HUNGARIAN POLICE are searching for a nine-year-old Irish girl and her Hungarian mother who disappeared hours before the child was due to be handed over to her father, in a custody case that has made headlines in Hungary.
The father, who is an Irish lecturer living in France, arrived in the village of Boconad with local police, a bailiff and diplomats from the Irish and French embassies in Budapest, to enforce a court order giving him custody of his daughter, whom he has not seen for 19 months.
However a search of the mother’s family home revealed she had fled the village with her daughter, after being released from a short stay in police custody on a legal technicality. The mother claims the girl was abused by her father when they all lived in Paris, but courts in France and Hungary have dismissed those allegations and demanded that the daughter be handed over to her father.
France has issued an international arrest warrant for the mother over her alleged abduction of the child and Hungary has now done the same, due to her disappearance this week.
The case has become something of a cause celebre in Hungary, where the mother has appeared on television to denounce the father and repeat her unsubstantiated allegations. The local tabloid press were in Boconad when the child was supposed to be handed over to her father and witnessed him being subjected to a volley of abuse from his ex-wife’s parents.
“I am deeply disappointed at not getting my daughter back and very worried for her welfare and about the psychological toll that all this is taking,” the academic told the Irish Times. “But if the police really want to find her they could do so very quickly – Hungary is not a big country.”
The case highlights the complexity and sensitivity of cross-border custody battles in the European Union and the apparent toothlessness of some EU law.
“This shows up Hungary as a rogue state within the European Union,” said the father. “EU law requires [child] return orders to be delivered and enforced within a six-week timeframe. It is now 19 months since the abduction and the mother is a fugitive, having committed a crime in one EU member state and taken refuge in another.”