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BY SHARON HARRIS-ZLOTNICK
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
For five years, little Sean Goldman’s mother and Brazilian grandparents kept from him from his father David by keeping him in Rio de Janeiro. The situation may have now come full circle, following State Superior Court Judge Michael A. Guadagno’s denial of visiting rights to these same grandparents in a Monmouth County court. He issued the 44-page decision on February 17.
David Goldman had agreed to specific visitation conditions for Silvana Bianchi Ribeiro and Raimundo Ribeiro Filho. After rejecting those conditions, they petitioned the court for more lenient visitation.
MaryAnn Spoto of The Star-Ledger reported that Guadagno dismissed the grandparents’ complaint. He reprimanded them for their "contemptible actions’’ and repeated attempts to undermine the father-son relationship by playing a major part in the original Brazilian litigation.
According to Michelle Sahn of app.com, attorney Jonathan Wolfe, of Skoloff and Wolfe in Livingston, confirmed his clients’ disappointment. They accused Goldman of continuously cutting them off from Sean since he returned to Tinton Falls to live with his father in 2009. The grandparents may choose to take further legal action.
The custody battle, creating an international dispute over custody rights for Sean, began in June 2004. Goldman's wife Bruna, Sean’s mother, took the child to her native Brazil for a planned short vacation. Upon arriving, she divorced Goldman, cut all ties between him and Sean and then remarried.
After Bruna died in childbirth in 2008, Sean’s stepfather filed for custody. Spoto reported that the Brazilian court was unaware of Goldman’s New Jersey legal action. The court initially granted custody of Sean to the stepfather, who had charged Goldman with abandonment. Guadagno stated that these abandonment accusations went beyond all decency.
The U.S. government became involved once the American media exposed the case on television. In March 2009, talks took place between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Brazilian foreign minister. Congressman Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) then arranged to travel to Brazil with Goldman, who saw Sean for the first time in over four years.
After much delay and legal conflict, Goldman prevailed and returned to the U.S. with Sean in 2009. Sean and his grandparents communicated via e-mail and photographs, but the grandparents then sabotaged the arrangement by devising a coded e-mail account.
Despite the subterfuge, Goldman would still permit visitation if the grandparents agreed to certain conditions, which included dropping all Brazilian lawsuits. They refused, and Guadagno lambasted them for their lack of gratitude and the relentless legal war. He further charged them with emotional abuse, but agreed to keep the door open for some relationship if the grandparents comply with Goldman’s reasonable expectations.
Sean's mother fled to a foreign country, told his father to forget about being a father anymore, tried to have her new husband "replace" Sean's real father, then died. So Sean was left with a dead mother and a living father, with the dead mother's family trying to take over paternity and custody on the basis of, well, the fact that they were all in Brazil.
For years, the Brazilian government and legal authorities supported their argument, until the Supreme Court ruled that no one on Earth had legal parental rights other than Sean's living father, and the primacy of his dead mother's family died along with her.
After all this, the dead mother's family wanted to see their grandson again, but decided to pretend that the events spanning several years--especially trying to permanently have custody of a child who wasn't theirs and whose father watched as he was basically extradited to another country--and demanded lenient rights. Both Sean's father and the U.S. legal systems told them to forget it.
After all that, I have no Earthly idea how anyone can have a response to anything these people say except "Fuck you" and any response to his grandfather's death except "That's sad news, but the reasons you never saw your grandkid again are your own fucking fault."
Oh, and while I normally love wild speculation (it's the lifeblood of being a sports fan after all) it would be nice if some of the posters here pulled their heads out of their own butts before constructing logic-free hypotheses. Go be ignorant somewhere else, please.
I just visited Sean Goldman in New Jersey. His looks healthy and happy. I am glad to see him. http://t.co/x2gymRp http://t.co/42VvmE6
Posted dated April 8, 2011
...and there's PROOF that Tostes lied about the morbidly obese story.
ETA Royler is a famous jiu-jitsu instructor. His family is famous in Brazil
Please, I'm a brazilian and for me It's very hard to accept this condition.
He is only a child and doesn't deserve it in his life.
In this week, Sean's grandparent died and Sean did not know about.
I you have some notice from him, please send me a message: seangoldmannotice@hotmail.com
Sorry....but you're an idiot.