June 14, 2010
A California woman has located her two children on Facebook fifteen years after their abduction. The children were two and three when their father kidnapped them following the breakdown of his marriage to their mother, Prince Sagala.
Sagala came home from work on day in 1995 only to find her estranged husband, Faustino Utrera, and small children gone. She learned from her husband’s relatives that he had fled to his home town of Mexico City with the children and did not intend to return. Since Utrera had threatened Sagala, she feared going to Mexico to retrieve them. Both the local police and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office were involved in the investigation, but the children were never recovered.
Sagala subsequently remarried and had two more children. In March she was visiting the public library when she asked one of her children to put her missing daughter’s name into Facebook, and her page popped up. Sagala began an e-mail exchange with the girl in an attempt to ascertain her whereabouts, but the child broke off the contact, stating she was happy with her family.
Police discovered Utrera had relocated to Florida and was living in a quiet neighborhood in Davenport, Florida with a woman whom the children considered a mother figure. Utrera was arrested and is being held on two charges each of kidnapping and violation of custody orders while his children are under the jurisdiction of the Florida Department of Children and Families.
According to Robert Lowrey of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, discoveries of this sort are extremely rare due to the control the offending parent generally exerts upon the abducted children.
Sagala is attempting to regain custody of her children, but progress has been stalled due to the children’s reluctance and official’s fears that they will run away if they are relocated. In the meantime, Sagala is finding strength through her younger children as she attempts to sort out the past and plan the future.
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Associated Press, Gillian Flaccus
Los Angeles Times (with Antonio Gonzalez, Davenport, FL)
Yahoo News
Channel 13 News, http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/2010/6/7/missing_children_found_on_facebook_dad_arrested.html
