On Aug. 25, 2010, Augusto Frisancho sat in Meadowood Regional Park in Baltimore, Maryland, waiting for his recently separated wife to drop off their kids, 11-year-old Ork’o, 7-year-old Amaru, and 5-year-old Raymi. His wife had asked Augusto to stay with the kids for three days as she had something to do. She was late. Augusto sensed something was not right and began praying the Rosary. Slowly, the minutes turned into hours. The sun set as Augusto waited and the children never arrived.

Worried, he frantically called his wife. Getting no answer, he dialed every number that he had, and no one picked up his calls. Augusto then drove to various places in Baltimore where he thought the children could be. He then decided to drive to the airport, suspicious that his wife had kidnapped the children, hoping to see them while they were fleeing or to find her car, a white Toyota Camry, in the airport’s parking lot.

He then went to the police station to report the children missing. Law enforcement asked Augusto if he was going to press criminal charges against the abductor. He responded that she was still his wife and he wanted to resolve the issue peacefully for the well-being of the family. He was turned down by the officer, who replied that in such a case there was nothing law enforcement could do because it belonged to the civil court.

After a frightening night of not knowing, he finally learned in the morning by email that his children had been taken to Slovakia by his wife and her family. He was confused and panicked, realizing they had indeed left the country.

After multiple attempts, Augusto finally reached his sons. “Daddy,” he heard on the other end, repeated by each child’s voice as they crowded around the phone. He felt relief to talk to them and believed they would be back in his arms soon. His oldest child, Ork’o, said, “School is starting in a few days, and I very much want to go there on time, I don’t want to miss it.” Hearing their cries, he stayed strong, trying to comfort them.

Augusto contacted the US State Department the day after he learned they were taken. As time passed from days to weeks, the telephone conversations got shorter, lasting only a couple of seconds up to two minutes, and became less frequent. “I was worried that I would lose the right to talk to my children,” he said. “I kept it light and made sure to keep everything positive in our short conversations.”

He knew he could not sit and do nothing. After several attempts to resolve things amicably with his wife, Augusto filed an application for the return of the children under an international treaty, the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Augusto’s wife was called upon by the Central Authority for the Hague Convention in Bratislava, Slovakia, to discuss the peaceful return home of the children. When no agreement could be reached, a series of legal proceedings began in both the US and Slovakia that continued for several years.

Dec. 31, 2010, was the last time Augusto talked to his children in Slovakia. He wished Ork’o a “happy new year,” then the phone went silent. The phone numbers were changed after that night.

2011 was the start of the hardest year of Augusto’s life. Everything in his daily life was a reminder of the absence of his children: the empty Baltimore home, the parks where he used to play with his children, the restaurants and grocery stores where they used to go for dinner or shopping, and the children’s schools. Unable to talk about what happened, he bottled up this tragedy and kept it inside, trying just to get through the day to day, slowly changing his routine.

Becoming what he called a “zombie,” Augusto worked, ate, and slept in an endless repetition, with no way of knowing how his children were doing. He lost his appetite and had to set alarms in his cell phone to remind him to eat so that he could stay healthy. For several years Augusto was unable to get satisfying sleep, and to this day he still has dreams about the children being separated from him.

Understanding he had to stay healthy and strong for his sons, Augusto eventually picked himself up.

“It’s easy to isolate oneself, but I knew I had to turn this nightmare around,” he said. Slowly, he began to visit his sons’ favorite places. “I would close my eyes and say, ‘God! You can do it, please tell them their father loves them’.” His relationship with God has been his strength throughout this horrible ordeal.

Feeling alone in this nightmare, he didn’t tell people in his community that his children had been taken. But when Augusto joined the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s “Team HOPE,” a peer support group of families with missing, recovered, and exploited children, he gradually began to open up and speak about his nightmare. “Parents like Augusto struggle with the emotional trauma and loneliness of having a missing or exploited child,” says Abby Potash, program director of Team HOPE.

Helping others and sharing his story became healing for Augusto. In 2011, it seemed that his children might finally come home when the Slovakian and US courts ruled in his favor. But it set off a host of additional hearings that led to many years of litigation. Long plane rides were filled with desperate studying of Slovakian and international law. The trips were filled with excitement and anxiety as he prayed the children would be in court.

In 2013, Ork’o and Amaru were present in court. Augusto was flooded with emotion as he caught a glimpse of their faces for a brief moment, though he was unable to speak to them. When the judge saw how badly and depressed the two older children looked in court, she ordered the mother to bring them again along with the youngest, Raymi, so a child psychologist could evaluate their mental health at the upcoming hearing.

Augusto hoped to see them at another court appearance, but they never returned. Instead, they were abducted again to Hungary in violation of a valid court order forbidding the removal of the children from Slovakia until the Hague proceedings were completed. Later, Augusto learned that his children had acquired Hungarian citizenship even though he is the custodial parent.

At the table where they used to enjoy family dinners, Augusto sits alone, surrounded by piles of court documents. He prepares notes for his testimony on Capitol Hill. Congressman Chris Smith has invited him to speak before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

He also spoke to the parliaments and foreign ministries of 57 countries, members of the Helsinki Commission that includes both Slovakia and Hungary, on the crime of child abuse committed by their own parents. He demanded that Slovakia request cooperation with Hungary so they could work together on the return of the children to the US.

Augusto explained that what Slovakia did by closing the Hague return case and asking him to translate thousands of documents into Hungarian and file a new Hague petition in Hungary was not right. He reminded Slovakia repeatedly that his children were being psychologically and emotionally abused, that it is a crime, and that Slovakia was allowing it to happen. He hoped this would help him reunite with his sons.

After learning that Slovakia refused to cooperate, Augusto took his case to the Highest Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Slovakia was ordered to pay him thousands of euros as compensation for damages incurred, but Augusto says that is only money. He has spent a fortune in legal fees, travel, and other expenses. A total of 14 judges from different courts and countries unanimously ruled that what was done to the children was wrong and that they should be back in Baltimore, but the court rulings were never enforced.

Today, Ork’o is 25 years old, Amaru is 21, and Raymi is 19. It has been fourteen years since they were taken. Augusto will never stop loving and searching for his children, and he has become an advocate for all abused and missing children nationally and internationally. He says his life was like a broken mirror, where he could see his past shattered into a million pieces, which seemed almost impossible to glue back together.

He has, however, risen from that tragedy and is putting the pieces back together. He has given his life completely to Jesus, which has brought him tremendous peace, as he learns to offer his suffering to Jesus’s suffering, who gave his life for his redemption. Augusto has already forgiven the abductor, and he prays for his wife and children every day. He never gives up hope that one day he will reunite with his children.

He lives in gratitude to the riders for The Ride for Missing Children for helping keep his light of hope lit. He longs for the day when he can bring his children to the Ride and say not one but three children at a time.

Thank you so much for your support, your love, and your prayers.