How many men could be primary carers for 4 kids or would want to be?
So because you hold the opinion, the father has no rights to his own children? My dh has admitted that he couldn?t be a SAH parent, that doesn?t mean I have the right to relocate with kids by lying to him!
And she did have a life there, choosing to move there when she was 16!
so you don't think it woudl have been 'unsettling' at all for 4 girls of that age to lose their established home, school, friends, etc?
What about the established lives they had in Italy? Where they were BORN & RAISED? The friends, the family etc? That their mother tore them from in the first place? They have been here 2 yrs. So the youngest had 7yrs in Italy & the oldest 13. Does that not count for anything?
The thing is this was never about custody. They had arrangements in Italy & if there were any issues, they should have sorted them out there; in fact I believe they were in the midst of a custody battle already. This is all about the fact that the mother kidnapped her children. They were returned so the courts in Italy can continue to decide what is best. The girls can?t be heard out here. They need to be in Italy to speak to authorities there. Australia cannot interfere with proceedings already underway in another country.
It did make me wonder of Austrialian police ( I know they weren't police) and such like often brutalise children?
Yes, of course they do. The police are often seen beating children in the streets. 
What a stupid thing to say! They had a job to do. The mother made it so the girls wouldn?t go peacefully.
I think it would be terrible precedent to grant success to the strategy of abducting a child, taking them to a distant country and poisoning them against the other parent (assuming that's what happened; obviously I don't know all the facts)
That is pretty much what the authorities are saying happened.
They just know that the system, the police, their father has forced them to do something they didn't want to do The reality being, is that their MOTHER has actually forced this upon them. No one else.
dallas re the money,
As to this point, I note that solicitors acting for the mother previously informed the State Central Authority in September last year, whilst reserving her rights to appeal against the return order, that the mother would return with the children and requested the payment of the AUD$8,000 by the father, which the father made available from here
It is no secret that the mother is saying she can?t return
Read the whole of that document, it is interesting reading when it states that one of the girls was saying how nice Italy was, just last year. Yet now, just over a year later, she hates it so much!
The fact that the youngest child could go from stating in May last year [2011] that she wanted to go home to Italy to her home in the Tuscan countryside to now asserting that ?Italy?s a scary place. I don?t feel comfortable?
Before I made the return order last year, .. that they had all indicated they would accept returning to Italy if their mother accompanied them
Of note though, was that expert?s report that the youngest child had stated a preference for returning home to Italy to live because she liked the place where they lived in the Tuscan countryside and the activities she used to do with her father and friends. Quite remarkably, in my view, she did not repeat that same preference to the Family Consultant when interviewed only a few weeks later, after the mother had the report of the psychologist in her possession
the efforts of their mother, and other members of the mother?s extended family, to keep them in Australia, notwithstanding the decisions of the Court, have had a significant emotional impact upon the children
The very public nature of the campaign has been very disturbing. I am satisfied that they have definitely not been shielded from the dispute and have clearly, I find, been significantly influenced in their views and their conduct by their mother and other members of her family.