A man whose former Panamanian wife has contravened a court joint custody order has appealed for his son’s return.

Shawn Simons has not seen Shenito, 10, in more than a year and now seeks sole custody after the collapse of his arrangements with the boy’s mother.

“If you can get somebody from the UK or Jamaica and bring them back to the Island to stand trial, why can’t you get my son, a Bermudian boy?” said Shawn Simons, who has successfully filed to have the case declared a child abduction.

Shenito attends school in Panama but their original custody agreement stipulated that he visits his father on school breaks.

Mr Simons continues to maintain the boy’s bedroom at his Camp Hill Road, Southampton home. It contains a new bicycle that Shenito has never ridden.

“My son still has gifts from Christmas and his birthday that he hasn’t opened,” Mr Simons said. “He left on August 16 last year, the day after his birthday, and he didn’t get a chance to open his gifts, which I thought was totally unfair.

“That was the last time I saw my son. He was due back three weeks later and she didn’t send him. She didn’t send him in December or May or this September gone, and she isn’t going to send him this Christmas.”

Mr Simons’s attempt to have his son returned has been taken up by other members of the community, with “Free Chino” T-shirts.

“A lot of people know my son,” he said. “He played football and went to Heron Bay School.”

Documents show that the Attorney-General’s chambers applied to Panama in June to have the matter addressed in the Central American country’s courts, after Mr Simons filed an application for assistance under The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction.

There have been e-mails in reply from Panamanian authorities, but no formal response.

In September, Bermuda’s central authorities referred the matter to Government House.

The case was forwarded by diplomatic note to the embassy in London for transmission to Panama’s Directorate General of Legal Affairs and Treaties, requesting action.

Government House confirmed that it had been sent on September 11, but Mr Simons said he had heard nothing since.

“All I want to know is what they plan on doing,” he said. “The Chief Justice said in court that the central authorities here had to take over now. They’re the ones who have to retrieve this boy.”

Mr Simons originally met his wife, a Panamanian guest worker, at The Reefs Resort & Club, where she was employed.

Married in January 2004, the couple were divorced through Bermuda’s courts in July 2011, when the Supreme Court settled on joint custody. Mr Simons’s former wife returned to Panama in 2013.

“It went through the Supreme Court,” Mr Simons said. “The social workers between Bermuda and Panama would correspond for the wellbeing of my son. That has not happened. On a scale of 1 to 100, I’ve got zero.”

Mr Simons said he believed the situation worsened after his son refused to return to Panama after visiting him in May last year. Shenito eventually went back to his mother.

Mr Simons said: “He was here for a week — I sent him on to the plane. I got called and told that he was crying and refused to leave. He was 8 at the time. It happened three times — I had to go to the social worker’s office and get a letter from American Airlines. He had to go back; it was a court order.”

Mr Simons said he was meant to speak with his son by Skype three times a week, but contact is erratic and conversations are brief. In recorded Skype exchanges, Shenito expresses unhappiness with his life in Panama.

“He is struggling in school because of the language barrier and he’s getting picked on,” Mr Simons added.

He said his son has half-sisters in Bermuda that he is being kept from as a result of the breakdown in the custody arrangement: Azjahnae, 15, and Sayde, who is ten months old.

Mr Simons also believes his case could be complicated by the breakdown of the court order, now that Bermuda’s courts recognise it as a case of abduction.

“I haven’t paid child support since June,” he said.

“The court is calling it kidnapping because she has no intention of sending him back. So now she is using the child support as something to hold against me.”

Efforts by The Royal Gazette to contact his former wife were unsuccessful. Mr Simons said he simply wanted his son returned. “I’ve made mistakes, but a child shouldn’t have to suffer over this,” he said.