Sisters dragged kicking and screaming from Sunshine Coast home to live with their Italian father break their silence – and the truth is very different to what the feminist controlled media portrayed at the time: when they learned they would be forced to return home, their fear was not of their father but of losing the lives they had created here in Australia
12:44am April 12, 2015 Ref: http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/04/12/00/27/vincenti-sisters-tell-60-mins-of-their-ordeal
Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/04/12/00/27/vincenti-sisters-tell-60-mins-of-their-ordeal#0KU8PCrjQceGQZUi.99
Footage of four sisters dragged kicking and screaming from their mother’s Sunshine Coast home and sent to live with their father in Italy captivated the nation in 2012. Two years later the two eldest sisters Emily and Claire Vincenti have spoken of the ordeal for the first time in an exclusive interview with 60 Minutes to air on Channel 9 tonight. They say the dramatic footage of their departure conveyed how traumatised they were but did not tell the complete story.
“I think they feel established enough and mature enough and of a view that they wanted to have their say,” 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown said.
The four sisters had moved to Australia from Italy with their Australian mother Laura Garrett in 2010, who would later maintain she did so to protect the girls from their allegedly abusive Italian father Tomaso Vincenti.
Tomaso Vincenti and his daughters
Laura Garrett (pictured) has consistently maintained that she was removing her daughters from Italy because of their abusive father
Just two years later, they were returned to their father in Italy. They were taken against their will and were filmed kicking, screaming and begging to be allowed to stay in Australia. “We were seeing them in the context of the allegations that were being made by Laura Garrett,” Brown recalls. “Laura basically painted a picture of having to flee (Italy). “It was a very heightened situation was how she described it to me.
“But the girls didn’t have a sense of that at all.” Brown said the sisters explain in the interview that they never felt they were fleeing Italy, simply going on holiday. “They were excited about coming to Australia, seeing the beaches and the other side of their family they didn’t know. They thought it was exciting,” she said.
And when they learned they would be forced to return home, their fear was not of their father but of losing the lives they had created here in Australia. “When they learned that they might have to go back to Italy they weren’t happy at all,” Brown explains. “They were quite legitimately upset. Not because they were going back to an abusive monster but because this was their life, this was their home and they wanted to live with their mother. “When they were put on the plane that night, when they were taken to the airport, they didn’t get a final goodbye to their mum or their school friends.
” Despite the trauma they have been through, Brown said the girls now appear settled and happy. They have school friends and boyfriends, they plan to travel and attend university and they are slowly rebuilding their relationship with their father. “They are reserved, mature and gracious young women who are very hesitant to be critical of mum and dad,” Brown said.
“They’re always building on their relationship with their dad who they love and they say they have a happy life.”
However, they only have limited contact with their mother who has remained in Australia. “They miss their mum a lot they say. Ultimately they would love to live with both of them. “They speak every day on the phone (to their mother) but for the last two years Laura has told them she has been too busy with work and studies to visit. “Just after our interview Laura showed up and spent three days with the girls and was due to then return to Australia. “I think the girls are hoping she might return for a longer stay.”
© ninemsn 2015
Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/04/12/00/27/vincenti-sisters-tell-60-mins-of-their-ordeal#0KU8PCrjQceGQZUi.99
Also read: Regrets Too Late for Wronged Dad
Miranda Devine – Saturday, September 21, 2013 (9:37pm)
THERE was always something fishy about the overwrought scenes last year of four screaming girls, at the centre of a custody battle, being dragged onto a plane to Italy so they could be reunited with their father.
The histrionics of their mother, Laura Garrett, seemed phony to me.
So did her accusation that their Italian father, Tommaso Vincenti, was violent.
Now his version of events is coming out.
Sixty Minutes tonight airs a damning story about Laura Garrett, an Australian mother who moved her daughters home in 2010, without Vincenti’s permission. The girls, aged 16, 15, 11, and 10, were forcibly returned to Italy in late 2012 on the orders of the Brisbane Family Court.
Former supporters Melissa and Troy Thomson claim Laura Garrett manipulated the girls to reject Vincenti and staged the heartrending airport scenes for the media.
“They thought their father was a violent man [and] didn’t pay any child support,” says Troy. “They thought their father didn’t love them … The sad thing is, none of that was true.”
Melissa regrets helping Garrett. “I was made part of this by deception.”
Some of Garrett’s supporters continue a vendetta against Vincenti, reporting him to Italian police, sending Facebook messages to the girls to throw boiling water on him and destroy his car.
Italian social workers now are considering restricting the girls’ communication with their mother.
“It’s terrible, what’s happened to my girls,” says Vincenti.
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We didn t want to leave : Sisters dragged kicking and screaming from Sunshine Coast home to live with Italian father break their silence