'Real concern' - Lancashire man helped American mum and 4 children disappear in UK, family court told

A man from Lancashire tried to help an American woman “disappear” in the UK with her four children for around three months, a court heard.

The woman brought the children to the UK late last year after purportedly meeting the Lancashire man online, in breach of orders from the American courts.

A judge at the High Court said the woman risked “catastrophic outcomes”,

The American father-of-two of the children, who is based in Orange County, California, is now involved in a High Court bid to have them returned to the United States, after US courts ruled that he should have sole custody.

In a preliminary ruling on Friday, Deputy High Court Judge Hannah Markham KC said the mother and father of the children separated in 2024, and that the father had a conviction in the United States for a domestic violence offence.

After the separation, the mother moved to New York with the children, but did not comply with court orders in the US to allow the children to have contact with their father.

In November, a court in California ordered that the mother return the children to the state and later awarded the father sole custody of the children, but it was later discovered that the woman had travelled to Paris, and planned to travel on to Manchester with a British man from Lancashire.

Judge Markham continued that after arriving in the UK in November last year, the mother and the Lancashire man then travelled to an “unknown location” in January this year and could not be located.

She continued that the pair “were doing what they could to evade being located” as they “regarded the court processes in both the USA and here in England to be unfavourable to them and to the children”.

Their location was unknown until April this year, when the woman’s address was provided by NHS England.

The mother, supported by the Lancashire man, is now opposing the bid to have the children returned to the United States, with a further hearing due to take place later this year.

Judge Markham said that the court had been “frustrated in proper attempts to locate the family” and been unable “to ensure that the children were safe, attending education and accessing medical care”.

She continued: “Missing children in cases such as these become a very real concern for the court.

“Parents who have taken such steps to hide and avoid engagement with professionals have been known to the courts and in some cases with catastrophic outcomes.”

Reporting restrictions in family court cases mean that only certain details of the case may be published to protect the identities of the children involved.

But the judge said the woman and British man may be named in future, adding: “Parents who try to disappear with children should know that they cannot assume that they can hide behind an old-fashioned belief that the courts will not permit publicity about them, the children or their details.”