Irish father fights for American son

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CAHIR O'DOHERTY,

Irish Voice

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A father's fear: Irish father Donough Lawlor and his son Liam

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It had begun so well. Lawlor originally met McAuliffe at a benefit night in the Kilmegan bar in Woodside, Queens in 2004. Their son, Liam Jack Lawlor was born on October 4, 2004.

By July 2005 the couple were married. But by March 23, 2006 they had filed for divorce and had begun custody proceedings against each other.

Lawlor was scheduled to see Liam on July 15, 2006, but his ex-wife Kathleen did not bring him. Worried by her threats to take the boy out of the country, Lawlor put in a request for information to the State Department for information of a passport being obtained for his son.

It was too late. McAuliffe had fled to England with Liam.

The abduction of his son introduced Lawlor to the heartbreaking world of missing and exploited children. He had no idea where the boy was.

In newspapers and magazines he saw images of his own son included among the photographs of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The experience, he says, was shattering.

“There was times I had to take down photographs of Liam on the fridge because I really thought I would never see him again. I went through a stage in my mind where it became very upsetting for me to view them. But I kept chipping away at the block, hoping that someone would give me some information on him, some way of finding him,” says Lawlor.

In May of 2007 Lawlor was granted a divorce from McAuliffe and sole custody of Liam by the Bronx Supreme Court. Later that year a judge ordered that McAuliffe produce Liam, but she ignored the request. Her parents, who live in the Bronx, were informed of each ruling, but McAuliffe’s reaction is unknown. (Attempts to contact McAuliffe before going to press were unsuccessful).

Meanwhile, Lawlor had hired a private detective and was in daily contact with international search organizations as he sought his son. On November 17 he was informed by a case manager at NCMEC who told him that Liam and McAuliffe were living in the U.K.

“My ex-wife is someone who has never bowed down to any form of authority,” says Lawlor. “She has taken Liam and dragged him though a series of new addresses in England, established a whole new life with an Albanian national, and she told Liam that her new partner was now his father.”

Lawlor filed a claim to have Liam returned to the U.S. under a ruling in the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Since the U.S. was the boy’s habitual residence, Lawlor’s representative argued for his son’s return to the jurisdiction. Lawlor’s appeal was granted on July 30, 2009.

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