Custody fight tinges U.S.-Brazil relations

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva meets with President Obama today in Washington for the first time, the most closely watched issue between their two countries might not be energy, the environment or hemispheric security but the custody of an 8-year-old boy.

The case of Sean Goldman, whose Brazilian mother moved him from New Jersey to Rio de Janeiro four years ago without his U.S. father's consent, has grown from an international custody dispute into a delicate political problem. Although it has not reached the fever pitch surrounding Elián González, the Cuban youngster at the heart of a custody and immigration controversy in 2000, the story has gained prominence since Sean's mother died in August, leaving him in the care of her second husband.

The battle has become a preoccupation at the highest levels of the U.S. government and is an irritant in relations with Latin America's most powerful country. The topic was the first that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton raised during a meeting with Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim in Washington last week, according to State Department officials.

The U.S. House overwhelmingly adopted a resolution Wednesday calling for Sean's return to his father, and a similar resolution is pending in the Senate.

When not canvassing government offices, Sean's father, David Goldman, has told his story to the likes of Larry King and Dr. Phil. Goldman said he has spent about $360,000 on the case.

The Brazilian media recently abandoned a near silence on the story, which partly stemmed from a judge's orders limiting coverage, and it has become regular fodder in the news since the meeting between Clinton and Amorim.

Governments in accord

There appears to be little conflict between the two governments over how the case should be resolved.

Both governments have indicated they consider the decision by Goldman's wife, Bruna Bianchi, to move Sean to Brazil in 2004 a violation of The Hague Abduction Convention, an international treaty that seeks to determine whether children have been wrongfully removed from their country of habitual residence.

The State Department and the Brazilian government authority that deals with the treaty have called for Sean's return to the United States. But the case remains in federal court in Brazil awaiting a ruling on whether the treaty has been violated.

"There is nothing which would in any way approximate to a diplomatic incident" in the case, Amorim said in Brazil.

The State Department at any time is working on up to 2,000 Hague cases, and there are 50 such cases involving U.S. parents seeking to have children returned from Brazil, the fifth-most of any country, after Mexico, India, Japan and Canada, said Assistant Secretary Janice Jacobs in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. The State Department has characterized Brazil as having a "pattern" of "noncompliance" on the treaty, she said.

"It is time to reunite Sean Goldman with his father, David," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who sponsored one of the resolutions calling for Sean's return. "The Brazilian government is not complying with international law and risks undermining relations between our two countries."

But the treaty is meant to settle which country should have jurisdiction in the custody dispute, not who should have custody, and officials of both countries said Brazil's judicial system, which has dealt Goldman several defeats, must ultimately decide the case.

"It's not for me, or anyone in the executive branch, to take the decision; it's the justice (system) that will have to interpret the convention in the light of the concrete events," Amorim said. He added, "The Hague convention has to be looked at and taken into account in the final decision."

Surprise divorce

Goldman met Bianchi in 1997 in Milan, Italy, he said. He was a model, and she was studying fashion design. They married in New Jersey in 1999 and moved to Tinton Falls.

In June 2004, Bianchi boarded a plane in Newark with Sean, then 4, and her parents for what Goldman thought would be a two-week vacation in Brazil. But she soon called Goldman to say their nearly five-year marriage was over. She wanted a divorce and custody of Sean.

Goldman, 42, a charter fishing-boat captain who still models, pursued legal avenues in both countries to get his son back. A New Jersey Superior Court judge ruled in August 2004 that Bianchi was wrongfully keeping Sean in Brazil and ordered her to return him. But she refused and eventually married lawyer João Paulo Lins e Silva, a member of a prominent Brazilian family of lawyers and judges.

Goldman filed a petition in 2004 under The Hague convention to have his son returned. Hague cases are supposed to be a "very expeditious process" and not last longer than six weeks, said James Garbolino, an assigned Superior Court judge in California who has written a book on such cases.

Emotional harm?

Among the common defenses for not returning a child, Garbolino said, are that a child would suffer grave psychological harm by going back to his or her home country, or if the parent waits more than a year after the child's departure to file a petition. Goldman filed within 50 business days of his son's departure, his attorneys say, but Bianchi's side has argued that Sean would be emotionally damaged if he returned to the U.S.

A federal judge in Rio in 2005 agreed that Sean had been moved to Brazil wrongfully but ruled that he should stay in Brazil because he had become "settled" in his new home, which is an exception described in the treaty.

Goldman and his supporters said the legal prominence of the wife's new husband influenced the judge's decision, a charge that Lins e Silva denied through his attorney.

The Lins e Silva family has a team of 70 lawyers working on the case, the newspaper Jornal do Brasil reported.

Seven months ago, Bianchi died during the birth of a daughter with her new husband, and a state court judge in Rio granted Lins e Silva temporary custody of the boy.

"Adapted to Brazil"

Sean attends an elite private school in Rio, plays basketball, practices jujitsu and "is completely adapted to Brazil, his neighborhood, his school, his friends," said Lins e Silva's attorney, Carlos Eduardo Martins, who is also a family spokesman.

Lins e Silva's father, Paulo, described Goldman in an e-mail as an absent father who has not attempted to support or visit his son in Brazil.

"Sean is a naturalized Brazilian citizen. He has lived here for almost five years and has been raised with much love, affection and care by a serious family, receiving the best education possible," he wrote, adding, "It's not fair, nor humane, this slaughter that we are suffering involving the calculated capriciousness of an absent father."

Goldman said he has traveled to Brazil nine times over the years to try to get his son back. He was in Rio on Wednesday waiting to undergo a court-ordered psychological evaluation and hoping to visit Sean, he said. His first court-ordered visit occurred last month.

"He asked me where have I been, how come I never came to see him, and that was very difficult," Goldman said.

"They didn't break our bond. We played basketball, we played in the pool. We spoke English with each other," he said. "He's a good boy. And I love him dearly."

Goldman said he was sued in Brazil and found guilty of talking publicly about the case. He said he has been accused of hiring a helicopter to fly over the boy's residence in Rio and of slandering the Brazilian family's name, charges he denied.

"I'm just a guy trying to bring my son home," he said.

Special correspondent Fred Alves contributed to this report.