Born in the U.S.A. [19/08/2001] PRODUCER: SARAH HALL REPORTER: AMANDA MILLAR Karen Intro: They were born in the USA, four children to a New Zealand mother and her American husband. He's now in a Virginia jail for sexually molesting the children. You might think that would be the end of it. But in fact the story has developed like a plot for a thriller ... a kidnapping plan, a prison escape, and a family under witness protection. Now the family is in hiding in New Zealand - but the question is how long will these children be safe? Amanda Millar reports. AMANDA (V/O): He may be behind bars but not even a maximum security prison can stop an American father from getting at his kids. He was a wealthy, corporate lawyer. Now he's a convicted paedophile who abused three of his four kids. He's Bruce McLaughlin. With their Kiwi mother, his children have been in hiding in New Zealand for two years. They thought they were safe. Then their father masterminded an elaborate plan to kidnap his sons and when that failed, McLaughlin escaped from jail. ROBYN: He'll stop at nothing to get himself out. I don't think this is about the children at all. I think it's about Bruce McLaughlin. AMANDA (TO CAM): American prosecutors say Bruce McLaughlin is a dangerous man. Now his ex-wife and his children fear for their safety as they're being forced to return to the United States. Robyn McLaughlin thought she could rely on New Zealand's protection. Instead she now feels betrayed by our authorities who say the family must go back. ROBYN: You need to look at their lives here and now, and their happiness here and now, their friendships, their love of life here, the freedom they're experiencing, the happiness, the healing that's taken place. Why send children back to the place of trauma? AMANDA (V/O): Robyn married Bruce McLaughlin twenty years ago. She was a naive New Zealander, he the sophisticated American. ROBYN: I felt like it was going to be a fairytale actually, his parents were well off, and the beautiful pre Civil War mansion, law school, lawyer, bright. We were going to travel the world and live that sort of fairytale really. AMANDA (V/O): There were holidays in the Caribbean, a million-dollar home… and along came four children. But the marriage quickly soured. ROBYN: I never saw his temper before we were married and then incredible psychological abuse, which later led to physical. AMANDA: In front of the children? ROBYN: Eventually in front of the children. AMANDA (V/O): One night Robyn was so badly hurt that Bruce McLaughlin was arrested. The family split up and the kids were given counselling. It was then that one of the sons said his father had sodomised him. His younger siblings had similar stories. (I/V): When you learnt that your husband had sexually abused all of your children, could you reconcile that with the man you married? ROBYN: No, no, and in terms of trying to understand that, I couldn't. Still to this day, how could you do that to your children? AMANDA (V/O): Bruce McLaughlin was charged with 23 counts of sexual abuse. Out on bail, he violated court orders by stalking his wife. His family also got involved. McLaughlin's brother Mark threatened to kill Robyn and tried to bribe her to withdraw the charges. His mother was also arrested after she assaulted Robyn. ROBYN: If I’m out of the way then that family has access to those children and Bruce’s premise all along is that he wants those children to recant their testimony and so I’m the only thing that stands in the way. AMANDA (TO CAM): Police were so concerned for the safety of the family that they placed them in a safe house under the Witness Protection scheme. And in spite of the 24 hour surveillance, Robyn says the kids were so scared their father would get them, that one of the boys slept in a wardrobe while the other patrolled the house at night to make sure the police were there. (V/O): It was a long and controversial trial but in March 1999 Bruce McLaughlin was convicted of nine charges of sexually abusing his children, and was sentenced to 13 years. ROBYN: I can only ever remember one of my sons, I can still see where he was standing, and I walked in and he looked and he said, “Mum did we win?” And I said, “Yes,” and he just broke down crying and just said, “Thank you, oh thank God, thank you. We won.” AMANDA (V/O): Bruce McLaughlin vehemently maintains he's innocent. He's hired a publicist from his prison cell, produced a 90-page media kit and even tried to buy advertising time. Until then the children had remained anonymous. Now they were public property in the States but here we can't identify them. BOY 2: I was in school and my friends were teasing me a lot and I wanted to move to somewhere else, find new friends and yeah. AMANDA (V/O): McLaughlin