A Father's Love (8 page)

Occasionally she would allude to her former lifestyle in Brazil, where she had lived in pampered affluence, complete with security guards at the gates to the family apartment and nannies and chauffeurs, as she was growing up. Sometimes she would brag to her friends, “Oh, in Brazil we drive around in bullet-proof cars.” Conspicuously absent from her descriptions, of course, was any reference to the
need
for security guards and bullet-proof vehicles. Bruna's own mom and dad had gotten trapped in the middle of a shootout right outside their home one day when they went out for ice cream. On another occasion, her father was held up at gunpoint while riding in the back of a taxi. Once, as Bruna came out of a store, an assailant lunged at her with a knife. She escaped and fled in her car. In truth, life in Brazil was often not safe, but Bruna always put a positive spin on it.

If Bruna was disillusioned with our simple, quiet lifestyle in one of the most picturesque parts of New Jersey, she never showed it or spoke of it to me. Apparently she was a much better actress than I had ever imagined.

A
FEW DAYS AFTER BRUNA LEFT, WE RECEIVED A NOTICE IN THE mail that her official U.S. Permanent Residence status had been approved, based on our being married. We had gone through the process of obtaining her green card, and the permanent resident status was just one step below her gaining citizenship. She already held dual citizenship in Brazil and Italy, so she could come and go as she pleased from Italy to the United States, based on the Visa Waiver program, but she wanted American citizenship, too. I had thought she wanted U.S. citizenship because she was so in love with me and happy living with me in New Jersey.

Less than a week or so after Bruna declared her intentions, our nanny showed up to do some housecleaning. As best as I could explain, I tried to inform her of what had happened and I asked her to stay on part-time to help me keep the house in shape even though Sean was not there requiring her care. She needed the job, and I appreciated the help, so she agreed to come once every two weeks to tidy up the house.

The first day the nanny was there, she found some things that she knew belonged in Bruna's closet. When she opened the closet doors, she couldn't believe her eyes.

“David,” she called to me downstairs. “Can you please come up here? I need you to see something.”

I trudged up the stairs to the master bedroom, and when I looked inside the closet, I understood immediately what was so disconcerting. I hadn't really paid much attention to Bruna's closet since she left. Now I saw that, except for a few old, unwanted items that Bruna never wore, all of her valuable clothes were gone. All of her jewelry, belts, shoes, and other items of value were also gone. I realized for the first time that the four suitcases I had lugged into Newark airport the night she left were filled with the best of everything she owned.

About that same time, I noticed that the second set of keys to Ray and Silvana's condominium in Sea Bright was not hanging in its normal spot, on a key rack by our front door. We had our own set of keys to their condo so we could check up on it, make sure normal maintenance was being done, and use the condo while they were away. I looked all over the house, but the keys were nowhere to be found.

The reality of the situation was now hard to deny: Bruna was not coming back. I knew I needed some legal counsel, so I started calling around Red Bank for attorneys. Mom and Dad went with me for many of the initial meetings, both for moral support and to help me remember what the attorneys said. My mind was still muddled by the shock that I had found myself in such a position, seeking legal representation so my son could sleep in his own room.

Some of the attorneys with whom I spoke did not feel my situation was their sort of case, or they felt it was outside the area of their expertise. Most were willing to recommend others I should contact. All of them offered two consistent bits of free advice: “Start taping all of your conversations with Bruna,” and “Do not step foot in that country without legal representation.”

In meeting with the various attorneys, one name surfaced in almost every conversation, that of a local Red Bank lawyer named Patricia Apy. “Patricia Apy is the best of the best for this kind of case,” I was advised. But when I contacted her, Apy said her caseload was too heavy and she turned me down.

Eventually, she called me back. “I have an opening and can take your case, if you are still interested,” she said. To me, it was almost like a sign that she was the right person for the job. Her office was a mere five minutes from my home, a fortuitous circumstance I would come to appreciate in the years ahead.

When I first met with Apy, she seemed highly professional, yet friendly and easy to talk to. “Call me Tricia,” she said with a winsome smile. Tricia had a good understanding of the ramifications of Bruna's absconding with our son. Most important, she recognized that ours was not a custody case but an abduction case, and as such, if I ever wanted Sean to come home, my best hope was to file for help under something called the Hague Convention, an agreement on the civil aspects of international child abduction.

I had never heard of the Hague Convention, so Tricia explained that it was an international treaty signed by more than eighty countries, including the United States and Brazil, agreeing upon principles and actions to remedy international parental child abduction. Initially, the United States Congress, in ratifying the treaty, clearly believed that the need for guidelines concerning the return of abducted children grew out of Middle Eastern marriages in which a man married a non–Middle Eastern woman and then absconded with their child, often returning to a country in which the woman had no recourse and even fewer rights. In fact, twenty years of practice under the treaty would reveal that more mothers than fathers engaged in the wrongful removal of children, basically kidnapping their own children and running off to foreign countries, most notably Brazil, Mexico, and Japan. Japan was not a signatory to the Hague agreement, but Mexico and Brazil were.

Under the Hague Abduction Convention, Tricia informed me, children must be returned swiftly, and a custody hearing must take place where the child normally lives, which in our case meant New Jersey, not Brazil. Like her fellow attorneys, Tricia emphatically warned me against spontaneously booking a flight to Brazil in an attempt to get Sean back. “Do not go to Brazil,” she said. “You cannot set foot in that country. If you do, she could drag you into a custody case or some false or criminal charges, and you will be in their jurisdiction, and you don't want that. This is not about custody. You and Bruna are not divorced; you are not legally separated. You did not consent for Sean to take up permanent residence in Brazil. She has abducted your son.” Tricia further explained to me that the Hague Convention stipulated that children taken out of a country without the permission of both parents should be returned within six weeks. “Brazil is a signatory to the Hague Convention,” Tricia told me, “but they are a relatively recent signer. Yours would be the first case brought for the return of an American child. What should take six weeks or fewer may take more time.”

