• 'Case of Juana Rivas'. The nth setback for Juana Rivas in Spain with the delivery of her children
  • 'Case of Juana Rivas'. Rivas runs out the last cartridges to prevent her children from returning to Italy with their father
  • Expert report: An Italian report says that Juana Rivas is "harmful to her children"

The Minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado, sent on August 9 a written letter to her Italian counterpart, Alfonso Bonafede , to intercede on behalf of Juana Rivas, the Spanish mother convicted of international abduction of her two children and whose custody was withdrawn for the Italian Justice, and to bring you up to date with the concern of women and be interested in the situation of the two minors, as EL MUNDO has been able to confirm.

Rivas, supported by its demands by the PSOE and Podemos, which came to support demonstrations throughout Spain in 2016 to request that their children be recovered, was sentenced in July 2018 to five years in jail (in a sentence confirmed by the Provincial Court of Granada ), highlighting the judge who had exploited "the argument of abuse."

In Italy, the Justice denied him at the end of the same year the custody of his own children for having a "pathological mental functioning", because she herself was a danger to minors as a "manipulator", and sent her for treatment. However, despite the ongoing judicial procedures in both countries - basically their recourse to both judicial decisions, and also to the dismissal of several complaints filed against her ex-husband, this did not prevent Minister Delgado from writing to the Government Italian.

On August 9, the head of Justice sent the letter interested in the situation of the minors and to express the concern of Juana Rivas, who tried by all legal means last summer that her children did not return to Sardinia after their holiday period with she.

"A risk situation for minors"

Sources of the Ministry of Justice confirmed on Wednesday to EL MUNDO the existence and sending of the letter, and argued that Delgado sent the letter to his Italian counterpart to transmit "that the Ministry has been aware of the concern of Juana Rivas for the welfare of their children for certain facts that could have occurred in Carloforte [place of residence of the children with the father] and that could have caused a situation of risk for the minors ".

The Ministry was aware of this "concern", these sources abounded, before the request for international protection made by Rivas last summer before the Delegation of the Government of Andalusia, trying by all means that their children did not return to Carloforte - a copy of that petition he also reached a court in Granada, which dismissed it.

Delgado's intervention, unusual because there are several ongoing procedures in both countries and the principle of separation of powers, was also absolutely unnecessary from an administrative point of view, according to sources of the cause, for having already traveled at least twice the Spanish consul to Sardinia to be interested in the situation of the two minors, Spanish nationals.

However, the minister intervened by writing to Bonafede, who briefly replied on September 16, as this newspaper has learned, reiterating that the Italian judicial system ensures the safety and welfare of children, and that for the country's legal system Transalpine the interest of minors is a priority.

The minister gave political and extrajudicial channels to the demands of Rivas, who has repeatedly denounced her former husband's ill-treatment of her children, never demonstrated abuse. To the point that, given the repeated lack of evidence, the Italian Public Prosecutor's Office came to give orders to the Carabinieri not to communicate more complaints if they were not accompanied by any indication, as published in this newspaper.

Support despite the expert report

Delgado thus backed Rivas before the Italian Government, branded by the psychologist Ludovica Iesu as "emotionally labile", "unable to manage his emotions" and given to "confuse his interests with those of his children", as reflected in his report 177 pages, after five months of work and 32 interviews.

Iesu pointed out, after repeatedly listening to the minors, the parents, the experts of each party and teachers and doctors linked to them, that Rivas suffers a "serious pathological mental functioning associated with disorganization of thought" and that he frequently uses the manipulation of minors to achieve their ends.

Iesu came to affirm - and for that reason the judge of Sardinia sent the Spanish woman to weekly treatment - that Rivas had "triangulated" her eldest son in the conflict she has with her ex-husband, Francesco Arcuri , and that he is "totally unconscious of the psychological damage generated to their children. " The same children for whose safety and well-being now Delgado claimed to intercede, in his letter, on behalf of Rivas, to the Italian Minister of Justice.

After traveling to Spain from Sardinia with the children, supposedly on vacation, in the summer of 2016, Rivas refused to return with them to the family home, in Italy, and filed a complaint in Spain against the father, for alleged ill-treatment in Italy .

A year later, in the summer of 2017, demonstrations took place throughout Spain, with the Juana campaign being in my house , when the woman became unaccounted for refusing to hand over her children, at the request of a court of Pomegranate.

From Susana Díaz to then President Mariano Rajoy - "you have to put yourself in that mother's place" - much of the political arch supported her. Two years later, she was convicted of abducting her children and all her complaints against her ex-husband were filed in Italy, several of them provisionally, for lack of evidence.

Informed by this newspaper of the letter sent by the minister to his Italian counterpart in favor of Rivas, Enrique Zambrano, lawyer of Arcuri in Spain, expressed his "absolute stupefaction and outrage". "It is a scandal with capital letters of which the head of the Ministry of Justice must explain, how and why she acts as a messenger of a woman sentenced to five years in prison for child abduction. I wish she had been interested instead on how it has been the stay of the minors in Spain, where she exercises her mandate, during the month of August in Maracena, or rather, what are the activities and treatments to which they have been subjected during that period by their mother ".

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  • Italy
  • Pomegranate
  • Dolores Delgado
  • Andalusia
  • Susana Díaz
  • Violence
  • society
  • Childhood

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