Actor appeals court decision in bid to win abducted daughter back

HOLLYWOOD actor Josef Cannon’s extraordinary six-year battle to get back his half-Irish daughter has gone to the Court of Appeal in London.

The 44-year-old had custody of Shelby, aged10, after a split in his marriage but her mother, Catherine Collins, abducted her during a visit to her parents in Navan in 1998.

She was eventually found living under an assumed name at an address on Merseyside.

But Mr Justice Singer ruled in the High Court in May that the child should stay with her mother because of how long she had been away from her home in California.

Henry Setright, representing Mr Cannon, told three appeal judges yesterday Collins had defied the Hague Convention on child abduction by changing her name and that of her child and hiding from the authorities.

He said it was wrong for the High Court judge to rule that the child was settled with the mother in circumstances where she had concealed the child.

There is also a cut-off point of 12 months for issuing a summons for a return of the child under the Hague Convention. Mr Setright said it was wrong that the mother was able to invoke this clause in the Convention by being a fugitive from the law. He said the 12 months should run from the time an abducted child had been found.

The couple met in California and married in 1994. Their relationship broke down after the birth of the child and the father brought up Shelby for the first four years but kept in close contact with the mother.

He was granted legal custody of Shelby in 1999 by a US court and the mother was ordered to return her to America. An arrest warrant for the mother was issued.

Mr Cannon publicised the kidnapping of his daughter throughout the world and in 2001 heard from a priest in Ireland that his daughter had been spotted at a school in Navan.

The mother then fled with Shelby to England.

A year later a new bill was introduced in California which eventually became State law as the Synclair-Cannon Child Abduction Prevention Act in honour of Shelby and Larry Synclair, who was abducted to Russia by a parent who did not have custody.

Judgement in the case is expected in three or four weeks.