Deadly Custody

It is a tragedy when those who once loved one another become estranged and no longer love, demanding separation. 'Till death do us part', may have seemed a reasonable marriage contract declaration at one time when people seemed to make more of an effort to remain together in wedlock, taking seriously the 'lock' part of the contract, than now occurs.

But people have longer life spans now, and the world is a dazzling place of choices and temptations that may not have been present in earlier times. The patience and consideration that two people must learn to give one another does not perhaps seem suited to modern times when everything is hurried and everyone is self-involved.

When marriages are torn asunder by disagreements, by a recognition of incompatibility and diverging interests and concerns, it is sad. When children are part of those families, it becomes a tragedy. Invariably, there is one partner who insists on separation, and the other would prefer their conjoined status.

And all too often a man who have been rejected will nurse a deadly grievance and anger toward the woman who rejected them and take her life. What is worse, sometimes women out of their sense of grief and dejection will take the lives of their children.

And then there are the instances when either the mother or the father will, out of a deranged sense of abandoned revenge, murder their children to make the other partner suffer. Which may just possibly have occurred with twin 6-year-old girls whose father, Matthias Schepp, was found to have committed suicide.

His death sad enough, but the children whom he had taken for a brief period given him as a reflection of partial custodian rights are missing. The father contacted the children's mother and left an anguished message that he could no longer live without her. And it is the children who are now missing.

One can only hope that the substantial sum of money he had withdrawn and was found to be missing when his remains were found with a much smaller sum of money in his possession, was used to hire someone to look after the two children. Someone had to. It can be hoped that the desperate, deranged father did not plan a final solution for his girls.

Comparisons can be made to the horrific murder of two children who had lived in Montreal with their parents. Who had moved to Texas briefly, and reconciliation failing, had separated, and the children Danyela and Deyan Perisic became part of a custody dispute. The children insisted they preferred to stay with their mother in Montreal.

The court under Justice Helene Lebel, ruled otherwise: "They do not wish to go back so they will certainly be perturbed. However, these children are intelligent and capable of coping. They are not being returned to a place where they will be in danger." How wrong she was. Law enforcement officers in Coldspring, Texas found the children shot by their father.

Both children were airlifted to hospital, but both died of their wounds. The mother, Vera Vucerakovich, was convinced that her children were in danger, in the company of their father, Pedrag Perisic. Justice Lebel held that the mother had unlawfully taken her children from Texas, when she returned to Montreal.

Her ruling that the children must go with their father to Texas was overturned by Quebec Superior court Justice Marie-christine Laberge who granted the mother custody, ordering the father to return them. He chose to take their lives and his: "They can go over my dead body to Montreal".