Bring Sean Home
There are many instances of parental child abduction around the world, where a child is taken away from the home by one of the parents. Usually, this is the result of broken marriages, and in a majority of cases, the abducting parent is the father (I guess since custody rulings often go in favor of the mother so she would have no reason to abduct the child).
Anyway, I just got done reading about a terrible case involving a little boy named Sean Goldman. Sean’s father David married Sean’s mother Bruna, a Brazilian national, in 1999, and Sean was born in 2000. Back in 2004, when Sean was 4 years old, David drove Bruna, Sean, and Bruna’s parents to the airport, thinking that they were going to go on a two-week trip to Brazil to visit other relatives. But as soon as Bruna’s plane landed, she called David back in the States to say that the marriage was over and that she was staying in Brazil with Sean.
David was shocked by this announcement, as he had no idea that the marriage was in trouble or that Bruna was unhappy in America. Since then, he has been engaged in a long legal battle to regain at least partial custody of Sean, but has effectively been shut out by the Brazilian courts. Even after Bruna died in childbirth on August 22 of this year (apparently she was able to get a divorce from David in Brazil without David’s consent, and she subsequently remarried), David still has not been able to regain custody.
Now Bruna’s new husband is filing for sole custody of Sean, and if that claim goes through, then that would be a complete travesty of justice — in a case already full of them. David is Sean’s biological father, and has never been shown to be anything other than a loving, stable parent. There’s no history of abuse or anything of that nature, so he should definitely have more rights to the child’s custody than anyone else.
David has spent a fortune on legal fees and travel expenses (for appearances in Brazilian court) during the past four years, and thus far has been stonewalled. He has not even been allowed to see Sean in all those years.
What a sad, sad story. Check out BringSeanHome.org for more info or to make a small donation if you can. This story just breaks my heart.