Maria Jose Carrascosa has been held in a New Jersey jail for three years for refusing to bring her daughter Victoria back from Spain, where the girl lives with Carrascosa's parents.

A U.S. court previously granted Carrascosa's ex-husband, Peter Innes, sole custody of their daughter, while Carrascosa has an order from a Spanish court that the girl remain in Spain until she's 18.

The 9-year-old still lives with her grandparents in Spain, and has not seen either parent in years.

"I have mixed emotions about the jury's verdict in this trial," Innes said Thursday in a written statement. "While I feel vindicated of the heinous allegations made against me through this entire process, it saddens me to think that yet even more time will pass that Victoria will not have either of her parents in her life."

A message left for Carrascosa's attorney, Scott Finchenauer, was not immediately returned. Carrascosa faces up to 10 years in prison when sentenced in December.

Innes says the couple, who once lived together in New Jersey, signed an agreement when they separated that neither of them would take their daughter out of the country. But in January 2005 Carrascosa took her daughter to Spain, where she obtained her own court order, which said the girl should remain in that country.

U.S. State Department officials, judges from the New Jersey county where Carrascosa is incarcerated, and Spanish authorities traveled earlier this year to The Hague to mediate a solution. The results were not made public but Innes' attorney, Peter Van Aulen, said judges from both Spain and the U.S. recommended a joint legal custody arrangement that Carrascosa rejected.

"It's a shame, it should have never happened," Van Aulen said of the lengthy custody battle. "There's a child in Spain without a father or mother."

Both parties have spent huge sums entangled in the case, Van Aulen said, though he declined to specify a dollar amount.