International Child Abduction
Hidden Girls’ Great-Grandmother Ready For Jail
The great-grandmother of four sisters at the centre of a bitter international custody dispute says she would rather end up in jail than reveal their whereabouts.
A Brisbane judge on Wednesday ordered the girls’ grandmother, great-grandmother and aunt to attend court on Friday to answer questions under oath about where the girls are hiding.
The girls disappeared earlier this week to avoid being returned to Italy to live with their father.
Their great-grandmother, who is hiding them, says no-one knows where she and the children are and she would not front court on Friday.
“If the judge throws me in jail, I’ll live with it,” she told the Seven Network.
“I have no respect whatsoever for the justice system.
Abusive Father or Parental Alienation?
Editor: Please treat the below article with a grain of salt. In my opinion this is a clear case of parental alienation, vilifying the father in the children’s eyes just so the mother can secure full custody. I find it extraordinary that the Family Court and the Department of Communities and Child Safety would force children into the custody of a genuinely abusive father. It would have been great for the Courier Mail to have exercised balanced reporting rather than falling for the same old tired stigma of the bad father wanted contact with his children just so he can abuse them. This is another example of the entrenched anti-father bias in the mainstream media in this country. This story below is so unbalanced and in my opinion, deceitful, that it would leave the likes of Caroline Overington and Adele Horin utterly green with envy.
FOUR Sunshine Coast sisters in hiding with their 70-year-old great-grandmother to avoid flying to Italy with an abusive and mentally unstable father have written emotional letters begging their dad to leave them alone.
But the father, his lawyers, the Family Court, and the state Department of Communities and Child Safety show no signs of backing down and are using police to hunt the girls.
FREE legal assistance for parents of abducted children
FREE legal assistance will be available to parents who are dealing with the abduction of a child from Australia.
The federal government has reached an agreement for new funding with the International Social Services (ISS) to provide the new service.
ISS already provides counselling and mediation services which are funded by the Attorney-General’s Department.
Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said the service is designed to provide practical support to parents in distressing circumstances.
“We want to make it as straightforward as possible for parents to get the assistance they need when dealing with the abduction of their children from Australia,” Ms Roxon said in a statement.
Three-year journey ends after abducted boy and his mother caught and sent home
A BRITISH mother abducted her six-year-old son and spent three years country-hopping through Asia before settling in Melbourne, where she was finally taken to court and ordered to return home.
According to a Family Court judgment published this month, the mother and father of the boy were in the midst of a custody dispute when the mother said she was taking their son on a two-week trip to the Philippines to visit his sick grandmother. They never returned.
A court order seeking information about the trip went unanswered and, several months later, an English judge found that the child – referred to in court documents as ”B” – had been unlawfully removed.
