A Father's Love (19 page)

We were barely five or ten minutes into our meeting when Congressman Smith looked me straight in the eye and said, “When do we go? The next time you go to Brazil, I will go with you. We will drive in the same car, go to the same places. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever I go, you go with me. We'll be like brothers.”

I could not believe my ears. I literally became so emotionally overwhelmed that I stood up, reached over, and shook his hand, saying, “Thank you! You have no idea what that means to me, to hear this from someone like you. You cannot imagine what this means to me.”

The congressman's expression grew solemn and he said, “I'm sorry I wasn't here sooner.”

I looked right back in his eyes and said, “I'm glad you're here now.”

For the next two hours we discussed the various aspects of my case, and at the end of the meeting, Congressman Smith and I made plans to meet in Brazil on Thursday of that very week. The congressman would fly from Washington, D.C., to São Paulo, while I took the all-too-familiar late-night flight out of Newark. From there, we'd travel together to Brasília to attend the visitation hearing.

Before we left his office, Congressman Smith reiterated his astounding commitment to me. “I'll do anything you want me to do,” he said. “I'll carry your bags, but bottom line, you are the quarterback. I don't want to do anything without your permission, because this is your son. This is all about you. This is all about bringing Sean home.”

I left the congressman's office just blown away. “Hopeful” had been my answer to every interviewer's question about how I sized up my situation, but for the first time since Bruna's initial devastating phone call, we had attracted an ally and a champion for the cause who could and would make a difference.

I was still filled with anxiety, though, the same way I had been during every other trip I'd made to Brazil since the abduction, but I felt grateful that Congressman Smith had offered to support me. I had been so desperate for someone to champion my cause for so long; his presence could only help. I had no idea what it all might mean, or to what extent he was willing to put his name on the line for an eight-year-old boy and his dad, but as I packed the usual assortment of toys and pictures that I'd carried with me on past trips, I had real hope that I might get to show these things to Sean.

By Wednesday, Congressman Smith submitted House Resolution 125 on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, calling on the Brazilian government to “immediately discharge all its duties under the Hague Convention” and “to obtain the return of Sean Goldman.” Congressman Smith pushed to get the resolution passed quickly. “We need to raise the level of visibility,” he said. Not only did he and his staff succeed in readying the resolution in Congress, they also collaborated with U.S. Senator from New Jersey Frank Lautenberg, whose staff was already working on a Senate resolution. We had met with Senator Lautenberg in his offices approximately two weeks before the
Dateline
piece had aired on January 17. Although the senator was dealing with the amazing circumstances of the crash landing of the U.S. Airways jet into the Hudson River, he had taken time to sit down with his New Jersey and Washington, D.C., staffs to discuss what strategy to employ in addressing Sean's abduction for what it was becoming—an issue between two countries. He offered to call Brazilian and other Latin American diplomats, and in particular to work with us in getting the U.S. Senate to support our efforts.

Senator Lautenberg and his colleague from New Jersey, Senator Robert Menendez, sent a letter to Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, asking him to examine the case and take the appropriate action to reunite Sean and me. Senator Lautenberg assured Congressman Smith that before the week was over, their resolution would be on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and it was. We suddenly had caught the attention of politicians from across the spectrum.

As planned, Congressman Smith flew to Brazil on Thursday, February 5. To this day, I believe the decision by him to get on that airplane and fly from Washington to Brasília was a pivotal turning point in Sean's life and in mine.

The following day, in a tense, grueling court session that ran nearly six hours long, my attorney wrangled with the attorneys representing the abductors in Brasília's Superior Court of Justice over the circumstances under which I would be allowed to see my kidnapped son. Originally Ricardo sought to discuss
how
Sean would be returned to me rather than
if
Sean would be returned, but when our opponents refused to consider that question, the heated arguments turned toward provisional visitation. Although the debate was ostensibly about visitation opportunities, it was clear from the outset that the abductors were attempting to turn it into one about who was better equipped to raise Sean, me, the boy's father, or João Paulo Lins e Silva, the man who, with the help of Bruna's parents, was retaining my child illegally.

To make things even more intense, this was the first time that João Lins e Silva actually showed up for a hearing I attended. Throughout the day, the second kidnapper sat right across the table from me. He did not speak directly to me and rarely made eye contact, although, in my peripheral vision, I noticed him glancing at me several times during the hearing. On those few occasions when he had to look at me, he simply glowered.

He did, however, cast plenty of aspersions and provocative statements my way as he addressed the court. In one of his more repugnant utterances, he looked at me and said, “Just because you are a sperm donor doesn't make you a father.”

I kept my eyes trained on the judge, and refused to respond to the pettiness of the kidnapper's crackpot statements. Instead, I spoke to the black-robed judge in calm, reserved tones.

Congressman Smith attended the hearing along with me, and although he was not technically a character witness, his very presence in the back of the courtroom seemed to enrage my opponents. The kidnapper's father, Paulo Lins e Silva, was also in the courtroom, sometimes conversing with his son and his lawyers, at other times in the back of the room, pacing and talking on his cell phone; the man was apoplectic. Officials from the U.S. embassy in Brasília and the U.S. consulate in Rio were in attendance as well. For the first time, an interpreter was provided for me.

At various points throughout the proceedings, tensions in the room rose to the boiling point, but I remained calm and forthright in my presentation of the truth. For instance, I showed the judge some of my pre-abduction family photos and read some cards Bruna had given me on past birthdays and Father's Days. João Paulo Lins e Silva interrupted, calling them meaningless cards that probably were never given to me by Bruna. He claimed that I didn't care about Sean, that Bruna and I never loved each other, and other outright lies in an attempt to incite me to lose my temper. Instead, I looked directly up at the presiding judge and said, “I'm not here to fight this guy or to defend myself from his slanderous allegations and lies. I'm here to be with my son, Your Honor. I need your help as a matter of law to make this happen, please.”

