Daphne Bramham: Child-abducting mom thrives in Japan as exec at Danish multinational
Credit to Author: Daphne Bramham| Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2019 23:00:31 +0000
In 2013, Chie Kawabata abducted her five-year-old son, defying a U.S. court order forbidding her from taking him to Japan and another that named her ex-husband as the primary parent.
But even though there is an international warrant for her arrest, Kawabata is vice-president at a multinational pharmaceutical company in Tokyo.
A few years ago, Kawabata — who has dual U.S.-Japanese citizenship — got a Japanese court order granting her custody of Max. But when she tried to register it in the United States and overturn the previous orders, her request was denied.
So, Maximus Kawabata-Morness is still officially missing. Max, as he’s known, is now 11. He’s spent more time in Japan than the United States, where he was born, or with his Canadian father in Vancouver, which is where a Washington state judge determined that Max should be living.
Except for occasional Skype calls, Kris Morness hasn’t seen his son since July 2013 and knows very little about how his son is doing. There are also infrequent emails.
I wrote about Max a few months after his abduction and recently received an anonymous letter in a brown envelope from Japan.
Enclosed with the letter was a recent photo of Kawabata, who is now using the name Chie Takayanagi. Morness confirmed that the photo is his ex-wife.
Her photo was on an internal communication from Novo Nordisk Japan in 2018 announcing her appointment as vice-president of human resources. The company is a subsidiary of a Danish-based pharmaceutical company, which has 43,100 employees globally and 1,050 in Japan.
“Many of Novo Nordisk employees have big concerns about having a legally doubtful person as HR head of the company and doubt the board of director decision-making process and their accountability,” the letter says. “It is known in Japanese pharmaceutical industry because Chie was fired (by) Biogen and Merck for this family issue.”
Morness said he was aware that his ex-wife had worked at Biogen, but not Merck. He also didn’t know that she had left Biogen.
The letter goes on to say, “As long as Chie Kawabata is present, Novo Nordisk will never win trust. They continue losing in brand reputation.”
It’s fair to conclude that the anonymous letter was written by a disgruntled employee, possibly even one who was passed over for the appointment.
While it raises the question of brand reputations being tarnished by individual employees, the more interesting questions are about the complicated heart-and-soul issues of globalization. How should multinational companies operate?
Should they have a duty to comply with international child protection conventions or any other human rights conventions? Can they simply follow the laws of the countries where they operate even though the laws may not meet the standards in the countries where the head office is based?
“This is an unfortunate situation,” Novo Nordisk’s chief communications officer wrote in an email in response to questions. Mette Kruse Danielsen refused to talk about Kawabata/Takayanagi specifically, citing privacy protection rules, adding that “we also consider it a personal matter.”
But what she did say is that background checks done on new employees “are performed in accordance with local procedure and customs in the country of hire.”
When Kawabata abducted Max, she knew that Japan was not a signatory to the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Its purpose is “to protect children from the harmful effects of abduction and retention across international boundaries by providing a procedure to bring about their prompt return.”
She knew that Japan would not enforce an emergency order of a Superior Court judge in Kirkland, Wash., that required her to hand Max over to Morness in Vancouver within 72 hours or honour an earlier court order granting Morness primary custody.
Long known as a black hole from which abducted children never returned, Japan became one of the last developed countries to sign the convention in April 2014. But it does not apply retroactively. Canada was one of the first signatories in 1980. Denmark signed 25 years ago, while it was 2008 before it came into force in the United States.
Family matters are inherently messy. They are a minefield for courts, let alone multinational corporations. That said, some seem unwilling to have child abductors as employees.
Soon after Max’s abduction, Kirkland police contacted Kawabata’s first employer in Japan — Adobe — to try to get information. Adobe fired her. When she was working for Coca Cola in Tokyo, Morness did contact officials there and some time later, Kawabata was let go.
“In the beginning, you just want to get your child back at any cost,” he said last week after reading the anonymous letter.
Over the years, Morness has come to question his earlier strategy, recognizing that if Kawabata isn’t working, Max might suffer.
Still, he hopes that some day a multinational employer will need Kawabata to leave Japan and fly to a Hague-compliant country for work. There, she could be arrested and required to return Max.
But it seems unlikely that Novo Nordisk will be that company.
So, Morness is left waiting and hoping that, if nothing else, when Max turns 18 in 6½ years, he will choose to come home.
Twitter: @bramham_daphne