A Father's Love (10 page)

As day after day, then month after month, clicked off the calendar, I felt frustrated that I was so helpless in the face of the overwhelming opposition. I was in an entirely new place, a position of vulnerability that I had never before known. Even doing my best, I could make no headway toward getting Sean home. I needed help. I had to open myself to others who were willing to help, and that was an awkward feeling for me.

 

 

FOR MORE THAN a year, the Brazilian courts had stonewalled us when dealing with our case. All the while, Sean remained in Brazil, and I had little contact with him. Finally, in late September 2005, my attorneys informed me that a judge in Brazil was ready to consider our case. I immediately dropped everything and booked a flight to Brazil.

I felt nervous excitement as I parked my Jeep at Newark's Liberty International Airport, although it was a bittersweet feeling. The last time I'd been there, I'd lost my wife and son. Still, the anticipation that I might be returning with Sean buoyed my spirits. Ricardo, my attorney in Brazil, was encouraged because a federal court in Rio de Janeiro would finally be hearing the case. Bruna and her supporters had tried desperately to have the case decided in family court as a simple custody case. They argued that because I had initially signed the authorizations consenting to Bruna's traveling with Sean to Brazil, her actions could not be considered “wrongful.” They consistently tried to argue that this was nothing but a custody dispute, best decided in Bruna's city of Rio de Janeiro. But I had never granted her any authorization to
keep
Sean in Brazil; he had never lived there.

That was a crucial distinction. It wasn't illegal for Bruna to have taken Sean out of the country; it was illegal for her to have retained him in Brazil without my consent, especially after the court ordered that he be returned. As such, the case was not a custody matter but an abduction case, to be considered under the stipulations of the Hague Convention. Hague cases were always to be handled in federal court rather than family court, and the Brazilian courts finally concurred. This was the good news. The bad news was that the Brazilian courts had basically ignored the return order we had obtained on the basis of the Hague Convention more than a year earlier.

Flying into Rio, seeing the outstretched arms of
Christ the Redeemer
, the 130-foot-high statue of Jesus standing atop the peak of 2,300-foot-high Corcovada Mountain, which overlooks the city and the sandy beaches and sea below, I still had to force myself to shake off worries that I might be flying right into a trap. Bruna and her family members had broken off communication with me for the past nine months and had shut down my contact with Sean, not allowing him to call me, not accepting my calls to him, not even allowing e-mail exchanges between us.

Nevertheless, I was hopeful, almost to the point of being naïve. I went to the hearing assuming that I would be reunited with Sean and be able to bring him home. I knew of Brazil's reputation for protecting the rights of the mother, and especially protecting their own citizens. In their minds, I was the “gringo,” the American coming into their country to rob a child from a Brazilian mother. But I was undeterred. After all, I was right. The law was on my side; we had an order from a U.S. court demanding Sean's return, and the power of a major international agreement supporting us. Sean had to be coming home.

I assumed that my opposition was merely Bruna and her parents—a formidable team, to be sure, but people with whom I had always gotten along well. Surely, we could work out this crazy matter in some equitable way. I had no idea at the time that Bruna was not acting alone. In reality, my legal battle would be against one of the richest, most powerful, most influential families in all of Brazil.

 

 

SOON AFTER MY arrival in Rio, I met my attorney, Ricardo Zamariola. I was surprised at how young he looked, but it didn't take long for me to realize that he knew his stuff and had a good handle on the legal aspects of our case.

The initial hearing I attended in Brazil was conducted completely in Portuguese, a language I hardly understood. Neither Bruna nor her parents—the kidnappers, as I had begun referring to them— attended, yet they were allowed to keep my son. Not only did they not attend the hearing, they refused to allow me to see Sean.

My attorneys brought me before any and all of the judges who would see me prior to the hearing, a normal procedure and common practice in Brazil. Then, once we were in the courtroom, I sat there trying my best to comprehend what was going on. No offer was ever made by the court to provide an interpreter, and Ricardo was busy enough taking notes or speaking on my behalf, so I sat through the entire ordeal barely understanding a word. The decisions, however, I understood.