applied to have the family’s passports confiscated and the US courts ordered the family to remain in Virginia until all the appeals were heard. Bruce's mother had applied for sole custody of the children and in desperation, Robyn asked the New Zealand Embassy for help. ROBYN: The verdict came back and I quote, that they could not live with themselves if anything happened to us and so they granted us fresh passports. AMANDA (V/O): In secret, Robyn McLaughlin fled the States with her four children, bound for New Zealand. ROBYN: I was told I couldn't go but this is the survival of a family. This was our death warrant almost, I felt like when they said we couldn't go, and I felt like I had the blessing of the New Zealand government. AMANDA (V/O): New Zealand was to be a stark contrast for the children. Gone was their affluent lifestyle. They were destitute, living off charity from the local church. But their mother could finally relax. Her kids were free and secure. ROBYN: I just thought we were a long way from him. That he can't, his arm can't reach to New Zealand. AMANDA (V/O): It was to be a false sense of security. MAN'S VOICE: Operation Reconcile. Inventory. AMANDA (V/O): Early last year, Bruce McLaughlin was working hard in his cell plotting an elaborate abduction. He'd get his soon-to-be-released cellmate to do the job. He drew up a contract. MAN'S VOICE: We, Bruce McLaughlin and Carlos Chestnutt agree to enter into a contract... AMANDA (V/O): Chestnutt would get $10,000 US and McLaughlin's BMW if he came to New Zealand with his girlfriend and kidnapped his two sons. MAN'S VOICE: …and find bag in trunk with passports, tape player and tickets... AMANDA (V/O): In 25 pages, the plan was thorough, right down to instructing Chestnutt on what kind of luggage to get. MAN'S VOICE: Buy money belt, two carry-on luggage carriers with wheels, two investigator badges (police)... AMANDA: And how to pose as a Maori... MAN'S VOICE: If asked you are a Maori couple, new to the South Island from Auckland, looking for a good school for your kids. AMANDA: Even on how to behave in New Zealand. MAN'S VOICE: It is certainly a good cover for you to walk arm in arm together past the apartment, to check it out. New Zealanders love to take walks. AMANDA (V/O): They'd stake out the schools and the home where Robyn and her children were living. MAN'S VOICE: Robyn is a tall, blond, long-legged, attractive woman who might be driving the kids. AMANDA: When you saw the extent of the planning that that man had invested, what was your reaction? ROBYN: Horror. He'd found us, he'd reached us, he'd penetrated my intimate circle. MAN’S VOICE: Reconciliation Day... AMANDA (V/O): June the 16th last year, the day they were to abduct the boys as they left school. They'd tell them they were police officers. MAN'S VOICE: Tell (beep) that you are a U.S. investigator who has come to take them back to the U.S. because they have illegally left the country, and they are to help dad get out of jail where he sits, even though he has done nothing wrong. Do not let them get away under any circumstances. After you get them in the car and they calm down, they will willingly come with you to help free me. Trust me on this. I am very close to my boys even though they have been brainwashed. ROBYN: That a so-called loving father, who loves and adores his children could hire, first of all a convict, who'd put his children in the care of a convict, just the deceit and the lengths he will go to is the most disturbing thing of all I think. AMANDA (V/O): Part of McLaughlin's plan was to repeatedly play a tape convincing the boys to co-operate. MAN'S VOICE: This is your dad. I love you with all my heart. Have faith that we will be a family again soon and courage to go with the U.S. investigators, Carlos and Sylvia. They are our friends. You know in your heart that your mother has lied to you and scared you into thinking that I have sexually abused you. AMANDA: How do you reply to that accusation? ROBYN: That I've... AMANDA: Manipulated your children? ROBYN: …and brainwashed them? Um, I don't even know, how can you even think that? AMANDA: There are cases of hideous separations, very acrimonious separations, where a mother or a father has accused the other partner through the children of sexual abuse. ROBYN: I wouldn't know where to begin. AMANDA: If there was no manipulation by you, what convinced the jury? ROBYN: The physical evidence was overwhelming. The boys especially...one of them was severely traumatised. AMANDA (V/O): The U.S. prosecutor told us one son's rectum is so damaged it resembles a 90 year-olds. (I/V): It's still very hard for your eldest son particularly to share anything of this with you isn't it. ROBYN: So much shame. MAN’S VOICE: Come now with