Talk:International child abduction in Brazil/Cases

Goldman (June 2004 - December 2009)

Main article: Goldman child abduction case

The case of Sean Goldman gained sustained international media attention after the Hague Convention case languished in the Brazilian courts for years prior to the abducting mother's death during the birth of another child by a new husband, her lawyer João Paulo Lins e Silva. The husband's family were a powerful legal clan with links to the Brazilian elite and attempted to adopt the child and continue to deny access to the legitimate father in contravention of the Convention.

It is argued that the Goldman abduction is a model of the type of case that The Hague Convention was designed to resolve. However, his case became much more than an international child abduction case and turned into a nationalist war of words and media frenzy, with the Brazilian side claiming that the child was Brazilian and that any attempt to return him to the US would be in contravention of the Constitution of Brazil. Even though it is clearly in the Brazilian courts that decisions on whether to return abducted children are made, the neutrality of SEDH and its respect for international law has also come under increased international focus and scrutiny. At the height of the Goldman case in 2009, the Director of SEDH, Special Secretary Paulo Vannuchi intervened publicly, claiming that the child should remain in Brazil. In a speech to the Brazilian parliament in April 2009, he claimed that if the child were allowed to visit his father in the US, he might end up being 'kidnapped'. Sean’s stepfather, Lins e Silva, and his family used their connections to ensure a succession of rulings favorable to their claims.

Larivee (8/04 - 6/10)

In 2001, François Larivee met Ione, a Brazilian woman who had been working as an architect in Montreal for 5 years. Two years later, when they found out she was pregnant, the couple bought a house, began living together and had a son, Lucas Larivee. In January 2004, Ione left and spent 12 weeks in Brazil and when she returned to Montreal their relationship imploded. In August, Larivee moved out and an agreement was signed in which he was allowed to visit his son three to four times a week. Before they had a chance to negotiate the child's custody, though, Ione, alleging she was going on a "short-trip" to the United States, abducted their son to Brazil. Larivee found out about this only when he returned to the house where his ex-partner lived and realized that his sons belongings were missing. He called the police but his attempts to get his son back to Montreal, even to negotiate basic custody, were in vain. He issued a request for return under the Hague Convention and it was sent by the Canadian central authority to SEDH, the Brazilian central authority. “At the time, I thought it would take a month or two to bring him back”, he said “I never wanted to make this public, but I don't think there is anything else I can do but go to the media”. According to Canadian legal sources, international abduction cases between Canada and other countries are sorted out quickly and efficiently except in the case of Brazil, “the difficulty with this Brazilian case is that we are buried in delays. There is always another appeal available to the mother.”

Ione was able to obtain custody of the child in the Rio de Janeiro family court, alleging on perjured evidence that Larivee had abandoned them. Because of this, Larivee had to transfer the case from the Family Court to the Federal Court. In March 2007, almost two and a half years after the original petition, the Federal Courts determined that the child should be returned to Canada. The child could not leave the country until all the appeals had run out, though. In October 2007, the Federal Court of Appeals rejected Ione's arguments and demanded that the child be returned to Canada and Larivee travelled to Rio de Janeiro to pick up his son. It should have been a simple operation, but when court officials went to pick up the child, Ione had fled with the child again. Her lawyer who was, in the meanwhile, inside a car parked in front of the house informed officials that the door was open. According to Larivee, his ex-partner's father was in the house and told authorities: “François is a nice guy, but my daughter is a lioness and will fight until the end, you will never get that child”.

Two days later, Ione obtained a decision from the vice-president of the Federal Court of Appeals suspending the decision to remove the child to Canada. After receiving another reprimand, she prepared two more appeals - one in the Federal Supreme Court in Brasilia and another in the Federal Supreme Court of Rio de Janeiro to try to suspend the previous decisions.

In May 2010, Brazilian Supreme Court (STJ) judge Paulo Furtado formalized an interim agreement between Larivee and Ione over the now seven year old Lucas under which Lucas would return to Canada to live with his mother from March 2011 with all expenses paid by Larivee and that he would travel there before that to spend the school holidays. Under the agreement, Ione agreed to suspend an application to the Supreme Court to reverse a previous decision to enforce Larivee’s rights of custody under the Hague Convention.

