This Czech newspaper article's tone is disturbing: It sounds like the most of the sources the reporter talked to do not take the Hague Convention seriously.
Czech news article: Czech woman need not return ill son to father in USA — court.
Czech woman need not return ill son to father in USA -- court
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/
04.04.2007
The mother said she was pleased by the final verdict in the case that had been proceeded for three years. She added it gave her hope that courts in the Czech Republic take children's benefit into consideration in their decision-making.
"Common sense has won," she stressed.
Eva Macready married a U.S. citizen in Texas and gave birth to their child, but later she decided to leave her husband.
She explained that he threatened her and the boy as he suffered from a mental disease, autism. Its symptoms have also appeared with the son.
The Supreme Court decided that the boy would stay with his mother in the Czech Republic over his health condition.
The international convention on legal aspects of children's abduction says that an underage child cannot be returned if he/she is threatened with psychological or physical harm abroad.
The court experts concluded in this case that the boy had a strong bond to his mother and the return to the USA would harm his condition.
The mother's defence counsel Marie Minarova said that though the father knew that Eva Macready was planning to leave for the Czech Republic with the child, he later demanded the son's return in court.
The Municipal Court in Brno first approved his demand, ruling that the mother took the child abroad at variance with the law. The Regional Court then changed the verdict and decided that the boy should stay in the Czech Republic.
The father filed a recourse with the Supreme Court, which rejected his arguments and definitively confirmed that the boy should stay with his mother.
Czech courts were in the past criticised for too formal decision-making on children whose parents lived in different countries and for not sufficiently assessing the conditions of children's transfer abroad.
In a recent dispute for a child, a Czech court, citing The Hague convention on kidnappings, ordered six-year-old Sara Baraova to be delivered back to her father in Portugal, from where her mother kidnapped her under international law two years ago. The handing over of the girl in Prague was accompanied by tears and the parents' tussle for Sara.
Sara, who kept weeping and refusing meals in Portugal, has been eventually reunited with her mother and returned to the Czech Republic yesterday. She will live with her mother and will make several visits a year to her Portuguese father.
Czech Justice Minister Jiri Pospisil says that judges do not always keep the interests of children in mind when deciding on international disputes for them, and he is considering setting up a special court panel to exclusively deal with these cases.
The Czech Office of International Legal Protection of Children will probably also face changes in this respect.
Author: ČTK
The father in this case wrote to me to say that most of the information about him in the case is "grossly incorrect." I wouldn't be surprised if he was right. Newspaper articles generally are full of inaccuracy, and so are divorce cases, and when you put the two together, you shouldn't rely on anything they say. This article looks at all the cases only from the abducting mother's perspective, exclusively and superficially.
Posted by: John Crouch | September 26, 2008 at 05:03 PM
Dear Mr. Crouch: I am the grandmother of Aidan Macready and reside in Oregon (USA). I was in Brno with my son, Thomas, when Aidan was a little over the age of 2, not long after his mother had kidnapped him (after a direct order from the Court in Texas not to leave the State). This child is not suffering from autism and is not autistic. If anything he is overly mommified. IF she got a doctor to state he was autistic, then it was probably her boyfriend in Brno who was/is a doctor. I was there for approximately 10 days. We were never allowed to take Aidan out of her parent's house to visit, even tho the court (in Brno) said we could. Eva and Aidan (at the time) were living with her parents in a small house. At one time I was made to stand out in the cold (December) and only one of us could go in at a time to the house - I contracted pneumonia from that little excursion. IF Aidan was diagnosed as autistic I would strongly suspect it was her boyfriend in Brno who is a doctor who did so. Thomas is very correct in stating that her comments are very (grossly his words) incorrect--I would go even further. Aidan has never been threatened by his father - the love of the father for his child is evident in visits, pictures, etc. The mother is slightly deranged. I did not see this until 2011 so was unable to comment earlier.
Posted by: Pma | June 06, 2011 at 08:07 PM