Row after Italy court splits up family living in woods

A couple who moved to Italy to raise their family off the grid are fighting to get their children back after an Italian court removed them over health fears.

A court decision to remove three children from their Anglo-Australian family’s home in the woods has become a political flashpoint in Italy, where there is wider debate over alleged judicial overreach.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni -- leader of a hard-right government that champions family values -- is reportedly concerned about the case near Chieti, in the eastern Abruzzo region, where the family has been living off-grid since 2021.

On Thursday, the juvenile court of nearby Aquila suspended the couple’s parental responsibility and ordered the transfer of the children to a protective home with their mother.

The court cited poor sanitary conditions at the home, and the unauthorised homeschooling of the couple’s eight-year-old girl and six-year-old twin boys.

The decision prompted a wave of verbal attacks and threats online against the judge, while a petition to “save the family that lives in the woods” has gathered over 135,000 signatures.

Italy’s deputy prime minister and leader of the far-right League party, Matteo Salvini, has called 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.

‘Without stress’

Defending their lifestyle as one “without stress” and in harmony with nature, Australian Catherine Birmingham and Briton Nathan Trevallion 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,” Birmingham told Rai in halting Italian.

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.

On Monday afternoon, the education ministry issued a press release saying the region’s education office had confirmed that “compulsory schooling has been regularly completed through home education” legal in Italy, according to news agencies.

Social workers were called last year after one of the couple’s children ingested poisonous mushrooms and was taken to hospital, reports said.

Political factions

The power of judges has generated public debate in Italy, as Meloni’s flagship justice reform -- which includes separating the careers of judges and prosecutors -- heads for a referendum next year.

Judges have decried interference by the government, saying the reform will curb their independence, while the government accuses the judiciary of political bias.

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.

It said recent statements from politicians “go beyond legitimate criticism of a judicial act and end up directly affecting the work of the magistrates of the Juvenile Court, exposing them to undue pressure, including through the media”.

A lawyer for the British father and Australian mother, Giovanni Angelucci, did not respond to requests for comment by AFP.

The British embassy said it was providing consular assistance but would not comment further.

By Alexandria Sage