The Australian "custody sisters"

[smartcooky]

We know the mother kidnapped the children and took them to a foreign country in an effort to avoid a proper legal custody hearing and deny the father the right to see his children, and then dragged out the inevitable for over 2 years and made a media circus of the whole affair. We know Australian courts also found the mothers behavior was atrocious. We know the mother hasn't made any sort of allegations of impropriety against the father.

We know this how? An absence of media reporting?

Well guess what sonny, we didn't know about Jimmy Savile's dirty little secret, until it became public... and it had been going on for over 40 years!

Just because you don't know something, or it hasn't been reported in the media doesn't mean it hasn't happened?

Unfit because of kidnapping.

That's not hard to grasp, is it?

No, its not not hard to grasp, but without knowing the family circumstances, we should not even be attempting to make judgements about the fitness of the mother. No-one on this forum knows the detailed circumstances of this family, and if they claim they do, then they are lying!

Making your children safe from harm might include having to remove them from the person harming them, and that might include kidnapping them. You do what you have to do!

If you are just going to make **** up from whole cloth could you at least make it more entertaining. I'm sure if you PM TM he can set you up with a plot, props, or at least a setting, that adds something to the conversation. This mundane "daddy may be molester" crap is just not even worth reading without a bit more effort.

Except that, having been a school teacher, I have encountered this "mundane "daddy may be molester" crap" a number of times before. On at least a couple of occasions, it turned out to be true. If there is one thing I have learned from my experiences is that you cannot judge what happens in a family until you actually KNOW the circumstances in detail.

 

[DreamingNaiad]

The mother had a lot of influence over how traumatic this was. She could have easily made it less traumatic, but that would not have made a good movie. (See the grandmother's comments about who will play the dark haired daughter in the movie version.)

Well the courts and police also played their part by lugging the kids around as if they were furniture she lost in the divorce. I agree that she should have been trying to calm them down but that doesn't make the way it was handled any better.

From the way she was described by the judge they would have known beforehand that she wasn't going to be any help calming the situation down. So storming in and grabbing the kids was just stupid, as well as bordering on assault.

 

[ponderingturtle]

With so much use of the trigger word "kidnapping" in this thread, I assume the mother has been charged, or extradition sought?

No?

Stop using such an emotionally laden word then. This was a custody dispute. It happens hundreds of times a day. Labelling someone a "kidnapper" does nothing useful. You may as well call her a terrorist holding children hostage.

So calling something what it is is immoral now when charges don't get pressed? She doesn't seem to even be denying the kidnapping claim.

 

[WildCat]

With so much use of the trigger word "kidnapping" in this thread, I assume the mother has been charged, or extradition sought?

No?

Stop using such an emotionally laden word then. This was a custody dispute. It happens hundreds of times a day. Labelling someone a "kidnapper" does nothing useful. You may as well call her a terrorist holding children hostage.

The father agreed not to press charges to get the kids returned to Italy.

Just because he agreed not to press charges doesn't mean she didn't kidnap the kids. It just means getting his kids back was more important than pressing charges against the kidnapper mother.

 

[WildCat]

We know this how? An absence of media reporting?

No, the Australian court opinion.

 

[WildCat]

Well the courts and police also played their part by lugging the kids around as if they were furniture she lost in the divorce.

Nobody lost anything in the divorce, she kidnapped the kids prior to the custody hearing.

It appears to me several of the kidnapping supporters here are under the impression the Italian court unjustly gave an abusive father sole custody of the kids, so she spirited them away to Oz for their own protection.

The reality is this is a vengeful, spiteful evil woman who was upset at her ex-husband so she decided she'd take the kids away from him to punish him for whatever wrongs she thinks were done to her. She's the one using the kids as weapons to get back at her former husband.

 

[smartcooky]

No, the Australian court opinion.

And Australian Courts, of course are never wrong

You might want to look up these names to see now Australian Courts are "always right".

Richard John Doney
Colin Ross
Darryl Beamish
John Button
Lindy Chamberlain
Ray Mickelberg
Peter Mickelberg
Brian Mickelberg
Roseanne Catt
Andrew Mallard
Salvatore Fazzari
Jose Martinez
Carlos Pereiras
Graham Stafford .
Farah Jama
Terry Irving

 

[DreamingNaiad]

Nobody lost anything in the divorce, she kidnapped the kids prior to the custody hearing.

It appears to me several of the kidnapping supporters here are under the impression the Italian court unjustly gave an abusive father sole custody of the kids, so she spirited them away to Oz for their own protection.

The reality is this is a vengeful, spiteful evil woman who was upset at her ex-husband so she decided she'd take the kids away from him to punish him for whatever wrongs she thinks were done to her. She's the one using the kids as weapons to get back at her former husband.

I never said that. Try reading it again. I said the children are being treated like property. As if they were a stereo system that the court deemed isn't hers and so can just be picked up and deposited at his house. It feels very dehumanising and that is the part of this case that makes me the most uncomfortable. I've also said she was in the wrong so I have no idea what you're babbling about.

She may have used them as weapons but they are the ones being punished for it. The fact that she did a bad/criminal thing isn't the point. The point is that the police handled this atrociously and treated the kids like criminals.

If you have a problem with "kidnap supporters" and people speculating the father may have been abusive then take it up with them and don't try to twist my posts.

 

[WildCat]

I never said that. Try reading it again. I said the children are being treated like property. As if they were a stereo system that the court deemed isn't hers and so can just be picked up and deposited at his house. It feels very dehumanising and that is the part of this case that makes me the most uncomfortable. I've also said she was in the wrong so I have no idea what you're babbling about.

