For weeks the girls, who have joint Australian and Italian citizenship, had remained in hiding with their great-grandmother after a court ordered they should be returned to their father in Italy.
A close friend of the girls' mother told the paper that the prospect of being returned to Italy against their wishes had made the girls anxious and withdrawn in recent days.
‘What do you expect from little kids being taken away from their mum?' said the friend. ‘The whole thing is unfair.'
The father had insisted in court battles that the children should be returned to Italy under the provisions of the Hague Convention, an international treaty against child abduction.
Justice Colin Forrest found in the Australian Family Court last year that while he did not absolutely accept ‘the truthfulness of all of the evidence deposed to by the father', he was satisfied the father did not consent to the children's relocation.
As Australians expressed their anger and dismay on social media, leading radio commentator Neil Mitchell said on his morning show in Melbourne that sending the children back to Italy amid the distressing scenes was ‘cruel, unreasonable and absurd'.
Referring to the children being dragged kicking and screaming to an aircraft to be sent home to a father they did not want to live with after their mother had collapsed in the street, he said all this was happening because of the law.
‘If you're a parent, this is disturbing stuff,' he said. ‘I don't doubt the judge is correct under the law, but we are talking here about children – is there no room for common sense?'
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