According to the judge, the agreement was "the best way to guarantee the welfare of the child" and thus the Hague Convention will be fulfilled. The judge explained also that the arrangement is temporary because the decision may be reviewed by the Canadian courts when the mother returns there. The Brazilian Supreme Court described Ione’s actions in this matter as being motivated by ‘bitterness’.

Unresolved cases

Ayubo (August 2004)

Lorenzo Ayubo was abducted and taken to Brazil from the US on August 23, 2004 during what was supposed to be a two week visit with his mother, Rita Guimarães. His father, Ariel Ayubo, a US resident, did not know that its was the last time he would see his son again. Lorenzo was only 3 and a half years old, then. He waited at the airport for them to come home, not knowing at the same time that Guimaraes was filing for custody rights in Brazil. He says he should have realized then that something was wrong when Guimaraes did not call to let him know that they had gotten to Brazil safely. Her attitude changed and when he asked to speak with his son, Lorenzo. She would say, "he's sleeping" or "not there", or "he's playing" or many many excuses. "I didn't know that Rita was going to do this. I have contacted our elected officials all the way up to the White House with no luck." In 2007, judge Fabricio Bittencourt, of the Federal Court of Guarapuava in Parana ordered that Lorenzo should be returned to his father after three years of judges passing the case from one court to another. Immediately after the order, though, the case had to go to a mediator who said that Lorenzo should stay in Brazil. The Guimaraes family immediately appealed. The appeals process against that decision took another year. Then, in 2008, the Federal Court (TRF) – 4th Region in Porto Alegre ruled that Lorenzo had already been in Brazil for so long that he had acculturated to it and that he should stay with his mother. This, has no basis in the Hague Convention, but it is a common strategy employed by Brazilian legal teams and something that is routinely used by Brazilian judges.In a newspaper interview, the mother, Rita Guimaraes, claimed that she had never kidnapped her son and that she had always maintained contact with the child's father. Ariel Ayubo, however, argues that the Guimaraes family wield considerable political power in the town they live in,that he was systematically denied access to his son and that he was not given adequate support by the bodies charged with maintaining his and his son's rights, such as Special Secretariat for Human Rights (SEDH), the US State Department and Office of Children's Issues and the US Consulate General in Brazil. It is also clear that the level of legal assistance that the Guimaraes family received was of the highest quality, with Rita de Cassia Guimarães lawyer being Flavio Pansieri, Professor of Constitutional Law at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, one of the main law schools in the state of Parana, and President of the Brazilian Academy of Constitutional Law, or the Academia Brasileira de Direito Constitucional. The fact that the Hague Convention overrides the Brazilian Constitution does not seem to have been considered by the judge in this case.

Birotte (4/06)

Kelvin Birotte was born in Las Vegas to Kelvin Birotte senior, a chef at Caesar’s Palace, and Hilma Aparecida Caldeira, a former member of the Brazilian international volleyball team in 2005. In 2006, his mother took him to Belo Horizonte in Brazil with the agreement of Birotte senior for what was meant to be a three month visit to her sick brother. When she did not return to the US after four months, Birotte senior went to the Brazilian consulate in Houston for advice and was laughed out of the room and told that he should contract a Brazilian lawyer. Caldeira had used the four months stay to claim Brazilian residence and citizenship for the child. Denied any assistance by the US Department of State Office of Children’s Issues and the Brazilian Special Secretariat for Human Rights (SEDH), he went to Brazil and was prevented by Caldeira and her family from being alone with Kelvin junior and had to return to the US alone. He went to court in Brazil but the judge did not know what the Hague Convention was and refused to make a ruling, passing the case up to another court. In 2008, a judge from the 19th Federal District Court in Belo Horizonte, Joao Cesar Otoni de Matos determined that Kelvin Birotte junior should return to the US under the terms of the Hague Convention. Caldeira immediately disappeared with the child and appealed to a higher court through her lawyer, Gilberto Antonio Guimaraes, who at the same time claimed to the press that he did not know where she was. The case dragged on until April 2010, when Minister Nancy Andrigui of the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice (STJ), ruled that the child should stay with his mother in Brazil in complete contravention of the terms of the Hague Convention. Caldeira and her lawyer gave a highly emotional interview to the R7 TV channel in Brazil. Guimaraes claimed that Article 13 of the Hague Convention meant that the child should remain in Brazil since he had become acculturated and that a return to the US would be traumatic.He also asserted that the Brazilian judiciary ws a model for the rest of the world. Caldeira, who is in breach of the Hague Convention and may be arrested if she enters the US, cried and claimed that she had been slandered as a kidnapper and that she only wanted the best for her child, that Birotte senior had shown no interest in the child and that he was unemployed in the US and could not keep her in the style that she felt she and her son deserved. "There is no kidnapping. They want to finish me off. No mother kidnaps her child. A mother always seeks what is best for her child. A mother does not run away from a country with her child if she is okay. What woman wants to build something with the child alone? The dream of every woman is to have a husband helping, bringing the child up with love, with financial support, with everything,"

