«It terrifies us»: the court removes the mother of the children from the woods and separates the siblings in the middle of the assessment

A twist in the case of the so-called "family of the woods": in the midst of the psychological assessment of the minors, the Juvenile Court of L'Aquila issued an order for the removal of the mother from the foster home where she had been allowed to reside with her children, simultaneously ordering the separation of the three children from each other.

A decision that deeply shook the entire legal and expert team following the Anglo-Australian couple, arriving like a bolt from the blue just as the technical consultancy was underway, scheduled for today and tomorrow.

The lawyer: "Like Andreotti, the consultancy was not going well"

The news was given by the family's lawyer, Marco Femminella, who made statements to the press before entering the protected facility. "There is an order from a court that has such a high sensitivity that we appreciated," he began with evident sarcasm, "that, in the midst of the consultancy, decided to remove the children and separate the mother."

The lawyer, visibly irritated, then expressed his frustration with a politically charged quote of rare sharpness: "Probably this consultancy, as Andreotti would have said, was not going well as it was going, so we interrupted it." A bitter remark that captures the mood of the defense team, convinced that the court's intervention deliberately compromised the regular conduct of the expert operations.

It remains uncertain whether the psychological tests on the minors will be completed within the foster home or transferred to another location — the latter hypothesis was initially put forward by the couple's legal team.

The psychologist: "A disruption of enormous and absurd gravity"

Even harsher were the words of Marina Aiello, one of the psychologists on the family's expert team, who commented on the decision with a frankness that leaves little room for interpretation. "A decision that terrifies us," she stated upon entering the protected facility, adding that she had not yet had the opportunity to meet the parents.

"We are here to conduct the interview and see the children — he explained —. I hope to be able to do it, this is my hope. It is a disruption that has escalated to an enormous and absurd level of severity." Words that outline an increasingly tense and conflicting picture between the parties involved, with minors at the center of a legal matter that becomes more intricate day by day.

The case

The "family of the woods" is the story of a couple of Anglo-Australian origins who chose to live in an alternative and isolated way, away from conventional society, together with their children. The situation had attracted the attention of the authorities and public opinion due to the living conditions of the minors, eventually ending up in the halls of the Juvenile Court of L'Aquila. Since then, the case has become a tangled legal and media knot that shows no signs of unraveling.