After six long years of searching, an Illinois father has finally been reunited with his 15-year-old daughter, Kayla Unbehaun, following her disappearance in 2017. It’s a happy ending for the father and his daughter, Heather Unbehaun, although certainly not the expected outcome that anyone anticipated.
The saving of Kayla Unbehaun has sparked a debate on the internet about whether parents should be responsible for abducting their own offspring.
As per the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, merely 1% of abductions are non-family abductions–children being taken by unfamiliar individuals is extremely uncommon despite common beliefs about abduction and the manner in which our media tends to portray the issue.
Nevertheless, in Kayla’s case, the abductors who took Heather Unbehaun’s side to meet her parents are mostly non-custodial parents. Like in the case of Kayla, Heather Unbehaun’s mother was the one who abducted her. According to the FBI, parental abduction makes up the majority of these cases, with family members being the most common perpetrators among all types of kidnappings.
In 2017, Kayla’s father Ryan Iserka reported her mother Heather and herself missing after a camping trip.
Ryan Iserka, residing in Elgin, Illinois, was given complete custody of his nine-year-old daughter, Kayla, following her mother Heather Unbehaun’s failure to adhere to previous court rulings pertaining to their custody disagreement. Iserka, along with his wife and her two daughters, resided with Kayla, while Heather was allowed supervised visits as per their custody agreement.
In 2017, when he went to pick up Kayla, there was no sign of them either. However, upon their agreed time, he went home to Wheaton, Illinois, to the Unbehaun’s. But during the 4th of July holiday in 2017, Iserka agreed to allow Kayla to go on a camping trip with Heather.
Heather discovered shortly thereafter that her lawyer had not heard from her in weeks. She shut off her phone and deleted her entire online presence. Fearing the worst, she immediately reported Kayla as a parental abduction victim. Unbehaun claimed that Iserka, the lawyer, skipped a custody hearing in June 2017, which upset him and prompted him to set up a GoFundMe.
Kayla Unbehaun was located after a North Carolina store employee spotted her on Netflix’s ‘Unsolved Mysteries.’
The manager of a Plato’s Closet clothing store in Asheville, North Carolina, reported to the local police the astonishing discovery of Kayla’s story, who is now 15 years old.
The episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” on Netflix focused on parental abductions, and in a montage of age-processed photos of abducted children, Kayla’s brief appearance caught the attention of an employee who recognized her. The manager was alerted to Kayla’s presence by the employee.
It was remarkable how Heather Unbehaun, who reported to the police, noted that Kayla had never managed to leave any technological breadcrumbs for the authorities. It was also realized that Kayla, who was known during her childhood, had enough of a tip-off from an employee who had offed.
Heather Unbehaun, an employee at Plato’s Closet, was arrested immediately and is now facing child abduction charges. She has been held on a $250,000 bond since the report was posted.
Some individuals on the internet have raised doubts about whether Heather Unbehaun should face charges of abduction for taking her own child.
Some online users have expressed outrage over the abduction of a little girl by her mother, but it is believed that she will soon be reunited with her father. The story of Kayla Unbehaun has left many astonished and has been widely celebrated.
On TikTok, a user expressed, “That is the mother of the person.” “You cannot abduct someone whom you have given birth to,” Some individuals believed that Unbehaun must have had valid motives for taking her daughter. “Perhaps my intuition is incorrect, but I sense that the mother was attempting to safeguard her child.”
So, if she was a danger to her child, someone would have reported that she found her safe, not adding up.
There was obviously only one reason for the visitation, which was stated by User One as “moms saying everyone’s kids can’t kidnap,” and many commenters pushed back by stating the obvious that those statements don’t make a whole lot of sense, of course.
“A supporter penned, ‘he desired joint custody.’ A supporter expressed, ‘The mother was becoming increasingly hazardous and the father assumed custody solely to ensure her well-being,’ regarding the alleged reasons behind Iserka and Unbehaun’s custody dispute, which primarily revolves around abductions. Additionally, the supporter highlighted specific information that had been disclosed in the true-crime podcast ‘The Vanished,’ which has garnered a following of dedicated fans.”
Every year, over 200,000 kids are taken away by a relative, irrespective of what certain individuals believe on the internet. The institution highlights that numerous cases of missing children go unreported, but parental kidnapping is indeed a significantly prevalent and distressing issue, as stated by The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
The majority of abducted children, even at the age of six like Unbehaun Kayla, are thankfully alive and recovered nowadays, thanks to technological advancements. This is good news, despite the prevalence of the problem.