Their names are Stephanie and Leonardo, they are 7 and 6 years old, they are Spanish, from Malaga, but they are not in Spain. Thirteen months ago, his mother, to which the Spanish justice had withdrawn the custodythe kidnapping and took them away.
Heriberto Centeno, their father, has been fighting ever since to see them, to get them back. A judicial ordeal, a titanic struggle and a personal investigation place them in Moscow. The situation is complicated, aggravated, blocked: they were torn from their father, their family, their friends and their school. They haven’t been here for a year. And, for a week, they live in a Russia on war.
“They are two Spanish brothers, minors, kidnapped by their mother. Please, I beg your help and collaboration”
Happy, smiling and with a special connection with their father, the children grew up in Estepona, Málaga. “I don’t know what he will tell them when they ask him about me, if I’m dead, if I’ve abandoned them… but I guarantee you that they ask him every day about his father,” laments Heriberto. They were kidnappedby his own mother at the school gate.
After a personal investigation that has robbed him of thirteen months, Heriberto places them in Russia. Also the Spanish justice. In a final sentence, issued by Court number 4 of Estepona at the end of this January – to which CASO ABIERTO, the events and investigation portal of the Prensa Ibérica newspapers, had access – the judge “considers it proven that the woman, declared in absentia, moved his minor children to Russia in January 2021 without parental consent.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine paralyzes any movement of Heriberto to recover his children. “With this convulsive situation, it is very complicated to get an immediate return order,” he says. It depends on the Russian justice, it always seemed difficult, but right now they do not attend to it. He is not seen.
“I desperately request the help of the public administrations, that of the competent Ministries and, in particular, that of the Spanish Embassy in Russia and the Moscow Consulate,” he pleads. “My children are registered in Estepona, schooled in Estepona, rooted in Estepona… They are two Spanish brothers, minors, who were taken by forceThey are away from home. They are in hostile territory. They are at war.
He kidnapped them after picking them up from school
The nightmare of Heriberto, a math teacher at a high school in Estepona, started on February 1, 2021. “They haven’t come to school,” the kids’ teacher told him. She waited until the last child came out of the CEIP Sierra Bermeja before passing by, surprised, to ask about them. His children, who were 6 and 5 years old at the time, they didn’t go out, because they didn’t go to school that day.
“Without notice and without the consent of the sole custodial parent, which is me, My ex-wife took my children out of the country. I don’t know how. I don’t know how it has been possible”, laments Heriberto. “There were two sentences that expressly prohibited the children from leaving the national territory, and the issuance of a passport. Despite this, the mother managed to kidnap them and escape.”
The alarms went off. The last time they saw the little ones was on Friday, when they left the school. They did it hand in hand with their mother, as the agreement established, she had to enjoy the weekend with the children. Heriberto, custodian father, after speaking with the teachers, tried to locate her. There was no answer. There was no signal.
He denounced it, but it had no echo. “There was police inaction, they did not take my complaint, and it took them 95 days to apply the kidnapping protocol. The Child Protection Law, with my children, has made water on all sides.”
“He says that he will not answer and that you will never see your children again”
“There isn’t a day that I don’t ask about my children,” says Heriberto. “Where are Stephanie and Leonardo? How are they? Can you fill me in?” The cell phone of his ex-wife did not give any more signals, but he does not stop trying.
“Every day I send three emails to the mother -one every eight hours- all, asking him where the children are, how they are, asking for a faith of life, begging them to come back & rdquor ;. He has never received a response. “Through a friend of hers, I was able to find out that she reads them, and she told me that she was not going to answer me and that I will never see my children again.”
judicial ordeal
They got married in 2013 and ended their marriage in 2017. The story of Heriberto and OO, five years after the breakup, has a devastating balance: “I have gone through a real judicial ordeal.” A total of 12 complaints of mistreatment against him, many weekends spent in jail, and a year -13 months- without seeing his children. “He continually denounced Me. They were all archived,” he recalls. The last one turned against the woman. “He filed a false complaint and there was a surveillance camera that discovered the truth.” After being summoned by the court, “in a letter from her lawyer, her wife announced that she was leaving, that she did not trust the Spanish justice system,” explains Heriberto.
The ordeal since the divorce caused several more legal disagreements. The Provincial Court of Malaga granted in 2019 sole custody to Heribert. A sentence that was ratified four times. The mother, with Russian and Spanish nationality, enjoyed a visiting regime to see the children. “On January 29, that custody order was broken,” she says. “She also skipped another sentence in which she is prohibited from leaving the national territory and issuing a passport. How did she do it? Who let her go?”
“There is a search and arrest warrant from Interpol” against the children’s mother
“You will not see them again”, the phrase was engraved in his mind. “After 13 months, the illegality of the transfer has been obtained in a final judgment, acknowledging international parental kidnapping by mothera search and arrest warrant has been obtained for her from Interpol,” says the children’s father.
In addition, according to the documentation to which CASE OPEN has had access, the parent is declared in absentia in the courts of Estepona and investigated for simulation of crime. “The last sentence that Spanish justice has given me is to grant me exclusive parental authority.” It happened a few weeks ago but, despite everything, nothing has made the return of the children possible.
russian justice
It was time to knock on the Russian door. It was not an easy road, but Heriberto was going to walk it. “The next step was to jump the border and go to justice in Russia.”
Time passes, the war progresses and the children are not. “It’s very hard,” he says, while he lives glued to international news. He begs the consulate, the embassy, the institutions to listen to his cry. Try to find a solution, open doors, even for her, “my ex-wife has dual nationality, she can come to Spain and escape the war.” He only wants his children, Stephanie and Leonardo, “the main victims of all this” to return.
