We hoped that Harazim's efforts might encourage other reporters to look more closely at our case and to increase public awareness about it in Brazil. Few journalists in Brazil were willing to oppose the Lins e Silvas, but an undercurrent of disgust was rife among those who knew the truth. I believed it would be only a matter of time until, like a seething volcano under enormous pressure, one small crack would allow the whole thing to blow sky high.
Following Harazim's lead, a legal publication and Web site in Brazil,
Consultor Juridico
, ran a 3,500-word story detailing how the case had landed in the Brazilian judicial system. The pressure mounted.
Perhaps the sudden media interest opened some eyes at the U.S. embassy in Brazil. I was out on my boat with clients the week before Thanksgiving when I received a telephone call from Clifford Sobel, the U.S. ambassador to Brazil. A good man, and an often mentioned potential candidate for the U.S. Senate, Ambassador Sobel became proactive and took a special interest in getting the U.S. embassy in BrasÃlia to exert as much pressure as possible to get Sean back to New Jersey.
I was surprised to receive the ambassador's call, but extremely grateful. He reassured me that they were working on my case and that we had “the full support of the United States.” I wasn't sure what that meant, but I expressed my appreciation to him. He reiterated that this was a clear-cut child abduction under the terms of the Hague treaty, and he emphasized to me that he understood how every week must feel like an eternity after four years of fighting to get Sean home. “It is a priority for the embassy to have this remedied,” he assured me. I thanked him for his call and returned to my fishing clients.
On December 1, 2008, Dr. Phil McGraw conducted a brief but hard-hitting television interview with me discussing the events since Bruna had died. The
Dr. Phil
show was syndicated throughout the world, so I hoped that someone somewhere might see it and be able to help me. Steve and Karen Bott, two friends of Bruna's and mine, were also interviewed, and they expressed their total surprise at Bruna's actions. Dr. Phil was outraged at the lack of response on the part of the Brazilian courts, and he asked Tricia Apy, also on the broadcast, what could be done. She encouraged his viewers to contact their elected officials and the U.S. State Department, Office of Children's Issues. Many did. The pressure was building.
Anytime I did an interview, I always tried to make the point that Sean and I were not the only parent and child victimized by international child abductors. I would tell how nearly three thousand American children were known to have been abducted. My situation may have been one of the most visible at that time, but we were merely one instance in the greater tragedy. Indeed, since Sean's abduction, more than sixty other children had been spirited away to Brazil by their own parents or relatives. This problem was a worldwide tragedy, and each year the number of abducted children and left-behind families was growing.
On Saturday, December 13, I joined Wendy, Mark, and a small group of demonstrators organized by our Web site to pass out flyers in front of the Brazilian consulate in midtown New York. At first, I felt a little awkward out there on the sidewalk distributing flyers to strangers as they walked by. But it didn't take much to remind me that while most people were busy Christmas shopping or getting ready for Hanukkah, I was getting ready to endure another joyless holiday season without my son. That motivated me to get a flyer into the hands of every person who happened by. Most people took the flyers; some crumpled them up and tossed them in the nearest trash can; but others paused to read the information, and a few stopped to talk about the case. I don't know how much good it did, but it was another bit of ratcheting up the pressure on Brazil to do the right thing.
The Lins e Silvas were powerful people, and I often wondered how far their influence reached. While we were conducting the rally in front of the Brazilian consulate, a South American reporter was interviewing me when her cell phone rang. “Hold on,” she said, as she took the call. A voice on the reporter's phone threatened her with serious consequences if she continued the interview. Suddenly, her face turned white and she stopped the interview immediately and disappeared. Apparently, someone inside the consulate had contacted the Lins e Silvas about the rally and the interview, resulting in the threatening call to the reporter warning her to stay away from this story. I never heard from her again.
Jeff Pegues of WABC-TV covered the demonstration as a followup to the segment he'd done in September. People were increasingly interested in what was going on with the case. Word was getting out, although it was a painfully slow process.
