The Custody Scam

Chief Judge Haiganush Bedrosian is proving me wrong . . .

2012-01-28T15:59:00.000-05:00

and I could not be happier.

In 2010 I testified against her becoming Chief Judge of Family Court. I feared that she was entrenched in a court culture that seems not to care about low-income litigants, that is especially catastrophic to battered mothers and traumatized children.

Frankly, I could not support any of the candidates for Chief, because the cases I had researched and watched unfold in their courtrooms suggested that none of them would confront the culture of cronyism and cabals that plagued the Family Court under Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, Jr.

I will write more about those concerns later at the Trophy Child blog, but now I want to focus on the important departure Chief Bedrosian undertook this week with her statewide training that participants praised as transformative to their understanding of traumatized children and likely to change the way they work.

The Chief Judge, who was a teacher before she became a lawyer and judge, intends to have more trainings. Over five hundred professionals, including Family Court judges, lawyers, staff from DCYF, the Department of Education, Juvenile Corrections, the Offices of Child Advocate and Attorney General, and many others stayed from start to finish through two days packed with substantive information.

The open way she structured this conference may finally dismantle the silos that have kept Rhode Island's agencies and decision-makers closed off from each other for too long.

[MORE TO COME]

Cost to Orange County, CA, of lying social workers: $10.6

2012-01-24T01:09:00.000-05:00

The total cost to Orange County of a case in which a jury found that two social workers lied to take away a woman’s daughters is $10.6 million, according to a new audit.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year declined to hear the county’s challenge to a 2007 jury award of $4.9 million to the Seal Beach woman, Deanna Fogarty-Hardwick. With interest on that amount plus her attorney fees, the total payout by the county was $9.6 million. In addition, the county incurred another $1 million of its own legal costs in the case.

Photo of Deanna Fogarty-Hardwick

For more on the County's response to this award, go to
http://taxdollars.ocregister.com/2012/01/19/cost-to-county-of-lying-social-workers-10-6-mln/146871/

Praising the Architects of Change

2012-01-12T10:56:00.002-05:00

This week brought evidence that much-needed changes are coming to Rhode Island's system of child-protection. At the head of the table at yesterday's meeting of the General Assembly's Joint Task Force on the Education of Children and Youth in the Care of the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, DCYF Director Janice DeFrances, left, and Family Court Chief Judge Haiganush Bedrosian, center, sat with Representative Eileen Naughton, who co-chairs the Task Force with Senator Rhoda Perry. Task Force members heard responses to their draft report and recommendations to better serve the educational needs of children in state care.

The Draft Report is available online at www.rilin.state.ri.us/educationdcyf
Comments should be sent as soon as possible to Peter Asen, Senior Policy Analyst, pasen(at)rilin.state.ri.us

Chief Judge Bedrosian announced a conference January 26th and 27th on "Family Court, DCYF and Schools: Putting Children First" that will improve understanding and communications to assure educational continuity for children in state care. For information, call 401-458-5300.

On Tuesday, January 10th, DCYF Director DeFrances met with Richard Klarberg, President and CEO of the Council on Accreditation (COA), to prepare for an internal assessment of DCYF in preparation for undertaking COA's process of establishing professional standards of accreditation, as the General Assembly mandated in 2010.

Mr. Klarberg also met with Senator Bea Lanzi (above), lead sponsor of the legislation in the Senate, and with Representative Eileen Naughton (below, left), lead sponsor in the House, and Anne Grant, Coordinator of the Parenting Project, that initiated the legislation.

Rep. Naughton introduced Mr. Klarberg to Speaker of the House Gordon Fox.

In the hallway, Mr. Klarberg met Governor Lincoln Chafee and congratulated him on his appointment of Dr. DeFrances and her commitment to improve the state's protection of vulnerable children.

The bills mandating accreditation are available online:
http://www.rilin.state.ri.us/PublicLaws/law10/law10130.htm
http://www.rilin.state.ri.us/PublicLaws/law10/law10134.htm

Here is the link to the actual law:
http://www.rilin.state.ri.us/Statutes/TITLE42/42-72/42-72-5.3.HTM

While praising these leaders for their commitment to improving the state's protection of children, we want to acknowledge the hard work of our volunteer lobbyist, Phil West, (foreground, below), who has devoted himself to government reform in Rhode Island since 1988. We are grateful that after his retirement from Common Cause Rhode Island, he has helped us win this important legislation for children and for parents who are trying to protect them.

In 2006, angry neighbors invited us to their community meeting after the state's removal of "Molly" and "Sara" from their mother and lifelong home. We began investigating the case to learn what had happened and then searched for ways to bring urgently needed reforms to DCYF. We are grateful for the state leadership that is working for those changes. For the story of "Molly" and "Sara," paste this link in your browser:
http://littlehostages.blogspot.com

Rhode Island needs the Attorney General’s Child Abuse Unit

2011-12-12T15:49:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin for creating a new Child Abuse Unit that will work with the accredited victims’ advocacy group Day One (“New unit to tackle cases of child abuse,” The Providence Journal, Dec. 6, 2011, page A1). This effort could finally protect children from sex abuse--unless it falls prey to the same pressures that too often sabotage the missions of Family Court, the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), and Hasbro Hospital’s Child Protection Program.

Pressures to impede the unit will be intense, because it is usually family members and friends, not strangers, who perpetrate child abuse. Pedophiles’ motives may not be sex so much as power and control over vulnerable victims. Add to that the enormous profitability of child pornography and the ease of webcam pimping.

But state officials charged with protecting children are so fragmented that they seldom bother to look beyond the boundaries of their individual roles to identify larger patterns of abuse. Each official is insulated from the benefits that a team of equals can bring by intentionally enlarging upon each other’s limited perspective.

In 1997, a Hasbro doctor and counselors at the St. Mary’s Shepherd Program all reported signs that a sister and brother suffered sexual abuse by their father. DCYF “indicated” the father, who sued the agency’s senior attorney for administrative failures. Suddenly under siege, DCYF pressured the Hasbro doctor to change her report.

She complied with a new report that minimized the evidence she once found compelling. By 2000, Family Court General Magistrate John O'Brien gave the children to their father's sole custody.

In 2002 the boy tried to run away. The following year, he had a breakdown. He tearfully testified to Judge Howard Lipsey about a laundry basket of videotapes in their father's bedroom.

Lipsey returned the children to their mother, but apparently never called state police to investigate the videotapes. He declared that he was now prejudiced against the father and could no longer rule on the case.

The next Family Court judge, Michael Forte released the father from paying child support because the children refused to visit him. The mother worked several jobs at minimum salary and raised her children in poverty.

From 1992 to 2006, more than a dozen judges grappled with the case under our failed system of adversarial litigation. In their final hearing, the father stood with photos in his hand and a smirk on his face, saying he wanted to show Judge Forte the stripper’s pole he had installed in his daughter's bedroom. Forte ignored him and ended the hearing.

