The fate of four-year-old Diana makes waves. The child was born in the USA but has been living with his mother in Lower Austria for two years. Yesterday, a bailiff picked up the girl against the mother’s will to bring her back to her father in California via Munich Airport, as the WAVE network (Women against Violence Europe) informed yesterday.
A spokesman for the regional court in Krems confirmed the child’s acceptance, but he was not allowed to comment on the content in more detail. The court thus implemented an OGH judgment from the previous year, in which it had been decided that the mother had wrongly brought the child to Austria and withdrawn it from the father’s custody. The legal basis for this is the International Hague Child Abduction Convention.
The return of the child must be prevented, according to WAVE activist Stephanie Futter-Orel, there is an “extreme threat to the welfare of the child and a violation of human rights”. Diana hasn’t seen her father since December 2020 and doesn’t speak a word of English. The child was taken in the morning hours in the presence of several police officers. The four-year-old was first brought to the regional court.
Diana was born in California to an American father and an Austrian mother. The woman is said to have been repeatedly abused and raped by her husband. The mother therefore did not return to America after a “home leave” in spring 2020.
In fact, a first-instance decision states that shortly before his wife left for Europe, the man had engaged in sexual intercourse “although she had said no”. The US citizen requested that his daughter be brought back and was right in the course of appeals. According to Rosa Logar from Vienna’s “Intervention Center Against Violence,” there is a record that mentions “years of” psychological and sexual abuse by the husband. The Hague Agreement leads to many cases of hardship, especially for women in binational relationships and their children. Maria Rösslhumer from the Association of Autonomous Austrian Women’s Shelters (AÖF) described the situation as “dramatic”. There is also a medical certificate, according to which the child is not fit to fly. “An injunction has already been filed with the court to stop the repatriation.”
6000 signatures
To protect the child’s well-being, a petition was submitted that was signed more than 6,000 times. The mother has neither a right of residence nor a right to work in the USA. It is therefore not possible for them to enter the country.
Source: Nachrichten
