Kids taken from Aus mum living in forest

Melbourne life coach Catherine Birmingham, 45, and her husband, British former professional chef Nathan Trevallion, 51, along with their eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old twin sons, have been living in a remote farmhouse, which reportedly operates without water or electricity, near Chieti, in Italy’s eastern Abruzzo region since 2021. But last week, a juvenile court in the nearby city of L’Aquila suspended the couple’s parental responsibility and ordered the transfer of their children to a protective home with Ms Birmingham, after prosecutors claimed the children were suffering from “serious harm” due to their off-grid lifestyle, according to The Telegraph. The court cited poor sanitary conditions at the home and the unauthorised homeschooling of the three children. “The family unit lives in housing hardship as the building has not been declared habitable,” the order states, as per CNN. The order added the family have “no social interaction, no fixed income, the home has no toilet facilities, and the children do not attend school”. “The order is based on the risk of violating the right to social life in consideration of the serious and harmful violations of the children’s rights to physical and mental integrity the parents should be suspended from parental responsibility.” Prosecutors had claimed in legal documents seen by The Telegraph that the children were being raised in “harmful” living conditions and should be “urgently” put into care. The court’s decision comes a year after all five family members were hospitalised for eating poisonous wild mushrooms from the forest in September 2024, according to CNN. Following the incident, law enforcement and social services visited the family but according to their lawyer, recommendations for the children to receive regular medical care and attend school were not met, the outlet reports. In a press release, the Italian Association of Magistrates for Minors and for the Family noted that the court’s decision last week to remove the children came after a year-long observation period “during which the court’s orders were systematically disregarded by the parents”. ‘This is insane’ Ms Birmingham has hit back at the court order, telling The Telegraph: “This is insane”. “There is no negligence, there is no abuse, the kids are not in danger of their lives,” she said. The family’s lawyer negotiated a deal for the 45-year-old to accompany her children to the shelter. However, Ms Birmingham told the newspaper she has been separated from her children inside the shelter and is “not allowed” to see her children. Mr Trevallion reportedly remains at the family’s property. “We’ve been imprisoned for a crime we never did. I have had my parental rights stripped from me,” Ms Birmingham said. Mr Trevallion told The Times the children’s removal to a care shelter was “very fast and unexpected”. “We got a call from a social worker saying she was at the Carabinieri police station and we needed to get over there. There were ten officers ready to go and kidnap the children, to put it bluntly,” he told the publication. “We spent 30 minutes negotiating and they agreed to allow Catherine to accompany the children to a centre. It was a compromise. Otherwise they would have just taken away the children without saying where.” The family’s lawyer, Giovanni Angelucci, said the couple will appeal the court’s decision. Defending their lifestyle as one “without stress” and in harmony with nature, Ms Birmingham and Mr Trevallion earlier told national broadcaster Rai this month that their children were “growing up better” in their home in the woods. A tour of the home given to Rai showed a wood-burning stove in a kitchen, colourful children’s beds covered with stuffed animals, and Christmas lights strewn about the home. Electricity is provided from solar panels, while the toilet is compostable and located in a shack outside, where a donkey, horse, dogs, cats, chickens and ducks roam a clearing among the trees. “The children are happy, healthy. We haven’t done anything wrong if we want to return to nature,” Mr Birmingham told Rai. But local media has reported that the children are not vaccinated and do not go to school, with the parents having failed to submit their request for homeschooling to local authorities. ‘Kidnapping’ Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – leader of a hard-right government that champions family values – and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini have both condemned the court’s decision. A spokesman for Ms Meloni called the move “alarming” and said she has contacted Italian Justice Minister Carlo Nordio over the case, as per CNN. Meanwhile, her deputy has labelled the judge’s actions “unworthy, worrying, dangerous and shameful”, describing it as a “kidnapping” of the minors. “Judges and social workers in Abruzzo, don’t be a nuisance,” he said, pointing to a need for judicial reform. An online petition supporting the family has amassed over 143,000 signatured as of Tuesday. Magistrates associations have defended the Aquila court’s decision to remove the children and slammed what they called exploitation of the case for political purposes. “We reject any form of exploitation expressed in recent days by some political factions and the media, which fail to consider the complexity and sensitivity of the rights in question,” said the Italian Association of Magistrates for Minors and for the Family. In a press release, it noted that the court’s decision came after a year-long observation period “during which the court’s orders were systematically disregarded by the parents”. On Monday, the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSM), which is tasked with judicial independence and disciplinary matters, opened a procedure to protect the magistrates in question.