A 9-month-old baby divided up as if it were a plot of land. "Court 'divides' infant between Athens and Volos. The Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens issued a groundbreaking ruling regarding the custody of a nine-month-old infant, following the parents' divorce, determining that the child's residence time would be split between Athens and Volos. The decision was issued after the mother moved with the child to Volos, without prior written agreement between the two parents or relevant court authorization. Given that custody remains joint, the court decided that the child should reside in both homes, ensuring balanced communication with both parents, and that the mother would cover the father's travel expenses" - from the newspaper TA NEA. What "groundbreaking" achievement are we talking about? The recent court decision imposing alternating residence for an infant just 9 months old, splitting its life into 10- and 20-day periods between two different cities (Athens and Volos) with a distance of 350 kilometers, on the pretext of the father's lack of written consent to the mother's relocation and under the guise of parental "equality," slides into a purely punitive stance toward the mother, essentially disregarding the true best interest of the baby. This has been, from the outset, the most fundamental distortion of the law and its supporters: that instead of courts judging the interest of the child, they judge the rights of the parents. Family law is explicitly child-centered. It does not exist to reward or punish adult behavior, nor to balance out their claims. Imposing such travel on a 9-month-old baby (with the mother even being obligated to cover the travel expenses) constitutes a violation of the stability and predictability that infancy requires. Even an adult is unable to adapt their life by changing environment and home every few days, so how can this be demanded of an infant? Bending the rod the wrong way. The ruling's argument that the alternative solution — a few hours of contact with the father in the mother's place of residence (even in temporary accommodation) — would expose the infant to "excessive hardship," tends to invert reality. Developmental psychology teaches that in infancy, stability of environment and of the primary caregiver is of fundamental importance for forming a secure attachment. Prolonged separation from the primary caregiver and continuous exposure to exhausting 4-hour trips will certainly have a traumatic effect on the baby's psychosomatic development, creating risks of future developmental disorders. Even more so, behind a nine-month-old infant there is also a postpartum mother. The ruling glosses over, painlessly and easily, the circumstances under which a woman in the postpartum period is led to relocate. Returning to her hometown is often the only path to survival (seeking a supportive family network, housing and financial security), especially when support is lacking in the place of the marital home. The court's judgment completely disregarded these real needs, prioritizing rigid formalism, while very often in such cases there is an element of violence involved. For a woman to decide, in the hardest period of her life — the postpartum period, however much this is concealed from society at large — to relocate, is not a decision made without there being a serious problem within the couple. The Solomonic Courts of the Tsiaras Law. Alternating residence, first of all, is not provided for by law. The only provision that actually does exist in the law is the best interest of the child, which is what the judicial authority must serve. In any case, it cannot be applied horizontally and dogmatically to infants under conditions of enormous distance in kilometers. This particular ruling produces a dangerous and "abusive" case law, which sacrifices a child's peace and health on the altar of judicial equalization of parental rights. It is no coincidence that it is fathers' rights and men's rights organizations that celebrate such rulings, and not the professionals who actually work to protect children. This ruling comes to confirm, in the most emphatic way, that the Tsiaras law distorts the child-centered character of family law and now — blatantly — treats children as real estate property, like a piece of property whose "owners" must divide it up. We are deeply shocked by this ruling. It doesn't concern only this particular woman and her infant. It embodies a logic of gendered punishment and social exemplary punishment against a woman who dared to become independent. The message being sent is that claiming one's autonomy can come at a heavy cost, with no regard for the best interest of the child. Such rulings do not affect only those directly involved; they act as a deterrent and intimidation for any woman thinking of leaving an abusive or suffocating relationship and building an independent life. That is why we do not see these as isolated incidents, but as rulings with a broader social and political footprint. We increasingly see that psychological resilience, self-assertion, independence, and a woman's refusal to stay silent are being turned into elements used against her, reproducing the stereotype of the "malicious," "vindictive" or "manipulative" woman. And we are doubly concerned when these stereotypes are also reproduced inside courtrooms, under the wings of the Mandatory Joint Custody law and under the auspices of an organized lobby with access to the entire network of power.

