commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Here on All Things Crime Blog we’ve analyzed cases in which parents, for a variety of reasons, should apparently never have had children in the first place. We’ve also seen cases in which one of the parents goes berserk and kills the whole family in a state of ultimate madness. There is a third scenario which is some ways appears to be the most interesting of all. This is when either the mother or the father develops such an unrelenting hatred for her or her spouse that they steal away in the night, child in tow, never to be seen again unless through grit, determination and probably a modicum of luck the wronged parent manages to locate the child who is then recovered, with all the new problems that brings.
If you want to scare yourself really badly put yourself in the place of either a mom or dad and imagine you’ve just come home from work, or have just gone to school to pick up your kid, or any of the other endless situations in which parent and child meet up after being separated, only this time YOUR CHILD DOESN’T COME HOME or DOESN’T MEET YOU in the school parking lot. Why? Because she’s gone, baby, gone.
Perhaps my most frightening moment in a life with more than a few dark edges was the time my then 4-year-old daughter vanished during a family get-together at our townhouse in Santa Clara on the edge of Silicon Valley. One moment she was there; the next moment she was gone. With my heart in my mouth I roamed our complex calling her name with a horrible feeling that wherever she was, she probably wasn’t wandering around outside, which meant someone could have snatched her. It was truly freakout city for yours truly.
Happy ending, the little tyke had fallen asleep under a pile of pillows under the staircase leading upstairs. She was never in any danger whatsoever but that was the day my hair began to turn grey.
Greg Allen wasn’t nearly as lucky in April of 2002 when his estranged wife Dara Llorens took their daughter Sabrina, who was five at the time, from their home in Austin, Texas, on a scheduled weekend visit. At that time Greg had primary custody and Dara had visiting rights. According to the FBI, Dara did the “slip away in the night routine” and took Sabrina with her.
I cannot fathom the anguish Greg undoubtedly felt when Sabrina didn’t return. Whether immediately or shortly thereafter, he put two-and-two together and realized that Dara had snatched his child.
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Let us leave Greg with his anguish for the moment and direct our attention to Dara and Sabrina. What do you do when you’ve just stolen your child (of course you probably don’t think of it as stealing) and know with some certainty that your estranged husband will wade through hell and high water to get her back.
What you do is the only thing you can do. You go into hiding. You go underground. You disguise yourself with plastic surgery and you and your daughter rarely see the light of day. This means the poor child can’t go to school but you rationalize it away by convincing yourself that she’s still better off than she would have been with your wretched ex. And in order to get your little charge (also known as your kidnapped daughter) to cooperate, you work day and night to poison her mind against her father.
Alyssa Newcomb and Tony Kerr of Good Morning America write:
“She was effectively a prisoner in a two-bedroom apartment. She has been told that I didn’t want her and that I committed suicide,” Allen said. “She was also told that both of my parents are dead.”
In effect, you turn reality into fiction in a manner that justifies your actions and makes your enemies the villains in your story.
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Artist’s rendition of what Sabrina might have looked like
It is possible that Dara underestimated Greg. Or maybe she just hated him so much she was willing to risk it all. But since she had been with him for several years berfore absconding, she must have known that he would never give up.
In any event, Greg did everything in his power to find Sabrina. This meant missing person’s posters, private investigators, a million questions, a million false leads, and a tireless focus of finding her…somehow…someday…someway.
There’s little doubt in my mind that Greg must have had to tough his way through endless nights and perhaps even weeks and months of despair. But he kept his shoulder to the wheel and, lo and behold, after 12 years he got a break.
Acting on a tip from a confidential informant, Mexican officials worked with a team from private investigator Philip Klein’s office to track Sabrina and her mother, Dara Llorens, Tuesday morning to a small apartment in the state of Tlaxcala, authorities said.
Twelve years of living underground came to a sudden halt when Dara’s hideout was raided, and Sabrina, who is now a pretty 17-year-old girl with chestnut brown hair and who goes by the name Fair, was found at last.
“Sabrina and Llorens were flown back to Texas Tuesday night. Llorens was booked into Travis County Jail on an aggravated kidnapping charge. It was not immediately known whether she has hired an attorney.”
At a news conference Wednesday in Austin, Allen said his daughter was “in pretty bad shape as far as my understanding. Sabrina has been under an intense campaign to hate me for 12 years. She’s currently under the care of a therapist that specializes in cases like this… She was not living a regular life. She has not been going to school.”
Although Greg now faces the supremely difficult task of regaining Sabrina’s trust, given all the heartache he’s already been through and all the patience he’s had to muster up for all these years, one cannot discount the possibility he will ultimately succeed in reaching out successfully to his no doubt bewildered daughter. He’s already working to line up a support team to help her get up to speed on everything she missed.
And Greg’s deepest hope is that his daughter still has some good memories tucked away of their time together from before she was taken away by his angry mother.
“I want to know her. She’s a completely different person, but they say personalities are formed by age five,” Allen told ABC News’ Austin affiliate KVUE-TV in an exclusive interview. “[I'm] hoping she has some memories still.”
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And what is Dara thinking as she cools her heels in county jail. This would depend somewhat on whether she is crazy or just ornery and angry. If it’s the former, God only knows what thoughts are rolling through her brainpan, but if it’s the latter, I would wager that even as she gnashes her teeth and girds her loins for what is to come, she still has grim moments of pleasure thinking about all the pain she put Greg through while hoping that her brainwashing of Sabrina took hold completely and that he never succeeds in regaining his daughter’s trust.
Pure hatred is a supremely frightening thing.