Two years ago we reported on Dermot Henry's access battle with his estranged wife who had taken his two children to Georgia. He eventually won his case - but at a cost. Anne Dempsey reports

When Dermot Henry's daughters, Marianne and Nicole, came to visit him in Ireland, it was the end of an emotionally draining legal battle, one which cost him €70,000. But as he prepares to see them again this summer, he feels it was worth every penny.

Two years ago we reported on how the hotelier's estranged wife, Manana, had taken the two girls to her native Georgia two years earlier and never returned. He feared he would never see them in Ireland again. Dermot says: "I was not looking for the children back as long as they were with their mother but I wanted access, allowing them to visit me twice a year.

"Manana refused and was trying to prevent them coming to Ireland until Nicole was eight, which was four years away then. While Georgia had ratified the Hague Convention on child abduction, which offers a legal framework regarding abducted children, it had never been invoked there."

In March, 2003, the Georgian Supreme Court finally agreed that Dermot's children could visit him each summer and winter in Ireland, providing he pay for his ex-wife's travel and accommodation expenses so that she could accompany them. Marianne, then nine, and Nicole, six, spent a week with him last July on a memorable holiday.

"It was amazing. The girls came in and went straight to their rooms where all their toys still were, as if they had never been away. They were very open with me, very chatty and bubbly, though they wanted to go back to their mother each evening, which was hard, but I think it will sort itself out in time as they grow older.

"I feel I won because I persevered, informed myself of the legal situation in Georgia and worked within the law there in spite of innumerable delays and difficulties. The cost was high in financial and emotional terms. I applied here for legal aid but, because the abduction was to a country without a proper legal apparatus, I was denied it.

"Fighting the case has cost me about €70,000 in legal fees, time and loss of earnings. I still speak to the children every Sunday and already I'm looking forward to seeing them this summer."

Manana had walked out on Dermot in July, 2001, and brought their two daughters to the former Soviet republic without his knowledge or consent. Dermot accepted his marriage was over but wanted visiting rights in Ireland with his much-loved daughters.

The couple met in Tbilisi in 1991 and married seven months later. "She was very beautiful. I was 35 years old, well-travelled, ready to settle down. But I still went into it with my eyes wide open. I had seen multicultural marriages going wrong but never anticipated what would happen to us," he says.

At the time both worked for Sheraton Hotels, he as financial controller, she as a housekeeping supervisor. For the first few years all went well - their daughters were born and, apart from "ordinary rows", Dermot remembers no major problems.

Around 1998 he was offered a job in Galway, where he already had a home. But Manana wished to stay in Georgia so he left with the proviso that she would follow and, after an eight-month separation, she finally did, arriving with the children at Knock Airport in December 1999.

"I knew from the word go we were in trouble. She came out of arrivals with Nicole in her arms, dumped her on to me without a word and walked away to get Marianne and the luggage." That moment set the tone for their life together and the couple entered an uneasy truce. The relationship could not sustain Manana's resentment at what she felt was an enforced migration to a strange country and by the end of 2000, when stony silences had replaced the rows, Manana asked for a divorce. He agreed and settlement proceedings began.

On July 2, 2001, Dermot left for work, leaving what he thought was a sleeping household. But at five o'clock that afternoon he had a call from Manana in Amsterdam, en route to Georgia. "She said she had taken the children, wasn't coming back and put the phone down. We were in the midst of negotiations. It was a complete shock."

In the intervening months Dermot pulled out all possible legal and diplomatic stops to gain access to his children in Ireland while staying in touch with them through weekly phone calls. "I got great help from Mary Banotti, the European Mediator for Transnationally Abducted Children, from charity Reunite, from Dana. But there were numerous legal delays and disappointments about hearing dates, which were heartbreaking."

Although the story has a happy ending of sorts, the problems faced by Dermot are becoming ever more common as increasing numbers marry across a cultural divide.

Denise Carter, director of UK charity Reunite, says: "When I first started, the typical situation was the girl who met a Greek on the beach on holiday and married him. Now the clientele has changed a lot; there are many cross-cultural relationships."

The most difficult thing should things go wrong, she says, is a Christian/Islam union or marriage between an Irishwoman and a citizen of countries which have not signed the Hague Convention regarding the legal handling of parentally abducted children.

Relate works with sister organisations, including ICPAC (the Irish Centre for Parentally Abducted Children), founded by MEP Mary Banotti. Denise became close to Cork mother Chris O'Sullivan whose four-year-old daughter, Deirdre, was abducted and killed by her partner and Deirdre's father, Christopher Crowley. "I hold Chris in very high esteem. Given what she has been through, to be able to walk around and function at all is a tribute to her.

"Such situations show the need to question the public perception that when a child is with her Mum or Dad they are safe. In 99% of cases they are but sadly one to two percent end tragically as Deirdre's did."

Denise's empathy with her clients arises in part from her own experience. A divorcee with two children, she met the father of her third child, Abigail, in 1985.

"He insisted on living in the US so we sold up and moved to Florida, marrying in 1989. But he was violent, aggressive and very controlling. I told him I wanted to leave and he said I could go but Abigail, aged three, had to stay."

Denise's attempt to leave with her three children was thwarted by a last-minute snatch by her husband so back in the UK she began to fight for her daughter's return. "I went cleaning to pay the bills, applied to a housing association for shelter. I rang Abigail in the US each Sunday and, while conversations were difficult with an aggressive adult hovering, I devised a way to make sure she knew I cared. I wrote each week, registering every letter, enclosing little gifts so when we spoke I could ask her what she'd got, ensuring she knew I hadn't forgotten her."

It took eight months to win her case but finally the court ruled that Abigail should return to Denise, with telephone contact and access granted to the father.

In seeking to return parentally abducted children, Reunite offers advice and information on how to go about the process. "We have an international support network for parents and grandparents by mail, email, phone or letter.

"For example, a mother who has just come home from winning a successful case in Athens, say, has much to offer another mother about to face the same experience."

If one parent suspects their child may be snatched by the other, what preventive steps can they take? "Familiarise yourself with the law and know your rights. Go and talk to your child's school or créche. There have been cases where the other parent has turned up at the school and taken the child away. Make sure they understand they must not give the child to anyone other than you or whoever you designate, including the other parent," says Denise.

"Keep passports in a safe place, needing both signatures to release them. You may also need to inform foreign embassies who will issue a passport to a parental applicant but you can only request them not to issue, not insist.

"For many parents whose child has been abducted, the isolation, the loneliness is the worse part. It's the not knowing what to do, it's the anguish of not knowing how their child is.

"Some know that the child has been told that their mother is dead or she didn't want you - it's like a dagger in the heart.

"It's a state of bereavement and has to be acknowledged. I'm thinking of one mother, aged 27, whose two children, aged two and four, were recently returned to her. In the process, the mother had aged 10 years but the last time I saw her she was three inches taller and that haunted look has gone from her eyes."

Reunite, PO Box 7124, Leicester LEI 7XX; phone 00 44 116 2556234; email reunite@dircon.co.uk; website: www.reunite.org

ICPAC (the Irish Centre for Parentally Abducted Children) - 43 Molesworth Street, Dublin 2; phone 01 6620667 - works with individual parents and publishes a comprehensive information pack on the prevention of/response to child abduction