Lisa Kennedy* thought she’d found the perfect man – he was tall, handsome, talked with an exotic accent and paid her the kind of attention that she always longed for.
But that romantic image changed forever the day that her Turkish-born husband took their seven month old son for an afternoon visit to his family in Istanbul before telephoning and dropping the biggest bomb shell of Lisa’s life –that he was keeping their son and they were never coming back.
In an exclusive interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly, Lisa Kennedy reveals for four year struggle to regain a normal life for herself and her son in Australia, a struggled that ultimately led to the involvement of a child an international recovery team, a crew from 60 Minutes and a water-borne escape across the Mediterranean sea.
That moment, when her husband told her that he was taking their son and filing for divorce in a foreign country, shook Lisa took her core. “I felt like I was dying,” says Lisa tells the September issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, out now.
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“My husband was a man I no longer knew. He’d taken my son and filed for divorce. We’d had our differences but there was nothing to indicate something like this was coming. I loved him and thought he loved me. It was the ultimate betrayal.”
To read more of Lisa’s story and how she managed to navigate the complicated world of international law and isolation in another country, pick up a copy of the September issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, in stores now. Her book No Going Back: A Desperate Mother’s Last-Ditch Plan to Escape From Turkey With Her Son is out now.
*Lisa’s name has been changed for legal reasons.
