The last most people heard of Betty Mahmoody, she had a worldwide best seller on her hands: the account of her 1986 escape with her daughter from a husband holding them captive in Iran.
But her story – and her travels – didn’t end there. Since the publication of her book, Mahmoody has bustled off to Hollywood for filming of her story, to Europe for research, to Washington, D.C., for congressional hearings, and back to her home state of Michigan, where she has lobbied for state abduction laws.
Part of what’s keeping the Michigan housewife-turned-author jumping has been the film version of her adventure, Not Without My Daughter, starring Sally Field as Mahmoody, which opened nationally on Friday.
Mahmoody, who served as a consultant on the film, says she’s pleased with the movie. It remains true to her book’s account, ending with Betty and her daughter Mahtob escaping from Iran.
But if there had been another chapter to Not Without My Daughter, it would have told the story of how Betty Mahmoody became a worldwide lecture celebrity and crusader to raise awareness of international child abduction.
In 1984, when her husband, Moody, told her he wanted to leave Alpena to return to Iran with her and their young daughter, Mahmoody worried that he might not return or let Mahtob come home. She had seen some warning signs, but Moody assured her they would come back to the United States. He even swore on the holy Koran.
Once they were in Iran, things were different. A two-week vacation turned into two years of captivity, until Mahmoody and Mahtob were able to escape from Tehran in an arduous 500-mile trip on foot and horseback to Turkey.
Moody had changed from being a great father, Betty Mahmoody recalls, to promising “he would spend the rest of his life to find me and have me killed” for escaping with Mahtob.
“I thought that we were going to have to go underground,” she says. “I would have been making myself a prisoner.”
Instead, Mahmoody wrote Not Without My Daughter, figuring the publicity from the book would provide security for her and Mahtob.
“I didn’t come back to America to be a prisoner,” she says.
There’s another reason she wrote the book: Betty Mahmoody wants the world to know that international child abduction is a real problem. According to U.S. State Department records, 3,057 child abduction cases were reported in the United States between 1975 and 1989.
Because there are no federal and few state laws to protect people in her situation, Mahmoody is afraid to let her husband learn where she lives.
That and related fears have led her to spearhead a campaign to raise awareness of the problem of international child abduction.
Mahmoody discovered how vulnerable she and Mahtob were when she first tried to divorce Moody and learned she would have to include her address on court papers. There were no laws that would allow her to hide her daughter from her husband.
She has pleaded her case on the lecture circuit, testified before state legislatures and congressional committees, and been an expert witness in child custody cases. There’s even a sequel in the works, coauthored by lawyer Arnold Dunchock and tentatively titled Not Without Our Children. In addition to updating Mahmoody’s story since she returned to the United States, it includes the accounts of other children who have been kidnapped.
Mahmoody’s crusade is beginning to bear fruit. Fellow crusader Dunchock says most of the legislative action undertaken in the past five years can be traced to Mahmoody.
Her testimony and presentations are extremely effective, he says, leaving people “very, very emotional.”
Gregg Jerome, legislative director for Rep. George Gekas, R-Pa., who has introduced a bill to make international child abduction a federal crime, praises Mahmoody’s efforts and her effectiveness. “Because of the publicity she brings to the issue,” he says, “Mahmoody has turned out to be a great spokesman.”
Still, there are those 3,057 cases of international child abduction. And they’re only the reported cases. Of those, the State Department says more than half have been resolved, meaning either the child has been returned or turned 18 years old, or one of the parents has agreed to visitation rights.
Mahmoody says the resolution rate is deceiving, because there is a difference between a case being resolved and a case being satisfactorily resolved.
“I think if you found a category like that (the latter), it would be very slim,” she says.
In the absence of a solution to abductions, Mahmoody and Dunchock have formed an organization to promote understanding and help people concerned about child abduction. About seven weeks ago, they hatched One World: For Children, a non-profit organization based in Corunna, Mich., to promote awareness of the dangers of international parental abduction, to provide counseling for people whose children have been kidnapped, and to explore alternatives, such as counter-kidnapping.
“We feel that the ultimate answer,” Dunchock says, “is trying to have a world community where there is respect for the children of another land.”
They see a glimmer of hope as more countries join the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which provides for the return of children wrongfully removed from a parent. The convention has 16 members, including the United States and several European nations.
Back in America, however, a lack of federal and state legislation that would result in a kidnapping parent facing legal action in the United States for an international abduction concerns Dunchock and Mahmoody.
“We (the United States) can enforce commercial contracts, but if a child is trapped in another land, that’s not for us grown-ups to worry about,” Dunchock says. “We feel that children really have been left by the wayside.”
“If a couple agrees that the children are to be raised in a certain culture,” Mahmoody says, “to involuntarily and abruptly snatch that child from the one culture . . . is a form of cruelty on a worldwide basis and a form of terrorism.”
Children, Mahmoody insists, “belong where they were born and raised.”
Although they haven’t had to overcome opposition to their cause, there hasn’t been a lot of support for them, either. It’s unfortunate and frustrating, they say, that children’s issues aren’t a top priority in Washington.
“It seems so basic, but we just have to get the support and the interest,” Mahmoody says. “It’s opening their eyes; these are the kind of things I’ve been doing to raise awareness.”
And that makes the little girl she rescued from Iran, now 11 years old, proud of her mom.
“She’s helping people,” Mahtob Mahmoody says. “She could have just come home and kept it all to herself and not tried to help anyone else.”
And although she’s still a little afraid at times, Mahtob knows what to do if someone tries to take her.
Some good things have come of their ordeal. Mahtob and her mother are closer, and, spending a quiet Christmas together, they talked about how lucky they were to have a happy ending for their story.
Betty Mahmoody says, “There aren’t many happy endings.”
She’s working to change that.
