Mother’s Day spent behind bars
The Leader, Canada
By Dan Ferguson Staff Reporter May 14 2006
A pregnant woman arrested for abducting her own children from Surrey to France will spend Mother’s Day in a B.C. jail, a Richmond Provincial Court judge ruled Thursday.
In denying Nathalie Gettliffe’s bail application, Judge Margaret Rae said Gettliffe has refused to return her son and daughter to the custody of their father, Surrey resident Scott Grant, despite repeated orders by courts in Canada and France. While Gettliffe, who is five months pregnant, offered to post bail and even wear an electronic monitor, the judge said the woman has nothing to keep her in Canada and every reason to return to France.
Ex-husband Grant was pleased. "I’m ecstatic that the court saw through all the lies," Grant said. He was talking about French news coverage of the case, some of it generated by Gettliffe’s French boyfriend, Francis Gruzelle, a journalist who has written several stories accusing Grant of belonging to a cult. Grant, a financial consultant who belongs to a fundamentalist church, has repeatedly denied the claims.
Gruzelle was the reporter who wrote the first stories about the international custody fight shortly after Gettliffe left Surrey with her son and daughter for France in 2001. During a 2004 interview with The Leader, Gettliffe denied that she was romantically involved with Gruzelle, saying he was only a friend who was sympathetic because he had lost his wife to a cult.
However, recent French news reports describe Gruzelle as Gettliffe’s companion and father to a nine-month-old son with her as well as her unborn child. Gruzelle’s ex-wife recently came forward to describe Gruzelle as an embittered former spouse who accused her unsuccessfully of cult involvement during a custody fight.
Some French news reports have also referred to complaints by Gruzelle and Gettliffe that a relative of Grant’s was handling her prosecution. Grant said his mother’s common-law husband happens to be a Crown prosecutor who is not involved with the case in any way.
A specially appointed independent prosecutor has been handling the matter. In a French-language television interview following the Richmond ruling, Gruzelle expressed outrage, saying that keeping his pregnant girlfriend in jail could lead to a miscarriage.
He also repeated claims that Getliffe had come to Canada for a mediation meeting with her husband, something Grant says isn’t true. He maintained he only learned that Gettliffe was returning to Canada when he performed a Google search and stumbled across a University of B.C. website that revealed she would be appearing before an examination panel of professors at the university to complete her Canadian Ph.D.
Grant alerted authorities, who arrested Gettliffe on arrival and charged her with abduction in contravention of a custody order. Her next court appearance is set for July.
Surrey Leader.com
