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Iruan Ergui Wu now in foster care

Chinese Nationalist Party caucus whip Lin Yi-shih (林益世), who helped the Taiwanese family of Taiwanese-Brazilian boy Iruan Ergui Wu (吳憶樺) in their unsuccessful fight to win custody four years ago, yesterday said the boy’s relatives in Taiwan were considering filing another custody lawsuit.

Lin told reporters in the legislature that he learned about a week ago that Wu had been placed with a foster family in Brazil.

He questioned why the boy would be put into foster care, adding that Wu’s Taiwanese family members told him they had not ruled out taking legal action to win back custody.

Wu arrived at his Brazilian grandmother Rosa Leocadia da Silva Ergui’s modest home in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on Feb. 12, 2004, after a bitter international custody battle with Wu’s Taiwanese uncle, Wu Huo-yen (吳火眼).

Iruan was born out of wedlock in Brazil in July 1995 to a Brazilian mother and a Taiwanese father.

His mother died in 1999, and he was brought to Taiwan in March 2001 by his father, who died a couple of weeks later.

The boy then lived with his uncle in Kaohsiung.

His Brazilian grandmother, who became the boy’s legal guardian upon his mother’s death, decided to take legal action to regain custody of Wu after his uncle refused to let her take him back to Brazil in 2001.

The custody battle made international headlines as Wu and his relatives went through a painful separation as the police tried to execute a court order and take the boy away and an angry mob of residents tried to intervene on Feb. 10, 2004.

Lin made the remarks after Taiwan Catholic Mission Foundation chief executive officer Ou Chin-jen (歐晉仁) confirmed yesterday that Wu now lives with a German foster family.

“When [I] visited him earlier this year, he was not in good shape as he had suffered a big blow after his great grandmother passed away last year,” Ou said.

“His grandmother had been in poor health over the past two years. Plus, her financial condition and her age made it difficult for her to take care of a 12-year-old child,” Ou said.

In an article written by Ou for an internal newsletter issued by the foundation in August, Ou said the boy was living a helpless life when he visited him in late February this year.

In mid-June, the official Brazilian child welfare agency decided to put the boy into foster care and transferred him to the Colegio Cristo Redentor, an elementary school under the Lutheran University of Brazil, Ou said.

Ou said the boy now lives with a new family where he could live a healthy life and go on with his studies.

Ou described Wu’s foster family — a German couple and their three children — as “loving,” adding that they had also adopted five other children, three of whom were from Africa.

He added that it might be impossible for the boy to return to Taiwan before he turns 18 unless the Brazilian court rules in favor of allowing the boy to travel freely between Taiwan and Brazil.
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