A Maidstone mother has issued a heartfelt plea to be reunited with her young daughter, stranded in Vietnam after her father allegedly took off with the family’s passports.
Duong Nguyen, the mother of 11-year-old schoolgirl Kate Vo, said the pair flew to Vietnam in July with her recently estranged husband.
Upon arrival he allegedly took the family’s Australian passports, later claiming they had been stolen from a hotel room at gunpoint.
Ms Nguyen visited Australia’s embassy in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) seeking replacement passports, but was unsuccessful in gaining one for Kate despite her being an Australian citizen.
Consular officials in Vietnam insisted the father’s signature must be provided in order to issue a passport to Kate, leaving her stranded in Saigon with family as her mother returned home to seek help.
Ms Nguyen said Kate, in year five at Footscray West Primary School, is missing her family, friends, school and dance classes.
“She doesn’t want to go anywhere, she just stays in the bed very sad and I’m very worried about her.”
Fighting back tears, she told Star Weekly the situation has left them both deeply upset.
“I miss my daughter very much. I really want to bring her back here because she needs to go to school. I want for them to make my daughter a passport so I can bring her back.”
Ms Nguyen said she has no family in Australia and has been left homeless by her separation.
She has been unable to contact her estranged husband.
“He left me and my daughter there. Until now I can’t contact him. Now I have nothing, my daughter is stuck there and I can’t get her back. I don’t know why this happened.”
Footscray youth worker Les Twentyman accompanied Ms Nguyen as she delivered a letter to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on Monday seeking her daughter’s return.
In her letter she said she had returned to Melbourne to try and find her ex-husband, but he had been “elusive and unavailable and not at all co-operative in assisting me to have our daughter return to Australia”.
A DFAT spokeswoman said the department does not comment on individual passport cases for privacy reasons.
“DFAT is aware of the details of this case and places a high priority on the welfare of children.”
She said provisions requiring a child’s passport application to include the written consent of each parent or guardian aim to protect a child from abduction and to protect the rights of parents.
“If full consent cannot be provided, the child’s application can be considered under the special circumstances provisions in passports legislation.”
