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Six months after an American man ousted his young son from Italy against his mother’s wishes and deliberately withholds his child’s location, a federal judge said this week that his mother would return to his hometown of Italy with his child. I ruled that it could.
Claudia Ciampa, 46, a light-former of her mother, attracted widespread sympathy in Italy and anger towards her father. News Outlets cover the incident extensively. He is known as Il Dramma di Claudia on the popular TV news program “Storie Italiane.”
The origins of the couple’s relationship detailed at this month’s hearing in US District Court were not contested. Ciampa lives in Sorrento, near Naples, and most of her life lives with her extended family. She met Eric Nichols, an American who lived in Italy for over 13 years. They became romantic and she became pregnant.
In a recent interview, Ciampa stated, “He was always complaining about Italy and the Italians,” expressing his desire to return to America, but he said, “He loved me, so he will stay in Italy for me,” he told her.
In the final weeks of her pregnancy, the couple flew to the US to give birth at a Cincinnati hospital. She said Nichols wanted assurance that he would be in the room for the birth of his son.
Attorney David Dwalkowski listens to his client Claudia Champa sharing the story of her hard work to regain custody of her son Ethan.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
After the boy was born in early 2024, they all returned to Italy, and within a few months the couple split up. Ciampa had custody of her child Ethan and raised him in a Sorrento home with her two children and a large family, but according to court testimony, Nichols had regular morning visits. Ta.
Testifying before US District Judge David O. Carter, Champa said he handed his son to Nichols on August 30, 2024 for a brief visit and asked for the child’s passport. Trust him.
“He said, ‘I’m not giving it to you,'” she testified. “As soon as he finished his sentence, he drove away. I was in panic. I was shocked. I was very afraid that he had left.”
When she arrived at Nichols by phone, she said, he hid that he would take Ethan to the beach and the zoo, and they would leave the country, first fly to London, then to America I told her I was there.
He refused to tell her where he took his son to, even if she sent a series of pleading texts: When will you bring him back? We need to see each other, hug and kiss, I miss him so much… Ethan needs his mother and I have the right to be with him too… where you can Please tell me if there is.
In a ruling issued Tuesday, Carter wrote, “The emotional sacrifice of his cover-up is evident from his mother’s desperate text message.”
For months, the Italian press documented her painful efforts to find her son. She sought help under the Hague Convention and urged action from the Orange County District Attorney’s Child Abduction Force. A superior court judge ordered Ethan to protect and custody, and the Italian consulate warned Cimpa.
In November, Ciampa flew to Orange County to see his son. A crew of Italian journalists accompanied her, and footage of the reunion went viral throughout Italy.
Since then, while awaiting the judge’s permission to take the child to Sorrento, she and her son have traveled back and forth between nine locations, from a hotel in Orange County to the home of an ambitious host.
This case was dependent on determining the child’s “habitual residence.” Cimpa said her life was in Italy and she had no intention of moving to the US, but Nichols said that after the birth of her child, a trip to Italy was intended only as a “temporary stay.” I insisted.
Nichols claims that Champa had claimed that he tried to kill herself and her son in May 2024 by leaving gas at her apartment, Champa explains as “silly.”
Nichols was in Italy, not in America, so when he took Ethan from his mother, he was not facing criminal charges in Orange County. However, if he returns to Italy, he faces accusations of accusations of acquiring children. He claims that his former lawyer gave him the impression that he was allowed to take his child to the US, and when he arrives in the US, they are in his place. He claimed he advised Champa not to reveal it.
“The legal advice was completely wrong, completely wrong, completely dangerous,” Nichols’ attorney Brett Berman told the judge.
In his ruling, the judge said the child should return to his “just house” in Italy.
“The case illustrates the very actions the Hague Convention tried to stop — acquiring children from their homeland by parents seeking a more sympathetic court,” Carter wrote. “My father took the breastfeeding infant across international borders, believing that his American citizenship would give him a more favorable forum. Meanwhile, Champa was 82 days after baby Ethan. endured a painful separation. This court would not serve as a shelter for such actions.”
Following this incident, one of the Italian journalists Marica Deltacua of Story Italian, said that although acquiring children’s parents is not uncommon in Italy, it is usually the case that they take them from their father. He said he was a mother.
The story differed in that “a child who is only six months old and has not yet been weaned is cruelly separated from his mother.”
Dell’acqua said her program kept the spotlight in the case following the story “with all demonstrations and torchlight queues.”
Another Italian journalist, Antonella Delpurino, was with Ciampa on the day she reunited with her child, but sympathy for Ciampa was widespread, saying her father’s unusual profile contributed to the public interest. .
“Eric is the biggest person we define as civilized because he is a culturally wealthy American,” Delpurino said in an email.
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