Congressional testimony: What long-term child abduction feels like

Thanks to Michigan international family lawyer Jeanne Hannah for posting some of the testimony from yesterday's Congressional hearing on international child abduction, which can be found in its entirety here on the Bring Sean Home Foundation site. Excerpt:

"For five and one half years, I walked in the shoes of the Left-Behind Parent. I lived in a world of despondency and desperation, with a searing pain throughout my entire being. Everywhere I turned I saw an image of my abducted child. Sleep was hard to come by and never restful. If I smiled, I felt guilt. When I saw children, whether it was in the store, a park, on television or even on my charter boat, where clients often take their families for a day on the water, it was more than painful. For the longest time it was too painful to be around my own family members. I couldn't even be around my nieces and nephews. It was too painful. Where was my son? ..."

I know how true this is -- I didn't get to see the hearing because I was in a two-day trial of an equally heartbreaking international abduction case that has gone on for 11 years now.