(HMG) – A panel of three Brazilian judges have ruled that New Jersey dad David Goldman should get his son Sean back, and must be handed over to him at the U.S. Consulate in Rio de Janeiro within 48 hours. This has been a long running saga that has seen Goldman put through 5-years of hell trying to get Sean back. The decision by the federal appeals court in Rio de Janeiro upheld a Brazilian federal judge’s earlier ruling.
On June 16, 2004, Bruna Bianchi, Goldman’s wife and her parents Silvana Bianchi Ribeiro and Raimundo Ribeiro, took the then 4-year-old boy to Brazil for what Goldman says was supposed to be a two-week vacation. Instead Bianchi stayed in Brazil, got a divorce, and remarried before dying last year while giving birth to a daughter. According to the Hague Convention, to which both the United States and Brazil are signatories, this was a clear case of international child abduction, otherwise known as parental kidnapping.
Since then, the boy’s maternal grandmother and stepfather have been trying to keep him in Brazil in a widely publicized custody battle that has gotten U.S Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and many other public figures involved in seeking the boy’s return. Sean Goldman is now nine years old and has a dual citizenship. The current court decision is likely to be appealed by the child’s stepfather and if you have followed this case you know with all the twists and turns that have occurred anything could happen.
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