An Australian woman who had her three children put into care while she and her British husband were bringing them up off-the-grid in woods in central Italy broke down in tears as she spoke to the media on Wednesday following a meeting with Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa.
"We're here to be listened to and to be able to be a family again," the woman, Catherine Birmingham, said in tears as she read out a statement after she and her British husband Nathan Trevallion met La Russa for about half an hour.
"We chose Italy because it had the same values ;;we wanted to raise our children with: family, love, being together, living and eating naturally, and above all, an existence full of love and peace where people support each other".
The case has caused widespread dismay in Italy and Premier Giorgia Meloni and other members of her government's have expressed concern about the way the social services have handled it.
Birmingham and Trevallion had been raising the children, an eight-year-old girl and two six-year-old twin boys, in a house without electricity or running water in woods near the town of Palmoli in central Abruzzo.
