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Update on Sean Goldman 12/22/2009 3:16:23 PM
This is Parental Child Abduction
I recently received an email that the courts in Brazil have ruled in favor of Sean Goldman. Some have asked why I have not called this a ruling for David Goldman. The fact is this was a kidnapping. It was recognized by the Hague Convention, which Brazil was a voluntary signer to. Although the young child has not been placed on a plane and sent home, we can only hope that will occur very soon.
The Brazilian court had already ruled in Goldman’s favor and then a higher court ruled that there should be a hold or stay until the boy could testify. The idea of putting a victim on the stand in favor of the criminal is absurd. The argument, although on the outside might seem logical, is not.
Think about it…
You find out that your child while on a vacation has been abducted. The other parent in a sleazy attempt of low character has planned to divorce you and then to help drive home the pain, and make it where you can never see your child ever again!
You did not deserve this. You are not an evil or vile person, you simply have found out you are no longer loved by your spouse. This person had spent weeks and months premeditating their final action. They talk to you and tell you that they will see you in two weeks and are maybe even a little affectionate. Behind your back they are leaving their job, closing their bank accounts, and making secretive calls in the shadows. Once they have arrived for their ‘vacation’, which is really a vicious move to run away from their responsibility as an adult or just humanity.
They can’t stand the idea of you ever seeing your child again. They’re so selfish in their desires that hurting you is the only way that they can feel better about themselves. They run to a country that is a voluntary signer to an international treaty, and then hide just long enough to claim the right to keep their stolen child under a loop hole in that same treaty.
They mentally beat their child into believing whatever makes them feel better about their illegal and morally evil actions. The child is only trying to survive, to feel love and be loved. They do not know why their mother has taken them from their father except what the child is told.
Again, imagine this is your child-
The child is raised to learn a language which is not his/her native language. Is taught to call another person by your name, mommy, daddy. They are forced through passive manipulation to let you go and accept this new life.
Later when you find your child, the other parent has the audacity to argue that their vile act was not wrong and should be rewarded by keeping up the lie they have spun. This child knows you, loves you and needs you. At the same time you are a mystery to them. The person who has fed them while hitting them with the emotional stick of lies, and deceit now wants them to get up on a stand and defend them. This is what parental child abduction is. This is why placing a child on a stand after being kidnapped and then enclosed in a reality that served only the abducting parent is a horrific idea.
To better understand this from the child’s point of view let me share some of my own story.
The week after my father was caught, and then let go I was full of mixed emotions. The night before our recovery while hiding my father with his family were praying and begging God to let him get away with us. We were being told about all the vile things my mother was one last time. She was a witch, a whore, b*itch, unfit, she had gone from a loving mother to a child abuser; she had married another man and hurt our father. Dad was trying to tell me with his father and family what I needed to say if they were able to allow me to testify. If dad was found guilty he would go to jail and it would be my fault. I would be the sole reason he would be locked away. I needed to save him. I needed to stay with him. I was reminded that although our home was poor, and mom’s the evil rich home, I knew what our home was like and dad could not protect me from the other home.
On the day of the hearing, December 5th, 1983, we drove up to the Bastrop County courthouse in Texas and dad grabbed our hands. The air was cold and stung with all the force I felt crushing me from inside. Up above a woman looked down at me. It was my mother, and my father reinforced that knowledge I held inside. Dad mumbled under his breath to me about what a tramp she was. She doesn’t want you, she is doing this only to hurt me, and you son. I was more confused than ever, I loved them both!
I didn’t want to testify, I didn’t want to be there but dad said I needed to protect him. The courtroom frightened me even at the age of eleven. Dad and papa told me I might need to testify and I needed to remember that I did not want anything to change. Dad reminded me that he had remarried and I had a new mommy. I would hurt her too by going back to my mother who had not cared for me while he had taken us. She had loved another man and had a new baby boy to replace me. I would hurt my new step siblings, that up until his arrest I had been sworn to keep from them dad’s fugitive past.
I want you to take this story, this narrative, and I want you to put your child in mine and Sean’s place. I want you to look at your spouse, how they love you, and think about how well you know them and how much you love them. Now think about my mother, Sean’s dad, and think how they felt to get that phone call, “Your child is never coming home and you will NEVER see them again”.
This is Parental Child Abduction.