I struggled through another holiday season without Sean, trying desperately to smile, to keep from being a downhead around Mom and Dad, my sister and her family, and Wendy and her kids. My house remained dark throughout the holidays; I put up no Christmas decorations; I lit no menorahs. To protect myself from becoming deeply depressed, and to help overcome my disappointment at not being able to celebrate the holidays with Sean, I focused my efforts on helping NBC get the home videos and photographs of him that they needed for the special they were working on. About that time, I received word that the
Dateline
feature would air in late January 2009. Rather than being one of several stories on the show, the producers had decided to do an hour-long special on our case alone. This could be the big break we needed.
13
Date with Destiny
D
ATELINE NBC
'S PROGRAM TOLD IN DETAIL THE STORY OF SEAN'S abduction, my struggle to get him home, and the uphill battle I still faced. Meredith Vieira hosted the entire program, which included background material on my early modeling career, how Bruna and I had met and married, and how she left with Sean. Meredith again interviewed me, asking poignant, probing questions that allowed me to make my case.
At the close of the program, Vieira asked the toughest question of all: “Does it ever cross your mind that you won't see your son again?”
“I can't think that,” I replied quietly. “No, no; this is so wrong on every level. He's got to come home.”
“How can any of this be possible?” Meredith asked.
“It's sick. Who can help me? Who can help? I just need help.”
Meredith looked at me intently. “How much do you miss that little boy?”
“I miss him every second of every day ... and in my sleep. The time we had together was the most special . . . precious moments ...” I paused momentarily, feeling my emotions getting the better of me, struggling to maintain my composure. “I can never describe the love I have for my son.”
The program aired on Friday night, January 30, 2009. Approximately six million people viewed it, many of whom were becoming aware of my plight for the first time.
The number of people who signed our online petition encouraging government officials to bring Sean home swelled from three thousand to more than twenty thousand almost overnight. Soon that number bumped up to more than sixty-five thousand. The effects were felt all the way to Brazil. Patricia Suarez Lomego, a brave woman who worked with the Brazilian Central Authority, the body in charge of dealing with Hague Convention cases and implementing the decisions, later told Ricardo that she received more than one thousand e-mails as a result of the
Dateline
interview. She was vilified in her own country for her advocacy of justice in our case, while people all over the world bombarded her in-box wanting to know why Sean Goldman was not being sent home.
I received innumerable e-mails and telephone calls as well, expressing support. Suddenly, it seemed as though the entire world knew about Sean and me.
In Brazil, the Lins e Silva and Ribeiro families still attempted to stifle any news regarding Sean, but once the
Dateline
special aired, it was almost impossible for them to keep the information under wraps any longer.
Two people watching were particularly touched by my plea for help: New Jersey congressman Chris Smith and his wife, Marie. They were appalled at the injustice of my situation. At eleven o'clock the night the
Dateline
piece aired, while the credits were still rolling, Congressman Smith was on the phone to one of his staff members.
We had previously contacted Congressman Smith's office, urging him to get involved. Mark DeAngelis and I had both spoken to his chief of staff in New Jersey, but the conversations had yielded no fruit. There were a number of issues, we were informed, that might make it difficult for Smith to get involved, not the least of which was the fact that I did not live in the New Jersey district he represented in Congress, but in an adjoining one. My congressman was Rush Holt, whose office Mark and I had also contacted, with much the same response we had received from our other representatives.
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WHEN CONGRESSMAN SMITH first heard about our case, he went to our Web site and was moved by the story. He placed a phone call to the American ambassador to Brazil to express his concern. Yet because of established protocol between representatives, he felt this was something for Congressman Holt to handle.
The day before the
Dateline
interview aired, Mark had e-mailed Congressman Smith's office and informed them that the network was planning to do a one-hour feature on Sean and me. “If you get a chance, please tune in,” Mark urged.
