The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has held that Italy violated Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to respond effectively to allegations of domestic violence and by leaving a mother and her two children in a shelter for almost three years without properly assessing alternative protective measures.
The case concerned a French national living in Italy who, in April 2021, reported her former partner and the father of her two children to the police, alleging prolonged physical and psychological abuse against both herself and the children. The following month, she and the children were placed in a domestic violence shelter while criminal and family law proceedings were initiated.
Although the authorities acted promptly in opening a criminal investigation and arranging emergency accommodation, the Court found that the subsequent handling of the case fell short of the State's positive obligations under the Convention.
The Court observed that the prolonged placement in the shelter protected the applicants from further violence but imposed a significantly greater burden on them than on the alleged perpetrator, who was not made subject to comparable restrictions. The authorities failed to review whether the continued placement remained necessary or proportionate and did not consider less restrictive alternatives, such as allowing the family to remain in the family home or permitting the mother and children to relocate to France.
The Court was also critical of the criminal investigation. It noted that, in 2021, the public prosecutor initially sought to discontinue the proceedings, characterising one alleged incident in which the father reportedly held a knife to the mother's throat as a "bad joke" and suggesting that it was normal for men to overcome a degree of female resistance to sexual advances. Although that request was ultimately rejected and further investigations ordered, the Court found that such reasoning reflected harmful gender stereotypes and echoed concerns previously expressed by the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) regarding the risk of secondary victimisation within judicial proceedings. Despite the reopening of the investigation, no substantive hearing had taken place by the time the Court considered the case.
The Court concluded that the authorities had failed to appreciate the particular dynamics of domestic violence and had not provided a response proportionate to the seriousness of the allegations. Accordingly, it found violations of Articles 3 and 8.
The Court also identified serious shortcomings in the parallel family law proceedings. While the mother had sought sole custody, removal of the father's parental responsibility, permission to relocate to France and maintenance in May 2021, the Juvenile Court did not remove the father's parental responsibility until May 2024 and had still not ruled on several of the other applications.
The Court criticised the Juvenile Court's decisions for relying on standardised template reasoning which failed to engage with the allegations of domestic violence or the evidence provided by the mother and children. It emphasised that courts determining custody and parental responsibility must expressly assess allegations of domestic abuse, their credibility and their implications for parenting arrangements.
In relation to the children, the Court noted that numerous reports submitted between 2022 and 2024 highlighted the detrimental impact of both the prolonged uncertainty surrounding their relationship with their father and their continued residence in the shelter. Despite these concerns, no timely decision was made.
The Court further found that the children's prolonged stay in the shelter had significantly affected their psychological and physical well-being. For nearly three years, they were required to live in a single 15-square-metre room and were subject to extensive restrictions on their daily lives arising from the shelter's internal rules. The Court considered these limitations to be excessive in the circumstances.
The ECtHR therefore found a further violation of Article 8 arising from the Juvenile Court's failure to act with the required diligence in determining custody issues and from the unjustifiably prolonged placement of the children in the shelter.