A Cayman Islands Grand Court judge has ordered that an 8-year-old child, born in Cayman, be returned to the island by her father, who took her back to his homeland in Turkey without the permission or knowledge of the girl’s mother.
The matter was heard in private on 15 Nov. in the Family Court before Justice Richard Williams, who has ruled that his judgment could be published publicly so long as the family members were not identified.
The mother in this case, he noted, is a Caymanian national, who holds a UK passport, while the father is a Turkish national, who holds UK and British Overseas passports. The child is Caymanian and holds a UK passport.
Cinema trip turns into international flight
In a statement issued to the court, the mother said the father had told her he was taking their daughter to the cinema on 10 Nov. The following day, he called her at 5:15am, claiming he was staying with the child at the Westin hotel and would bring her home by noon, she said. At that point, the mother said, he had already left the Cayman Islands, and the time he called coincided with when his British Airways flight would have landed in Heathrow.
That day, she notified police, who confirmed, after checking with Customs and Border Control and British Airways, that the child and the father had left on the BA flight to London, with a connecting flight to Istanbul, Turkey.
The mother was informed that the father has only purchased a one-way ticket and that his business partner has confirmed that the father asked him to buy out his interest in his Cayman Islands business for $45,000, she said in her statement.
On 12 Nov., via text messages, the father acknowledged that the child was in Turkey. The next day, he told the mother, amongst other messages, “come baby we miss you”.
“The mother in her messages was demanding that the child be returned, was talking about divorce proceedings, and threatening to involve Interpol,” the judge noted.
The mother said that, on 14 Nov., the father told her he did not need permission from her family members to take the child on vacation.
The mother said she had been able to speak to the child via WhatsApp on 13, 14 and 15 Nov., which had been facilitated by the child’s paternal aunt in Turkey.
“The mother states that the father has removed all the original copies of the child’s paperwork and that he has been contacting her school requesting her academic transcripts,” the judge noted, adding that the mother feared he is seeking to enrol the child in a school in Turkey.
This action, coupled with the “surreptitious way” in which the father had removed the child; the fact that he had asked his business partner to buy his share in their business; a transfer of US$15,550 on 5 Sept. and other funds on other days by him to his personal Turkish bank account; and the purchase of the one-way tickets, had led the mother to conclude that he did not intend to return the child to Cayman.
As the couple is still married, under the Children Act, both he and the mother have parental responsibility for the child, the judge noted.
‘Wrongful removal’
He stated, “I find that even though the father also has parental responsibility, he is not able to take unilateral action to remove the [child] from the Cayman Islands. Permission is required by all of those with parental responsibility for the child, or permission from the Court. Neither have been given to the father in this case. Taking a child abroad without such permission amounts to a ‘wrongful removal’.”
The judge noted that the child had been born in the Cayman Islands, and from 2019 to 2021, had lived with her mother in Turkey while the father remained in Cayman. In Turkey, the mother and child lived in a property which the couple owned and still own, he said, but the child has always lived with her mother.
He pointed out that the parents had been living together in the matrimonial home in Grand Cayman until the father left with the child on 10 Nov.
Williams granted sole custody of the child to the mother and issued an order requiring the father to return the child to Cayman, into the care of her mother. He also agreed to the mother’s request to issue an order to stop the father from obtaining the child’s school records.
The judge noted that Turkey is a signatory to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which operates to ensure the fast return of children to the country in which they normally live, if, for example, they have been wrongly removed from there.
He said the Cayman authorities are in the process of making an application to the Turkish authorities to seek the return of the child.
“If the father fails to comply with the orders of the Grand Court, then the application for a return order for the child will take place in the courts in Turkey,” Williams stated.
Return ticket
In a footnote to his written judgment, Williams stated that the mother’s attorney, on instructions from his client, had contacted the court with an update on 16 Nov., the day after the hearing at which the judge had delivered his oral judgment.
The lawyer said, following the hearing, the mother had heard from a “credible source” that, after arriving in Turkey, the husband had bought airline tickets for him and the child to return to Grand Cayman on 5 Dec.
“The husband has not informed the wife of this, nor has she been provided with or seen any flight tickets,” the judge noted. “The mother believes that, if the father has purchased tickets, he has only done so to delay any Hague Convention proceedings in Turkey.”
Williams stated that, having reviewed this additional information, his ruling remained the same.
“The father has wrongfully removed the child. He did not have the consent of the mother to permanently remove the child or even to temporarily remove the child for almost 4 weeks during the school term time from 10 November 2023 to 5 December 2023,” he said.
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