Thu Dec 24
MIAMI An American father and his nine-year-old son arrived on US soil Thursday evening after a bitter five-year custody battle that ended in time for the pair to spend Christmas together.
David Goldman and his son Sean arrived in Florida aboard a plane chartered by US television network, which reported their arrival.
Chris Smith, an American lawmaker who helped the father, told AFP in Brazil that the network had bought exclusive access to the Goldmans' story.
In an interview conducted aboard the plane, David Goldman told Media the experience had been extremely emotional.
"My little boy is five feet away, sound asleep, peaceful. We're on our way. My heart is just melting. I love him."
An NBC reporter on the plane said the father and son appeared close, at times laughing and playing puzzles together, though an exhausted Sean also slept for stretches of time.
The boy, who speaks broken English but is more comfortable speaking Portuguese, was handed over to his father in chaotic circumstances at the US consulate in Rio de Janeiro early Thursday.
Smith said the reunion was "very warm, very emotional," but it was preceded by a media scrum as Sean's Brazilian family delivered the boy to his father's custody.
Media reported that David Goldman was "very angry" about the way Sean was brought the consulate.
The child cried and looked shocked as he ran a gauntlet of 60 reporters, photographers and cameramen. The jostling media crowd had to be held back by police to let him pass.
The reunion and US return were made possible by a Brazilian Supreme Court order delivered this week that capped Goldman's long custody struggle against his late ex-wife's Brazilian family, which assumed care of Sean after his mother died in childbirth last year.
"Please accept my most sincere and humblest gratitude" for the outcome, Goldman said in a statement delivered by Smith, adding he was overjoyed at the reunion with "my beautiful son."
"My love for him knows no boundaries," the statement said.
The pair took off three hours after they met for just the third time since being separated in 2004. Their previous visits were in February and June this year.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was "thrilled" that father and son were finally together and flying home.
"I offer my warmest wishes for father and son as they celebrate their first holiday season together in five years," Clinton said in a statement.
She had led US government efforts to have Sean returned to Goldman.
The US Congress also added pressure, denouncing what it called the boy's "kidnapping" and holding up passage of a trade measure benefiting Brazil until the handover was secure.
Sean's Brazilian grandmother, Silvana Bianchi, told the Globo news website that the boy "was very sad to go."
"He was very nervous. He had a fever of 38.5 degrees (96.4 degrees Fahrenheit) last night and vomited when we arrived at the consulate. He was really shaken up," she said.
The family's lawyer, Sergio Tostes, told reporters the Brazilian relatives were extremely "upset" by the way the handover was handled by US consular officials.
He also said that Sean's grandmother had been denied a seat on the plane -- which he was told was chartered by the US government -- to accompany him to the United States.
But Smith said Sean's Brazilian family had deliberately paraded him in front of the media instead of accepting arrangements to drive into a discreet consulate entrance to avoid the cameras.
"It was very cruel... a coup de theatre," the US lawmaker said.
A US embassy spokeswoman, Orla Blum, also denied Tostes's charge, saying steps had been taken for a quiet entry into the consulate "so Sean could meet his family, his father, in calm."
Sean was born in the United States in 2000 with dual US-Brazilian nationality to Goldman, a former male model, and Bruna Bianchi, a fashion designer originally from Rio.
In 2004, Bianchi traveled to Brazil with the boy for what she said would be a two-week vacation, but instead stayed there, divorced Goldman and married Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, a prominent lawyer.
She died last year while giving birth to a daughter.
David Goldman told the Media he planned to give Sean's Brazilian grandmother the chance to see her grandson.
"It will take time, but I won't deny" them the right "to know each other," he said.
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