Quets judge denies release request

U.S. District Court Judge Louise Flanagan today denied a request from Allison Quets, accused of kidnapping the twins she gave up for adoption, to be released from jail pending trial.

Quets, who is accused of fleeing with the twins, Holly and Tyler, to Canada in December, is charged with international parental kidnapping. A week after the twins were taken, Quets was arrested in Ontario and the twins were reunited with their adoptive parents, Kevin and Denise Needham of Apex.

Last month, a federal magistrate ordered Quets detained.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Bowler appears to have taken issue with Quets' lawyers' depiction of what happened after her last detention hearing. Her Wilmington lawyer, Dennis Sullivan, told reporters: "Allison has struggled and fought for her children for a year and a half."

In the court filing, Bowler responded: "It seems clear that the defendant remains obsessed with regaining control of the children regardless of the rule of law -- or the best interests of the children."

Bowler also countered the defense's contention that the prosecution's evidence came solely from the Needhams. Bowler said an FBI agent's testimony in the previous detention hearing was based on a Florida court order granting custody to the Needhams' cell phone records, travel records, financial records, Quets' e-mails and interviews with others beyond the Needhams.

The prosecutor says Quets plotted for months to flee to Canada with the twins by securing passports for the children, trying to gain their medical records, taking the girl to Canada once before, contacting a Canadian immigration lawyer and talking with friends about which countries did not allow extradition.

"The defendant coolly and in a calculated fashion planned this abduction months in advance," Bowler wrote. "She appears to have even conducted a trial run three weeks earlier. She clearly had no intention of returning.... She did all of this in direct contravention of an explicit court order well known to her. She poses both a serious risk of flight and a danger to the community in the persons of the twins and the adoptive parents."

That depiction is vastly different from how Quets' friends describe her -- as a woman who felt frustrated with the Florida courts over her inability to regain custody of the children she had through in-vitro fertilization.

Quets' friends say she was pressured by a close friend to agree to an open adoption with the Needhams when she was in a weakened state after a difficult pregnancy. They say she soon changed her mind and has been trying to regain custody through the courts.

The Needhams dispute that account and have repeatedly declined to comment about the court battle.