Like Penn State officials, none of these authorities felt responsible to call in state police to investigate what really happened to these children. (State police exposed the fraudulent credentials of the court’s mediator who worked on this case, and the children’s guardian ad litem was later found to be defrauding the fund that paid him to represent poor litigants. Neither court official was prosecuted.)

Many Family Court custody cases are orchestrated by guardians ad litem--privately paid lawyers with enormous power over families. Judges assume these “guardians” submit objective reports, but many are blatantly biased, depending on which parent pays them and the guardians’ relationships to other professionals profiting from these cases.

Guardians often ask judges to order parents to pay for expensive psychological “evaluations” by one of a handful of clinicians still willing to produce highly questionable reports for Family Court.

Attorneys for alleged abusers often insist that children must stop seeing trusted counselors like those at Day One, arguing that therapy will interfere with clinical evaluations. This calculated strategy keeps children under the thrall of their abusers.

Meanwhile, judges order clinical “evaluations” and forced “reunification” sessions with abusers “in a therapeutic setting” that further traumatize abused children. Rhode Island Blue Cross and Blue Shield told me they do not pay clinicians for court-ordered sessions, since these are not therapeutic. But court-ordered clinicians have learned to couch their reports in therapeutic language and to bill insurers under nondescript codes. Victims of abuse can seldom afford to pay for these sessions, but children regularly pay the cost in night terrors and gastrointestinal disorders.

Based on more than two decades studying Family Court custody cases, I hope that the Attorney General’s Child Abuse Unit will finally bring clarity, ethics, and prosecution to our state’s stymied system of child protection.

Victims need this clarity and continuity of a single, salaried team trained to recognize family dynamics that accompany child sexual abuse. The team must thoroughly understand and care about a family’s history and be available to that family in the future to effectively provide both legal and therapeutic advocacy.

Team members should meet often to build mutual trust. They must disclose and evaluate any attempts by others, especially lawyers, to contact them, and they must preserve the confidentiality of agency whistleblowers and potential victims who might suffer reprisals for coming forward. Team members must recuse themselves from any case where they have conflicts of interest.

To this end, team members should regularly disclose, under penalty of perjury, all outside contacts and verify that they have received no payment or benefits other than salary for working on this case.

Finally, the Attorney General’s Office must move quickly to bring evidence of child sex abuse to the Grand Jury where it belongs, to alert Family Court and DCYF, and to assure prompt, skillful prosecution of abusers in Superior Court.

Anne Grant (parentingproject@cox.net) investigates legal abuse in Family Court custody cases. Her writing appears in blogs like http://LittleHostages.blogspot.com and in Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody: Legal Strategies and Policy Issues, ed. By Mo Therese Hannah, Ph.D., and Barry Goldstein, J.D (Civic Research Institute, 2010).

Do Family Courts Allow Sexual Abuse for Profit and Child Pornography?

2011-12-08T22:53:00.000-05:00

Barbara Farris at The Ellis County Observer asks whether the widespread practice of courts giving children to fathers whom the children accused of sexually abusing them is part of a larger pay-off by child pornography producers. It's an important question to investigate.

Click on the title above or paste this in your browser:

http://www.elliscountyobserver.com/2011/12/04/barbara-farris-family-courts-allow-sexual-abuse-for-profit-in-porn-part-1/

Saving Mila

2011-12-03T07:39:00.000-05:00

Newbold Noyes' description of legal abuse in a Maine custody court captures the inept and often corrupt atmosphere we have witnessed in Rhode Island courtrooms--except that most judges in Rhode Island Family Court do not let us take notes.

"Saving Mila" tells of child abuse that the Court fails to condemn. Read down the list of posts to get some sense of what this four-year-old has suffered.

(Click on the title above or paste the link below in your browser.)

http://lorihandrahan.com/2011/12/01/newbold-noyes-describes-january-2011-moskowitz-hearing/

Retired Judge: "I made the mistake myself...."

2011-11-20T02:44:00.000-05:00

When retired San Diego Superior Court Judge DeAnn M. Salcido admits she made mistakes because she did not understand domestic violence and the defense ploy of accusing victims of "parental alienation," it is a sign of progress.

Find her blog, Judicial Action Watch Society, here (or click on the title above):
http://www.judicialactionwatchsociety.org/Family_Court_Crisis.html

Her mission is:

. . . to educate the public on how the judicial system is designed to work. Only through education on how to identify systemic failure within the court system will the average citizen be equipped to effectively advocate for court reform . . . .

Complaints against family court specialist go back years

2011-11-12T09:48:00.001-05:00

Malcolm Maclachlan's November 3rd article in California's Capitol Weekly, begins:

According to her resume, Janelle Burrill is many things: psychologist, attorney, social worker. To the Sacramento Superior Court, she’s both an approved family court mediator and a special master, a person appointed by the court to make sure judicial orders are followed. She’s also been active in Placer and El Dorado Counties, testifying in numerous cases. But to some critics of California’s family courts system, she’s something else: Exhibit A for what’s wrong with family courts in California.

Her fraudulent claims remind me of David Tassoni, apprentice to Rhode Island Family Court's former Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, Jr.

Burrill and Tassoni both enjoyed enormous power in secretive family courts though their credentials were not questioned while both actively promoted the discredited legal tactic of "parental alienation" (developed by psychiatrist Richard Gardner, who claimed a status he never held at Columbia University Medical School).

The article expresses surprise at the high prices charged by these court "specialists" citing huge retainers and fees of $200 an hour. That is the same amount charged six years ago by attorney Lise Iwon (now head of the Rhode Island Bar Association) when she worked as guardian ad litem to remove two sisters, 5 and 9 years old, from an excellent mother, using the same bogus argument of "parental alienation" that Burrill and Tassoni liked to use. When she convinced Judge John Mutter to take the girls into state custody, Iwon complained that their mother still owed her $5,000. Before long, Iwon's bill approached $50,000.

Iwon was close friends with Lise Gescheidt, who was criminal defense attorney for the two girls' father. Gescheidt (who now heads the RI Supreme Court's Ethics Advisory Panel) defended her friend Iwon and accused the girls' mother of introducing motions that "slander the professional reputation of a unbiased guardian ad litem who has consistently acted in the best interest of the children without meaningful compensation. . . .” (Italics added.)

These cases are all about money and power, not about determining the "whole truth and nothing but the truth" or the "best interests" of children.

The only family that is reliably served by Family Court are the "sisters and brothers" of the Rhode Island Bar and their former colleagues, now on the Bench, who protect and preserve the Family's interests.

The ease with which Lise Gescheidt and Lise Iwon influenced staff at the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) shows that the Executive Branch is also implicated in this ongoing scandal.

The third branch of government, Rhode Island's General Assembly did the right thing by mandating in 2010 that DCYF must finally get accredited by the internationally recognized Council on Accreditation.

