Mom confirms dad took daughter to U.S.

Earlier this week we brought you the story of Gesenia Cook, the Belize City mother whose five year old daughter was taken for the weekend by the child’s father and never returned home. Today she had her suspicions confirmed.

Gesenia Cook, Mother
“It’s like without her, I don’t know how my life will go on, knowing that she is out there, but how is she doing, you know. It is very depress, it’s more than depressing, you know.”

Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
Six days after Belizean national five year old Zoe Kathryn Cook was allegedly kidnap by her father, sixty-three year old U.S national Richard Cook, the child’s mother Gesenia Cook still does not know where is her daughter, only that she is no longer in Belize.

Gesenia Cook
“I can’t, I can’t sleep at nights. I am next to my phone, watching the phone every other second to see if any call wah come in from him.”

The Cooks, who have been separated for close to four years, were scheduled to appear in family court for a custody case. Until then, the court had granted the mother interim custody. The father was granted access on alternate weekends from five p.m. Fridays to five on Sunday evenings. But last weekend, instead of returning the little girl home, the father and daughter were seen at the Philip Goldson International Airport boarding a flight to Miami around two-thirty on Saturday afternoon.

Gesenia Cook
“I went to the police station yesterday and they did a search, they called immigration, and yes, they have approved that she left the country. They flew to Miami and that’s as far as I know. Then yesterday evening about three-thirty I received a call from a friend of his, you know well just stating just to pass a message onto me that they are in the States and Zoe is doing okay.”

It is not clear how the father and daughter were able to leave the country without the legal requirement of a written authorisation from the mother, but the child is the holder of both a Belize and U.S. passport.

Gesenia Cook
“This is not the first time that he has taken my daughter to the States, this is the second time. But the first time he let me know that he was going to the States, but he was going for only three days. And so the embassy asked him that I had to do a written authorisation and take it to a justice of the peace and have him stamp it. So I do not know what he possibly did, I do not know if he used the same piece of paper or photocopy it or did another one and trace my signature, I don’t know but that is the only thing I can think of.”

Today when we contacted the U.S. Embassy’s Consular officer, Cindy Gregg, she told us that they are scheduled to meet with Gesenia and that she must bring along the court records to verify she has custody of her daughter. Once that is done, they will do whatever they can to assist within the confines of the law.

Gesenia says her daughter’s picture will also be posted on the website for exploited and missing children, in the hope that it will lead her to Zoe.

Gesenia Cook
“But I would at least would feel, you know just a tiny bit of happiness just to hear at least her voice and know that she is okay and she is not sick or anything like that.”

In the meantime, Gesenia says she is not giving up hope that one day she will be reunited with Zoe.

Gesenia Cook
“If I don’t get to see her now or a couple of years now, there will be a point where my daughter is gonna ask, “Why he left the country? What about my mother?” She is going to be asking those questions, so I am just hoping that he gives my daughter the right answers and not the wrong answers.”

If you have any information that can help Gesenia Cook, please call her at 620-2999.