A Father's Love (21 page)

MY JOY OVER Sean's and my first visit was short-lived. The next day, Sean seemed much more cool and aloof. It struck me that the reason his demeanor toward me had changed overnight might be because he had been chastised for showing affection to me the day before. As the second visit progressed, Sean told me that his grandparents, especially his grandmother, had scolded and rebuked him for being so friendly to me the previous day. I was the “enemy,” after all, and how dare he warm up to the enemy! They intentionally kept him up most of the night so he would be too tired to enjoy playing with me in the morning. They also excoriated him for calling me Dad.

When he came to meet me that second day, he called me David. He admitted to me, “I'm not allowed to hug you. I'm not allowed to say ‘I love you,' and I'm not allowed to call you Dad.”

His words broke my heart, but I knew they weren't coming from him. They were channeled through him from the people watching out the upstairs window.

At the risk of alienating my son and destroying all the good feelings we had experienced the day before, I wrapped him in my arms and looked into his clear eyes. “Look, Sean,” I said gently, “I don't care what is going on up there.” I nodded toward the Ribeiro apartment. “I am your father, and it's okay to call me Dad.”

Sean did his best to comply with my instructions as well as the abductors' demands. For a while, he simply quit calling me anything. “Come here,” he'd call, cutting himself short, to avoid addressing me purposely as Dad. I understood his struggle and didn't want to put him in an impossible situation, but I couldn't let the situation pass by unnoticed. I was his dad, and I wanted him to know that no matter what, I would always be his father and he would always be my son. Nothing he or anyone else said or did would ever keep me from loving him. Our relationship was based on “blood” and love, not court orders. That relationship required respect, despite the attempts of Sean's maternal grandparents and the Lins e Silvas to disparage me and spawn disrespect for me in his heart and mind.

During my second visit with Sean, he and I played board games at a table by the pool. How did I know where to start and what he might enjoy? Before going to see him, I had checked with some of the people at the embassy who had children around Sean's age. I asked Karen de Andrade, “What are some of the hot or trendy games that are popular among preteen kids in Brazil?” guessing that Sean might be aware of them. Karen made some good suggestions. I had also observed Wendy's kids back home; we sometimes played games together, and I noticed what they liked, so I took some of those kinds of games and toys, too.

All too soon, my few hours of “abductor-controlled” visitation with Sean came to an end. I hugged him close to my heart. “I love you, Sean,” I told him. “I will always love you.”

We walked over to the steps leading away from the pool area, neither of us saying a word. Just as before, our eyes connected; the father-son bond was there, and it hurt so badly that we simply couldn't go home together. I watched him leave, and waved as he stepped inside the building.

As euphoric as I felt at the close of day one of our visitation, my heart was breaking at the close of day two. Clearly his captors had intended to show him, by our confinement and the psychological pressure they were exerting on him, that my role as his dad had diminished and was nonessential, that at most I had become a guy who might come and visit now and then. They were trying to imply that because Sean and I were severely restricted in our expressions of love and our overall interaction, our relationship could reconnect only so far. I pulled strength from deep within myself and focused on my love for Sean. It was so difficult to walk out that gate, leaving my son behind. Yet I had no other legal options. I was not about to take the law into my own hands. I had never seriously considered doing so, and I certainly was not going to succumb to such a temptation now.

I returned to my hotel room and sent an e-mail to Mark DeAngelis.

I couldn't sleep, so I watched the video clips of Sean and me playing in the swimming pool. I watched them over and over again. I was determined that I would not rest until Sean and I could play like that in our own pool, in our own backyard in New Jersey. The six hours I had spent with him over those two days had zoomed by, but they were the best six hours I'd had in a long, long time. Seeing him those days was the most beautiful thing I'd experienced since his birth.

 

 

I STAYED IN Brazil a few more days because I was “encouraged” by the court to undergo psychological tests. It was a requirement that was being supported by the Brazilian Central Authority as well. Ostensibly, João Paulo Lins e Silva was to receive the same tests, and Sean himself was to be examined. The psychological tests were really not optional, but rather were insisted upon by the Brazilian authorities, since João Paulo Lins e Silva had petitioned the court stating that I posed “a grave risk of harm” to Sean if we were reunited. I was reluctant to consent to the tests, not because I feared the results but because the Hague treaty does not require psychological verification. Moreover, my attorneys feared that the tests could be some sort of trap, a clever ruse to create a battery of psychological “facts,” and the information gleaned could perhaps be twisted, attempting to prove that I was in some way unfit to be Sean's father, thus manufacturing some “factual” basis to retain Sean. But I was Sean's father, his only real father, and he had been stolen from my life. Why was he not home with me? The answer to that question was the only one that mattered to me.

Tricia Apy expressed strong concerns that subjecting the treaty analysis to this psychological test could be used by the court as a pretext. Although Ricardo agreed, he was convinced that we had little choice; he contended that if we did not submit to the psychological exams, we would be giving our opponents a tool that they could leverage against us. Against my will, and with as many safeguards as my attorneys could place around the tests, I finally consented.

Apparently, the Lins e Silvas and Ribeiros were certain the psychological tests would work to their advantage. It turned out just the opposite. The Brazilian psychologists assigned by the federal court concluded that Sean had been the victim of “parental alienation.” And in analyzing the strained visitations, they drew the same conclusion: that the pulling back by Sean could be attributed only to pernicious parental alienation inflicted upon him by his Brazilian grandparents and Bruna's husband. They noted, as well, after visiting the grandparents' and husband's homes that Sean did not possess a single picture of me, or any picture that showed the two of us together. In response to the psychological report, the Ribeiro and Lins e Silva families immediately hired their own psychologists in attempts to dispute the independent psychologists' findings. For their interrogation of Sean, they took him, without the permission of any court, or notice to me, to a mental institution outside Rio.

