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The boys were seven and four at the time of their abduction.
RUNAWAY MOM: Edyta Ustaszewska Watkins, 52, of Newmarket is charged with two counts of child abduction. She allegedly snatched her two young kids in 2009 and fled to Poland. Photo by FACEBOOK
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The family court concluded that the dad was the better bet for the warring couple’s two young boys.
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Edyta Ustaszewska Watkins, 52, their mother did not like the judge’s decision that her ex-hubby should have sole custody. If she couldn’t get the ruling she wanted, police alleged, she would do things her way.
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According to cops, the Newmarket woman, with the help of her elderly father, proceeded to kidnap the boys and whisk them to her native Poland in 2009.
Dad waged lonely crusade
Now, CTV News reports that the runaway mom has been arrested in Poland and appeared in a virtual Newmarket courtroom from a Polish jail on Monday. She is charged with two counts of abducting a child under the age of 14. The boys were seven and four at the time of their abduction.
Their father, Stephen Watkins, has waged a lonely crusade for years to have the boys returned to him.
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A DAD’S DESPERATE PLEA. (COURTESY Photo)
“When I was saying goodbye, he came over and he hugged me and said, ‘I love you, Dad,’” he told The Toronto Sun in 2012.
Watkins and detectives determined that Edyta took their boys from the GTA to the U.S., and finally to Poland, where they hid for years while their devastated father begged the feds for action. His sons are now 24 and 21, but it isn’t clear if they’ve returned to Canada. Their mother is behind bars and has been ordered not to contact the boys or their father.
Dad awarded sole custody
York Regional Police said the malevolent mom snatched the boys two months after her ex-hubby was awarded sole custody in January 2009. She took them from Toronto to New York before flying to Germany with help from her father.
Her father, Ted Ustaszewski, then 78, was integral to the plot, providing his daughter with money, plane tickets and cover. Because of his age, Ustaszewski was given a conditional sentence that included a year of house arrest.
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It took Watkins almost three years to track the boys down and petition a Warsaw court to return his sons to him. But because Canada and Poland didn’t have an extradition treaty, a Polish court torpedoed his efforts, calling a return here “detrimental” to the kids.
Edyta Ustaszewska Watkins, 52, of Newmarket. One of Canada’s most wanted. (FACEBOOK)
Ustaszewska Watkins was eventually named one of Canada’s most wanted by the RCMP.
“Whatever sentence is imposed in this case, it will be inadequate in the sense that I have no power to order the one thing that would matter most, the return of the children,” Ontario Court Justice Joseph Kenkel said in sentencing her father in 2021.
“Any sense of fairness or justice in the sentencing process is necessarily incomplete where the offence results in a victory for the offender and a terrible loss for the victim with no hope of remedy,” he said. “The impact on all of the victims of this offence has been serious and irreparable.”
None of the charges have been proven in court.
@HunterTOSun
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