Mother, grandfather and partner arrested after two sisters found hidden in Formia flat for two weeks

The disappearance

Alisya and Sarah Di Giacinto left the family home in Civitella Alfedena, in the province of L'Aquila, during the night of 6–7 June. According to investigators, the two sisters climbed out of a window and were picked up by their maternal grandfather, Marco D'Acunto, and their mother's partner, Vincenzo Esposito. They were driven to Formia, in the province of Latina, and hidden in the apartment of an 80-year-old distant relative, Maria Sofia Di Russo. The girls had been living in the care facility for about two years, having been removed from their parents seven years earlier amid a bitter separation.

The plan

Prosecutors say the abduction was orchestrated by the mother, Valentina D'Acunto, after a court in Cassino revoked her parental responsibility in May 2026 for obstructing the father's relationship with the daughters. On 5 June, the day before the escape, she received calls from two numbers registered to fictitious Pakistani nationals. Ten SIM cards had been bought illegally in Naples; seven were still unused at the time of the arrests. After the girls vanished, the mother's phone went silent. Intercepted calls on relatives' lines later helped reconstruct the scheme.

When we found them, the two sisters did not jump for joy; they shut themselves in the room where they had been living until then.

The discovery

The breakthrough came through a video call between the mother and the daughters, made on a mobile phone hidden inside a panettone box and powered by a SIM registered to a false name. That call led carabinieri to the Formia flat on Sunday 21 June. Around thirty officers took part in the operation. The girls, who had spent the entire fortnight in a single room with the shutters down and only a television for company, initially resisted leaving and said they wanted to stay with their mother. A social worker eventually persuaded them to come out.

The arrests

Valentina D'Acunto, Vincenzo Esposito and Marco D'Acunto were detained on charges of aggravated kidnapping. The prosecutor ordered their arrest citing a risk of flight and pointing to "numerous acts of misdirection" by the suspects. The two men were sent to Sulmona prison, while the mother was taken to Teramo. The elderly relative who hosted the girls is under investigation but remains free. The father, Stefano Di Giacinto, who had always suspected his ex-wife, suffered a health episode when he tried to see his daughters at the police station. He later said: "It is the end of a nightmare, but we are not at the end yet. My only thought is for them, that they are well."

A complex protection case

The case has reignited debate about Italy's child-protection system. The girls had been in care since the ages of five and nine, and the national guarantor for childhood, Marina Terragni, stressed that any decision must be taken solely in their best interest. The mayor of Minturno, Gerardo Stefanelli, who is the sisters' legal guardian, described the situation as "very difficult to manage" and said the girls are under severe emotional stress. The prosecutor, Luciano D'Angelo, called the parental love behind the abduction "sick" and noted that neither parent had put the children's welfare first.