We are more. Everywhere. Amid heatwaves, work, obligations, individual and collective struggles, something very beautiful, hopeful, and angry was born a few weeks ago. 🟣 On June 27, 2026, the first open and remarkably well-attended assembly of the Campaign for the Abolition of Mandatory Joint Custody took place. Five years have passed since the passage of the Tsiaras law: a law that has demonstrably abused children and killed women. In the wake of this sorrowful five-year assessment, hundreds of women came together, both in person and online, to organize ourselves, determined to abolish the mandatory joint custody law. At this assembly we discussed the devastating consequences of the Tsiaras law, shared our experiences, and planned our next steps. Feminist collectives from all over Greece also took part and spoke up, as did people from other European countries with the help of an interpreter - we thank Konstantina from the Greek Forum of Migrants for her tireless contribution that evening. Of course, this assembly would not have had such a large turnout without the invaluable, in-solidarity work of four educators, who looked after the children during the assembly, allowing dozens of mothers to take part! In this moving first attempt of ours to come together and coordinate, our feelings were intense and mixed: anger at the abusers, outrage at the regime of violence and control that countless children and women live under, but above all, feminist rage. Because from this assembly we saw that we have each other, and we vowed that we will not stop until the mandatory joint custody law is torn down. This assembly marked the dynamic launch of our Campaign. In the thick of summer, cis and trans women and queer people from all over Greece are organizing interventions and awareness actions, each one contributing their own small part so that the message reaches everywhere: "5 years is too many! Abolish the Mandatory Joint Custody law." First and foremost, those directly affected by the consequences of the law, but also all of us together. Whether we have children or not, we know well that the Tsiaras law affects all of us, as it deepens male patriarchal power and strengthens its control over our bodies in every aspect of our lives. It's giving them wind in their sails, and we will cut it off. All of us who came together committed to meeting again in September in a new, open, even larger assembly, where we will discuss how to escalate with new, wider-reaching actions to abolish the Mandatory Joint Custody law. Until the day we meet again, you can find our declaration on our website, by following the link https://stopchildabuse.gr/oxi-stin-ypoxreotiki-synepimeleia/ #no_to_mandatory_joint_custody #children_have_a_voice We will win this fight!

We're slowly getting ready for the open assembly to organize actions for the repeal of the Tsiaras law on Saturday, and it's very important to us that everyone can come, without restrictions and without stress. Niki, Eleni, and Niki, experienced educators, will look after the children during the assembly. We thank them from the bottom of our hearts! We're waiting for you, young and old, feminist and queer assemblies, collectives and individuals Here's the event as well: https://fb.me/e/6UqgcKbG7 See less

Five years is a lot. The campaign @No to Mandatory Joint Custody calls on feminist and queer collectives, as well as all beings who wish to join, to an open assembly to organize actions for the repeal of the Tsiaras law, on Saturday, June 27th at 7pm at the Aspalathos art space in Exarcheia. The Tsiaras law Kills Women. For five years now, the campaign and the few organizations and journalists who have been documenting the effects of the implementation of the mandatory joint custody law, have observed a dramatic increase in the intensity of gender-based and domestic violence as a result of the policies and the climate it has created. The femicide of Vasiliki in Kalamata is a foretold crime of the Tsiaras Law. It is the image of the raw violence of the state that imprisoned her in a life with her abuser, under the weight of threats that if she left he would take the children from her. In the end, he took her life. Because he could. Because he was allowed to. Her murder and the barbarity in which she and her children lived, the trauma that two small children are now called upon to manage, are the result of the mandatory joint custody law. Of the regime of terror and blackmail it has imposed, for the benefit of abusers. And it is happening right now, as we write these lines, in thousands of homes. The Tsiaras law Tortures Children. A few days ago, news came that within 48 hours 3 mothers and all their children were murdered by their ex/current husbands and fathers. 13 people dead. In the United States, where the "men's rights" lobby started, the counterattack of the country's rich white cis heteronormative men against the feminist movement and its achievements is already on the next page. Not just women. Children too. All dead. Five years is a lot. Not one day more. We will not mourn more women. We will not cry for children. We will not go back to the dark times of the man/father Master. We do not intend to return to a regime of violence and terror from which millions of women and queer beings around the world have fought to escape – in every corner we shout that we, and our children, will live free. This struggle against the war they declared on our bodies, we will win. The Tsiaras law will be overturned. With organization and feminist resistance. We are waiting for you to fight together, on Saturday, June 27th at 7pm, at Aspalathos - Art Space, 129 Charilaou Trikoupi, Exarcheia. No woman alone and no one alone means all of us together. Here's the event! https://www.facebook.com/share/17VzqGD6GY/ Please click attend and join us at the assembly See less

