Father again claims illegal abduction

Updated July 15 with Gerdes reply

The father of an 11-year-old girl who lived in Malta until last year and recently settled in Germany with her mother – after the courts allowed her to travel out of Bulgaria despite his objections – is now claiming illegal abduction.

The German father of the child – who has filed a number of court cases against different women with who he has children – initiated a child abduction case under The Hague Convention in Germany. 

Andreas Gerdes is claiming that the girl’s German mother, Dara Meubrink, abducted the child when she took her from Bulgaria to Germany last January. 

But Meubrink is arguing that she travelled to Germany after obtaining permission from the courts to leave Bulgaria – where she stayed with her daughter for four months because the father objected to the girl’s departure.

The child had been living in Malta and Gozo before the father took her to Bulgaria in June last year.

During various court cases the Bulgarian courts heard how the parents met in Germany and moved to Malta where they had a daughter. The couple broke up and eventually agreed to split the care of their child 50/50. 

The mother eventually moved to Gozo with her child where she lived for the past years and had habitual residence status in Malta. 

The father requested that the mother registered their daughter in Bulgaria in June 2021. She agreed “to keep the peace” and under the premise that the child would continue to spend half of her time with each parent.

A Bulgarian court heard how the daughter went to her father in January 2023 and was meant to return to her mother in April. The father planned a 44-day European tour and wanted to take his daughter. The mother agreed. The trip ended in Bulgaria in June 2023, where the mother was supposed to pick her up and return to Gozo. 

The mother feared losing contact with her daughter and filed a missing person report while in Germany where she was visiting sick grandparents. 

On the night of October 8, German police informed her the father was stopped with their daughter at the North-Macedonian border on their way to Kosovo, the court heard. 

After the police handed her daughter over to her, her initial plan was to return to Gozo but with her daughter’s “residency in Bulgaria”, the father objected to her departure and took the case to court. He claimed the child was better off with him.

The case dragged on until November when the Bulgarian District Court ruled the child could leave Bulgaria.

The father appealed the decision. The mother and her daughter could not leave until the second instance court confirmed the decision last January and she left for Germany where she started attending school.

A second court case for care and custody is still pending in Bulgaria. In a preliminary ruling (that is not final) the court ruled that the child’s place of residence will be the mother’s home in Germany and the father has access rights and must pay maintenance. 

The father now initiated a case in Germany claiming illegal abduction and asking for the child to be returned to Bulgaria. 

When contacted, the father said he fought for his daughter’s custody because he was concerned about leaving her with her mother due to lifestyle choices he disagreed with. He said he tried to find solutions up until last January and ended up alienated from his daughter who was allowed to leave Bulgaria. He is denying abducting the child.  

“Now I have to fight for my parental rights and [my daughter’s] future, and yes I am taking various actions: reporting Dara to the authorities for making false declarations to the authorities that she had full custody over [my daughter], seeking damages for violation of my parental rights, and seeking a new court-imposed custody arrangement in Bulgaria, which is the place where [my daughter] and I are both registered as residents,” he said.

Father has filed other child abduction cases

This is not the first time Gerdes, who first came to Malta on holiday in 1995, has claimed child abduction.  Over the past years he had a number of court cases against four different women, from who he has five children. Several of the cases centred around child maintenance or custody. 

Anika de Vilera

In 2017 he went to the media in the case against one of the four women – Croatian national Anika de Vilera – with who he had a daughter. He claimed de Vilera had abducted the child when she left Malta for Croatia. 

In a 2018 interview, in which Gerdes spoke about the abduction to Croatia to the media, it was reported that he made his money from investing in innovative communications and digital companies. 

In March 2021, the Municipal Civil Court in Zagreb ruled this was not a case of abduction since at the time Gerdes had no legal title to the child. 

This was because the mother was still technically married to her ex-husband and the child was his in the eyes of the law.  There was nothing stopping de Vilera from leaving Malta to head to Croatia, the court found.

Gerdes appealed and the decision that was confirmed by the Country Court of Zagreb in June that year.

He then filed a constitutional application claiming the courts breached his rights to a family life. He argued, among other things, that the court did not take note of a 2016 private agreement in which both parties agreed that he was the biological father, had joint care and custody and both parents’ consent would be needed to travel out of Malta among other things. His application was upheld and the case was sent back to be heard. It is pending.  

Gerdes later sent the following statement.

He claims:

1. Gerdes and Meubrink had a private agreement on shared parenting.

2. The article states: “The mother feared losing contact with her daughter and filed a missing person report while in Germany where she was visiting sick grandparents.” This is far from the truth.

3. The father tried to negotiate a new agreement with the mother last summer and the parents were in communication all throughout the summer.

4. The mother did not want to take the child to Gozo as stated in the article. The father made an offer to the mother for the child to attend school in Gozo in court in January 2024, but the mother rejected that offer and insisted that the child goes to live in Germany with the child’s grandparents.

5. A Bulgarian court gave an interim decree in which it provided that the child’s residence is in Germany, the mother has residential custody, and the father has visitation rights. The father’s lawyers are of the opinion that this judgement is unlawful and a case is being prepared to challenge this judgement in human rights courts.

6. The article claims that the father is “now claiming illegal abduction” and that he has “initiated a child abduction case under The Hague Convention in Germany.” It is appropriate to point out that the case of abduction in Germany has been filed by the Central Authority of the German Ministry of Justice, not by the father.

7. The article also mentioned the case of abduction of another daughter by Anika de Vilera to Croatia in 2017. The article mentioned this by saying that “this is not the first time Gerdes has claimed child abduction” and that “he claimed de Vilera had abducted the child when she left Malta for Croatia.”

In this case, at the time, the Maltese family court had issued a warrant of precautionary injunction against the child being taken out of Malta, and the child’s passport had been deposited in the Maltese family court.

De Vilera then got a new Croatian passport for the child after making a report to the police in Malta that the child’s passport was missing, and the police gave her a missing passport report. This happened at a time when the child’s original passport was deposited in court, and the court had already sent notification to the police that the child could not be taken out of Malta.