Bordaty (3/07)

Yehezkel Hanan, Israel Haim, and Yoshua Itai Bordaty were born in Israel. The family moved to Florida in July 2006. Eight months later, on March 20, 2007, Smadar Hameiry abducted the 3 children to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Mr. Bordaty filed for divorce in Florida and was granted full custody of the children. Smadar Hameiry was represented at the Florida divorce trial by her Florida attorney.

Mr. Bordaty also filed a Petition for the Return of his children under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. An Application for the Return of the Children was filed by the children's father through the U.S. State Department on June 13, 2007, and was received by the Brazilian Central Authority on July 13, 2007. The Brazilian Federal Court has found that the children were illegally removed from Florida and illegally taken into Brazil because Smadar Hameiry traveled to Brazil without the permission of her husband and without the permission of the Florida Court. The Brazilian Federal Court has also recognized the Florida divorce, that Mr. Bordaty has legal custody of his children, and that the children are being illegally retained in Brazil by Smadar Hameiry. Nevertheless, the Brazilian Federal Court has stated that because the children have been in Brazil for such a long time (after an unexplicable 20 month delay in starting the trial) without having any contact with their father, that it would be in their best interest to stay in Brazil with their mother. According to the Hague Convention, the Bordaty children should have been returned to Florida, USA, by August 2007. Brazil has been determined to be non-compliant with the Hague Convention in this case.

While the Brazilian Federal Court handling this International Parental Kidnapping case has so far refused to return the abducted children, they have also made it very clear that Smadar Hameiry must allow the children to communicate with their father every day. Furthermore, on 7 August 2009, the Brazilian Federal Court issued an Order stating that Smadar Hameiry can return to Israel with the children if she wishes to do so. But the children are still in Brazil, and Smadar Hameiry and her family in Brazil have stated that they will never let the children talk to their father again.

Gerber (9/06)

General problems

1. Most of this is not in the only source - which is a one sided newspaper article - including the extensive quote at the end.
2. The article in question says that Gerber has not seen his children since 2006, yet the photo at the top is clearly dated Decmeber 2009.
3. All is from the point of view of the father.

• What can be relevant (to the article) in this case?

1. it is wrongful retention, not an abduction
2. it concerns France not America
3. Arrest for child support
4. The fact that multiple children mean more children than cases

Nicolas, Laetitia and Anthony Gerber

• names are wrong 'Antoine, Lætitia et Nicolas'

were born in France

• not in source - not relevant

and were abducted in September 2006 in

• they were (allegedly) wrongfully retained not abducted

Fortaleza,

• not in source

Brazil by their mother during a family holiday.

• Source has mother's version - which is different - but neither are relevant

The Brazilian wife tricked her French husband, Alain Gerber, into leaving the children in Brazil

• POV

on the pretext that she needed minor surgery and wanted them with her.

• Not in source

Gerber was so coned, though, that he asked the French pro-consul in Fortaleza for advice.

• Not in source

On September 27,

• Not in source

Gerber returned to France. His wife and children failed to follow him and it was not until March 2007 that he discovered through diplomatic channels that his wife had obtained custody of the three children in the Ceara state courts

• not in source

in contravention of international law.

• Not in source - BLP infringement - POV - Original research

At the same time he discovered that his wife had withdrawn 100,000 Euros from his bank account to give to her extended family in Brazil.

