FBI says Utah couple kidnapped child to flee possible gender surgery case

A Utah custody dispute became a federal international kidnapping case after a 10-year-old vanished on a supposed camping trip to Calgary and turned up in Cuba, drawing FBI help, a federal complaint and a rapid handoff from foreign authorities.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah says Rose Inessa-Ethington, also known as Eri Ethington, 42, and Blue Inessa-Ethington, also known as Carly Ann Crosby, 32, both of Cache County, Utah, were deported from Cuba on Monday, April 20, with FBI assistance after Cuban law enforcement located them there on April 16. They were arraigned in Richmond, Virginia, and are being transported to Salt Lake City for the rest of the case at the Orrin G. Hatch United States District Courthouse.

Court documents say the child was scheduled to leave on March 28, 2026, for a camping trip to Calgary, Alberta, with Rose, Blue and Blue’s 3-year-old child, but never arrived at the hotel or campground. The child told the biological mother by phone that the group had reached Canada, then did not return on April 3 under a court-ordered custody arrangement. Prosecutors say the group crossed from the United States into Canada on March 29, then flew from Vancouver to Mexico City and from Mérida, Mexico, to Havana, Cuba, using U.S. passports.

The legal trigger for the federal response was international parental kidnapping, a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1204. The Justice Department says Congress enacted the statute in 1993, and it carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison, a fine, or both. In practice, the law is used when a parent or other relative removes a child across national borders in defiance of a custody order, turning what might otherwise be a state family case into a federal enforcement matter.

Here, the state court had already acted. On April 13, 2026, a Utah state court ordered the child returned to the mother immediately and granted the mother exclusive custody. The Justice Department says interviews with family members raised concerns that the child, who was born male but identified as female, had been manipulated by Rose, and that relatives feared the child had been taken to Cuba for gender reassignment surgery before puberty.

The case sits within a long line of cross-border custody battles tied to Cuba, including the Elián González dispute in 1999 and the 2013 return of Joshua and Sharyn Hakken after they kidnapped their two young sons. It also shows how quickly family-law conflict can escalate once a child is moved abroad and a court order is ignored.