Published on 24 April 2023
SECOND SECTION
Application no. 225/23
Tamara COTELNIC and Others
against the Republic of Moldova and Romania
lodged on 22 December 2022
communicated on 6 April 2023
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns allegations about the respondent States’ failure to provide the applicants with effective protection from domestic violence and to take adequate measures to prevent or to react promptly to the abduction to Romania of the second and fourth applicants by their father.
The applicants are a mother and her three children, aged thirteen, six and three respectively. The first applicant (“the mother”) divorced the children’s father (V.C.) in 2019, but the applicants and V.C. continued living together in the Republic of Moldova. The parents exercised shared custody of the children and after their divorce none of them sought exclusive custody. The mother claims that she had been a victim of domestic violence for a long time at the hands of V.C. and in June 2022 she left the common residence in the Republic of Moldova with all three children for a holiday in Serbia, visiting her sister. V.C. pursued them in Serbia where he claimed to the police that the mother had been ill-treating the children. However, on 9 July 2022 a welfare officer confirmed that the mother and the children sought refuge from V.C. with the mother’s sister and that the Leskovac Court (Serbia) had issued a protection order against V.C. to not approach nor contact the mother’s sister. In August 2022 the mother and the children joined V.C. in Brașov, Romania with the purpose to settle there and rebuilt the family. On 7 August 2022, while the mother and the oldest child were in the city looking for a rental apartment for the family, V.C. took the two other children, the second and fourth applicants, and left to Chișinău, Republic of Moldova, without notice. The mother and the oldest son returned to Chișinău, too; all her requests to see her other two children were refused by V.C. who accused her of being an unfit mother.
On 29 September 2022 the mother made an official request to the Moldovan authorities to cancel the travel documents of the second and fourth applicants. On 1 October 2022 she waited in her car outside V.C.’s parents’ house in Chișinău and saw her two children. When she tried to take them with her, V.C. attacked and beat her, while his mother was pulling the children away. The forensic report found around six bruises of different sizes on the mother’s neck, face and jaw (with the largest ones on her neck, measuring 5 cm by 0.3 cm). While the mother alerted the police about the possible abduction of the second and fourth applicants by V.C., no action was undertaken.
On 3 October 2022 the mother sought a protection order for herself and all three children from the Chișinău District Court. In addition to the incident on 1 October 2022 she also referred to V.C.’s arms permit and previous conviction for firing it in a public space to threaten another person. She requested that the order be issued both in respect of V.C. and his mother. The court granted the request the same day, ordering V.C. and his mother to refrain from contacting the applicants in person or via other means, to respect a distance of at least 200 m from the applicants and not come into their visual field, and to refrain from coming to the children’s school or kindergarten and to the first applicant’s workplace. V.C. left the courthouse before the court delivered the protection order and at 9 p.m. the same day left the territory of the Republic of Moldova with the second and fourth applicants. On 8 November 2022 the Chișinău Court of Appeal upheld the protection order, rejecting V.C.’s appeal on points of law. On 2 December 2022 the Chișinău District Court extended the protection order for another ninety days.
On 26 October 2022 the mother made an official request under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (“the Hague Convention”) to the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, the designated Moldovan authority under the Convention, seeking the identification of the children’s whereabouts in Romania and their immediate return to the Republic of Moldova. The Ministry made a request to their Romanian counterpart on 10 November 2022, no reply was received at the time when the application was submitted on 22 December 2022. Equally, the mother did not receive any clarification from the Border Police how it had been possible for the children to cross the border when a request for the invalidation of their passports had been made five days earlier.
V.C. is in contact with the first and third applicants via Whatsapp. On 18 December 2022 he wrote to the third applicant that his six-year-old brother, the fourth applicant, could no longer walk, that his feet went numb and then he no longer could step on them. The first applicant was unable to find out more information.
The applicants complain under Article 3 and 8 of the Convention that the respondent States had failed to provide them with effective protection from domestic violence and to take adequate measures to prevent or to react promptly to the abduction to Romania of the second and fourth applicants by their father.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Were the authorities of the respondent States aware of the acts of domestic violence against the applicants or should they have been aware thereof? Did the authorities comply with their positive obligation to take all necessary steps to protect the applicants from domestic violence, as required by Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention, in view of the protection order issued against V.C. by the Moldovan courts (see Osman v. the United Kingdom, 28 October 1998, §§ 116 and 128, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998‑VIII; Eremia v. the Republic of Moldova, no. 3564/11, §§ 48 et seq., 28 May 2013)?
2. Has there been a violation of the applicants’ right to respect for their family life, contrary to Article 8 of the Convention, in the light of the proceedings for the return of second and fourth applicants to the Republic of Moldova (see X v. Latvia [GC], no. 27853/09, §§ 101, 106-07, ECHR 2013 and Neulinger and Shuruk v. Switzerland [GC], no. 41615/07, §§ 131-40, ECHR 2010)? Did the domestic authorities of both respondent States comply with the requirement of speediness inherent in proceedings for the return of children (see, for example, G.S. v. Georgia, no. 2361/13, §§ 49 and 63-66, 21 July 2015)?
3. The parties are invited to submit information about the developments of the proceedings under the Hague Convention.
APPENDIX
List of applicants:
Application no. 225/23
No.
Applicant’s Name
Year of birth/registration
Nationality
Place of residence
1.
Tamara COTELNIC
1988
Moldovan
Bărboini
2.
Antonia COTELNIC
2019
Moldovan, Romanian
Chișinău
3.
Ștefan COTELNIC
2009
Moldovan, Romanian
Chișinău
4.
Valentin COTELNIC
2016
Moldovan, Romanian
Chișinău