Asvesta

For four years, the minor child (“the child”) of George Petroutsas, a dual citizen of Greece and the United States, and Despina Asvesta, a Greek citizen, has been situated squarely at the center of his parents’ tumultuous separation and divorce, an event that has involved the courts of both the United States and Greece. Twice the child has been spirited from continent to continent — first by the mother, who kept the child in Greece, away from the father in the United States, after originally traveling there for a brief visit, and then by the father, who secreted the child back to the United States during a court-ordered supervised visit. Both parents have filed petitions under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, an international agreement governing the return of children removed, usually by one parent in order to gain a custody advantage over the other parent, from their “habitual residence.”

A Greek court denied the first' petition, filed by the father after the mother traveled with the child from the United States to Greece and kept the child there, determining that it was not bound to return the child to the United States. After the…