Grew up in a ruin in the woods of Vastese, without light, without running water and without traditional school. It is the story of three children, between 6 and 8 years old, whose parents – Nathan and Katherine, she is Australian, a former riding teacher, he is an English wood craftsman – have chosen to grow up in contact with nature, far from civilization and what they consider a society “toxic”.
The case, told by The Messengerexploded in October 2024, when the police intervened to rescue the family after serious mushroom poisoning. During the inspection, the officers found the house in conditions that were then defined as “dilapidated”, without essential services, and reported the situation to social services.
As he reports again The Messengerthe first report from social workers confirmed that the minors did not have a pediatrician, did not attend school and lived in an unhealthy environment. When the institutions appeared, however, the family isolated themselves, making themselves untraceable.
The file was passed to the L’Aquila Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office. A new survey, carried out in April 2025, described an area with a unusable ruin, a caravan, a small farm and a dry toilet.
The accusation of “serious prejudice” and the parental wall
On 21 April 2025, the public prosecutor asked the juvenile court for the urgent custody of the children to the Municipality, speaking of a condition of “serious prejudice”. The family, however, firmly opposed it.
“We are not criminals, but free parents”
The parents explain that they practice un-schooling, a form of free education, without school or imposed programmes, but with an exam at the end of the school year in a public structure. The children do not hang out with other children “so as not to be influenced”, but learn from nature, manual work and daily life.
Their lawyer, Giovanni Angelucci, clarified that there is no violence or family distress:
It is a conscious life choice, not a condition of abandonment. They want to preserve the relationship between man and nature.
The family, he explains, is self-sufficient and economically independent: it produces what it consumes, collects water from a well, uses solar panels.
The final word to the Prosecutor’s Office
Meanwhile, social services have proposed some “minimal solutions”: improved housing, regular pediatric visits and educational placement in a municipal centre. The family, however, objected again, despite presenting supporting documents:
Now the ball is back in the prosecutor’s office, who will have to decide whether to proceed with an intervention or leave the children to their parents. Meanwhile, the family continues to live in the woods, among the hills of Vastese, without running water but with a strong conviction: to live free, outside the system.
But where is the same diligence when children really suffer?
And here comes the question that no one seems to want to ask. Where is all this diligence when children really live in abandonment, amidst extreme poverty, violence and crime? The parents of these three little ones are not monsters, but people who have chosen another life: a modest house, solar energy, a water well, no TV, no smartphone.
Their children play outdoors, learn from nature, breathe clean air and homeschool. Perhaps the problem is precisely this: they live outside the system, and the system doesn’t like this. They remind us that freedom, simplicity and self-sufficiency are scary because they question the model of life that has been imposed on us.
Before pillorying two brave parents, we should ask ourselves: what really is a happy childhood? Maybe not the one in front of a screen, but the one under the sky, with his hands in the earth.
Sources: Il Messaggero / TG3
