The decision by an Italian court to remove three children being brought up in the woods from their British-Australian parents has sparked a fierce debate in the country over alternative lifestyles.
Nathan Trevallion, a former chef from Bristol, and his wife, Catherine Birmingham, a former horse-riding teacher from Melbourne, bought a dilapidated property in a wooded area in Palmoli, in the central Italian region of Abruzzo, in 2021.
The aim was to raise their three children – Utopia Rose, eight, and six-year-old twins Galorian and Bluebell – as close to nature as possible.
They grew their own food, generated electricity via solar power and extracted their water from a well. Meanwhile, the children, surrounded by horses, donkeys and chickens, were homeschooled. Weekly trips to San Salvo, a town on the Adriatic coast with a population of 20,000, exposed them to the outside world.
But the idyllic life came under scrutiny from local social services in September last year when the entire family was hospitalised after eating poisonous mushrooms picked from the woods.
The authorities investigated further and found the family’s dwelling to be “dilapidated, in terrible hygienic conditions and lacking the necessary utilities”, a court document showed.
Last week, the judge of a juvenile court in L’Aquila upheld a prosecutor’s claims that the children were suffering from “serious and harmful violations” of their rights owing to living off-grid, and ordered their removal. They were taken away by police on Thursday afternoon and taken to a church-run facility. Their mother is with them, although both parents have limited access to their children, according to their lawyer, Giovanni Angelucci.
In its ruling, the juvenile court noted that “the family unit lives in housing hardship” and has “no social interaction, no fixed income”, while the home “has no toilet facilities” and “the children do not attend school”.
As they awaited the court’s decision, Trevallion and Birmingham gave several interviews to the press, generating support from thousands who signed an online petition calling for the family to be kept together.
Trevallion described the children’s removal as “a great heartbreak” that had caused them “shock”. “It was the worst night of my life,” he told the local news site, Il Centro, the day after the children were taken away, adding that in the care facility they were made to sleep in a separate room to their mother. “This is the hardest thing,” he added. “It’s a terrible situation.”
He told La Repubblica: “We live outside of the system … this is what they’re accusing us of. They are ruining the life of a happy family.”
Trevallion declined to speak further on Monday and Birmingham could not be reached for comment.
Angelucci said the couple would appeal against the removal of their children, claiming that the judge’s report contained “falsehoods”, especially related to their schooling.
The couple met while travelling in Bali and contemplated raising their family in Spain before settling in Italy. Trevallion told La Repubblica they would like to stay in the country but were also ready to move to Australia.
The case has generated political controversy and a backlash against the juvenile court’s top judge, Cecilia Angrisano.
Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, expressed “alarm” over the children being taken into care and instructed her justice minister, Carlo Nordio, to assess whether there were grounds to send inspectors. The deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, compared the case to a kidnapping.
Italian magistrates often come under attack by Meloni’s government, and the ANM union on Monday warned against the “exploitation” of the case, saying the court’s decision was based on factors including the children’s safety, sanitary conditions and education.
Chiara Saraceno, a well known Italian sociologist, said: “It is very difficult to understand what is happening there. But there is nothing wrong with wanting to provide an alternative education. The problem is how isolated these children were and how hygienic their [living] conditions were.”
However, Saraceno questioned the focus of the social services on this particular case, when “so many impoverished children live in houses”. “In these cases, you have to wonder: where are the social workers?”
