Anne Stevenson does it again, exposing legal abuse in Georgia's child protection industry

ATLANTA, June 26, 2014 — According to court records, throughout 2011-2012, “Jane’s” children (then ages 2 and 7) repeatedly insisted and showed credible evidence to child psychologist Nancy McGarrah, Ph.D and Ann Shannon, LCSW, that that their father made suicidal and homicidal plans with them, that he routinely watched child porn with them and sexually assaulted them during overnight visits.
Read more at 
http://www.commdiginews.com/life/georgia-court-may-have-given-sex-predator-custody-of-child-victims-19453/

In Memory of Anthony, Austin and Athena Castillo

by Eileen King, Executive Director, Child Justice, Inc. 

Congratulations to Cheryl C. Kagan (D) who won the Maryland Primary Election for District 17, defeating Del. Luiz Simmons (D) who was also running for Sen. Jennie Forehand's seat.  

Karmic Justice has been served.

Local Marylanders may remember that on February 25, 2010, before the Md. House Judiciary Committee, Del. Simmons "re-tried" Dr. Amy Castillo's credibility after she testified in support of a bill that proposed changing the burden of proof from "clear and convincing" to "preponderance of the evidence".  

I was stunned and horrified that anyone would try to destroy the credibility of a mother whose fears were absolutely justified and who had suffered the unimaginable loss of her three children.

This material gives you an idea of why this was a very important primary race for Maryland's victims of domestic violence/child abuse and for the state laws that protect them. 

Here is Dr. Amy Castillo's testimony on Feb. 25, 2010:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/pdf/HB_700_Testimony_Amy_Castillo.pdf

You can watch Del. Simmons' questioning here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovz6e1B5EwQ

The Washington Post Editorial Board wrote about HB 700's death here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/06/AR2010030601948.html

My March 13, 2010 Op Ed in the Washington Post: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/13/AR2010031301846.html

Del. Simmon's justification for his behavior as well as his characterization of advocates as "zealots": 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031904328.html

You can hear Del. Simmons attempt to justify his position here: 

http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2010-03-11/domestic-violence-and-protective-orders-maryland

Another good article from the Ms. Magazine blog:

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2010/05/19/abused-women-in-maryland-arent-lying/

And don't forget this blog:

http://dumpluizsimmons.blogspot.com/2010/03/attention-maryland-you-have-some-pigs.html

There's more of course...but as I said above, this material gives you an idea of why this was a very important primary race for Maryland's victims of domestic violence and child abuse and the laws that protect them. 

Eileen King

Executive Director

Child Justice, Inc. 

301-283-1762 cell

Ignorance Is This Campaign 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfK1xr_rLIYS_1uMOlB4SAw

The Silent Scandal of Courts Putting Children With Their Abusers

from Small Justice, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNXqDgSAOt4

Sitting on a flowery couch, a 10-year-old girl recalls the first time her father raped her. She was three years old and tried to roll away, but there was little she could do when he pulled her towards him and took off her nightgown.

“I often wonder what would have happened if I had either cut, or at least moved that scene,” said the filmmaker who shot and edited Small Justice: Little Justice in America’s Court, a 2001 documentary that followed three parents through the U.S. family court system as they tried to protect their children from abuse.

A PBS executive had told Garland Waller that the opening scene was just too much and if she’d change it, the documentary might have a chance to air. “I wish I had been more flexible about changing the content,” said Waller, an assistant professor of communications at Boston University ...

Continued here: 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/23/1308970/-The-Silent-Scandal-of-Courts-Putting-Children-With-Their-Abusers

Two-Parent Households Can Be Lethal

… and the lethality can keep occurring in future generations.

Here's the problem when civil court judges ignore the history of crime in families, because lawyers want to keep the case "civil":

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/opinion/sunday/domestic-violence-and-two-parent-households.html?_r=1 

A Hostage Child Goes Home

AFCC Judge Johnston issued orders releasing Justina Pelletier from DCF custody and putting her into her parent's care. She goes home tomorrow!

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, June 17, 2014 –  Communities Digital News has from the family that  Jennifer Pelletier had planned to spend the next three days in front of the Suffolk County Juvenile Court with hundreds of child welfare advocates protesting for her younger sister’s release from State care, but now it appears that those efforts may not be needed.

After over 18 brutal months in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, Jennifer says the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will return Justina to the family tomorrow, Wednesday, June 18, 2014.

Read more at 
http://www.commdiginews.com/life/exclusive-breaking-news-justina-pelletier-finally-going-home-19739/

Finally… Authorities take action against company run by NY family court judges, attorneys

NEW YORK, June 17, 2014 — The IRS has revoked the tax exempt status of a New York corporation founded and operated by sitting family court judges and the professionals who appear before them for failure to comply with federal tax laws.

This is just the latest string of punitive actions authorities have taken over the years against the national trade association whose members oversee cases involving the State’s most vulnerable children and families. Legal industry professionals are now asking questions about whether the authorities should do more to protect families from sub-regulatory corporations, and whether or not a bigger cover up is afoot?  

