Another heart-breaking story about tug-of-love children, this time from Australia.
It seems to me, from what I’ve read, that the mother should have sorted things out as soon as she took the children to Australia and decided to keep them there. I’m sure the father would have objected, but being forced to return the girls to Italy after a fortnight’s holiday would have been less traumatic for them and then discussions could have been started between the parents. Acrimonious discussions perhaps. But to subject the children to this – hiding out at granny’s and being forcibly removed by the police – is cruel. The judge would have had no option, under the law, but to order the return of the children to Italy. The mother must have known she was breaking the law, but did she stop to think about the consequences for her children?
Boadicea's Chariot 
Obviously the girls cannot know their own minds since they are all under the age of 16. So what they want is irrelevant. It is what the law says that matters and the law says they must return home to their father in Italy . The mother was clearly wrong to have abducted the children and she should be locked up and placed on an offenders list to ensure that she does not work with children again. Simple really.
A bit harsh to say the girls cannot know their own minds, Sipu. What they want should not be irrelevant, but not having seen Italy or their father for two years is going to have altered their perceptions.
Good evening Sheona.
The thing about the ‘law’, of course, is that it has to deal with so many different sets of circumstances and does so in so many different ways This particular case has very little in common with the case of Megan Stammers to which, I suspect, Sipu is alluding.
Jeremy Forrest abducted a minor without the consent of her parents and is clearly open to criminal prosecution.
The parents of the four sisters separated in 2007 and a family court in Italy awarded them joint custody.at that time.
In 2010, the mother, Laura Garrett, took the girls to Australia for a holiday without the consent of the father, Tomasso Vincenti. He applied to have them returned to Italy and the Australian family court ordered that return as it was bound to do.
The reason why they have to go back is that such cases are covered by the Hague Convention on the International Abduction of Children to which both Italy and Australia are signatories. They are not going back to be with their father as opposed to their mother, They are going back so that the original court which dealt with custody can review and, if necessary, vary the custody arrangements. I am absolutely certain that the wishes of the children will be taken into account at every stage of the process and strongly suspect that they will end up in Oz.
I am equally certain that the mother will not be locked up. The Hague Convention is governed by International Private Law.
Quite proud about finding my Italian source material, by the way. Googled ‘quattro sorelle l’Australia e l’Italia’ and up it came. Interested to see that Italian papers are quite free to publish names in a way that is forbidden both here and in Australia.
http://www.gonews.it/articolo_147927_Quattro-sorelle-contese-lItalia-lAustralia-lAlta-Corte-dice-allappello.html
Sheona, I was being mischievous and was alluding to parallels that may exist elsewhere. Megan Stammers was only 15 and was deemed too young to know her own mind. The teacher ‘abducted’ her despite the fact that she clearly went willingly.
Then of course there is the thorny issue of the law which must be obeyed, even in the face of common sense.
Ah, I see that Mr Mackie has read me like the open book I am!
It well may be the legally correct solution but I suspect the father will rue the day he ever did it!
Quite amusing really to anticipate exactly how those girls will make his life an absolute misery.
Rather reminds me of 2nd incumbent’s attempt to drag me into court as an unfit mother out of spite. The boy who was 12 and not party to the lawsuit insisted in turning up from boarding school. When the judge was hearing claptrap from the ex, the boy insisted on being heard and persisted until he was heard. The judge went off into chambers with him for a good half hour and came back and threw the whole thing out of court. The boy neither forgave or forgot the whole incident till the day he died. He refused to see his father for years because of it. His father refused to pay maintenance in an effort to get visitation, the boy wouldn’t relent and I never bothered to apply for it, didn’t need it.
It ended up with the father having a guilt complex about not supporting his son, giving the boy a car when he was 18, which he wrecked quite deliberately and carried on wrecking every car his father gave him. He kept them 12/18 months or so and then wrecked them. When I tackled him on the subject he solemnly assured me he tallied the values and would stop when he judged he had had the value of 6 years maintenance!
His father never worked it out! Just thought the boy was drunk, ( he was virtually teatotal as an adult!)
Amusingly the boy was an excellent driver and never put so much as a scratch on my cars.
It was my big threat when he misbehaved, “I’ll send you to live with your father!”
I did once for three weeks when he was 15, found the little sod installing optics of vodka and gin in his bedroom!!! Told not to come home at all, ever, unless he could behave as a civilized human being. He returned for the first day of school and not another word was ever said on the subject. Sometimes silence is the best policy! He never went back to stay voluntarily.
Teenage children who are thwarted can wreak unimaginable havoc when not consulted I rather pity this Italian, wouldn’t be in his shoes for all the tea in China! Actually, I cannot imagine why people do not consider this kind of problem before they marry foreigners or those of differing religions. Personally I think the courts should be made to listen to the children, especially those of secondary school age, it would save a lot of unhappiness and hassle.
JM whilst 3 is the correct legal route, it doesn’t take into account the effect that such trauma will have upon the children, especially the younger ones. It would have been far more kind to them to have the case moved to Australia. The father rather deserves everything he is going to get for being so insensitive to his children.
