RIO DE JANEIRO: A New Jersey man and his nine-year-old son were reunited Thursday in Brazil after a 5-year international custody battle, and immediately headed home to spend the holidays in the United States.
David Goldman and his son, Sean, left on a charter plane about three hours after the boy was handed over by his Brazilian family, said Rep. Chris Smith, who was in Brazil to support the US father.
Earlier, carrying his luggage and wearing a yellow shirt with the Brazilian flag and Olympic rings, Sean was escorted by his relatives to the US Consulate, where a scrum of journalists tried to get close. His father, of Tinton Falls, New Jersey, was waiting for him inside. The boy cried as his stepfather and family lawyer tried to get him through the crowd, and guards roughly pushed back photographers and TV cameramen.
His maternal grandmother, Silvana Bianchi, said in tears simply that “this is a very difficult moment.”
Sean has lived in Brazil since Goldman’s ex-wife, Bruna Bianchi, brought him to her native country for what was supposed to be a two-week vacation in 2004. She stayed, divorced Goldman and remarried, and Goldman began legal efforts to get Sean back.
After Bianchi died last year in childbirth, her husband, Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, a divorce attorney, continued the legal fight and won temporary custody.