As it turned out, the congressman's chief of staff and the congressman and his wife all watched the program on Friday night. At around midnight, Mark received an e-mail from Smith's New Jersey office, saying that Smith and his chief of staff had indeed watched the program and asking if I could come in to their district office for a meeting.
On Monday morning, February 2, Tricia Apy, Mark DeAngelis, and I drove to Whiting, New Jersey, to meet with Congressman Smith. Standing to greet us as we were ushered into his office, Smith was dressed in a dark suit with a crisp button-down blue-and-whitestriped shirt. His bright blue eyes sparkled, and his sincere facial expressions highlighted every word, creating a first impression of a man who was friendly and approachable, yet somehow intense. After a few perfunctory conversational tidbits, we seated ourselves in the congressman's office and got down to business.
Congressman Smith had just begun his fifteenth term of office, thirty years of serving the people of New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a devout Roman Catholic, so faith and family are not mere campaign slogans for him; they are integral parts of his life. Growing up in a strong working-class family, he was taught the value of hard work. As an athlete, he played soccer, wrestled, and ran track and cross country, so he had an appreciation for come-from-behind efforts. In fact, he was known for often rooting for the underdog.
A senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Smith strongly advocated pro-life issues, veterans' affairs, religious freedom, assistance for families dealing with autism, umbilical cord and bone marrow stem cell research, and Lyme disease education and research. Congressman Smith was well-known on Capitol Hill for sponsoring legislation in support of human rights, whether that meant fighting against human sex trafficking or campaigning to have abducted American children brought home. In 2008 he had willingly gone far beyond the extra mile in his efforts to rescue two American girls who had been visiting their grandparents in the Republic of Georgia when war broke out there. Thanks to his efforts, the children were now safely back in the United States.
Of course, I wasn't aware of all this when we first met. Mark and I knew that Smith was a champion for human rights, which was one reason why we had tried to get his attention and help for some time. Other than that, I just thought he was a really nice guy. More important, he had expressed a willingness to help, and he had the wherewithal to do it. The congressman later joked that he had no choice but to helpâafter watching the
Dateline
special, his wife got him in a headlock and said, “What are you going to do to help this guy? He needs your help.”
“So today I'm just obeying my wife,” Smith quipped, setting us all at ease.
To enable the congressman to better understand some of the issues of the case that
Dateline
had not touched upon, and to outline some of the help I thought we needed from an elected official, I had written a letter to him over the weekend and had sent it on ahead. The congressman, too, came prepared. When he first heard my story, he talked with Ambassador Sobel, and he was convinced that Bruna's abduction of Sean, and the subsequent retention of Sean in Brazil by her family members, was one of the clearest violations of the Hague treaty that anyone in the State Department could remember. He also seemed certain that I had done everything by the book, taking the proper steps in the correct manner to have Sean returned. “I've read your letter,” he said, looking straight at me, “and I thought it was well done. Let's talk about what I can do to help.”
I briefly reviewed my story, hitting many of the details the congressman already knew from watching the
Dateline
feature. I told him of Bruna's initial demands, my trips to Brazil, the refusal of the abductors to let me see Sean or even talk with him by phone after Bruna's death, the broken promises, and the failure of the Brazilian courts to ensure that I would be able to see my son. I told the congressman that another hearing was scheduled for that very week.
“Fill me in,” Congressman Smith probed. “There's something going on this week, some kind of hearing that you are going back to Brazil to attend?”
“Yes,” Tricia Apy replied, and reviewed the tortured legal history of the case in both countries while Congressman Smith patiently listened. “There is a federal court hearing to decide possible visitation issues for David, and believe it or not, they are still trying to decide whether the case should be adjudicated in federal courts or in their state courts.” Tricia explained that the abductors were pressing for the case to be heard in state court, where they could turn it into a custody case and not a treaty case. This would get around the obligations of the Hague Convention, which demanded Sean's returnâwhich would be a given if the case were adjudicated in the federal court. That the Brazilian judicial system even allowed the competency issue to be considered was scandalous.