Justice will ultimately have ruled in favor of the father. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday, March 28, rejected a mother's challenge to the French court's decision to send her child back to Japan so that he could be handed over to his father.
The courts "did not order the child's return automatically or mechanically" but "duly took into account (his mother's) allegations during an adversarial and fair procedure, and rendered reasoned decisions which pursued the best interests of the child,” the court said in a statement.
A family conflict dating from 2017
The applicant, Marine Verhoeven, French born in 1988, married a Japanese man in 2007 in France and then went to live with him in Japan, according to the Court. The couple had a child, Louis, in 2015.
Two years later, in July 2017, Ms Verhoeven returned to France with her son to spend the summer holidays. But a month before the return flight, she warned her husband that she would not return to Japan and wanted a divorce. For his part, the father submitted a request to the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs in October 2017 for assistance with the child's return, recalls the ECHR.
VIDEO. Louis, 4 years old, separated from his mother and sent back to Japan the day after Christmas
Two years of proceedings followed. In February 2018, a family judge in Montpellier, southern France, ordered the child's return to Japan, a decision upheld on appeal a few months later. Seized, the Court of Cassation first overturned the appeal decision at the end of 2018, asking the Toulouse Court of Appeal to re-examine the case.
No “attack on respect for family life” of the mother
The latter confirmed the first decision in June 2019 and validated the conditions of return to Japan proposed by the father. A second appeal was rejected at the end of 2019 and Louis was handed over to his Japanese father on December 26 of that same year.
“The (French) courts rendered reasoned decisions which pursued the best interests of the child and which made it possible to exclude any serious risk for him, whether it be the alleged risk of violence against him or of that of a possible severance of ties with his mother, further indicates the Court, which sits in Strasbourg (eastern France).
“The return of the child to his father in Japan under the Hague Convention”, relating to international child abduction and ratified by Tokyo, “did not infringe the right to respect for life family of his mother", further considers the Court.