TV show on foreign kidnapping

NBC Dateline had a one-hour TV special on this story a couple of days ago:

Michael McCarty was in a custody battle with his ex-wife when she kidnapped their kindergarten-age son to Italy. And even though McCarty has full custody in the U.S. and the mother has been declared unfit, his son is still in Italy four years later — and McCarty is still enduring an agonizing wait in a seemingly eternal legal limbo.

In 2007, Liam McCarty was taken by his mother, Manuela Antonelli, to her native Italy — an unauthorized trip that flew in the face of her custody agreement with ex-husband Michael. Two years later, she was deemed an unfit parent by Italian courts and Liam was placed in an orphanage. A year after that, Antonelli kidnapped Liam again, and when Italian officials recovered the boy three months later, he was placed in foster care with his Italian uncle.

But even though McCarty has full legal custody of Liam, now 9, in the United States, Child Services in Italy will still not give him his son.

The program was vary favorable to the dad, and did not really explain what made the mom unfit. My guess is that she was completely unreasonable, and would not obey court orders. Possibly a little crazy also, because the psychologist had turned against her. I got the impression that if the court had decided on joint custody early, and stuck to that, then both parents could have lived with that.