Carlos and Sylvia and help me to get out of jail here in the U.S. Do what they say to do. Otherwise I will spend the next 15 years, the rest of my life, behind bars for something I never did. Come free me. Love Dad. AMANDA: He wanted you to come back and say what you'd said wasn't true. Would you have said that, that it wasn't true? BOY 1: No I wouldn't. I'd stick with the story because the story, the truth, because that's what happened and I want people to think that I’m not a liar, I won't lie about what I say. And that you should stick up for what you say? AMANDA (V/O): When prison guards found the abduction plan in McLaughlin's cell, he faced a potential 45 years in jail. Even that didn't stop him. On his way to court he leapt out of a van and briefly escaped. McLaughlin was sentenced to an extra two and a half years and locked up in one of Virginia's toughest maximum security prisons. From here this former attorney planned his next move. He asked New Zealand to return his children to the United States, even though he couldn't look after them. He said his mother should have custody. AMANDA (V/O): New Zealand has signed the Hague Convention which is a global agreement to return children at the centre of international custody battles to where they came from and Robyn and her family must leave New Zealand by the end of the month. ROBYN: I was absolutely devastated because I felt like New Zealand had supported me. They had been here two years now, were doing so well and their friends are all here, that this is obviously the place to be. Why return them to a place of trauma, of a life that's not normal? AMANDA (V/O): For Robyn McLaughlin her daily run is her only escape from the battles with her former husband. What she hasn't told the children is that they may have to go through it all again. Bruce McLaughlin has been granted a hearing next week to determine whether there's a retrial. He's claiming the children's evidence was tampered with. ROBYN: I haven't even told them, I just cannot bring myself to tell them. I mean it's bad enough they're going back and there's lots of tears, and there's lots of fears and anxiety, and I just can't dwell on that right now. It's just too much for me to handle. AMANDA (V/O): And at the centre, the children, confused and tired of it all. They will talk about the abuse, but not the details. (I/V): What part do you think you can you remember? GIRL: The abuse. AMANDA: What sort of abuse? GIRL: He was touching my private part when we were watching TV. BOY 2: He was sexually abusing us. AMANDA: How do you feel that he says that he didn't do that? BOY 2: Quite, very mad at him. He should just tell the truth. AMANDA: What's it like to live like this, with all this happening around you? One family in one part of the world, another here, and this fight that's all centred around you. BOY 1: It's quite... everything's like, up in your face, as soon as one thing happens another thing happens. It's not just a break, it's bad news, then bad news, then more bad news. AMANDA (V/O): Whatever their father might have done to them they still have special memories. GIRL: He's funny and he played with us a lot and he had a good smile. BOY 1: It's real sad that he's in jail. If I could change it, I could make him come out cos he's not really mad at us, I think he's mad at our mum, for most parts ’cos she's been out there fighting for us. And yeah I think he's a just a good guy, I love him still. I mean I’ve never stopped loving him. He's my dad. AMANDA: Even though you understand what he's done to you? BOY 1: Yeah I understand, but I mean we should just get on with the rest of our lives and forget the past. AMANDA: Does it upset you to hear that those children still have a great deal of love and affection for their father? ROBYN: It's the same thing when he was abusing me. It was a love-hate sort of thing and so I think it's sort of typical actually that you can still have feelings for your abuser. He's their father, he will always be their father. AMANDA (V/O): The McLaughlin family must leave New Zealand within the next ten days. They're packing away a life of security, to face an uncertain future living once again under police protection. (I/V): Where do you want to be? GIRL: In New Zealand. AMANDA: Why do you not want to be over there? GIRL: Because it's unsafe and I would get embarrassed because everyone knows. BOY 2: I hate it there. I've found friends really easily here and just don't want to go back. I feel safer here. AMANDA: How much of you wants to take your children and go into hiding and just ignore that order and say leave us alone? ROBYN: Every fibre in me. I believe that I talk for the children too. We just want to get on with our lives. When does life become normal for us.