Now we need the General Assembly to turn its attention to Family Court. The many legislators who are also members of the Bar should step back, recuse, and allow their colleagues to conduct an open audit of Family Court costs and services.

More about Lise Iwon's handling of this case is at http://littlehostages.blogspot.com

The Capitol Weekly article on Burrill appears at the link below (or click on the title above):
http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?xid=1040os14pyj1slg

A daughter reveals the unrestrained violence and profanity of her father, Texas judge William Adams

2011-11-03T10:32:00.001-04:00

In 2004, Hillary Adams was 16. The daughter of a Texas judge, she set up a camera that recorded her father beating her with unrestrained rage and profanity. She recently posted that video on line here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl9y3SIPt7o

She wrote this caption:

2004: Aransas County Court-At-Law Judge William Adams took a belt to his own teenage daughter as punishment for using the internet to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time. She has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father's backwards views. The judge's wife was emotionally abused herself and was severely manipulated into assisting the beating and should not be blamed for any content in this video. The judge's wife has since left the marriage due to the abuse, which continues to this day, and has sincerely apologized and repented for her part and for allowing such a thing, long before this video was even revealed to exist. Judge William Adams is not fit to be anywhere near the law system if he can't even exercise fit judgment as a parent himself. Do not allow this man to ever be re-elected again. His "judgment" is a giant farce. Signed, Hillary Adams, his daughter.

Judge Adams' rulings on child abuse allegedly show that:

~He has held that a child should be ignored even if the child reports horrific child abuse.
~He has held that a parent or lawyer who relies on what a child says should be sanctioned.
~He has awarded children to their abusers.

Hillary says she posted the seven-year-old video: “...after a barrage of harassment from my father over the phone, I snapped and finally uploaded it. Now I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner.”

The outpouring of support and disgust was immediate, with many reaching out to media outlets and local authorities on Hillary’s behalf. She says: ”I hope my father gets everything he deserves.... I’m so glad someone believes me, after all these years…."

Click on the title above to see the county's November 2nd news release:

ARANSAS COUNTY, TEXAS - Judge Burt Mills has today announced that Aransas County is aware of the video posted on YouTube regarding County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams, and the matter is now under review by the Police Department. Please refrain from communication with County offices or the Sheriff's Department on this matter until the review has been completed. Calls, emails, and faxes only create disruptions for other ongoing county business. The public's cooperation would be most appreciated.

As I write this in Rhode Island, I am grateful that our state does not elect judges, and that citizens increasingly come to testify before the Judicial Nominating Commission about candidates being considered for judgeships. But Rhode Island still remains the only state that gives judges lifetime tenure without review.

We need a review process that recognizes how such enormous discretionary power can corrupt our judges--especially in Family Court where judges often ignore standards of evidence, and lawyers can lie with abandon.

Watchdog group critiques Montgomery County judges who issue restraining orders

2011-10-03T10:46:00.002-04:00

(Daniel Morse/WASHINGTON POST) - Judy Whiton, left, and Laurie Duker, right, run Court Watch Montgomery, which monitors restraining order hearings in Montgomery County.Five years ago, Laurie Duker took a job helping abused women get restraining orders in Montgomery County. What she saw stunned her: Some judges belittled people or didn’t give women the protection Duker thought they needed. The final straw, she said, was when a judge asked a man where he was from, heard “El Salvador” and said from the bench: “Figures.”So Duker quit and started a watchdog group. Over six months, she and 24 other volunteers observed 642 restraining-order hearings to critique the judges and the system.Read more here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/watchdog-group-critiques-montgomery-county-judges-who-issue-restraining-orders/2011/09/29/gIQATcBaGL_story.html

Ex-judge sentenced in "kids for cash" scheme

2011-09-24T11:33:00.000-04:00

Click on the title above or go to this link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/23/national/main20110774.shtml

IACHR responds to police failure to protect the Gonzales sisters...

2011-09-19T09:06:00.002-04:00

after the U.S. Supreme Court fails to hold police accountable.

IACHR calls for U.S. "to conduct a serious, impartial and exhaustive investigation into systemic failures."

PRESS RELEASE
N° 92/11

IACHR PUBLISHES REPORT ON CASE JESSICA LENAHAN OF THE UNITED STATES

Washington, DC, August 17, 2011 – The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) made public today its merits report on Case No. 12.626, Jessica Lenahan (formerly Jessica Gonzales), United States, related to the duties of the State to respond to situations of domestic violence with diligent protection measures.

Jessica Lenahan, a victim of domestic violence along with her daughters Leslie, Katheryn and Rebecca Gonzales, ages 7, 8 and 10, obtained a restraining order against her ex-husband from the Colorado Courts in May 21, 1999. Not knowing the whereabouts of her daughters, Jessica Lenahan had eight contacts with the Castle Rock Police Department during the evening of June 22, 1999 and the morning of June 23, 1999. In each of her telephone calls and discussions with the police agents, she requested efforts to locate her daughters and she informed them that she possessed a protection order against Simon Gonzales. Her contacts were met with a police response that was fragmented, uncoordinated and unprepared, and it did not respect the terms of the restraining order. That morning, Simon Gonzales drove his pick-up truck to the Castle Rock Police Department and fired shots through the window. There was an exchange of gunfire with officers from the station in the course of which he was fatally wounded and killed. The deceased bodies of the three girls were found in his truck.

The restraining order was the only means available to Jessica Lenahan at the state level to protect herself and her children in a context of domestic violence, and the police did not effectively enforce it. The state apparatus was not duly organized, coordinated, and ready to protect these victims from domestic violence by adequately and effectively implementing the restraining order. These failures to protect constituted a form of discrimination in violation of the American Declaration, since they took place in a context where there has been a historical problem with the enforcement of protection orders; a problem that has disproportionately affected women since they constitute the majority of the restraining order holders.

The Commission established that the State did not duly investigate the complaints presented by Jessica Lenahan before the death of her daughters. The State also failed to investigate the circumstances of their deaths once their bodies were found. Consequently, their mother and their family live with this uncertainty, and the law enforcement officers in charge of implementing the law have not been held accountable for failing to comply with their responsibilities.

The Commission encourages the United States to comply with the recommendations contained in the Merits Report, which include to conduct a serious, impartial and exhaustive investigation into systemic failures that took place related to the enforcement of Jessica Lenahan’s protection order, to reinforce through legislative measures the mandatory character of the protection orders and other precautionary measures to protect women from imminent acts of violence, and to create effective implementation mechanisms, among others.

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission has a mandate to promote respect for human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to the OAS in this matter. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who are elected in an individual capacity by the OAS General Assembly and who do not represent their countries of origin or residence.

Useful Links--for live links, click on the title above or post this link in your browser:
http://www.cidh.oas.org/Comunicados/English/2011/92-11eng.htm
Admissibility Report on Case No. 12.626
Merits Report on Case No. 12.626
IACHR Webpage where the Reports on Cases are published
IACHR Press Office
Website of the IACHR

(Look below for a prior posting in August on this IACHR report.)

