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Government leaders condemn juvenile court for interfering in personal life choices
Alisha Rahaman SarkarTuesday 25 November 2025 09:13 GMTComments
Nathan Trevallion and Catherine Birmingham (Change.org)
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An Italian court’s order to remove three children from their British-Australian parents because they were being raised in the woods has sparked public outrage, and backlash from the government.
A juvenile court in the central city of L'Aquila ruled last week that the off-the-grid lifestyle of the couple put their children's well-being at risk.
Nathan Trevallion, 51, and his Australian wife, Catherine Birmingham, 41, were raising their children in a farmhouse in the mountainous Abruzzo region which they bought in 2021.
The family said they were enjoying an idyllic life in the forest with horses, donkeys and chickens.
The court observed that the eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old twin boys were being raised without electricity, gas or running water, with the family relying instead on solar power, well water and homegrown food.
The children were homeschooled and had little or no opportunity to mix with other youngsters.
“The members of the Trevallion family have no social interactions, no steady income, there are no sanitary facilities in the dwelling, and the children do not attend school,” the juvenile court said in its ruling.
“The family unit lives in housing hardship as the building has not been declared habitable.”
The family’s lawyer, Giovanni Angelucci, told CNN that they were heating the home with fireplaces and lighting it with solar power.
The couple had removed running water to avoid microplastics and reduce costs and were instead taking fresh water from a well.
There was no indoor toilet, he said, so the family used an outdoor composting toilet.
Mr Trevallion’s situation came to the attention of the police last year when the whole family was hospitalised after they ate poisonous mushrooms foraged from the forest.
Ms Birmingham was allowed to accompany the children to their new accommodation after their lawyer convinced social workers that her presence was needed to limit the trauma of separation.
“It was the worst night of my life,” Mr Trevallion, a former chef, told local newspaper Il Centro.
“Taking children away from a parent is the greatest pain there is. It's an injustice.”
“We live outside of the system,” he later told La Repubblica. “This is what they are accusing us of. They are ruining the life of a happy family.”
“They are happy, smell good, well-mannered, and well-fed,” he said of his children. “Why break this bond?"
The case has sparked intense debate in Italy over alternative lifestyles and more than 143,000 people have signed an online petition backing the family.
Prime minister Giorgia Meloni was reportedly “alarmed” by the decision while deputy premier Matteo Salvini condemned it.
“It’s shameful that the state interferes in private education and personal life choices, and steals children from a family who found Italy to be a welcoming country," he told Radio24, adding that he would seek to intervene on behalf of the family.
The conservative Pro Vita and Famiglia group also accused the court of overstepping its jurisdiction.
“The state and social services must intervene only in the presence of proven abuse, mistreatment or neglect, not to punish lifestyles that don’t fall within the dominant standard," group spokesperson Jacopo Coghe said.
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