I think this man’s behaviour is revolting, and I’m with the mother
Yes, she was unwise to behave the way she did, but what we saw there – Petra Nemet running after and attacking the woman who has taken her small child away from her, and who is raising him instead of her – was an act of pure and utter despair that practically every woman who has a child will understand.
Is there a woman who wouldn’t be mad with grief and desperation in those circumstances, unless she is the sort to have voluntarily abandoned her own children?
In our persistence in treating men and women as equal in the subject of parenthood we choose to overlook that the biological experience is totally different. When a woman’s baby is taken away from her forcibly, she is driven insane. This goes way beyond the grief felt by a father, because it is hardwired by evolution into the mother to protect the baby she has grown for nine months and to which she has given birth. Take it away, and all those evolutionary switches begin tripping up at a primeval level.
Petra Nemet lost the care and custody of her child because her behaviour was irrational after the birth. She was pronounced an unfit mother. This is the sort of thing that used to happen in the past when people did not know about post-natal depression and post-natal psychosis. But this is the 21st century.
So behave irrationally after giving birth, succumbing to depression and in worst-case scenarios psychosis. The fathers of their children do not have them committed or seek to have them declared unfit so as to seize full care and custody of the child. They care for both the child and the mother and enlist the help of the rest of the family where possible. That is what love is – love for your child if not for your child’s mother.
This man does not truly love his child but merely wishes to possess him. If he really did love him, he would know that he is doing one of the worst things possible you can do to any child, and that is to forcibly deprive that child of its mother. For a boy, the implications of this are even more serious, because the boy who is raised to despise his mother has his view of women in general distorted and damaged for life, just girls who are raised in contempt for their father – because of problematic estrangement from their mother – will have lifelong problems with men.
But the bottom line is that it is primitive, unacceptable behaviour in the 21st century to portray a woman as mad, take her child away, and then, when her behaviour becomes increasingly unhinged as a result of that grief, use it to show how right you were in taking her child away in the first place.
Given the way the father of the child is behaving now, I would say there are probably good reasons why she was miserable enough to try to run off with the baby in the first place. What sort of man would insist on a European arrest warrant being taken out for the mother of his child, on the basis that she attacked his girlfriend, to whom he has given that child to care for?
What exactly is he going to tell his son when he grows up, and what is he going to tell him meanwhile?
25 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141126/local/european-warrant-for-attempted-abduction.545734
It was as obvious as daylight that this woman suffered post-natal depression and the man took advantage of the situation instead of standing by her side. Many have balls only for decoration.
From her name and what we can see of him in this picture it seems that she married a German of Turkish extraction, so there may be more to her story than what is published.
[Daphne – Well, there obviously is. I think it is shocking the way EU law is being used to shore up a culture, alien to 21st century Europe, of taking the child from the mother and prioritising the father. But they were not married. His surname is Leonhardt. Hers is Nemet.]
Culture may have nothing to do with it. He’s probably just a vindictive male chauvinistic pig. There are so many like that.
My thoughts exactly.
I can clearly remember a case which ended in a far more tragic way, with the mother loading her baby into the car and driving off the quay into the sea at Cirkewwa, where they both drowned.
They were missing for some days, and the husband appeared on television to make an unconvincing appeal for their return.
She had been kept under close watch because of post-natal depression. But as it turned out, he had left her alone for a short while before her sister turned up to do the next shift. She left the house then.
Just a month after their death, the widower was at some small social gathering with a woman sitting on his knee. They later married.
I do not know anything of this case but one thing I do not like is this tendency to diminish the role of the father in bringing up children.
The horror stories I have heard, and of which I have first-hand knowledge, are truly heart-breaking and honestly destroy the man for the rest of his life, not to mention the children who are psychologically compromised by the whole experience.
At least this is the case with several of the men I know who were made to go through a living hell and whose lives and relationships with their children are destroyed as a result of the terrible brainwashing and psychological/legal bullying that they were forced to endure, not only till the children turned 18 but for long after.
The children often only return to the father after the age of 30 when they have had time to digest the events and acknowledge the brainwashing they were subjected to. It is truly gut-wrenching to even try to fathom. I will stop there as I am clearly going to be gunned down for stating the obvious.
[Daphne – Exactly. And my point here is that this is precisely what is happening here: to the mother. The difference is that in the mother, the devastation is more profound because it triggers off reactions at an animal level which do not exist, by virtue of pure biology, in men. The fact that is always missed in these arguments is that the emotional connection between man and baby – as distinct from child – is not biological but social. Women know beyond doubt who their children are. Men take them on trust.]
I totally agree with you Daphne.
I’m not so sure she suffered from post-natal depression. Your item made me curious, so I browsed the German websites on her case.
