My ex snatched our four-year-old girl and took her to her native Poland five years ago – I’ve been suicidal, couldn’t even look at her photos and spent £160,000 trying to get her back. I just want to be her dad again
- Tom Toolan’s daughter Rhian was taken by his ex-partner Edyta in 2018
- After five years, she still has not been returned to him despite court orders
As Tom Toolan looks through old photos of his daughter Rhian at his home in Essex, he is filled with sadness.
Showing a bright-eyed five-year-old with curly brown hair and a cheeky smile, the family snaps are a distant memory of a happier time.
Last week it was Rhian’s 10th birthday. But Tom didn’t celebrate.
The last time he spoke to his daughter was on FaceTime in 2019, a year after she had been abducted.
‘When she was abducted I couldn’t look at these photos at all. It just made me cry and feel quite ill,’ the 60-year-old NHS worker told MailOnline.
Tom Toolan’s daughter Rhian (pictured together) was abducted by his ex-partner Edyta and illegally taken to Poland in 2018. Five years later, he’s still fighting to bring her home
‘It’s only recently that I’ve been able to put them back up and look at them again.
‘But I have to be careful. If I’m having a really bad day, the sadness can take over, so I have to be careful not to become obsessed with the injustice.
‘I suppose I’m lucky that although at times I was suicidal I managed to pull away from that. I need to protect my mental health. I find it really difficult to deal with though. I look at these photos and just feel incredible sadness.’
Tom’s nightmare began in 2018.
As he was preparing to pick Rhian up from nursery school, he received a text message from his ex, Rhian’s mother, Edyta Sonta.
The message said that she had taken Rhian to Poland, Edyta’s home country, and they would not be returning.
Tom said: ‘I was devastated. I was Rhian’s full time carer from six weeks old and we did everything together.
‘Rhian was very, very bright, funny, talkative, and knew how to wrap me round her little finger. We were inseparable. We walked the dogs, fed the horses together, went shopping together, to the park everyday, swimming at the weekends.
‘Rhian always cooked with me, and the older she got the more fun we had doing it.
‘Above all Rhian was a very, very, very happy little girl. We enjoyed the simple things like shopping because for Rhian everything was an adventure.
‘We liked the zoo, building a tower out of blocks and knocking them down, reading stories, all the things dads do with their babies.
‘When I got that text I was angry, upset, but naively I knew I had justice on my side and that I would eventually get Rhian back, because I knew Rhian’s abduction was criminal and she would have to come back to the UK.
‘What I did not know is that I would not get the support of the police, that I would go £160,000 into debt and that the courts and court orders issued in the UK and in Poland are not worth the paper they are written on.’
The last time Tom Toolan spoke to his daughter was on FaceTime in 2019, a year after she had been abducted by his former partner. Despite court orders, she has still not been returned to the UK by his former partner and Rhian’s mother, Edyta Sonta
First meeting Edyta through a mutual friend in London, the couple struck up a romance which eventually saw her move into Tom’s Suffolk home.
Tom said: ‘When I first met Edyta she was reserved, guarded, but funny from time to time, but I did not realise there was a lot of baggage from her previous relationship, as there was from mine.
‘Clearly there was a mutual attraction. I think if I was honest I was lonely, and so was she, she was not very kind and did push me away, I should’ve taken the hint.
‘She had been working at a garden centre in London but, having an MA in Horticulture she felt under appreciated as she was basically doing garden maintenance rather than design.
‘She was also unhappy because of sexual harassment, which she complained about a lot, so I suggested she start up her own business.’
Moving in with Tom shortly after, he then helped her set up a horticultural business, carrying out garden maintenance and designs which soon brought in around £50,000 a month.
But then Edyta became pregnant.
Tom said: ‘That’s when things started going wrong between us.
‘She was devastated and really did not want the baby, she was unable to breastfeed and was clearly very unhappy.’
‘She made it clear that she was not going to stay home to look after Rhian, so I did.
‘I did as much consultancy work as I could whilst looking after Rhian full-time. Edyta took no interest in her whatsoever, she was just interested in her work and business.
‘I eventually got another job and went back to work full-time and Rhian went to a childminder and then nursery.’
The couple then split up with Edyta taking custody of the child.
Tom said: ‘I went to court because I believed that Edyta would take Rhian to Poland.
‘On April 5th 2018 the Peterborough family courts decided that Edyta could not remove Rhian from the UK to live in Poland, but four months later Rhian was abducted,’ he recounted.
‘I contacted Edyta in Poland, I asked her to return Rhian, she refused and so it began, the lies the false accusations and the trying to create evidence to make me look bad.’
In 2019, Edyta gave an interview to a Polish newspaper in which she accused Tom of abuse.
Published on the paper’s epyotrkow.pl website, Edyta said: ‘Over time, my partner began to put psychological and emotional pressure on me, exploited me financially.
‘I had to be completely subservient and everything I did had to be under his complete control. He forbade me speaking Polish and made it difficult for me to keep in touch with my family in Poland.
