Custody battle breaks out over children who survived 40 days in the jungle as it emerges mother who died four days after plane crash was a domestic violence victim
A custody battle has broken out among relatives of four Indigenous children who miraculously survived a plane crash and 40 days alone in the Amazon rainforest of southern Colombia amid accusations their father was a domestic abuser.
The siblings, ranging in age from one to 13, remained hospitalised on Monday and were expected to stay for several more days, a period that Colombia’s child protection agency is using to interview family members to determine who should care for them.
On Sunday, grandfather Narciso Mucutuy accused his son-in-law Manuel Ranoque of beating his wife, Magdalena Mucuty.
Mr Mucutuy told reporters that his grandchildren would hide in the forest when fighting between their parents broke out.
Mr Ranoque acknowledged to reporters there had been trouble at home, but he characterised it as a private family matter and not ‘gossip for the world’.
Asked whether he had attacked his wife, Mr Ranoque said: ‘Verbally, sometimes, yes. Physically, very little. We had more verbal fights.’
Mr Ranoque said he has not been allowed to see the two eldest children at the hospital. Astrid Caceres, head of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, said in an interview with local BLU radio that a caseworker was assigned to the children at the request of their maternal grandparents, who are vying for custody with the father of the two youngest.
‘We are going to talk, investigate, learn a little about the situation,’ Ms Caceres said, adding that the agency has not ruled out that they and their mother may have experienced domestic abuse.
‘The most important thing at this moment is the children’s health, which is not only physical but also emotional, the way we accompany them emotionally,’ she said.
Ms Caceres refused to comment on why Mr Ranoque was not allowed to see his children in the hospital.
The children were travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to the town of San Jose del Guaviare in southern Colombia on May 1 when the pilot of the Cessna single-engine propeller plane declared an emergency due to engine failure.
The aircraft fell off the radar a short time later and a search began for the three adults and four children who were on board.
All adult passengers were found dead in the wreckage of the plane that was suspended almost vertically after smashing into the trees.
Yet more than a month later, the children were found dishevelled, malnourished and dehydrated – but miraculously alive.
They survived by eating cassava flour, seeds and fruits they found in the rainforest which they were familiar with as members of the Huitoto Indigenous group.