It appears she is a known liar, thief and crook, who gets no sympathy from whoever knows her.
[Daphne – You cannot take children away from their parents on the basis that their parents are known liars, thieves and crooks. The requirements for taking children away are very, very specific. The child itself must be consistently and directly endangered.]
The Maltese courts must have had a good reason for assigning custody only to the father. She seriously endangered his life when she kidnapped her severely asthmatic child from Malta, with the intent to flee to Thailand, but got caught at the Polish/Ukrainian border.
She doesn’t have the best interest of her child at heart, this is all about her. Not every mother is a good mother and she appears to be an unfit mother.
http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/wegen-sorgerechtsstreit-kleiner-junge-aus-deutschland-in-polen-hinter-gitter_id_3563071.html
[Daphne – I’m sorry but I can’t agree with you here. Did this man suddenly discover when his child was a year old that the woman with whom he had a baby was ‘unfit’? I think this is a case where the relationship sours – probably because he was already seeing that other woman – and from there on in, it’s a crusade to make the mother out to be nuts so that he can conveniently wipe her out of the picture while keeping the child. Throughout my life I have known mothers who were truly incapable of raising their children – women severely addicted to alcohol, women with severe psychosis that led to long stays in mental hospitals, women with drug-addiction problems, women with severe depression that left them unable to get out of bed for long periods. Nobody took their children away. And it’s a safe bet that if Petra Nemet were not living in a foreign country (Malta) but had her family around to support her, her child wouldn’t have been taken away either. But she had no support. It’s easy to make a woman look crazy – it’s hardwired into the cultural history of Europe. But Malta is full of really unbelievably unfit fathers and no court will deprive them of shared care and custody of their children. And a big part of that reason is that most mothers understand that for their children’s sake they have to somehow involve the father.]
For all I know they are both unfit and irresponsible parents.
They both took out their bickering on the child’s back, using it as a weapon and the child pays the price. My heart goes out to the poor child.
It’s not a safe bet that if Petra Nemet lived in Germany she would not have lost custody. Look at the women hiding in Gozo with their children for exactly that reason.
“For all I know they are both unfit and irresponsible parents.”
Again, you can’t guess, from a site, the personal issues of a couple regarding the upbringing of their child.
“It’s not a safe bet that if Petra Nemet lived in Germany she would not have lost custody. Look at the women hiding in Gozo with their children for exactly that reason.”
Who knows?
The woman is defending her right to be with her son. The father has deprived her of this right.
Why hasn’t she been granted the facility to see her son every week, weekend?
No, Mattie. It’s not a guess. If you are responsible parents, you bring up a child in wedlock, where both parents made a commitment to each other in public.
Statistics say that 95% of unwed parents break up by the age the child reaches the age of 15.
The damage the child or children suffer from this break-up is enormous.
The break-down rate of marriages is much lower. And would have been much more difficult.
“The Maltese courts must have had a good reason for assigning custody only to the father. She seriously endangered his life when she kidnapped her severely asthmatic child from Malta, with the intent to flee to Thailand, but got caught at the Polish/Ukrainian border.”
We could also say that putting the child near that tree plant (photo) is dangerous to their asthmatic child but then neither you or I know the extent of severe regarding the child’s asthma or to judge whether he is able to travel or not, stay near plants or not.
Katrin,
Liars, thieves and crooks bring up children of their own and their children aren’t taken away from them just because they are liars, thieves and crooks.
I mean, just look at Malta and get your answer. So many children of liars, thieves and crooks were brought up by them and have turned out well. Others were turned into liars, thieves and crooks like their parents so your argument doesn’t make sense.
Children are taken away from their parents for other reasons.
Mattie,
The fact is, we don’t know why he got sole custody. There must have been a damn good reason for that. If not, why didn’t she turn to the German embassy for help? Why didn’t she turn to the German law courts for help? Instead, she made a show on RTL television, the biggest trash tv for a trash audience.
“She doesn’t have the best interest of her child at heart, this is all about her. Not every mother is a good mother and she appears to be an unfit mother.”
You can’t really judge what a mother is from a blog on the internet.
The fact that the mother desperately wants to be with her child to me means that 50% of her character means well. At least her maternal instincts are there.
I can judge a mother by turning to trash tv rather than to proper channels of justice. Also, seeing those damning comments on Focus are an eye-opener. That is very rare.
Having lived in Germany for many years, I saw a depressing number of trash parents, totally self-centred but carrying the supposed well-being of their children like a monstrance in front of them. And in the course subjecting them to incredible suffering, which they will have to bear for the rest of their lives.
I’m simply sick of these kind of people. They have no idea what they are doing to their children.
