The trial of Juana Rivas's husband for alleged child abuse begins in Italy.

The Cagliari Criminal Court (Italy) is scheduled to begin the trial of Francesco Arcuri this Thursday, accused of allegedly committing "habitual physical and psychological abuse" of his children, according to a statement issued by Juana Rivas's legal team on Thursday, who expressed confidence that "the extremely serious facts stated in the Italian Prosecutor's indictment will be proven ."

The hearing thus opens a parallel process to which the complaint filed by Arcuri against the mother from Maracena (Granada) for the alleged commission of child abduction regarding the minor child will continue in Spain. The child was returning to Italy with the parent, who has custody, on July 25 after staying in Spain with Rivas since the previous Christmas holidays.

"On October 30th, Juana Rivas will give a statement regarding these events ," her lawyers added on Wednesday, noting that this will happen despite Granada's Investigative Court No. 4 "considering that they were not criminal, through a reasoned statement of the reasons for dismissing the complaint," to which Arcuri's legal team appealed.

The Second Section (Criminal) of the Granada Provincial Court, in a ruling dated July 24, upheld part of the appeal filed by Arcuri's team against the dismissal of their complaint, and the investigation was reopened.

Thus, a ruling from Granada's 4th Court of Instruction, dated July 30, summoned Rivas to appear as a suspect at 10:00 a.m. on October 30 at the courthouse, at the same time and place as Arcuri was summoned as the complainant on September 22 through her legal representative.

Regarding the trial in Cagliari, Rivas's legal team lamented that it begins "with the extremely serious legal and social anomaly of having one of her main victims and witnesses in the case, her young son, under her control ," after being, according to the mother's lawyers, "forced by the Court of First Instance No. 3 of Granada to return to living with her alleged abuser."

"Despite the terrible situation that the Maracena resident and her children have been enduring for years," they trust that, "finally, the central issue" of the Juana Rivas case will prevail, which is "not in the least a custody dispute" nor a "manipulative mother" who "intends to take her children away" from a "good father," but rather "a very serious case of gender-based violence."

The latter, in "its cruel manifestation of vicarious violence, in which, given that the continued mistreatment of minors has taken place in Carloforte (Italy), it will be in that country where such acts will be judged."

Last January, the judicial authorities in Granada provisionally suspended the child's return to Italy after the Christmas holidays . This was done after the minor stated that he had suffered alleged episodes of physical and psychological violence at the hands of his father and described the "terror" of returning to him. The return was scheduled for July 25th after a failed attempt at the family meeting point that same week.

Last March, the Granada Court of Appeals confirmed the ruling of the 9th Court of Instruction in Granada, which in February agreed to forward the case file of Rivas's youngest son to the court in the Italian city of Cagliari for further investigation into the alleged abuse he reported the minor had received from his father. This hearing was scheduled for this Thursday.

In April 2021, the full Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court upheld Juana Rivas's conviction for the crime of child abduction, after she spent a month in the summer of 2017 missing with her two children, violating court rulings requiring her to hand them over to their father. However, it reduced her sentence from five years to two years and six months in prison, considering that, although two minors were abducted, she committed a single crime and not two.