The Family Who Lived in the Woods: How a British-Australian Couple Lost Their Children to the Italian State
The juvenile court of L’Aquila has issued a ruling that separates Catherine Birmingham from her three children and splits the siblings between different facilities, sending shockwaves through a case that has gripped Italy for months.
Italy’s so-called forest family case took a dramatic turn on Friday when the juvenile tribunal of L’Aquila ordered the removal of mother Catherine Birmingham from the protected facility where she had been living alongside her three children, and simultaneously decreed that the children themselves be separated and placed in different structures. The ruling landed on the same day that court-appointed psychiatrist Simona Ceccoli was scheduled to begin psychological assessments of the three minors, a coincidence that the family’s legal team described with barely concealed fury.
“There is a court order from a tribunal with such high sensitivity that, right in the middle of the psychiatric assessment, it decided to remove the children and separate the mother,” said the family’s lawyer, Marco Femminella, speaking outside the facility before entering. “Probably this assessment, as Andreotti would have said, was not going well as it was going, so they interrupted it.” His words, laden with sarcasm toward the judiciary, captured the atmosphere around a case that has divided Italian public opinion since November.
Who the Trevallion Family Are
Nathan Trevallion, 51, is British. His wife Catherine Birmingham, 45, is Australian. The couple moved to Italy in 2021, settling in a stone farmhouse in the woods near Palmoli, in the province of Chieti in Abruzzo. They had three children: a daughter of eight and twin boys of six. The farmhouse had no running water and used a dry toilet. The children were educated at home by their mother using a Steiner-inspired unschooling method that prioritised creativity and natural learning over formal literacy and numeracy.
The family came to the attention of authorities in September 2024 when all five members were admitted to hospital following mushroom poisoning. During that contact with the health system, social services noted that the children could not read or write and had limited interaction with peers their own age. An investigation followed, and on 20 November 2025 social workers and police executed a court order removing the children from their parents. The father, Nathan, remained at the farmhouse. The mother, Catherine, was permitted to accompany the children to a protected residential facility in Vasto, on the Adriatic coast, where she could be with them during set hours each day.
“It’s been a painful and very sad night. I cannot sleep well because I miss my family. I don’t understand why this has happened to us.” Nathan Trevallion, speaking after the initial removal of his children in November 2025.
Four Months of Mounting Tension
What followed the November removal was four months of escalating friction. The facility in Vasto reported persistent difficulties with Catherine’s behaviour, citing what staff described as a rigid and uncooperative attitude, a refusal to comply with internal rules, and what they characterised as an effort to undermine the children’s engagement with the educational programme being provided. The facility formally requested that the tribunal consider moving the family elsewhere.
The family’s legal team contested that characterisation at every turn. Catherine’s relatives, including her mother Pauline and her sister Rachael, who travelled from Australia to Italy to support the family, described the atmosphere at the facility as oppressive. Rachael, speaking on the RAI television programme La Vita in Diretta, said that visits to the structure felt like being watched in a prison. “The children are suffering,” she said. “And so is Catherine.”
Italy’s national children’s ombudsman, Marina Terragni, weighed in in January, warning that removing Catherine from the facility entirely would inflict a fresh trauma on children who were already in a fragile state. “It is not conceivable, whatever the attitude of the mother, that such a further trauma could be inflicted on the three minors,” Terragni wrote. Her intervention did not alter the trajectory of the case.
The Psychiatric Assessment at the Centre of the Dispute
The procedural heart of the case has been a series of court-ordered psychiatric and psychological assessments. An earlier assessment of parental capacity, conducted on Nathan and Catherine by court-appointed psychiatrist Simona Ceccoli, proved deeply controversial. The family’s legal team sought to have Ceccoli removed from the case, raising doubts about her impartiality and citing comments she had made on social media. The tribunal rejected that application.
Friday 6 March was scheduled as the first day of Ceccoli’s psychological assessment of the children themselves, a process that the court had allowed 120 days to complete. That assessment was supposed to evaluate the children’s psychological state, their cognitive development and their emotional condition after months in institutional care. The ruling to remove Catherine and separate the children arrived just as that process was beginning, throwing its continuation into doubt. It is not clear as of Friday evening whether the assessments will proceed at the Vasto facility or be relocated.
“These four months, to which must be added the almost two months already spent in the facility, represent an infinite amount of time for children.” Marina Terragni, Italy’s children’s ombudsman.
What Friday’s Ruling Means
The practical consequences of Friday’s order are stark. Catherine Birmingham will be removed from the Vasto facility and returned to the family farmhouse in Palmoli, where Nathan has been living alone since November. The three children, who have been living together in the same facility with their mother nearby, will be separated from each other and placed in different structures. The location of those structures has not been publicly confirmed.
For the defence team, the ruling is both a legal setback and, they argue, a child welfare disaster. Previous assessments by health professionals attached to the Vasto ASL had already found the children to be in a state of significant distress as a result of their separation from their parents. Separating them from each other and from their mother simultaneously is a step that the family’s own psychiatric experts described as terrifying. “I have not yet spoken to the parents,” said defence psychologist Marina Aiello, arriving at the facility on Friday morning. “We are here to conduct the interviews and see the children.”
A Case That Has Divided Italy
The forest family case has generated an unusually intense public debate in Italy about the limits of state intervention in family life, the rights of parents to raise children outside conventional educational and domestic frameworks, and the capacity of the child welfare system to make proportionate judgments in complex situations. The family’s unconventional lifestyle, the foreign nationality of both parents and the remote rural setting have all contributed to a story that resists easy categorisation.
Supporters of the family argue that the state has criminalised an alternative way of living that, while unusual, posed no direct harm to the children. Critics contend that the children were being denied their rights to education, socialisation and appropriate living conditions. The tribunal has consistently sided with the view that the children’s welfare required intervention, but the execution of that intervention has generated as many questions as the original decision.
The case is expected to remain before the L’Aquila juvenile tribunal for several more months as the psychiatric assessment process concludes and the judges weigh their options. Among those options, according to earlier reporting, is the possibility of temporary foster placement with family members, including Catherine’s mother Pauline or her sister Rachael, both of whom hold dual Maltese and Australian citizenship and have expressed willingness to take on that role if the court were to permit it.
For Nathan and Catherine Trevallion, Friday’s ruling represents the most painful development yet in a process that began with a single night in hospital fourteen months ago. As Nathan put it in November, sitting alone in the farmhouse where his family used to live: “I miss my life. I don’t understand why this has happened to us.”
Ph: Corriere.it
