The traumatising ordeal of a mother left stranded in Sudan after being exit-trafficked by her husband continued when she tried to reunite with her young children.
Mohamed Ahmed Omer took their two children, aged six months and two, with him when he fled back to Australia and abandoned his wife in September 2014.
After 16 months separated from her kids, the woman finally made her way back to Australia after securing a visa.
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But her “nightmare continued” as Omer moved their children from place to place to avoid her.
“The journey to reunite with them became an agonising struggle,” she said, in a statement read to Victoria‘s County Court today.
“When I tried to reunite, I faced false accusations, claims I was abusing him and the children, resulting in a police order banning me from seeing them.”
Two months after her return to Australia, in April 2016, Omer took the children back to Sudan and left them there.
The distraught mother went to Sudan six months later to find her children, where she was confronted with even more legal hurdles.
“A sharia court stripped me of custody and prohibited me from seeing my children,” she said.
“I was even in prison for three days.”
She said the ordeal “irrevocably changed” the lives of her and her children, whom she now has full custody of.
“Losing my children was the most devastating period of my life,” she said.
Omer, 52, became the first person in Victoria to be charged with exit-trafficking after he deceived his wife into travelling to Sudan and led her to believe she had a valid visa to return.
He had withdrawn his support for her visa and, after arriving in Sudan, he changed their tickets home.
Omer is facing up to 12 years behind bars after a jury found him guilty of the commonwealth offence in April.
His barrister told a pre-sentence hearing today that Omer’s PTSD from growing up amid a civil war would make prison more difficult for him.
“It’s accepted this is really a stain on an otherwise blameless life for Mr Omer,” Brett Stevens told the court.
“He acknowledges the intentional deceit that caused the complainant to exit Australia, but that doesn’t mean the jury accepted all of the victim’s evidence.”
He asked Judge Frank Gucciardo to hand Omer, who is currently in jail, a good behaviour bond with “some period to serve” in prison.
Prosecutor John Saunders said the Omer’s “callous behaviour” needed to be properly punished.
“The youngest of the children was still being breastfed, these are particularly damaging acts in the context of a young family,” he said.
The judge said Omer had fabricated much of his story to explain his conduct.
He shifted the blame to his wife during his police interview, claiming she had been neglecting their children and that he left Sudan with the kids because her family had threatened him, court documents reveal.
“He is simply dissembling, or at one end just fabricating stuff,” Judge Gucciardo said.
Omer will be sentenced at a later date.
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