Sean Goldman, a nine-year-old boy at the center of a long and bitter US-Brazil custody battle, is to be handed over to his American father in Rio de Janeiro early Thursday, a US lawmaker here told AFP.
The transfer will take place around 9:00 am (1100 GMT) at the US consulate, said Chris Smith, the Republican representative for the US state of New Jersey. Smith is accompanying the father, David Goldman, in Rio since last week.
Because of the "overriding concern" for Sean's mental state, father and son will be whisked off to the airport immediately for a US-bound flight without facing the many journalists camped out in Rio covering the story, Smith said.
Sean "has been hurt by this situation" and needs privacy, he explained.
If the handover goes as projected, it will cap a five-year legal war between David Goldman and the Brazilian family of Goldman's ex-wife Bruna Bianchi, who died in childbirth last year.
Brazil's top Supreme Court judge, Gilmar Mendes, on Tuesday struck down a final appeal by the family against Goldman's custody claim, delivering final victory to the New Jersey dad.
Mendes's verdict upheld a decision by a lower court in Rio that awarded custody to Goldman. The chief judge of that court set 9:00 am Thursday as the deadline for the boy to be presented at the US consulate to be reunited with his father.
The lawyer for the Brazilian family, Sergio Tostes, told reporters that Sean's Brazilian stepfather and grandmother, and the other Brazilian relatives, realized they had lost and now wanted only "a harmonious transition that looks after the boy's well-being."
Goldman told the US television network NBC shortly after hearing the verdict that he could not wait to get his son back to the United States.
"I know once we're together and we're back home, we will heal and he will be okay," he said.
The US State Department said it had supplied Goldman with a US passport in Sean's name so the boy "will be able to travel whenever the exchange of custody takes place."
Sean was born in the United States in 2000 with dual US-Brazilian nationality to Goldman, a former male model, and Bianchi, a fashion designer originally from Rio.
In 2004, Bianchi went to Brazil with Sean for what she said would be a two-week vacation, but she ended up staying there, divorcing Goldman and marrying Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, a prominent lawyer.
She died last year while giving birth to a daughter.
Lins e Silva used legal procedures to block Goldman's efforts to regain custody of Sean, arguing the boy was so integrated into Brazilian life that sending him to the United States would be harmful.
He also said Sean himself wanted to stay in Brazil.
The issue developed into a sore point in US-Brazil relations, with officials from both countries concerned that a Hague Convention governing international child abduction cases was not being observed.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed her Brazilian counterpart on Sean Goldman earlier this year, while the US Congress demanded an end to his "kidnapping."
Sean's Brazilian family decried those moves as "improper interference" and claimed it was acting only to defend the boy's best interests.
The Brazilian grandmother, Silvana Bianchi, 60, told the Brazilian news website G1 she was "shocked, saddened, disappointed and ashamed" by the Supreme Court ruling and claimed Sean had been "sold" by Brazil to secure a preferential trade deal with the United States.
Representative Smith, in Rio, said Sean had lived "a very manipulative situation" during the legal battle.
But he stated that Goldman was open to allowing the Brazilian family to have access to Sean in the future because "he said he would not do to them what they did to him."
The drawn-out fight and its resolution, he said, "will be a landmark case not just for Sean but in other cases around the world."
He singled out Japan as one country where, he said, there were 125 "abducted" children of US citizens, some of them military personnel stationed there. Smith explained he was promoting a US bill to boost enforcement of the Hague Convention.
Copyright 2009 AFP American Edition
