My children and I landed at Melbourne airport early on Christmas morning in 2017. Christmas is not the same here in Japan as it is in Australia. Despite the fact it’s often a school day, I always kept the kids home to open presents and go out for a Christmas lunch as a family.
That year I wanted them to experience the Australian Christmas of my childhood. A summer Christmas with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins; the beach and sunshine.
Although things had started to change within our family, I had no idea as my children and I were walking along the beach with our Australian family on Christmas Day just what kind of nightmare was going to unfold after our return to Japan. I had no idea that that day was to be our last Christmas.
Not long after our 15th wedding anniversary, in October 2017, my husband had asked me for a divorce and said he would move out. Not wanting a divorce, and hoping he'd change his mind, I asked him to stay until after we returned from the already planned trip.
He moved out one day in February 2018. I came home from work and found he was gone.
In April, while I was watching TV with my mother, who had come to Japan to help me look after the children, he suddenly returned.
'From today, I will live here again,' he said, pushing the children in front of him into the living room.
The situation deteriorated so badly within our family after that as my husband repetitively told me to just leave and go back to Australia. There was no Christmas in our household that year. I was determined to stay and certain the courts would ultimately see his actions as damaging if I could just be patient.
Catherine Henderson with her two children and then husband in 2011. This image has been digitally altered. Credit: Supplied.
When I was celebrating that last Christmas in Australia with my family I didn't know that Japan had a sole custody system with no provision for joint custody. I had never heard of parental child abduction. I had no idea that in Japan once one parent has taken the children away, the other parent can effectively be blocked from their lives not only by the courts but also by other Japanese societal systems at the will of the parent who has abducted them.
I had no conception that the legal system in Japan routinely favours the parent who has made a new home with the children. The fact that the parent may have taken the children from their family home without the knowledge or agreement of the other parent before doing so isn't taken into consideration. A system that, in my opinion, not only allows one parent to abduct their own children, it actually rewards them for doing so. How could I have known these things? They are unbelievable.
When I was celebrating that last Christmas in Australia with my family I didn't know that Japan had a sole custody system with no provision for joint custody. I had never heard of parental child abduction.Catherine Henderson
When I started crying in mediation because I had realised that they weren't going to give me even one opportunity to see my children before Christmas in 2019, they looked at me as though I was some crazy woman who had mistakenly walked into the wrong room. I know I probably looked crazy, but I felt that I was the only sane person in the room. Crying was the appropriate reaction of a mother cut off from her children for no good reason and prevented from seeing them, talking to them, helping them, protecting them, laughing with them.
I think the family court system in Japan is looking for quick and easy solutions. There were so many times that I felt that not one single person in that system actually cared even one bit about the fact that my children had lost their mother. I felt that they saw the abduction as an easy way to decide which parent would get custody and me as selfish for wishing to disrupt the children's so-called stable new lives. In fact, one mediator actually told me that I was lucky that my children were of an age they no longer needed a mother.
Catherine's home after her then husband moved out with their children.
The mediators and court investigators didn't appear to agree with my assertions that as I was an important person in the children's lives, my husband and the court had a responsibility to help me restore my connection with the children. I said in many sessions that my relationship with them shouldn't be contingent on the finalisation of the divorce and that we could start immediately to re-establish contact. No such opportunity was ever provided.
Ultimately, almost three years after the abduction, I was divorced and lost custody without having spoken to the children since the day before they were taken. I am now no longer legally connected to my children, except for the child support I must pay. I have no legal rights to have any input in, or get any information about their lives.
Ultimately, almost three years after the abduction, I was divorced and lost custody without having spoken to the children since the day before they were taken.Catherine Henderson
These kinds of experiences make me feel as though I have somehow taken a wrong turn and ended up in some bizarre alternative reality. A reality where people think that not only is it reasonable, but that it is preferable, for children to only have one parent after divorce. Many days, I suddenly remember what has happened and the resultant shock never seems to decrease. I try to avoid seeing families doing everyday and special things together. I avoid TV shows, books and movies with themes about family. But it’s impossible, they are everywhere. I no longer feel comfortable living in Japan, but I feel as though I cannot leave.
I sit on my couch in Tokyo, contemplating another Christmas without my kids. I still have our family Christmas decorations. I can't bear to throw them out. I don't know whether I should be angry at my ex-husband for not considering them important enough to take, or grateful to him for having left them behind. Tangible but painful reminders of a life shared with my children.
Catherine’s husband declined to be interviewed for Dateline’s documentary Japan’s Taken Children.
In a written statement he said: “The court ruled … I hadn’t committed Parental Alienation, illegally removed the children or failed to cooperate with visitation.”
Watch the documentary Japan's Taken Children on
