Kidnapped girl to stay with her father – court
Published: 03 July, 2009, 15:09
Edited: 07 November, 2009, 13:07
Victor Gioia, lawyer of Jean-Michel André, holds Elise (AFP photo / Michel Gangne)
(1.8Mb) embed videoTAGS: Children, Scandal, Russia, Europe, Law
A French court has ruled a girl at the center of a bitter custody battle between her French and Russian parents should remain in France with her father. Her Russian mother may see the girl three times a month.
Belenkaya’s lawyer Grigory Renkurt, says he and his client are not satisfied with the court’s decision and are going to appeal. He insists that the parents should receive equal parental rights.
Meanwhile, Elise’s father has called the court’s decision “considered”, taking into account the “complexity of the situation” – though the court denied his request that Irina Belenkaya could see their daughter only in his presence, Ria Novosti news agency says.
Irina Belenkaya will be able to see her daughter “in special places where being with children is allowed.”
The custody fight over Elise André began in 2007, when Irina Belenkaya and Jean-Michel André failed to agree on splitting the parental access to their three-year-old daughter, who has dual Russian-French nationality.
A French court ruled that Elise was to stay with her father, but shortly afterwards, Irina Belenkaya took her daughter to Russia, where she obtained parental rights to her. In 2008, André came to Russia and took Elise back to France.
On March 20, 2009, Elise was again kidnapped from her father on their way home from kindergarten.
Later, on April 13, Belenkaya was detained in Hungary while attempting to cross the border to Ukraine with Elise, who has since been returned to her father.
At the end of May, Irina Belenkaya was released from custody by prosecutors in France.
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2 comments
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I'm curious to know more about the girl's parents. Growing up with a caring dad on the French riviera would be a lot better than growing up with an indifferent single mom in some middle-of-nowhere Russian town. The converse is true as well. The French court decision could be saving or ruining a life, depending on this information. We shouldn't always be quick to assume the negative.
Is the father going to stay at home to look after the child or is he simply going to farm her out to an au-pair or nanny? I cannot think of many situations where one would take a child from it's mother - and this is not such a situation. In the end, when this child grows up, she will most likely resent her father and the courts that made this decision.
to Yaz: Oh, you see Moscow is not in the " middle-of-nowhere " and the mother is not "an indifferent single mom" as you stated here. She came to save her daughter from that agly guy who kidnapped Liza from Moscow in 2008. Moreover it the place where this guy lives that is in the middle-of-complete-nowhere, and he is in fact jobless and homeless - living with his parents. The mother has PhD and a very good work in Moscow. And the last but not the least it's much better for any child to live with its dear mother not with the father, espessially the father like this one, old and without money.