Shattered Childhoods, Stolen Lives
The case of Severina Vučković throws into stark relief the reality of all child victims of the family courts
In early 2021 my son learned our cat had died. This was one year after he and his brother had been unlawfully forced to return to Croatia by a British judge, following our escape from abuse and torture in the corrupt “family court” system.
My child screamed in agony and fury, his face red and streaming with tears. His rage was directed at the courts and social services which had separated him against his will from his beloved pet. Now he would never see him again.
“When is this going to end?” he screamed. “They have already stolen half of my childhood!”
That was three years ago. The torture and agony of my children is still ongoing. The courts, at the behest of my children’s own father, have ruined their childhoods and risk having a deleterious impact on their whole lives. Like the lives of many other child victims of the so-called “family courts”.
It is easy to grieve a cat. For those who love them, cats are funny and endearing, beautiful and comforting. But they are small in size and their interactions with our psyches have boundaries, which means it is within our power to process their passing, however painful. But what about my child’s grief for his mother, his grandparents, other family members he and his brother have been separated from for over seven years? How many of us will pass away before he gets to see us again?
When it comes to human beings who are ripped from our lives, our shared histories, complexities and blood ties make grief a blasted landscape which is too difficult to navigate, to contemplate, to process.
A landscape which my friend, adult adoptee and activist Paul Brian Tovey, depicts so brilliantly in his art. (Do visit his blog, his Facebook and his Twitter pages).
My little boy had his mother torn from his life when he was just two-and-a-half years old. His father took him to Croatia with no intention of ever returning him or his brother. This was an act explicitly designed to blackmail me. While a Croatian judge initially, correctly, ruled that my little boys should be returned to me, their father reached out to his contacts in the criminal bureaucracy in Croatia, who were only too glad to help him. No doubt, a little greasing of palms took place.
UK links
What happened to my children and I is exactly what is happening in the case of Severina Vuckovic, a Croatian celebrity and pop singer, usually known just as “Severina”. Her child custody case is notorious in Croatia, illustrating that money. power, a public profile and the best lawyers are not sufficient to overcome the problems encumbering children’s legal cases.
Severina’s case should interest people in the UK. She has reported the people involved as connected through conflict of interest with Tony and Cherie Blair. In that report, which is worth reading carefully using translation software if necessary, she says:
According to my knowledge, Cherie Blair came to Zagreb two years ago at the invitation of Milan Popović and said that he paid for her accommodation and services. There is an official statement and photos from that visit, Milan Popović and Cherie Blair were with Milan Bandić and his closest associates at the reception in the Dverce Palace. So at one point I wondered if this meant that soon Donald Trump would also decide about my child.
Nacional, 30. 11. 2019
Milan Popović is Severina’s ex-husband, a Serbian copper magnate. It is interesting that Lord Michael Farmer, the Conservative peer who has been instrumental in injecting US extreme right wing neoliberal policies and business models into UK Government policy through the Centre for Social Justice and the Family Hubs network, also has a background in copper trading.
Throughout the UK, the EU, the USA and beyond, the same things are happening to children as are happening to Severina’s child. The same policies are being pushed through propaganda and “economic diplomacy” onto Asian countries. Tony Blair is one of the key architects of the laws, policies and systems which are responsible for the legalised trafficking of children by the State. So is Lord Farmer and his staff in the House of Lords. David Cameron was in office during the time these policy changes and models were being built and rolled out.
Severina’s drama is playing out on TV screens across Croatia right now. She is a stratospheric star whose past includes sex tapes which were made public without her consent. But that does not impact the mother she is today. Nor does her career. There is a stream of public opinion in Croatia which mocks her and victimises her for being a working mother confident in her sexuality. The same happens to stars in the USA. The President of the Supreme Court in Croatia insinuated that because she is wealthy and powerful she is not deserving to be considered a victim. But she is a mother with vital biological ties and vital importance in the life of her child, like every other. With a small number of exceptions where serious child abuse is involved.
On 24 January a judgment was overturned by the Supreme Court in Croatia, revoking Severina’s right to shared custody of her son, returning full custody to his father, who doesn’t even live in Croatia. This put back in force a court order reducing her time with her own child to a few hours spread over weeknights and every other weekend. This is more than my children and I have, but still nowhere near acceptable.
A childhood lived in fear
What does this mean in reality for a young boy who will now be subjected to yet more emotional and logistical upheaval in a life already lacerated by uncertainty, instability and fear?
Someone who has not been through this may struggle to understand how deep and primal this fear is. An adult will almost certainly underestimate the depth of the fear that a child experiences.
I have sat in front of stony-faced, numb-brained social workers in Croatia who have told me I can simply send my children to mental health institutions to undo the damage that they refuse to accept they have caused. Media investigations later exposed those very institutions as involved in malpractice and the maltreatment of children, their staff accused of sexual misconduct and the unlawful removal of children from their mothers.
Thankfully I had already learned to downgrade the value of their “opinions” and prioritise my children’s welfare. To use my own common sense.
I made a conscious decision to reject calls to participate in the further institutional abuse of my own children.
