Brazilian "Justice" Fails Yet Again

Sasha Zanger, an Austrian man, married Brazilian woman Maristela dos Santos after meeting in Brazil in 1993. They lived in Austria and had two children, Sophie, age 4, and a boy, age 12. But their marriage came to an end and they divorced. Mr. Zanger paid child support ($1300 euros a month) but his ex-wife failed to give him adequate shared custody.

Then, in January 2008, she disappeared. She had kidnapped her children and brought them to Brazil.

Sound familiar?

Mr. Zanger then began a legal battle to get his children back, using the Hague Convention as the legal basis for his plea. Under the convention, his children should have been sent to Austria within 6 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. Despite the fact that children were kidnapped, he continued to pay child support, especially since the children were living in a favela in precarious conditions.

But it did no good. Though Maristela was located in March 2008 in Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian courts granted custody to her sister, Geovana. Maristela suffers from mental illness, and her sister was given responsibility of the children in her stead. Maristela disappeared again in April 2009, and was only located on June 22nd.

Meanwhile, Mr. Zanger saw hope on the horizon: on June 17th, 2009 the Brazilian court granted a warrant for the search and seizure of the children. But the warrant was never put into effect, and law enforcement agents failed to act.

Just two days later, four year-old Sophie was pronounced dead at a hospital in Baixada Fluminense.

She had been severely beaten, with signs of cranial fracture, broken wrists, heavy bruising, and was also malnourished. Her legal guardian, her aunt Geovana, and her cousin, Geovana's daughter, are the prime suspects. They claim Sophie fell in the bathtub. In a TV interview, however, Sophie's brother claims he was the one who beat her, because his aunt told him to.

Mr. Zanger flew to Brazil this week and has refused to leave until he is given his son back, as well as his daughter's body. But after the murder, Maristela's adoptive mother was given custody of Mr. Zanger's son, and he must go back to the court to demand custody.

In the meantime, there is no indication the aunt and cousin were arrested, and Mr. Zanger's son remains in the custody of his ex-wife's adoptive mother.

Comments

[claudia]

please help us spread the petition to brazilian supreme court concerning the hague convention.
www.petitiononline.com/88010301
many thanks and best regards, claudia

[Jacqueline Wilkins]

This is heart wrenching. It is beyond my comprehension that the Brazillian government can choose to ignore the Hague Convention and return this mans son even after his daughter was murdered.

Lets hope that the Brazillian citizens extend a hand to help their countries officals see the light and return this boy and Sean Goldman.

My thoughts and prayers are with this grieving father, Mr Goldman, and the 60 other children Brazil refuse to send home.

[Alexandra]

This is completely ridiculous!! There seems to be a strong bias against foreigners in these custody disputes. I feel for this man, who has lost a daughter in such a way. Let's hope his plight serves to wake up public opinion about the seriousness of these kidnapping cases and how it is not always in the child's best interest to be with her Brazilian family. There is no reason a father should be denied custody without evidence of abuse or negligence. It makes me sick.

[brazinglish]

Everytime I come here I read something that makes me regret having learned this language.
I also feel like I have a scarlet letter on my chest, being born in this country...

[Chrissy Luccini]

I am beyond sick after reading this. This is so wrong, on so many levels, I do not know where to even begin. I am sorry but the Brazilian legal system is an absolute disgrace and there needs to be a complete and total overhaul of the system before anyone is safe in that country. After hearing about the Goldman case I thought it was just the rich and connected that got away with these types of things in Brazil but after reading this story I think anyone can get away with anything in Brazil because of the ineptness of their legal system.

[FreeSeanNOW]

OMG when will this end. When is someone going to make Brazil abide by the Hague. I am so sorry for the death of his daughter. It makes me sick. SOMEONE HELP PLEASE! How many more children must die before Brazil is forced to abide by the Hague?

[Cris]

I hate to say it but the more I hear of these stories I feel like the moral of the story is don't marry brazilians for fear it doesn't work out!!!

[BZgirl]

This is eerie and weird. It's like Brazil is a black hole: the kids go in, they get sucked down in a nightmare of a legal system, and they never quite make it out. In my mind it's just as lawless and unjust as the governments of North Korea and East Germany making it nearly impossible for people to leave the state. I love Brazil but the country can't be taken seriously when it engages in these inhumane shenanigans based on political bias.

