Dad's quest ends as son returns home

Ken Thompson had an image of his son Andrew on his cycling gear as looked for him. Photo / Supplied

Somewhere in Sydney, 6-year-old Andrew Thompson is back home again after his father's three-year odyssey to track him down.

Ken Thompson, a former New South Wales deputy Fire Service Chief, quit his job, moved to Europe and cycled more than 6000km hunting for a son taken to Europe by wife Melinda Stratton, who is now facing extradition from the Netherlands.

Yesterday Thompson told media that he and Andrew were glad to be home, after their first Christmas together for years - in Amsterdam - and a stack of delayed presents from a "very generous" Santa Claus.

"I hadn't seen Andrew for three years so there was a backlog of presents at the North Pole that had to be delivered," he said.

"Andrew thought Christmas was a wonderful time. It was snowing, and that made it pretty special in Europe."

But Thompson urged more countries to join the Hague Convention on international child abduction, and called on the Australian government to strengthen its laws against parents who take children overseas without permission.

"It's not about finding a way to punish a parent who's taken a child," he said. "It's about finding a way to enable the authorities to help you find the child."

Stratton, who speaks French and German, left Australia almost three years ago, vanishing into Europe with Andrew while her husband began a cross-hemisphere search that eventually involved Interpol and ended with Stratton's arrest by Dutch police.

Thompson hauled the abduction into the international media, launched an internet campaign in a bid to find the pair, quit work and began cycling through Europe, chasing leads he hoped would take him to his son.

The Weekend Australian reported that Stratton had turned for help to the church and to friends in Austria and Germany while she was on the run.

The newspaper said the pair travelled under the aliases of Mandy and Timothy Welsh and that despite Interpol arrest notices Stratton had been shielded in Amsterdam by Catholic nuns from the order founded by Mother Teresa.

Later she found sanctuary with a small African Methodist Episcopal congregation which housed the pair and helped to enrol Andrew in school.

But last September Amsterdam police were tipped off by a schoolmate's mother, who recognised Andrew as a missing child featured on the internet.

Stratton was arrested, and Andrew was housed in a child-protection home for more than two months, visited regularly by his father and taken to see his mother in prison.

During the court proceedings Thompson was ordered not to speak to the media about the case, and yesterday he urged reporters to respect his son's privacy.

"I'd now like to ask the national and international media to please respect Andrew's privacy and give him a chance to be a normal, little Aussie boy," he said.

Andrew was released into his father's care last month. Meanwhile, Stratton remains in jail after a series of actions that first saw her released from jail, wearing an electronic bracelet and staying in a village outside Amsterdam with a retired judge that the Weekend Australian said had befriended her when she was being shielded by the Catholic nuns.

Later, at the insistence of Australian officials, she was returned to jail, where she unsuccessfully fought the decision handing Andrew to Thompson, and challenged her extradition to Australia in a case that could take up to three months to complete.

When she does return Stratton will face charges relating to the abduction, carrying a jail term of up to three years if she is convicted.