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 eastern state of New Jersey, was in Rio de Janeiro waiting for the Brazilian family to hand over his son, Sean, in accordance with a ruling Brazil's top judge delivered late Tuesday.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Gilmar Mendes ordered 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 deadline was now set for Thursday at 9:00 am (1100 GMT), taking into account the time already elapsed before the supreme court appeal.
But it was unclear whether that deadline would be enforced, or even observed.
Negotiations were under way for the handover, a US embassy official told AFP, without providing a definite deadline for their completion.
"We're hopeful that this will be a smooth and swift process -- because it's time," the official said on condition of anonymity.
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.
Goldman's five-year struggle through Brazil's interminable legal system means that 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.
Bianchi had told her husband she was traveling with their son for a two-week vacation, but ended up staying in Rio, divorced and married Lins e Silva, a prominent lawyer.
She died last year 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 to 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's ruling.
She alleged the 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.
Copyright 2009 AFP American Edition
