One day after a federal judge here ordered that a 9-year-old boy who was abducted by his Brazilian mother be returned to his American father, a Supreme Court justice stayed the order, extending a custody case that has reached the highest levels of the Obama administration and caused tension between Brazil and the United States. (Maybe the US should try some sanctions against Brazil. Many foreign countries basically condone parental kidnapping. A hard line stance would show foreign born parents that removing children from the US is not the answer to a child custody dispute.)
Judge Rafael Pereira Pinto had ruled Monday that the child, Sean Goldman, be turned over to United States Consulate officials here by Wednesday afternoon. The consulate was to turn the child over to his father, David Goldman, who lives in New Jersey.
The decisions come amid a struggle of more than four years by Mr. Goldman to get his son back from the family of his former wife, Bruna Bianchi Ribeiro, and her second husband, João Paulo Lins e Silva, a lawyer from a prominent family in Rio. (That is the reason the decision was stayed. Mr. Lins e Silva is from a prominent family. If he were from some average family he would have been Sean, an American citizen, would have been promptly returned. This is no different than the Elian Gonzalez case, and the United States made sure he was returned to Cuba. We followed the rules, and international justice demands that Sean be returned to his father.)
The United States has complained about Brazil’s handling of the case under the Hague Abduction Convention, a treaty that provides a mechanism for participating countries to solve international abduction cases. Judge Pinto ruled that the treaty needed to be respected and ordered the boy delivered to the consulate by 2 p.m. Wednesday.
But 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. (How is it unconstitutional to return a US citizen back to a birth father who hasn't had his parental rights terminated. The boy is with his stepfather after all, not even a biological relative.) The Supreme Court must now take up the case, but it was unclear when that would happen.
Reached at a Rio hotel late Tuesday, Mr. Goldman called the Supreme Court stay “heartbreaking and disgraceful.”
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.
Ms. Ribeiro took the boy back to her native Brazil five years ago. She divorced Mr. Goldman and married Mr. Lins e Silva, who helped represent her in the custody case that followed. She died last year from complications while giving birth to a daughter.
Mr. Goldman had not seen his son for nearly five years before he was allowed brief visits in Brazil in February. He has been trying to gain custody since 2004. In August of that year, a New Jersey Superior Court judge ruled that Ms. Ribeiro’s efforts to keep Sean in Brazil were “wrongful.” Mr. Goldman sought help under the Hague Abduction Convention.
A judge in Rio wrote in 2005 that moving Sean and keeping him in Brazil were illegal under New Jersey law. But the judge also cited a clause in the treaty that says a judicial authority can allow a child to remain in the second country if “it is demonstrated that the child is now settled in its new environment.” Mr. Goldman’s lawyers appealed. This year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said Brazil should respect the treaty.
Here is the link to David Goldman's website , which includes his blog.
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