Could Judge Peter McBrien Have Prevented Madeline's Murder?

2011-09-19T08:45:00.000-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: Anne Hart 916-715-5243
September 18, 2011

Controversial Judge at the Center of A Tragic Death: Citizens Protest

Sacramento, CA - On Thursday, September 22, 2011, community members will hold a protest from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm at the Sacramento Superior Court, 720 9th Street, Sacramentoregarding the abject failure of Sacramento family court to protect children in custody disputes. The protest will begin on the corner of 9th and H Streets.

One judge, Sacramento Family Court Judge Peter McBrien, has been a focus of community scrutiny for over a decade for his lack of judgment and destructive decisions. He destroyed ancient oak trees on a nature preserve to obtain a better view from his home which earned him the moniker of "Chainsaw" and resulted in a felony charge that he pled down to a misdemeanor. Additionally, he received a public reprimand from the Commission on Judicial Performance. He then became personally embroiled in the divorce case of Ulf Carlsson, and went far out of his way to destroy Mr. Carlsson by ensuring he was fired from his job. Judge McBrien committed numerous ethical violations along the way and earned another reprimand. Battered mothers report that he consistently places children with substantiated molesters, batterers, violent alcoholics, and drug addicts. Now, Judge McBrien failed to protect a toddler, who was then murdered.

After a statewide AMBER Alert, two-year-old Madeline Layla Samaan-Fay was found near Placerville, CA in her father's vehicle. She and her father Mourad Samaan were both dead.

Samaan had a pattern of not returning his daughter Madeline from visits and had told her mother that he was taking the child to Oregon against the court order. Prior to the toddler's death, Judge McBrien had refused to grant an ex parte request by Madeline's mother to order law enforcement to locate the father and child, and to place Samaan on supervised visits. Judge McBrien had a perfect opportunity to prevent this tragedy, but refused to assist the mother Marcia Fay, a California Deputy Attorney General, in locating and protecting her child.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has sharply rebuked the United States for failing to protect women and children in the Gonzalez v. United States decision in August 2011, stating that the U.S. practices discrimination and violation of the right to equality.
http://www.cidh.oas.org/Comunicados/English/2011/92-11eng.htm

We can begin changing these destructive patterns by demanding that Judge McBrien be removed from family court and from any position that gives him authority over vulnerable children.

###

Father-supremacist lawyer praises his brother for killing two-year-old daughter

2011-08-18T11:01:00.001-04:00

Nabil Samaan, a lawyer and father, claimed in an interview with FOX40 on Sunday that his brother, Mourad "Moni" Samaan, was the victim of a broken family court system when he murdered his 2-year-old daughter, Madeline Samaan-Fay, and killed himself.

He went on to say, "I think he did the right thing. I'm proud of my brother and now he's in a better place. He's at peace. His daughter's at peace. She'll have one name now, and we can move on. And hopefully the court will learn a little thing about justice.”

After a public outcry, the lawyer recanted his statement, blaming it on his shock and exhaustion.

Watch the video: Is he speaking out of shock and exhaustion or out of his own belief in father-supremacy?

Click on the title above or paste this link into your browser:
http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/ktxl-brother-of-amber-alert-suspect-recants-earlier-statements-20110817,0,2179058.story

(The Parenting Project has worked with some fathers who were, in fact, protective parents fighting a corrupt court system. We believe courts need to look at the long-term evidence of abuse and coercive control in domestic relations. The pay-to-play system of adversarial litigation vastly increases the risk to children and parents trying to protect them.)

International Commission Finds United States Denied Justice to Domestic Violence Survivor

2011-08-17T16:53:00.000-04:00

Landmark Human Rights Case Finds that Failure to Enforce a Restraining Order and Indifference to Domestic Violence Led to Daughters’ Deaths

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, University of Miami School of Law, (305) 284-5923 (office), (305) 281-9856 (cell); clopez@law.miami.edu Robyn Shepherd, ACLU national, (212) 519-7829 or 549-2666; media@aclu.org Nancy Goldfarb, Columbia Law School, (212) 854-1584, nancy.goldfarb@law.columbia.edu

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a landmark decision, an international tribunal has found the U.S. government responsible for human rights violations against a Colorado woman and her three deceased children who were victims of domestic violence.

Jessica Lenahan (Gonzales) v. United States is the first case brought by a domestic violence survivor against the U.S. before an international human rights body, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The IACHR ruling also sets forth comprehensive recommendations for changes to U.S. law and policy pertaining to domestic violence.

The case concerns a tragic 1999 incident in which police in Castle Rock, Colorado failed to respond to Jessica Lenahan’s repeated calls for help after her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, kidnapped their three young children in violation of a domestic violence restraining order. Ten hours after Lenahan’s first call to the police, her husband drove up to the Castle Rock Police Department and began firing his gun at the police station. The police returned fire, killing Gonzales. Inside the truck, the police found the bodies of the three girls – Rebecca, Katheryn, and Leslie – who had been shot dead. Local authorities failed to conduct a proper investigation into the children’s deaths, resulting in questions about the cause, time, and place of their deaths that remain to this day.

“I have waited 12 years for justice, knowing in my heart that police inaction led to the tragic and untimely deaths of my three young daughters,” said Lenahan. “Today’s decision tells the world that the government violated my human rights by failing to protect me and my children from domestic violence.”

Lenahan is represented by the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law, the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic and the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The commission’s determination that the United States violated Ms. Lenahan’s and her children’s human rights by failing to ensure their protection from domestic violence has far-reaching implications,” said Professor Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, director of the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law. “As our country seeks to promote human rights of women and children around the world, we must also look at our own record here at home.”

The commission’s decision stands in stark contrast to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Town of Castle Rock v. Jessica Gonzales (2005), where the justices ruled that Lenahan (then Gonzales) had no constitutional right to police protection, and that the failure of the police to enforce Lenahan's order of protection was not unconstitutional. Lenahan then filed a petition against the U.S. before the IACHR, alleging violations of international human rights.

“Now that the commission has appropriately found the police and the United States responsible for their appalling lack of action, it is critical that they be held accountable,” said Lenora Lapidus, director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “We can no longer accept police departments' failure to treat domestic violence seriously and to regard it as simply a private matter unworthy of serious police attention.”

Established in 1959, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is charged with promoting the observance of and respect for human rights throughout the Americas. The commission is expressly authorized to examine allegations of human rights violations by all 35 member-states of the Organization of American States, which includes the United States, and to investigate specific allegations of violations of Inter-American human rights treaties, declarations and other legal instruments.

"We know that the issue of violence against women is one that the Obama Administration cares deeply about,” said Peter Rosenblum, director of the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic. “We encourage the Administration to work with the appropriate state and local officials to address and adapt the Commission’s recommendations in a meaningful way."

