Picture your child; age four, young, innocent, smiling, the light of your life. Everything you ever dreamed of in life has come true. You have a loving spouse. Together, you have a pre-school age child you would give your life for. You go to sleep believing you are the happiest person on earth, then, suddenly you wake up to a nightmare. Your spouse is gone, but worse yet, your child is gone. The next five years of your life are spent trying to get your beloved child back, even after his mother is long dead. This is exactly what happened to David Goldman.

As a male model, David was on assignment in Italy where he met his beautiful wife-to-be, Bruna, from a very wealthy family in Brazil, raised with maids and servants and being educated in Europe. They marry, settle down in New Jersey and have a son, Sean. Bruna’s parents come to visit and she decides to join them back in Brazil for a two-week visit, taking their son with her. David drives them to the airport and promises to join them in a few short days.

Before David has a chance to board his plane to Brazil he receives a phone call that shocks him. His wife is staying in Brazil with her parents, never to return to the United States, and wants full custody of Sean, threatening David that if he does not comply he will never see his son again. He did not sign those papers. His wife makes good her promise, gets a quickie divorce in Brazil, without his presence or knowledge, and remarries a Brazilian man from an even wealthier and well-connected family. Then, she dies in childbirth. David, rightfully believing since he is Sean’s biological father, wants immediate custody of his son. Thanks to the inefficient Brazilian judicial system and family connections to the government, Sean’s grandparents and stepfather have succeeded in virtually kidnapping him and keeping him from his true father. They were wishing Sean’s father would disappear magically, but he did not. David Goldman has been in a five-year fight trying to gain custody of his son, his story only recently hitting the news.

I look at this story logically and legally and I believe David Goldman has every right to bring his son home. I look at this story as a grandparent, whose daughter has died and her son is all I have left, and I would want custody of Sean also. If I had the money I fear I too, would spend every penny trying to keep him, even knowing it would not be the right thing to do. I think I would use any means possible. Both sides of this story tear my heart out.

Yesterday, I heard the news that the court in Brazil ruled Sean Goldman was to be returned to his father today, allowing David Goldman to bring his son home to the United States on an air flight this afternoon. I was ecstatic for him, hopeful and yet, untrusting of the judgment. My intuition proved to be correct. This morning I heard on MSNBC that a higher court reversed the lower court’s decision. International law is clear and under the Hague Treaty, Sean is being kept in Brazil illegally. The irony is that Bruna’s widower husband practices Family Law. He did not file for custody of Sean. Instead, he filed to replace David on a birth certificate issued for Sean in Brazil.

David had not seen his son in five years before he was finally allowed visitation this past February. It is obvious that any treaty between countries regarding abduction of children is being violated. It is even more obvious that money and power influence law.

Sean has every right to be with his biological father. Hope and heartbreak are the daily ordeal of David Goldman. Morals and ethics have been tossed out the window in this case. As he puts it, “They have nothing on their side but my son.”

Sadly, he is correct, but isn’t that all they need?




Pictures: www.ethnicnewz.org

http://bringseanhome.org/