She may have used them as weapons but they are the ones being punished for it. The fact that she did a bad/criminal thing isn't the point. The point is that the police handled this atrociously and treated the kids like criminals.

If you have a problem with "kidnap supporters" and people speculating the father may have been abusive then take it up with them and don't try to twist my posts.

OK, and who is responsible for it coming to this point, if not the mother?

 

[Dr. Keith]

I'm sorry this exchange is just brilliant!

We know the mother kidnapped the children and took them to a foreign country in an effort to avoid a proper legal custody hearing and deny the father the right to see his children, and then dragged out the inevitable for over 2 years and made a media circus of the whole affair. We know Australian courts also found the mothers behavior was atrocious. We know the mother hasn't made any sort of allegations of impropriety against the father.

We know this how? An absence of media reporting?

No, the Australian court opinion.

And Australian Courts, of course are never wrong

I'm fairly certain they are accurate as to what was alleged in court by the parties, even when they come to the wrong decision.

Can you show where she made any allegation against the father other than the grandmother claiming that all Italians are liars in front of her half Italian grand kids?

There is a hell of a lot of assuming going on, here.

 

[a_unique_person]

It's too bad his children want nothing more than to get away from him.

If she can do it, then so can anyone. She effectively kidnapped his daughters. When you agree to have children in a country, when they are citizens of that country, you can't take them to another country secretly.

If they want to live with her, and only have weekend access rights, for instance, then that is up to the law to decide in that country. Otherwise any parent in a divorce just has to make sure that they strike first, grab the kids, and run. That way just leads to utter chaos.

 

[joesixpack]

I'm wondering if anyone with extensive experience with children has taken up a defense of the mother's actions or has condemned the decision of the Australian courts?

Any parents? Any developmental psychologists? Any school teachers or children's health professionals?

Advocating against the forced reunification with the father based on the histrionics of teen aged girls is a pretty weak position. I wonder if there's anything aside from the girls' public anguish to support your position?

Crickets on this. Anyone? Tragic Monkey? Lionking? Any of the anti-father posters here? Nothing?

 

[katy_did]

I don't accept that glib syllogism. I'm quite willing to consider that the mother and her family may have handled this situation badly. But the way to counter that is not to pour gasoline on the fire, unleashing the police with instructions to use whatever force is necessary. We might see that as the administration of the law. For the kids, it was a physical assault and a vivid confirmation of their worst fears. If the mother indoctrinated the kids, the police ended up validating the doctrine: fear your father, fear his power to control your lives, fear the agents who do his bidding.

It cannot have been the only option available. If the court felt that the mother and her family had used the powers of persuasion to manipulate the kids, perhaps they should have made a civilized effort at counter-persuasion. Perhaps this father could have flown to Australia to re-unite with his children in a mediated environment where everyone felt safe.

Almost anything would have been better than what they ended up doing.

Unfortunately I think by that point there weren't many options left. When the original order was made for the kids to be returned to Italy, the mother was supposed to take them to Brisbane Airport on a specific day. Instead, the grandmother went on the run with them (that's when she made the "Italians are all liars" comment). The father did in fact fly to Australia and reunite with the kids, by all accounts happily, but given that they were still being cared for by the mother's family - the judge granted the mother interim custody with "great reluctance" after they went on the run - there would only be so much he and the courts could do within a very limited time-frame to undo the effects of any manipulation.

There's no doubt the mother wanted a scene just like the one which occurred - after all, this thread and numerous other discussions and media articles wouldn't even exist if it hadn't. It supported her case more to have the children distressed. If the mother created a situation where the only way she was going to let the girls go was to have them taken by force because it made for better TV - if attempts to do things in a more civilized way had already failed - it's very difficult to know what else the authorities could have done.

 

[katy_did]

There is no evidence that these kids were happy or miserable, just that they were attached to their mother and knew that they would be unlikely to see her again if they left. I'm sure she convinced them of that.

Indeed - it was "made abundantly clear by her to the children over a period of several months at least, that she will not return with them to Italy". This was apparently their primary reason for not wanting to go back.

 

[kerikiwi]

I don't understand why people blame the mother for using the kids as pawns but assume the father isn't doing the same thing. She just grabbed them first. Does that automatically mean he's only capable of unselfish love, and she's incapable of it? Maybe they're both jerks, but she was just faster out the starting gate.

That would be because there is evidence that the mother used the children as pawns, and no evidence that the father did.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Crickets on this. Anyone? Tragic Monkey? Lionking? Any of the anti-father posters here? Nothing?

Sweetie, it's the weekend. And there's not a damn bit of point in arguing further. Everybody's already decided what they think and refused to consider otherwise.

 

[DreamingNaiad]

OK, and who is responsible for it coming to this point, if not the mother?

Where in that post did I say this whole situation wasn't the mother's fault? Just because she started this chain of events doesn't mean the police handled it well. Or that the way the kids removal degenerated was entirely her fault. I've even already agreed that the court was right to remove the kids from her custody. She sounds unstable and untrustworthy and I doubt she'll get any unsupervised access after pulling this stunt.

 

[katy_did]

I don't know if anyone else has seen the 60 Minutes program on the case? It has interviews with the father and with the mother's family. I just watched it and it's...revealing, let's say.

 

[lionking]

Crickets on this. Anyone? Tragic Monkey? Lionking? Any of the anti-father posters here? Nothing?

Are you saying I'm anti-father? You couldn't be more wrong.

It looks like you were on the wrong end of a custody dispute, and if so, you have my sympathies. But I can disagree with you without warranting a label, as much as labels (like kidnapper and unfit mother) are popular in this thread.

 

[DreamingNaiad]

Has anyone actually said she was right to abscond with the children? Or have people just been saying their removal from Australia was unnecessarily violent?