More information on this case can be found at: www.aclu.org/human-rights-womens-rights/jessica-gonzales-v-usa; www.law.miami.edu/hrc/hrc_gonzalez_usa.php; www.law.columbia.edu/human-rights-institute/initiatives/interamerican/gonzales

Use of Junk Science in Family Courts

2011-07-19T21:24:00.001-04:00

Click on the title for this video or paste this in your browser:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2XhUhGjPy8&feature=player_embedded#at=191

The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges says that judges should strike "parental alienation" defense strategies from the record, because it fails to meet standards of evidence. But it is commonly used by Rhode Island court officials and elsewhere to traumatize victims of domestic violence.

What reference letters and JNC hearings reveal about Family Court

2011-05-31T11:19:00.001-04:00

In May the Judicial Nominating Commission (JNC) interviewed nine candidates for two vacant positions on the Family Court bench. I attended the interviews, read the reference letters supporting each candidate, and returned a week later for public testimony.

Attorney Kerry Rafanelli received letters from 69 supporters. That was 17 more than all the other candidates combined. People who sent those references may have great respect and affection for the candidate. But their letters raise concerns.

One-third of Mr. Rafanelli’s references came from lawyers. Others came from psychologists whose business is to produce court-ordered evaluations. Thirteen came from judges. A Family Court judge noted that he was writing “at the behest” of Mr. Rafanelli.

The General Assembly established the Judicial Nominating Commission in 1994 to vet candidates and nominate them on merit in order to move Rhode Island beyond elevating judges primarily as political rewards. Candidates should demonstrate that they understand ethical boundaries required of judges before they ascend to the bench.

Here’s the dilemma: If a candidate asks for a reference letter, it puts colleagues in an awkward place. If those colleagues have ethical scruples or simply do not want to recommend this candidate, they might fear that declining would put them at a permanent disadvantage if this person becomes a judge destined to rule on their cases.

One of Mr. Rafanelli’s letters came from a lawyer who practices in Family Court and chairs the Supreme Court’s Ethics Advisory Panel and yet does not seem to recognize the conflict of interest in sending such a letter.

Will letter-writers gain an edge over their opponents? Do their endorsements place psychologists on a short list from which this judge will force litigants to get evaluations costing thousands of dollars?

One parent came to praise Mr. Rafanelli, but others claimed his actions traumatized their families. A teenager testified that Rafanelli had insisted she and her brother must end their sessions with long-term therapists and meet only with court-ordered psychologists--including Dr. Judith Lubiner, who sent a four-page endorsement of Rafanelli. The teens’ father wrote a letter affirming Rafanelli’s zealous representation. Their mother said Rafanelli advised the judge to send both teens to Texas for “deprogramming” that their father had found on the Internet.

Another mother told Commissioners that Rafanelli, once again working with Lubiner, had entered their case as guardian ad litem and ended a decade of relatively successful co-parenting. The mother has had no contact with her daughter for two years since then. The two lawyers opposing this mother had sent a joint letter endorsing Rafanelli’s candidacy.

Judges in both of these cases wrote letters of support for him.

Family Court suffers from a widespread public perception that it is corrupt with cronyism and thick as thieves. The Rhode Island Supreme Court repeatedly raises strong objection to Family Court decisions made in chambers without proper records. Too many judges believe without evidence what they are told by lawyers, guardians ad litem, and psychologists who have curried favor with the Court.

We need the Bench, Bar, and Judicial Nominating Commission to spell out more clearly why letters of support should be discouraged from anyone who might stand to gain professionally if this candidate becomes a judge.

The Commission has been hard-pressed: The sheer number of judicial vacancies has drastically multiplied their meetings. As chairperson, Dr. Herbert J. Brennan, a healer by profession and demeanor, has welcomed the public and patiently heard their pain. He notes that JNC meetings on Family Court judgeships bring out a larger audience than other courts.

In their May 4th interviews, some Commissioners raised the standard for questioning candidates. Commissioner Jeffrey M. Grybowski asked about specific problems in Family Court—about the court overreaching its resources to set up specialty courts, about chaos and bullying in the court, the problems of truancy court, the offensive use of restraining orders, about the court’s interaction with the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, and the court’s overwhelming bias to keep families together regardless of domestic violence.

Commissioner Richard M. McAuliffe, Jr., asked a question handed to him during a break by a member of the audience about the offensive use of psychological evaluations in Family Court. He told me later that he considers it important for him as a Commissioner to try to represent the public in these interviews.

David Bazar, editor of the Rhode Island Bar Journal, had an outstanding interview as he expanded on Commissioners’ questions with thoughtful comments on the larger significance of the law. He had two strong letters supporting his application from people who are not in the Judiciary and do not practice in Family Court.

I don’t know Mr. Bazar. I remember seeing him once in court, when he walked through a nearly empty courtroom where a distraught mother was fearful for the safety of her daughters. He did not know her, but he stopped and spoke to her with kindness and concern. That’s not what we expect in Family Court, but it is what we need.

After several rounds of balloting, Commissioners sent two alphabetical lists to Governor Lincoln Chafee, with four nominees appearing on both: David Bazar, Rossie Lee Harris, Jr., Susan Fink Hirsch, and Sandra Lanni. Patricia Asquith and Jane Fearing Howlett each also appeared on one of those lists.

Children often speak of their court-ordered experiences as “torture.” Many parents have told me they would never have gone to Family Court if they had known the lasting harm it would cause.

The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (and their current issue of Transparent Courthouse Quarterly online) notes “remarkable consensus on the nature of the problems” in civil courts. They are calling on state rules committees to innovate and find urgently needed reforms.

The Judicial Nominating Commissioners have done their part. Now Governor Chafee must name judges able to envision effective roles they can play to help bring essential changes to Rhode Island Family Court.

AG’s office targets Sacramento family court mediator

2011-04-22T06:37:00.000-04:00

Published in Capitol Weekly, April 21, 2011

http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_c=znccb3xqdm1wua&xid=znc63u9zrsx2yl&done=.znccb3xqdmnwua

By Malcolm Maclachlan | 04/21/11 12:00 AM PST

The state Attorney General’s office has filed legal papers seeking to revoke the license of a Sacramento family courts mediator for allegedly lying on her renewal application. The mediator, Janelle Burrill, has been at the center of numerous controversial child-custody cases.

Burrill is based in Sacramento, but works in both the Placer and Sacramento family courts. The Sacramento family courts, along with Marin, were reviewed by the Bureau of State Audits in a January audit that was critical of the standards both courts used in hiring and monitoring court-ordered specialists.

Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office filed the accusation against Burrill on March 17 on behalf of Kim Madsen, executive office of the Board of Behavioral Sciences (BBS). BBS operates under the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) and licenses clinical social workers, among other professions. Deputy Attorney General Karen Denvir wrote the official accusation against Burrill and will prosecute the case on behalf of these agencies.