So the girls were between the ages of 7 & 13 when they were ‘abducted’
Two years later they don’t want to leave their new ‘home’
I can understand that, however, as a father (this one has joint custody) I’d like to be with them (as I assume he would) and contribute to their upbringing.
After two years of brainwashing by mummy and granny I’m not surprised that the children are traumatized but in this case the law is absolutely correct.
6 months in Italy and 6 months wherever the mother decides to call home seems fair to me.
CO, please assume, for the sake of argument, that this had been a marriage between an Italian and a Pakistani and that the girls had been taken to Pakistan? For the avoidance of doubt, Pakistan is a non-member contracting state for the Hague Convention involved.and bound by it. Would you be so ready to argue that the girls should have their case determined in Pakistan to avoid possible trauma?
The whole point of the Hague Convention for me is that it seeks to avoid the possibility of legal jurisdictions squabbling over the custody of children. A simple rule – the country that first determines custody remains the legal jurisdiction to determine any variation thereof unless and until all parties concerned agree to vary that jurisdiction.
Works for me and I still maintain that the girls will, in due course, end up where they want to be and with their mother. I hope that they find their way back to their father in time and if he deserves it.
JM I take your point!
However, yr para 3,
‘unless and until all parties concerned agree to vary that jurisdiction.’
It is unfortunate that the adult could not be sufficiently adult to see this and avoid the ensuing trauma and public display. He/she/both will repent it all at leisure. He would have been much wiser to have spent his money, not on lawyers but on a ticket for himself to visit the children in Australia. All he has done is alienate his children probably for good. I’m afraid I have never understood this need for grown adults to exact revenge on their ex partners through the medium of their children, utterly despicable. It amazes me that anyone else would touch them subsequently with a barge pole seeing their true natures.
I used to insist that the boy dealt with his father directly on the telephone, I had no intention of refusing access, however I could not make my son visit him and he had to tell him so himself. I don’t like cowardice, lies, evasions and hiding behind others, one must learn to do one’s own dirty work and not lurk behind smokescreens and the law. If people were a little more honest and upfront with each other half these dreadful fracas would never get off the ground.
This whole incident is contemptible from start to finish as is the Frog fracas with the idiot schoolgirl, all down to bad parenting. They ought to be made to have licences to breed!
Afterthough- Who has the bad taste to marry an Italian anyway? A weekend affair maybe but marry it?
Bound to end in tears with all that fattening pasta!
Thank you, JM, for the legal view and the Italian link. There was no suggestion that the children were unhappy in Italy, though mother may have been. Taking the girls to Australia for “a holiday” without paternal consent put mother in the wrong immediately. Two years in Australia, with, as Soutie suggests, brainwashing from mum and granny is despicable. It may be that time in Italy will change their minds eventually. But, as far as I can see, the blame is mother’s, but the damage is to the children. Perhaps the moral should be, Christina, don’t marry an Aussie.
🙂
Seeing as how I have an Italian brother-in-law of whom I am very fond, if it came to a choice, I would have to side with you Sheona.
Australian Family Law does take into account the wishes of the children. Initially, the fact that the mother had taken and kept the children ‘illegally’ was not widely broadcast – so my sympathies were with both the mother and the children.
However, having a close friend who, in good faith, allowed his daughter to visit her mother in South Africa, only to find that the mother refused to return the daughter – this particular mother has lost my support.
Like Christina, I find parents who use their children as weapons in divorce conflicts to be utterly despicable.
My father took my brother when he was eleven – he’s ten years my junior. He was not allowed to see either his mother or me and he was given a completely distorted picture of our mother .
I finally broke the barrier after 25 years, but the relationship with my father was destroyed and the relationship with my brother is not particularly deep – those missing years can never be replaced. My brother has not seen his mother since and it is now too late, since she came to terms with the situation many years ago and is unwilling, at her age,to re-open old wounds.
The desire for what I see as petty revenge, has long lasting and wide-spread effects.
The truly poignant sequel to this tale is that my brother, like me, left school and returned to university at 25. He got a first in medieval history and is also a teacher….
Boa, what a sad story. I have been lucky inasmuchas my daughters’ mother seems never to have ‘bad-mouthed’ me, so I can continue to have normal relationships with them.
I tried to ensure that both my daughters saw their father – the solicitor thought I was quite mad when I insisted on extending his visiting hours! That he chose eventually to ‘disappear’ was sad for them – although I have to admit, it was a great deal easier for me and I honestly believe that, in the long term, it was better for them. But, I would never have deliberately set out to stop him seeing them.
This is another one of those cases where breaking a law leads to nasty consequences. However harrowing the scenes on the airport tarmac, the fault surely lies with the mother in this instance.
Family break-ups are tough on everybody, the children most of all and my ex and I were careful to involve the children, young as they were, in as much of the decision making as possible. My son chose to accompany me to England, while the two daughters stayed in Cyprus, though one changed her mind after a bit, though both children living with me in England spent most school holidays with their mother. Doing the best you can is how it should work, isn’t it?
Anything Oz can do Brits can do better. (or at least as well.)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9615450/Mother-missing-with-her-four-children-has-been-arrested.html