Patricia Reguero Ríos

The orginal article is published in Spain by the "El Salto" and written by Patricia Reguero Ríos

Introduction by Linda

linda and louis have known laura for several years and have witnessed her journey and struggles up close. Finding recognition with each other, supporting each other in these incredibly complicated and difficult times proved to be a great support especially for the two mothers. Laura and Linda are in regular contact and share their ups and downs as well as their difficult moments. They find each other's support because much does not have to be said or explained because they are going through the same thing. A friendship has developed with mutual respect and now the time has come for Laura to come forward with her story. This at a special time in her life as she will soon be facing another judge. We at the foundation support her where we can and with Laura's permission we can publish her story. A petition has been started in Spain where anyone who wants to support her can sign it and she can finally get her custody and daughter back. Would you like to support her in another way? Send us a message and we will make sure it gets to her.

English Translation by DeepL translator of the first Spanish article

A Dutch mother who reported sexual violence against her daughter by her father is accused of abduction and is no longer in custody. When her daughter verbalised several situations of sexual violence against her committed by her father and grandfather, the woman went to several instances in Spain, where she lived, without any response.

‘With the information that has been referred to me today, the child should remain with the mother and not be handed over to the paternal family’. This is the instruction that Laura, a Dutch woman, received on 23 June 2021 after attending a medical consultation with her daughter at the health centre in the town where she lived, in the Valencian Community. The professional who attended her also initiated a notification for socio-health care and child protection, a protocol in which she attested to the story and the symptoms observed and requested the action of the Public Prosecutor's Office for Minors.

The day before, the woman had gone to a police station in that community to file a complaint in which she told the officers what she had observed in her daughter, and also what the little girl had verbalised, and which pointed to the possible existence of several episodes of sexual violence against the girl committed by the grandfather and the father of the little girl, both of whom are Spanish. The little girl had verbalised having been subjected to touching by her paternal grandfather and showed sexualised behaviour that she said she had learned from her father, according to the account that the woman gave at the police station. The mother provided several audio and video recordings as evidence to corroborate this account.

The child, who has dual nationality, had just turned 4 years old at the time. The mother's name is not Laura, but she prefers not to give her name because she is afraid of her ex-husband, but she also feels the need to tell her side of the story.

One month, no response

With the medical report in hand, Laura decides not to hand over the child while her lawyer requests a modification of the terms of custody - in January 2020, when the couple separates, they had reached a joint custody agreement - so that custody is temporarily assigned to the mother while the complaint is investigated. The mother manages to live for a few weeks in different places with the child while waiting for precautionary measures to be taken following the serious allegations. This protection does not come and, in parallel, the father files several lawsuits for breach of the custody agreement.

After 35 days, Laura is left without a safe place to be, she has not received any help, the court has not carried out any investigation, has not agreed on the measures she is asking for, and on the other hand, has quickly executed the father's demand for non-compliance with visitation.

Finding herself helpless, she decides to travel to her home country, the Netherlands, taking advantage of the summer school break, and with a return ticket for both of them. There, she immediately contacted the police to make her situation known.

The girl, away from her father, verbalised several more situations of sexual violence committed against her by her father and grandfather, and the woman filed a new complaint in her country where these situations were recorded. There she brings new recordings of the girl where she verbalises them. In total, Laura has more than a dozen files that she has submitted as evidence to the Dutch authorities.

However, in Spain, her ex-partner had filed a complaint for abduction on 24 June, one day after the health centre opened the protocol and before Laura's trip to Holland. Laura does not hand over the child on the day set by their custody agreement.

The father requested the return of the child under the Hague Convention and the Dutch courts, after a process that ended with the decision of the Dutch Supreme Court, ultimately ruled to return the child to Spain despite the allegations of possible risk due to this separation.

The ‘Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, done at The Hague on 25 October 1980’ aims to ensure the immediate return of children wrongfully removed or retained in the States that accede to it and to ensure that custody rights are respected. Although there are exceptions (rootedness of the child in the place to which he or she has been removed or situations where return would expose the child to the risk of ‘physical or psychological danger or otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation’), the reality is that these are applied only exceptionally.

Once this convention has been invoked, the most common practice is to return the claimed child immediately, regardless of any circumstances. The report ‘Custody, violence against women and violence against children’ by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, warns of this application of the Convention, as in practice it hinders mothers' attempts to protect themselves and their children from violence by automatically labelling them as abductors.

"Neither the complaint filed in Spain, nor the complaint filed in Holland, nor the protocol opened by the medical authorities in the Valencian Community were of any use: the girl was separated from her mother and returned to her father without being investigated"

In Laura's case, neither the complaint filed in Spain, nor the complaint filed in Holland, nor the protocol opened by the medical authorities in the Valencian Community were of any use. Nor were the documents that accredit that Laura went several times to the Victims' Office to ask for help and explain her situation, with no response.

In February 2022, the little girl was taken from her mother at their home in Holland. Four people showed up at her home without prior notice and despite the fact that she had informed them that she had five days to hand her over. Laura was given a few minutes and told she could take five things for the child before being taken in a car with strangers and guarded by two other vehicles to the premises where the father was waiting, a situation she describes as the most traumatic of her life.

Three days after the girl's return to Spain, the same court that had ignored her request for changes in the custody regime while the abuse was being investigated withdrew custody of her until the kidnapping trial, which is scheduled for February 2025, is clarified.

That was more than 21 months ago. He has not seen her since.

The trial for sexual violence against the girl

In the complaint filed by Laura in the Netherlands, which expands on the facts denounced in Spain, it is stated that the child has suffered sexual violence on several occasions since 2020, when the time spent with the father and grandfather increases due to the confinement due to the health situation, and on 23 June 2021, when the mother takes her away from them.

