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Other dads might just be a dad, but he's more than a dad," is what one 11-year-old recently said in a news interview regarding how his father fought for years to regain custody of him after his mother abducted him in 2004. Now, the father does have child custody of the boy.
The case goes back in 2004. The mother, who was still married to the father, claimed she was taking the child to Brazil for a vacation. However, instead she quickly severed ties with the father, got a divorce and remarried. She never returned with the boy.
Then, when the child was 8 years old, the mother died and her new husband set about plans to adopt the boy. However, his biological father never gave up, and continued to push back about the plans for adoption and starting working with the courts and U.S. officials to regain custody of his child.
Looking back at what was going on at the time, the now 11-year-old said he was confused about everything and was simply too scared to ask why his father was no longer a part of his life and why they weren't going back to the United States.
However, after the federal court in Brazil took up the case, the biological father ended up being awarded custody, and the boy was sent back to the United States. He still lives with his dad to this day.
In the beginning, the entire situation was also understandably hard for the young boy. In the beginning, he didn't even call his father "dad." But now, after more than two years of living with his father, he claims the two are best friends.
And, while his grandmother in Brazil is continuing to fight for rights to see the 11-year-old, the father has said that she can see him, but first needs to drop a lawsuit that she has filed to appeal the custody decision.
Source: msnbc, "'I wasn't angry': Boy at center of Brazilian abduction case speaks out," Scott Stump, April 24, 2012
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