Family in the woods, mother removed from children

These were the words of lawyer Danila Solinas as she left the family home last night, where the mother of the 'woodland children', removed from the shelter following the order of the L'Aquila Juvenile Court, was housed.

The Premier Giorgia Meloni intervened on the matter: 'After deciding to entrust the social services with three children who lived with their parents in the wild and to place them in a foster home, the Juvenile Court of L'Aquila decided to remove the mother from the protected structure where she was allowed to stay with her children and to separate the minors as well. It is a decision that inflicts on the children a further, very heavy trauma, after the separation from their father.

My thoughts are with the children and their parents affected by an absurd concatenation of decisions with a clear ideological tenor," said the Prime Minister. "The task of the Juvenile Courts is to protect children and adolescents in the face of cases of ill-treatment, abuse or abandonment, acting in the best interests of the child," the Prime Minister continued. "And where would the best interests of the child be when children are removed from their father, then from their mother, to spend months and months in a foster home, increasingly alone, because the Juvenile Court judges do not agree with the family's lifestyle?

It is not the role of justice, and of the state in general, to replace parents, to decide how children should be educated, to impose a lifestyle based on standards that are clearly ideological. Because children do not belong to the state: children belong to mothers and fathers, and a state that claims to replace them has forgotten its limits.

A judiciary that claims to take their place has forgotten its limits. According to the Authority for Children and Adolescents - which has called for the suspension of the order to transfer the children, with consequent removal from their mother - independent expert opinions on the minors' health have already indicated a state of distress and suffering. Are these court decisions improving or worsening the conditions of these children? It is legitimate to ask oneself this question. The government had already intervened in this matter, passing a special bill, which I hope Parliament will be able to approve as soon as possible, to restrict arbitrariness and pursue exclusively the best interests of the minors'.

The mother is to be taken out of the family home in Vasto and so the three children will also be transferred to another shelter. This was reported by Tg1 on social channels.

The decision, called for by the management of the family home in Vasto where the children have been taken in since 20 November 2025, is contained in an order of the Juvenile Court of L'Aquila that, according to the first information that has emerged, orders the transfer of the woman to another facility. Transfer that will take place in the next few hours.

A decision 'that terrifies us'. With these words Marina Aiello, one of the psychologists making up the team of experts for the 'family of the woods', commented on the decision of the L'Aquila Juvenile Court.

'I have not yet spoken to the parents,' he said as he entered the shelter, 'we are here to interview and see the children. I hope to be able to do that, that is my hope. This is an upheaval that has escalated to an enormous and absurd degree'.

For the forest family, the Childhood and Adolescence Authority Marina Terragni expresses her opposition to the transfer of the children without their mother and calls for the decision 'to be suspended' pending 'further independent medical examination'.

A new examination 'is to verify,' he explains, 'the possible consequences of this transfer-separation on the health of the three children. And I therefore hope that the decision to transfer the children by separating them from their mother will be suspended pending the outcome of this new examination'.

"The children in the forest house are learning, progressing, but they are stressed". This is the account given by Lidia Camilla Vallarolo, the retired teacher who has been looking after them for almost two months in the sheltered house where they were taken after being removed from their home in Palmoli. The teacher was interviewed by the programme Ore 14 Sera aired yesterday in prime time on Rai 2 hosted by Milo Infante.