An Icelandic woman received a court order to return to the United States with her two children before the next coming Sunday. Borghildur Gudmundsdottir had the two children with an American soldier who wants to have custody over the children in the United States. Gudmundsdottir told Morgunbladid she wonders if it is considered alright to throw Icelanders out from their own country “like throwing out old rags”. She continued, asking who has the right to kick two children out of a country and strip all security and safety from their mother. Her children are aged 10 and five and are said to be doing well in school and life in Iceland.
Borghildur said in the interview that she has no money for a trial in the United States, or even for a ticket and visa for travel to the country. Her green card has expired in the United States. Gudmundsdottir appealed the decision to have the verdict overturned in Iceland, but it was denied. She continued the case all the way up to the Supreme Court of Iceland, which also upheld the ruling. She has searched for lawyers to assist her with the case, but has not been successful in finding any who are willing. A Facebook group started recently trying to provide the distressed mother with financial support in her struggle to keep her children, according to another Icelandic news source, Frettabladid.
The Morgunbladid newspaper claims that she has not received a clear answer yet on what will happen to her if she travels to the United States on this custody case. She says however that she knows if she does not show up that Interpol, in collaboration with the United States’ FBI, would most likely extradite her from Iceland.
The children have not seen their father for one-and-a-half years. “My younger son does not even remember his father,” Gudmundsdottir says. She is in a new relationship living together with her new spouse in Iceland. She continues, “Both of my sons call him [the new spouse] father. They will lose their father, their mother, their school, their neighborhood, their home, and their friends. I have to hand over my children to a man who does not even know their bedtime or whether they have allergic reactions.”
The law states that if after 12 months no child custody claim is made, nothing can be done. The American father has filed a suit after 13 months. Gudmundsdottir claims that the case has been a huge mess for the Icelandic courts and it was highly unpredictable it would end up like this. She also claims that the man suffered unusually high tempers after taking part in the War in Iraq, which the children are rather afraid of.
Although in Icelandic, it is possible to see the outcome of the court case in the Icelandic Supreme Court here on their website.
[…] Icelandic woman forced to give up children to USA […]
SORRY, AFRAM BOGGA!!!
THOSE CHILDREN SHOULD REMAIN IN ICELAND. IT IS SO STUPID TO FORCE THEM TO GO BACK TO US. WHO IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF THEM? A FATHER WHO IS NEVER AT HOME? OH, I SEE, THE GRANDPARENTS? GIVE ME A BREAK!! THERE IS NOT A BETTER PLACE FOR THEM THAN BEING WITH THEIR MOTHER. I WOULD SAY THE OPPOSITE IF SHE WAS NOT A GOOD MOTHER. BUT SHE IS. IF SHE WAS A BAD MOTHER SHE WOULD ALREADY COME TO ICELAND LETTING HER KIDS BEHIND. BUT IT SEEMS THAT SHE FOUGHT HARD TO GET THEM OUT OF THERE WITH HER.
AS FOR THE GRANDPARENTS. I THINK THEY SHOULD LOOK INTO THEIR HEARTS AND RESPECT THOSE CHILDREN´S LIFE. THE FATHER CAN NOW CONTINUE HIS LIFE AND HE CAN VISIT THE CHILDREN IN THE FUTURE. HE CAN USE HIS TIME OFF THE MILITARY TO VISIT HIS CHILDREN. WHO KNOWS IN WICH PART OF THE WORLD HE IS GOING TO BE WORKING NEXT? AFGHANISTAN? GIVE ME A BREAK!!
I THINK THAT THE SAFEST PLACE FOR THE CHILDREN IS THE QUITE, NATURAL LANDSCAPE OF ICELAND, AND NOT THE US STREETS FULL OF VIOLENCE AND CRIMINALITY. AND LETS THINK, WHAT A FUTURE DO THEY HAVE IN US? IN ICELAND THEY HAVE VERY GOOD EDUCATION, ACTUALLY FOR FREE, A GOOD HEALTH CARE SYSTEM. THEY ALSO HAVE FAMILY HERE.