I leaned forward in my chair and dropped my jaw. “More time?” I asked.

“The average length of time for a contested treaty case and return of an abducted child is, in my experience, eighteen months to two years. But this is clearly a treaty case; the facts are unequivocal. Bruna has only been in Brazil a few weeks, and once you file may voluntarily return. I would predict that at a minimum you should expect six months to secure a return.”

 

 

LATER, BRUNA'S PARENTS would attempt to use my willingness to abide by the attorney's advice as an argument against me, saying, “David was more interested in complying with his attorney than coming to visit with his own son.” That was lunacy. Of course I wanted to see Sean, and would have been there at a moment's notice to bring him home, but my attorney wisely counseled me to stay out of Brazil until orders had been entered by the New Jersey court, and there were assurances that Sean would be returned to me under the rules of the Hague Convention.

Tricia's advice both gave me hope and made my stomach turn. Intellectually, I understood when she said it could take months to get Sean home, but emotionally I clung to that lower number. Indeed, even six weeks seemed like an eternity to me. Six weeks without my son? Six weeks without seeing his smile, without tossing him onto my shoulders, without taking him out for breakfast or a ride in our boat? Six weeks without tucking him into bed? How could it possibly take so long? How could we survive six long weeks apart? Six
months
? Impossible.

I recognized, of course, that getting Sean home was just the first of many steps. Bruna had not filed for divorce, and Tricia advised me not to file for divorce unless and until Sean was back on U.S. soil. To do otherwise, she said, would dramatically slow down the effort to have Sean returned expeditiously. An entirely different international legal process has to be employed to litigate divorce, then, to secure the return of an abducted child. Further, it might cause Bruna to solidify her position even further, and hope for getting Sean home anytime soon might evaporate. It might also cause the Brazilian courts to be less inclined to push for Sean's return.

Also, the focus was to bring Sean home, not to start any other costly litigation that might muddy the waters or slow the process. But I also knew that in the United States, a former marriage partner is not permitted simply to take a child to another state without the other partner's permission, much less to another nation. I felt sure that the U.S. court system would be fair.

Whatever sort of custody arrangement we eventually agreed upon, at least it would be done in the United States, in our home state, the area in which we had lived together, and would be decided by a U.S. judge. All of that seemed so very far in the future. Right now, all I cared about was getting Sean home.

 

 

TRICIA CAUTIONED ME to be strong, and not to allow Bruna to sway me into doing something stupid. “She will use everything she can to get you into that country,” the attorney warned, “but don't do it. She may try to woo you there with kindness; she may try to seduce you; she may try to cajole you, threaten, or accuse you. She may do anything to try to trap you into a family court custody case in Brazil. Don't be fooled.”

In fact, Tricia was suspicious that I had been set up from the beginning. Although I didn't know it at the time I hired her, she would later discover that Bruna had already been laying the groundwork. Immediately upon arriving in Brazil, she had filed a cause of action, which she kept secret from me. In it, she alleged that she and Sean had already been living in Brazil for an extended period of time, and that Sean had already been enrolled in school—both misleading statements. Bruna had indeed enrolled Sean in school as soon as she arrived in Brazil, without my knowledge or consent. She also had Sean seeing a therapist, ostensibly to “help him deal with the loss of his father,” thus attempting to give the impression to the court in Brazil that our situation had resulted from a planned separation. She even told the Brazilian courts that her parents had assisted her in negotiating the terms of our separation, an allegation her parents would later attempt to deny.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. If there had been a planned separation, it had been orchestrated by only one partner in our marriage, Bruna, most likely with the support and assistance of her parents. When Bruna disclosed to me in one of our early conversations that she had enrolled Sean in school and that he was seeing a therapist, I was appalled. “Bruna, what are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, Sean loves school, and he is seeing a wonderful therapist.”

I later discovered that she knew exactly what she was doing, and was following a well-orchestrated plan to give the impression to the courts that she and I were legally separated.

 

 

WITHIN A WEEK or so after Sean's abduction, following Tricia Apy's instructions, I began recording Bruna's telephone calls to me. When Bruna realized that I was not cooperating with her plans, the calls took on a less friendly, more aggressive tone. “You need to come here,” she urged. “We need to take care of all this here. Why should I come there? You are the one alone.” At times she begged me, at other times she cajoled me, but the message remained the same. “Come here and sign over custody of Sean to me.” She promised that if I did so, she would bring Sean home for visits every few months. But then she dropped some frightening hints.

“We can do this together and do it friendly, but if you are not going to come here, things are going to change.”

Still surprised at Bruna's new tone, I countered, “You're threatening me, too?”

“I'm not threatening you,” she answered. “I'm telling you.”

W
ORK WAS GOOD THERAPY FOR ME, ESPECIALLY DURING THOSE first few days after Bruna's calls. Getting in my boat and heading back out to sea was a tonic for my soul as well as my body. I'm not sure that I was such good company for my charter customers, however, during those early days after Sean's abduction. I was often sullen and moody, trying my best to help my clients have a good time and catch the big fish they sought, but becoming melancholy if not downright morose as the six-hour charter went on. Thanks to stories like
Moby-Dick
, fishing captains are often perceived as a crusty Captain Ahab types, or like the cantankerous shark hunter Quint in the movie
Jaws
, so maybe my new clients weren't surprised. Actually, most modern captains are pretty nice guys, and I felt bad that some of my clients thought I was an unfriendly sad sack.