A Father's Love (26 page)

CNN indicated that they, too, had received the tape and intended to run it. They responded that there was “some question” about who Sean's legal guardian was and who could consent to the use of the tape. Tricia reminded CNN's producers, “In the United States of America, where your offices are located, there is no question: David Goldman is the sole legal custodian of Sean Goldman.” She sent copies of the relevant U.S. and Brazilian orders, and indicated that she would be forced to recommend legal action if CNN went forward. Eventually CNN capitulated and pulled the video.

A week or so after Silvana and Lins e Silva appeared on
The Early Show
, another judge in Brazil ruled that Sean was to remain with Lins e Silva until a final ruling was reached in the case.

My stomach was churning. This case was getting sicker by the minute.

I
RETURNED FROM BRAZIL ALONE AND MORE DESPONDENT THAN ever about the prospects for bringing Sean home. I was emotionally beaten up and drained, but no less determined to keep going. Judge Pinto had clearly indicated that it was in Sean's best interests to return with me to the United States. The order was solid. As Tricia Apy pointed out, in all her years of working on international child abduction cases, ours was as clear as any case could be. It was a textbook case in Hague 101. “Return is the only answer.”

But the incessant legal maneuverings spawned by the Lins e Silvas and the Ribeiros blocked us at every turn. Every time a judge ruled according to the facts and the treaty, the Lins e Silvas' and the Ribeiros' lawyers found one that would throw in a procedural monkey wrench. Sean was still trapped in Brazil, and I didn't know how to rescue him.

The summer of 2009 was hell. Each day dragged on with little positive news from my Brazilian attorneys. We were being yanked back and forth by the Brazilian court system, facing one manufactured delay after another but never making real progress. From somewhere within me, I drew strength, knowing that it was right for a boy to be with his dad, that all of heaven and earth affirmed the love of a father for his son, that by law, morality, and common sense, Sean belonged home with me.

I continued making trips to Washington, working with Congressman Smith and Bernie Aronson, trying to keep the pressure on our public officials to do something, not just about Sean but also about the scores of other American children abducted to Brazil and other countries. My goal, of course, was to be reunited with Sean, but if I could help bring more attention to the abduction issue, if I could be a voice for the other suffering families, whose pleas so often fell on deaf ears, I welcomed the opportunity. Progress, however, was frustratingly slow.

Our case had ridden a wave of media and diplomatic attention to the highest levels of government. With no new developments, attention crested, then dropped without a ripple, leaving the press less prone to delve back into the story. I continued getting requests for interviews, and there was no less interest from reporters when I gave them, but for weeks at a time, I simply had no new information to offer them. Whenever I did have something to say, I wanted it to make an impact. I knew that the media could not run headlines about Sean every day, but Sean had been the headline in my heart and mind every waking hour for the last five years. To me and to those supporting Sean's return, no news
was
news. What was Brazil doing? What was taking so long?

Our goal was to apply pressure across all fronts in any way we could to make a difference. Congressman Smith pressed the State Department to suspend or take away Brazil's preferential trading status, which gave Brazil duty-free access to the United States for many of its products. Chris worked constantly with his colleagues in the House and the Senate from both parties to build support for the legislation he had introduced, which would require better tracking of international parental abduction cases by the State Department and, most important, spelled out eighteen specific punitive responses the United States would undertake if countries failed to cooperate in resolving abduction disputes. In July, I participated in a press conference in Washington attended by other parents of abducted children, hoping to draw attention to Congressman Smith's bill. Unfortunately, getting members of Congress to focus on this new piece of proposed legislation was nearly as difficult as securing the compliance of foreign countries with their Hague treaty obligations. I discovered that congressmen were constantly on the go: running in and out of committee hearings, voting on the floor, meeting with constituents, talking to the press, raising campaign reelection funds, and attending political events.

On the other hand, for the other left-behind parents and me, there was only one paramount issue: getting our children back. When one reporter asked me to comment on what it felt like to be a father of an abducted child, I responded, “It's an anguish that's with us 24-7. Awake, asleep, working, walking—no matter what, it's with us.” Unfortunately, that same kind of constant attention to the issue of child abduction was not the norm for our government officials.

When I wasn't in Washington, I kept busy with work, staying out at sea all day and returning home physically exhausted in the hope of being able to sleep. I spent time with Wendy and her children, and with my mom and dad, but despite Mom's home cooking, I lost weight. I noticed more gray flecks showing up in my hair, and could barely recognize myself in the mirror.

On September 30, 2009, we received some hopeful news. The Brazilian court in unanimous decisions threw out three suits filed by João Paulo Lins e Silva aimed at obstructing progress under the Hague Convention. The next decision date was scheduled for October 16.

Back in June, Congressman Smith had urged Congressman Eliot Engel to hold hearings on Brazil's patterns of poor compliance with regard to returning abducted children. Congressman Engel was the chairman of the Western Hemisphere Committee, and was also the secretary of the Brazil caucus. Engel agreed to hold a hearing the second week of September, timed to coincide with an upcoming visit to the States by President Lula, who would be in New York at the UN General Assembly and then in Pittsburgh for the G-20 Summit, a confab of the world's top twenty industrial and economic powers. President Obama was scheduled to attend both meetings.

