Early last June, Lee-Helen Wintersgill packed up her belongings, left her Middletown home, and moved to Germany with her 8-year-old son, Eric.
Eric's father, Ronald Wintersgill, who had shared equal custody with his ex-wife on alternating weeks, didn't find out until two days later, after the boy failed to make his usual Sunday-night call to his father.
What New Castle County police call a parental abduction was reported immediately. But because the boy was already out of the country, there wasn't much authorities could do, Detective Kevin Lang said. It took Ronald Wintersgill, a 39-year-old Rising Sun, Md., resident, more than 10 months of legal wrangling in foreign courts before a three-judge panel in Germany ruled last month that the boy should be returned to his American home.
Last Sunday, Eric Wintersgill, now 9, and his dad took a plane from Frankfurt, Germany, and Eric set foot in the United States for the first time in nearly a year.
When reached by telephone Friday, Lee-Helen Lerma, who now uses her maiden name, denied she violated any laws by taking her son out of the country. "Nothing was done correctly, the way it was supposed to be done," she said, refusing further comment. Lerma said her story was scheduled to air on German television Monday.
U.S. Department of Justice statistics show that international family abductions are not as common as those within the United States.
Each year, more than 354,100 children are abducted by a family member, but only about 1,000 of those are taken out of the country. In 54 percent of the cases, it is the mother who takes the child. Of the 1,965 children taken overseas by a family member between May 1, 1997 and April 29, 1999 (the most recent statistics available), only 344 have been returned through either court negotiations through the Hague Treaty, voluntary return or re-abduction.
In the Wintersgill case, Ronald and Lee-Helen had divorced Feb. 15, 2002, after an eight-year marriage. Lee-Helen Lerma's mother lives in Germany, which is why she went there.
After Eric was taken, Ronald Wintersgill said, he turned for help to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. What he received from that organization was a "package of applications of the Hague Treaty," he said. The treaty, signed by countries including the United States and Germany, created a procedure for returning kidnapped children taken from one nation to another.
Ronald Wintersgill was then referred to a lesser-known organization called the Committee for Missing Children in Lawrenceville, Ga., which was instrumental in helping him get his son returned. The 13-year-old nonprofit group, headed by David Thelen, specializes in international abduction cases.
"There's nothing worse than seeing a child taken away from a parent," Thelen said. If Ronald Wintersgill had not taken legal action overseas, his only other options would have been to work with groups that rekidnap children taken outside of the country by one parent and smuggle them back to the other parent - which authorities said typically costs about $25,000 - or leave Eric with his mother. Lang said there are no other local options for parents in such cases.
Typically, Thelen's shoestring operation fields about four dozen calls a week for help with family-abduction and runaway cases. "Cases like Ron's that we can physically help are no more than a dozen a year," Thelen said.
Father prevails in court
Thelen put Ronald Wintersgill in touch with German attorney Harold Weisker, an expert in the articles of the Hague Treaty, to argue the case before the German court.
Thelen's nonprofit advocacy organization also picked up the tab twice for Ronald Wintersgill's roundtrip plane fare to Germany.
"If it weren't for them, Eric would still be in Germany," said Lang, the detective who worked on the boy's case locally. Ronald Wintersgill credited Lang's testimony in September with helping him gain full legal custody of Eric in Delaware courts.
After Ronald Wintersgill appeared before the German court in February, the boy's mother allowed him a three-hour visit with his son. "He ran into my arms, clung to me and wouldn't let me go," the father said. "He broke down and said he wanted to come home."
The boy was living in a basement apartment with no yard in an industrial section of Hockenheim with Lerma, her boyfriend and their two small children, Ronald Wintersgill said. Eric was enrolled in the third grade in a German school but had to be put back a grade because he couldn't speak the language. "He watched German TV to figure it out," Ronald Wintersgill said.
Thelen said Lerma had five weeks to appeal the court's Feb. 10 ruling to return the boy to his father. At the April 23 appeal hearing in Karlsruhe, Germany, a three-judge panel again ruled in Ronald Wintersgill's favor. The panel ordered Eric's mother to turn Eric over to his dad.
Ronald Wintersgill said it was a sad day for his son when he left Germany last Sunday. A German camera crew had interviewed the boy the day before and filmed the departure.
"[Eric] cried, because that was his mom," Wintersgill said. "But he knew he wanted to come home. And he knew he could call Mom on the phone."
This week, Ronald Wintersgill, his fiancée, Wendy Holler, and her 9-year-old daughter, Rebecca, welcomed Eric to their new Maryland home, situated on several acres of land with horses to ride. It's been a big treat for Eric to ride his bicycle again, Holler said. He needed to be licensed in Germany to ride a bicycle, but couldn't speak the language to take the test, she said.
'Thrilled' to be home
Since Eric's arrival, Holler said, she's been fixing all of the boy's favorite meals, like grilled steak and homemade pizza topped with bacon. "He's thrilled to death to be home," Ronald Wintersgill said.
Lang said Eric's mother will not face any charges in connection with taking her son to Germany if she ever returns to the United States to visit him.
"If we do that, the next time the German court may find in favor of the parent who abducted the kids," Lang said. "We're not going to ruin it for another parent down the road."