Mother who abducted two Bellevue boys, fled to Mexico sentenced to 13 months in prison

By Allison DeAngelis • November 17, 2016 1:30 am
Mother who abducted two Bellevue boys, fled to Mexico sentenced to 13 months in prison

The mother who abducted two Bellevue boys and fled with them to Mexico for six months before being apprehended was sentenced to 13 months in prison on Nov. 17.

Faye Ku, 42, of Lakewood, Calif., was pled guilty to two counts of international parental kidnapping and was sentenced in U.S. District Court. Once she completes her prison sentence, Ku will be on supervised release for one year, according to the court.

“This defendant sought to deprive her children’s father of his court-sanctioned parental rights by fleeing the United States,” said United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker. “She abducted her children, abused their emotional attachment to her, brought them to a dangerous part of Mexico and had a destructive impact on the entire family.”

In August 2015, Ku falsified a court order for visitation allowing her two sons, Sage and Isaac Cook, to visit her in California. The woman was only allowed court-ordered supervised visits with her son following an incident in June 2013 in which she attempted to take the boys to Taiwan.

Sometime after the boys arrived in California, she took them across the border into Mexico. In a prepared letter found by law enforcement officials in her apartment, Ku blamed the children’s father for trying to control them and asked him to leave them alone.

Following an intensive, multi-agency search, Ku and the children were located in Sinaloa. The FBI’s Legal Attaché in Mexico City pursued a series of leads to identify their location and passed information to Mexican officials, according to law enforcement.

The children were reunited with their father on Feb. 12.

“Bringing the children home safely was only possible due to extraordinary partnerships with law enforcement agencies across multiple states and in Mexico,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Jay S. Tabb Jr. said in a statement. “The children’s well-being was the ultimate triumph after six months of dedicated investigative work, but today’s sentencing provides additional satisfaction by reassuring communities that parental kidnapping will not be tolerated.”