An off-grid UK-Australian couple have described their heartache, trauma and stress after fighting for two years for the right to parent their children as they choose, following the removal of the children from their home in Italy.
Catherine Birmingham, from Melbourne, and her British partner, Nathan Trevallion, had their three children removed from their “dilapidated” off-grid home in the Abruzzo region last year, sparking global conversations about state intervention and alternative lifestyles. The family lived on a property in the woods, where they grew their own food and homeschooled the children.
Court orders removal after hospitalisation
In September 2024, the family was hospitalised after eating poisonous mushrooms they had picked, which brought them to the attention of authorities. In November 2025, the juvenile court ordered the removal of Utopia Rose, nine, and six-year-old twins Galorian and Bluebell to a residential care facility, citing a lack of hygiene, social interaction, toilet facilities and schooling.
Birmingham stayed with them until March, when she was ordered to leave under a new court ruling. On Wednesday, an Italian court approved a staged process that would allow a “gradual reunification process”, and could eventually allow the children to leave the facility.
Partial revision of previous decision
“The ruling partially revises previous court decisions and sets out a gradual reunification process, allowing the children to return home for daytime visits immediately and, from October, for weekend overnight stays with their family,” their lawyer, Simone Pillon, said.
In a statement released on Thursday, the couple said the “long-awaited decision, which our entire family awaited with anguish, arrived with a harshness that broke each of our hearts”. They asked whether forcing school attendance was “fair, legal, and respectful” of their parental rights and the rights of their children, saying they chose Italy for reasons including its homeschooling rights and support for family bonds.
Concerns for children’s health
The parents have said that doctors say the children’s health is at “serious risk” and “the only way to reduce this risk is to return them home immediately”. “We are deeply concerned for their health,” the parents wrote. “How will they be well if they are forced to travel back and forth from their home to the foster home, then to school, and then back to the foster home again, all while still being kept apart from their parents? How will they fare in the evening when, after an afternoon spent at home with their friends and pets, they must return to the foster home?”
Italy’s hard-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has expressed “alarm” over the children being taken into care, while the deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, compared the case to a kidnapping. But the judiciary’s union said the court’s decision was based on factors including the children’s safety, sanitary conditions and education.
Monitoring and appeal plans
After the latest decision, social services will monitor the process and make an assessment before any permanent reunion can happen. The couple wrote that the authorities wanted to impose a standard. “And those who don’t follow it lose their children,” they wrote. “We are deeply saddened by this. We have continued to collaborate and engage with everyone, even under extreme trauma, stress, exasperation and concern for our children knowing their daily suffering but we will always demand respect for our parental rights and, above all, for our children’s rights, especially their right to health – mental, physical and emotional.”
The couple plan to appeal for a complete and faster reunification.
