Exclusive | Judge orders US dad to return infant son to Italian mom after nasty trans-Atlantic custody fight and he worries hell never see the boy again
An American father — who is wanted in Italy for allegedly abducting his infant son — has been ordered by a California judge to turn the boy over to his Italian mother following a bitter international custody battle.And now, the dad fears he’ll never see the boy again.“Everything I did was to protect [my son],” Eric Howard Nichols told The Post in an exclusive phone interview Monday.
“There was no malice in my actions.”Nichols, 50, became a notorious figure in Italy after he took his son Ethan to the US without the knowledge or permission of his ex-partner, Claudia Ciampi, 46.Ciampi did numerous interviews on Italian TV about the case and even appealed to Pope Francis for help.Nicholas admitted he refused to tell her where he was with the child, who was seven months at the time and still breastfeeding.Now, Ciampi has returned home with the boy and is seeking full custody and a restraining order from Nichols after California federal Judge David Carter last week ruled in her favor in the international custody case.The incident ended up involving Italian, American and international law enforcement to track down Nichols and the baby boy to Orange County, California in November.
The boy was taken from the father and placed with Ciampi in the US while the case played out.Nichols, “kept the breastfeeding infant from his mother for about 82 days, refusing to disclose their location in the United States,” all while Ciampi “endured” a “heart wrenching separation from Baby Ethan,” Carter wrote in his Feb.18 decision.Nichols defended his actions in a phone interview with The Post saying he is in this terrible position, in part due to bad legal advice from a former lawyer, who told him he could help Nichols if he took the boy back to the US where he was born.“It has been 3 months since I’ve seen [Ethan],” Nichols told The Post, noting Ciampi has only allegedly allowed him a few minutes with the boy on video calls once every four days.“This is ...