An Italian court has ruled that a teenage boy be partially removed from his mother’s custody after lawyers claimed he was “effeminate in a provocative way”.
The court in Venice heard the 13-year-old must be suffering from a “personality disorder” due to having “almost exclusively female role models”.
State lawyers say the boy “tries in every way to show that he is different” and highlighted an incident when he went to school wearing eyeshadow and nail varnish, which his mother said was for a Halloween party.
A social services report on the boy, from nearby Padua, said he was suffering from a “personality disorder” and argued that he had difficulty forming relationships with other people due to his dependence on his mother, local newspaper Mattino Padova reported.
The court heard how the mother of the boy, identified only as “Marco”, had been reported by social services after she refused to allow his father to see him – accusing him of sexual abuse.
Social services reported Marco’s “emotional world appeared tied almost exclusively to female figures and the relationship with the mother appeared characterised by aspects of addiction”.
The President of the Court of Minors, Maria Teresa Rossi, ruled that both parents had failed in their parental responsibility towards the child and ordered that the boy spend 12 hours a day, between 7am and 7pm, in a “youth community” to gain some independence from his mother.
But she denied she had made the decision to impose the partial removal order because the boy was “camp”.
She said: “The court does not impose the distance due to an alleged effeminate attitude. We have no preconceptions [about the boy’s sexual orientation].
“Any measure that restricts parental responsibility is linked to a comprehensive review of their adequacy to full their role and the protection of the child is our primary interest”.
The lawyer for the boy’s mother, Francesco Miraglia, said the decision was “outrageous” and said he would appeal the verdict in a secondary hearing which is due to take place next week.
