One person who may be joining them is Lisa Miller, whose daughter Isabella will finally be free from the threat of imprisonment in her wicked stepmother's home in only a few months--but who is still eligible for imprisonment herself for years to come.
The US has a long history of jailing mothers who just want to raise their own daughters, beginning with Elizabeth Morgan, who was jailed for 759 days from 1987 to 1989--not for kidnapping her daughter, as there was no evidence of that, but merely for refusing to tell the authorities where she was (living under an assumed name with her grandparents in New Zealand, as it turned out); and continuing to so refuse under penalty of indefinite imprisonment for contempt. It took two acts of Congress (one of which was later declared unconstitutional) before she and her daughter were able to live together under US jurisdiction. |
In another famous case, Lee Barnett fled the country with her infant daughter Savannah, only to be arrested, extradited, and imprisoned for it two decades later. The problem was that she fled to a country where people generally supported US custody law--Australia--and a suspicious acquaintance turned her in when she carelessly referred to her daughter "Samantha" by her real name. Had Lee and Savannah fled to Russia, I don't envision this having happened.
Both of these cases had in common with the Miller case that the natural mother lost custody of her child following a divorce, a loss of custody that took place despite of charges of sexual abuse against the party who was nevertheless granted sole custody of the child. In in all three cases, it appears that the party who eventually won full custody wasn't even interested in being a parent until after the affected child was born, and the mother tried to take her away.
Lisa Miller faces some serious prison time if she ever returns to the US; I don't think there even is a statute of limitations on her contempt charges. New Zealand is out, and Australia is out, so unless she's content to indefinitely risk continuing to live where she does now, Russia seems a viable option, if she can just reach there--or their nearest consular office--undetected. And as the case of Julian Assange demonstrates, just reaching the consular office isn't always enough.
UPDATE FEBRUARY 25, 2019 Supporters of the Millers are calling for a campaign to ask President Trump to pardon all involved. Should this happen, Lisa and Isabella will be able to return to live openly in the land of their birth. Otherwise, they will be forced to continue their life of crime indefinitely.
UPDATE JANUARY 20, 2020 Lisa and Isabella made the decision to come out of hiding, despite not receiving a presidential pardon. Isabella's only crime to date has been living in Nicaragua without a visa for the past ten years, and--since she was a minor almost the entire time--there's a good chance she won't go to prison for it.
