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Venice Court removes Ms. Rosenberg's Guardianship -- without even informing her or her lawyers! Message from Rabbi Raphael B. Butler of the Orthodox Union
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Letter to the Mayor of Venice and Secretary of the Foreign Minister of Italy
Dear Sirs, I am writing to express my concern with a judgment entered by the Juvenile Court in Venice on December 2, 1999 depriving Mrs. Tali Pikan-Rosenberg of any rights of guardianship over her two minor daughters. As you know, the removal of guardianship is an extraordinary action, heavily disfavored by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Italy is a signatory. Both Mrs. Rosenberg's procedural and substantive rights were violated by the Venice Juvenile Court decision. Neither she nor her legal representatives were given proper notice of the court's intention to "reactivate" the file, despite a written request by attorneys for both parents that the court defer from further action in light of ongoing custody proceedings in Genoa, where the two girls in question presently reside. Notice to Mrs. Rosenberg was sent to an address where, as the court knew very well, she has not resided in four years. Moreover, attorneys for Mrs. Rosenberg were in frequent contact with the Venice court, and yet received no notice. In a remarkable act of effrontery, the Venice court cited Mrs. Rosenberg's failure to respond in a hearing about which she was not informed as one of its grounds of decision. On the substantive level, the Venice court had no proper basis to employ such a rarely invoked power as that of removing guardianship. The court relied on a CTU report that was almost four years old, and which was described by the author herself as incomplete. It neither examined the minors' whose fate it was determining nor inquired into their wishes, as required by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The judgment of the Venice Juvenile Court constitutes a stain on the Italian justice system - one that I hope will soon be expunged. Sincerely yours,

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