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Piauí Magazine
March 2009

The custody dispute for young Sean has changed realms, now in the major Brazilian media after being printed in the New York Times and knocking on the doors of the White House and the Presidential Palace in Brazil

hris Smith is an affable, chubby, middle-aged American whose cheeks turn rosy when he comes in contact with a ray of sunlight, and is always traveling. His itineraries aren’t always on the tourist circuit. Amongst other countries, he has been to Russia, Georgia, Romania, Vietnam, China, Sudan, Cuba and Northern Ireland. For twenty-eight years he’s been snooping around “in loco”, examining the state of human rights of some of the most vulnerable groups. A Republican Congressman from New Jersey since 1981, he is a senior member of the powerful International Affairs Committee in the United States Congress. He’s also known as one of the most tenacious congressmen on Capitol Hill. Child labor, sex slavery, genocide and social ills of all kinds take him to many places abroad.

At the end of January, Mr. Smith was preparing to spend the weekend with his family at their home in Hamilton, in the state that four months ago, reelected him for the fifteenth consecutive time. It was ten o’clock in the evening and he was watching TV with his wife, Marie. They were tuned into Dateline, on NBC, one of the most renowned news programs on American television, with an hour devoted to long features. One of the themes that Friday was the case of David Goldman, an American whose Brazilian wife, Rio-born Bruna Bianchi, fled to Brazil in 2004 with the couple’s son, Sean, then age 4. The documentary Fighting for Sean told the story of this father’s struggle to see his only son again since then (see “A Father in a Foreign Land,” in Piauí November 2008).

The NBC show recapitulated the events through Goldman’s eyes, and the ball of yarn that unraveled into a disaster caught Congressman Smith’s attention: married for the second time to Brazilian lawyer João Paulo Lins e Silva, Sean’s young mother died due to complications giving birth last August. The boy, separated from his biological father by force from his removal and retention in Brazil, thus became also orphaned by his mother. Even so, all of the father’s legal attempts to bring his son home to the United States, as determined by the International Hague Treaty, signed by Brazil, were bogged down in the Rio state courts. The head judge at the Second Family Court, Geraldo Carnevale Ney da Silva , granted the boy’s stepfather provisional custody of the child, as his “socio-affective father”. The stepfather also filed a request to have his Sean’s last name be changed from Goldman to Lins e Silva.

With Dateline’s credits still rolling on the screen, Congressman Chris Smith, a father of four, decided he should get involved with the case. After all, Sean was an American citizen, born in the state of New Jersey. Furthermore, Smith had been successful in the complex repatriation operation of two girls last year. On that occasion, sisters Ashley, age 7, and Sophia, age 3, were retained in Georgia during the Russian invasion, separated from their father.

It was a little after 11pm when Mark DeAngelis, creator of the site bringseanhome.org, an electronic tool in the campaign for Sean’s return to his father, received a message from Mary Noone, Congressman Smith’s Chief of Staff. The congressman wanted to meet David Goldman and asked that he come to his office within two days, on Monday afternoon. Goldman, who didn’t know what to expect, went to the meeting with his American lawyer, Patricia Apy and his friend Mark. When he was informed that Sean’s father was summoned to a hearing in the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) in Brasilia, scheduled that week, Chris Smith offered to accompany him. “I was amazed,” Goldman said later, “since he made that decision in less than ten minutes into the conversation.”

Goldman had already been to Brazil seven times, each time to attend the judicial procedures that have so far prevented Sean’s return—once with his mother, twice with his cousin, and the other four times, alone. On every trip, he went home empty-handed. And each time, he left with the impression that it was getting more difficult for the courts to comply with the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction – known as the Hague Convention – which supports his plea.

Actually the Portuguese translation is inadequate, since “kidnapping” in Brazil is normally understood as a violent act committed along with extortion as a means to make money. The “kidnapping” the Convention deals with is basically an act committed by a parent, who takes away the child from the other parent. When a child is brought to another country without the consent of the other parent, this constitutes, under the Hague Convention, international child abduction, found in the treaty’s title. The Hague Convention also stipulates that before the child’s custody is debated, the first act (the “kidnapping”) must be undone, and the status quo must be reestablished. The litigating parties can then resolve the dispute in the courts where the child resided before the illicit act.

The official presence of a member of the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee at David Goldman’s side propelled the case to another realm. But Chris Smith was not the only American congressman to show support. Last October 29th, six days before being elected as the 44th president of the United States, the former Senator Barack Obama sent the following email to a friend of Goldman:

Dear Christopher [Rennau],…as the father of two children, my heart goes out to the Goldman family…According to the information from the Office of Children’s Issues, as well as the American embassy in Brazil, the United States is working along with the Brazilian Central Authority to return Sean under the Hague Convention…you can be sure that I will remember your concern regarding the progress of this case…I ask that you stay in touch from now on.

For some time, the diplomatic channels between the two countries have been working in silence about the matter. On a frigid afternoon in Washington, with the American capital electrified by the inauguration ceremony of the White House’s new occupant, which took place the night before, the head of the abductions unit at the Office of Children’s Issues received this reporter from piauí magazine. “Cases of child kidnapping by the parents have increased worldwide, annually,” explained Martha A. Pacheco, who has worked for the State Department for twenty years and has been located in the unit responsible for compliance with the Hague Convention for eighteen months. There are multiple causes: an increase in the number of marriages and divorces, a greater ability to travel, and above all, a strong rise in immigration.

The Office, which has a team consisting of forty employees, is a division of the State Department, now run by Hillary Clinton. By regulation number 105-277, section 2803, the department is obligated to produce an annual report for Congress, listing the countries that impede the compliance of the Hague Convention. Of the 68 signatories of the treaty, which went into effect in 1980 and was ratified by President Lula in 2000, ten countries are considered non-compliant, according to the most recent edition, dated April 2008. Among them is Brazil.

Three areas are analyzed to determine if a signatory country does or does not comply with the treaty: the Federal Central Authority’s performance, which in Brazil is a branch of the Special Secretary of Human Rights and therefore subordinate to the Executive Branch; the behavior of the Judiciary in how it treats the cases; and the law enforcement performance in the execution of legal decisions.

Brazil was approved in the first and third compliance areas. But, along with Bulgaria, Chile and Germany, Brazil failed miserably in the second requirement, Judicial performance. “Even in the United States there are judges who have never heard of the Hague Convention,” clarified Michele Bond, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Overseas Citizen Services from the Department of State, interviewed by phone.

At the time of my interview with Martha Pacheco, which occurred before Dateline aired to an audience of more than six million viewers, the diplomatic dimension of the Goldman case was still limited. Even so, stressing the point that she was generalizing, the head of the Kidnapping Unit reiterated the American position: “We never abandon a case, we never give up.” When asked if she expected a change in the course of the Goldman case as Hillary Clinton was taken over as Secretary of State, her answer came out spontaneously: “This is a case we really will try everything.”

The phone conversation with Deputy Assistant Bond, however, took place nearly two weeks after the documentary was shown and had generated such a wide response that NBC decided to continue covering the case. In the meantime, two Democratic senators from New Jersey, Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, sent a joint letter to “Dear President” Lula asking “respectfully, that you examine and take the appropriate measures necessary to return Sean to his father:” all this in the name of the strong and friendly bond between Brazil and the United States. Congressman Chris Smith, on the other hand, had also gone on the promised trip to accompany David Goldman to official meetings in Brasilia and the first reunion between father and son in Rio.

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