The Provincial Court of Bizkaia has acquitted to the Deputy of Social Action Sergio Murillo and the three officials of the Childhood service of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, tried for the alleged crimes of prevarication, mistreatment and psychological injuries in relation to a provincial order of 2017 by which the institution assumed the custody of the minor, daughter of Irune Costumero, and transferred the stay to the father, without having consulted him with the judge who had issued a regime of joint custody. The defendants were facing a request for five years and six months in prison for which they have been acquitted. The sentence acquits, in the same way, the Provincial Council as a subsidiary civil liable.

Irune Costumero denounced the Provincial Council for having taken custody from her, alleging alleging the false SAP syndrome, a false pathology that is not recognized by any international medical or psychiatric institution, but that is applied in judicial processes and has as a consequence the withdrawal of custody of mothers, accusing them of influencing their children not to want to see their fathers.

The girl was separated from her mother in 2017 and despite her efforts, the case had been pending review by the courts since then, during which time the minor lives with her father.

At the trial, held between the days 7, 8 and 9 of last June, Irune Costumero stated that the defendants were lying, he assured that “they violently ripped “his daughter over a” non-existent “syndrome, “without having asked the girl why she did not want to go with her father.” According to him, the mother fled “with her daughter after having denounced the father for mistreatment. Costumero also reported that the father “kidnapped” the girl when she was 21 months old and kept her “unaccounted for” for months in which he did not know “if she was alive or dead” and recalled that Osakidetza initiated procedures up to three times. of mistreatment of the father against the minor, “although the judge understood that the injuries were not so serious that she did not return to him.”

On the part of accused, the psychosocial team who prepared the report of the withdrawal of custody of his daughter to Irune Costumero assured in the trial that the Diputación he acted ex officio “given the seriousness of the case“, considering” urgently necessary the intervention of the Childhood and Family Service of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia. “The assessment of the forensic team took place in July 2016, when the Barakaldo Base Social Services referred the Costumero case to the Childhood Service of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, a transfer that took place due to an assessment of “serious risk of lack of protection” and due to the “suspicion of emotional abuse and instrumentalization in conflicts of parental figures”.

The Provincial Council assumed the provisional custody of the minor in 2017, by provincial order, in compliance with providing “immediate attention”, authorizing the minor’s stay with the father and establishing a visiting regime with the mother.

As stated in the indictment, in the judicial process it was argued that Costumero exercised the so-called “parental alienation syndrome” on his daughter. The UN sent a report in September 2020 to the Government of Spain asking for explanations, as the report recounted how, after the agreement of a joint custody between Costumero and his ex-partner agreed by a court in 2013, the father’s complaint before the social services of the Biscay Provincial Council stating that the mother influenced the girl so that she did not spend time with him, motivated a performance of this institution. Costumero had denounced his ex-partner for mistreatment, but the case was closed with an acquittal.

Bizkaia regrets the “irreparable” damage

The Provincial Council of Bizkaia has lamented the “irreparable” personal harm suffered by its four employees acquitted of the crimes of administrative prevarication, mistreatment and psychological injuries, which had been accused by Irene Costumero.

After the acquittal of the Provincial Court of Bizkaia, the Biscayan provincial institution has indicated that this judicial decision “certifies that the workers of the Department of Social Action and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia itself have acted with the rigor and professionalism that society demands and waiting for the first institution of the territory “.

Furthermore, it lamented the “irreparable, unnecessary and unjust personal damage that the public treatment of this judicial process, in some areas, has caused to those involved and, by extension, to the entire Provincial Council of Bizkaia”. Therefore, he has asked for a “deep collective reflection“to avoid similar situations in the future.” Not everything goes, “he asserted.

Finally, he thanked and encouraged his staff to continue carrying out their work in favor of the society of Bizkaia “with the same solvency as up to now” and has ratified his commitment to a “better” future for all the people who live in Bizkaia .

Irune Costumero, for its part, He has already announced that he will appeal the acquittal decreed by the Provincial Court of Bizkaia of the Deputy of Social Action Sergio Murillo and the three officials of the Childhood service of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia.