Why leaving Miele with her adoptive parents is the only choice “in the best interests of the child”

There are children who never reach couples who would have a lot to give. And children who instead come to women and men who do not want, cannot or are not able to keep them and who therefore decide to leave them. At best in protected places, at worst in very dangerous places, at risk to life.

It is the second case that befell little Miele (fictional name, ed.) in the cold November of 2020 in Modica, Sicily, given birth by his mother in a bathroom after a pregnancy kept hidden for 9 months, then placed by his biological father in a shopping bag and left among the waste in Ragusa for two hours. A sealed fate, which suddenly takes a different path, because the biological father stages the discovery, calls the ambulance and the little boy is taken to hospital. Bleeding, suffering from hypothermia and hypoglycemia, Miele survives.

So while the ordinary Court proceeds to investigate the father for child abandonment and the mother for complicity in the same crime, after 16 days the child is entrusted to the care of a couple suitable for adoption. One of those whose children didn’t come but who has a lot to give.

It’s a rebirth: Miele begins to let himself be hugged, cradled, to no longer tremble like a leaf or cry like a desperate man. She finds rest and comfort. Since there was no sign or interest on the part of anyone, after 30 days the Juvenile Court of Catania definitively decreed his adoptability and the pre-adoptive foster care period began for the family, with which you can begin to strengthen the new parental bond and help the little one overcome the trauma of his abandonment. This means that there can no longer be late recognition by biological family members nor can the adoptability sentence lapse (ex art. 11 L. 184/83). But here everything goes wrong: the woman who gave birth to the child, despite the time that has passed, has second thoughts and wants it back. Due to a chain of procedural errors and judicial discretions, after almost two years the Court of Appeal rules that Miele must rightfully return to her, it does not matter whether she is fit and adequate to care for this child or even whether she could be convicted in the ongoing trial for the crime committed. Returning to her – it is written – is in the “best interests of the child”.

Well, a few days ago Miele turned 3 years old. PAccording to an executive decree of the Juvenile Court of Catania, on 28 December 2023 he will have to say goodbye to his mother and father (but also to his grandparents, uncles, teachers and friends) to be “relocated” to the woman who she gave birth to him and that in all this time she has never seen or heard from him.

On Change.org the adoptive mother has launched a petition which in a few days reached more than 27 thousand signatures and which gave rise to a great movement of popular indignation.

However, the debate on which family has more rights over the child is not at the centre. But how can it be possible that for Italian justice this is the greatest interest of little Miele, the choice that will best guarantee his happiness and well-being, both current and future?. The environment where he will be able to grow up peacefully and where he will be able to better manage, when he grows up, the terrible discovery of what was done to him as soon as he was born.

«The best interest of child»: a legal principle that has guided the entire child protection system for decades at an international level and which instead in Italy can translate into the forced withdrawal of a child from the mother and father who loved him for 3 years to return to an unknown woman whose only relationship with him is that of having fathered him. Is it therefore only this, in Italy today, that legitimately makes a man or a woman a parent?