Danville Man Recounts Rescue of Abducted Son

Steve Fenton owns a construction company and leads a quiet Danville life, but at one time his life read like the script of a Hollywood film — distraught father fights to get his son back, and ultimately abducts his own child under the noses of soldiers and government officials in two countries.

Fenton is now telling the full story of what happened when he lost and then rescued his son in a new book he authored, “Broken Treaty.”

Fenton’s 16-month ordeal began in December, 1992, when his estranged wife took their then 6-year-old son, Stephen, to Mexico for a visit with her family.

The couple met and married in 1982 in Mexico, where Fenton was attending college, and moved to the United States, where Stephen was born in 1986.

Over the years, the marriage suffered, and Fenton and his wife separated and shared custody of their son.

Fenton says their relationship was amicable, and he had no reason to be concerned about his wife’s holiday visit plans in Mexico.

Fenton was shocked when she called and told him she and Stephen were not returning to the United States.

Over the months that followed, Fenton says he pursued every legal and diplomatic avenue, “spent every dime on lawyers and documents” to try and have his son returned to him, and was frustrated at every turn.

Although Mexico had recently signed the Hague Convention Treaty, which in part included provisions for expeditiously returning internationally abducted children, Fenton said that it turned out to be “completely unenforceable” at the time.

Unwilling to give up on a promise he made to his son when he had last spoken with him to “come and get him,” Fenton began plotting a rescue plan when he received a tip from a contact in Mexico that led him to the home in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico where Stephen and his mother were staying.

Fenton worked with a child recovery specialist, who Fenton says has returned over 100 children, and found a willing pilot to fly Fenton and his son back to the United States covertly.

In preparation, Fenton altered his appearance, and succeeded in the rescue that included taking his son off a school bus, and switching cars several times before boarding the small plane that flew them back to Brownsville, Texas, the closest U.S. city, over 400 miles away.

At first Stephen didn’t believe that Fenton, in disguise, was his father, and in the time that he had been in Mexico he had lost his ability to speak English. Fenton says he had to tell his son details that only he could know about a fishing trip, before Stephen was convinced and went with him willingly.

After getting past soldiers at the airport, and successfully flying back to the United States, Fenton nearly lost his son again, when Customs officials and FBI agents in the United States intercepted them, after Mexican authorities alerted them.

Images of the rescue are sharply seared on Fenton’s memory, who recalls that Stephen returned to the U.S. with no shoes, having lost them in the rush to get him out of Mexico.

Following the rescue, there was a lot of adjustment for everyone. Fenton writes about what readjusting to life after the separation was like for him, his son, and his ex-wife.

Fenton took his son regularly to visit his mother at the cyclone fence on the United States and Mexico border.

He says he felt it was important for his son that he find some way to keep her connection with Stephen, and eventually helped her to be able to return to the United States years after Stephen returned.

Fenton and his ex-wife no longer speak, and she has never told him why she decided to keep Stephen from him, but mother and son continue to have a relationship.

He kept extensive journal entries from which he wrote the book. Writing the book was a way for Fenton to “come full circle and finish telling the story,” he says.

He received encouragement from local mentors and supporters, including author, Penny Warner, and an old client of Fenton’s, the now famous .

Sullenberger “got really involved in the story,” says Fenton, and helped verify details and gave technical insights about the plane that Fenton used in the rescue.

Although he received an offer to turn his story into a movie, he said he turned it down when producers wanted to change his story to be that of a mother, rather than a father, seeking to reclaim their abducted child.

Fenton is donating a portion of the book’s proceeds to Takeroot.org, a support network for individuals who, as children, were abducted by a parent or family member.

“I always wanted to be able to help others in this situation,” says Fenton.

He says the group’s unique approach to take child abduction “a step further” and provide for what a child will need when they are recovered or returned especially appealed to him. 

Today, Stephen is a successful young 25-year-old, who had a normal Danville childhood, filled with family, soccer games and trips to the Sierras—“Broken Treaty” recalls a time when it could have been very different.

"Broken Treaty: The true story of a father's covert recovery of his missing son from Mexico" is available for purchase through Amazon.com in Kindle e-book edition. Click here to order the book.