• Not in source - BLP infringement

In the meantime, in December 2006, the French Central Authority Ministry of Justice had contacted the Special Secretariat for Human Rights (SEDH) in Brazil to ask them to locate the missing children. SEDH responded that they were unable to do since they had disappeared (they had always been at their grandparents’ house in Fortaleza).

• Unsourced

In March 2007, in an interesting parallel to the Boyle case, below,

• Synthesis

SEDH said that their work was finished and that they could do no more since the wife had proven to them that Gerber had agreed that she could move to Brazil with the children.

• Unsourced

Evidence from documentation held by the police in Fortaleza, though, shows that his wife did not initially understand what the Hague Convention was and refused to respond to SEDH and to her husband’s phone calls for this reason but that, once she had understood, she changed tack and claimed that she had moved the children to Brazil legally and with Gerber’s approval.

• Unsourced, synthesis, BLP violation

She also claimed to the Fortaleza police that her address was the same as her parents’ while the parents claimed to SEDH that she had disappeared without leaving an address. Despite this, and despite proof that the family home was in France, SEDH initially refused to reopen the case.

• Unsourced

However, in May 2008, SEDH did reopen the case and acknowledged that the children had been abducted but that they were unable to order the return of the children to France.

• Unsourced - contradiction how was it "reopened" if "they were unable to order the return of the children"?

In February 2009, after five lawsuits, theCeara State Court of Justice annulled all their previous decisions on the grounds that they had finally realized that they were not competent to judge what was a case for the federal courts.

• Unsourced - "finally realised" POV language

Gerber immediately filed a lawsuit in the federal courts for the immediate return of his children under the Hague Convention and on February 14, 2009 he went to Brazil,

• Unsourced

convinced that he would be able to return to France with his children.

• Unsourcable - POV

Instead, on arrival he was arrested by the Brazilian Federal Police on a charge of non-payment of child support (see Boyle, below) and only the intervention of the French pro-consul and his lawyer resulted in his release.

• Unsourced, possible synthesis

He was not allowed to be alone with his children and was supervised and filmed and recorded by his ex-wife, her brother and an unknown armed man.

• Unsourced - implies that the armed man was "with" the ex-wife and brother, implies all three supervised filmed and recorded- needs clarifying even if sourced

He was also visited by a ‘Judicial representative’ who threatened him in front of his children with arrest if he did not pay spousal support of 75,000 Euros within three days.

• Unsourced - POV quibble marks, no capital J needed.

In an interview with Le Figaro, Gerber says,

“I have done nothing more than ask for justice all these years. I control my pain as hard as I can. In three years, my ex-wife not even sent a short note about our children. They no longer speak French or know anything about French culture. Both have been completely eradicated from their lives. From birth, I always looked after our children, parental authority was always been shared between us and now, as part of the divorce (which she never had the dignity to respond to) I have ‘right of custody’ under the law in France. I have submitted to the Brazilian court more than 70 sworn statements of good moral standing under the quality of a man, father and husband. How long will Brazilian courts take to solve such cases as mine and make so many people suffer (grandparents, uncles, cousins, father, and of course, our children in the first place)? How long the courts will deny their international commitments? How much longer will the courts allow one of the parents to practice parental alienation the consequences of which are so serious and harmful to children?”

• Not in source. Mostly not relevant even to the case, let alone the article.

Summary: how could this information be used in the article? Well if it was fully sourced it could usefully be used thus (the text is ad lib, not suitable for use):

Cases outstanding include 48 children in 27 cases form the US, 3 children in 1 case from France^[1], 4 cases form Israael 1 from the Netherlands...

Most cases (55) concern abduction but 6 cases ^{[1],[4],[11],[21]} involve wrongful retention...

In two case ^[1],[11] the left behind parent has been arrested in Brazil over non-payment of child support...

Then the citation, or foot-note with citation serves to support the actual text that is about ICAIB not about one specific case.

Summary of the summary:

• Everything must be citable, and preferably cited.
• Anything that might be contentious must be cited - and in this article that is almost everything.
• Everything must be significant to the article.
• The article must be NPOV.

Rich Farmbrough, 00:40, 1 September 2010 (UTC).

