Chris Smith: “Thank you, Chairman Royce, for your total support of this legislation and the initiative behind it. You have been a…”

“Thank you, Chairman Royce, for your total support of this legislation and the initiative behind it. You have been a great friend of all of the left-behind parents and abducted children. I want to thank you very sincerely, and I also thank Eliot Engel, our ranking member. At a time when there are very few bipartisan initiatives, you, as leader of our committee, have ensured that the committee is a bipartisan committee where we work on a global basis for all people on human rights and humanitarian issues. It really has made a difference. Thank you for your support in getting this legislation here today. I appreciate that very much. Mr. Speaker, David Goldman spent over 5 agonizing years trying to legally rescue his son, Sean, from an abduction to Brazil, which is a signatory nation, like the United States, to the Hague Abduction Convention. Despite Mr. Goldman's airtight case that demonstrated an egregious example of both child abduction and wrongful retention, the Hague treaty was unavailing, and the outcomes in the Brazilian courts largely proved infuriating, infirm, and ineffective. David Goldman had extraordinary legal counsel both in Brazil and in the United States. Patricia Apy, his American attorney, is a world- class expert in child abduction cases. He waged his case by the book and won judgments in the New Jersey courts.…”