Verdict mixed on grandparents’ role in Houston boy’s abduction to Brazil
A federal jury Friday found an affluent Brazilian couple guilty of aiding in the international kidnapping of their Houstonborn grandson in a rare prosecution that drew national attention to the U.S. government’s lackluster efforts to return thousands of children taken abroad amid custody disputes.
But, in an unusual move, U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett did not formally accept the jury’s decision, saying he wanted more time to consider defense attorneys’ request that the couple should be cleared because of allegations raised in the trial that their daughter was fleeing domestic violence.
“As the judge of this court I have to make a determination if judgment notwithstanding the ver-
is appropriate,” Bennett told the lawyers. “I want to think on it.”
In a closely watched case that drew calls for diplomatic action from U.S. lawmakers, the jury in Houston concluded the grandparents — Carlos Guimaraes, 67, and Jemima Guimaraes, 66 — helped their daughter relocate to Brazil in 2013 under the guise she and her now-8-year-old son were traveling abroad for a family wedding. But the jury acquitted the couple on conspiracy charges.
The couple are among just 53 people charged since 2013 by the Justice Department in cases involving international parental kidnapping, despite agency reports that more than 1,100 children are abducted each year.
The boy’s mother, Marcelle Guimaraes, 40, is a fugitive on related charges and lives in Brazil.
The boy’s father, Houston physician Christopher Brann, brought the case to the FBI and mounted a vigorous lobbying effort for the boy’s return. He said Friday he is pleased with the jury’s decision.
“I’m just sorry it had to come to this,” said Brann, an internal medicine doctor at Baylor College of Medicine. “I begged for five years for them to be rational and see the greater good. … I just want my son back. That is the only thing I have ever wanted.”
Dispute turns international
Marcelle Guimaraes left the U.S. with her then-3-year-old son, Nico, in July 2013 to attend her brother’s wedding.
By then, Guimaraes and Brann had separated and had a joint custody agreement in Harris County. Brann formally gave his permission for the 20-day trip.
Just days after her arrival and without Brann’s knowledge, she appeared before a civil judge in Brazil with documents showing she had a home and a job at her mother’s school in the beachside town of Salvador, Bahia, and that Nico was enrolled at the school.
Without notifying Brann of the court dates, Guimaraes told the judge Brann was ill and couldn’t travel to Brazil. The Brazilian judge granted her sole custody of Nico.
She told Brann, however, that she was sick and extended the trip twice.
Brann turned to the FBI in 2015 after two years of Skype calls and 20-hour trips to the remote resort city, where he was allowed to see the boy only if accompanied by hired guards.
Since then, state and federal courts in two countries have taken up the question of where Nico Brann should live.
The father’s lobbying efforts resulted in a letter last week from the bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee, including U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas urging the Trump administration to “use every possible tool” to bring the child back.
“Along with my colleagues, I’m urging the Justice Department and the State Department to do everything they can to secure the rightful return of Nico Brann to the United States,” Cruz said in an emailed statement to the Houston Chronicle. “International parental child abduction is a serious issue and getting worse.”
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, D-New Jersey, who authored the 2014 law designed to pressure governments to return kidnapped children, sent his own letter asking for the boy’s return and his mother’s extradition. The Sean and David Goldman Act, named after a New Jersey son and father separated after the boy’s mother took him to Brazil, gives the State Department punitive tools, including suspension of foreign aid, to pressure governments into returning children more quickly.
Bringing children home, however, can take years. Of the 643 children reported abducted in 2015, only 269 had been returned by May 2018, said an official at the State Department’s bureau of consular affairs said.
The case highlights the struggle many “left-behind” parents face trying to convince recalcitrant foreign governments to comply with a decades old treaty designed to protect them against international parental abductions, according to advocates.
“This is primarily now a crime that is committed by mothers,” said Laura D. Dale, a Houston lawyer specializing in international child abductions. “It sets these kids up for a lifetime of baggage.”
