Clinton intervenes in US-Brazil international custody dispute
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that she is pushing Brazil’s government to return an eight-year-old boy allegedly being held by Brazilian relatives although his US father wants custody.
“I did raise it at the highest levels of the Brazilian government,” Clinton, told NBC television in an interview of the case of Sean Goldman.
“I’ve been working with several members of Congress. We are hoping that this case gets resolved.”
“It is in their court system. They have an independent judiciary like we have an independent judiciary. Sometimes we’re on the receiving end by families elsewhere in the world,” Clinton added.
Clinton said Goldman’s case is an example of a problem around the world. She said there were nearly 50 U.S. children in similar situations in Brazil who should be returned to the U.S. — and more around the world.
She compared the case to the Elian Gonzalez custody battle, which ended in 2000 when the administration of her husband, President Bill Clinton, decided that a young boy should be returned to his father in Cuba over the objections of relatives in Miami.
American David Goldman in 1999 wed Brazilian Bruna Carneiro Ribeiro, who gave birth to Sean in 2000. The family lived in the eastern US state of New Jersey.
Goldman says that when he and his wife went to Brazil for a visit in 2004, she disappeared and then called him to say the marriage was over and she would not be returning to the United States.
She got a Brazilian judge to grant a divorce, and then she remarried. She died in childbirth in August.
David Goldman reestablished contact with her family and started legal efforts to win custody of his son, and in September he visited Brazil but made no progress.
Clinton, who was speaking from Jerusalem, stressed that: “It is important that we spend some time working with friends and partners like Brazil.
“This is an ally on many important issues with the United States, a neighbor, and Latin America, and we have similar concerns with others — that we have an international agreement about how to handle these child custody cases. We have one, the Hague Convention.”