An Australian family who had their three children taken from them by Italian authorities because of their controversial upbringing has called on the Albanese government to intervene to help get them back.
The eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old twins of Australian woman Catherine Birmingham and her British-born husband Nathan Trevallion have been living in a state-run foster care facility in the southern region of Abruzzo for nearly four months.
Before that, the couple had been raising the children “off the grid” on a property near the town of Palmoli that had no running water, electricity or formal schooling.
“I just feel empty inside, full of sadness,” their father, Trevallion told 60 Minutes. “They don’t deserve what’s happening to them.”
The couple is now undergoing court-ordered psychiatric assessments to determine whether they are fit to parent.
“What I’m fighting is the very, very, very ignorant belief that what we have done to our children was wrong,” Birmingham said.
There are no allegations of abuse or neglect that typically trigger the removal of children from their parents. Instead, it was an extreme bout of food poisoning that drew the eyes of the local police, the Carabinieri, in September 2024.
“We have been picking edible mushrooms off our property for a long time, and honestly, we had just eaten too many in a few days,” Birmingham said.
Trevallion added: “I was vomiting, had diarrhoea, and was starting to get heat flushes and starting to sweat.”
When emergency responders arrived at the family’s property, they were alarmed by their off-the-grid lifestyle and alerted social services.
Court documents declared the home was a “dilapidated ruin” without utilities, and that there was a lack of essential care for the children, who had no pediatrician and who were not attending school.
The couple were practising what they describe as “parental education”, a version of homeschooling without a curriculum, drawing inspiration from the Steiner system. It rejects early academics in favour of creativity.
“They know how to sew, they know how to knit, they know how to chop wood, they know how to grow plants from seed,” Birmingham said.
“They’re learning other life skills that every child that sits there playing with the toys is not learning.”
Their home doesn’t have a bathroom, instead just a compost toilet that is a short walk from the house. They wash in an old tub.
“The base philosophy behind it for us is that the children are growing up in this environment where they have freedom with a boundary,” Birmingham said.
Trevallion said: “You wake up in the morning and do whatever you feel like doing.
“We don’t have to run out the door to take the children to school. It’s just a very relaxed way of waking up, eating breakfast together as a family and continuing through the day.”
But authorities were unimpressed.
“In Italy, inside a home there must be a toilet,” mayor Giuseppe Masciulli told 60 Minutes.
“The house had some damage… the children did not attend school and did not practice homeschooling, which is a recognised private way of educating children in Italy, but were actually practising unschooling, which is not recognised by Italian law.”
In April 2025, the couple were ordered to make some key changes to their lifestyle for the sake of the children.
“They wanted us to force [our daughter] into school, attach to mains water in our house, and put a flushing toilet in,” Birmingham said.
“We were getting ready to attach the water and talk about the toilet, but we were not going to force [our daughter into school]. I’ve always said to them, ‘If you ever want to go into school, you go to school’. They don’t want to.”
But it wasn’t just the lack of formal education that concerned authorities; it was also the parents’ lack of co-operation.
A court order revealed that Birmingham and Trevallion had refused to meet with social workers or participate in parenting support activities and that they wouldn’t allow mandatory health checks.
“We did say yes to a lot of things, but we were not going to do things that were going to damage our children,” Birmingham said.
Last November, the court took the step of removing the three children and placing them in a foster care facility, alongside other children in the care of the state.
Their mother negotiated a deal so she could live in the facility with them. Their dad, Trevallion, gets three visits a week.
“It’s been the toughest time of my life,” he said. “I can’t support my family right now. I can’t help them.”
The Italian public has become obsessed with the story, according to Claudio Giambene, a reporter for the country’s national broadcaster, Radiotelevisione Italiana.
“They seem like aliens, aliens coming from a different era,” he said.
“They want to be free. They don’t want to respect the rules. And the typical Italian behaviour with some people coming from abroad is ‘if you don’t want to stay here, you can go home. Why don’t you go back to Australia?’.”
The family have told authorities they’re ready to move to a nearby property, equipped with running water and connected to electricity, if their children are handed back to them.
They’ve also promised to allow a teacher to visit the property and assist with homeschooling.
The final hurdle is the ongoing psychiatric assessment of the parents, which could take months.
Asked if she felt let down by a lack of support from the Australian government in their bid to have their children returned, Birmingham said: “Humanity, in multiple ways, has let us down.”
“The last resort was the Australian government, that just that killed me.”
Professor Tonino Cantelmi, who has spent hours with the couple, will give evidence in their defence.
“They are very good parents, very affectionate, very present,” he said.
“We have to do something to bring this family back together.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says it is engaging with Italian authorities and it is providing consular assistance to the Birmingham-Trevallion family.
Amelia Adams – 60 Minutes reporter and former senior US correspondent.
