A British father has had his three children taken away by Italian authorities after they were poisoned by mushrooms when he took them to live off-grid.
Nathan Trevallion, a 51-year-old ex-chef from Bristol, lived in a run-down farmhouse in the Abruzzo region of central Italy with his Australian wife Catherine Birmingham and their three children, an eight-year-old girl and six-year-old twin boys.
Having bought the property in 2021, Mr Trevallion moved his family in with the aim of living off-grid.
But authorities were called to the homestead in September 2024 after all five members of the family needed to be taken to hospital because they had been poisoned by mushrooms.
The three children have now been removed from the care of Mr Trevallion.
He told Corriere Della Sera: ‘Yes, unfortunately, it happened, and it was terrible. They took our children away from us.’
With parental rights now suspended, the children have been placed in a foster home, and a guardian is set to be assigned to care for them.
Social services arrived on the scene alongside five officers to remove the children from the house in the woods. But mother Catherine Birmingham was able to accompany them to the protected facility and spend the first night with them.
‘Otherwise the shock would have been truly unbearable,’ the family’s lawyer, Giovanni Angelucci, said.
Mr Trevallion spent his first night and morning alone in the farmhouse, and told the Italian news outlet that he would deliver toys and clothes to his children on Friday morning.
But the case has caused a stir online, with over 13,000 having signed a petition in support of the family and their choices to live off-grid.
The family relied on solar power for electricity and a well for water because their home is located six miles from the nearest small village.
The children were also homeschooled and authorities said they had inadequate access to healthcare.
Earlier this month, Ms Birmingham claimed police had ‘bullied and harassed’ her and her family.
She claimed they had to flee the property three times after police showed up theatening to take their children away.
She told the Telegraph: ‘They saw we were living off grid and they labelled our house a crumbling ruin. The kids were really traumatised.’
The family’s lawyer, Angelucci, had insisted the children were in ‘perfect health’.
‘They are in better physical condition than most children,’ he said, adding: ‘There is no evidence of maltreatment.’
In an effort to prove their claims, Trevallion invited a local media outlet to the family’s cottage to reveal how they lived.
He reportedly said in broken Italian: ‘There are cracks in the walls, but the walls are strong.
‘We are a clean family. Every day we sweep the floor’.
In a statement to the court, Trevallion and Birmingham said: ‘We consciously changed our own lives… to provide our children with parents that are able to be at home with them, food, air and water that is clean, and an environment that not only is beneficial to their brain and physical development but, most importantly, a connection.’
