Rights of Custody – Art. 3
The parents have joint custody of their daughter. There is no evidence of the (implied) consent of the father to the daughter being taken to Germany permanently. For a child to be deemed to have been taken abroad illegally, there is no requirement that this must have been done in secret.
Grave Risk – Art. 13(1)(b)
The court rejected the complainant’s arguments that returning her daughter would subject her to a severe risk of physical or mental harm. The court allowed her to accompany her daughter to Sweden and to keep her in her care until such time as custody proceedings took place. The court also ruled that the separation from her brother, then aged 17_, would not constitute a risk to the child’s wellbeing. It ruled that it had to be expected that a sibling of this age might move away from other siblings (e.g. in order to spend time in a foreign country or study at university).
