The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ordered the return to Panama of young twin boys abducted by their mother from their father's homeland, reversing a Tampa judge who ruled the children were so “settled” in the United States that they should be allowed to stay.

The panel noted the twins were twice abducted by their mother, a U.S. citizen, in violation of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

The appellate court found the general “principle of return” should have mandated the children's return a second time.

The children were 5 years old they were taken a second time and had been living in Tampa for more than two years when U.S. District Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington ruled in favor of the mother on the settlement exception.

While “sympathetic” to the father, who hired a private investigator to track down the children, Covington said their interests “outweigh the other interests of the Hague Convention because disruption of the stable and permanent connection the children have established to their new home would be harmful.”

But the Eleventh Circuit said Covington clearly abused her discretion and she must order their return to Panama.

The published opinion was issued Wednesday by Second Circuit Judge John Walker, sitting by designation, with the concurrence of Eleventh Circuit Judges Beverly Martin and Adalberto Jordan.

As detailed in the opinion and other filings, Christine Bailey and Roque Fernandez became romantically involved when Bailey was working in Panama and gave birth to twin boys. She left Panama in 2009 without telling Fernandez and moved to Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Fernandez sued under the Hague Convention for the return of the 9-month-old boys.

Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri ruled in 2010 that Bailey's removal of the children was wrongful and none of the treaty exceptions applied and ordered their return.

Bailey returned to Panama, where she and Fernandez entered into custody negotiations and where Fernandez filed criminal charges over her abduction of the children.

The twins lived with their mother, and their father visited every other weekend. The relationship was so acrimonious that a Panamanian judge ordered meetings at a police station to transfer the children.

In January 2013, Fernandez picked the boys up and didn't bring them back for two months. Bailey had the police retrieve them from school and fled to Florida, eventually settling in Tampa. Fernandez, who is barred from entering the U.S. because of a U.S. criminal conviction, has not seen them since.

Once he located them, Fernandez filed suit in the Middle District of Florida, again citing the Hague Convention and arguing he had custody rights under Panamanian law.

In denying their return, Covington said she was “troubled” and “deeply disturbed” by Bailey's actions in twice fleeing Panama with the children and noted, “The interest in discouraging wrongful removals like that perpetrated by [Bailey] is not enforced at any cost under the Hague Convention.”

The twins “are thriving in Florida,” the judge wrote. “The court believes that the children's interest in settlement in this case outweighs the other interests that would be served by returning the children to Panama.”

In reversing her, Walker wrote, “The two primary objectives of the Convention, according to Article 1, are 'to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed or retained,' and 'to ensure that rights of custody and of access under the law of one Contracting State are effectively respected in the other Contracting State.' '”

“We do not suggest that district courts should regularly return a child under the Convention despite a finding of settlement in a new environment,” he wrote. “To the contrary, a district court ordering the return of a settled child should be an infrequent occurrence, so as not to swallow the text of [the Convention's] stated exception. But this case, for several reasons, is unique.

“First, this is the second time in five years that the mother has wrongfully removed the boys from Panama and brought them to the United States. And it is the second time that the father, from abroad, has had to petition a federal district court under the Convention for the return of the boys to their habitual residence in Panama,” the ruling said.

Covington “did not properly weigh the mother's flouting of the 2010 Missouri district court's injunction which ordered the return of the boys to Panama, or the mother's disrespect for the Panamanian court's exit restriction forbidding her from taking the boys from Panama,” Walker wrote.

The panel said Bailey prevented the Panamanian courts from resolving multiple child custody issues and noted the district court order would require child custody proceedings to be held in a country the father is barred from entering.

“This means that the father will not be able to personally appear before a Florida court to argue for custody … and significantly impedes the father's ability to fight for his rights,” the panel wrote.

Fernandez is represented by Brett Barfield, Brandon Faulkner and Jennifer Lada of Holland & Knight.

“We are very pleased with the ruling from the Eleventh Circuit,” Faulkner said by email. “This has been a long and exhausting battle for Mr. Fernandez as a father.”

Holland & Knight represented Fernandez pro bono and found it “egregious that the mother had engaged in repeated kidnapping, violating the Hague Convention twice and flouting a previous U.S. federal court,” he said.

“There is no doubt that these cases — international parental abductions — raise difficult issues for the trial courts, but the Eleventh Circuit's decision establishes a necessary precedent to deter cross-border kidnapping, and repeat offenses in particular,” Faulkner said.

Bailey is represented by Jeffrey Gibson, William Taylor IV and Ashley Taylor of Tampa's MacFarlane, Ferguson & McMullen. They did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.