Manzi (11/06)

Not all Brazilian abductors are women; in November 2006, Roberto Manzi, a Brazilian man, abducted his two daughters, Bailey, aged 4 and Chelsea, 10, to London in the UK. After a year-long battle a court ordered him to return the girls to the USA. Instead, using false passports, he decided to flee to Brazil, where the family is originally from. According to his wife, Brazil is a country ‘where you could get away with mostly anything’. The children were severely brainwashed by their father and were also prevented to speak to their mother. On August 2009, the Brazilian Federal Court issued an order of return for the two children, but as soon as the abductor learned of the ruling, he took them and hide with them in the city for about fifty days until he could appeal the sentence. In October, he was caught by the Federal Police trying to forge the numbers on the license plate of his vehicle, with intentions to flee again but this time he was arrested for 2 months. The children were taken to one of the mother's family member right away and it's where they are living now. In May 2010, the Judge met with the girls to hear what their wishes were in regards to either stay in Brazil or come back to the USA and both said they wanted to live with their mother in the USA. The Judge also had a video-conference with the mother through Skype. Finally As of July 2010, Chelsea and Bailey are in constant contact with their mother and are more than anxious to come home. The case was being considered by the High Court Judges of the Supreme Court in Brasilia, DF, in Brazil.

Pate (8/06)

Robert Martin Pate of Houston, Texas, met Brazilian woman, Mônica Dutra, in Manaus, Amazonas, in 2000 and they had a daughter, Nicole Pate, When Nicole was six months old in April 2001, the family moved to the US and in 2004 Dutra asked for a separation. Counter accusations flew, with Dutra claiming that Pate had told her she would pay for the divorce and Pate accusing Dutra of being a spoiled tropical princess who could not live without servants. In May 2006, Dutra returned to Brazil for a short visit, saying that her father had cancer. When she did not return, Pate filed a request under the terms of the Hague Convention and Dutra was accused of child abduction. When the case came to court in Brazil, Pate lost. A lawsuit Pate has filed alleges Dutra's employer at the time, El Paso Corporation helped her make that plan a reality.

Rezende-Boyle

Not all abductions involve moving the child to Brazil from another counry. In the case of Rebeca Rezende Boyle, the abducting parent, Mara Silvia Oliveira Rezende, broke off all contact with the child’s father, Martin Boyle, a British citizen. Boyle and Rezende had separated and signed an agreement with the family court in Sao Paulo granting Boyle visitation rights and requiring Rezende to keep him fully informed of his daughter's whereabouts. However, with the assistance of her parents, Maria José Oliveira Rezende, who is a lawyer, and Milton Pessoa Rezende, a director of the US multinational, the L.S. Starrett Company, in Itu, she abducted the child and repeatedly moved her around from location to location while refusing to respond to requests for information from Brazilian lawyers, the British Consulate General in Sao Paulo and International Social Services. Rebeca was 13 when her father finally discovered the Hague Convention and the Hague request was first made in April 2006, but by the time she had reached the age of 16 in July 2008, SEDH had still not managed to locate her, despite repeated assurances to Boyle that Interpol had been informed. In May 2008 the matter was passed by Patricia Lamego de Texeira Soares, the SEDH case co-ordinator, to the Brazilian Solicitor-General Advocacia-Geral da União, who rejected it on the grounds that the abducted child was ‘almost’ 16. The mother’s strategy of playing for time and counting on the slowness of the Brazilian judicial system had worked, despite the father’s increasingly desperate calls and emails to SEDH warning them that the mother was clearly playing for time and SEDH's promises to the father that they would not give the mother more time (even though they had no idea where she was living). On the collapse of his Hague request, the father went to Brazil to search for his daughter and was arrested on landing at Guarulhos International Airport on a trumped-up charge of non-payment of child support which had been issued by Maria Jose Oliveira Rezende in order to physically prevent him from contacting his daughter (see the Gerber case, above). Boyle was kept in prison for 15 days in a 3m by 4m cell with 20 criminals and it was while he was there that he was told that Rebeca had been fraudulently adopted by her stepfather, a man called José Augusto Dos Santos Sá, an employee of Petrobras in São José dos Campos, that her birth certificate had been changed and Boyle's name had been removed from it on the basis of perjured court evidence in which Mara Silvia Oliveira Rezende and José Augusto Dos Santos Sá swore on oath that Boyle had disappeared and that his whereabouts were unknown. During the whole period that the fraudulent adoption was taking place, Boyle had been trying to locate his daughter and had received emails from Milton Pessoa Rezende, all of which indicated a wish not to get involved and none of which mentioned an adoption process. The situation that Boyle found himself in was that he was both the father for the purposes of the spurious child-support claim, had been systematically denied visitation rights for 14 years and was no longer Rebeca's father under Brazilian law anyway The conditions that Boyle were kept in are reflected in an Amnesty International report in conjunction with the UNHCR, which says that the Brazilian detention system is characterized by cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions with overcrowding and gang control being a serious problem. In 2009, Boyle issued legal proceedings in the family courts in São José dos Campos to have the fraudulent adoption reversed but, as of July 2010, the Brazilian judicial authorities had still failed to locate Mara Silvia Oliveira Rezende, José Augusto dos Santos Sá and Rebeca (who by then had turned 18 and was no longer a minor). Boyle has still not seen or spoken to his daughter.

