The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal against an order of the High Court that a 14-year-old boy who had remained in England after visiting his father should return to live in South Africa.
The boy’s parents, both South African nationals, had married in 2009 and the boy was born two years later. The family had lived in South Africa before moving to England in 2013. The parents’ marriage broke down in 2015 and they subsequently divorced. In 2018, the mother was granted permission to relocate with the boy to South Africa.
In November 2024, the father wrote to the mother proposing that the boy should move to England to live with him, and a few months later began proceedings in South Africa seeking an order to that effect. In October 2025, during the half-term holidays, the boy visited him in England. Shortly before the boy was due to fly back to South Africa, the father wrote to the mother informing her that he would not be returning. The father withdrew the South African proceedings, and the mother made an application in England for the boy’s summary return under the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
It was not disputed that the boy objected to returning to South Africa and that he was of an age and degree of maturity at which it was appropriate to take account of his views. The boy’s Cafcass guardian opposed the making of a return order. However, the High Court exercised its discretion to make the order. The boy and the father appealed to the Court of Appeal.
They contended that the High Court had failed to give proper weight to the boy’s objections and wrongly concluded that they were not authentically his own but the product of the father’s influence. They also argued that the Court’s approach to the evidence relating to alleged parental influence and alienation was wrong, including by relying on a report prepared during the South African proceedings containing what the Court described as a blistering critique of the father’s parenting style and behaviour, and by failing to give proper weight to the guardian’s evidence and recommendation.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeals. The High Court had comprehensively explained its approach to the views expressed by the boy: it had placed them in the broader context and carefully explained why it had decided that they had been significantly influenced by the father. The argument that the Court had failed to engage with broader aspects of the guardian’s evidence was rejected. In particular, it was clear from the judgment that the Court had had well in mind the potential consequences for the boy of returning to South Africa. Overall, the Court of Appeal was not persuaded that the High Court’s exercise of its discretion was flawed or that its decision to make a return order was wrong. Indeed, its powerful analysis fully explained and supported its decision.