Australian-British fighting to have their off-grid children returned
An Australian family who had their three children taken away from them by Italian authorities because of their controversial upbringing has called on the Albanian government to intervene to get them back.
Australian woman Catherine Birmingham and her British-born husband Nathan Trevallion’s eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old twins have been living in a state-run foster care facility in the southern region of Abruzzo for nearly four months.
Before that, the couple was raising their children “off the grid” on a property near the town of Palmoli that had no running water, electricity or formal education.
“I feel empty inside and full of sadness,” said their father, Trevallion. 60 Minutes. “They don’t deserve what happened to them.”
The couple is currently undergoing court-ordered psychiatric evaluations to determine whether they are fit to be parents.
“What I struggle with is the very, very ignorant belief that what we are doing to our children is wrong,” Birmingham said.
Typically, there are no allegations of abuse or neglect that trigger the removal of children from their parents. Instead, it was an extreme case of food poisoning that caught the attention of the local police, the Carabinieri, in September 2024.
“We have been collecting edible mushrooms from our property for a long time, and to be honest, we had eaten a lot in just a few days,” Birmingham said.
Trevallion added: “I was vomiting, had diarrhea and started having hot flashes and sweating.”
When emergency responders arrived at the family’s property, they were alarmed by their off-grid lifestyle and alerted social services.
Court documents described the home as a “dilapidated ruin” with no plumbing and no basic care for children who had no pediatrician and were not in school.
The couple were practicing what they described as “parent education,” a curriculum-free version of homeschooling inspired by the Steiner system. He rejects early scholars in the name 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 seeds,” Birmingham said.
“They learn other life skills that not every kid who sits there and plays with toys learns.”
There is no bathroom in their home, instead there is a compost toilet a short walk from the house. They wash in an old bathtub.
“For us, the basic philosophy behind this is that kids grow up in an environment where they have freedom and have boundaries,” Birmingham said.
Trevallion said: “You wake up in the morning and do whatever you want to do.
“We don’t have to run out the door to get the kids to school. It’s just a very convenient way to wake up, have breakfast together as a family, and get on with the day.”
But officials were not impressed.
Mayor Giuseppe Masciulli said, “In Italy, a house must have a toilet inside.” 60 Minutes.
“There was some damage to the house… the children were not going to school and they were not practicing home education, which is considered a special way of educating children in Italy, but they were actually practicing unschooling, which is not recognized by Italian law.”
In April 2025, the couple was ordered to make some significant changes to their lifestyle for the sake of the children.
“They wanted us to push” [our daughter] “We put it in the school, connected it to mains water in our house and put in a flush toilet,” Birmingham said.
“We were getting ready to connect the water and talk about the toilet, but we were not going to force it.” [our daughter into school]. I always told them: ‘If you want to go to school, you go to school’. “They don’t want it.”
But it wasn’t just the lack of formal education that worried officials; it was also due to lack of cooperation from parents.
The court order found Birmingham and Trevallion refused to meet with social workers or engage in parenting support activities and would not allow mandatory health checks.
“We said yes to a lot of things, but we weren’t going to do things that would hurt our children,” Birmingham said.
Last November, the court took the step of removing the three children and placing them in a foster care facility with other children in the state’s care.
Their mother made a deal to live with them at the facility. Their father, Trevallion, is visited three times a week.
“It was the hardest time of my life,” he said. “I can’t support my family right now. I can’t help them.”
According to Claudio Giambene, a correspondent for the country’s national broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana, the Italian public became obsessed with the story.
“They look like aliens, aliens from a different era,” he said.
“They want to be free. They don’t want to respect the rules. And the typical behavior of some Italians 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 told authorities they were prepared to move to a nearby property with running water and electricity if their children were returned to them.
They also promised to allow a teacher to visit the property and help with homeschooling.
The final hurdle is the parents’ ongoing psychiatric evaluation, which can take months.
Professor Tonino Cantelmi, who spent hours with the couple, will testify in their defense.
“They are very good parents, very affectionate, very present,” she said.
“We have to do something to bring this family back together.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was in contact with Italian authorities and provided consular assistance to the Birmingham-Trevallion family.
Amelia Adams- 60 Minutes correspondent and former senior US correspondent.