Worldwide we've got to get a set of enforceable standards in place in many realms. I'm sick of the strongarming, the tit for tat mentality, and the uber-protectionist ideal in trade and labor (Obama isn't helping) and in cases like these. I'm not advocating a leftist uniworld concept but I would like to see less protectionism, more focus on reciprocity for talented labor (as seen in the European Union), more focus on mutually beneficial transactions between nations, and the elimination of circus-like cases like the one you've mentioned above. Not only are these cases inhumane, they widen the divide between nations even more.

[Ernest Barteldes]

I heard about this via a friend in Brazil who read something I'd written about the Goldman case. This is heartbreaking

[me]

i agree with the bloggers above about the inept brazilian system, but keep in mind that the system is inept because of the ineptness/incompetence of the brazilian mentality. It seems to me that all of the brazilians suffer from mental illness although they do a good job of hiding just like everything else. These people will stoop to anything as long as they get their way without regard for they're & their children well being.
The whole country seems to be dysfunctional.

[Ray Adkins]

Me,

The only one that seems to be dysfunctional is
Y O U!!!
How can you write that a whole nation suffers from mental illness, you really don't know the proper use of words.
This case is an absurd, to say the least, it is a tragedy.
The only impression that gets stronger in every case is that many judges in Brazil, principally in RIO DE JANEIRO, seems to be super proud of their land and have a strong inferiory complex and are too biased in cases of custody involving foreigners and Brazilians.
In the Goldman case it is clear that the Lins e Silva know how to play the Brazilian judicial system into their favor to keep gaining time on David.
But this case involving the Austrian children is an outrage, a scandal and probably will expose a serious problem with the biased judicial system and might result in some change.
Our hearts go out to the Austrian father, we should pray and hope he gets justice.
Let's hope that these tragedies coming to light will force a change for the best.

Ray

[Canarioca]

If the Goldman case wasnt bad enough, this poor man has lost his child FOREVER! There was evidence of child abuse (bruises,cranial damage etc) and he still has to FIGHT the legal system in Brazil.
This is just wrong on all levels.
I am well aware of the biased attitude towards foreigners, as I too was 'privy' to their legal system in regards to how they like to run things when it comes to child support and custody. I have two children with a Brazilian.
Lets hope that in light of this horrible tragedy, that change will be implemented within the judicial system. Its too easy to say'Thats just the way it is"...
NO PEOPLE,IF BRAZIL IS TO BE CONSIDERED A DEMOCRACY, PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROTEST AND PUSH FOR CHANGES...REMEMBER,THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE GOT FERNANDO COLLAR IMPEACHED IN 1992...
Complacency is Brazil's worst enemy.

[Ray Adkins]

Amem!
Complacency is Brazilian's worst enomy indeed...

[Martin Boyle]

The problem is systemic. It has little to do with a 'Brazilian mentality' in an a priori way. People who live in a system that is dysfunctional will obviously employ 'jeitinhos' and extra-judicial methods if it benefits them - they will also exploit systemic failures to benefit themselves. There will be no justice from the Brazilian courts until the international community and the governments of the countries whose citizens have been affected by this put serious pressure on the Brazilian government.

Here's my story - it's been going on for 17 years...the whole of my daughter's life.

I am a British man, Martin Boyle, who was married to a Brazilian woman, Mara Silvia Oliveira Rezende. The result of my 15 year battle to see my daughter is that I have had my father's rights illegally removed in Brazil, my daughter has been fraudulently adopted by another man (the modus operandi in Brazil) and I have been imprisoned in Sao Paulo on a trumped up charge of non-payment of child support - all in a relentless attempt to physically block me from seeing my daughter. I have been simply unable to see my daughter since 1994 because my ex-wife and her family - with the active connivance of the Brazilian legal system and the pathetic dithering of the British authorities - has managed to run rings around everyone, hide my daughter away, commit perjury and simply refuse to cooperate with any request for access.

My ex-wife and I lived in the UK and Brazil and had a daughter, Rebeca, who was born in July 1992. The relationship between my ex-wife and me had not been good for some time before she became pregnant and it got worse after Rebeca was born, with my wife behaving eratically, undergoing therapy and going through a difficult co-dependant relationship with her parents.

In December 1992, my ex-wife engineered my firing from my post as an English teacher by turning up at my place of work and calling the secretaries there to make wild, unsubstantiated allegations against me. Her parents ended up conniving with her by having their lawyers (a family friend, since my mother-in-law is a lawyer herself) send me a letter at my home (a flat owned by my in-laws) telling me to vacate the flat. I went through a rushed custody hearing which I was not prepared for and which I only half understood and custody was awarded to my ex-wife. I was told I could visit Rebeca one afternoon every two weeks. I was also told that I had to pay £180 sterling a month in child support. I did not have a job or a home (I was sleeping on a friend's floor) because I had been engineered out of both, so I left Brazil to return to the UK to weigh up my options.

