Violent, drug-addicted father kidnapped 5-year-old daughter in 1973; only now are mother, daughter reuniting (Las Vegas, Nevada)

This story just makes me ill.

If this father had in fact broken the mother's neck, nose, and fingers, busted her nose (twice), and cracked her tailbone when he kicked her with his steel-toed shoes, then why wasn't he in prison? Oh wait, don't tell me. We don't prosecute domestic violence in this country, do we? We don't prosecute drug dealers either, at least if it's the mother bringing up the charges.

So dad ROBERT ARRINGTON abducts the 5-year-old child "during a heated custody battle and messy divorce" (this is how the media undermines the reality of battered women. Some abuser/control freak breaks a woman's neck and then has the nerve to demand custodial rights over the child, and the media nervously proclaims the matter to be "heated" or "messy." It's CRIMINAL that this kind of scum is even indulged by the media or the legal system with power over children so he can continue his abuse. Yet they constantly are.)

Given that this 1973, the mother gets very little help (they still get very little help, despite the pontificating of Ernie Allen below).

So how did the daughter do under dad's paternal guidance over all those years? Daddy continued to use and deal drugs. Under his fine tutelage, the girl was introduced to freebase cocaine at age 13. Over the next 18 years, she was basically homeless except for bouts in prison, mostly for drug charges. She acquired AIDS. She does not actively look for her mother as Daddy Dearest had told her she was dead. The article is notably silent on physical abuse, but I trust our Dastardly readers to see between the lines.

Now 37 years later, mother and daughter have had a reunion, but given that the daughter cannot afford her AIDS medication as she is no longer in prison, it is certainly "bittersweet." (Actually it's not "bittersweet" at all. It's another crime that you have to be in a "privileged" population to get affordable medical care in this country, but that's another issue.) Once again, the system is messing over two victims of abuse and not allowing them the resoures they need. What else is new.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/reunion-after-37-years-bittersweet-85760142.html

Feb. 28, 2010
Las Vegas Review-Journal

Reunion after 37 years bittersweet

Mother welcomes home daughter with AIDS

By KRISTI JOURDAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Marlana Lozano, right, comforts her daughter, Tammy Arrington, who reunited with her after 37 years. Lozano, who said her daughter was kidnapped at age 5 by her ex-husband in 1973 during a custody battle, was reunited with her Feb. 7 in North Las Vegas. The reunion has been difficult for both as Arrington battles AIDS and cannot afford her medication.
K.M. Cannon/LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Nerves twisted Tammy Arrington's stomach into knots on the trip from Palm Springs to North Las Vegas.

She was going to meet her mother for the first time since she was a child, and she found the ride was unbearable. She made her aunt pull over so she could throw up. Then she called her mom on a cell phone.

"All we did was cry," Arrington, 42, said.

It had been 37 years since Arrington was held by her mother, Marlana Lozano. Arrington was 5 years old when she was snatched by her father from a restaurant parking lot.

Mother and daughter reunited Feb. 7 at Lozano's North Las Vegas home.

But the reunion is bittersweet.

Arrington has been fighting full-blown AIDS since 2001. The disease and years of drug use have wasted her body. Her ribs and shoulders jut from her tiny frame, and only children's clothing will fit.

"How do you meet your mom and say you're dying and that you have to mourn for me again?" Arrington said. "She's so positive about everything, and I sit here and tell her it's not going to work."

Outside a North Las Vegas Starbucks, both women cried gently in each others' arms as they told their story.

They apologized to each other for lost time and chatted about a fulfilling future together. The hardest part for them, it seems, isn't telling their story; it's the realization that they're running out of time as Arrington's health worsens.

"I just got my baby back, and I'm afraid I'll lose her again," Lozano said.

Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said it's important to realize the reunion of a missing child and her family can be a difficult transition.

"You can't expect 'happily ever after' from the first moment," Allen said. "You have to realize in these kinds of cases, a significant block of this child's life has been stolen. It's tough but hopeful."

Back in 1973, the parents were going through a heated custody battle and messy divorce, which Lozano blamed on her husband's domestic violence and drug abuse. She said she fled from him because he broke her neck, ribs and fingers, busted her nose twice and cracked her tailbone when he kicked her with steel-toed shoes.

Lozano said her family was on vacation in Redondo Beach, Calif., when Robert Arrington sprinted through a parking lot and swept Tammy into his vehicle.

Lozano searched for her ex-husband, but each time she found the new house where he was keeping Tammy, he had packed up and moved without a trace.

There were no milk carton photos of missing children and no Amber Alerts to aid in Lozano's search for her daughter in the 1970s. There was no comprehensive way to circulate photos of missing children then, Allen said.

"You couldn't enter missing children information into the FBI database, and most police departments had mandatory waiting periods where they thought children were just runaways," Allen said. "The taking of a child by a noncustodial parent was a civil matter of which they wouldn't get involved, and it wasn't a crime in every state in the 1970s."

Federal laws were enacted in the 1980s that created a database of missing children information. In 1984, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was created.

Meanwhile, Arrington said she was growing up with a father who dealt and used drugs. He introduced her to freebase cocaine -- which is like high-grade crack -- when she was just 13 years old.

Lozano kept looking. She contacted various law enforcement agencies in California and the FBI but they didn't come up with any solid leads. After several years, she accepted that her daughter was dead and tried to move on with her life, eventually leaving California and coming to North Las Vegas. But her instincts told her to continue looking for her daughter.

Arrington ended up on the streets and bounced in and out of prison for 18 years, mostly on drug-related charges. She ended up living in a tent behind a strip mall in Palm Springs. She went Dumpster diving for clothes and collected cans for money when she wasn't too sick. She tried looking for work, she said, but no one would hire a terminally ill ex-convict.

"For me, is it OK to die now?" Arrington said. "I'm wondering why I'm still here suffering. So it's OK to rest. But no, it's OK to start again, I think. And that's where I'm undecided. I'm not talking suicide, but you get so tired. You just want to lay down and go to sleep and say, 'OK God, no more.'

"But now it might be time for me to live the life I never had."

Arrington had thought she was alone. She'd been out of contact with her mother for so long, she figured she was dead -- as her father had told her for years. He died in 2004 from pancreatic cancer just three weeks after completing his last prison term, and all his relatives were dead.

Hoping to make a connection with someone from her mother's family, Arrington plugged her name into a genealogy Web site. She was contacted by her aunt within three weeks.

"R U MY NIECE? Tammy, the family has been searching for over 30 years. ... Your Mother is still alive and searching for u," the e-mail read.

She got in touch right away.

"The Internet has really provided a way to reconnect and help people find each other and find themselves," Allen said.

In the back of Lozano's mind, she never gave up hope that her daughter was alive and she would see her again.

But the joy of their reunion is tempered with the reality of her daughter's health.

Lozano works as an assistant at the College of Southern Nevada through a Social Security employment program, making about $1,140 a month. She cannot afford the prescription AIDS drugs that her daughter received for free in prison.

And Arrington is having trouble battling the bureaucracy to qualify for programs such as Medicaid. The latest roadblock: She can't afford the money -- or the six-month wait -- to get her birth certificate from California, which she needs to secure a Nevada ID.

"I want to spend more than a year with her; I really do. I want to get to know her more than I do," Lozano said. "To me, it's the happiest moment of my life. I have my baby back, for however long it is."

Contact Kristi Jourdan at kjourdan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.