RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the Brazilian government yesterday to push for the return of an 8-year-old boy to his US father, who says his son was abducted illegally more than four years ago. Clinton, speaking in Jerusalem on NBC’s “Today” programme, said she had raised the case at the “highest levels” of the Brazilian government and urged it to grant US citizen David Goldman custody of his son, Sean.
“Mr. Goldman has, under every known law of international adoption, followed the rules,” she said.
“He’s come in, he’s made a claim, which is certainly a paramount claim that as the biological father he has every right to have custody of his son.”
Goldman’s wife, Bruna, took Sean on vacation to her native Brazil in 2004, then divorced him and stayed there in what Goldman says was a case of international child abduction. She died last year in childbirth and her new husband is refusing to return the boy to Goldman, who lives in New Jersey.
The new husband, a lawyer, is living with the boy in Rio de Janeiro, where Goldman saw him for the first time in four years last month.
Brazilian local courts have declined to grant Goldman custody, despite both Brazil and the United States being signatories to the 1980 Hague Abduction Convention.