The accusation states that Burrill “committed dishonest, corrupt or fraudulent acts” when she claimed on her June, 2009, renewal application that there were no official pending complaints against her. In fact, there were two official complaints of official misconduct filed against her by family court litigants at the time. It also notes that in March, 2010, the American Board of Examiners in Clinical Social Work revoked Burrill’s certification for “misrepresentation” of complaints against her.

Finally, the accusation claims that Burrill “made a false representation” in a letter to family courts judge regarding one of the BBS complaints against her. That complaint stemmed from her work as a “reunification therapist” in a custody case between Jayraj and Bindu Nair over their two sons.

In February, the Capitol Weekly published a story about Jayraj Nair, the father in this case, and his official complaints about Burrill as he sought to regain custody of his sons. We did not identify Burrill by name in that story, but an April 7 San Francisco Weekly story did.

When reached by phone in February, Burrill referred questions to her attorney, Ed Friedberg, who was quoted in the earlier story. As of press time, he had not returned two calls seeking comment for this story.

According to sources at the AG’s office, Burrill has been served with the accusation and has contested the charges. The case will likely be heard in October. If she is found guilty of the charges, her case would be referred back to BBS, which would have the option of taking away her license - though Burrill could file multiple appeals. “She can drag this on forever, seven years or so, without an impact on her practice,” Jayraj Nair said.

Burrill was appointed to seek reconciliation between Suraj and his mother Bindu in 2008. According to numerous official documents, Suraj had been seeking to be placed in the sole custody of his father, Jayraj. Burrill soon began clashing with both father and son, including a billing dispute with Jayraj Nair.

By early 2009, Jayraj Nair had begun filing official complaints with BBS over Burrill - one of the complaints she allegedly did not acknowledge, causing her to run afoul of licensing organizations. Burrill countered with allegations that Jayraj was intentionally seeking to alienate Suraj against his mother—something he has denied.

Burrill has also sued Jayraj Nair for defamation for comments he made on the website RightsForMothers.com. Burrill has also sued him for distributing an audio recording that Suraj Nair made of one of his sessions with Burrill. Jayraj Nair said Burrill has accused him of making the recording, even though he said he was not present. He also said he is preparing a civil rights lawsuit against Burrill, but will not be seeking damages.

“We don’t want any more children and families harmed by her,” he said.

In February 2009, then 12-year-old Suraj was taken from his father’s Granite Bay home in handcuffs and turned over to the fulltime custody of his mother. He has reportedly run away numerous times since, and has been staying in a protective facility in Placer County since March while seeking reunification with his father.

Jayraj Nair has lost numerous rounds in court, though he alleges this is largely because he has run up against a legal system in the Placer County family courts that has circled the wagons around Burrill. This includes an order to pay $75,000 of his ex-wife's attorneys’ fees.

He recently won a round in court. On March 25, a state appeals court ruled that he was improperly barred from being able to hold an evidentiary hearing to contest the restraining order keeping him away from his son and his ex-wife. The court ordered such a hearing to take place within 60 days, opening the possibility that Nair may soon be able to see his older son.
Burrill has been the subject of numerous complaints over the years. Last June, a group of parent litigants held a protest rally against Burrill outside her Sacramento offices.

In August, Betsy Vail and her daughter, Rebecca Knox, testified at a hearing of the California Commission on the Status of Women that Burrill sought to reunite Knox with her estranged father against her will and also acted in an extremely unprofessional manner. Knox and Vail eventually prevailed in that case, severing ties with the father, and have filed official complaints against Burrill with multiple state agencies - including one with BBS.

In January, the Bureau of State Audits issued a report on the Family Courts in Marin and Sacramento Counties. It did not mention Burrill or anyone else by name, but found that the Sacramento family courts did not properly vet their court-appointed specialists.

Jayraj Nair said that he hopes his case and others like it help lead to greater outside scrutiny on the courts in general and the family courts in particular. He said he especially hopes that steps are taken to remove the immunity that court-appointed witnesses have when they testify, saying this gives these specialists the freedom to “commit fraud” and get away with it.

The pretend world of custody courts

2011-04-21T10:17:00.001-04:00

Published at
http://timesupblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/pretend-world-of-custody-courts.html

By Barry Goldstein

The Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) is the part of the US Justice Department that provides grants for programs designed to reduce and prevent domestic violence. They recently sponsored a forum for their staff and other professionals in various parts of the government to learn about the crisis in the custody court system. They heard from seven protective mothers, one very inspiring Courageous Kid and over a dozen of the leading experts in the country. It was a wonderful discussion based upon current scientific research and actual experiences and everyone seems to get it that the courts are routinely making catastrophic mistakes in failing to protect children and domestic violence survivors. The purpose of the forum was to consider the problem, causes and solutions. It was so wonderful to take part in a reality based discussion about domestic violence custody issues and to do so with people who may have the ability to promote the needed changes. And yet the next day if any of us walked into a custody court, the research and the reality that were an unquestioned part of the discussion at OVW would be missing in the pretend world that is the present custody court system.

Similarly, in December, I had the privilege of participating in a review of grant proposals concerning gender, violence and health. The Canadian Institute of Health brought leading experts in the field together to consider which grant proposals would be most beneficial to fund. This was a high level discussion in which all of the participants were familiar with current scientific research so that we could have a reality based discussion. I found it particularly interesting that the Canadian government could attract knowledgeable experts for $200 a day at the same time the courts pay or require litigants to pay thousands of dollars for a few hours to “experts” completely unfamiliar with up-to-date research who instead provide opinions based on their personal belief system and prejudices.

Our custody courts are a very insular system in which information and ideas that contradict the misinformation routinely relied on by court professionals are unwelcome. Custody courts started relying on mental health professionals at a time when no research about domestic violence was available and many people assumed domestic violence was caused by mental illness, substances abuse and the behavior of the victims. We now know the original assumptions are wrong and mental health professionals rarely have much expertise in domestic violence or child sexual abuse. Nevertheless the courts are so used to relying on professionals with inadequate training that they routinely refuse to hear genuine experts or treat their testimony with tremendous skepticism. Experts, government agencies and academicians relied on to make major decisions in the real world are treated with disrespect by the court system. Repeatedly I have heard judges suggest that when the (inadequately trained) GAL, evaluator and child protective caseworker all agree, it is unreasonable to consider any other view.

Abusers often impose a pretend world on their victims by denying and minimizing their abuse. They often blame their partners by claiming her behavior forced him to abuse her. It is often unsafe for the woman to challenge this pretend existence. Genuine experts agree that dealing with reality is an important part of the healing process after survivors leave their abusers. This makes the common court practice of cooperating with abusers to focus on pretend issues so harmful to battered mothers and their children.