On October 5, 2005, a Brazilian federal judge, Fabio Tenenblat, said that although it was clear that Sean's home was the United States and he had indeed been wrongfully retained in Brazil, and that his abductors were violating court orders entered in New Jersey as well as the stipulations of the Hague agreement by retaining him, he was there in Brazil with his mother, and the mother is the most important parent-child bond. The judge admitted that it had taken far too long for the courts to get to the case, but the judge also said Sean had, in the meantime, acclimated to living in Brazil, and therefore he should stay with Bruna.

The judge referred to a clause in the Hague treaty that gives the court discretion to permit a child to remain in the second country when the left-behind parent has waited a year to request a return and the abducting parent can demonstrate that the child was settled in his or her new environment. The judge pointed out that Sean was attending one of Rio's best schools, had a number of friends, and was a “normal, happy child.” Therefore, he would allow Bruna to keep him in Brazil.

It was a ludicrous ruling, and was completely inconsistent with treaty law around the world, but a firm one nonetheless. I was appalled and upset, and fought hard to hold my tongue. I knew that any outburst on my part would be used against me to show that I was an unfit parent, and would play right into the hands of the kidnappers.

I returned home frustrated and discouraged, and, worst of all, without Sean. While in Brazil, I had not been permitted to see my son, nor had I been allowed to talk with him by phone. It was clearer than ever that the Ribeiros were no longer my loving in-laws, but had transformed themselves into my opponents and were playing hardball.

Before leaving Rio de Janeiro, my attorney and I filed an appeal to the judge's ruling based on the fact that our legal challenges under the Hague, in which I had sought Sean's immediate return, were well within a year of his abduction. In fact, we had filed for help under the Hague Convention rules in September 2004, fewer than six weeks after the abduction. I wasn't asking the Brazilian courts for any favors; we weren't asking them to bend any laws or to make mine an exceptional case; all I was asking was that they do what was right. There were no gray areas; there were not two sides with equally strong positions. The Hague Convention demanded that a child abducted by a parent be returned within six weeks. Our court order in New Jersey demanded that Sean be returned to the United States within forty-eight hours. That had been more than a year ago, and Sean was still in Brazil.

It was also at this point that it became clear to both of my attorneys that the issues in our case were greater than simply those in my case. As my appeal was prepared, it was obvious that one of the weaknesses of our position was caused by the lack of support by the Brazilian government in upholding their own treaty obligations. The Brazilian Central Authority, which administrates the Hague Convention in Brazil, had decided when I originally filed that they would not actively assist in the case if I hired a private lawyer. Since my application had been sitting in Brasília with no action for two months, I had no choice but to secure the assistance of Ricardo. As we began the process of taking an appeal, Tricia knew that the support of the Brazilian Central Authority and the United States embassy would be crucial to success. Tricia traveled to Brazil to collaborate with Ricardo on the appellate case, but particularly to meet with our consul general, Simon Henshaw, who understood that not only were the courts not applying the treaty, but the Brazilian government wasn't supporting the treaty in the way that it should. He was a passionate advocate for the increased support of the Brazilian authorities, and as a result of his advocacy, the BCA decided to review and actively support our appeal.

I returned to an empty house physically and emotionally exhausted. I dropped my things at the door and went into the kitchen to get some fresh food for Tuey, our family cat, who, like me, was still awaiting Sean's return. I glanced around the house to make sure everything was okay, and everywhere I looked, pictures of Sean beamed back at me. But they weren't new pictures. The most recent ones had been taken in the spring of 2004, nearly a year and a half ago. My eyes gravitated toward a photo of Sean and me riding a roller coaster together at the Point Pleasant boardwalk the day before his departure for Brazil. I wondered how much he had changed since then, and what he looked like now. I wondered if he still remembered me or even thought about me.

I trudged up the stairs toward what had been Bruna's and my bedroom. I stopped briefly in front of Sean's bedroom door. I dared not go into his room, where his shoes remained neatly lined up awaiting his return. I couldn't bring myself to look into the baskets filled with his toys. I pushed past the doorway to my bedroom and fell onto my bed, wishing this nightmare could end, praying for Sean's well-being, and for his quick return.

 

 

BETWEEN AUGUST 2004 and January 2005, I was afforded little contact with Sean. I sent him cards and gifts, but I doubt that he ever saw them. Some were even returned unopened.

