Court Wants Boy in Brazil Sent to U.S.

Court Wants Boy in Brazil Sent to U.S.
By KIRK SEMPLE
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: December 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/world/americas/23rio.html?th&emc=th


The chief judge of Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a 9-year-old boy at the center of an international abduction and custody fight must be returned to the United States with his American father, according to the court’s Web site.

David Goldman, of New Jersey, who has pursued a five-year court battle to gain custody of his son, in Rio de Janeiro on Monday.

The ruling, the latest in a five-year legal battle that has unfolded in both the American and Brazilian courts, put the father, David Goldman, one step closer to being reunited with his son, Sean. The boy was taken to Brazil in 2004 by the woman who was Mr. Goldman’s wife at the time, a native Brazilian, and has remained there ever since.

The ruling by Judge Gilmar Mendes was immediately binding, said Mr. Goldman’s American lawyer, Patricia E. Apy.

But relatives of Mr. Goldman’s ex-wife, who died last year, were exploring legal options that would enable them to keep Sean, according the family’s legal adviser, Sergio Tostes. Mr. Tostes said he would have no further comment until he had studied the judge’s decision.

Ms. Apy said, however, that it did not appear to Mr. Goldman’s legal team that the Brazilian family had any other legal remedies to block Sean’s repatriation. It remained an open question “whether they will voluntarily comply with the order,” she added. “I don’t have any evidence of that as we’re speaking.”

Mr. Goldman, a charter fishing boat captain and real estate agent from Tinton Falls, N.J., was in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, where he had traveled last week in the hope of receiving Sean. He was not available for comment, Ms. Apy said.

“We’re trying to keep him available to deal with the actual pickup details,” she explained.

The case, which has become a source of tension between the United States and Brazil and has reached the highest levels of both governments, began in June 2004 when the boy’s mother, Bruna Bianchi, flew with her son to Brazil for what was supposed to be a two-week vacation. Several days later, she called Mr. Goldman and told him she wanted a divorce and was staying in Brazil with the boy.

Mr. Goldman filed lawsuits in the United States and Brazil to get his son back.

When Ms. Bianchi died, Sean was left with her second husband, a prominent lawyer in Rio de Janeiro whose family has continued the fight to keep the boy in Brazil.

Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that Sean should be handed over to Mr. Goldman within 48 hours; Mr. Goldman promptly flew to Rio de Janeiro.

But the next day, the Supreme Court issued a stay while it considered a motion by the boy’s maternal grandmother to let the boy’s opinion about the case be heard in court. The stay effectively suspended the appellate ruling that the boy be handed over to his father.

In a letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the grandmother, Silvana Bianchi, insisted that in Brazil, the grandmother raised a child “in the absence of the mother.”

“To take a child from the family he’s living with during the last five years, exactly on the eve of Christmas, is inhuman,” she wrote.

Both Mr. Goldman and Brazil’s attorney general, Luis Inácio Lucena Adams, appealed the stay to the Supreme Court, and the matter fell to the court’s chief justice, Judge Mendes, who issued his ruling late Tuesday night in Brasília.

The United States has complained about Brazil’s handling of the case under The Hague Abduction Convention, a treaty that provides a mechanism for signatory countries to resolve international abduction cases.

Mery Galanternick contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.