Thirty days after the departure from France to Japan of Louis Kudo-Verhoeven, 4 and a half years old, the tension at a distance is still very real between father Sushei Kudo and Marine Verhoeven the mother. On December 26, she had to hand the little boy over to his father in application of a decision of the Toulouse Court of Appeal (Haute-Garonne) made in July 2019 and confirmed on November 21 by the Court of Cassation.
This controversial decision had been obtained by the father in application of the Hague Convention which requires the return of the child to the family home. Two years earlier Marine, had returned to France with her son and she had not returned to Japan where she had lived until then with her husband met in Toulouse a few years earlier. Then, she had filed for divorce in France, citing domestic violence.
VIDEO. Louis' heartbreaking departure for Japan
After the absolute tear of the separation of the day after Christmas, the mom and the grandparents struggle to obtain the most minimal information on the new Japanese life of the little boy. “We don't know how he lives. We have the feeling that everything is done to keep us out of the way, to make Louis forget us as quickly as possible and move on to his new Japanese life. The commitments made by his father before recovering the child are not required, in particular that of not breaking the bond between the child and his mother "exclaims Marine Verhoeven, the mother who alternates between moments of depression and anger. "Should we therefore get used to the idea of never seeing Louis again before the age of his Japanese majority, in fifteen years?" ".
"When we ask a question, the father cuts off the sound"
To support the betrayal of the father's commitments, the French family brandishes the simulated communication by Skype which is supposed to make the link between the two families and the two cultures. “You can never really talk to Louis. When a question is asked, the father cuts off the sound and he seems to dictate the answer to his son. Most of the time, the webcam films the ceiling or the stairs, and these are sometimes sequences of a few minutes between two cuts, ”adds Viviane the grandmother.
On a sheet of paper, she keeps the accounts of these few minutes taken from the great intercontinental silence. "The father had promised the matrimonial apartment so that Marine came to settle there in Tokyo with Louis, but this apartment no longer exists and Louis lives with his father in the home of his grandparents" adds Viviane the grandmother then that the friends of the association "Never without Louis" installed in Salles-d'Aude do not disarm. All of them, Magali, Joseph, Jérôme and the others are able to recite by heart all the texts that govern the rights of the child in France and abroad.
They want to be heard so that "French justice stops sending children back to Japan which, in this matter, never respects its commitments". In the room in Salles-d'Aude, the little boy's room is still there, empty. Stylized little foxes laugh on the duvet and a cushion with the photo of Louis and his mom freezes the last moment of life here. It was December 26 at the start of an emotional winter that could last a long time. Contacted through his lawyer Me Hansu Yalaz, Louis' father, did not respond to our requests.