I returned to the UK in December 1992 seriously depressed and worked sporadically for a few months. I was unable to pay the child support stipulated but did send money when I could. During this time, neither my ex-wife nor my in-laws acknowledged the receipt of any money at all. In June 1993 I finally secured full-time work again and, in the face of persistent refusal to acknowledge the receipt of money, I opened an account for my daughter in the UK and have been depositing the child support there ever since. I did not realise that this act of love and good faith would end up with me in a Brazilian prison 16 years later on a spurious charge of non-payment of child support.

In June 1994, I turned up in Brazil unannounced because my letters had gone unanswered for a year. I was led on a wild goose chase around Sao Paulo by my ex-wife, Mara Silvia, before I finally got to see Rebeca in a church hall. I broke down in tears when I saw her and so did my ex-wife. I spent two days there before leaving Brazil again to go back to work. I gave Mara some money and we agreed that there would be regular contact through letters and telephone. Little did I know that she had no intention of maintaining contact. Once again, my letters and calls and money transfers went unacknowledged.

In 1997, after years of non-cooperation from Mara, I divorced her in Britain under English law. She was fully informed through her lawyers and they sent a letter in response only after they had received the decree nisi from the English court. Mara herself refused to respond.

After the divorce, I tried to maintain contact with Rebeca by telephone through my ex-in-laws and there were brief periods when I thought that we were reaching an understanding and I chatted with Rebeca on the phone. She knew that I was her daddy and said she loved meand wanted us to be a family. I said that that was my dearest wish as well. I continued to put the child support payments in Rebeca's account in the UK because Mara and her family simply refused to acknowledge any letters or money transfers. Gradually, contact petered out because the ex-in-laws refused to pass on messages. Mara had long since disappeared with Rebeca and I did not know where she was. I continued putting the child support in Rebeca's UK account though.

I remarried in 1999 and it was when I finally managed to contact Mara and tell her in 2002 that contact was broken once and for all and the legal jiggery pokery and bad faith and lies began in earnest. When I told Mara that I had remarried she screamed hysterically down the phone, prompting Rebeca to start screaming too (it was later alleged that I had made Rebeca cry). That was the last time I ever heard my daughter's voice. She was 10.

In 2004 I again started campaigning in earnest to try and make contact with Rebeca. My ex-father-in-law, Milton Pessoa Rezende, promised to take me to see Mara and Rebeca if I came to Brazil. I started writing and emailing through him but still received no reply.

Frustrated and driven to distraction, I boarded a flight to Sao Paulo in an attempt to see my daughter. I made contact through my ex-mother-in-law, Maria Josefina Oliveira Rezende, who said she would contact Mara but instead, in a grotesque act of bad faith, contacted a lawyer instead. I myself took on a lawyer who, it turns out, probably thought that this would be a straightforward access/ money issue, but who underestimated the bad faith of the Rezende family. In the end I did not see my daughter and returned to the UK heartbroken. I had made a denuncia, or official police report in Sao Paulo, but nothing was done about it.

Between 2005 and 2008 I tried the following means to see my daughter:

1. The British Consulate in Brazil.
2. The Foreign Office, Child Abduction Unit.
3. Neil Gerrard, MP.
4. The Office of the Official Solicitor.
5. International Social Services.
6. Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman.
7. Brazilian Central Authority (Federal Authority), and Interpol.
8. Kent Constabulary, (UK regional police force) - Interpol.
9. Reunite.
10. Missing Persons.
11. Brazilian Federal Police, through which I made a denuncia (accusation) in 2005.
12. The Brazilian Embassy in London
13. Brazilian Social Services.
14. Internet social networking sites.
15. Two private lawyers in Brazil, one of whom ripped me off and did nothing, and the other (recommended by the Brazilian Federal Authority) who simply disappeared before doing any work on the case.

I have also made three Data Protection Act requests to the Foreign Office, the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman and the Office of the Official Solicitor and have uncovered evidence of a degree of duplicity and bad faith on the part of the UK authorities which would cause complete disbelief it were presented as an episode of Yes Minister (e.g. attempting to establish that my daughter had no right to British citizenship so that they could 'get rid of this chap' and 'wash our hands of the matter').