It was a long, draining, exasperating day. At the close of the session, the judge warned me emphatically not to speak to anyone about the case. Congressman Smith, however, was under no such gag order, and he spoke freely to the media outside the courtroom, and fielded phone interviews from back in the States. Before he talked to anyone about the case, though, he always conferred with me to see if I thought the interview would be helpful. “You're the quarterback,” he reminded me.

Meanwhile, as I was struggling to control my anger and maintain my dignity during the visitation hearing, back in Washington, the news that Congressman Smith had flown to Brazil with me in an effort to bring Sean home was having a ripple effect. Mark DeAngelis received a call on his cell phone at about 10:30 AM from a woman named Leslie Potter, who was Congressman Rush Holt's district director in New Jersey. In an anxious voice, she told him that she needed David Goldman's phone number in Brazil because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted to speak with him right away. Mark later said, “It was at that moment when I realized that we had finally succeeded in getting the case to the highest levels of the U.S. government. And it never would have happened had it not been for Congressman Chris Smith.”

As elated as I was that we had finally gotten the attention of some movers and shakers in government, the potential call from the secretary of state soon paled in comparison to the results of the hearing. Following the prolonged visitation hearing, the court had granted me permission to see my son!

T
HE VISIT WAS SCHEDULED FOR THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, AGAIN at the Ribeiros' residence, which was ostensibly also the residence of João Lins e Silva and Sean. When the visitation was ordered, the officials from the Brazilian Central Authority were overjoyed that the agreement reached in the Superior Court would lead to Sean and me reuniting. They seemed elated, as though their job was done, since I had finally been granted access to my son. Lins e Silva dared not thwart the visit this time; too many eyes were watching.

I couldn't refrain from expressing the feelings in my heart. In a very serious manner, I looked as many people in the room as possible dead in the eye, including the officials from the BCA, and stated, “Although I'm very grateful for everyone's help that will hopefully allow Sean and me to visit with each other, this is not over.” I hadn't come merely to visit my abducted son; I had come to bring him home.

 

 

ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8, Congressman Smith and I had some free time, because we could not get meetings with government officials that day, so we attended church together at Dom Bosco Sanctuary, a cathedral in Brasília. It felt good to be in a place where, at least for a short time, I could let down my guard. Throughout this ordeal, I had had to remain controlled and focused. I had been tested at every turn, constantly castigated verbally and emotionally by the other side, who hoped that I would crack up or give up. They would have loved for me to have allowed that “red ball of fury” to take over, but I wouldn't let it; I couldn't. So, once inside the church, I dropped my “armor” and became quite emotional. My feeling of release wasn't because of confronting the kidnapper face-to-face. It was the culmination of suffering the unbearable agony of the previous four and a half years and knowing that my son was in such a bad place, with neither of his parents to comfort him, held by people who were too self-absorbed and cruel to see or care about the damaging effects their actions were having on him. My prayers soon turned to sobs, then a flood of tears and bellows from deep within me.

Congressman Smith sat several rows behind me and quietly prayed. I knew he was there, and his faith bolstered mine. We spent several hours praying together and listening to a choral presentation. In one of the songs of praise, which was sung in Portuguese, it sounded as though the singers were saying, “Pai Sean.” I took great comfort in the song, and also in “The Chaplet of Divine Mercy,” a series of prayers pleading for mercy. A number of people in the church noticed me and offered to pray for me. I gladly accepted.

 

 

NERVOUS DOES NOT even begin to describe how I was feeling as Ricardo, the court officials, and Congressman Smith and I pulled up in front of the address where supposedly I would find Sean waiting to see me for the first time in more than four and a half years. I told myself to remain calm. Sean needed to see me as his father who loved him, and to see that our relationship was natural, true, and good. I homed in on one thought: my love for my son. I let Ricardo and the embassy officials handle all the other details. We had learned since my first attempt to visit Sean that João Paulo Lins e Silva most likely did not even live at this address. It was a gated condominium complex in which Bruna's parents, Silvana and Raimundo Ribeiro, resided.

Considering the ridiculous legal shenanigans previously foisted upon me, the visitation agreement seemed tilted remarkably in my favor this time—at least it was so on paper. The agreement gave me the right to visit Sean from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM every day, every time I traveled to Brazil, so long as I gave the Ribeiros' representatives seventy-two-hours' notice. (João Paulo Lins e Silva immediately petitioned the federal court that I should be allowed to see my son only on March 12 and 13, 2009, and then only after 6:00 PM, because of Sean's school commitments. The federal court of Rio dismissed the ludicrous request, saying that missing two days of school would not cause nearly as much harm to Sean as not being able to reestablish a relationship with me.)

More important, the agreement placed no restrictions on me, and did not forbid me to take Sean out or to be seen in public with him. Nor did it require supervision by a third party during the visitation, although our opponents pressed to have Sean's therapist present during my initial visit.

The night before my visit with Sean, I hadn't been able to sleep. The anticipation was too great. As morning dawned, I was very anxious; I didn't know what to expect, but I hoped and prayed for the best. Despite the open visitation granted to me by the Brazilian court, João Lins e Silva and the Ribeiros refused to allow Sean to leave the grounds of their complex. As much as it irritated me that we were once again being jerked around by these people, I consented. We were this close; I didn't want the relatives to whisk Sean off to some other location, as they had done previously. Moreover, the Ribeiro camp kept insisting that Sean's psychologist observe our visit. Again, as distasteful as I found any concessions to their demands, if it meant seeing my son, I would tolerate the therapist.