Mother’s payout after twins taken from her ‘unlawfully’
A MOTHER whose nine-year-old twins were unlawfully taken from her in a case exposed by The Sunday Telegraph has won a payout from the authorities.
Footage recorded in March 2012 showed Nikolai and Anastasia Antonova screaming and crying as they were forcibly taken from their home by social services in the Netherlands.
The authorities argued that the family were unable to properly care for the twins because they spoke Russian at home rather than Dutch, as well as the “baseless claim” their mother might abscond with them to their native Latvia to escape their estranged father.
However, after years of legal wranglings, the family were finally reunited in November 2014 after a judge ruled that the twins should have never been removed from their mother’s care.
The family is suing the three authorities connected to the “unlawful and careless removal of the children” – Salvation Army Youth Protection, the Ministry of Justice and Security and the youth protection service of Gelderland province – claiming they are liable “for the damage suffered and to be suffered”. The youth protection service has now reached a financial settlement with the family – paving the way for the other two authorities to follow suit.
The case was highlighted by the late Christopher Booker in a series of columns for The Telegraph. It attracted international attention and was raised by a Latvian MEP in Brussels.
While in the Dutch care system, the children were said to be forbidden from speaking Russian, owning a mobile phone or watching news on the television, breaching the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Mr Booker wrote that “the Dutch authorities’ treatment of these children appears to be in breach of no fewer than 17 separate articles of this treaty, to which Holland is a signatory”.
He continued: “But much the same is true of pretty well every case I have investigated here in Britain, where children have been snatched from their families for similarly dubious reasons.”
The Dutch government’s welfare department was contacted for comment.