During one of my early, brief phone calls with Sean, I was reminding him how I'd always carried him around on my shoulders at home when he stunned me with a remark: “There's another guy who carries me on his shoulders now.”

“Oh, really?” I tried not to sound too surprised. “Who is this?”

“My friend.”

“What's his name?”

“John,” he replied. I heard Bruna in the background telling Sean to be quiet, and the next thing I knew, the call was disconnected.

I didn't know who “John” was, but the notion of someone else trying to replace me in my son's life angered and repulsed me. That was also my first clue that perhaps in addition to running off with our son, Bruna had also stepped outside our marriage and become involved with another man.

In January 2005 my attorneys and I became concerned about Sean's whereabouts. The Ribeiros' lawyers continued to misrepresent where Sean was living, saying emphatically that he and Bruna were living with them. That January my attorneys asked for the specific whereabouts of Sean, and eventually were told that Bruna had gotten her own place, with her parents' help. At no time did they tell the Brazilian or U.S. courts that Bruna had moved in with her Brazilian paramour, a man named João Paulo Lins e Silva, and she had taken Sean with her. All I knew was that from January 2005, my contact with Sean was severed.

 

 

SOME OF MY friends tried subtly to encourage me to move on, to let go of Bruna, yes, but also to let go of Sean. I couldn't do that, and I quietly recoiled from anyone who suggested such a thing. “That's easy for you to say. It's not your son who was kidnapped and is being held in a foreign country.” My friend Jim Freda later admitted that at times he thought the situation was hopeless, but didn't want to discourage me. A devout Christian, Jim vowed to pray for Sean and for me, and I have no doubt that he did.

Other friends semiseriously suggested that we form a kidnapping party of our own, that we go down there and bring Sean back without the blessings of the Brazilian courts. Although I never seriously considered such an action, when I contacted the U.S. State Department for help and advice, they adamantly warned me against attempting to get Sean home that way. “If you go down there and break any laws in Brazil by attempting to kidnap your son and bring him home, if Brazil presses charges, we will have no choice but to send you back to face those charges in Brazil.”

Great. Thanks a lot. The U.S. authorities were basically saying, “We will uphold the law if you rescue your son, but we can do nothing to force Brazil to uphold the same law when one of its citizens kidnaps your American-born child.”

A more compelling reason for my not attempting to smuggle Sean out of Brazil was that I didn't want to put him in harm's way. I had already received death threats, and should we try to pull off a covert raid of some sort, wrenching Sean away from his captors and whisking him out of the country, he could easily get hurt. I didn't want to endanger him by putting him at risk of physical harm, not to mention the emotional trauma that might result from such a rescue. No, I had to do it right. I had to bring Sean home through legal, governmental procedures. I was his father. The courts would have to be on my side.

But they weren't.

Over the coming years, each time I got kicked in the teeth and sent home empty-handed, it convinced me all the more that I was perhaps facing an evil far beyond that of Bruna. I was soon to learn that I was correct.

S
OCIALLY, I FELT A BIT AS THOUGH I HAD BEEN MARKED WITH A scarlet letter. People who had heard rumors about Sean's departure but who didn't know me looked at me suspiciously, no doubt wondering what I had done to cause my wife to run off with our child. Ordinary, mundane activities such as going to the grocery store or to a gas station got to be awkward, furtive affairs. I wanted to get what I needed and return home as quickly as possible. Although I had done nothing wrong, people looked at me as though I had. Sometimes disparaging comments that were made about me got back to me. Bruna's orthodontist, for example, who had fitted her with braces after we were married, learned of her actions when I requested her billing records. She had gone to him prior to the abduction, accompanied by her parents, had him do one last adjustment, and then her mom paid off the bill. Later, the orthodontist and his wife were out to dinner with mutual friends of ours. During the conversation, someone suggested, “David must have done something really mean or have been a really bad guy for his wife to take off with his child like that.” Those kinds of comments seared into my heart, but they were unavoidable. Most people assumed there were two sides to every story, so there must be something missing, something that I wasn't telling, or some bizarre element or piece of the puzzle that had not yet been discovered but that would eventually make sense of the entire matter.