From the statement by New Democracy MP Giannis Loverdos during the parliamentary debate on the Tsiaras law, that an abuser doesn't mean he's a bad father, to the entrenchment of the notion that the abuser is a good father, only five years separate us — from the implementation of the mandatory joint custody law and a line drawn in the blood of murdered women. Yesterday morning we woke up to learn that Vasiliki was no longer with us. Her abusive, controlling husband slaughtered her at the knee, with the children watching the slaughter, just as they had watched the beatings with the belt, just as the neighbors listened to the screams, just as the police monitored the offenses reported ex officio by the neighbors and yet couldn't find the house. Just as we watch the state snatch the children away and dump them at the hospital, after the femicide of their mother, instead of them being in the arms of people who love them. Just as we watch the articles by journalists, their news sites, the packs of "active dads" in the comments of the news, sketching out from the very first minute the regime we find ourselves in five years later. "The young girls had a very good relationship with their father, who savagely murdered their mother in their home," "Exclusive – Kalamata: 'The young woman was having an affair – He was watching her,'" and of course whitewashing the femicide perpetrator by spreading everywhere the narrative of the killer's...self-defense. While we know, we knew beforehand, what a friend of hers publicly reported: "He had threatened her that he would arrange things so that she would never see her children again. She stayed because she feared for her life and for her children's lives." We know, we knew beforehand, The Tsiaras Law Kills Women. The abuser and the femicide perpetrator are a good father for the world being prepared by the far right, both in government and outside it, within New Democracy and elsewhere. A good father is one who disciplines and trains the state's future citizens to understand that his wife and children belong to him; a good father is one who contributes to the normalization of gender-based and domestic violence, and who has every right to punish "for the sake of honor," if need be. This is a good man and a good father. On the battlefield we live in, within and beyond our borders, the Tsiaras law and its supporters are preparing tomorrow's masters and murderers. Tomorrow's slave and mistress. And children with bowed heads. The belt with which the femicide perpetrator beat Vasiliki will fall with force -if it isn't falling already- on children's bodies. We have no intention of returning to a regime of violence and terror that millions of women across the planet fought to escape – in every corner we shout that we will live free, both us and our children. We will win this fight against the war they declared on our bodies. The Tsiaras law will be overturned. With feminist organizing and resistance. We will live. We will protect the children. Vasiliki, we will vindicate you. # The Tsiaras Law Kills Women # no to mandatory joint custody

Five years was too long. Five years of the Tsiaras Law. Five years since the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis and New Democracy opened the door to the far-right lobby of men's and fathers' rights. Since they legislated within parliament and trained every judge in this country so that abusive men could blackmail their ex-partners using their children as a tool, so that they could exert power over and abuse children and women even outside of marriage. So that child support would be cut in half and their power increased fivefold. Five years since they passed the dystopian Kafkaesque nightmare of mandatory joint custody, so that no mother would dare report the abuse of her child, since she now risks losing custody and going to prison. Today at 6 pm at Eteron (38-40 Leokoriou St., Psyrri), the journalistic investigative team The Manifold will talk to us about how the Greek authorities treat victims who dare to report domestic violence and/or child sexual abuse. Speaking with them: Giorgos Nikolaidis Psychiatrist, Director of Mental Health and Social Welfare at the Institute of Child Health Kiki Petroulaki Psychologist, President of the European Network Against Violence Ioanna Stentoumi Lawyer We will be there to listen to what we have been living through for five years now. Because recording and documenting is a tool of resistance. Five years was too long. Repeal the Tsiaras Law. Here is the event page: https://fb.me/e/6TjlP5wi7

