“Go get a white husband.” » After three years of absence, these words from her son devastated Marie. Story of a maternal struggle faced with the twists and turns of the French and Mauritian justice systems.
She waited more than three years to see her son again. Three years of procedures, borders, closed doors. And when she finally found him, Wednesday April 8, in a room in the C.S.K. building. in Port-Louis, under the gaze of officers from the Child Development Unit (CDU) and the Family Protection Brigade, he turned his back: “Go and start your life again. Go find a white husband. »
Thirteen years old. This is the age of the child who said these words, facing his mother standing in front of him after more than three years of separation. Marie Souana Isaïe took the blow without flinching. She says she knows those words didn't come from him. “These words were dictated to him by adults. » But certainty does not ease the pain.
She left that day empty-handed, without her son, without even the guarantee of seeing him again soon: the CDU informed her that she would now have to go through the Court to obtain a new visit.
To understand where Marie is today, we have to go back a long way. For fifteen years, she says she lived under the influence of Patrick Vidal, a 77-year-old French national and former police commander. A relationship that she describes as progressive confinement: manipulation, physical and psychological violence, isolation. Little by little, weakened, she had to leave her job, becoming totally dependent on this man. Their son was born in 2012, in Moka.
Two years later, in 2014, she claims to have been taken to France under pressure to sign documents whose real scope she did not understand. It was only later that she realized what she had signed: custody of her child had just been granted to the father. She had signed her signature without realizing the consequences, under a constraint that she did not have the means to name at the time.
It will take him years to find the strength to leave. It was ultimately thanks to the support of the CIDFF association (the Information Center on the Rights of Women and Families) that she took legal action and regained independence. The 2014 decision is revised. A new judgment grants him shared parental authority. This is a first step. But the fight has only just begun.
On July 22, 2023, French justice went further: faced with the situation, the child was placed under the responsibility of Child Welfare. Patrick Vidal contests the decision. The Aix-en-Provence juvenile court rejects his appeal. The placement is extended until June 2024. And above all, a strict ban on leaving French territory is imposed on the child.
But according to Marie, this decision was never respected. Her ex-partner would have left France with their son for Mauritius, without informing his own lawyer, who
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