US lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on the Brazilian government to return a boy who is living with his stepfather in Brazil to his American father.
Of 432 lawmakers in the House of Representatives, 418 voted in favor of the resolution to urge Brazil to return nearly nine-year-old Sean Goldman to the custody of his American father, David Goldman.
“The kidnapping of Sean Goldman and his continued four-and-a-half-year unlawful detention in Rio must be resolved immediately and irrevocably,” Republican Representative Chris Smith told the House before the vote.
A year after David Goldman and Brazilian Bruna Carneiro Ribeiro were wed in 1999, they had a son, Sean. The family lived in New Jersey. In June 2004, Bruna and Sean traveled to Brazil.
“Almost as soon as she arrived in Rio de Janeiro, she advised Sean’s father, David Goldman, that she was permanently staying in Brazil, the marriage was over and that she was not going to allow Sean to return home to New Jersey,” Smith told fellow lawmakers.
Bruna got a Brazilian judge to grant a divorce from Goldman and remarried. After she died in childbirth in August, another Brazilian court granted custody of Sean to his Brazilian stepfather.
But courts in New Jersey had granted David Goldman “full custody of Sean as far back as August 2004,” Smith said, calling on Brazil to respect its legal obligations and return the boy to the US.
“David Goldman should not be blocked from raising his own son, and a child who recently lost his mom belongs with his dad,” he said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the Goldman case when she met two weeks ago with her Brazilian counterpart, Celso Amorim, and US lawmakers said on Wednesday they want President Barack Obama to bring up the case with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is due to visit Washington this week.
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