The Jacqueline Gillespie case. Hero or Villain?

The recent Jacqueline Gillespie case has interested me a lot. For those who have not heard of it, Jacqueline Gillespie is an Australian mother that had her 2 children taken from her, illegally from the perspective of Australian law, and legal from the perspective of Malaysian law. This is because her husband, the cousin of the current Terengganu Sultan, remarried and she immediatly took her kids to Australia and divorced him. Readers, what say you all?

Side 1 - Jacqueline Gillespie is a villain

She is of course talking about Raja Bahrin, cousin to the present Sultan of Terengganu. What happened was, Raja Bahrin married a second wife and Jacqueline Gillespie ran off to Australia taking the children with her. At first Raja Bahrin would not allow her to take the children with her but she bluffed him that her mother was very sick and dying so, out of compassion, Raja Bahrin agreed.

I, in fact, met her at Subang Airport the day she left for Australia and she was sobbing as she told me the story. She also said she had no money so I gave her what little I had on me. Little did I realise she had cleaned out her bank account and was quite loaded.

Once she reached Australia she filed for a divorce and brought the children to church to be baptised. Jacqueline told the court that she badly treated, beaten every day, and was practically a slave back in Malaysia; so she dared not return to Malaysia to file for a divorce, as she should have done since she was married in Malaysia under Malaysian law and according to Islamic rites. This was definitely not true. Tengku Ampuan Bariah, the late Sultan’s consort, loved Jacqueline like her own daughter (because she had no children of her own) and Jacqueline went about the palace like she was born a princess.

Raja Bahrin then filed for custody of the children but lost. Raja Bahrin’s Australian lawyer did not think they were going to win as, what he said, “Two of the three judges are Jews so, as a Muslim, you have very little chance in this courtroom.” By the way, the lawyer who said this is not Muslim but Christian.

The court then gave Raja Bahrin visiting rights a couple of times a year. However, every time he wanted to visit the children, his passport and air ticket would be impounded. He would also be searched and all his cash plus watch and other valuable would be confiscated. Further to that, there would be two guards who would stand watch the entire hour or so he spent with the children and Raja Bahrin was not allowed to touch the children or have any physical contact with them whatsoever. He was also not allowed to talk about Islam to the children.

After a few years, the rules were relaxed as the authorities felt that Raja Bahrin had been behaving himself all those years. Nevertheless, the no cash or valuables and impounded passport and air ticket ruling remained. But he was allowed to spend some time alone with the children as long as they were sent back at the end of the day in exchange for his passport and air ticket.

Raja Bahrin could take it no longer. One day, leaving his passport and air ticket behind, he took the children for a long drive to the coast and jumped onto a boat that had been prior-arranged for the ‘great escape’. In the middle of the high seas, the boat developed engine trouble and it drifted for many days until it was rescued by the Indonesian Navy and towed to safety. It was sheer luck Raja Bahrin and the kids did not bump into any pirates or got swept under in a storm. The Indonesian Navy personnel told Raja Bahrin that, one day late, and they would have been history because his boat was drifting towards cannibal-infested territory (it is surprising that such things still exist in this day and age).

Raja Bahrin’s and Jacqueline Gillespie’s story is certainly a tragedy but the way Farah related it paints him as a villain. I know both husband and wife very well and it pains me to see this happen. After they divorced, I met Jacqueline in one of my trips to Australia and we do still communicate via e-mail from time to time. But to say it serves Raja Bahrin right for marrying two wives would be as fair as saying it serves Anwar Ibrahim right for getting beaten up and jailed on sodomy charges because he refused to bail out Dr Mahathir’s son’s shipping company with Petronas’ money.

Anyway, the point to all this, Farah’s piece on royals and polygamy plus references to Raja Bahrin has not been presented in the right perspective. In any story, there is always the other side of the coin and all may not be what it seems. And as much as you may want to think poorly of the late Sultan of Selangor for marrying a young wife after the Tengku Ampuan died, there were hidden hands paying the role of matchmaker with the objective of controlling the institution of the palace.

