A decision by Cypriot courts to return an abducted child to his father in the USA did not contravene the mother’s rights under the European Convention, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday in its judgment in the case of G.K. v. Cyprus.
It is noted that in Tuesday’s Chamber judgment in the case in question, the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been, no violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The case, as it is noted in the judgement, concerned the proceedings and a subsequent order by the Cypriot courts to return the applicant’s son to the USA under the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. “The Court found, in particular, that the domestic courts had not automatically ordered the return of the child”, it said, adding that, they had considered all the arguments of the parties and rendered detailed decisions which, in their view, safeguarded the best interests of the child and ruled out any serious risk to him.
“As a whole, the decision-making process had not run contrary to the procedural requirements inherent in Article 8 of the Convention, and the applicant had not suffered a disproportionate interference with her right to respect for her family life”, it is noted. The Court underlined that the aim of the Hague Convention was to prevent the abducting parent from being allowed to benefit from his or her own wrongdoing, it adds.
It is noted that, the child was handed over to the Cypriot authorities on 29 May 2021 and was returned to the USA, after his mother and applicant, a Cypriot national, “failed to provide the level of proof necessary for the child not to be returned to the USA”. The woman had left the US with the then one-year-old child, for Cyprus on October 2017, after lodging a domestic violence complaint against the father and moving to a safe house with the child.
Relying on Article 8 (right to private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights, “the applicant complained that her rights had been breached by the unreasonable length of the Hague Convention proceedings and by the domestic courts’ decision to order the child’s return to the USA without adequately assessing the situation and risks involved”, it is noted. The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 26 March 2021.
The Court said that, after assessing whether the applicant’s objections to the child’s immediate return had been genuinely considered by the domestic courts, whether the decisions had been reasoned and sufficiently detailed in the light of the exceptions set out in the Hague Convention and whether the courts had satisfied themselves that adequate safeguards were available in the country of return, it considered “that the domestic courts’ findings had been well-reasoned and justified”.
It adds that, the Family Court of Paphos “had noticed certain contradictions” in her allegations compared to her claims before the US court, while she had also concealed the fact that the temporary order of protection in the USA had been dismissed owing to her failure to appear in court. “Her allegations that the father was violent had remained unsubstantiated. Even though she had been given the opportunity to cross-examine the father before the domestic courts in Cyprus, the allegation of his being violent had not been raised and her questions had been limited to whether he had been convicted of any offences in the past, to which he had replied that 25 years earlier he had been convicted of minor violations, which did not affect his criminal record, his employment status or his fitness to exercise his parental rights”, the judgement says.
As regards the woman’s argument that the return would be too hard for her son and would be psychologically damaging, the Court noted that Article 13 (b) of the Hague Convention stipulated that harm arising solely from separation from the parent who was responsible for the wrongful removal or retention was not a valid reason for non-return of the child.
The Court noted among other things, that, in reaching their decision, the domestic courts had taken into account the child’s adaptability due to his young age, the father’s assurances as to being able to care for his son, the assistance of the Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and the US authorities, as well as the fact that the applicant’s claim that she was unable to return to the USA remained entirely unsubstantiated.
Source: Cyprus News Agency