Associated Press
KENNEWICK — A Benton City woman says she took her two daughters from a previous marriage and fled California five years ago to protect the girls from their father.
"I did what I knew in my heart was right — the only thing I had left to do," Annette Seddon said in a telephone interview from the Benton County jail.
Seddon and her husband, Steve, agreed Monday not to fight extradition to San Bernardino County, Calif., where they face possible charges of child abduction. Each is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail.
The Seddons were arrested earlier this month after Steve Seddon was stopped for a possible traffic violation.
He said the couple never tried to keep the father, Michael Bonifazi, from the two girls, Ciara and Cortney. They just wanted the visits supervised.
The Seddons have accused Bonifazi of abusing his daughters, but deputy district attorney John Watterson of San Bernardino County said there has been no evidence of abuse and Bonifazi has never been charged.
Bonifazi, of Yucca Valley, Calif., said he was convicted of sex with a minor in 1989 when he was 24 and had a relationship with a 17-year-old girl. He was married to Annette at the time.
"It may have been a stupid thing to do," Bonifazi said. "But it doesn’t mean I’m a child molester."
Annette and Michael Bonifazi divorced in 1992.
"They were back and forth in a longstanding custody battle from 1992 to 1997," said Bruce Granlund, an investigator for the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office.
When the courts allowed Bonifazi unsupervised visits with the girls, the Seddons decided to run.
"We lost our appeal," Steve Seddon said. "We had no other choice."
In December 1997, the Seddons took Ciara, then 9, and Cortney, 6, along with daughter Alison Seddon, 4, and 16-year-old Ernie, Annette Seddon’s son from another marriage, and left for Plains, Mont.
Granlund said he found Ernie, who by then had turned 18, in Plains in 1999. But the Seddons and the three girls were on their way to Eastern Washington. In Benton City, they built new lives with new names — Mark and Debbie Davis.
Steve Seddon got a job at an auto parts store and Annette Seddon stayed home with the girls, whom she home-schooled. They tried to live a normal life and not dwell on the past.
"We didn’t really talk about it," Annette Seddon said.
The most difficult part of hiding was lying to everyone about who they were.
"Yes, I lied," she said. "But it was imperative to our safety and well-being."
Ciara, now 14, and Cortney, 10, were returned to California for a reunion with their father.
Alison, now 8, is being cared for by her grandmother, Marguerite Galaski, Annette Seddon’s mother.
Annette Seddon said she wonders how her daughters are faring in California. "I’m just hanging out here wondering what is going on," she said. "It’s very difficult."
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