THEY WOULD HAVE TO WALK ON OUR DEATH BODIES TO FORCE THOSE CHILDREN TO GET OUT OF THE COUNTRY. I CAN ASSURE THAT HUNDREDS IF NOT THOUSANDS OF ICELANDERS WOULD GET TO THE STREETS AND DO WHAT IS NECESSARY.
AFRAM BEGGA !!
Sameasit wrote :
>And by all means write an editorial if desired. But don’t pass off that writing
>as a news article. There is enough junk trying to pass as news these days.
>Journalism matters. Strive for something better.
It looks like nothing is being learned, sadly by editors at IceNews.
https://www.icenews.is/index.php/2009/02/24/david-oddsson-says-david-oddsson-doing-well-at-cbi/#comment-67856
Shannon Becker . .
I would like to see you answer Ninna´s questions!!
Maybe you can´t??
I find it absolutely fascinating when people become so obsessed with being politically correct that when a story comes out about a mother in a desperate fight for her children that just because the fathers side isn’t properly represented she must be the evil one?
As the court case has started it is best not to go into detail about evidence but some of those present the ex in a bad light to say the least.
I have a few questions of my own. If he was so desperate to see his kids, why did he walk out on them in Kentucky and then only visit them twice the following year? There was a 12 months limit he had to start the Haague proceedings, why did he wait until the 3rd last day? Why did he never ask for a video call with his boys? Why did he call his son on his 9th birthday wishing him a happy 8th birthday? How is it that he can’t afford to visit the boys in Iceland but he can afford to buy a new Rubicon and drive the gas guzzler from Louisiana to Kentucky and back? If he was so glad to see his kids again, why did they go out horseback-riding and playing while their dad sat inside watching tv?
To answer a few things mentioned on this page:
Horselover,
1. Hardin county court issued a travel ban on Bogga and the boys the day after she landed in Iceland.
2. The Power of attourney cannot be revoked without proper notice to the person granted it. A paper notifying the carrier that the POA has been revoked must be presented. Bogga got A paper like that sent to her through the Icelandic embassy in Washington to Iceland, again after she arrived, and as the revoking paper has the wrong date of issuance of POA on it it’s validation is questionable.
3. No she wasn’t.
4. Having a house is not enough, especially not when it’s been mortgaged through the roof, so to speak, by the ex who had the money put into a new account just in his name, illegal as far as I know as the mortgage was in both their names, and then called to tell her he was going to reduce his payments to her to about 600 dollars. How far do you think that will go towards taking care of 2 children? Water, electricity, clothes, school clothes, food… Bogga has an obligation to take care of the boys, when that became impossible to do in the states she did the only responsible thing she could, she went home to where she knew she would get all the support she needed to honor her obligation.
5. She is an amazing mother and yes it will come out during the trial.
From jolinegkg, “The Buschings also say they were advised by a previous caseworker not to visit the boys because it might be construed as an indication that such visits were easily affordable and less jolting on the boys than moving back to the United States.” It might be construed as visiting the boys would be less jolting on the boys? Please… is that a secret? Of course it is less jolting! So why did they not choose the less jolting option for their grandsons?
Shannon Becker, I was present when the father came to pick up the boys and I don’t understand your comment about it being a beautiful sight? Were you there? I didn’t see you. Did you not notice that he arrived 15 minutes late? Did you not notice that he didn’t get out of the car to meet them? I saw no emotion in his face as he quickly hugged them and then had them go in the back of the car.
It is obvious to me, that not one of you, knows, Borghildur (Bogga).
I have know Bogga since 1995. She is a good friend of mine. Taking care of her children is her Nr 1 priority.
Mrs Becker: Bogga is a good person. She is a good mother. Maybe something else should be said about you. Where was you husband when you were about to marry Colby? Moving your children from state to state in a couple of months and then going back to be with your husband. Maybe you should gather some info ON BOTH SIDES before you make statements on who is a better parent.
Ms “Horselover” or should I call you “Tammy”? You are not worth the comment.