None of these organisations have been able to do anything because my ex-wife has simply refused to cooperate. She has refused to divulge her address, has impersonated a lawyer on the phone to Brazilian social services and the Brazilian Central Authority and claimed to have had my daughter adopted by her new partner on the grounds that I was uncontactable.

The final straw came in June 2008 when I called a woman at the Brazilian Central Authority who had been dealing with my application under the Hague Convention. I had struggled since 2006 to get the Central Authority to agree to pursue the case under the Hague Convention. They finally agreed in December 2007 after Reunite had called Alex Marinkovic at the Office of the Official Solicitor and asked him to request the Brazilian Central Authority to do this (they had previously refused, so it seems that personal requests carry weight in this area). I dealt with two people in the Brazilian Central Authority, Patricia de Texeira Lamego Soares and Lalisa Froeder Dittrich. They told me that we needed to be quick because the hague Convention did not apply to children over the age of 16, and my daughter would be 16 on 23rd July 2008. We put a case together, and Lalisa Froeder told me that as long as the case went to the AGU (Brazilian Federal Court) before my daughter's 16th birthday, they would deal with it. She and Patricia Soares contacted Alex Marinkovic on 26th May to say that the case had been sent to the AGU and that they would deal with it in about a month. Between then and yesterday, I had no replies to my emails to them. Yesterday, when I called Lalisa Froeder, it transpired that she had gone on maternity leave and had not arranged to have my emails forwarded to her colleague, Stella Chimarrelli. Ms Chimarrelli, however, informed me that the case had been rejected by the AGU on the grounds that my daughter was ALMOST 16, and that they had sent the documentation to Alex Marinkovic in London by normal mail, even though they knew that there was a postal strike in Brazil. They had made no attempt to email me, even though they knew that I was in regular contact with them. If I had not called, the deadline of my daughter's birthday would have passed and I would have been none the wiser. You could not make this story up, and it confirms accusations of Brazilian non-compliance with the Hague Convention. It also shows that my ex-wife's strategy of non-cooperation, refusal to divulge her address and her simply hanging on until my daughter's 16th birthday has paid off for her.

In June 2008 I again returned to Brazil in-person to try and see Rebeca. I was hoping to force an agreement on access and was willing to hand over Rebeca's UK bank account. I never imagined in my wildest dreams what would happen. On arrival at Guarulhos airport I was taken into custody by federal agents and put in a 3mX4m bare cell with 15 - 20 criminals on a charge of non-payment of child support (Brazil runs an archaic system of debtors' prisons a bit like those portrayed in the novels of Charles Dickens). I had offered to pay there and then at the airport but was told that either someone else would have to pay or I would have to serve 60 days. My father sent the money that was officially being claimed but was told by the British consulate that it wasn't enough. In fact the British consulate ended up conniving with the Brazilian authorities in a disgraceful example of duplicity. My lawyer got me out on appeal after 15 days but not after he had informed me three days into my imprisonment that I had had my fathers' rights (patrio poder) officially removed and that Rebeca had been adopted by a man I had never even heard of in 2003. I had never even been summonsed or contacted about it and did not even know the name of this man. I have subsequently found out that his name is José Augusto Dos Santos Sá and he lives in São José dos Campos in Sao Paulo. Rebeca has had her birth certificate changed without my knowledge or permission and her name is now Rebeca Rezende Sá. Even my parents' names have been removed and replaced with those of José Augusto Dos Santos Sá's parents - people who are not her blood relatives.

Mara Silvia Oliveira Rezende is now Mara Silvia Rezende Sá, and she has behaved with extreme duplicity along with her mother and father in this matter. She has lied and delayed, refused access to the British Consulate and to Social Services in the city of Itu, Sao Paulo. She called social services posing as a lawyer and there has been no comeback. She has acted with complete impunity. Right up until the point at which I was imprisoned in July 2008, she and her parents had kept to the position that they had nothing against my seeing my daughter - just that she needed to be 'psychologically prepared'. When she found out that I was in jail, howver, she apparently danced for joy and said, 'he will never see Rebeca as long as he lives. I hope they deport him without a stitch on his back!' She was completely uninterested in discussing either access or money. I have managed to get this far with the support of friends. I sometimes feel like giving up completely and putting everything in a box marked 'another life' but then I dream about my daughter, wake up breathless and sobbing and know that I have to keep on struggling. It is love that makes me do it.