Missing Brazilian Boy Snatched By Jailed Dad Refuses To Return Home To Violent Mum

A boy reportedly snatched from his Brazilian mum by his Argentine dad in 2015 has refused to be reunited with her after accusing her of violence, which he said had forced him to go on the run.

Carlos ‘Carlinhos’ Attias Boudoux, 13, hit international headlines after he handed himself into a police station in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires last month.

His mother had last seen him when he was aged nine, when Carlinhos and his sister went to Buenos Aires to spend Christmas with their father, businessman Carlos Attias, in 2015.

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However, the dad only returned his daughter to her mother in the Brazilian city of Recife the following month in January 2016 and kept Carlinhos with him in Buenos Aires.

This prompted the siblings’ mother, physiotherapist Claudia Franco Boudoux, to report her ex-husband to the police.

A court finally ordered the boy to be returned home in 2019, but he went missing just days before he was due to board the flight.

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The father was then jailed a year later in 2020 after he was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping his son and blocking his contact with his mother.

Following Carlinhos’ recent reappearance in Buenos Aires, Claudia was delighted to have had news from her son for the first time since his disappearance two years ago.

She set out to travel to the Argentine capital on 31st January to be reunited with him and bring him home.

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However, a recent report on Brazilian TV programme ‘Domingo Espetacular’ said that Carlinhos does not want to return home with his mother to Brazil.

In the report, Carlinhos said he suffered violence when he was living with his mother in Recife. He also said that when he handed himself in at the police station last month, he did not want to reveal where he had been staying out of fear of reprisal against the people who took him in following his disappearance in 2019.

He revealed he went on the run shortly before his scheduled flight to Brazil two years ago because he did not want to return to his mother.

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He also said he told the Argentine police that while living in Brazil, his mother had blocked all contact between him and his father for two and a half years.

Claudia, in turn, has claimed that she had a loving relationship with Carlinhos and that the “violence” he claimed to have suffered was merely the odd smack here and there.

Claudia believes Carlos did not return Carlinhos to her as revenge for her engagement with her subsequent partner.

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According to an expert, who appeared on the Domingo Espetacular report, Carlinhos’ new testimony may affect his repatriation decision.

He currently remains under the care of the Argentine authorities as the family dispute continues.

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