Mrs. P. met her future husband in March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown began in the Czech Republic. “He was the only person I was in contact with during quarantine besides my family. Two months after we met, he told me that I was the woman of his life and wanted to start a family and have a child with me. I went along with it, and I got pregnant in July, and we got married in September,” the young woman told Právo. However, their story has a long way to go before reaching a happy ending, and her two-year-old son plays a sad role in it.
There were significant cracks in their marriage that appeared relatively quickly. “Some things that I overlooked before started to seem strange to me. I found out that my husband was pathologically dependent on his parents, and his father chose me for him because he thought I was a good match,” Mrs. P. said.
“After I got pregnant, we stopped having sex. My husband told me he was no longer attracted to me as a pregnant woman. He left both of us four months after giving birth,” she recalled. But that was far from the end of it.
“I mostly took care of our son myself, and my husband showed no interest in him,” the mother said. “He told me that he didn’t care about the child and that his parents wanted a grandchild. He didn’t intend to contribute financially and didn’t see him. Only after six months did he suddenly appear and demand to take our son to his parents,” she added.
That’s when the disputes began. The mother refused to let her husband take the baby to his parents, who had no relationship with him. The child protection agency and then the court got involved. The court issued preliminary measures allowing the father to take his son for several hours several times a week, despite the mother’s objections.
“The father is minimally involved in taking care of the child. His elderly parents do it for him. He doesn’t respect our son’s routine or diet. Our son almost always gets sick after visiting him, but the court thinks it’s okay,” the mother claimed. According to Právo’s sources, the husband argues that he has seen his son only six times out of 31 court-ordered appointments. The exchange didn’t take place on other occasions.
The mother claims that her child was taken from her by her husband, who cannot take care of him properly. She also suspects him of sexually abusing their son. The police, however, have refused to investigate the case. The mother’s current situation is complex and traumatic, and she must keep fighting for her child’s best interests.