"Every time we protest against the mandatory joint custody law, someone shows up to explain to us that joint custody is a good thing, that the child needs both parents, that many dads today want to have a more active role in raising their children, and above all that requiring mothers to raise their children exclusively is patriarchal. After thanking them for this explanation, both personally and on behalf of my fellow activists, many of whom undoubtedly need yet another lesson on what patriarchy means, male guidance on what to fight for and what not to, an analysis of what feminism is, and instruction on the countless mysteries that the female mind struggles to process, let me say once again the following: The child's right to be raised by both parents is recognized in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and I don't know anyone fighting against the Tsiaras Law who doesn't support it. The problem with the Tsiaras Law is that it doesn't protect this right. Nor was the intention of the lobby that pushed for the passage of this law to protect this right. The Tsiaras Law has two basic, interconnected functions: First, it constitutes yet another - the strongest so far - legal weapon in the hands of abusers, overwhelmingly men, though not exclusively, allowing them to continue abusing their wives and children even after the dissolution of the marriage. Second, it has unleashed the biases of some judicial officials who want women to be "hysterical" and "vindictive" and children to be unreliable and incapable of expressing their fear or wishes. The Tsiaras Law is not only not a child-centered law, but a law that violates another basic right of children: the right to be heard and to have their will respected by the authorities, a right also recognized by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Because, of course, children's right to be raised by both parents must be weighed against their right to life, safety, and protection from abuse. This law, in practice, nullifies this right every day in the courts, forcing children into contact, overnight stays, or even cohabitation with those they report as their abusers. And it confronts mothers with a brutal dilemma: if they protect their child, as is their duty, and refuse to hand them over to their abuser, then at some point they will be called upon to serve the prison sentences that courts hand out for violations of court decisions, and their child will end up fully in the hands of their abuser, now with sole custody. Or the child will end up in an institution - as we have heard juvenile prosecutors and judges threaten - where, of course, they have an increased risk of being abused. Moreover, the Tsiaras Law in practice allows the continuation of the abuse of women by turning children into a back door through which the abuser maintains control over his victim. This law is not, in a general and vague sense, an endorsement of the good of raising children jointly. It was born and lives within a specific ideological space: that of the "men's rights" movements, i.e., those reactionary movements that demand the restoration of the "traditional family," the restriction and reversal of feminist achievements. A conservative, tradition-obsessed, deeply misogynistic ideological space. The Tsiaras Law is not a law for the modern dad who wants to participate in raising his child. It is a law for the dad who is enraged because his status as head of the household is questioned, because they dared to raise their heads, because they don't tolerate his violence with the submission he believes they owe him. It is a law that allows him to put "the bitches and their bastards" back in their place. This is evident from the basic ideological frameworks that shaped the law and that inspire the organized groups that pushed for its passage: First, the pseudo-theory of "parental alienation," a piece of quackery that has not only been completely debunked as to its scientific validity, but has also been shown to be the most convenient tool for ensuring that reports of child abuse and domestic violence are not adequately investigated and are dismissed. "Parental alienation" is the quintessence of DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender). And don't let me hear that I supposedly don't accept the obvious, that many parents put their children in the middle during divorces, that they badmouth the other parent, and so on. We're not talking about that. "Parental alienation" is not a colloquial expression for every conflictual divorce where children suffer from their parents' excesses. This happens, and it is terrible, but "parental alienation" is a specific "theory" with a specific history, and from its invention to this day it has constituted a courtroom tool, designed to adorn the defense arsenal of men accused of abuse. Second, the myth of "false allegations" - whether of domestic violence or child sexual abuse - and indeed of their supposed "increase." A myth propagated by these groups, flooding the internet with articles referring to "studies" that supposedly prove it. Except that no such studies exist. These things are not measured in Greece; the studies literally do not exist. They are measured, however, in other countries, and there they show, on