I will not go into Colby’s 4 relationships in details for the last 18 months, but I will say, how can he sit there and cry about not having seen his sons for 18 months? Why didnt he visit them? He said that he had no money. But I know he could afford a new Jeep! And I would like to know how much it cost him to send an e-mail to his sons? Remember that it was him that left his family, not the other way around.
Bogga has raised her sons on her own, more or less and done a great job. The boys are very good kids. They love their mom and want to stay with their mom. She has offered their father to have the boys for 8 weeks in the summer time and every other Christmas to start. Which I think is pretty good. She has never stood in the way of the boys talking to their father or seeing him. It was obligation to take care of her sons and that is what she was doing when she came to Iceland.
As for her oldest son. I was there when she made the the adult decision to let his father be the primary caregiver and they share 50/50% custody. She knew his father could provide better for him at that time so she did what most mothers would have done and chose a better life for him. This woman is not selfish. There is no doubt in my mind that if Bogga felt that her sons would do better with their father then that is where they’d be right now. And I think that if Colby felt that he was a better parent that he would have sought after full custody or at least be the primary caregiver from the get go. But even he chose Bogga.
AS for Bogga moving 4 times… Yes. She moved to Iceland and staid with her sister. A couple of months later she got a job at a hospital in Iceland on the east coast and they provided a full furnished apartment for her while she was accumulating furniture of her own, which she did and then she moved into her own apartment. Then she fell in love and decided to accept a job that was offered to her in Reykjanesbaer and she and her new spouse started living together. They have lived together now for almost a year and have a lovely, happy home.
She volunteered as an EMT for an ambulance squad for 2 years, she volunteered for the AMERICAN RED CROSS while in Germany, providing service to soldiers in need. Teaching CPR/AED etc. There is not a mean bone in Bogga’s body. And those who claim otherwise, just don’t know her!
Some of you ask “what is the deal here” Here is a litle of my side..
In April 2007, the father of my children moved out of our home in KY to live in KS, leaving the children with ME! About 6-8 weeks later I find out he is having an affair. I confront him and then he tells me he doesnt know if he wants to be married anymore. After 9 years of marriage you would think he would at least tell me that in person?
When the father of my children filed divorce papers he asked for the kids to have their permanent residence with ME! And he would have visitation. Just like he did in 2003 when me and my son lived in Iceland and did his father agree to that in the divorce papers) I was a 200% student and I had a part time job to make ends meet! While the father of my children took out an 18.000$ mortgage loan and went shopping not to mention other creditcards that he topped! (all to be proven in court)
The POA had not been revoked. AFTER I got to Iceland I recived a paper deleting A POA that was made on the 1st of May 07, mine was made on the 3rd of May 07. The embassy in Washington DC made sure, offcourse that it was still valid before issuing new passports!
As to if I let me children talk to their father when he called? EVERY TIME unless if it was after their bedtime! My children go to bed almost every night at the same time! Their father knows that but still finds it ok to interupt their routines, but I do not. Routine is vital for kids.
While we were in Iceland he made some attemts to call his sons, but when he called now in June, we had not heard one word from him since January! He did not send birthday presents even. I made an e-mail acct for my older son to communicate with his dad, but his dad sent him once an e-mail and that was it! For 18 months! 1 e-mail.
He bragged about not paying childsupport!
About the whole moving thing and the men.. goodness, I would love to know how they came up with that story. I have lived with 1 man since I got to Iceland and I still live with him! This is just to show how well Mr Daddy has stayd in contact with us!
You also might want to think about WHY Mr Daddy took 12 months to decide if to ask for the children to be brought back to the USA again. His explanation to me was that he needed at least one child in the US for more than 180 days per year to put on his taxreturn so he could get tax credit. He asks for the younger boy because the older one is to much of a mommy’s boy (also to be proven in court)
While you may put my ex-husband on a pedistall due to his Army carrier, I dont think it affects the spouse and children any less, being good or bad. WE were a military family. Until my ex-husband LEFT US!
Now about my oldest son… I and his father share 50/50% custody! Very sucsessfully. We are still the best of friends til this day.
