4 sisters returned to Italian father after their Australian Mum took them to Australia.....dragged kicking and screaming onto the plane.

[AmberLeaf]

Apparently the girls aged between 9-15 are dual citizens.

Link sorry its the DM.

Do they not take the childs view into account in Australia?

on criminal charges, I'm also guessing that if the father dropped them, the authorities would not have much stomach to pursue the mother without a victim who is complaining of the crime.

but that's just an educated guess about how prosecutors tend to handle things like this. I can't imagine Italy would be that different. why waste public resources if no one is complaining about the crime? this is not a murder charge.

Didnt the judge say he didnt think the father was being entirely truthful but had to allow their return anyway?

I don't know, I suppose its easy to cite abuse but its equally easy to cite parental alienation too.

Of course a person can make a new allegation.

redsilk I'm sure I read they were being given to the Italian authorities until a custody hearing is in place.
It may also be because of the girls reaction to being taken back to Italy means its best for now that they aren't immediately handed over until they have calmed down. They may be feeling hostile to towards their family at he moment hence why it's not in their best interest to see them at the moment.

I agree I can completely understand why they would both be suicidal after loosing a child this shouldn't be used as evidence against either of them.

amber it was said both parents were suicidal after the death of one of their child. This was used as a reason by the Austrilain embassy to help the mother go back home because she needed family support and the children were best placed with her. Unfortunatly the didn't have the power to decide this and are partly to blame for the legal mess.

Linerunner, of course the father can make a new allegation, but for what if the mum is in Australia and he already dropped the charge of parental kidnapping? (by the way, this is not treated as a major crime, or even a crime at all, in some countries, famously Russia for one).

AmberLeaf, I don't recall news reports of the judge saying this. Under the Hague convention, the judge had the authority to order the children to remain in Australia if there was evidence they would be in danger if returned to Italy. so I doubt the judge said anything like this.

as I said before, when I first started following this case I was 100% behind the mum. but now after the evidence came out at the trial last week and after her horrendous behavior towards her girls, I've started looking more into this and feel completely conned and burned. I don't like being fooled.

I'm really only focusing on the way the girls were treated by the Australian authorities. Bloody awful.

LittleBairn, the Italian articles posted earlier said nothing about the authorities taking the girls. they said only that they were being returned to the father. I do not recall any mention of social services or other authorities being involved. as I said, taking children from both parents requires a court order after finding of unsuitability. but here both parents still have custody, so could not have happened.

I think you might be confusing the fact that the dad went back to Italy after last week's hearing, and the Italian embassy was sending someone to accompany the children on the flight. that makes sense to me. but they are delivering the children to their father, which is what the Hague convention requires.

your idea is not a bad one, although I think it would require a great deal more cooperation between governments for there to be an intervening "cooling off" period when the children are returned. unfortunately, the Hague just says return them to the country from which they were abducted and says nothing about custody.

red it was an Aussie artical that said they were going to be with the Italian authorities and that there was still to be a hearing, nothing has been permantly decided.

Redsilk

The father had insisted in court battles that the children should be returned to Italy under the provisions of the Hague Convention, an international treaty against child abduction

Justice Colin Forrest found in the Australian Family Court last year that while he did not absolutely accept ?the truthfulness of all of the evidence deposed to by the father he was satisfied the father did not consent to the children?s relocation

LB, AL, ok... now I understand. I thought the reference was to the accusations against the dad. I remember this now and it makes sense. the judge had to establish whether the dad had consented for them to remain in Australia. that's a defense under the Hague. sounded like the judge said he didn't believe everything the dad said about their going to Australia, but ultimately accepted that he never intended his daughters would move to Australia.

I also had questions about whether the father might have consented at one point to their remaining. his offer to share custody and let the kids stay in Australia with periodic visits in Italy, after the mum had kidnapped the kids and was already in Australia, might have been taken as consent.

I am late getting home to get dinner on after obsessing about this case all day and getting no work done. thank you everyone of an enjoyable procrastination.

as for what will happen next, I will Google the Australian and Italian press by the middle of next week. the Italian papers are reporting the mother's name as Laura Garrett, which makes it easy to find articles if you Google in Italian (google.it)

my prediction: kids will be with dad and are fine; mom will announce plans to bring her fight to Italy.

and I'll dream of being one of the kidnapped girls myself. I think we'll have spaghetti for dinner tonight. does that count as Tuscan?

I guess, Redsilk, it'll all come out in the wash, as they say. (Not your dinner, the outcome of this case.)

