O.C. judge sides with Italian mom in custody dispute that has transfixed a nation

Six months after an American man whisked his infant son out of Italy against the mother’s wishes and deliberately withheld the child’s whereabouts, a federal judge ruled this week that the mother can return with the child to her native Italy.

The plight of the mother, 46-year-old Claudia Ciampa, has attracted widespread sympathy in Italy, as well as outrage toward the father. News outlets have covered the case extensively. On the popular TV news program “Storie Italiane,” it is known as Il Dramma di Claudia.

The origins of the couple’s relationship, detailed in a hearing this month in U.S. District Court, were not in dispute. Ciampa has 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 cafe where he was promoting his business as an English language teacher. They became romantic, and she became pregnant.

In a recent interview, Ciampa said that although “he always complained about Italy and Italians” and expressed a desire to return to America, he told her that “because he loved me, he would stay in Italy for me.”

In the final weeks of her pregnancy, the couple flew to the United States so she could give birth at a hospital in Cincinnati. She said Nichols wanted the assurance that he would be present in the room for his son’s birth, which is not a given in Italian hospitals.

Lawyer David Dworakowski listens as his client, Claudia Ciampa, shares the story of her anguished efforts to regain custody of her son, Ethan.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

After the boy was born in early 2024, they all returned to Italy, where within a few months the couple split up. Ciampa had custody of the child, Ethan, and was raising him in her Sorrento home with two of her other children and her extended family, though Nichols had regular morning visits, according to court testimony.

Testifying before U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, Ciampa said that on Aug. 30 she handed her son over to Nichols for a brief visit and asked him for the child’s passport, a request she said she made routinely because she did not trust him.

“He said, ‘I’m not giving it to you,’” she testified. “As soon as he finished that sentence, he drove away. I was in a panic. I was shocked. I was very afraid that he was going away.”

When she reached Nichols by phone, she said, he told her he was taking Ethan to the beach and the zoo, concealing from her that they were leaving the country, first flying to London, and then to the States.

He refused to tell her where he had taken their son, even as she sent him a series of pleading texts: When are you bringing him back? We need 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 too... Just tell me where you are.

In a ruling issued Tuesday, Carter wrote that “the emotional toll of his concealment is evident from Mother’s desperate text messages.”

For months, the Italian press chronicled her anguished efforts to find her son. She petitioned for help under the Hague Convention, prompting action from the Orange County district attorney’s Child Abduction Unit, which located the child. A Superior Court judge ordered Ethan into protective custody, and the Italian Consulate alerted Ciampa.

In November, Ciampa flew to Orange County to meet her son, 82 days after he was taken. A crew of Italian journalists accompanied her, and video of the reunion went viral across Italy.

Since then, while awaiting the judge’s permission to take the child back to Sorrento, she and her son have shuttled among nine locations, from Orange County hotels to the homes of willing hosts, some of them lined up by the Italian Consulate.

The case hinged on determining the child’s “habitual residence.” Ciampa said her whole life is in Italy, and she never intended to move to the U.S., while Nichols contended that the trip back to Italy after the child’s birth was intended only as a “temporary sojourn.”

Nichols alleged that Ciampa attempted to kill herself and their son in May 2024 by leaving the gas on in her apartment, a claim Ciampa describes as “ridiculous.”

California

He was both fire captain and prolific arsonist. His novel put him in prison

The FBI would eventually call John Orr the most prolific serial arsonist of the 20th century, and when he went on trial in 1998, prosecutors presented his manuscript as a thinly veiled memoir of his crimes.

Jan. 29, 2025

Because Nichols was in Italy, and not the U.S., when he took Ethan from his mom, he does not face criminal charges in Orange County. But he does face a child abduction charge if he returns to Italy. He claimed that his prior attorneys gave him the impression it was permissible for him to take his child to the U.S., and that once he arrived in the States, they advised him not to reveal his whereabouts to Ciampa.

“The legal advice was totally mistaken, totally wrong and totally treacherous,” Nichols’ attorney, Brett Berman, told the judge.

In his ruling, the judge said the child should return to his “rightful home” in Italy.

“This case exemplifies the very conduct the Hague Convention sought to deter — the abduction of a child from their home country by a parent seeking a more sympathetic court,” Carter wrote. “Father took a breastfeeding infant across international borders, believing that his American citizenship would grant him a more favorable forum. Meanwhile, Ms. Ciampa endured 82 days of heart-wrenching separation from Baby Ethan. This Court will not serve as a refuge for such actions.”

One of the Italian reporters following the case, Marika Dell’Acqua of “Storie Italiane,” said that while the parental abduction of children is not rare in Italy, it is usually the mothers who take them from the fathers.

This story was different in that it involved “a child of only 6 months, not yet weaned, who is brutally separated from his mother.”

Dell’Acqua said her program has followed the story “at every demonstration and torchlight procession,” to keep a spotlight on the case.

Another Italian journalist, Antonella Delprino, who was with Ciampa on the day she reunited with her child, said that sympathy for Ciampa was widespread, and that the father’s unusual profile contributed to the public interest.

“Eric is a cultured, wealthy and American man, therefore the maximum of a person that we define as civilized,” Delprino said in an email.