Our Story: A Father's Struggle Against Institutional and Racial Discrimination.

In December of the same year, a second abduction attempt took place, but it was thwarted in time and aborted in Zurich. Another custody petition was filed, yet once again, relying on the social worker’s opinion, the court rejected the father’s request.

Crucially, these two abduction events were nowhere mentioned in the court’s rulings.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, during hearings the DGEJ social worker continued to lie to the court and to attempt to discredit the father in order to justify placing the child. Finding no concrete evidence against him, she nonetheless included in her reports (File No. 5452136) unfounded claims, even writing: « Mr. Hori is quickly projective and believes that complaints against him are, for example, due to his skin color. »

In parallel, a request was filed in February 2024 through the Swiss Federal Office of Justice, activating the Hague Convention. However, this process has still not yielded results in Ukraine. From February until the death of Kim’s mother in November 2024, the authorities in the Dnipro region continuously gave the father the runaround, sending him from one court to another.

After the mother’s death, local authorities ignored the father’s rights and granted custody of the child to the maternal grandmother. The proceedings continue to this day, in 2025, without any decision on their part.

Facing this inaction, the father reached out to the Ukrainian president to ask for his support. The president’s office refused to get involved, replying that the judiciary is independent in Ukraine. As a reminder, Kim holds only Swiss citizenship, not Ukrainian a fact the local authorities are aware of but which changes nothing about the situation. The fight continues in the hope that the Ukrainian justice system will finally agree to rule on the matter and return the child to her father.

In Switzerland, since the January 2024 abduction, the cantonal authorities, particularly the Public Prosecutor’s Office, have not attempted to identify the accomplices in the kidnapping, and the police have refused to investigate due to the connections to Ukraine. They also refused to report the child to Fedpol and Interpol, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office issued orders to dismiss the case against unknown persons (« classement sans suite contre X »).

Thanks to his own efforts, by petitioning the Justice of the Peace of Lausanne himself, the father finally succeeded in September 2025 in having his daughter officially reported to Fedpol and Interpol. Thanks to this international alert, he can now file a criminal complaint against the grandmother and continue his efforts to recover his daughter before it is too late.