Excerpt from malaysiakini.com

Jacqueline Gillespie - Hero

"Once I was a Princess" is a book about how a woman's determination to continue to fight for her two kidnapped children's basic human rights saw her redefine her identity and role in society from distraught mother to a humanitarian activist on the world stage.

Jacqueline Pascarl Gillespie who joined us on Saturday's show was racially and sexually abused as a child. Her dysfunctional childhood left her vulnerable to the heady proposition of being swept of her feet by a seemingly gentle and urbane foreign student, Prince Raja Bahrin. They moved to Malaysia where they married and Jacqueline was re-educated and moulded in the disciplines of a princess and an obedient Muslim wife.

Back in his own country it bore no resemblance to the quiet student of their whirlwind courtship and she was treated by her husband as little more than a brood mare and decorative appendage. Forced to suppress her intellect and endure physical brutality, Princess Yasmin, as she was now known, maintained a carefully constructed facade of aristocratic solidarity. In just four years, a fairytale romance begun in the soft Melbourne spring of 1980 had turned into a nightmare of Islamic superstition, isolation, rejection, betrayal and abuse.

The birth of her two children steeled her resolve and determination to raise them far from the rotten atmosphere where she was living. Following the disintegration of her marriage (her husband had bigamously married a night club singer) she returned to Australia with the children and built up a career for herself in TV and radio.

After seven years of freedom her life took another turn in 1992. Her vengeful husband abducted both children in a cloak and dagger operation and managed to flee the country by sailing from Queensland to Indonesia in a tiny motor cruiser. Since then and despite diplomatic lobbying, legal challenges and humble pleas, Jacqueline has been allowed no contact with her kidnapped children, Iddin who is 16 and Shahirah, 14.

Succumbing to grief was never an option for Jacqueline. Instead she focused on providing support for other parents in similar circumstances and is now an acknowledged international expert on parental child abduction. She has emerged from her ordeal a stronger and more independent woman, forging a place for herself with humanitarian aid work in Bosnia and Africa.

The publication of her book "Once I was a Princess" coincides with this month's European conference on parental child abduction organized by the London based charity Reunite.


excerpt number 2:

9.39 In 1992, Mrs Jacqueline Gillespie's two children were abducted from Australia in defiance of an Australian Family Court custody order. The children's father smuggled the children out of Australia on a small boat back to Malaysia.

9.40 Malaysia is not a party to The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Therefore, the Convention could not be used to return the children to Australia on the grounds of their habitual residence in Australia.

9.41 Both children have dual nationality. They obtained Malaysian nationality by birth and acquired Australian nationality by descent from their Australian mother on registration at the Australian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur.

9.42 The children's father had obtained custody orders from the Islamic religious court in his home state in Malaysia before coming to Australia to abduct the children. Under the Malaysian law, the father had legal custody of the children. It was open to Mrs Gillespie to challenge the custody orders in the Malaysian courts, but she decided not to proceed. Lawyers for the Australian High Commission advised that such a challenge would have been a test case for Malaysian law on the question of whether the civil or the religious courts have jurisdiction in custody cases involving religiously mixed marriages. The Australian Government, through the Attorney-General's Department, offered Mrs Gillespie financial assistance so that she could obtain legal advice in Malaysia on the prospects of legal action in the Malaysian courts to obtain the return of the children.

9.43 Because the children are Malaysian citizens and living with their father, the Australian High Commission had no legal grounds to request access to the children to determine their welfare. However information about the children gained by the High Commission has been relayed to Mrs Gillespie through DFAT.

9.44 The Australian Government requested the extradition of the children's father to face charges in Australia relating to his breach of the Family Court orders. The Malaysian Government refused that request, on the grounds that his action did not constitute a crime in Malaysian law. As noted in paragraph 6.129, 'the 'dual criminality test' is standard procedure in extradition cases.

9.45 DFAT submitted that this case illustrated how different legal systems can give different verdicts in custody cases and the importance of The Hague Convention to enable return of children to their normal place of residence. It further illustrates the Government's inability to intervene in private legal disputes and where dual nationality is involved.[20]

from the australian government website

This case has had many films and books written about it. What do you think?