A Japanese mother has been granted sole custody of her son by the Family Court of Australia. The child was abducted by his Australian father’s family after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The father met the woman in Japan while he was still married to his first wife, who was pregnant at the time. He subsequently divorced and married his Japanese partner.
After the 2011 natural disasters in Japan the man persuaded his wife to go back to Australia with him and her son, to fix what was by then a “troubled marriage”, according to The Japan Daily Press.
The publication states that the husband later returned to Japan and that “…it looked like he wasn’t coming back”. His wife handed guardianship of their son to her mother-in-law and pursued her husband, finding him having an affair with a woman who has since become his third wife.
The mother contacted her mother-in-law to get her son back but was told that he was being sent to live in New Zealand.
A legal battle ensued at the Family Court of Australia in which the mother was awarded sole custody by Justice Stuart Fowler.
Photo by joolmp via Flickr under a Creative Commons license