‘My ex-partner suffers from depression. When we were together, he didn’t leave the house, he had no friends, he didn’t like daylight. Life with him was not easy.’
Despite the accusations, police could find no evidence of abuse and the courts ruled in Tom’s favour.
Tom’s nightmare began in 2018. As he was preparing to pick Rhian up from nursery school, he received a text message from his ex, Rhian’s mother, Edyta Sonta. The message said that she had taken Rhian to Poland, Edyta’s home country, and they would not be returning
In both Britain and Poland, including the Polish Supreme Court, Edyta was ordered to return Rhian to her father.
But five years on, nothing has happened.
Tom said: ‘The Polish Public Prosecutor has repeatedly refused to prosecute Edyta Sonta, refusing to comply with court orders.
‘Polish Ministers refused to meet with me. I had two letters from the Polish Embassy in the UK which stated they would honour any court orders issued by the UK courts including the those issued by the High Court, but they haven’t.
‘The UK government has a lot to answer to for not being more forceful and holding Poland to account.
‘Why has the Polish ambassador not been summoned to explain the lack of enforcement?
‘The UK government are unresponsive. Brexit also plays its part, if we had remained in the EU my daughter probably would have been home.
‘In the lead up to Brexit whilst Edyta and I were together, she became very agitated, worried that she would be asked to leave even though she had been in the UK for over 16 years.
‘In respect to Rhian’s abduction, the main issues was not being able to get an international arrest warrant that could be applied in Poland.
‘If the UK had remained in the EU, Poland would have been unable to refuse Edyta’s extradition.
‘The UK courts may have been a little more proactive, because there was a legal basis on which an arrest warrant could have been issued in respect of civil proceedings, but all of this was lost when the UK left the EU.
‘Brexit also caused problems when dealing with the European Coordinator for Children’s Rights.
Tom says he was devastated when he got the text saying his daughter would not be coming home, but thought he had justice on his side. Since then, he has faced an uphill battle that has caused him to go into debt, and still has not been able to bring Rhian home, saying: ‘the courts and court orders issued in the UK and in Poland are not worth the paper they are written on’
‘Whilst they supported me for as long as they could, after the transition period had finished, support stopped and so did any influence they had in promoting the interests of the UK, UK children and fathers.’
Because the EU works under a regulation called Brussels IIa, which means that countries should respect the due process of other countries’ courts, since Brexit the UK now has to rely on the more complicated Hague Convention.
‘The UK should have been able to ask for Edyta’s extradition to the UK to face charges of child abduction under the 1984 child abduction Act section 1.
‘However, I have been told that Poland did not sign that part of the agreement which allowed for the extradition of a Polish national on anything other than terrorist charges.’
Tom’s frustrations are also directed at the Polish and British police.
He said: ‘It took some doing to get Interpol to acknowledge that Rhian was missing.
‘Their argument was that I knew where Rhian was and that health checks undertaken by the Polish police at the request of Suffolk Police via Interpol meant that on most occasions they could speak to Rhian and or her mother.
‘But eventually I provided enough evidence to convince them that Rhian was not attending school, the Polish courts considered her at risk and Edyta could not be found. Even Poland’s missing persons organisation ITAKA has put Rhian on their list.
‘But she’s still there and Edyta remains free despite abducting a British child breaking UK law and more to the point breaking numerous court orders in Poland, all of which ordered the return of Rhian to the UK.’
Half a decade later, Tom – who is now happily married with two children – has spent over £150,000 trying to bring his daughter home.
He said: ‘I’ve made huge sacrifices. I had to sell our cars, we’re in debt, I’ve remortgaged the house, all the things I should have been saving up for in my retirement have gone.’
Although not giving up hope that one day he’ll be reunited, he says he has to keep his hope ‘balanced’.
He said: ‘I’ve often thought that perhaps I should stop. But there’s something inside me that prevents me from doing that. I still have hope, but you have to be careful with hope as it’s like having a chain around your neck.
‘Although I don’t want to believe it, I have to tell myself that it is possible I won’t see her again. I may die before seeing her again. This is my harsh reality.’
At the beginning of August, almost five years to the day after being abducted, Tom’s daughter appeared on the website of the Polish town where she now lives after winning a school ‘firefighting awareness tournament’.
Tom said: ‘I didn’t recognise her at first. And then I had the terrible realisation that I could walk past her on the street and not know it was her. And she could walk past me without recognising me. It makes me tear up, to be honest.
Tom says his frustrations are directed at British and Polish officials, Brexit on account of it making it more difficult to corporate with Polish authorities, and the Polish and British police
‘When a child dies, as devastating as it is, in most cases there is a kind of closure with a funeral. But when your child is abducted, you get stuck in a bereavement loop, with no closure.
‘Going through the anger, depression, despair, it’s difficult to get out of it.’
He added: ‘I want Rhian to know that I have done absolutely everything I can possibly do to get her back and that I never stopped trying.
‘I love you and miss you incredibly. I just want to be your dad again.’
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