Court puzzled as to why father never pursued children’s abduction by British mother

In a judgment handed by Mr. Justice Robert Mangion, who presided over the Family Court, ruled this afternoon that he was officially declaring a couple separated from each other, but questioned the father's intransigence to find his four abducted children.

Judge Mangion said that the father, who filed for separation in the absence of his estranged wife, didn't even produce evidence as to what child maintenance he was asking for, while ruling that he could stay in the government provided social housing apartment, excluding his estranged wife.

The court heard how the couple had married in September 2000, weeks after a daughter was born out of wedlock. The two then had another four children.

The father claimed that family life was ok with five children, until 2009, when his British wife was showing signs of restlessness at home, and started to go out quite often.

One day during the summer of 2009, the mother allegedly woke her children up early in the morning, telling them that they were all going to swim at Birzebbugia.

While the father prepared to go to work, he saw them prepare for the beach and leave.

His wife and five children had not returned home by 5pm, and decided to lodge a report at the Valletta Police Station at about 10pm.

A Police Inspector on duty started to investigate, and discovered that the mother had left for the UK with the children that same day.

While the father claimed that he never heard of his wife or children for over a year, he received a phone call from his wife in 2010, telling him that his eldest daughter wanted to return to Malta alone because she couldn't stand her mother's new boyfriend.

The girl returned to Malta and is now living with her paternal grandmother, and her father, even though her relations with her father are not good, due to him being strict on behaviour.

But the father insisted with the court to have it declare he gets full custody of all the children, a matter the court did not accept given that he declared that he doesn't know where they are, whatever happened to them and worse, that he never pursued them.

The court accepted the fact that the mother abandoned the matrimonial home, and while granting the father the right to live in the government-owned apartment, it stopped at only granting him the right over objects he owns, and didn't rule on the estranged wife's items which were never listed or brought as evidence before it.