Just when calm appeared to have been restored in the Gannon family – finally united with nine-year-old daughter Ellie after the child’s natural father, a Portuguese entrepreneur from Vilamoura, kidnapped her and kept her from home for seven fraught-filled months – news comes that Ellie is now living in a hotel bedroom in Funchal, Madeira, with her father as “the Faro Civil Court refuses to allow her to leave the country” to join her mother.
Ellie’s mother Candice, 28, is currently pregnant with twins and undergoing emergency treatment in Ireland for “serious complications” with the pregnancy. She has written to the Algarve Resident explaining how she had hoped Ellie would be allowed to go with her – particularly as Candice has to stay in Ireland for some weeks after the babies are born – but the court refused her request.
“I am deeply concerned with some of the decisions issued by the Faro Civil Court since Ellie was returned to me in February 2013,” she writes.
“I believe that the court’s decision not to allow Ellie to travel with me and (her little sister) Olivia for treatment in Ireland, has put Ellie in an intolerable situation. Ellie was traumatised as a result of being kidnapped, and she was seeing a child psychologist regularly over the past eight months to help her cope with the psychological damage that she suffered as a result of being hidden away from her legally appointed, core family nucleus, for seven months.
“I am now talking to specialist lawyers about taking a case against Portugal to the European Court of Human Rights,” Candice concludes. “They feel that both Ellie’s and my fundamental human rights and constitutional rights may have been seriously violated.”
Ellie is a British citizen, says her mother. Meantime, the girl continues to live on the island of Madeira, which is where the Gannons say they have been “kept hostage” by the court order that says Ellie must live in Portugal.
The father, Filipe Silva, is currently awaiting trial for kidnapping her.
