Lithuanian officers on Tuesday detained parents who had kidnapped their children and were trying to flee the country. The operation involved a wild car chase and forged documents that the couple – members of an extreme anti-government and conspiracist movement – tried to use to get past the border guards.
Inga and Mindaugas Vilčinskai have been on the police wanted list since July 18 when they kidnapped their three children, aged nine, seven, and five, from a foster home in Kaunas.
The children had been taken away from them the previous month due to child rights abuses. According to the State Child Protection and Adoption Service (VVTĮT), the children were not attending school and the parents were refusing contact with school representatives and child welfare workers.
Moreover, the Child Protection Service said the parents’ grip on the family situation was “inadequate”. Members of an offshoot of the so-called sovereign citizen movement, they do not hold any valid ID documents and claim they do not recognise the Republic of Lithuania or its laws.
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Car chase at the border
At a press conference on Tuesday night, Kaunas County Police chief Mindaugas Baršys said the family were stopped and detained as they were trying to cross the border to Belarus.
They were driving a Ford Focus with German license plates and presented forged documents to border guards.
While the officers were inspecting the documents, the car – which included a third adult, as yet unidentified Lithuanian citizen – drove off towards the border.
“They were going at 100 km/h, on a gravel road, and were stopped after driving about two kilometres, close to the state border,” said Darius Škarnulis, chief of the Vilnius Border Police.
According to him, the parents were supposedly planning to take the children to Belarus on foot, across a forest area.
The family had previously resided in Germany and moved back to Lithuania last year.
“There have been a number of reports of possible violations of children’s rights, one was from the police about possible domestic violence, other reports from the social services centre, from the school,” VVTĮT director Ilma Skuodienė said at the press conference. She added, however, that the service had no information about possible abuses in the family from German authorities.
Kaunas County Police chief Barškys noted that “no [physical] violence was used against the children” by the parents, but they were found drunk, “which is one type of violence”.
The children were taken back to the Pastogė (Shelter) foster home in Kaunas, VVTĮT spokeswoman Alina Žilinaitė confirmed on Wednesday.
According to Skuodienė, they were seen by physicians and psychologists and are feeling fine.
“The children have had extraordinary experiences over the past weeks, so our first task is to ensure a safe environment for the children and to take care of their physical and emotional safety,” Skuodienė told BNS on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday that the parents, Inga and Mindaugas Vilčinskai, are facing child abduction charges and a court granted an arrest warrant for them last week.
Following their detention, the court will now decide on the length of their arrest. The prosecutor’s office said it would ask to keep them in detention for two months.
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