A gay Cape Town couple have been reunited with two young children they want to adopt after an exhausting legal wrangle.
|||A gay Cape Town couple have been reunited with two young children they want to adopt after an exhausting legal wrangle, which has seen the children moved back and forth between here and the Eastern Cape.
The two men, Daneall Lowe and Ivo Indiani, run a hair salon in Somerset West, and have been caring for the children – aged four and six – since January 2010.
Lowe is the children’s uncle. His brother is their biological father, who is no longer in a relationship with the children’s mother.
The drama arose late last year when the men began formal proceedings to become official foster parents. This was opposed by the children’s mother, who had initially agreed that the children be cared for by the pair.
Since then, their quest to care for the children has been a tale of relentless court appearances and orders, which has seen the children being moved back and forth between Cape Town and East London and which has involved social workers, local police and even specialised police units.
After the latest round of legal battles, the children flew back to Cape Town and were returned to the men’s home on Tuesday, after being fetched by Lowe from their mother in East London.
This came after the men won an interim order from the Western Cape High Court, on March 23, to be granted temporary custody of the children.
“We are overjoyed at being together again,” Lowe told the Cape Argus.
But the men only have temporary custody while they await a High Court date where they will appeal a January 16 Magistrate’s Court ruling that the children be taken from them and returned to their mother.
The High Court has also ruled that the children be returned to their mother in East London to spend the June-July school holidays with her.
In the meantime, while the next High Court date is pending, options regarding the children’s future will be investigated.
The High Court ruling includes the observation that on one recent occasion the children were taken from the men. “The circumstances under which the children were suddenly removed from the care of Daneall and Ivo, taken to an unknown ‘safe place’ in unfamiliar surroundings, and then secretly spirited away to East London by plane, must have been very stressful for them and it is debatable as to whether that was in their best interests.”
The court said that in its view it would be in the children’s best interests and certainly less of a risk for them to “return to Somerset West after the Easter 2012 school vacation and to continue to reside with Lowe and Indiani for the second school term, subject to reasonable contact with their parents, such contact to be exercised unsupervised in the greater Cape Town and Helderberg areas”.
“In such circumstances, Daneall and Ivo will be responsible for all of the children’s’ financial needs, including schooling and medical care.
“The children should be permitted to spend the winter 2012 school vacation with their mother in East London and in the event that no final determination has been made by this court of any proceedings then still pending, the children shall return to Daneall and Ivo to continue their schooling in Somerset West during the third term of 2012, unless this court directs otherwise.”
The court also said it was not satisfied that, at this stage, it had been shown that the mother “was able yet to properly care and provide for the childrens’ needs, whether physical, emotional or financial”.
“For example, it is a source of considerable concern to the court that the children will have to share a room in a fourth floor flat with a 16-year-old sibling, whereas with Daneall and Ivo they each had their own rooms in a comfortable residential environment with a garden.
“Further it is troubling that the occupant of the third room in the mother’s flat remains unidentified and that the mother appears to have been reasonably secretive in that regard.”
A private social worker said in a report before court that she was satisfied that the children had been well cared for by Lowe and Indiani while they had lived with them in Somerset West in 2010 and 2011.
She also considered the pair to be an appropriate couple to act as primary caregivers to the children.
The mother, however, is permitted daily contact with her children by phone, SMS or Skype, and may see them at weekends, provided they give the two men 72 hours notice of this.
Cape Argus