My 2 youngest boys, have always been with me. I am their security. I have raised them since birth! They are good, happy boys. I have asked their father numerous times to stay in touch with them while we were in Iceland but he refused! So, I refuse to accept responsibility for lack of communication between him and my sons. E-mails, phones, visits, there are many ways to stay in touch, occasional postcard even would have gone a long way but that never shoed either.
I was born in Iceland, I got married in Iceland, our first son was born in Iceland or second was born in Germany. Our sons are dual citizens. The only permanent thing in my sons lives has been ME. Our older son told his father that he doesnt want to move to the states, but he wont listen. My younger son has spent 24 months out of 5 years with his father…. Not because I took them away, but because he chose to not see them! Like I said, we already lived 16 hour drive apart before we went to Iceland…
As a friend to both of these you all do not know the whole side to this story! Bogga as we call her here in U.S. willing took their kids from here.
1.Bogga was told not to leave the States here that the precedings had already started.
2. She used a Power Of Attorney that was revoked! Illegal as all get out of.
3. She was having an affair here with another man while her husband was protecting our country.
4. Money she had a house that was being paid for , bills where taken care of and all she did was blow it.
5. As far as being a mother I believe she is far from it. But as we all know it will come out in court the right way!!!!
No sympathy for her she made her bed now she has to lie in it .
From a US point of view. You have a father that is getting ready to deploy and a spouse that is cheating, he’s had enough. He wants a divorce, while he is out of the state, she used revoked power of attorney’s to get emergency passports to remove the children from the US before the father can get back. Now she complains that he was always gone doing his “professional soldiering”. She met him while he was in the military, chose to have children with a military man. Then decides to break those vows, and now claims he is unfit to be a parent because he is a soldier. His Love as a father is just as abundant as her’s as a mother. She might want to own up to the fact that He did call, but she would not go get the boys to talk or came up with one excuse after another. Other fact she ight want to bring up to add to her lack of stability are the numerous times she has moved these boys since she went running back to Iceland. Not just place to place, but man to man. When the boys were finally reunited with their father in Kentucy, it was an absolute BEAUTIFUL sight. They have nevr forgotten DADDY. No matter what man comes into a childs life, there is only 1 DADDY. Icelandic Courts looked at all sides of the story and did what WAS best for these children, as should all others. Continuing to help this woman, or fund her in any way is a crime. She is only using these 2 boys as pawns to help herself. Lets not forget she does have an older child, that she willing gave up custody of. She chose to take care of herself and a roomate rather than her own child at that point. This Man, Richard Colby Busching, the Father, and Daddy of the two younger boys, payed off her back child support when he married her. The a word from the other side.
You see!! this was not as “pour woman, they want to take her kids away” as the “article” presented the story, now if she loves her kids that much, she can just go there and find a job and make a life just to be close to her kids. as I know MANY forign fathers have had to do here in Iceland, having to move to Iceland and leave their lives behind just to be able to be close to their children, and some times they dont even let them see them.
I wrote this column in May 2008 for the Albuquerque Journal in New Mexico, USA. perhaps it will help clear some things up.
UPFRONT
Dad, Sons an Ocean Apart
Joline Gutierrez Krueger
It was almost as if Colby Busching’s days as a father had never existed. And maybe if he didn’t have photos of his two little boys and multitudes of memories to cling to, he might imagine they weren’t real at all.
They are that gone.
In a matter of four days in January 2008, while the 33-year-old Army staff sergeant was preparing to deploy to Iraq from Fort Riley, Kan., his estranged wife, Bogga, was 650 miles away in Kentucky hastily packing up their sons to leave the country for her native Iceland.
Which is substantially farther than 650 miles.
Colby and his parents, Rebecca and Kit Busching of Albuquerque, had gotten wind that Bogga was planning something like that. They quickly set to work to stop her in her tracks — first by notifying the Icelandic Embassy in Washington, D.C., to flag her attempts to obtain emergency passports for the boys using Colby’s power of attorney, which had been revoked three months before when the marriage soured.