Sanchez-Machado (3/08)

Michael Sanchez met Nigia Machado, a Brazilian woman, in English class in Berwyn, Illinois in the US in 2002 and dated until they graduated in 2004, after which they started living together. A few months later, Machado became pregnant and gave birth to Emily Sanchez Machado. Machado’s parents were extremely upset about the pregnancy. Machado’s parents obstructed Sanchez from seeing his daughter. In December 2005, Sanchez contracted a lawyer to assure his rights as a father. Machado had not listed him the father on the birth certificate, and refused to allow Emily to participate in a paternity test. In court, the judge ordered a DNA paternity test. Based on the results of the DNA test, the judge ordered her to put Sanchez’s name on Emily's birth certificate. On January 4, 2007, after nearly 2 years of negotiations, they were able to agree on terms for a parenting agreement.

One year after the parenting agreement, on March 27, 2008, Nigia informed Sanchez that she would be leaving for Brazil because of ‘frustration with the courts’ and the fact that he knew she was an illegal immigrant in the US. Sanchez’s experiences with authorities in the US and Brazil reflect others’ experiences. The Illinois State Police, the FBI and the NCMEC all listed Emily as missing and then removed her name from their lists. On February 16, 2009, Emily was finally located in Brazil. Sanchez’s story is familiar; he states that he has made over 10,000 phone calls, sent over 2,000 E-mails and 5,000 text messages to people and issued 2,500 press releases and accumulated $14,000 in legal fees. On March 20, 2009, he submitted a petition for Emily's return under the Hague Convention but has faced difficulties with the Brazilian Central Authority.

van Driel-Maciel

Thiago De Sousa Maciel has been held in the state of Amazonas, Brazil by his mother's sisters, Maria Azilna Duque Maciel, who is a Brazilian civil servant, and Maria Auxiliadora de Sousa Maciel. His parents, Kees van Driel, a Dutch citizen, and Maria Acilda de Sousa Maciel, a Brazilian, were officially resident in Bilthoven in the Netherlands. They divorced on June 18, 2008; the mother refused to agree to any custody and visitation arrangements and took Thiago and his half-sister, Maella, from there to Brazil on September 19, 2008. Although Kees van Driel had no custodial or legal rights over Maella, a Dutch court ordered a report and investigation by the Department of Child Defense on Maella’s behalf to so that van Driel could gain contact and at the same time contact was made with the Brazilian central authority, the Special Secretariat for Human Rights, (SEDH), and a request for the return of Thiago made under the Hague Convention. In January 2009, Maciel returned to the Netherlands without van Driel’s knowledge in January 2009 to start an appeal procedure in a superior tribunal. The Dutch police did not put her on a wanted list until February 2009. During the time she was in the Netherlands, the Dutch police were unable to locate her. While in Brazil, Maciel issued a police statement against van Driel and the Office of the Solicitor-General in Brazil (Advocacia Geral da Uniao) postponed the Hague Convention case due to this for several months. According to van Driel, when they did eventually take on the case they did not know what to do and the Dutch central authority had to explain the case again to SEDH. On October 19, 2009, after three enquiries, the Dutch central authority received a letter from SEDH stating that the case had been lodged with the Federal Court of the State of Amazonas under number 2009.32.00.007253-4. On October 20, 2009, the Dutch central authority asked for an indication of the date of the hearing and the exact whereabouts of Thiago. It seemed that in time Thiago had been sent to live with another sister in the state. SEDH responded to the Dutch central authority’s inquiry of November 30, 2009 on January 5, 2010 stating that the Brazilian Solicitor General had filed for return of the child before the Federal Court of the State of Amazonas. The judge informed the mother about the procedures, but no hearings were scheduled. The Dutch central authority responded to SEDH’s incomplete information requesting to know the exact dates when documents had been filed as well as why there had been such a long delay by SEDH. As of June 2010, they have received no response from SEDH.

