Canadian PM to champion Montreal doctor's child abduction case during visit to Ukraine (01/17/99)

Canadian PM to champion Montreal doctor's child abduction case during visit to Ukraine

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - Dr. Yury Monczak, a young Montréal-based cancer researcher, has been caught in a Ukrainian Canadian parent's nightmare - a nightmare of international proportions. However, it seems that his country's government is willing to take up his cause - all the way to the top.

Dr. Monczak's 6-year-old son, Ivan, was abducted on June 7, 1998, by his former wife and the boy's mother, Miroslava Bartchouk. On January 5, the Toronto Sun daily reported that an official at Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's office had assured the 38-year-old doctor that Mr. Chrétien would raise the matter in upcoming meetings with his Ukrainian counterpart Valerii Pustovoitenko. The Canadian prime minister is scheduled to make his first visit to Kyiv on January 27-28.

Reached by The Weekly on January 13 at his lab at the Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital, Dr. Monczak said both Justice Minister Anne McLellan and Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy have written formal petitions to Ukrainian government officials asking for Ivan's immediate return, so far without success.

According to the report by Mark Dunn of the Sun's Ottawa Bureau, "both ministers indicated Ukraine has refused to respect Canadian laws by not sending the Canadian youngster home."

Dr. Monczak told The Weekly that Canada's officials have been very sympathetic and helpful. He told The Weekly that an official at Canada's Embassy in Kyiv, Jean Ludger-Bastien, has tried to personally contact the child through Ms. Bartchouk's mother, Nila Klioukova, who resides in Kyiv.

According to Dr. Monczak, Ms. Klioukova was very hostile and on one occasion told Mr. Bastien "that nobody would ever see [Ivan] and that he would be placed under a bodyguard's watch so that nobody could approach him."

Dr. Monczak said he is exhausting every means to get secure his boy's return, lobbying both the Canadian and Ukrainian governments. The Montreal-based researcher said he spoke to former Ambassador to Canada Volodymyr Furkalo and former Consul General in Toronto Serhiy Borovyk (currently an official at the embassy in Ottawa), and said he will contact current Ambassador Volodymyr Khandogiy in the near future.

The distraught father has placed Ivan's name on an international registry for missing children, the Missing Children's Network. He told the Toronto Sun he went to pick up his son for a summer vacation but found "Ivanko" had vanished and "some of Ivan's toys, stuffed animals and crayon drawings were left behind."

"It wasn't until Monczak received an anonymous phone call from Ukraine that he learned of Ivan's whereabouts," the Sun reporter wrote.

Ivan Nestor Monczak, who has brown hair and blue eyes, was born in Montreal on November 9, 1992, and appears on the Child Cyber Search Canada (CCSC) website (http://www.childcybersearch.org/), which also carries a photo and information about his mother.

Upon the advice of Halyna Freeland of the Ukrainian Legal Foundation, Dr. Monczak retained Ukraine-based jurist Natalia Petrova, and the matter was formally brought before a court in Ukraine in November 1998.

Soon afterwards an official diplomatic dispatch on the subject from Canada's Ministry of Foreign Affairs was forwarded to Ukraine.

Reached by The Weekly on January 12, Sophie Galarneau of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said Mr. Chrétien has been apprised of the case and that he does intend to raise the matter with officials in Ukraine, but added that such assurances are "hard to confirm." She cautioned that "it always depends on events, the situation and the circumstances."

Dr. Monczak told The Weekly that Ivan's mother tried to abduct their son, an only child, once before. He said that in the summer of 1994 he returned from work to find both Ms. Bartchouk and Ivan missing. After a frantic search, they turned up at an abused women's shelter in Montréal.

Ms. Bartchouk filed for divorce at that time and was granted custody of their son. However, Dr. Monczak's petition for a restraining order on his wife, which banned her from leaving the municipality of Montréal, was also granted that year.

The divorce was finalized by a Québec Superior Court decision on May 1996. According to Dr. Monczak, in his decision Judge Herbert Marks established that accusations of assault on Ms. Bartchouk and Ivan were without foundation (by his wife's admission). "I spent $45,000 countering perjury," the cancer researcher said.

Dr. Monczak met his ex-wife in Kyiv in July 1990 during a Ukrainian medical society visit to the Ukrainian capital. The couple were married in Montreal in October 1991. Ms. Bartchouk was granted landed immigrant status in January 1993.

Dr. Monczak said his former spouse is a journalist by training, that she worked at a museum of literature in Kyiv when they met and found employment as a long-distance telephone clerk when living in Montréal.

As corroborated by the Toronto Sun story, in Judge Marks' May 1996 decision, both parents were forbidden to make out passports in Ivan Monczak's name without written permission from the other. According to the January 5 report, police are treating the case as an abduction because Dr. Monczak's ex-wife violated a court ruling that forbade anyone from taking Ivan out of Québec.

Mr. Dunn wrote that "the same court granted full custody to Monczak after the abduction and issued a writ of Habeas Corpus ordering the child be brought back."

Dr. Monczak said that if the prime minister fails to get his son back he will have to travel to Ukraine and plead his case before a foreign court. The first formal hearing on the issue is scheduled to take place in Kyiv on February 2.

Dr. Monczak told Mr. Dunn on January 4 that his son "is the biggest treasure I have. He has been abducted. A great injustice has been [done] to him, and I think my government, my prime minister, should stand up for this little boy."

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