A TUG-OF-LOVE that threatened to sour US-Brazilian relations ended on Christmas Eve when a nine-year-old boy was handed over by his Brazilian family to his American father after a bitter custody battle.
The decision followed a ruling last Wednesday by Brazil’s supreme court and ended a five-year legal tussle between the boy’s family in Rio de Janeiro and his father, David Goldman, from New Jersey.
The dispute started in 2004 when Mr Goldman’s Brazilian wife, Bruna Bianchi, took her son to Brazil to visit her family. She never returned and later filed for a Brazilian divorce before remarrying in Brazil.
Mr Goldman had already started legal proceedings for the return of his son under an international treaty against child abduction when Ms Bianchi died giving birth to a daughter last year.
Following her death, Ms Bianchi’s family in Rio de Janeiro fought her ex-husband for the right to keep the boy in Brazil, claiming he would be better off being raised with his young sister in a country he considered his home, rather than returning to a father he barely knew.
Following the ruling, Sean was given up by his Brazilian family to his father at the US consulate in Rio in the middle of a media scrum that left the boy looking stunned and near tears. His father’s lawyers and consulate staff said they tried to arrange a private handover, but this was seemingly scuppered when Mr Goldman refused a request for the boy’s Brazilian grandmother to accompany them back to the US.
The reunited Goldmans flew out of Rio on an aircraft chartered by US television network NBC. From prominent Rio legal families, the boy’s Brazilian grandmother and his stepfather, a leading divorce lawyer, used their knowledge of Brazil’s legal system to drag the case out, despite Brazilian law recognising the rights of surviving biological parents.
They fought a high-profile and emotional campaign in the local media, and at a final hearing the family’s lawyers showed the judges posters declaring: “I want to stay in Brazil forever”, which they said Sean had drawn.
Many Brazilians have backed the Rio family’s cause, pointing out that Mr Goldman did not travel to Brazil to visit his son once he was taken there by his mother. Others believe the dispute shows how rich and well-connected Brazilians can manipulate the legal system to their advantage.
After the court ruled the boy be returned to his father, Silvana Bianchi, his maternal grandmother, wrote to Brazil’s president pleading for him to intervene, saying “in the absence of the mother, child-rearing falls to the grandmother . . . It is natural foreigners with a different background do not understand these sentiments, so authentically Brazilian.”
But President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had previously said the boy should be reunited with his father, as the government sought to distance itself from a private legal case that threatened relations with Washington.
Mr Goldman had mobilised support in the US. President Barack Obama, secretary of state Hillary Clinton and members of the US Congress all pressed Brazil to respect its obligations as a signatory to the international treaties against child abduction.
Last Wednesday’s ruling by Brazil’s supreme court and the Brazilian family’s decision not to contest it follow threats in the US Senate to suspend Brazilian trade privileges worth $2.75 billion (€1.91 billion) if the boy was not reunited with his father.
Brazil’s attorney general had filed an appeal against an earlier ruling that suspended an order for Sean to be returned to his father.
In a note to the court, he warned that the country’s failure to comply with the Hague convention on child kidnapping “will lead to the imposition of sanctions, and damage the reputation of Brazil before the international community”. The Hague Convention says children kidnapped by their parents should be returned within six weeks.
The boy’s Brazilian family said they will seek the aid of Brazil’s government to gain visiting rights to see Sean in the US – a move Mr Goldman says he does not oppose.