They sought an injunction from the Kentucky courts to prevent her from taking the children out of the country, and on Jan. 11, 2008, it was granted.
But Bogga and the boys were already gone.
“We missed them by eight hours,” says Rebecca, a grandmother made of steel and sentiment who is determined that this will not be the end of it.
She has only begun to fight.
Bogga, in a transatlantic call from her home in Reykjanesbær with the boys (and a boyfriend), says bring it on.
“We completely legally came to Iceland,” she says in a voice that bears no hint of Viking-speak. “For me, being here in Iceland, I can fight and Colby can fight and it would be a fair fight. Had I stayed in America, Colby’s parents would have bought him a top lawyer, and I would have no dime to do that. In Iceland, my lawyer is free.”
Bogga says that the power of attorney document she used to apply for emergency passports was still in force. But a notarized copy of the revocation document dated Oct. 17, 2007, clearly refutes that claim.
Apparently, though, whoever issued the passports had not taken note of that.
That was just the first of the bureaucratic bungles the Buschings say they have weathered in this case.
The family contacted the U.S. State Department’s Office of Children’s Issues to have the boys — Andrew, 4, and Brian, 9 — returned under the Hague Abduction Convention, an international treaty that seeks to determine whether children have been wrongfully removed from their country of “habitual residence.”
But after some nine months and at least five caseworkers, the case stagnated.
In September 2008, the family was assigned a caseworker who got things moving. The case was finally filed that November.
This January — a year after Bogga and the boys departed — the family was assigned an attorney in Iceland. The case is now in the hands of an Icelandic judge, who has asked for a psychiatric evaluation of the boys before he asks Brian, the eldest, to decide what to do with his life.
That doesn’t sit well with Rebecca.
“What upsets me the most is that a judge is going to shift the burden of such a weighty decision on a 9-yearold boy under duress,” she says.
She worries that it’s just another effort to delay the case so that it makes it easier for the judge to simply say the boys have been “settled” too long in their new country to move them again.
“And why would you take happy children from their mother?” Bogga asks. “It’s not as if I’m not saying the boys shouldn’t have their father in their lives. I want him to be in their lives. I’ve invited him and his parents to come and visit many times.”
But, she says, aside from the cards and gifts Rebecca sends, contact from America has been minimal.
“If Colby wanted to, it would be so easy to put a few quarters in a pay phone and call our sons,” she says. “The odds of him not being able to contact his children are none.”
But the Buschings say Bogga filters the calls and cuts off conversations when she does not like what she hears.
Colby, who was allowed to delay his deployment to Iraq and remains at Fort Riley, says the few phone calls with his boys have been frustrating.
“I used to call my kids every weekend, but last time I spoke with them, I was told by my ex-wife that our oldest son didn’t want to talk to me because he was ‘bored’ with the conversation,” he says. “All he would say was, ‘Dad, when are you going to send our stuff?’ They missed their stuff more than they missed me.”
He hasn’t spoken to his sons since February.
The Buschings also say they were advised by a previous caseworker not to visit the boys because it might be construed as an indication that such visits were easily affordable and less jolting on the boys than moving back to the United States.
“We had decided to play this the way the State Department wanted us to,” Rebecca says.
Now, though, they are taking their story public.
There’s far more to that story, of course. In custody cases, there always is.
In the coming weeks, you’ll learn more of what happens to Andrew and Brian and the adults in their lives who are as far apart in everything as the miles between here and Iceland.
UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. You can reach Joline at 823-3603 or jkrueger@abqjournal. com.
I wonder what would be the attitude if this happened in reverse, with an American woman taking her Icelandic children from their Icelandic father back to America…
Cold North Wind, why do you assume that the fathers are the conniving ones?
There are two sides to every story, and this article only shows one. I’d like to hear the father’s point of view, as well as more objective people who knew the family in the US.