We had hoped to get strong media coverage for the Engel hearing as a result of these two important gatherings of world leaders, attended by both the U.S. and the Brazilian presidents. But at the last minute, the hearing was canceled, with no explanation given.

Congressman Smith would not be deterred. Prior to the UN and G-20 meetings, he was invited to a summit mix-and-mingle that both presidents were scheduled to attend. “David, you're coming along,” he told me. “I want to introduce you to President Lula.”

Before the event, I wrote a short note on a card that we planned to hand to President Lula. The message on the card essentially said, “I am the father of Sean Goldman, and I implore your help to get my boy back.”

Unfortunately, due to a problem in Honduras, President Lula did not show up at the event. Undaunted, Congressman Smith suggested that we attempt to get the card to President Obama. The idea was to give the note to the U.S. president, who would be seeing the Brazilian president several times over the next week. Again and again, while others were schmoozing at the party, the congressman tried to find someone who would pass the note to the president. Congressman Smith asked eight separate people, including two assistant secretaries, to get me in front of the president for five seconds, so I could give him the card. “Here's a note from a father who simply wants his son back,” he told them. “You don't even need to talk about it. Just hand the president the note.” It never happened. We were a mere fifteen feet away from where the president stood as he made his brief remarks, but the gap may as well have been a million miles.

Late that night, we dropped off the card at the Brazilian mission, with the hope that somebody there would get it to President Lula. We never learned if that happened, and we returned home disappointed and discouraged.

BEHIND THE SCENES at the same time, Chris Smith and his staff and Bernie Aronson were working hard to persuade the Foreign Affairs Committee to hold a hearing on the issue of child abduction, with Sean's case as the centerpiece. Although the committee was controlled by the Democratic majority and Chris was a Republican, he was a senior member of the minority and had worked with his colleagues across the aisle in the past to pass groundbreaking legislation to curb child sex trafficking around the world. Bernie called the chairman of the committee, Howard Berman of California, and the subcommittee chairman, William Delahunt of Massachusetts, an old friend, urging them to schedule a hearing. Chris's chief of staff, Mary Noonan, cajoled and persuaded other staffers on the committee.

Early in October, I received an invitation to testify as the lead witness on October 29, 2009, before Delahunt's Washington Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight on Parental Child Abductions. Bernie Aronson and Tricia Apy were also scheduled to testify. Finally, we were getting somewhere. For weeks I worked on my testimony. This was really going to make a difference, I was sure. Then the bottom fell out from under me. Just days before the hearing was to convene, I was called by one of the subcommittee's staffers. The hearing had to be postponed.

The explanation the staffer gave me was that Chairman Delahunt had to meet another commitment, but later we were told something else. Some Democrats on the committee, including some from New Jersey, seemed increasingly envious of the national attention Chris Smith was receiving in the media for championing my case. We heard rumors that there were fears that this could be damaging politically to other representatives in Congress including my own congressman, Rush Holt, a Democrat, who had been late in providing his support.

For whatever reason, partisan envy and politics, or something else entirely, a forum to bring national attention to the plight of thousands of American children abducted and held in dozens of countries around the world was being scuttled. Didn't these congressmen understand? Did they have a clue as to the heartrending pain gripping thousands of American families who had an empty chair at every dinner, every birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, where a child, grandchild, brother, sister, niece, or nephew used to sit? I had wanted to move my struggle from Tinton Falls to Washington because I was sure our nation's capital was where serious issues such as parental child abduction could be solved. Now I began to wonder if I was right.

The cancellation of this second hearing was a serious setback. If the government of Brazil thought the U.S. Congress no longer viewed our case as a pressing matter, they might stonewall even more, and the kidnappers surely would be emboldened.

 

 

CHRIS SMITH WAS also a member of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, named in honor of the late California congressman, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the U.S. Congress. After the Foreign Affairs hearing was canceled, Chris worked to arrange a hearing by the caucus on the problem of parental child abduction. In November, the hearing was finally scheduled, primarily at the insistence of Congressman Smith. I was now to appear before the Lantos Commission on December 2, 2009, again as the lead witness.

The Lantos commission did not have the same standing as Delahunt's subcommittee, which could propose and vote on legislation, subpoena witnesses, and oversee the workings of the executive branch. The commission could only advise. Still, it was an official entity of the U.S. Congress, an opportunity to tell our story to the world.

The Lantos commission was cochaired by representatives Frank Wolf of Virginia and James McGovern of Massachusetts. Unfortunately, McGovern could not stay for the entire session, but Frank Wolf, Chris Smith, Rush Holt, and Virginia congressman James Moran were there.

We met in Room 1310 of the Longworth House Office Building, a stately complex just south of Capitol Hill. The hearing attracted a large crowd of media, embassy officials from various countries, and other concerned citizens. Extra chairs had to be brought in to accommodate the overflow crowd of spectators and press. I sat at a long table in front of the committee members, along with three other “left-behind” fathers. Behind me sat my mother and father. Wendy, Mark, and dozens of our Web site friends were in the crowd to give me support and solidarity. Their presence helped.

Congressman Smith opened the hearing with a powerful statement. “International child abduction is a huge scandal,” he told the committee, “that has been significantly enabled by ignorance, indifference, incompetence, or outright complicity by far too many governments around the world. The present state of affairs is unconscionable and must change.”