‘Harmful’ to families
Brazil is among 12 signatory countries cited in a 2018 annual State Department report for persistent failure to comply with the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
Suzanne Lawrence, a special adviser for children’s issues in the State Department, declined to discuss any specific cases or why the agency had not sanctioned Brazil. But she acknowledged that courts in Brazil do not move promptly. The average span of inaction is nearly six years, according to the annual report.
“The longer these cases go on the more harmful they are to the families,” she said.
In the Brann case, the governments of the U.S. and Brazil concluded Nico was illegally abducted in violation of civil law, but the federal courts in Brazil have ruled he should remain there because his mother was well settled with family support. That ruling is on appeal.
An attorney familiar with the delays said Brazilian courts have allowed such disputes to drag out for years, allowing the parent in Brazil to request clarifications of orders, while so-called “left behind” parents in the U.S. have little recourse beyond political pressure, if they have the means.
In the four years since the law was passed, the U.S. has only made one extradition request and public condemnation on behalf of an abducted child, according to the May 14 letter from the Senate Judiciary Committee to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Brann testified before the committee April 24, calling his situation “a textbook case for the application of the Hague Convention.”
“If I couldn’t get Nico back with these facts, no left-behind parent can ever rely on the treaty,” the Houston doctor said. “What has compounded my anguish enormously is that the United States has all the tools it needs to compel Brazil and other countries to comply with the Hague Convention — it just won’t use them.”
Allegations of violence
The child’s grandparents were arrested Feb. 7 during a stop in Miami on their way to another grandson’s birthday in Houston, charged in a sealed federal indictment with conspiracy and aiding in a parental abduction.
Brann testified in the threeweek trial that his ex-wife premeditated Nico’s abduction with the help of her affluent father, the president of a British-Brazilian agricultural commodities company, and mother, who owns the private school for young children.
Defense attorneys told the jury the couple’s lack of concern about traveling to the U.S. showed they didn’t believe they had done anything wrong.
Witnesses testified that the relationship between the Marcelle and Brann was violent, with Marcelle telling authorities in Harris County that he had been abusive to her and that she believed he was addicted to pornography.
Brann admitted under crossexamination that he had written an email at his wife’s direction saying he was sorry and acknowledging that he had pulled her hair, pushed her to the floor, hit her in the face and arms and kicked holes in the wall. He also testified that he watched pornography during night shifts at the hospital, which caused marital friction. He said there was mutual violence, and that he defended himself against her rages.
“These people are not in charge,” said defense attorney Rusty Hardin said, of the granddict parents welcoming their daughter to Brazil. “Rightly or wrongly the decision was made by their daughter.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sherri Zack told jurors that Brann had the sexual proclivities of a typical adult male, and said there was no evidence that Marcelle was afraid for her safety. She called the exwife “manipulative.”
With the mixed verdict Friday, the jury apparently rejected the prosecution’s argument that the couple helped their daughter concoct an elaborate scheme to secure a job abroad and enroll her son in a Brazilian school, in violation of the custody order in Harris County.
If the jury had accepted that Marcelle was fleeing an incident or pattern of domestic violence, they could, under the law, have ignored the question of whether the grandparents might have been guilty of aiding in the kidnapping.
“I am crushed, our team is crushed,” Hardin said following the ruling. “The evidence was uncontradicted that they believed their daughter was a victim of domestic violence.”
It is that so-called affirmative defense — that they were shielding their daughter from what they believed was an abusive relationship — that the judge is considering.
Veteran defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor Philip Hilder, who is not connected to the case, said the judge’s reluctance to accept the jury’s verdict is a sign that he is weighing concerns. “It is an indication there’s a viable issue the judge wants to consider,” Hilder said.
U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick said his office will continue to press for Marcelle’s return to the U.S. to stand trial in what he termed a “heart-wrenching” case.
“International parental kidnapping is a terrible crime,” Patrick said in a statement after the verdict. “Our office will not rest until the mother is back on U.S. soil to face her own kidnapping charges.”