This March 2013 family photo provided by Lindsey DeFilipi shows Shauna Hadden, left, and her daughter Ava Machado, both of Agawam, Mass. Hadden, a Massachusetts mom says she and her 6-year-old daughter are stranded in Brazil after police seized their passports because of a custody battle with the child’s father.BOSTON – Police in Brazil have seized passports belonging to a woman and her 6-year-old daughter, stranding them in South America for more than a month in an international custody dispute with the child’s father.
Thirty-three-year-old Shauna Hadden and her daughter, Ava Machado, have been in Brazil since late May, when they began a trip Hadden said was intended to connect the girl with the father she hadn’t seen in more than three years.
Hadden’s mother, Linda, said Friday the pair had already arrived in Rio de Janiero on her way to visit Ava’s father, 32-year-old Donizete Machado, when her daughter received a phone call from a mutual friend warning her that Machado planned to keep the girl.
Instead of taking a flight to southern Brazil to meet Machado, Shauna Hadden and her daughter flew north to stay with friends in the northeastern city of Fortaleza.
Then in early June federal police came to them with a court order and took both passports. Ava’s maternal grandmother said her daughter gave up the travel documents because she was scared Brazilian authorities were going to take the girl.