the one hand, that it is extremely difficult to define what a "false" allegation even is (One not proven in criminal court? One based on criminally proven perjury? What are we measuring? And where do we find it?), and on the other hand, to the extent that we acknowledge the limitations of the methodology, that "false" allegations are extremely rare. These things, of course, are for serious people, not for certain Greek judges who have swallowed the myth whole because it suits their preconceptions, and who have had it repeated to them by 4-5 psychiatrists paid by defendants accused of abuse. And the mere fact that, at the very moment women are being killed by their current or former partners - having already sought help from the authorities and having been left unprotected - some people talk about "false allegations" should trouble every moral person. And of course it is no coincidence that this myth of "false allegations" gains momentum in the wake of #MeToo, when for the first time the internet filled with women's stories about the violence they endure and the fear they are forced to live their lives with. And here, as with "parental alienation," the undertaking is ideological: we're not talking about balancing tests, presumptions of innocence, the bar for criminal proof, and other such substantive matters that require not only research tools but, above all, basic recognition of the proven scale of gender-based violence and child sexual abuse. We are talking about an attempt to erase a phenomenon from the public sphere, to destroy the awareness that half the population is terrorized and/or abused at some stage of their life because of their gender, that one in five children suffers some form of sexual abuse, and that the perpetrators are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, men. We are talking about the systematic nullification of everyday, widespread abuse beneath an enraged cry of "The whore is lying." Third, "contact at any cost," in other words the crude notion that "just because he beats his wife doesn't mean he's a bad father." That is, the idea that a child seeing their father (in reality: the father's right to see his child) has absolute priority, one that nullifies any act for which that father is being reported, be it the abuse of the mother and/or the child. Look, we, the fellow activists fighting against the Tsiaras Law, maintain that even parents who are bad - most often because they are poor, but also due to mental health issues, addiction, delinquency, etc. - should be supported by welfare services so that they can become better parents and their children can grow up with them - instead of, as happens now, the state summarily taking their children away and sending them to institutions, until it hands over the most "desirable" of them for foster placements that are unreservedly converted into adoptions. We are committed to recognizing and fighting for the right of children to grow up even with parents who need help in order to be parents. And we believe it is the state's obligation to provide them with this help. Abuse, however - violence - is off the table. This should be obvious. And to make this clear, so there is no misunderstanding: any physical or psychological violence is condemnable. However, there are certain forms that stem from causes like those mentioned above, from which it is possible, with the right support, for a parent to be freed, to abandon, to "find their way." Systematic domestic violence and child sexual abuse do not belong to these forms. The risk to the victims is far too great. And this should be obvious. In other countries, we have already mourned children murdered by their fathers during "contact at any cost." Must we mourn here too? So every time someone appears to explain to us what a good thing it is for both parents to raise the child, or how modern dads change diapers, tell bedtime stories, sterilize breast pumps, and sit with their kids memorizing the rivers of Fthiotida, I find myself wondering: do they truly not know what we're talking about? Don't they know that we are talking about women and children being crushed by the weapons that Greek legislation and Greek authorities hand out every day to criminals so they can continue torturing their victims? But then I remember that when the Tsiaras Law was being passed, the diversion tactic was exactly this: the warnings of those who knew what we were talking about were drowned out in a general "discussion" about the benefits of joint custody and shared parenting, about the patriarchy that forces women to raise the children, and about modern parenthood. A "discussion" fueled not only by the organized groups with their propaganda about supposed "equal rights for moms and dads," or their natural fellow travelers, nostalgics of every stripe for the glorious past of the "traditional family," but also by quite a few progressives, leftists, and anarchists who said, "well, all things considered, Tsiaras and the right-wingers are bad, but joint custody is a good thing and women must be liberated from patriarchy." And when I remember that, my question is answered." Augustinos Zenakos is a journalist, a member of the investigative journalism team The Manifold