Family abduction takes bitter toll on victims

‘The story changed’
For Richard Paris, childhood was a traumatic blur. Born in Buenos Aries and diagnosed with polio when he was 3, Paris spent his early years shuttling back and forth between South America and treatment centers in the U.S. During one trip in 1957, Paris’ mother abruptly canceled a return to Argentina, telling 6-year-old Paris that his father and grandparents had been killed in a car accident.

The story was a lie.

Unbeknownst to Paris or his father, Paris’ mother was having an affair with her husband’s best friend, an Argentine priest. The man persuaded Paris’ father to send him to the U.S. in search of the wife and son. Paris’ father was left penniless when his estranged wife and her lover cleaned out his bank account.

Paris figures he and his mother moved 15 times over the next 11 years. With each new home — Los Angeles, San Antonio, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina and Brooklyn, among them — came a new name and back story.

“Sometime between 7 and 10, the story changed,” Paris said. “It was no longer that my father had been killed, but that they were alive and that he was hunting for her.”

Paris reunited with the man he once thought dead after graduating from high school in 1967. “We have a good relationship, but he had been hurt so deeply,” Paris said.

Paris and his mother rarely talk anymore.

“Mom’s actions caused generations of loss,” said Paris, a hospital administrator in Buffalo, N.Y. “I tried for years to try to get her to understand the depths and magnitude of what she did to me and to others — she never did. She said, ‘I did it for you.’”

‘I’m one of the lucky ones’
That he’s been able to have a successful career, resurrect a relationship with his father and raise a family despite his tumultuous childhood is a source of great pride for Paris.

“I’m one of the lucky ones,” he said.

Through encounters with other Take Root members, Paris said he learned that the awkwardness, shame and detachment he felt growing up are common among victims of family abduction.

“We’ve been through this unique, bizarre, isolating experience,” he said. “No one else has walked in our shoes.”

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