An American dad was hoping Wednesday for a Christmas Eve reunion with his young son after winning a marathon five-year custody battle against his deceased ex-wife's Brazilian family.
David Goldman, a former male model from the northeastern state of New Jersey, was in Rio de Janeiro waiting for the Brazilian family to hand over his nine-year-old son, Sean, in accordance with a ruling by Brazil's top judge.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Gilmar Mendes ordered Tuesday that Sean be presented to the US consulate in Rio under the terms of a previous verdict by a lower court in Rio, which had set a 48-hour deadline.
The Brazilian family was reluctantly obeying the order and would not lodge any appeal, attorney Sergio Tostes told reporters.
The boy's Brazilian stepfather, Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, and the rest of the family, "want a harmonious transition that looks after the boy's well-being," Tostes told the Estadao news agency.
The head judge of the Rio court, Paulo Espirito Santo, issued a statement on Wednesday saying the handover deadline was Thursday at 9:00 am (1100 GMT), but it was unclear whether that deadline would be met.
"We're hopeful that this will be a smooth and swift process -- because it's time," a US embassy official told AFP, adding that negotiations were under way.
Tostes told Time magazine he expected the handover to take place Thursday, Christmas Eve, "at the earliest."
Goldman was happy but cautious with the verdict.
"I hope this is it," Goldman told the US television network NBC shortly after hearing the verdict.
As soon as he saw his son, he said, the two would leave for the United States.
"I know once we're together and we're back home, we will heal and he will be okay," he said.
A US state department official, Philip Crowley, told reporters in Washington that a US passport had been supplied in Sean's name to Goldman so that his son "will be able to travel whenever the exchange of custody takes place."
Goldman's five-year struggle through Brazil's legal system means he has had almost no contact with Sean, who was born in the United States in 2000 with dual US-Brazilian nationality and who now reportedly speaks only Portuguese.
Goldman's ex-wife, Bruna Bianchi, ran off with Sean from their New Jersey home to her native Brazil in 2004, ostensibly for a two-week vacation.
But she ended up staying in Rio, where she divorced Goldman and married 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 serious point of contention in US-Brazil relations, with officials from both countries concerned that a Hague Convention on international child abduction was not being observed.
That treaty, which comes into play when a child is removed from his or her habitual home and taken abroad without authorization, would require any custody dispute over Sean be settled in New Jersey.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed her Brazilian counterpart on the case earlier this year, while the US Congress demanded an end to Sean's "kidnapping."
Sean's Brazilian family decried those moves as "improper interference" and claimed it was acting only to defend the boy's best interests.
His Brazilian grandmother, Silvana Bianchi, 60, told a Brazilian news website she was "shocked, saddened, disappointed and ashamed" by the Supreme Court ruling, and "revolted" that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had ignored her entreaties to intervene.
She alleged the final verdict was motivated by "an economic accord," referring to the passage Wednesday of an extension to a US trade measure benefiting Brazil that had been stalled by the custody issue.
"My country -- Sean's country, as he is born Brazilian -- sold a child," she said.
On Tuesday, she told Lula in a letter that losing Sean "on Christmas Eve is inhuman."
Copyright 2009 AFP American Edition
