Six months after an American man torn his little son against the wishes of the mother from Italy and held back the child's whereabouts, a federal judge decided this week that the mother could return to her homeland with the child.
The mother's need, 46-year-old Claudia Ciampa, attracted a widespread sympathy and outrage towards the father in Italy. News agencies treated the case in detail. In the popular TV message program “Storie Italiane” it is known as Claudia's drama.
The origins of the couple's relationship, which were detailed in a hearing this month before the US district court, were not controversial. Ciampa lived in Sorrento near Naples, most of her life with her extended family. She met Eric Nichols, an American who lived in Italy for more than 13 years, in an Italian café in which he promoted his business as an English -language teacher. They became romantic and she became pregnant.
In a recent interview, Ciampa said, although he always complained about Italy and Italians and expressed the desire to return to America, he said to her: “Because he loved me, he would stay in Italy for me.”
In the last few weeks of her pregnancy, the couple flew to the USA so that she could give birth in a hospital in Cincinnati. She said Nichols wanted the assurance that he would be present in the room for the birth of his son, which is not a matter of course in Italian hospitals.
The lawyer David Dworakowski, who is left, listens to his client Claudia Ciampa, tells the story of her fearful efforts to regain custody for her son Ethan
(All J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
After the boy was born in early 2024, they all returned to Italy, where the couple separated within a few months. Ciampa had custody of the child Ethan and raised him in her house in her house with two of her other children and their large family, although Nichols had regular visits, according to court statements.
Ciampa said in front of the US district judge David O. Carter and on August 30, 2024 told her son for a short visit to Nichols and asked him for the child's passport. Trust him.
“He said,” I don't give it to you, “she said.” As soon as he ended this sentence, he drove away. I was in panic. I was shocked. I was very afraid that he was going away. “
When she did not reach by phone, she said that he would take Ethan to the beach and zoo and hide in front of her that she left the country, first to London and then fly to the States.
He refused to tell her where he had taken her son, even though she sent him a number of pleading texts: When do you bring it back? We have to see each other and hug and kiss, I miss him so much … Ethan needs his mother and I have the right to be with him … just tell me where you are.
In a judgment published on Tuesday, Carter wrote: “The emotional tribute of his veiling results from the desperate text messages of the mother”.
The Italian press had been drawing its satisfied efforts to find its son for months. As part of the Haager Haag Convention, she applied for help and called for measures by the district attorney of the district for children who localized the child. A judge of the superordinate court ordered the baby Ethan into protective custody, and the Italian consulate alarmed Ciampa.
In November, Ciampa flew to Orange County 82 days after taking it to meet her son. A crew of Italian journalists accompanied them and the film material of the reunification became viral all over Italy.
Since then, while she was waiting for the judge's permission to bring the child back to Sorrent, she and her son have led between nine locations, from Orange County Hotels to the houses of willing hosts, some of which were set up by the Italian consulate.
The case depended on the determination of the “habitual residence of the child”. Ciampa said her whole life was in Italy, and she never intended to move to the United States, while Nichols claimed that after the child's birth, the trip to Italy was only intended as a “temporary stay”.
Nichols claimed that Ciampa tried to kill herself and her son in May 2024 by entering the gas in her apartment, an assertion that Ciampa describes as “ridiculous”.
Because Nichols was in Italy and not in the United States when he took Ethan from his mother, he will not face any criminal charges in Orange County. But he faces a kidnapping fee of children when he returns to Italy. He claimed that his former lawyers gave him the impression that he brought his child to the United States, and that after his arrival they advise him not to reveal his whereabouts.
“Legal counseling was completely wrong, completely wrong and completely treacherous,” said the lawyer of Nichols, Brett Berman, the judge.
In his decision, the judge said that the child should return to his “lawful home” in Italy.
“This case illustrates exactly the behavior that the Haag Convention is deterring – the kidnapping of a child from his home country by a parent who is looking for a more sympathetic dish,” wrote Carter. “Father took a breastfeeding child across international borders and believed that his American citizenship would give him a cheaper forum. In the meantime, Ms. Ciampa had 82 days heartbreaking separation of Baby Ethan. This dish will not serve as a refuge for such measures. “
One of the Italian reporters who follows the case, Marika Dell'acqua of “Storie Italiane”, said that the parental kidnapping of children in Italy is not uncommon, but usually the mothers they take out of fathers.
This story was different in that “a child of only 6 months, not yet weaned, which is brutally separated from his mother”.
Dell'acqua said her program followed the story “With every demonstration and every procession of Torchlight” to keep the case in the spotlight.
Another Italian journalist Antonella Delprino, who was reunited with her child on the day she was reunited at Ciampa, said that the sympathy for Ciampa was widespread and that the father's unusual profile had contributed to the public interest.
“Eric is a cultivated, wealthy and American man, hence the maximum of a person we define as civilized,” said Delprino in an e -mail.