By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The head of Costa Rica's woman's institute has given her support to Chere Lyn Tomayko, who awaits extradition to the United States to face a federal charge of parental child abduction.
The support came in a heart-rending opinion piece published in La Nación Sunday. The writer was Jeannette Carrillo Madrigal, executive president of the Instituto Nacional de Mujer.
Ms. Carrillo characterized the former boyfriend of Ms. Tomayko as a violent aggressor and said the woman might be murdered if she were returned to the United States.
Ms. Tomayko is the Texas woman who fled that state in 1997 with her minor child contrary to a judicial order of dual custody. For years she lived openly in Costa Rica with at least the tacit approval of some U.S. officials. It was not until her minor child turned 18 that law enforcement officials arrested her on a U.S. federal arrest warrant for parental child abduction. She had made the F.B.I.'s 10-most-wanted list for years.
Monday in what appeared to be part of an orchestrated campaign Julio Rodríguez took up the cause in his En Vela column in the same newspaper. He said that Ms. Tomayko fled the United States from the claws of a man with a long history of aggression.
Ms. Tomayko claims aggression by the father of the child, Roger Cyprian. A Texas judge discounted those claims and ordered that both he and Ms. Tomayko should have joint custody of their child, Alexandria Camille Cyprian. Cyprian, who still is in Texas, denies those claims, too.
Ms. Tomayko has been in the Buen Pastor women's prison for 10 months while her lawyers filed repeated court appeals to prevent extradition. A.M. Costa Rica reported June 19 that she had lost her last appeal and would be extradited within two months.
However, Ms. Carrillo of the women's institute raises another legal point in her column, "The human face of a judicial file." Ms. Tomayko has had two more children in Costa Rica. The father is Javier Montero, an Heredia veterinarian. Ms. Carrillo said that the children did not
 Minister Carrillo
|
 Ms. Tomayko
|
have adequate representation of their interests in the court proceedings. Ms. Carrillo said that help was sought but not received from the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia.
She also said that "Our country ought to offer their support and solidarity to Ms. Chere Lyn Tomayko" because fundamental constitutional rights to live in dignity in peace and without violence are at stake.
Rodríguez went even further and said that the woman ought not be "deported."
Among other legal efforts, Ms. Tomayko tried at one time to obtain political refugee status in Costa Rica, court officials said. She has been successful in winning the support of many other persons, mostly women, with her claims of physical aggression.
There has been no explanation given by U.S. Embassy as to why Ms. Tomayko was allowed to live so many years in Costa Rica while on the F.B.I. most-wanted list. Embassy officials had full knowledge of her whereabout since at least 2002 when a reporter passed on information at the request of a reader. Embassy officials will not comment to A.M. Costa Rica, but they have made some comments to Cyprian.
The father said he is distressed at losing the companionship of his child for years. Now the young woman does not want to talk to him, and he blames the influences of the mother, he said.
Ms. Carrillo is an appointee of President Óscar Arias Sánchez. She holds the rank of minister. The Tomayko case is covered by an international treaty.