It is a trauma that is usually invisible to all but the few involved. But when it occasionally surfaces in the news, it strikes a deep and disturbing chord. One parent in a breakup disappearing with the child or children while the other suddenly empty begins a desperate search. The statistics appear to show abductions-by-parents account for more at least a third of all cases of missing children in Canada. And sometimes as in the case that hit the headlines this month, the search can drag on for years. Today, we look at the fallout, the ripple-effect and the emotion that lingers.

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Part One of The Current

Satire

It's Wednesday, December 7th.

The city of Gatineau, Quebec is taking heat for issuing a manual warning new immigrants that bribing officials is forbidden.

Unless of course, the officials work in construction.

This is The Current.

Parental Abduction - Murray Wood

Joe Chisholm last saw his daughter when she was just a year old. He'll never get to see her grow up -- because she already has. Police arrested the woman who allegedly abducted her last week in Victoria. At the time of her arrest, she was working in communications for the BC government.

Murray Wood also knows the agony of abduction. His ex-wife took their son and daughter to visit family in Japan in 2004. She never returned, despite a Canadian court order giving him sole custody. We first heard from Murray Wood in 2006 and he joined us again this morning in Vancouver.

Parental Abduction - Amanda Pick

The Missing Children Society of Canada says it worked on 231 cases of missing children between March of 2010 and March of 2011, and that 75 of those -- about a third -- involved parental abduction. The RCMP's most recent published numbers on the subject are from 2003, and they show that more than half of the missing child cases it handled were parental abductions.

Amanda Pick is the Executive Director of The Missing Children Society of Canada. She has been working with Joe Chisholm, whose daughter was abducted by her mother nearly two decades ago. Amanda Pick was in Calgary.

Other segments from today's show:

• Niall Ferguson: The West and the Rest
• Chevron oil spills in Latin America as game-changing