Foreign Wife Fights Custody of Children from Abusive Husband
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Once a famous foreign wife blogger who was one of the testaments to successful stories of foreign women married to Chinese men, Ruili (pseudonym) is now embroiled in a bitter dispute with her husband about custody of their two children after the couple agreed that raising children in her country would be the best option.
Ruili's husband obliged to the thought of raising their children in Austria at first but backed down later. He then blocked all contact with her in 2020, taking sole custody of their children.
Background
For many years, Ruili documented her love affair on her blog "China Elevator Stories", which is now no longer accessible and she thinks her husband is behind the shutdown.
Her followers were constantly engaged in posts of her seemingly fairy-tale-brought-to-life publications on her blog. However, she proved once again that not all that glitter is gold.
Ruili says her husband took down her blog in 2017, but she managed to put it back online in 2022 after her sister sent her archived articles. The website was no sooner taken down, and she suspects that her now ex-husband is the one who did it considering that he took it down before.
A Happy Marriage
"I did not write about the negative side of my marriage," Ruili said during an interview.
She says that her marriage was abusive and it got even worse when she was pregnant with their first child in 2013. Her husband threatened her multiple times during their marriage, and went as far as to tell her that he would get her killed if she left him or saw her with another man.
After she gave birth to their second child, she insisted that they raise their children in Austria, her country of origin, considering that children in China are subjected to too much pressure in school and that health care in Austria would be better than in China.
Playtime for children was also another factor she considered when she made that decision.
In 2018, the couple agreed to move to Austria and Ruili traveled solo in the summer of 2019 to her hometown to prepare for the big family reunion, little did she know that her husband was plotting against her.
Separation
Ruth learned that her husband had enrolled the children to attend local public schools while she was in Austria and that left her dumbfounded. As she was busy preparing a home for the family in Austria, she couldn't find enough time to return to China and there came Covid-19.
She quickly realized that she could not return to China due to the lockdown, and her husband refused to relocate, or take their children, to Austria.
The husband severed all contact with her on July 2, 2020. She has never heard from him or her children ever since.
▲Image Credit: SpeakingofChina.com
For more than three years since then, Ruili has been fighting to re-establish contact with her children to no avail. She could not find help from authorities in her country, and says she always ends up being victim-shamed by authorities.
"I didn’t write about the downsides of my marriage on my blog – which were plenty. My marriage was filled with horrific abuse. By the time I had become pregnant with my first son in Shenzhen in 2013, I had heard, not only once, from my Chinese husband, that he’d have me killed if I ever left him, or if he ever found me with another man." Wrote Ruili in a blog.
Reference: Kunache, WWAM, SpeakingOfChina
*The opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author.*
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