Laura provides the videos and audios where the little girl expresses different situations of sexual violence against her committed by the father and grandfather: the girl clearly verbalises that the grandfather has licked her genitals and buttocks. In addition, the mother detects abnormal behaviour in the child, such as touching her genitals, caresses or kisses inappropriate for her age, which, when asked by Laura, she claims to have learned from her father.

After the filing of the complaint, the girl was summoned to take a Gessel camera test in September 2021, which she did not attend because she was in Holland, requesting a new day or measures so that the minor could come to the test with security that was not agreed upon. In this test, a space is set up to prepare for an interrogation in a room that is separated by opaque glass from another room from which the persons being questioned can be observed. These facilities are equipped with audio and video cameras, and these recordings are crucial for a trial, as they provide what is called ‘pre-constituted evidence’ which, following the approval in 2021 of the Law on the Comprehensive Protection of Children and Adolescents against Violence, must be used systematically in certain cases so that the minor gives a single account of the facts, preventing them from testifying several times, which exposes them to being re-victimised.

The girl came to the Gessel camera test after several months of living with the father, who was the person under investigation, during which she had only been in contact with her mother through video calls.

The law states that technical means will be used to avoid visual confrontation in the event that the person under investigation is present. In other words, it somehow assumes that the person testifying will not be present with the person under investigation. But it makes no allusion to the convenience or otherwise of this test being done after several months of exclusive cohabitation with the person under investigation, as happened in this case: the child finally went to take the Gessel camera test in July 2022, after having been with the persons mentioned in the complaint (father and grandfather) since February, without any contact with the mother other than in video calls with the father always present.

The result of the examination shows that the child does not make any reference to the facts reported and does not verbalise them when asked leading questions. It automatically concludes that there are no indications of abusive situations corresponding to the alleged facts.

The request to submit this evidence to a judicially ordered expert report on non-verbal communication was rejected, so Laura and her lawyer commissioned an expert report. The report concludes that the child's responses lack spontaneity and coherence. It also detects numerous stress reactions, evasiveness to questions and signs of a possible risk situation in the child.

‘Absolutely nothing has been done to investigate the abuse’.

‘The Gesell chamber is done horribly’, says the lawyer representing Laura in Spain. She refers not only to the fact that the girl went to testify hand in hand with her father, but also to the fact that the girl was not allowed to testify in Dutch, the language in which she has revealed most of the abuse. Despite the fact that there was an interpreter, she was placed in the part of the courtroom where the child was not present, i.e. next to the judges and professionals observing the testimony.

On the other hand, the lawyer regrets that the judge did not agree to carry out a judicial expert report on non-verbal communication as requested by the defence, and that he later rejected the conclusions of the report presented by the defence because it was a report from a third party.

The conclusion of this process is a free dismissal ‘due to the circumstances of the case’, and not a definitive dismissal. In other words, the case could be reopened if new evidence were presented, but all the evidence requested has not been admitted and therefore the case is blocked and the court has not agreed to any new investigation, which is why the lawyer has lodged an appeal with the Constitutional Court.

Despite the appalling conditions in which the Gesell test was carried out, the lawyer believes that this is not the worst thing about this case. ‘The most flagrant thing is how the process began’, she says in reference to the response to Laura's first complaint, when “absolutely nothing” was done.

  "The lawyer laments the slowness and inaction of the courts in Spain, which have not carried out any of the tests that she has requested to investigate the possible aggressions against the girl."

It is this inaction that led to the woman's transfer to the Netherlands, argues the lawyer. But, once the complaint for abduction had been filed and the order to return the child to Spain in compliance with the Hague Convention had been executed, the whole case now revolved around the mother's actions, as can be seen in the change of attitude of the Public Prosecutor's Office: although a report by the Prosecutor initially recommended suspending the custody agreement until the complaint of sexual violence had been investigated, this same body changed its attitude after the mother left with the child for the Netherlands.

The lawyer laments the slowness and inaction of the courts in Spain, since when the complaint is filed ‘no one is called, and by the time the Gesell camera is scheduled, she has already left with the child’, she explains to El Salto. Meanwhile, in the civil proceedings, urgent measures to change custody are requested, for which the court calls a first hearing for December, that is, six months later, although it is finally brought forward to September. However, when in these proceedings a call is made to the paediatrician and an expert or even a Gessel camera is requested, the court's response is that ‘there is no room for it’, explains the lawyer.

Two calls per week

Today, Laura can contact her daughter through half-hour video calls twice a week, but she assures that her ex does not facilitate this contact while another barrier between mother and daughter is installed: the child is no longer speaking the language in which she communicates with her mother, Dutch.

In addition, she is waiting for face-to-face visits to be established every two weeks at a meeting point, which will put her in the situation of having to travel to Spain to be present for the visits, which would last an hour.

She has also had to fight to have access to the information that the school where her daughter attends school provides to all parents: it was only a few days ago that she managed to get a judge to determine her right to have access, like any other parent, to the system used by the school where she can follow her daughter's school development.

Laura tries to remain financially stable in order to be able to cope with the process and tries to take care of her health so that she is in the best possible condition in case the situation changes and she can take care of her daughter. In the meantime, she resorts to all possible means to be with her daughter, whom she considers to be at risk.

Her case shows how the judicial system penalises mothers who denounce intra-familial sexual violence against their children, as detailed in the study Institutional Violence against Mothers. Another Save the Children study points to the critical role of mothers in reporting sexual violence against their children.


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