IT MUST be among the most heart-rending moments in any parent's life. A broken relationship, loved ones torn apart, with children caught in a tussle for custody, leaving one parent with the occasional right to visit his or her child.

Emotions turn to despair and often, in a moment of madness, that person steals the very child they love from the home where the courts believe they are best placed.

For the parent left behind there is an agonising wait for the child to return from visiting their ex-partner. The minutes draw to hours, the hours to days and, in some cases, the days to years as the 'visit' turns into abduction.

For Susan Dhanjee, and nearly 1,000 other parents each year whose lives are destroyed by child abduction, it is a recurring nightmare.

Waking each day to the desolation, emptiness and soul-searching; knowing your child is in a foreign country. But not knowing where.

Susan was well aware her husband of seven years was a danger. She knew what he was capable of.

Viral Vadilal Dhanjee, from the Seychelles, was a ticking timebomb, scheming and plotting a foolproof plan to drag his son, Milun, away from his home in Staithes, North Yorkshire, to a foreign world, a foreign life - a world without his friends, his toys and, most of all, his loving mother.

It was not the first time Viral had tried. He had smuggled Milun aboard a flight from Gatwick Airport in December 1998 until police tracked him down.

But August 1999 was a different matter. A High Court tug of love gave Milun, then eight, to his mother, leaving Viral with a week's visiting rights.

Despite vociferous pleas for the authorities to recognise her husband's single-minded intent to steal his son, Susan's appeals fell on deaf ears.

"I wasn't happy at all," she says, with desperation in her voice. "I knew exactly what was going to happen. But nobody was taking any notice. I phoned the police, the courts, solicitors' offices.

"I knew what he was like but there was nothing I could do to stop it. They told me they would put me in jail if I tried anything."

Susan hired a car and drove around North and West Yorkshire trying to track her husband's every move but eventually lost him.

On August 25 last year she saw her son for the last time. Where he is now, she knows not.

On the verge of tears, she says: "You are just in complete shock. I was honestly expecting to get him back within days. I never expected it to go on as long as this.

"I wake up feeling Milun is not near me. You see all his toys and everything lying around, it is just terrible. To a mother there is nothing worse."

Not surprisingly, she is angry at the hurt her ex-husband has inflicted on her and the upheaval on her son.

"I will never forgive him for what he has done - not to me, but to Milun.

"He is just a horrible, selfish, unbelievable person to have done this."

He was not a nice man, according to his wife. Manipulative, devious and prepared to do anything to get his own way, Viral Dhanjee wove such a deceptive abduction plan that police and Interpol are still following shadows.

Susan is not alone.

Thirty per cent of British abductees are still in the hands of their captors, according to the chairman of Reunite, the national charity for missing persons.

Anne-Marie Hutchinson says: "They say it is worse than a bereavement. It is very, very difficult to deal with. If you know where they are, even if they are in another country, you could at least comfort yourself knowing what they are doing.

"For Susan, she doesn't even have that comfort."

Reunite was set up in 1985 to deal with the problem of child abduction. Ms Hutchinson says: "At that stage, although it happened, it was a fairly ignored concept."

Funding from the Foreign Office and the Lord Chancellor's department helps the organisation deal with hundreds of court battles each year to return children to their rightful homes.

Parental abductors fall into three categories, according to Ms Hutchinson.

Mothers tend to snatch children when they run home after a relationship breakdown; cross-cultural marriages are prolific catalysts for abduction and others do it to be "blatantly vindictive".

Susan's case is less common than others. She lived with Milun in the seaside haven of Staithes on the North Yorkshire coast. The majority come from the deprived inner city areas, or large ethnic minority communities such as Bradford .

A website, www.missingkids.co.uk, has been established giving police an opportunity to highlight cases of abduction and runaways.

The list includes the names of 11 abducted children, many from London, who police are desperate to trace. For each smiling face on the site, there are dozens more who disappear.

To witness Milun Dhanjee's picture - ruffled black hair, big smiling brown eyes and a grin that radiates youthful innocence - is to question why a father could wrench him from his home environment.

From her isolated farmhouse, Susan spends almost every waking moment trying to track her son down through the Internet.

She has developed a network of contacts which she hopes will one day lead her to Milun.

It is the only way she can cope with her loss, for she still recalls the happy youngster who blossomed in a safe environment.

"He absolutely adored it here," she says: "He was unbelievably settled and he will be devastated to be taken somewhere where he knows nobody."

Reunite encourages parents to take an active hand in the search for a missing child.

"I am all for them being very proactive and doing stuff for themselves," Ms Hutchinson says.

And they must always cling to the hope that one day their child will return safely. In Milun's case it is a conviction that she also holds.

"Milun will return. It is just a matter of when. He (Mr Dhanjee) cannot stay away forever," she says.

The main fear is for Milun's happiness. Susan, and countless parents in her situation, cannot rest for the feeling of helplessness.

She worries that her husband will have brainwashed her child against her. "I do not know how he will be feeling. I only know his head will be full of lies about me not wanting him, not phoning him, not coming to find him."

Despite being brought up in the Seychelles, Milun cannot speak the dominant language, French Creole. For him there is only English.

At his school in Staithes, the children, one year on, still ask Susan: "Where is Milun? When is he coming back?" Two questions that pierce the heart - two questions that perpetually spin through her mind each and every day.