They literally “got out in the nick of time”. Anyone who has been following stories of tug-of-love nine-year-old Ellie Kelly Silva will have breathed huge sighs of relief on Monday when she finally flew from Portuguese soil to be reunited with her mother and younger sister Olivia, and meet her new twin baby brothers Charles and Henry.
But what no one could have known was that there was a “sinister plot” at work in Portugal to overturn the Faro Court decision awarding custody to Ellie’s mother after six years of legal wrangles – and a seven-month stretch of agony in which Ellie’s father kidnapped his daughter and kept her in hiding.
As far as the Resident can understand, Silva enlisted the support of TV station TVI which broadcast an extraordinarily biased and emotive report, full of poignant images of the child and her father, and ending with a psychologist affirming that “impossible as it is to believe there are still courts in Portugal that do not attend to the higher interests of the child”.
The broadcast went out almost exactly at the moment that Ellie finally rushed headlong into the arms of her delighted mother Candice in Dublin.
But if lawyers had had their way, she would never have got there.
“The plan had been to keep us in Madeira until the smear campaign had been aired,” Ellie’s step-father Philip Gannon explained from the safety of the family’s new home in Ireland.
“Our lawyers had actually advised us to arrange Ellie’s delivery to the airport on Tuesday, but I insisted on Monday as I had heard Silva was working on another biased TV report.
“I also insisted on getting an emergency travel document from the embassy.
“What a difference a day makes! Had Ellie not have flown out with me today, she would have gone back to him as he had temporary custody.
“I would not have rated my chances of getting another court order for Tuesday after his propaganda campaign was aired.”
Indeed viewers unaware of the background to the story would all have been visibly shocked by the report’s contention that this was a case where justice had “failed”.
The prime-time news feature – replete with dramatic music and apparently “spontaneous” recorded declarations by Ellie that she wanted to remain with her father – made one serious mistake. Not once in its 14-minute stretch did it mention the fact that Filipe Silva is awaiting trial for having kidnapped his daughter and held her for seven months.
The Gannons have now instigated legal proceedings over the programme, saying it was “ludicrous” in its bias.
“This really was a very close shave,” 37-year-old businessman Gannon agreed.
Meantime, he told us, “Ellie is grinning from ear-to-ear. She just came running toward me at the airport and said ‘get me out of here’. I picked her up and literally ran up the stairs to the restricted boarding area.”
As the incredible day wound to a close on a happy family finally complete with all its children in Ireland, Candice Gannon told us: “I was afraid to believe that this was actually happening until Philip finally brought Ellie through the front door! She ran up the stairs and we just hugged and cried.
“We both new that her ordeal was finally over”
By NATASHA DONN [email protected]
Photo: Ellie with mother Candice and sister Olivia in their Dublin home
