After waiting 6 months for the police to help him...
After waiting 6 months for the police to help him...
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Super dad: The father managed to track his sons down armed with just a pair of binoculars |
The father, who had custody, suspected that the boys had been abducted by their Swedish mother, who was granted access twice a year, and had asked Australian police to pass on details to their Swedish counterparts.
When week after week went by with no progress, the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, flew to Sweden.
There he rented a car and drove to Sodermanland, a county on the southeast coast, where he knew the mother's parents lived.
He believed that was where the mother and the boys were staying, so he watched the premises through his binoculars for a week.
Then, convinced the boys were in the house, he slipped out of his car under cover of darkness and walked to the front door. To his delight, he heard his sons' voices inside.
"I didn't even know the children were alive," he told a Swedish newspaper. "The feeling was incredible."
Returning to his car, he called the police. When they arrived, they entered the house, arrested the mother and reunited the boys with their father.
Cops embarrassed
The case has left the Swedish police red in the face.
Columnist Lars Lindstrom, writing in the Expressen newspaper, commented, "It is a genuine falling mark to the work of the police.
"(The father) went on leave, flew from Melbourne to Sweden and found them in a week. How did that happen?"
The police responded by saying they had done their best to find the children during the months of investigation.
"We have looked at a number of addresses," Detective Superintendent Svante Melin of Sodermanland police told the newspaper.
The father and his sons are now preparing to fly back to Australia, their fares paid by the Swedish Foreign Ministry.
"I'm grateful that they will help take us home,' said the father. "My economy has been driven into the ground."
No blame game
But he insisted he would not cast any blame onto the Swedish authorities, saying they had made every effort to find his ons.
The mother has been held in custody while a date is set for her to appear in court.
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