A mother who is hiding her son from her estranged husband – apparently because she and the husband’s new girlfriend had a tiff on Facebook – will face 45 days in prison if she does not immediately divulge to the husband where the child is.
The father turned to the Limpopo High Court, in Polokwane, for an order to hold the mother in contempt of court. While the parties are embroiled in divorce proceedings, a court last year ordered that the parents, for now, have joint custody and parental responsibilities towards the child.
The father said he last saw his child at the end of April, as his wife had moved him to an undisclosed location. He said this was to spite him as she and his girlfriend had exchanged harsh words on Facebook.
Besides asking that his wife be imprisoned for contempt of court, the father also asked for an order imposing a fine of R75 000 on her and a further R1 000 a day for each day she refused to allow him to see their child.
But Judge Maake Kganyago imposed the prison sentence only. He issued a warrant for her arrest and ordered that it would be executed if she did not immediately return the child. The wife, who opposed the application, said the child got upset when he was to visit his father. She also said she told her husband she was moving to Brits, where she had found a better employment opportunity. She said that after moving, she did give her husband her new address.
The wife said the husband was staying with his girlfriend, who had two children. She said the girlfriend had threatened her on social media, and the child did not want to visit them, as he said they were “naughty”.
The wife told the court she had started to fear for the child’s safety when in the care of her husband and his girlfriend and her motivation for withholding the child from the husband and his girlfriend was justified.
The judge said it appeared that the problems started in April, when the wife sent a message to the husband’s girlfriend through Facebook, congratulating her on being with the husband.
The wife said the girlfriend responded with a threatening message to tell her she had no idea who she was, and she must not “tempt” her.
Judge Kganyago said all these issues were triggered by the response which the wife got from the girlfriend, as she was aware that she and the husband were living together and previously had no problem with it.
“In my view, the respondent (wife) had a problem with the applicant’s girlfriend and is using the minor child to punish the applicant for the deeds of his girlfriend, which makes her action to be mala fide (in bad faith). The respondent was therefore acting wilfully and with malice in refusing the applicant access to his minor child,” the judge said.
Pretoria News