Juana Rivas will file an appeal before the Italian Supreme Court against the decision of the Cagliari Court of Appeal that has denied her custody of the youngest of her two children, who must remain in Sardinia with her father, Francesco Arcuri, although she will be able to visit him.
The director and legal adviser of the Women’s Center of Maracena (Granada), Francisca Granados, has considered that the Italian civil ruling is based on the “false Syndrome of Parental Alienation” (PAS) and “radically” fails to comply with the Convention of Istanbul. Likewise, it considers that the sentence has not taken “at all” into account the different reports from the Cagliari attorney general that, in the framework of another criminal process in progress, it would be demonstrated that the father of the minors has repeatedly engaged in aggressive behavior with his kids.
Granados, has indicated that Juana Rivas does not intend to make public statements at the moment and has taken the opportunity to recall that the prosecutor came to affirm, in a hearing last November, that “the progressive behavioral involution” of the parent would not allow her to continue with her guardianship.
The legal adviser assures that “a sentence like that of Cagliari, at this moment in Spain, would be materially unfeasible, impossible. It is not acceptable that sole custody of a child be given to a father, while criminal proceedings are being instituted for mistreating to that child.”
The battle for the custody of children is one of the most media cases in recent years in Spain. It began in 2016, when the mother left Italy with them, alleging physical and psychological abuse by Arcuri.
Once in Spain, Rivas refused to return to Italy with the minors, whom he enrolled in the Granada town of Maracena for the 2016-2017 academic year.
In June 2017, the father obtained provisional custody and custody of the children in Cagliari, which led to a court in Granada ordering their return to Italy, a decision that was endorsed by the Provincial Court.
When this requirement was neglected, the court issued a resolution ordering the immediate delivery at the end of July at the Family Meeting Point in Granada. The father of the children traveled there along with the Italian consular authority and a police force, but the mother did not show up. Rivas decided to hide with her two children in a place that the authorities tried to locate. This led Arcuri to file a complaint for the disappearance of the children.
In July 2022, the Spanish Supreme Court upheld the partial pardon granted by the Government to Juana Rivas, for her sentence to two and a half years in prison for the abduction of her two minor children.
The sentence stipulates that the eldest son, aged 17, will be in the custody of Juana Rivas in Spain, while the second, aged 9, must remain with his father on the island of Sardinia. However, the mother “may exercise the right to visit the minor exclusively in Sardinia”, during weekends or at Christmas, or in the small town of Carloforte, on the island of San Pietro, where her father resides. This Holy Week, the sentence specifies, the minor must remain with the father.
In summer, Juana Rivas will be able to take in the child for 15 consecutive days before the first half of July and another 15 days in the first half of August, unless the opposing parties agree to another distribution.
The judge has rejected an instance for the protection of the minor presented by Rivas and has ordered the Social Services of Carloforte to analyze the conditions of the child after he has spent time with his mother.
In the sentence, a report from June 2022 is also included, indicating that the child had changed his version of his relationship with the mother and that both she and the older brother had made him tell lies.