“I am very reluctant to blame Jarrett personally for your concerns,”
But he wrote the article. I think we need to hold journalists to some kind of standards. If the facts are unavailable or sketchy then write that. And by all means write an editorial if desired. But don’t pass off that writing as a news article. There is enough junk trying to pass as news these days. Journalism matters. Strive for something better.
Thank you for allowing me to post my rant.
[…] Icelandic woman forced to give up children to USA […]
[…] Icelandic woman forced to give up children to USA An Icelandic woman received a court order to return to the United States with her two children before the next coming Sunday. Borghildur Gudmundsdottir had the two children with an American soldier who wants to have custody over the children in the United States. Gudmundsdottir told Morgunbladid she wonders if it is considered alright to throw Icelanders out from their own country “like throwing out old rags”. She continued, asking who has the right to kick two children out of a country and strip all security and safety from their mother. Her children are aged 10 and five and are said to be doing well in school and life in Iceland. […]
Whatever the story behind all this- the fact remains that uprooting the child now- is tantamount to abuse.As long as children are viewed by the laws as – furniture or- property- then these tragic scenarios will continue.Why do some here so easily assume that the mother is soehow -conniving and – able to pay all kinds of money etc.??? I suppose, like much of the public- they don’t know about these horrendous stories- so many desperately hurt children and dead children- as a direct result of these kinds of- events.(nota bene- the fathers who fought for custody- did the abusing and killing-)
Are you drunk? Iceland is a free country!
Clearly the writer of the “article” (if you can call it an article) simpathaizes with this woman and is trying to help her, posting this complaint not article about her situation, this woman thought it was so easy to just leave and come home, and leave a fathert without their kids, and never went to hearing in court, off course she was not there, never answear to court calls, and now she has to pay the consecuenses, but now is crying about it. Why didnt she separated from this man legally and ask for custidy if the kids legally and then came to Iceland?
In English:
http://eng.domsmalaraduneyti.is/laws-and-regulations/nr/104
I suspect the difference here is that it’s a custody battle, not an extradition of a criminal.
Presumably if she refused to go and a US court found in favour of the father, the children could be removed and delivered to him.
This law could lead to some funny situations related to banking :) .
If the woman and her children are Icelandic citizens then they may not be extradited out of Iceland. According to the law: 2. gr. Ekki má framselja íslenska ríkisborgara.
Source: http://www.althingi.is/lagas/nuna/1984013.html
I agree that the article seems a bit one-sided. There must be a reason that the Icelandic courts have rejected her claims, and that she can’t find a lawyer willing to help!
She seems to be playing this pity card with all this crying on tv, when the facts are that she went about this incorrectly and illegally.
I do also agree that the headline is over the top!
Hi Sameasit,
Thanks for your comment. I am very reluctant to blame Jarrett personally for your concerns, as there seem to be very few details available in the Icelandic press either. He has cobbled together a few sources into a good summary of what is available to Icelandic speakers.
I believe the case centres on the fact that the woman took her children back to Iceland and they fell out of contact with their father over the next year or so (the mother says he is a bad father – but I don’t want to probe that area too deeply). Then, one month after the 12 month deadline, the father decides to fight for custody.
The upcoming custody battle in the US will mean the mother has to pay travel, accommodation and legal costs in the USA, even though she is apparently of only modest means.
As I say, that is the story as I understand it at the moment. Hopefully more details will emerge soon.
Thanks for reading IceNews
Alex, editor
This passes for journalism at Icenews?
I realize this isn’t the New York Times but come on. Apart from the absurd headline, there is no discussion whatsoever of the facts. What happened ?
I’m left to guess from reading between the lines that the women kidnapped the children and took them to Iceland and found a new “father.” Because that’s how it reads. How else to explain the various judgments against her in the Icelanic courts and the fact taht she is concerned about being extradited.
Yes, the kids haven’t seen their father for 18 months because it sounds like the mother kidnapped the children from the US and it took 18 months for the case to wind its way through the Icelandic court system. Then to add insult to injury the mother uses that long time period as a reason to keep the kids.
Seriously Jarrit, it would be nice to hear what this case is all about. Learn to write a news article not some biased, weepy quasi-editorial.
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