Almost a decade ago, Andrea Gutwirth's ex-husband took their two sons on a Christmas holiday to Argentina. She had no concerns on their departure in late 1996 - but the outcome tore her world apart. A few days before they were to return she received a phone call from her ex-husband saying he was keeping her children, then 12 and 14. A few days later she received a fax from her sons, saying they wanted to stay with their father - a document she believed was engineered by their father.
The shock overwhelmed Ms Gutwirth, who spent the night in hospital. What followed was a drawn-out, desperate struggle over many years to try to win her sons back. Her goal was to have them returned to Hong Kong, where a local court had ruled before the holiday that she was entitled to legal custody.
In her quest, she travelled first to Argentina where over a period of months she appeared on chat shows, worked closely with embassies and consulates, and with the help of the South American media tracked down her boys.
But she was still unable to force their father to hand over her sons and she returned to Hong Kong a broken-hearted woman, with two equally distraught teenage daughters. She had failed to see her two boys in Argentina and it was not until 2003 that she and her children were reunited in a visit to Australia, where Hendrik and Alexander had been living for several years.
The four adult children now live in Australia and Ms Gutwirth visits them on a regular basis.
But the strain of those years is something Ms Gutwirth will never forget and she now uses the difficult lessons she learned about her own fractured family and turbulent emotions to help thousands of other women who find themselves in similarly harrowing crises.