The findings of the three court-appointed psychologists became a powerful jackhammer that broke through one obstacle after another in the abductors' attempts to keep Sean in Brazil. Though written in Portuguese, the translations clearly stated that Sean was in “a wrongful retention,” and that he “should be returned to the custody of the biological parent.” Moreover, the three psychologists agreed that Sean had suffered “serious psychological damage” while being kept in Brazil. The technical term the psychologists used, “parental alienation,” suggested that the Ribeiros' and Lins e Silvas' attempts to disparage me and undermine my parental role in Sean's life were causing devastating emotional effects in Sean. No doubt the longer he endured this sort of despicable treatment, the more chance of long-term damage—all the more reason why I had to get my son home.

B
ACK IN THE UNITED STATES AFTER SEEING SEAN, I MISSED HIM more than ever. But finally being with my son also motivated me, buttressing my will and making me even more determined not to give up the fight.

Congressman Smith had arranged a meeting with the Brazilian ambassador to the United States, Antonio Patriota, so upon hitting the ground, I didn't even go to my house, but continued on to Washington. The meeting with Ambassador Patriota did not begin well. I had brought with me the videos Congressman Smith had shot of Sean and me in the pool in Brazil, but the ambassador did not even want to see them. Congressman Smith worked the conversation around until the ambassador finally agreed to watch the videos. Meanwhile, I laid out all sorts of pictures of Sean on the coffee table in front of him. There was no use arguing with him, so I simply pointed to a picture of Sean and said to him, “This is my son.” I looked the man in the eyes and said it again. “This is my son.” I let that sink in for a long moment, and then said, “This is my son, and somebody who is not the father
has my son
.”

The ambassador's demeanor softened, but at the end of the meeting, his only recommendation was that Congressman Smith not push the resolution he had presented in the House. Patriota clearly hoped that, with time, the problem would simply go away.

 

IT WAS NO less difficult to step inside my house when I returned from my trip. I knew now after being with Sean that he was no longer the little four-year-old boy whose pictures surrounded me at home. He was soon to be nine years old. I'd have to buy him all new clothes when he came back; I was looking forward to that. And we'd probably want to update his bedroom, now that he was soon to be entering preadolescence. From the day he left with Bruna, I kept Sean's room exactly as it was—with all his stuffed animals on his neatly made-up bed, his clothes hanging in the closet. His little shoes remained lined up nice and neat. His toys were in their baskets, all just as he had left them.

Nor did I remove his sandbox outside or the childproof gate at the top of the upstairs stairwell. One day, I believed, Sean would come home to me, and when he did, I wanted our home to be as close as possible to the way it was the day he departed for Brazil. As the only difference, I usually kept the door to his room closed. I couldn't bring myself to go in there unless absolutely necessary. The memories were simply too painful. Even in my bedroom, I'd often have flashbacks of Sean bounding in each morning, raising the blinds, and looking out the windows facing the river below. “Holy mackerel!” he'd exclaim, as if it were the first time he'd ever viewed the panorama in front of him. The natural setting was a source of great wonder to Sean, no matter the time of year.

“Oh, God, please bring him home,” I prayed every night and every morning. “I miss him so much.”

Fortunately for me, in some ways at least, I didn't have much time to sit around the house and mope. Upon my return from Brazil, I was soon shuttling back and forth from Tinton Falls to Washington and New York, attending meetings, doing interviews, traveling the media circuit, talking to anyone who might be able to exert pressure on the courts in Brazil.

It was a daunting task. In most interviews, I had only a few minutes to get my message across. I did my best to remain calm and articulate. One wrong word, one emotional outburst, could have sabotaged all of our efforts. This was serious business. I wasn't on tour, trying to promote a product; this wasn't like doing an ad for a magazine. I wasn't selling anything. Nor was this my idea of fun. I just wanted my son back.

All I could think about, as I lay awake each night with this great sense of urgency that had taken over my life, was:
Time is of the essence
. Each day that Sean was in Brazil played into his captors' hands; he was growing older and more accustomed to being there, and losing his memory of his time in the United States with his family and me.

 

 

IN LATE FEBRUARY and early March, two significant events took place that changed the playing field completely. First, in Brazil, the judiciary finally decided that our case belonged in the Brazilian federal court, not a state family court. Besides snatching the case away from Lins e Silva cronies, it put the decisions back under the Hague Convention, where they belonged.

Second, in the United States, after struggling for years to make any headway with our government, almost overnight Sean became front-page news in Washington. I'm convinced that one of the main reasons our case rose to such a high level was the behind-the-scenes efforts of former assistant secretary of state Bernard Aronson.

Bernie Aronson knew just how difficult negotiating with Latin America could be. He had served as the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs between 1989 and 1993 under President George H. W. Bush and during the first six months of President Bill Clinton's administration, longer than any other holder of that post. Bernie had played a crucial role in the successful negotiations to end the war in El Salvador, negotiated with the Soviet Union over Central American issues, and helped convince Brazil and Argentina to place their nuclear programs under international safeguards. Bernie understood how slow and unnecessarily cumbersome the Brazilian judicial system could be, how it could be manipulated by powerful elites, and how hopeless and heartrending it could be for a lone American citizen like me seeking justice from the Brazilian courts.