Many years ago I tried to help a teenage girl whose father was sexually abusing her. She finally found a therapist she could trust and the courage to share her secret. He called the child protective agency, but their response was to remove the girl from her home so the father’s life would not be disrupted. They put her in a home for girls that included those there for criminal behavior. While at this home, she was assaulted and robbed. The caseworker refused to permit her to continue working with her therapist just when she needed him most and pressured her to recant her allegations. The caseworker threatened to send her to an even worse facility and she was also concerned about the trouble her father would face. When she recanted her allegations she was sent back to her home and forced to engage in therapy based upon the false assumption her allegations of abuse were wrong. At a time when she needed therapy in response to years of abuse, she was forced to engage in therapy to determine why she made false allegations.

More recently, I worked on a New Jersey case in which a young child reported to her mother that her father and his mother had touched her in the vicinity of her privates. She did not know the words to be more precise. The father immediately denied the allegations and claimed the mother was making deliberate false allegations. The unqualified professionals focused only on whether the child was molested or the mother made false allegations and when they could not find enough evidence of abuse after a flawed investigation assumed the allegations were false. They brought charges against the mother and eventually gave the abusive father custody and the mother supervised visitation. When the court professionals later learned of the father’s history of domestic violence and hired a qualified expert who used current research to recommend custody be restored to the mother, the court professionals ignored the information that undermined their mistaken finding. The mother was forced into therapy in which she had to prove she no longer believed the true allegations if she wanted unsupervised visitation with her daughter. Having escaped the pretend world imposed by her abuser by leaving him, the mother faced another pretend world imposed by the court.

These kinds of mistakes are common in the broken custody court system. Often they are caused by court professionals who use the bogus Parental Alienation Syndrome (sometimes by other names) to give custody to the abuser and deny normal contact with the protective mother. Some courts impose reunification therapy on the children who are taught that their dislike of their father is not because of his history of abusing them and their mother but because of the lies she has told them. Again at a time when they need therapy to heal from their father’s abuse and the separation from their primary attachment figure, they must instead engage in therapy based on pretend alienation issues. These practices work well for the bank accounts of mental health professionals, but poorly for children.

Most court professionals have been trained to view contested custody cases as “high conflict” by which they mean the parents are angry at each other and act out in ways harmful to their children. Current research, however, establishes that most of these cases are actually domestic violence cases. Fathers with a long history of abuse seek custody as a way to gain access to their victim to pressure her to return or punish her for leaving. Court professionals unwittingly assist these tactics by pressuring the mother to interact and cooperate with her abuser instead of pressuring the father to stop his abuse. The normal fear, emotion and reluctance to cooperate with a man they see as dangerous is used to discredit and punish the mother. Using the “high conflict” lens makes it harder for court professionals to recognize the father’s abuse and to take it seriously.

Few court professionals have been taught about the dynamics of domestic violence or how to recognize it. We regularly see court professionals discredit domestic violence complaints for reasons that are not probative such as when women return to their abuser, withdraw protective orders or don’t have police or medical reports. The women do this for safety and other reasons, but if the professionals treat this kind of information as if it were proof of false allegations, they have no chance to recognize valid complaints. At the same time, these professionals are often only looking at incidents of physical abuse. Accordingly they fail to see the patterns of controlling and coercive behavior. They don’t pay attention to economic control, isolating behaviors, emotional abuse, monitoring their partner’s behavior or information about the abusers’ motivation. Once courts determine through these flawed practices that the domestic violence allegations are false, they generally refuse to consider additional evidence or events that support the allegations and severely retaliate against mothers who continue to believe their allegations. Significantly, when courts do recognize the father’s abuse, they rarely if ever penalize him for continuing to deny his abuse.

The pretend world created by the custody courts is supported by the popular myth that women frequently make false allegations of abuse to gain an advantage in the litigation. A new Department of Justice study led by Dan Saunders of the University of Michigan found that court professionals without adequate training in domestic violence are more likely to believe this myth and in turn make recommendations harmful to children. The myth greatly contributes to the frequent mistaken findings we see in custody courts where valid allegations of domestic violence are disbelieved. Widespread gender bias also contributes to the inaccurate decisions.

Custody courts do their worst job in responding to allegations of sexual abuse of children. Although a majority of allegations made by mothers are accurate, 85% of the cases result in custody for the alleged abuser. Even attorneys with little knowledge of domestic violence and child abuse routinely advise clients not to raise sexual abuse allegations, even with strong cases, because the courts are so reluctant to believe a father could commit such a heinous act. Sexual abuse against young children is particularly hard to prove because it is committed in private for obvious reasons and children often do not have the language to describe what their father did to them. Although many court professionals expect physical proof, most assaults do not leave physical evidence and when they do it may be gone by the time the child works up the courage to reveal the abuse. Older children often recant true allegations because the abuser has threatened to hurt them or their mother or because they don’t want someone they still love to get in trouble. Poor investigation methods by often inadequately trained professionals also impede proof of sexual abuse. When allegations are made by mothers the most likely circumstance is the allegations are true. The next most likely is that the accused did not abuse the child but engaged in boundary violations that made the child uncomfortable. Other common possibilities are that the allegations are false, but made in good faith or that the evidence is equivocal, but court professionals routinely focus on deliberately false allegations even though this is the least likely cause for the allegations. The result of these flawed practices is that courts often deny valid allegations of sexual abuse and conduct the rest of the case based upon the fiction that there is something wrong with the mother for trying to protect her child.

These common mistakes in domestic violence and child abuse cases lead to a pretend world promoted by the abuser and supported by the court in which the case is conducted based on the fiction that the mother’s allegations are false. Any attempt by the mother to provide additional information of the father’s abuse is treated as a lack of cooperation for which she is severely punished. Her only hope to have some minimal time with her children is to prove she no longer believes the true allegations she made. In other words she is back in a pretend world that she hoped to escape by leaving her abuser. Even worse, now he has complete control, supported by the court and she is not even near the children to try to protect them when he acts in a dangerous manner.

In the typical contested custody case the mother is the primary attachment figure for the child and complains about the father’s domestic violence and/or child abuse. The father counters with claims of alienation. The primary attachment figure is the parent or other caregiver who provides most of the child care during the first couple of years of a child’s life. When a child is separated from their primary attachment figure, the child is more likely to suffer depression, low self-esteem and to commit suicide when older. Accordingly it makes no sense to do this unless the primary attachment figure is unsafe such as if they were a drug addict or beat the child. At the same time children who witness domestic violence are more likely to engage in a variety of harmful behaviors when they are older and their normal development is impeded which can cause lifetime of harmful effects. Alienation is a nebulous term which is often alleged in a generalized way. The most likely outcome of false negative statements is that it harms the relationship with the parent making the false statements. There is no research that demonstrates long term harm to children from alienating behaviors. Claims of primary attachment are almost always true as in our still sexist society mothers continue to provide most of the child care particularly in the first years of a child’s life. In many cases the father does not contest the issue or the work schedules of the parents make it clear who was the primary attachment figure. Mothers’ allegations of abuse are rarely deliberately false (in cases of child sexual abuse inaccurate complaints could be made based on the behavior of the child), so the complaints tend to be reliable. Alienation claims by fathers in contested custody cases are often part of a standard abuser tactic to deflect claims of abuse. Research such as the study led by Nicholas Bala establishes that fathers in contested custody cases are sixteen times more likely to make deliberately false complaints. The complaints by mothers are more important to the well being of children and far more likely to be true than father’s complaints and yet in contested custody cases fathers receive custody or joint custody between 70 and 83% of the time. Clearly courts are not making decisions based upon the reality experienced by children or approaches that benefit children.

