KF Attorney Foils International Kidnapping Saturday, April 25, 2009 DENTON -- Nothing upsets Charla Bradshaw Conner quite so much as parents who disregard their children’s interests in order to do outright war with a spouse. Recently she helped uncover a trans-Atlantic parental kidnapping case in which the husband did just that.
A French woman, Cecile Sharp, was Conner’s client. There had been trouble between Ms. Sharp and her husband, Texas computer consultant Tim Sharp, but not enough to affect his visitation with their three children; Simon, 6; Emma, 7; and Chloe, 11. At the end of the weekend, Mr. Sharp did not return the children to their mother’s care and this set off an international game of divorce intrigue that ended recently when the husband and children were found in North Texas.
In a story in The Dallas Morning News on this case, Dallas County family court Judge David Hanschen said: “This is about as egregious a crime as you can commit without bodily injury.” Because of her husband's action, Mrs. Sharp did not see her children for more than nine months. During that time, she filed for divorce in France and French authorities indicted Mr. Sharp on charges of parental kidnapping.
Some time later, Mr. Sharp filed a divorce petition in Dallas County and that's when his wife got some idea where they were, since the court notified her of the impending action. She then hired Conner, who put a private investigator to work finding exactly where her husband and the kids where living.
"The investogator staked out Mr. Sharp's attorney's office and followed Mr. Sharp to Covenant Church in Carrollton," Conner says. "He picked up the kids at the school affiliated with the church and went a few blocks away to a house that we later learned was owned by the church."
Conner handles divorces in Denton, Tarrant and Dallas counties. She was on hand at the courthouse in Dallas when Mr. Sharp was apprehended by U.S. State Department officials just before a hearing was to take place in the divorce case. What happened next has a surreal quality that Conner says she will never forget.
"Judge Hanschen's concern was for the kids' safety," she says, "so he wrote out an order by hand on the back of a docket sheet that allowed me to go get the children at American Heritage Academy, the church-affiliated school they attended."
But school officials didn't believe the handwritten order was legitimate, and neither did the Carrollton police who soon arrived. They all felt this would be handled by federal marshals. Conner suggested they call the judge, who got in his car in the middle of a heavy rainstorm and drove to the school to sort things out.
To Conner, these actions occured none too soon. "When we got to the house where they were staying," she remembers, "there were three bags packed and sitting next to the door. They were ready to leave at a moment's notice."
Conner told the kids their father was working and they were going to go see their mother for spring break. "Doesn't that sound like fun?" she asked, and the children agreed. Conner took them to her home in Westlake and they were on their way back to France the next day. Soon, Tim Sharp was extradited back to France to face several charges, including kidnapping.
Click here to listen to Charla Conner interviewed about the kidnapping case on America Tonight |