Weinstein (8/06)

Mr. Weinstein married a Brazilian woman in 1996 in Pittsburgh, in the United States. Both their son, Paul (1998), and daughter, Anna (2001), were born in Pittsburgh. Both children have Brazilian passports due to their mother's nationality. Throughout the marriage, the wife regularly took the children to Brazil each winter and summer. In June, 2006, the wife left for Brazil with the children, promising to return in August 2006. Mr. Weinstein visited Brazil, as he had customarily done each summer, in July, 2006. About the date of their return, the wife notified him that she would be staying in Brazil with the children. In September 2006, he sought a court order in the United States to establish the childrens' habitual residency, seek their return, and obtain primary custody. His wife was properly notified and had legal representation at the hearing.

In response to the court order in the United States, his wife obtained a court order in Brazil giving her full custody of the children and legitimizing her presence in Brazil with the children. Her attorney cited the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as evidence. This Convention was never ratified the United States. Mr. Weinstein was not notified of the hearing and did not have legal representation. This order was later nullified under Article 16 of the Hague Convention.

In October, 2006, Mr. Weinstein petitioned the US Department of State Office of Children’s Issues, the designated Central Authority for the Hague Convention, which immediately transmitted the request to the Brazilian central authority, SEDH. He also registered his children and wife with Interpol. Despite providing two valid addresses and multiple phone numbers, SEDH failed to file a case against the wife until July, 2007. Patricia Lamego De Texeira Soares, the coordinator at SEDH, claimed that Brazilian Interpol took that long to locate the children. In March, 2008, Mr. Weinstein was given ten days notice to be in Brazil for a hearing about the case.

In February, 2010, the federal judge in Brazil issued a ruling denying the petition for the return of the children to the United States. The AGU (Advocacia-Geral da União)filed an appeal to this ruling on behalf of Mr. Weinstein in April, 2010.

Mr. Weinstein has been able to maintain a relationship with his children.

Zanger

Sascha Zanger, an Austrian citizen, married Brazilian woman Maristela dos Santos after meeting her in Brazil in 1993. They had two children in Austria, Sophie Zanger and Rafael Zanger. After their divorce, Zanger paid child support of 1300 Euros a month but his ex-wife failed to give him adequate shared custody. Then, in January 2008, she disappeared, kidnapped her children and took them to Brazil. Zanger then made a request for his children's return using the Hague Convention. Under the convention, his children should have been sent to Austria within six weeks of the kidnapping. That didn't happen. He fought in the courts, went to Brazil four times and spent 100,000 euros on travel and legal fees. Though Maristela was located in March 2008 in Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian courts granted custody to her sister, Geovana dos Santos Vianna and Lílian Vianna. Maristela suffers from mental illness, and her sister was given responsibility of the children by the local family courts in her place. Maristela disappeared again in April 2009, and was only located in June 2009. Meanwhile, a Brazilian court granted a warrant for the children to be located and taken into care, but the warrant was never put into effect, and law enforcement agents failed to act. Just two days after the warrant had been issued, four year-old Sophie was pronounced dead at a hospital in Baixada Fluminense. She had been severely beaten and had signs of cranial fracture, broken wrists, heavy bruising and was also malnourished. Her legal guardian, her aunt Geovana, and her cousin, Geovana's daughter, were arrested and charged with murder. They claimed Sophie had fallen in the bathtub and that Sophie's younger brother had beaten the her. Zanger flew to Brazil refused to leave Brazil until he was given his son back, as well as his daughter's body. However, after the murder, the local family court gave custody of the boy to Maristela's adoptive mother and Zanger had to return to court to demand custody. As of May 2010, Geovana dos Santos and Lílian Vianna remained at liberty.