Skegness Magazine

Skegness mother’s torment when two-year-old son was abducted by Syrian father, 1968:

Skegness Child Abducted by Estranged Syrian Husband

WORRY OVER `UNIFORM’ PHOTO
Mother fights on for return of her son

MORE than four years after Mrs Jean Hurst’s son was taken from her by her Syrian husband she has received a photograph of him — in mock uniform holding a toy pistol.
It is the first photograph she has seen of the boy, David, now six, since just after he was taken to Damascus in 1964.
Mrs Hurst, living in Castleton Boulevard, Skegness, said: “I got it through a solicitor in Damascus after asking specially for it to be taken.
“But when I got it I had a bit of a shock. I didn’t expect David to be dressed up in uniform.
“It is what I might have expected of my husband however. He has always wanted to be a top-class soldier but has never managed it
No doubt he is trying to pass on his ambitions to David, and in the situation that exists between Syria, the other Arab countries and Israel, it is not what I would want for him”.
Mrs Hurst, 30, has assumed her maiden name with the title “Mrs” since her husband, Bashier Oda Bashy, returned to his native country with David.
She is still hoping to raise enough money to contest her husband’s custody of the boy in the Syrian courts.
And in the past two months she has opened a nursing home in Castleton Boulevard with a partner and begun a job as a social worker in the town.

A qualified, nurse, Mrs Hurst said: “I am hoping that the nursing home will enable me to get enough money to be able to ft something.
Confident
“I am confident that if only I had the money I could get David back. Even in Syria, where women don’t count for much, it is law that in cases of separation any child under nine should stay with his mother.”
Mrs Hurst met her husband when he was a student at Nottingham University.
They married when she was 19. He was 27. In the seven years before the separation Oda Bashy continued as a student — except for a short period when he returned to Syria to sign on in the Army but then changed his mind.

Car ride
The break came when Oda Bashy disappeared with David, then two, after taking him for a car ride.
Mrs Hurst found they had gone to Damascus, and with a friend — Miss Maureen Vincent, who is now her partner in the Castleton Boulevard nursing home — she went to the Syrian capital to try to get David back.
But they did not have enough money to stay there while legal proceedings were taken.
“We said we would send the money when we got back to England,” Mrs Hurst explained. “But when we did get back we learned that we could not send the amount of money needed to Syria because of currency regulations.
“Since then I have been trying to save enough money to go back to pay for legal action and stay there until it is completed.
“At the same time I have written to the Queen, contacted an MP and been in touch with an international organisation which helps in cases like mine, all to no avail.
At times I have almost given up hope of doing anything.
“But the photograph I have just received has helped me again to become determined to get David back, for his own sake.”

Research source: Skegness Standard November 1968

Forty years on from his abduction, David will now be 46 years of age. Where is he now? Was he ever reunited with his mother, Jean Hurst in Skegness? Someone out there must know…