Judge orders mum to flout travel ban
Judge orders frightened Scots teenage mum and baby son to take repatriation flight to Malta despite global lockdown
Mother told to fly across Europe with her baby son
One of Scotland’s most senior judges has ordered a teenager to break the Governmentimposed lockdown and fly to Malta with her baby son despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
Leigha Collins fled home to Scotland after leaving Malta with her son Hayes when her relationship with his father broke down.
But a Court of Session judge has now ordered her to return Hayes, aged 11 months, to his father, Kyle Borg. Lord Brailsford ruled that Leigha, 18, had broken Hague Convention rules on child abduction.
Lord Brailsford’s ruling effectively forces Leigha to break the UK Government’s ban on leaving home and travel to London and across Europe with her baby son, despite the global pandemic and worldwide lockdown.
She has no idea where they will stay when they arrive in Malta.
The judge made his ruling 10 days ago and pointed out that, because there were so few commercial flights because of the lockdown, Leigh and her son would need to return to Malta on a repatriation flight meant for Maltese citizens who have been trapped in the UK since international airline travel stopped.
They have been ordered to join a repatriation flight from London on Thursday.
Her lawyers intend to appeal the ruling this week but, meanwhile, politicians raised the case with ministers in a bid to halt the enforced journey during lockdown.
Yesterday, Leigha, from Kinghorn, Fife, said: “Scotland is in lockdown and so is Malta yet I have been ordered to travel all the way from Fife to London on public transport with an 11-month-old baby despite all the guidelines and advice telling us not to travel or leave home.
“I am then expected to get myself to Heathrow
Airport, go through security checks and officials
No one is meant to leave home, everywhere is in lockdown, but despite the risks, I have been told to travel across Europe with a baby. I can’t think about it. Every bit of it terrifies me – Leigha Collins
check passports and travel passes before we get on what will undoubtedly be a packed flight to Malta.
“The flight alone is over three hours and, with all the waiting around, that means at least four hours in a cramped plane breathing in air that could be carrying the virus.”
“Once I land in Malta I have no idea where I will be going, where I will stay, how we can access food, water and necessities, and what can be done to ensure that myself and Hayes are kept safe and protected. “Every aspect of this terrifies me.” Malta last week recorded its first death from Covid-19, a 92-year-old woman, and more than 300 people have been diagnosed.
Now Mid Scotland and Fife MSP Alex Rowley has written to the First Minister, Lord Advocate and Justice Secretary. He told the Sunday Post: “I have written to all levels of government to look into this case as a matter of urgency.”
In his letter he says: “At a very minimum, this case should be put on hold until it can be reviewed and, in the current circumstances, no one should be forced to travel from Scotland to a foreign country.”
MSP Mike Russell, Cabinet Secretary for Government Business and Constitutional Relations, has also brought Leigha’s case to the attention of Children’s Minister, Maree Todd, and Holyrood’s Equalities and Human Rights Committee convenor, Christina McKelvie.
Leigha, 18, met Mr Borg, 19, after she moved to Malta when her parents, Cerry and Dougie Collins, opened a bar there three years ago.
Leigha, who also has a older son, Alfie, two, said: “He said he’d treat Alfie as his own. And when I became pregnant with his baby he agreed to come to Scotland so we could begin a new life as a family.”
Dougie and Cerry closed their bar and returned to Fife. The young couple and Alfie joined them but Leigha said Mr Borg became homesick and persuaded her to return to Malta, where their relationship broke down.
She said: “I felt I had no choice but to flee from Malta. From being very charming and caring after we first met almost a year ago, he changed once Hayes was born. I felt frightened and alone. I didn’t know who to turn to.”
Mr Borg then launched an action claiming she had abducted Hayes.
In his ruling, Lord Brailsford accused Leigha of “duplicity” and ordered Hayes be returned to Malta,
And he said that, while Leigha had told the court she faced an “intolerable situation”, these circumstances affected her, but not her son.
He said: “It is perfectly clear that the intolerable situation she refers to, is her own circumstances. Now that may well be the case. I don’t need to judge that, but it is not the situation so far as the child is concerned.”
In his statement to the court Leigha’s ex said he was happy to raise Leigha’s two-year-old son Alfie as his own, but said he also wanted a child of his own. He said the boys were “loved” by his family but added: “I do not deny that we had a few verbal arguments.”