Read more at:

http://www.commdiginews.com/life/authorities-take-action-against-company-run-by-ny-family-court-judges-attorneys-19646/

See more of Anne Stevenson's revelations on the AFCC's operation in Connecticut:

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/speaking-family/2013/may/20/ct-judicial-branch-vendors-operated-court-employee/

What William Holt’s Disciplinary Hearing Shows About Rhode Island

On May 30th, attorney William F. Holt admitted violating the Rhode Island Supreme Court’s Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct. His hearing before a 3-member panel of the Supreme Court’s Disciplinary Board summarized the violations: ex parte communications with a judge; removing divorce documents from the clerk’s office; filing a motion that misrepresented an order of the court; compounding litigation in multiple courts; and endangering a litigant by enabling her estranged husband to enter her home despite his psychiatric history and guns. 

These kinds of offenses are all too common in Family Court. The uncommon aspects of Holt’s hearing were that a judge finally censured him for fraud on the court and referred him to the Disciplinary Counsel and that the Disciplinary Counsel followed through with charges and negotiated a settlement – the equivalent of a plea bargain. The panel may now recommend to the Supreme Court that Holt’s license to practice law be suspended.

In 1993, when I was executive director of the Women’s Center of Rhode Island, we examined our successes and failures in order to improve our effectiveness helping families escape domestic violence. We gathered a group of mothers who had succeeded in protecting their children from violence at home only to find that Family Court exposed them to greater danger. Their complaints frequently focused on Bill Holt, a protégé of the Chief Judge of Family Court, Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, Jr. 

Holt and Jeremiah belonged to a group we called “the Cranston Cabal” from their years in the administration of Mayor Edward DiPrete, who became governor and then promoted the man he called his “closest friend,” Jeremiah, his executive counsel, to the top position at Family Court.

DiPrete later pled guilty to eighteen felonies, avoiding a trial that would have implicated others in his circle, and went to prison. Jeremiah faced his own ethical issues relating to his Cranston office building and business dealings with his tenants, including Holt, whose favored status with the Chief of Family Court made him a force to be feared.

Among the conflicts in cases I documented, Holt and Attorneys John Tarrantino and Patricia Rocha—the same two who represented Holt at his disciplinary hearing—hammered out a questionable insurance scheme to benefit their clients. They persuaded Rocha’s father, the late Judge Gilbert Rocha, to block the insurance investigators’ access to court records.

Holt’s conduct in that case displayed the same “zealousness” he described to the disciplinary panel on Friday. He called it his “passion for the law.” He described his thrill at strategizing and mental gymnastics. “I had the world by the tail,” he said, before this “tragedy” struck when he was finally censured.  

His colleague of eight years, Catherine E. Graziano, offered a revealing memory at the hearing. She and Holt had met on opposite sides of a divorce case. Later he called out of the blue asking her to join the firm he planned to start. She agreed to think about it, but was astonished when Holt called back to say he had put up his sign on Reservoir Avenue, and it already had her name on it.

His style of coercive control over colleagues and clients apparently affected judges, too. The disciplinary panel heard of a judge who could have censured Holt but merely scolded: “I’m not going to sanction you, but don’t let this happen again.”  

In one case, not part of Friday’s hearing, a mother had planned to sue Holt for malpractice after he had let her divorce order go through despite its reference to a settlement agreement that did not exist. When she complained, Chief Judge Jeremiah would not let her leave court until she had signed that agreement. The court never dealt with the real problems she and her child faced. Her street was shut down for the bomb squad to remove chemical explosives her husband had stored in their basement. Another state later suspended her ex-husband's medical license after his felony convictions for sexually abusive child pornography.

The real tragedy is not Holt’s brush with justice but that Rhode Island’s Family Court functions largely as a patronage mill, rewarding political insiders with appointments as judges, magistrates, and court personnel. The Court seldom gets to the issues that endanger families, and William Holt’s hearing illustrates why.

For years I was told that the Disciplinary Counsel would not charge attorneys for ethics violations like Holt’s unless there was clear financial malfeasance. At Holt’s hearing, Deputy Disciplinary Counsel Barbara Margolis said, “I can’t figure out why he did these things,” because it was “not for personal profit.”

Of course it was. Family Court lawyers in Rhode Island have a limited number of families to charge their billable hours. These common methods of dragging out cases are tools for holding the world by the tail and winning by attrition, not rule of law. 

UPDATE: The Disciplinary Counsel suggested a one-year suspension of Holt’s license, but the Supreme Court imposed a three-year suspension in November 2014, saying he “showed a persistent pattern of deceiving judges.”

After studying Rhode Island divorce cases that cost families hundreds of thousands of dollars, I was astonished when a Florida attorney told me she charges a flat $4,000 plus court fees for divorce and custody cases, and they are usually done within a year. Rhode Island is long overdue for its judges and Disciplinary Counsel to censure and charge the flagrant ethical violations in Family Court.