Sunday Newscape Magazine

One day in June, 2004, at the Newark International Airport, David Goldman said goodbye to his wife, Brazilian-born  Bruna Bianchi Ribeiro, and his 4-year-old son, Sean, as they were leaving on what was supposed to be a short two-week vacation to her native Brazil.

Instead, once in Brazil, Bruna divorced David Goldman and married influential lawyer, João Paulo Lins e Silva. Sadly, Bruna died from complications while giving birth to a daughter last year.

Bruna’s family is also a very influential family in Brazil. According to the official “Bring Sean Home”  website, David has run up against two very powerful and influential families in Brazil “that have done all they can to prevent him from being reunited with Sean. He has exhausted virtually every legal option available to him in both the US and Brazil at great cost emotionally and financially.”

Today, almost five years later, David is still relentlessly fighting the Brazilian families and, it seems, the entire Brazilian judicial system to win back custody of Sean and bring him home to their house in Tinton Falls, New Jersey.

And for one moment, on Monday, it appeared as if David Goldman’s long ordeal would soon be over. Brazilian federal Judge Rafael Pereira Pinto ruled that Sean Goldman, now 9 years old, be turned over to United States Consulate officials in Rio de Janeiro by 2 p.m. Wednesday afternoon.   Upon hearing the ruling, Goldman flew immediately to Brazil expecting to regain custody of his son.

It would have been the happy and honorable ending to a nearly five year heart rending struggle by David Goldman to get his son back from those who have been keeping him against every legal, civilized, and moral rule and norm: the families of his former wife and of her second husband, along with a team of lawyers and with the help of some Brazilian judges.

But it was not to be.

According to the Wednesday New York Times: “Late Tuesday, Marco Aurelio Mello, one of 11 Supreme Court justices, suspended the sentence after receiving a request from Brazil’s Progressive Party, which argued that ordering the child to be sent to the United States was unconstitutional.”

The Progressive Party, a minor political party allied with the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, argued that the Hague Treaty - to which both the United States and Brazil are signatories and which upholds Goldman’s parental rights - is not legally enforceable under the Brazilian constitution. It is now reported that the entire Brazilian Supreme Court will take up the case sometime next week.

It was another cruel blow to Goldman, who was in Rio to be finally reunited with his son and take him home. He called the Court’s decision “heartbreaking and disgraceful,”

And heartbreaking, disgraceful and disgusting it is. The “Sean Goldman “case” is not only a human tragedy, it is a legal travesty, an embarrassment to Brazil, and one that has bec0ome a full-fledged, international diplomatic incident.

According to the Hague Abduction Convention, a treaty that provides signatories the rules and means to solve just such international abduction cases, this is a clear case of international child abduction, otherwise known as parental kidnapping.

The custody case that has reached the highest levels of the Obama administration and caused tension between Brazil and the United States. Again, the New York Times: “The State Department has cited Brazil for noncompliance with the abduction treaty, saying there are about 50 unresolved cases involving children who were taken there from the United States. ‘Brazil needs to define itself as either a nation of laws or a nation that harbors and protects child abductors,’ said Bernard Aronson, a former United States assistant secretary of state for Latin America who is assisting Mr. Goldman.”

Even Brazil’s own president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said that Brazil should respect the treaty.

Under the Obama administration, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has raised the Sean Goldman matter at the highest levels of the Brazilian government and also with several members of the U.S. Congress. As a result, the case was transferred from lower courts to Brazil’s federal court system, and Goldman was allowed to visit Sean, albeit under tight Brazilian supervision. On March 14, 2009, President Obama had a face-to-face meeting at the White House, with the Brazilian President and raised the custody case of David Goldman.

On Thursday,  New Jersey Republican Congressman Chris Smith, who has been championing the Sean Goldman case all along, backed his words up with actions and introduced a bill in Congress that would temporarily remove Brazil from a duty-free trade program. Smith says that Brazil received $2.75 billion in benefits last year.

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell has been very instrumental in keeping this tragedy in the public eye. Thank you, Andrea. Dateline NBC which traveled to Brazil with David has tentatively announced that it will be airing a complete one hour report on the Goldman case on Sunday June 7th at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, 9:00 p.m. Central.

For more details on this broadcast, and for new developments in this sad case, please go to the www.BringSeanHome.org website.