David and Sean: Conclusion of a Saga

Call me crazy, but I never understood the rationale behind the Brazilian relatives’ reasons for keeping maternally abducted Sean Goldman in Brazil after her death.

About five years ago, I watched an episode of Dateline. It was the first time I ever saw or heard of David Goldman, a Tinton Falls, New Jersey father pleading across borders for the return of his only child – a son – who had been taken on false pretenses by his mother to her native Brazil and remained there still. Even back then, as I listened to the story, one thing struck a chord: If the boy is biologically his own and he wants to raise him, who are these non-related people to try to keep him from it?

A little history lesson

Bruna Bianchi, an aspiring Brazilian designer meets handsome aspiring model David Goldman, while the two are in Paris. In the city of love, they fall in love and marry. Soon thereafter, they move to the suburbs of New Jersey. They have a son. They name him Sean. He is the light of their lives, or so the photographs of Sean’s early years would imply.

When little Sean is four, his mommy takes him on a two-week vacation to see her parents in Brazil. David drives his wife and child to Newark airport for their flight. Only Bruna’s plans do not include a return trip, just a blatant abduction of the American-born child, followed by threats to her clueless husband in America to sign away custody of the boy to her, or risk never seeing him again. David is unaware on that drive to Newark that the next time he is thisclose to the boy, much time will have passed. David never signs away his son to Bruna.

While in Brazil with her parents, Bruna gets a Brazilian divorce from her husband and remarries a prominent lawyer in her native land. Meanwhile, back in Tinton Falls, David is insane with plans of getting his son back. He does not get to see or hear from Sean and the boy is growing.

Her new, infinitely less attractive husband knocks up Bruna. I could be less harsh, but I haven't any niceness left for Bruna Bianchi with which to soften my wording. Sean will have a little half-sister, further attaching him to a country that has become his home. Still his real father struggles with his absence. Still his real father fights for his return. Sean is, more likely than not, shielded from this struggle, as his mother and new father hope that with age will come forgetfulness. David Goldman who?

As luck – or that bitchy little Karma – would have it, Bruna gives birth to the child but dies in childbirth. Bye, bye Bruna. Normally, I am not this callous, except that I just ripped a page right out of your own book of emotions. Cold-hearted bitches need to stick together.

Bruna’s apparently controlling parents – along with her new husband – decide they do not need to tell David Goldman of the passing of his babymomma. In fact, quite a bit of time goes by before David learns Bruna is gone.

Naturally, assumes the terribly distraught and duped father, his BIOLOGICAL son will be returned to him – his only surviving parent. Naturally. But if I have learned anything from this case is that the natural order of things has no place here.

Instead of “Here is your son. Sorry about the whole abduction thing…” David hears: “Yeah, we’re ah…we’re gonna keep ‘em. Thanks for the sperm, though!” Clearly that is not a direct quote, but the kind of thing I think about when I think of these kinds of things.

David Goldman is floored, and rightfully so. What do these people mean they’re keeping his son…illegally…in a whole other country and continent? Sorry, but this kind of thing deserves the abbreviated shock statement: WTF?

So began a battle, fraught with drama and disappointment, people taking sides and voicing their opinions, broken promises, love lost, love found, then lost again, the progressive brain-washing of a child, blatant disregard for international laws and possible political ramifications for two usually cordial countries. Over what? One. Little. Boy.

Flash forward

Five years have passed. I had a transplant. I lost a parent. My husband lost both grandparents. I gained a house. I lost it to flood. All the while, David Goldman has been battling. Letters and cards sent to his boy were heartlessly 'returned to sender'. The surreal existence of a man who had to halt his life to fight for a beloved son persists. Perhaps unbeknownst to his son Sean, David has fought all the days and nights since his son’s abduction to get him back. All the while, Sean has been growing. Sean has been at close range to some of life’s harshest moments: divorce, remarriage, adaptation to a new father, make-believe stories of possible abandonment from his real father, death of his mother, birth of a half-sister and then there was the court battles.

All the while the hairs on David’s head have turned to their autumn, graying like the skies of an overcast day. While in Rio de Janeiro, Sean’s little boy features mature, his baby teeth fall out. His first language is washed away daily in small bits and pieces. His life is transformed. In Tinton Falls, David’s life remains the same. He is still Sean’s dad. He just doesn’t get to see his boy.

We don’t hear about him in the every-day news. We forget about him, and then we see a small news piece, as he struggles to keep his story relevant. Then we remember him again. “Oh yeah, that dad from New Jersey. Remember? He is trying to get his kid back from Brazil.” But just as soon as we say or think that, we forget again. Our lives go on and still he fights the good fight.