But did the Australian police really have to be so heavy-handed?

(And yes, I have also campaigned in the UK over similar issues here with asylum seeking minors.)

For the first time ever, I agree with Niceguy2.

But there are allegations of violence and abuse, not just towards the mother but to the children too.

If someone came on Mumsnet and said their husband was abusive towards then and had hurt their children what would posters say?

They would say 'GET OUT NOW......CALL WOMENS AID and if you don't you are allowing your children to be abused'

If this mother was a Mumsnetter and lived in the UK she could have fled the home and would have had advice and support from fellow Mumsnetters wouldn't she?

Why is this case different? is it because we can see/hear the fightback from the other parents side?

I find it hard to believe how many people are sympathetic to the mother here.

She took them from their father and the only home they have ever known. She refused to let their father see them, she refused to let them return to visit their wider family, she alienated them from their previous life, she disobeyed court orders and took them "into hiding", she refused to return them, and then when the final order was made instead of sitting them down and saying "ok, you have to go back, I will go with you and we will work this out" she allowed them to get really upset, told them they would never see them again, and rather than behaving like an adult had hysterics and collapsed .

Surely there was a better way to sort this out.

I also agree with NiceGuy2, and if my dh did to me and my children what this woman has done I would fight tooth and claw (and support them being taken by force, if necessary).

And I might believe the allegations of abuse if they had come before the abduction

The vast majority of allegations of abuse are to be believed, sadly. But those that suddenly appear in the middle of a custody battle, when the parent who is making them looks as though they are going to lose, always seem a tad suspicious to me.

not nice footage of the girls being dragged off but agree that the mother shouldn't have done what she did. And as one half of an international couple with Italian DP and DS living in Italy just would like to make the point that the place they appear to live in is a few km outside Florence, a sophisticated, cultural city and is not somewhere out of a Dolmio advert! My experience of Italian small communities has only shown me that small communities are very similar all over. To the extent I spent one car journey back from visiting some of DPs family in a small mountain village matching everyone I had met with their doppelgangers in the small, mining village in the UK I have family from. Same outlooks and characteristics, just different language (and weather).

The man could be and is alegedlly abusive.
Of course a woman would go into hiding over this.

I feel sorry for the girls, no matter the rights or wrongs they did not want to go.
The screaming and crying sounded like that of someone truly scared.

If this man was violent, what else was the mother to do.

And I might believe the allegations of abuse if they had come before the abduction

But they did.

Sorry, I should have said before the custody battle.

When did the mother allege abuse? And was there any proof, any police reports, anything at all? Not all fathers are abusive.

Not sure M,ary but it would seem at least at the time she left Italy.

was there any proof, any police reports, anything at all? Not all fathers are abusive

I know not all fathers are abusive!

You should know that not all abuse will be reported too.

I have no idea as to what/if anything was reported in this case.

I just think there has to be some rule about intercountry marriage breakups.

Hague originally came in to stop fathers taking children away to another country, and to give the mother the right to have the case heard in the children's country of residence. It may not be perfect, but if you let some parents take their children thousands of miles away and effectively hide them from the parent left behind, then where do you stop?

These cases have to be heard somewhere. It can't be left to whichever parent has the resources to hide the children from the other parent for long enough for that to become the status quo. That would lead to many children being taken and hidden.

I still think that if the father had taken four children away from their mother, stopped contact, refused to return them, and effectively alienated them from her there would be much more uproar against him.

The bottom line here is that what she did was illegal. She knew it, she did it anyway. This mess is of her making. I'm sure this wasn't the first court decision. She's been given multiple chances to do the right thing and she's refused each time.

Abuse? Not seen any articles about what has allegedly happened. But if there was then it's also a matter for Italian courts. They will listen to BOTH sides and weigh up the evidence available.

Let's assume for a moment he was abusive. I'm not so sure but let's assume he was. That does not give her the right to also do something illegal.

What she's done now is weaken her own case. What court is going to now award custody to her? She's already shown she doesn't care about the law. Or lying. Or secretly moving abroad and alienating the kids. And she's not even going to be in Italy to put her case across.

Dad has already given an undertaking to drop criminal case. If he did pursue criminal charges then he would be shooting himself in both feet in the eyes of his kids. He needs to rebuild trust and showing them he's not the ogre their mum has painted him to be. Putting their mum in prison isn't exactly going to help his cause is it?

The kids are the real losers here and it's all mum's fault.

Did the Australian need to be visibly armed when dealing with these distressed children? Is that actually compulsory in Australia?

Australian police sorry typo