What is interesting is that the woman had been allowed to leave Malta some hours after the incident and then ”Petra Nemet, has also been placed on Malta’s wanted list as well as on the national “stop list” so that she will be stopped at any point of entry or exit on the island. The Maltese police are in the process of issuing a European arrest warrant.”
The father is so very lucky!
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141126/local/european-warrant-for-attempted-abduction.545734
The behaviour of the woman is unlawful no matter how you gloss over her state of mind. There are two sides to every story but in my experience the man never seems to be allowed to have his story heard. By the way, what is his side of the story ?
They were not married.
As we saw last night in Joseph Muscat’s reference to this sector of society, an unmarried natural mother, in Malta, is considered by that now dirty word: “a single mother.”
More importantly, the legal system would have held no proper cover for her:
There is no way a single mother can simultaneously declare the father’s name on the birth certificate whilst retaining her name for the child, as is common in other countries.
Therefore, she is forced, if she needs to for the sake of her safety and that of the child, to forgo the name of the father on the birth certificate and have that child declared “father unknown.”
This, is the source problem that Joseph Muscat should have tackled with regards to single mothers, and not the benefits that they – in certain cases – are not interested in receiving.
Such an available option may have resulted in a different outcome for this couple, especially where the male ego that upon birth of the child is stronger about wanting recognition even when other factors – again such as safety of the child – should take precedence where no other firm commitments between the couple have been arrived at. It is the mother who takes the ultimate choice to continue the pregnancy and carry the child to term. Today’s context needs to take that choice into consideration.
You have a situation, in Malta, where two single mothers in civil union (or not?) can adopt a child and choose which surname to give it, and what to leave on the birth certificate, but an unmarried natural mother cannot.
This creates untold grief for all the parties concerned.
This is an area that deserves to be given immediate attention.
Well, that’s the European Arrest Warrant for you. And the victim list gets longer by the day.
Perhaps one day you will come to realise why everything is, quite literally, topsy-turvy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to find out. One just needs to know the facts, keeping in mind that all truth eventually surfaces in one form or another – but not necessarily in the places you’d expect it to surface.
In the US, there are numerous cases where good, hardworking parents have lost their children to foster care over trivial issues.
In one case, the Child Protection Unit removed three young children from their home because they felt the house was untidy and the kitchen sink had too many unwashed dishes (in this case the distraught parents managed to retrieve their children after a few weeks, but not everyone is so lucky).
It is not for nothing that family courts are held in secret and victimised parents arrested the moment they speak out.
The real world has nothing to do with the illusion we’re bred on.
grief for the father and utter despair for a mother, biological inequality between father and mother, sounds like erdogan to me.
[Daphne – What rubbish. That men and women are not biologically equal in the reproduction process is an inescapable scientific fact and not a cultural or religious opinion. This has nothing to do with rights but with science.]
Hi Daphne, could I have your e mail address please.
[Daphne – [email protected]]
He surely didn’t give her the chance to prove herself to be a good mother. The child was taken away from her at the age of one.
On the other hand he was fast in finding himself another woman to fill the void and to suit his needs – his business.
It is a fact is that the child is being exposed to a confusing environment – to a lifestyle dictated by his father’s needs and wants and which to me looks like he does not seem to be fit for purpose.
A child needs security – different partners certainly do not help give a child happiness. The boy needs his mother and if this cannot happen, then he should be given to people who can care for him properly and not to his father who’s mishandled the situation and who is leaving him in the care of women who aren’t his biological family.
Unfortunately postpartum depression is quite common after birth. She might be a danger to herself.
Ghaziza Daphne, jiena dejjem insewgwi r-rapport tieghek u dejjem sibt li ghandek ragun u verita, pero jiddispjecini nghidlek li f’dan il-kaz, m’ghandekx informazzjoni korretta. Nixtieq inkun naf minn tak din l-informazzjoni manipulata. Jiena naf lil din il-familja u l-istorja mill-bidu. L-izjed raguni mportanti ghaliex il-qorti tat il-kura u l-kustodja kollha lil missier, hu ghal fatt li din l-omm kienet vicin li toqtol lil binhom minhabba problemi mentali li gew pruvati minn checkups psikologiki. Jiena naprezza li kieku inti tisma z-zewg nahat ta’ l-istorja qabel tiggudika. Dan huwa kaz delikata hafna u qed titfa pressjoni fuq il-missier u t-tifel bla bzonn. Ghandek dritt tippublika l-opinjoni tieghek imma kun gusta. Jiena certa li l-familja lesti li jitkellmu mieghek. Jekk tixtieq taghmel kuntatt jiena lesta nghinek.