IRISH GIRL Fiona Shaw (10) left Hungary last night, nearly four years after she was abducted and later taken on the run by her fugitive mother.
Fiona was expected to arrive this morning in Paris, where her father, Irish academic Leslie Shaw, is waiting. Fiona’s mother, Krisztina Orosz, is in a Budapest jail cell fighting extradition to France on charges of child abduction.
Dr Shaw has been trying to regain custody of Fiona since Ms Orosz took her to her home village of Boconad in late 2007 and failed to return to France, where the three lived. Ms Orosz accused Dr Shaw of sexually abusing their daughter and refused to go back to France or comply with a French order to give him custody of Fiona.
Courts in France and Hungary rejected the abuse claims against Dr Shaw, and the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Hungary had failed in its obligation to return Fiona to him.
Armed police raided Ms Orosz’s home in Boconad on Wednesday and found her with Fiona and her grandparents. The whereabouts of mother and daughter had been a mystery for two years.
Fiona was taken to a Budapest clinic, from where she set off yesterday in an ambulance bound for Paris. She was accompanied by her cousin, while Dr Shaw flew back to Paris after deciding that Fiona was too traumatised to travel with him.
"It's a great relief to get her back but I don't know what's around the corner," Dr Shaw told The Irish Times.
“My priority is to reverse all the damage done to her in the last four years, to get her back to school and restore relations with her friends and family. I will devote all my time, energy and resources to getting Fiona back to normal life.”
Dr Shaw said Fiona had been “brainwashed” by her mother to believe that he abused her. He said Fiona “recoiled... in horror” when she saw him this week, and she was crying and screaming when put in the ambulance yesterday.
Ms Orosz went on the run with Fiona after briefly being arrested by Hungarian police in 2009.
Dr Shaw, who teaches at a business school in Paris, has arranged for Fiona to go straight into a children’s hospital when she arrives in the city. “It is impossible to say when she will be back living with me,” he said.
“How long will it take to undo the damage? It will be like deprogramming her after everything she has been taught by her mother.”