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US dad flies home with son after Brazil custody win
 
 
  
 
 AFP - Friday, December 25
 
 
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RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - – A US man and his nine-year-old son held an emotional reunion in Brazil Thursday after emerging from a bitter five-year custody battle, and flew back to the United States to get to know each other over Christmas.
 
David Goldman and son Sean Goldman were aboard a flight chartered by a US television network that bought exclusive access to their story, Chris Smith, an American lawmaker who helped the father, told AFP.
 
Early Thursday, the two were brought together at the US consulate in Rio de Janeiro for a "very warm, very emotional" meeting made possible by a Brazilian Supreme Court order delivered this week, Smith said.
 
The legal victory capped Goldman's long custody struggle against his late ex-wife's Brazilian family. She died in childbirth last year, and the family assumed care of Sean and tried to keep him in Brazil.
 
"Please accept my most sincere and humblest gratitude" for the outcome, Goldman said in a statement delivered by Smith.
 
Goldman expressed joy at being reunited with "my beautiful son" after five years apart, and said "my love for him knows no boundaries."
 
He spoke of "a new beginning, a rebirth of our family."
 
Smith, who had been with Goldman in Rio awaiting Thursday's reunion, said he was unable to travel with the two on the flight because the plane had been chartered by the US network NBC and therefore he was prohibited from doing so under congressional rules.
 
The plane took off three hours after Goldman and Sean saw each other in what was just their third meeting since being separated.
 
They had only seen each other briefly in February and June this year since the boy arrived in Brazil in 2004.
 
In Washington, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was "thrilled" that father and son were finally together and flying back to the US state of New Jersey.
 
"I offer my warmest wishes for father and son as they celebrate their first holiday season together in five years," Clinton said in a statement.
 
She had led US government efforts to have Sean returned to Goldman.
 
The US Congress also added pressure, denouncing what it called the boy's "kidnapping" and holding up passage of a trade measure benefiting Brazil until the handover was secure.
 
Sean cried as he ran a gauntlet of 60 reporters, photographers and cameramen when he walked into the US consulate with his Brazilian stepfather and grandmother and their lawyer.
 
They arrived just 20 minutes before a court deadline was to expire for his handover.
 
The boy looked shocked by the jostling media crowd, which had to be held back by police to let him pass, and hugged close to his Brazilian stepfather.
 
He said nothing. His only message was by way of a Brazilian football jersey he wore.
 
His Brazilian grandmother, Silvana Bianchi, told the Globo news website that Sean "was very sad to go, and stunned by all the confusion" at the consulate.
 
"He was very nervous. He had a fever of 38.5 degrees (96.4 degrees Fahrenheit) last night and vomited when we arrived at the consulate. He was really shaken up," she said.
 
The family's lawyer, Sergio Tostes, told reporters the Brazilian relatives were extremely "upset" by the way the handover was handled by US consular officials, particularly the chaotic scene at the consulate.
 
He also explained the grandmother had been denied a seat on the plane -- which he was told was chartered by the US government -- to accompany Sean to the United States.
 
Smith, though, complained that the Brazilian family had deliberately paraded Sean in front of the media instead of accepting arrangements to drive into a discreet consulate entrance to avoid the cameras.
 
"It was very cruel... a coup de theatre," he said.
 
A US embassy spokeswoman, Orla Blum, also denied Tostes's charge, saying steps had been taken for a quiet entry into the consulate "so Sean could meet his family, his father, in calm."
 
Sean was born in the United States in 2000 with dual US-Brazilian nationality to Goldman, a former male model, and Bianchi, a fashion designer originally from Rio.
 
In 2004, Bianchi traveled to Brazil with the boy for what she said would be a two-week vacation, but instead stayed there, divorced Goldman and married Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, a prominent lawyer.
 
She died last year while giving birth to a daughter.
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
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