Children Are Not Chess Pieces

Last night NBC did a two-hour Dateline report on David Goldman, the young father whose wife pretended to take their then 4-year-old son Sean back to her native Brazil for a vacation. Instead, after arriving in Brazil with Sean, the wife called David and let him know that she had left him and their marriage, and intended to keep Sean in Brazil. For the next five or so years, Sean's parents engaged in an international battle, with David charging his wife with parental kidnapping, and, after her tragic death in childbirth, fighting for the return of his biological son from the boy's stepfather and maternal grandparents.


What struck me most, as I watched the program, is the profound trauma this child suffered and the utter disregard for his psychic well-being on the parts of all the parties involved in Brazil. In his short life, Sean has endured:

• being hi-jacked by his mother at the expense of his father;
• adjusting to a divorce and remarriage by his mother;
• the rare death of his very young mother in childbirth;
• the confusing visits of his father David, who would appear and disappear periodically;
• the attempt by his Brazilian family to erase the child's love and memory of his father by withholding letters and gifts sent from the U.S. by David, and allegedly telling Sean that David was a bad father;
• the public spectacle of being marched through the streets by his stepfather and grandmother surrounded by a mob of rabid paparazzi in order to finally transfer custody to David;
• being thrust into a "family celebration" with people he may very well have forgotten, and
• returning to New Jersey to a familiar but different house and a school where his fractured, forgotten English would be a hindrance to his adjustment.

How exactly is a nine-year-old supposed to have collected the skills and emotional foundation to cope with all this nonsense? He appears to be a people pleaser, the kind of personality that shoves down real feelings in order to keep the peace and avoid hurting the feelings of anyone, especially adults. He has put on a happy face, albeit with eyes that are slightly vacant, while his American family does whatever it can to spin the story in their favor. At some point, the price of adults behaving badly will be paid at least by this innocent child, and likely by others with whom he tries to develop relationships. And who won? Clearly not Mom or her extended family. David? He lost five years of a once highly productive life and wonderfully awesome early years of a child's development. He seems to have won the battle, but will he ultimately lose the war, especially if Sean manifests these traumas via problematic behavior or emotional problems?

Children deserve better. They are people, not property that should populate parental battlefields. They don't ask to come here, they have no say in who their parents are or who they become, and they get no vote on the outcome when things go haywire. But when the time comes to pay...