TRACY Glover’s world was turned upside down when her eight-year-old daughter was snatched from her by her ex and flown 1,000 miles away.

What followed was an agonising five-year battle to get her daughter back home safely in the UK – despite the law insisting she had to stay in the Czech Republic with her dad.

Now, speaking publicly for the first time since she was reunited with her daughter Eliska, now 14, a year ago, cleaner Tracy, 47, who lives in Shipley, West Yorkshire, opens up on the harrowing experience she had losing her daughter.

And she explains why she now appreciates the little things so much – even if it’s just finally finishing Gilmore Girls together or buying her daughter’s school uniform.

Snatched in the night by dad

In November 2016, Tracy’s ex Jarek* picked up Eliska for a sleepover, with just a little rucksack, and her glasses.

When she awoke, she realised he’d taken her on a plane back to his hometown in the Czech Republic, where Tracy, Eliska and Jarek lived for seven years, before their separation.

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At first, Tracy believed he would change his mind and return their daughter to the UK – where she wanted to be, with her mum – but as time went on, his intentions became more and more clear.

And, despite Tracy getting the British police involved, there was nothing they could do, due to the Hague Convention, which says a child’s base is considered to be the country where they’ve lived longest, meaning the Czech Republic was classed as Eliska’s permanent residence.

Jarek fought for custody of their daughter through the Czech courts in her absence, and successfully charged her (in Czech law) with being a “child abductor,” meaning that if Tracy ever returned to the Czech Republic just to live near her daughter, she would risk arrest and imprisonment. 

Crucially, it meant Tracy had no rights to see her daughter.

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“It was so humiliating,” Tracy says. “It felt very much like the intention of it all was to degrade me and to show me my place. 

“The judge responsible had never actually met me and he took five years of my daughter's childhood.”

Battle for daughter

For the next 18 months, Tracy only had phone calls with her daughter, which were dependent on her ex agreeing to put Eliska on the line. 

She considered appealing against the Hague Convention, but she says she could never have afforded it.

“I'm not from a middle class family,” she says. “I don't have a lot of money, so I couldn't have  a Hague Convention case. 

“It was a choice between keeping a roof over my head, continuing to fight and keeping myself alive or pursuing legal help, and ending up on the streets.”

After continuous pleas from both Eliska and Tracy, Jarek agreed to bring Eliska to Shipley for the first time since he snatched her, in August 2019, and left her with Tracy for six weeks. 

“I was terrified she would no longer recognise me, or worse even remember me, but nothing had really changed between us,” Tracy recalls. 

She also visited twice more in Christmas 2018 and summer 2019 – but when the coronavirus pandemic struck, it left mother and daughter apart once again.

What is the Hague Convention?

The Hague Abduction Convention is an international treaty developed by the Hague Conference on International Law in 1980.

It aims to secure the safe return of a child who's internationally abducted by a parent, from one country to another.

Under this law, the convention says the child should be returned to their "habitual residence" immediately, before any action is taken on custody or access rigths.

The habitual residence is the country where the child has lived for most of their life.

Return at last

As Eliska grew older, she and Tracy were able to speak on the phone more – and she also became more vocal about wanting to live with her mum.

And the mum believes Jarek was eventually worn down by everything, which is why he returned her a year ago, also helped by a petition that got 3,000 signatures, including from some of Eliska’s teachers.

She says: “It was my determination. I wouldn't be quiet.

“Even her teachers could see and they messaged me saying, 'She talks about you all the time. And we pray for you.' 

“Eliska had been saying, 'I want to live in England. I want to be with my mum.' 

“For a long time, he told her that she couldn't, but eventually I think it just got too difficult to continue what he was doing, and he gave up in the end.”

Mother-daughter reunion

It had been three years since Tracy had last seen Eliska, and she hopped in a taxi and rushed to the airport straight from work to collect her, still not quite believing she was finally getting her daughter back.

“I dared not even buy food before she got here, in case it didn’t actually happen,” she tells us.

She recalls: “When she arrived, obviously looking a fair bit older than the last time I saw her, with these little flushed cheeks, we hugged each other, and then she looked at the huge suitcase she had brought with, and said, ‘I brought everything.'”

The pair got the bus to Asda for the food shop, and then a taxi home “holding hands the entire way”.

“We didn’t cry because we were both shaking so much,” she says. “It was just such an intense moment. It was really like being in a dream.”

Tracy had spent the last five years thinking she’d never be reunited with Eliska, and says she would feel “a horrible feeling of loss and pain” in her stomach around three to five times a day, every time she saw a parent and child together.

But on the way back from the airport, with Eliska next to her, she recalls: “I looked out the window and I could see a man carrying a little kid on his shoulders. 

“I was waiting for that punch in the stomach, but I looked and thought, 'You don't have to live like that anymore and you're not going to live like that anymore.'”

Taking nothing for granted

Since Tracy has had Eliska back, she never takes anything for granted. Even going shopping for her school uniform was a big moment, as well as finally finishing Gilmore Girls together.

“Even a bad day now is a good day,” she says. “If you're disappointed by somebody or something goes wrong, or someone's horrible to me, anything like that, I know when I get home that she'll be there.

“Getting the school uniform was amazing, just really small things that some parents probably think 'Oh God, this is a bit of a drag,’ and take for granted, but I'd not been able to do.”

She continues: “We used to watch Gilmore Girls when she was little and because she was away so long, I couldn't watch the more recent series, when it came on Netflix. 

“So when she came back, we watched that. 

“It's just really little things like taking her for a hot chocolate, being silly, singing with her, going on walks, going out for meals, just things like that.”

Difficult return to UK

But it hasn’t always been easy for Eliska since she’s been back, especially in those first days of school, with it being very different to her “little village school” in the Czech Republic.

Recalling her second day of school, Tracy says: “She was a bit shocked and cried, but I had to leave her at the bus stop and go to work, and I nearly cried as well.

“She said, 'Is it going to get easier? When am I going to make friends?' and I just had to say 'It is going to get easier, it will get better' but I walked away thinking, what if the people who told me that this is going to go wrong are right? 

“All these ‘what if’s' flooded through my head but it was okay.

“She’s made friends, who she has sleepovers with all the time, and really likes the school and her teachers now.”

'We're survivors, aren't we, mummy?'

Eliska is still in contact with her father, as well as his mother, who lives out in the Czech Republic.

Tracy says: “Her view now is that, because she has a close relationship with her grandma, she feels that she wants to maintain connections with the Czech Republic. 

“I think she would like to, at some time, even visit but she is very firm about England being her home and the place she actually wants to live, but I think she should have the right to be every part of herself.

“That's all I ever wanted for her.”

She continues: “She’s a very fluent Czech speaker, and it’s quite funny, since being back here a year, she's got a really strong Yorkshire accent, but then she'll start speaking in Czech with her strong accent, and she's both of those people. 

“It's fascinating, really, and it's a lovely thing leftover.”

And when it comes to her own feelings about Jarek, Tracy says she has “no vengeful thoughts” towards him.

She adds: “He has tried, at this point, to make things better. 

“However, my daughter and I went through something that should never have happened at all. 

“She's the bravest, strongest, most amazing girl you could ever imagine.

“She said to me once, ‘We’re survivors aren’t we mum?’

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*Jarek's name has been changed.

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