power in their family, whether they are abusive or not.

Uncomplicated.

It explains everything that has happened in Ilona’s case and millions of others around the world over the last half century. Incompetent and malicious GAL’s, social workers and even law enforcement officers simply aid in the agenda. Law enforcement was used in Ilona’s case to get information about the mothers’ network, a real threat to men’s power in the family.

A warning is given right at the beginning of the film:

Helping to hide a child is a serious criminal offense.

Which begs the question: Is a goal of the documentary to scare and deter women from helping to hide children from fathers?

Anyway, the way to cut through all the players and the seemingly complicated mess in post-separation cases, is to focus on who has the authority to decide custody of children. Only judges do. Judges are the tip of the spear. Their power to remove children from mothers is what needs to be eliminated. Focusing on peripheral actors is what confuses the issue.

Finally, while documentaries like this award-winning Dutch one is good for exposing yet another story of yet another devastated mother, it is important to see through the inaccurate and misleading narratives.

It’s time for women to rise up and demand a new system in which judges do not have the power to take or endanger our children—or our financial security. Join the Coalition to fight for a new system.

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SISTERS IN SOLIDARITY

Our next Sisters in Solidarity forum will be on Saturday, October 14th, 1pm Pacific; 4pm Eastern; 8pm GMT; 9pm BST; Oct. 15th 9am in New Zealand and 6am on the Australian east coast. A zoom invite will be sent before the forum. Please do not share; it’s only for Sisters.

If you’d like to join Sisters in Solidarity, you need only agree that the core cause of the Post-Separation Crisis is systemic sexism and that we need a new system. Read this column for more information about the Sisterhood and then fill out this form.

Sisters are women who want to support each other, raise awareness, discuss topics related to the crisis, and engage in activism to end it.

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