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Abducted as a child with 60 Minutes, Gaudi turned to drugs & alcohol.

Abducted when Ray Martin drove a getaway car in 1980, a man tells Insight it had a profound effect on his life.

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An Australian man who was part of a child abduction with a 60 Minutes team in Spain, later turned to alcohol and drugs as an adult, to deal with the impact of his experiences.

37yr old Gaudi Rubio-Thorne was only 18 months old when Ray Martin drove the ‘getaway car’ for his mother Kayleen Thorne in Barcelona in 1980.

This week he tells Insight host Jenny Brockie that the separation and media attention had a profound affect on his later life. While he initially welcomed the attention as a young boy, growing up it was a label he could not shake off.

“(I was) totally lost. Wondering about identity. Totally lost. Looking for love in all the wrong places,” he tells Insight.

“I turned to alcohol and soft drugs because they were readily available. That progressed and I guess I just went looking.

“Meeting people who never knew my story, meeting people like that …..(was) golden.”

“He feels that he became known as the kid who was abducted”

“Gaudi doesn’t have any memory at all of the actual abduction because he was only 18 months old when it happened. But it’s clearly had a profound effect on him and and it was a very notorious, very high profile case at the time and again involved 60 Minutes,” Jenny Brockie tells TV Tonight.

“He feels that he became known as the kid who was abducted, and he says that’s had a big impact on his life.

“He’s 37 years old and it happened when he was 18 months old, and you could tell he found it extremely difficult to talk about it, you can see that in the programme.”

“After the Abduction” on Insight hears from several adults who were abducted in international custody cases when they were children.

“It’s about the kind of adults the children grow up to be. Once they’re adults and they’re able to reflect on what it was like for them as children.

“We felt that the most recent coverage … had focussed very much on the individual parents”

“I think we felt that the most recent coverage around child abduction had focussed very much on the individual parents’ points of view, the points of view of companies that were involved.

“But we didn’t want to get too tied up in in that territory that we felt was already well covered.

“What we didn’t felt hadn’t been well covered were the longer term consequences for the children at the centre of it.”

Another guest is 42 year old ‘Amanda’ who was abducted by her father when she was 11yrs old, taken to the US to live and not allowed any contact with her mother. At 18 she came back to Australia to reconnect with her mother.

“The really interesting aspect of Amanda’s story is that she does remember the incident. She was 11 years old and suddenly these big men stormed into the house and grabbed her and took her outside. Her father was there with a van and took her off to buy clothes. The legacy for her, and particularly for her mother who eventually committed suicide, is just enormous,” says Brockie.

“I don’t think there are any easy answers”

Insight also hears from parents involved and Child Recovery Australia specialist Col Chapman. But while some have turned to drastic methods to reunite with family, Brockie says there are no easy answers.

“‘Re-abduction’ or ‘retrieval’ -or whatever you want to call it- can damage a child, as well one of our experts in the program says, but you do wonder what on earth the solution is?” she explains.

“I don’t think there are any easy answers in these situations.”

As Gaudi tells Insight, “I would like to think my abduction is a love story. My father did it because he loved me and my mother did it because she loves me.

Insight airs 8:30pm Tuesday on SBS.

Lifeline 13 11 14
Beyond Blue 1300 22 46 36

5 Responses

  1. That’s such a good idea to show the childrens point of view with this issue. I’m sure all of us have been wondering about how these abductions affect the kids further down the line.

  2. I really think Ray Martin has a lot to answer. Not just this case but his comments regarding the latest 60 minutes kidnapping. On The Project several weeks ago he strongly supported the Beirut kidnapping. Also on 60 Minuted last night, they said that Tara and crew couldn’t comment due to possible legalities in Beirut. Since when have they respected international law.

  3. Unfortunately….some are driven by possession…..the children are their property….and their pride is offended by what they perceive as them losing the battle……and by revenge on the other parent….Not always a pretty picture.

  4. An inescapable conclusion for me is that, while the parents who organise to abduct their own children are driven by their love for the child and probably believe that it is in the best interests of the child, ultimately it is a selfish act.

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