Time moves slowly

Sean is growing. Making a smooth transition back to his United States life an unlikely scenario now. He will not get through this unscathed. That much is almost a certainty amid all the uncertainty. Any textbook, therapist, psychologist or parent can tell you that. I am none of these, but hell even I can see that elephant in the room!

A website to help David get him back is created – www.bringseanhome.org. Volunteers pour in to help. Donations pour in to keep David afloat as he whittles through thousands of dollars in his quest to get Sean back. Some volunteers linger. Some stay. Some go just away. Sometimes a battle with so many obstacles just seems insurmountable, except to David.

Sean’s a school kid now. No longer the four-year-old precious babe who could be tossed around by David. No longer the one whose memories would be so quickly erased. That is not such a great thing. Not when the memories the child is building are Brazilian. The language he is learning is Portuguese. The one he is forgetting is English. The place fading in the distant corners of his mind is the U.S.

Christmas Eve is always thought of as a time for miracles. Christmas Eve of 2009, a miracle happens. After much debate and several letdowns, David Goldman finally wins. He will get to bring Sean home. The head of Brazil's Supreme Court, Gilmar Mendes rules that Sean has to be returned to his father in accordance with a ruling by a lower court and international custody accords. This time, however, his Brazilian relatives did not appeal, instead deciding to give up their fight and hand over the boy.

David wants to believe it, but he is been here before. So instead he says the smartest thing. He will believe it when the wheels lift off Brazil and Sean is next to him on the plane.

Oftentimes, miracles are just that: miracles. However, miracles can sometimes be traced back to real and tangible evidence. Such as this case has shown me. Perhaps it was the pressing and urging of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that changed the collective mind of Brazil’s highest court. Maybe it was New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg’s block of a renewal of a trade bill with Brazil that would have numbered in the $2.75 billion arena. That is more the kind of miracle I am seeing – the one laced with $100 bills that suddenly made the prominent relatives of Sean in Brazil raise the white flag of defeat. Who knows? At the end of the day, it sounds to me a lot like holding a kid for ransom, then giving him up when the cost of keeping him becomes too steep.

So here we are, Christmas Eve of 2009 at 11 a.m. (Easter Standard Time). Nine-year-old Sean Goldman and his worse-for-wear Dad, David, are en route back to New Jersey. When they touch ground on American soil, Sean will have to begin life anew yet again. He will have to re-acclimate himself to his American culture and language. He will have to reestablish a relationship with his long-lost dad with whom he seemed to have a great relationship – as great as one can have with a four-year-old. He will probably need to endure years of therapy to cope. He will possibly encounter a lot of confusion and confrontations, as his story was such a publicly fought one.

Although this may not be the path he chooses right now, Sean may one day realize who the real culprit in all this mess was: his mother Bruna. She did not foresee how wrong it was to try and erase one father and replace him with a new one for the little boy. She did not foresee her own death and the subsequent battle for Sean that would ensue. She did not foresee the ugly tug-of-war for Sean. She did not foresee that her American ex-husband would love his son so much that no border, obstacle or battle would keep him from the boy. She did not foresee the irreversible damage of taking Sean that day. She did not foresee that perhaps one day he would have to go back to that old life. In my opinion, Bruna Bianchi was a selfish, self-centered woman who did not take into consideration the consequences of her actions in the life of her little boy. Now Bruna is gone and though in many ways her death can be seen as payback for her sins, in others you can look and say: “Well, she is free of all worries, while poor Sean’s journey back has only now just begun.” I don’t wish for any child to have to harbor such anger and resentment for a parent, but in this case, I would see how it is hard not to.

My heart breaks for Sean Goldman! Despite being so loved that grown men and women would battle fiercely (against the odds) to be the ones to “get” him, he is still the only victim and the only innocent one. He is just a lonely little boy at the center of chaotic combat that is beyond his years to comprehend. Sean did not choose to be taken from his home to another life by his mother. He did not choose for her to die there. He did not choose to be raised by a stepfather that he grew to love as a father. He did not choose to lose five crucial developmental years with his real father in his real home. He did not choose to be at the center of this international media storm. Sean did not choose to have it all end with a trade-off of his human form on the neutral grounds of an embassy, like a lost little treasure without a heart and soul of his own. Yet, at the end of the day, it will be Sean and Sean alone who will have to sift through the long-cold embers of his short, but complicated life and try to build something solid from the fragile ashes of his here and now.