Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has strongly criticised a court decision involving the so-called “family in the woods”. She said the latest developments in the case left her “speechless” and raised concerns about how the state intervenes in family life.
In a message posted on social media, Meloni said the decision by the Juvenile Court of L’Aquila to remove the mother from the protected facility where she had been staying with her children — and to separate the siblings — risked causing additional trauma to the minors.
“After deciding to entrust three children who lived with their parents in nature to social services and place them in a family home, the court has now established that the mother must leave the protected structure and that the children must also be separated,” Meloni wrote. “It is a decision that inflicts on the children an additional, very heavy trauma.”
A controversial case
The case concerns the Trevallion family, an Anglo-Australian couple who moved to rural Italy and chose to raise their children in a remote house in the woods near Palmoli in the Abruzzo region.
The parents — British national Nathan Trevallion and Australian-born Catherine Birmingham — lived with their three children in a rural stone building without running water, electricity or gas, relying largely on self-sufficiency and solar power.
Authorities became aware of the family in 2024 after the children were hospitalised for mushroom poisoning. This prompted investigations by social services into their living conditions and welfare.
In November 2025, the Juvenile Court of L’Aquila ordered the children — an eight-year-old girl and six-year-old twin boys — to be removed from their parents. The authorities placed them in a community facility, citing concerns about housing conditions, schooling and access to healthcare.
Meloni: “Children are not the property of the state”
Meloni sharply questioned whether the latest court decisions for the ‘family in the woods’ truly serve the best interests of the children.
“The task of juvenile courts is to protect children in cases of abuse, mistreatment or abandonment,” she wrote. “But where is the child’s best interest when children are separated from their father, then from their mother, and kept for months in a group home simply because judges disagree with the family’s lifestyle?”
She argued that the state should not replace parents or impose a particular model of upbringing.
“Children are not the property of the state: they belong to their mothers and fathers,” Meloni said. She further warned that institutions risk overstepping their limits when they attempt to dictate how families should live.
Concerns about the children’s wellbeing
Meloni also referred to concerns raised by the Italian authority responsible for safeguarding children’s rights, which has asked for the suspension of the latest order to transfer the children away from their mother.
According to the authority, independent medical evaluations have already identified signs of distress among the minors, raising questions about whether the repeated separations may worsen their psychological condition.
The prime minister said it was legitimate to ask whether the court’s decisions were improving or worsening the children’s situation.
Meloni noted the Italian government has already introduced draft legislation aimed at limiting what it sees as excessive discretion in decisions involving child custody and social services.
The bill, she said, seeks to ensure that interventions by authorities are strictly focused on the “best interest of the child”. It also looks to prevent ideological considerations from influencing such rulings.
