Family: Judge rejects dad's glowing account of life in US

A father of three who lives in Texas and is said to have subjected his children to a nomadic life has failed to persuade the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) that his children should be returned to him. The Star reports the father launched proceedings in terms of The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Act, to have his children returned. Judge Fiona Dippenaar concluded that the evidence proved that the children – aged seven, nine and 11 – will be placed in an intolerable situation if they are returned to the US.

While the father painted a picture of a stable home for the children in the US, which he said was far more promising than life in SA, the mother painted the picture of a family without roots and who had lived a nomadic existence when the father had lost his job. The father presented a glowing picture of life in Texas filled with amenities and opportunities, contrasting it to life in SA which ‘provides a far less certain future’. But the judge said his picture was painted in broad and abstract terms and disregards the realities of the family’s life experiences and ‘the erosion of various constitutional rights which are presently taking place in the US, and specifically in Texas, rights which enjoy protection under the SA Constitution’.