CEDH · PRESS;FORTHCOMINGHEARINGS;ENG — 22 juin 2007

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .sFE10DC93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s40F41F73 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s33165EBA { font-family:Arial; font-size:8pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .sCB9E0544 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left } .sC7EAD8B { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline } .sF6A12959 { width:33%; height:1px; text-align:left } .s2EB42ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:10pt } .s653E6C45 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6.67pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS 455 22.6.2007   Press release issued by the Registrar   HEARING ON 28 JUNE 2007   The European Court of Human Rights will be holding a chamber hearing on the admissibility and merits in the case of Maumousseau and Washington v. France (application no.   39388/05) on 28 June 2007 at 9 a.m. (local time) . The hearing will be broadcast from 2.30 p.m. on the Court’s Internet site http://www.echr.coe.int .   The applicants are Sophie Maumousseau, a French national who was born in 1967 and lives in Les Adrets de l’Estérel (France), and her daughter Charlotte Washington, a French and US national who was born on 14 August 2000 in the United States of America and lives with her father in Wappingers Falls (New York, USA).   Summary of the facts   The case concerns the return to the USA of Charlotte, then aged four, further to an order by the French courts in December 2004 in execution of a decision by a US court granting custody of the girl to her father. The child, whose habitual residence had been in the USA, had arrived in France in March 2003 for a holiday with her mother, who had then decided not to return to the USA but to remain with her daughter in France.     In May 2000 Ms Maumousseau married David Washington, a US national, and their daughter Charlotte was born in August 2000.   While she was still living in the United States Ms Maumousseau took steps to obtain a divorce, but could not, she claims, afford to pursue the proceedings.   In March 2003, with her husband’s consent, the mother took Charlotte on holiday to France, to stay with her parents. However, she later refused to return with her daughter to the USA, despite repeated requests from her husband.   Mr Washington brought proceedings in a New York State Family Court, which ordered on 15 September 2003 that interim custody of Charlotte should be granted to her father, that she should principally live with him and that Ms Maumousseau should return the child immediately. On 26 September 2003 Charlotte’s father applied to the US Central Authority, which submitted a request to the French authorities, under the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, to secure Charlotte’s return to the United States.   When questioned by the gendarmerie in October 2003, Ms Maumousseau declared that she refused to return her child. The public prosecutor brought proceedings against her in which Charlotte’s father intervened.   On 15 January 2004 the Draguignan tribunal de grande instance considered that it was not appropriate to order Charlotte’s return to the United States on account of a serious risk that she would be placed in an intolerable situation. The court considered, in particular, that in view of her very young age and her close relationship with her mother, Charlotte’s return to the US would place her in an intolerable situation because of her separation from her mother and the change in the way of life to which she had become accustomed.   On 13 May 2004 the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal set aside that decision and ordered that Charlotte be returned immediately to her place of abode in the United States. The court dismissed Ms Maumousseau’s argument that there was a serious risk that Charlotte’s return would expose her to physical or psychological danger and would place her in an intolerable situation. Ms Maumousseau lodged an appeal on points of law against the judgment (her appeal was ultimately dismissed in June 2005).   Ms Maumousseau was interviewed by the police on 8 June 2004 with a view to the voluntary return of the child, then by the public prosecutor on 2 and 9 July 2004. She was then informed that she would be guilty of a criminal offence if she kept her daughter in the current situation, but she reiterated her refusal to comply with the judgment ordering Charlotte’s return to the United States.   On 23 September 2004 the public prosecutor of Draguignan, assisted by four senior police officers, entered Charlotte’s nursery school seeking to enforce the judgment of the Court of Appeal. The incident received wide media coverage in France. Ms Maumousseau, the child’s grandparents and staff from the school apparently physically resisted the police intervention by forming a protective barrier around the child, with the help of some villagers. Faced with this resistance, in the course of which blows and insults were apparently exchanged, the public prosecutor provisionally discontinued the enforcement of the decision.   Ms Maumousseau applied to the Draguignan children’s judge, who ordered Charlotte’s placement in care, with rights of contact for both parents. On 3 December 2004 the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal ordered that Charlotte be returned to her father. The next day the girl left France for the United States.   In the meantime Ms Maumousseau had filed for divorce in France. In August 2005 the Draguignan family-affairs judge ruled that parental responsibility should be exercised by the parents jointly, that Charlotte should habitually reside at her mother’s home in France and that the father should be granted rights of visiting and staying contact.   Charlotte’s father, among his submissions to the US courts, requested that Ms Maumousseau’s visits to Charlotte should take place in the law courts under the supervision of the child’s paternal grandmother and a law officer, and that security should be deposited with the possibility of seizure if the child left the country. In February 2006 the New York State Family Court granted the request for a restriction on the applicant’s visitation rights. Among other findings, the court stated that the New York State courts alone had jurisdiction to rule on questions concerning the custody of Charlotte and added that it would not proceed with any examination of Ms Maumousseau’s visitation rights before she had obtained the annulment of the French courts’ decisions and the recognition of the US courts’ exclusive jurisdiction to deal with this case.     Complaints   Relying on Article 8 (right to respect for family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights, Ms Maumousseau argues that Charlotte’s return to the United States is contrary to her daughter’s interests and has placed her in an intolerable situation in view of her very young age.   Moreover, the applicant alleges that the police intervention at Charlotte’s nursery school in September 2004 will leave the girl with significant psychological after-effects and entailed a violation of Article 8 in conjunction with Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment).   The applicant further argues that she has been deprived of her right of access to a court in that the Court of Cassation and Court of Appeal accepted that the judge dealing with a request for the return of a child under the Hague Convention did not need to assess the situation as a whole in deciding whether the return was in the child’s best interest. On this point she relies on Article 8 in conjunction with Article 6 § 1 (right of access to a court).   Lastly, Ms Maumousseau alleges that the decision by the French authorities to order her daughter’s return to the United States has entailed a violation of her right to an effective remedy, on account of her inability to assert her rights of custody and contact effectively before the US courts.   ***   Decisions, judgments and further information about the Court can be found on its Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ). [1]   Press contacts Emma Hellyer (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 42 15) Stéphanie Klein (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 21 54) Beverley Jacobs (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 54 21) Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30)   The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.   [1] These summaries by the Registry do not bind the Court.