Parents need to understand that social workers, expert witnesses and judges are poorly trained, not as intelligent as you might hope, often completely lacking in sensitivity and compassion, working off dangerous ideologies, working to undemocratic, secretive policies and motivated by money, not child welfare.
Ludicrous process
The rationale for the new decision in Severina’s case was procedural error, but this explanation conflicts with the practice of the Croatian Constitutional Court – the highest court in the land, although it is also plagued with allegations of corruption.
Why do we have a hierarchy of courts if the lower courts are free to take their own path, without impunity? We see this happening again and again, in countries across the world.
So one country, for example, bans false allegations of “parental alienation” being used to cover up abuse, but the lower courts still do it. This is what happened in Croatia. My children were not returned following ridiculous slander and malpractice on the part of Dubravka Kocijan Hercigonja and the Maksimir branch of the SS (social services) - the same branch that has been tormenting Severina and her child.
So the cases go to appeal, every stage takes years, and they drag on for decades and predicate children’s lives on wrongheaded legal pontifications.
But they are not just wrongheaded. There is criminal intent in many cases.
It’s unconscionable. It needs to change. It can change. And this is the year it will change.
We are all Severina
Posters have started to appear around the city of Zagreb: “We are all Severina”.
Severina has spoken publicly about the fact that she is not the only one. She showed up at the unlawful extradition of Cesare, a little boy who was forced to return to Italy under the infamous Hague Convention after his mother was accused of child abduction. Despite dozens of people who turned up with Severina to show their opposition, nothing could stop the police violently dragging him away.
The Croatian public was shocked and horrified at this “enforcement” – a word associated with the recovery of physical goods or financial assets.
Croatia is the most corrupt EU member state. The Croatian people have been living with a mafia as Government for decades and the enforcement of extreme neoliberal privatisation which is decimating their lives.
Kids for cash
I believe that the Balkan wars, the human trafficking networks that flourished at that time, often under the auspices of the UN, and the deals that were done to secure the support of the EU and NATO during the war may mean that Croatia was selected as a test bed for extreme neoliberal projects in Europe, including the transformation of the family justice, child protection and social care systems into profit-driven industries.
This project is being rolled out at alarming speed in Croatia. Children are being whisked from their homes without court orders, there are rife reports of abuse in children’s homes, and fostering and adoption agencies are springing up everywhere. Elder abuse takes place in unregulated “homes”, and after it is exposed in the media nothing is done.
Croatia is the new portal for the import of human beings from Africa into Europe, borders have come down and corrupt officials, including my ex husband, are policing them. Asset stripping through the courts is rife, and we can increasingly see this happening in our own countries, especially in family law cases.
The Croatian people know how it is to be enslaved to a judiciary that is out of control and to rampant corruption.
Many of us thought: “Only in Croatia”. Few imagined that this is a global human trafficking scandal.
The massacre of motherhood
Croatian people like to believe that they love children and venerate mothers.
They didn’t realise that corruption LOVES children and PARTICULARLY preys upon them. But scandals such as Osijek, where judges, politicians and expert witnesses are known to have been johns of a children in a care home show that it is in fact an open secret that nobody does anything about, despite the best efforts of award-winning journalists such as Drago Hedl.
This is the commodification and exploitation of children and motherhood.
This is non-consensual surrogacy.
This is the sexual enslavement of children.
There are fears that vulnerable minority communities such as Roma are targeted, and their children taken for organ harvesting. Croatia is a world leader in organ transplantation despite being a small and rather poor country, and concerns have been raised about organ harvesting, with such a weak rule of law.
Nobody told the public that the value and meaning of motherhood had been trashed. In the Croatian Constitution, motherhood has a protected status:
Article 63
The state protects motherhood, children and youth and creates social, cultural, educational, material and other conditions that promote the realization of the right to a dignified life.
Nobody told the public that when they started a family and gave birth to children, the State had a right to take them with no lawful basis, to incarcerate and sell them into slavery and exploitation.
Nobody told us that it has quietly become Government policy to express human life in dollars.
No-one left behind
Please help us publicise what is happening in Croatia… a mirror image of what is happening to us elsewhere.
Mothers like me are screaming to be heard. Some fathers too. I know one father, Dominik Kovac, going through absolute hell in Croatia right now, at risk of being sectioned and his child taken in a Cesare style scenario. This is not just about Severina. This is about all our children. None of them must be left behind.
The Croatian Parliament may be powerless to stop this because I believe this is EU policy. The European Commission has done nothing to stop it, and our complaints are stonewalled. They are complicit.
It is time for the global public to get outraged.
We have elections coming up. If politicians are going to get elected, we have to push them to making a commitment to ending the destruction of childhood and human life NOW.
To join the global campaign against the scandal of the “family courts”, please sign up here.
Please, anyone associated with this please contact us, we’re going through something similar right now in Varazdin and we have gathered all proof and evidence that child services is lying and slandering us and we’re fighting to get our daughter back right now. Please any investigative journalist and media contact me, Daisy McCrackin on twitter/ instagram and TikTok