At the weekend, a man kidnapped his four-year-old daughter, broke through a barrier at Hamburg airport with a car and only gave up after 18 hours of negotiations. Apparently he wanted to take his child to Turkey because of a custody dispute. Even if most cases are not so spectacular, child abductions due to disputes over custody are not rare in Germany. The statistics from the Federal Office of Justice counted a total of 220 cases in 2021 in which children were supposed to be taken from Germany to other countries. It is not clear from the statistics whether the recorded cases involved one child or two or more siblings. The most common destination for child abduction in 2021 was Turkey (29 cases), ahead of France (21), Poland (19), the USA (15) and Russia (11). Children from 41 countries were to be brought to Germany from abroad in 2021. The statistics record most of the 139 cases for children from Poland (19), England (10) and Switzerland (9).
In response to a Stern request, the Federal Office of Justice (BfJ), which is responsible in Germany, named 187 cases of child abduction from Germany to abroad for the year 2022. However, the numbers do not show a complete picture, as the Federal Office emphasizes. Because: Only the cases reported to the office are recorded. Parents can also, for example, contact legal authorities abroad directly to get their kidnapped children back. According to the BfJ, most children should be taken to Turkey (22 cases), Romania (16) or Poland (15). During the same period, most children from Ukraine (23 cases), Poland (15) and England and Wales (9) were to be brought to Germany.
All cases registered by the BfJ involved a custody dispute. The office does not continually record personal circumstances statistically in such cases. Internationally, however, the statistics show that in three out of four of the cases recorded, “the mothers carry out the child abduction” – i.e. 75 percent women versus 25 percent men. “This corresponds to the local experience,” the office writes to the star. The number of cases of child abduction from Germany abroad has been “largely constant in recent years (2022: 187; 2021: 220; 2020: 209; 2019: 218; 2018: 241)”. The office cannot provide an estimate of the number of unreported cases. But the official figures also show: every other day a child from Germany disappears at the hands of a parent.
Sources: 2021 statistics from the Federal Office of Justice, 2022 statistics from the Federal Office of Justice, star inquiry to the Federal Office of Justice, 2022 activity report from the BfJ.
