Father reunited with son after two-year custody battle

A two-year chapter of heartache and legal battles closed with the promise for a better future when a Gozitan father won the custody of his 14-year-old son who lived in the UK, and was reunited with him last week.

"This was never about winning my son from my wife; this was about restoring all that was precious to the boy's life and which had been taken from him," Mario Attard said.

Speaking from his home in Gozo, Mr Attard, 45, is hoping to snuff out his nightmares and restless nights and help Shaun settle back into normality on the island with his older siblings.

Talking about the past life he shared with his British wife, whom he married in 1986, is not easy, but Mr Attard recounts how soon after the wedding he moved to Manchester.

However, the couple soon returned to Gozo, where they raised three children, and settled down happily. When Shaun turned seven, his wife seemed anxious to return to her roots, so they packed their bags, sold all their belongings and went back to the UK.

Mr Attard found it hard to settle down and their relationship began to suffer. Soon after, he returned to Gozo for health reasons but in his quest to keep the family intact he flew back to the UK.

The situation between the two was strained and eventually Mr Attard got on a plane and landed in Malta "with nothing. I had left with my hands full and now I returned empty-handed".

Eventually in 2006, his two older children - a son today aged 21, and a daughter, 19 - joined him in Gozo and Shaun spent the holidays with them in summer.

Before he was scheduled to return to Manchester, the issue ended up in Gozo's law courts. The judge ruled it was in Shaun's best interests to remain on the island, because of dangers he could be exposed to if he returned to live with his mother following allegations of substance abuse by others in the family home.

Not prepared to let go of her youngest child so quickly, his wife appealed in the Maltese court, but also launched a case in the English courts, which ruled, in a landmark judgment, that it had primary jurisdiction over Shaun. It ordered the boy's immediate return to Manchester saying he was abducted, despite the fact that his father had always been granted legal access.

"That day panic ensued. When we got home we were surrounded by 10 policemen and social workers and Shaun was whisked away against his will. Unbeknown to anyone, his mother was already in Malta and the police handed Shaun over," he said, recalling the heart-wrenching that had been captured by the media in December 2006.

On this point, one of his two lawyers, Angele Formosa, said yesterday she still had reservations about how the English court ordered the return of the child on the basis that he was abducted.

The legal battle and woes began and Mr Attard and his two other children were only allowed to speak to Shaun on Mondays and Fridays at 9.30 p.m. and every conversation had to be overheard by the mother.

Dr Formosa explained that the ordeal had been extremely stressful on all parties, especially Shaun who could not understand why he was separated from his father.

"The boy was not given the chance to make his voice heard in the English court. It was being made to appear that the boy had settled there and they were doing everything possible to push the son into forgetting his family in Gozo," she said.

Together with another lawyer, Alfred Grech, Dr Formosa worked to try and resolve the matter, but it was not easy because English law was different and involved high costs.

For the past two years, Mr Attard kept up his fighting spirit to ensure his son was happy. He could not rest knowing that Shaun had been separated from the culture and way of life the boy loved so much.

Whenever he went to the UK to visit Shaun, Mr Attard was treated like a criminal and his passport was taken from him, just in case he planned to run off with the boy.

A year after Shaun was ripped from his father's embrace, the case was even highlighted by Bishop Nikol Cauchi in The Times.

"As far as I have been able to gather, the government agencies, locally and in the UK, have managed to do little to assist the father when he earnestly sought their help," he wrote.

"He was left, almost alone, to fight the battle in the London courts for his paternal rights and those of his son..."

Mr Attard said he would never have managed to get through all this without the help of Mgr Cauchi as well as former Gozo Cathedral parish priest Joseph Vella Gauci, Fr Manuel Cordina and his lawyers.

The saga dragged on for another year, before Shaun finally took matters in his own hands to make his voice heard. The case was concluded this month and on October 3 Mr Attard was finally granted custody.

Dr Formosa said she was happy with the outcome of the case, where for the first time there had been direct contact between the Maltese and English courts through video links. And despite its initial reluctance, the Maltese lawyers were eventually accorded a legal standing in the English court.

Mr Attard said: "My battle was never against my wife. My fight was to ensure my son was happy. My wife and I can fight all our lives, but children should never be made to suffer."

Now, he is preparing to put all this behind him, and yesterday he could be found in the garage with his three children, building a carnival float - a pastime that glues them together.