The worst custody decisions provide custody to the alleged abuser and supervised or no visitation to the safe, protective mother who is the primary attachment figure for the child. These decisions are virtually always wrong because they are based on punishing the mother for believing the father is dangerous and not on concerns for the well being of children. The findings are usually wrong because of the flawed practices, but the outcome would be wrong if the findings were correct because courts rarely weigh the harm they are causing with whatever benefit they seek to create. The harm of denying the child their primary attachment figure is far greater than any benefit the court believes it is providing. Significantly, we rarely see evaluation reports or court decisions that weigh the benefits and harm of a decision they are considering. This is the kind of result we see when courts fail to consider current scientific research in their decisions. Judges may believe the mental health professionals involved in the case provide this expertise, but the professionals relied on by the courts are rarely familiar with current scientific research and courts don’t disqualify or even discredit evaluators and other mental health professionals for being unfamiliar with current research.

Mothers partnered with abusive fathers are in an impossible situation. If they fail to protect their children from the dangerous abusers, they can lose custody for failure to protect. The mothers hear repeated messages that they should leave him, but when they do and try to protect their children, they are punished for interfering with the relationship between the children and the abusive father. The result is too many courtrooms in which courts recreate the pretend world the mother sought to escape.

In fairness to the custody courts, they were forced to develop practices to respond to domestic violence cases at a time when no research was available. Many other entities were slow to understand the best ways to respond to domestic violence. Police officers were trained for many years to separate the parties when called to a home and have the abuser walk around the block to calm down. Eventually they switched to a pro-arrest policy after research demonstrated this practice was ineffective. Domestic violence homicides were reduced as communities moved towards practices designed to hold the abuser accountable. Even domestic violence agencies have not always been as supportive of protective mothers as they deserved, but with the increase in Custody-Visitation Scandal Cases and increase in domestic violence homicides as a result of mothers staying with their abusers because of the dangers created by custody courts, the domestic violence community has made child custody an important priority. It has taken a while for academicians to realize the harm in common custody court practices. Initial research supported shared parenting, but more comprehensive research has demonstrated shared parenting is harmful to children even when there is no domestic violence, but too often it is used in domestic violence cases because court professionals have difficulty in recognizing domestic violence. Current scientific research confirms complaints by protective mothers that the custody courts are mistreating them and harming their children. Government agencies now seem to understand the custody courts are harming children. Their understanding is based upon the research now available. The problem is that child custody issues have historically and constitutionally been left to the states and their courts.

Psychologists and other mental health professionals engaged in research have come to understand the harm of the standard practices in domestic violence custody cases. Most mental health professionals are not involved in the custody court system, but have failed to impose ethical standards on mental health professionals involved in questionable practices in the custody courts. The professional associations have permitted ethically challenged psychologists and other professionals to make recommendations unsupported by current scientific research, engage in biased practices that favor abusers and make diagnoses that are not found in the DSM IV because they don’t exist. Although ethical considerations would require the professionals to consult with experts on subjects in which they don’t have expertise, like domestic violence, the professionals in custody courts routinely fail to consult domestic violence experts, wrongly believing they have this expertise. This has led to frequent mistakes in domestic violence custody cases. These unqualified mental health professionals have played an important role in misleading custody courts and creating an illusion that there is a scientific basis for the mistaken practices commonly used in custody courts.

Judge Sol Gothard often trains other judges because of his expertise in domestic violence and child abuse. He was featured in the PBS documentary BREAKING THE SILENCE: CHILDREN’S STORIES. He wrote that if the courts had commissioned a study on how the present practices are working, they would have found the research contained in DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, ABUSE and CHILD CUSTODY. This research demonstrates that the present practices are working poorly for children. The outdated and discredited practices routinely relied on by custody courts lead to the pretend world of custody courts we have discussed in this article. We must encourage judges and other court professionals to be open to the current scientific research and stop closing their eyes and ears to information that undermines their long-held beliefs and assumptions.

Barry Goldstein is a nationally recognized domestic violence expert, speaker, writer and consultant. He is the co-editor with Mo Therese Hannah of DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, ABUSE and CHILD CUSTODY. Barry can be reached by email at their web site www.Domesticviolenceabuseandchildcustody.com

How the courts force battered women and children to stay with their abusers

2011-04-16T16:34:00.001-04:00

A few months after Holly Collins turned 22 years old she opened the front door of her family home in St Louis Park, Minnesota to Hennepin County Child Protection investigators. They made it known that they were aware of her husband’s abuse to her and her children, specifically citing a recent fracture to her little boy’s skull. This young mother was warned that if she didn’t flee immediately with her children and file for an Order For Protection her children would be removed from her care as well and there would be a procedure of Failure To Protect charges filed against her. This is one way to force a battered woman to leave her abuser and protect her children. One may think it is a bit harsh to threaten an abuse victim with criminal charges but perhaps necessary to protect her and her children.

It is incomprehensible that as a result of the Order For Protection, which was granted and forbade Mark Collins from abusing his wife and children, the father was simultaneously granted unsupervised visitation with the very children he abused. This girl, barely a woman couldn’t understand the ramifications of the family court system. Holly Collins sought out the Child Protection Investigators who forced her to take her children away from their abusive father and went directly to the Child Protection office in a panic begging them to protect her children. “This is why I stayed” She wept “At least I could protect the children MOST of the time. Now my children have to go alone with him and there is no one there to protect them.” The child protection desk agent was sympathetic but explained that once this battered woman took actions to protect her children and left her abuser the case was then transferred from Juvenile Court to Family Court and it was her duty as a mother to get the family court judge to protect her children.

In the meantime Holly’s young children would return from court ordered visitations battered and bruised. Holly’s little boy was treated by their pediatrician for injuries sustained from his father‘s abuse. The doctor’s report documents the bruises to the young lad and clearly states “Mother will be alert for abuse potential situation.” For 5 more years Holly Collins was alert and vigilant to protect her children but time after time and one court hearing after another Mark Collins somehow managed to convince the judge that Holly was trying to “Alienate” him from his children’s lives. Eventually a family court judge instructed Holly to take the children to the Boston Children’s Hospital to be evaluated by the Child Abuse Trauma Team and he simultaneously ordered a custody evaluation. Both Dr. Eli Newberger and the entire investigative team at the Boston Children’s Hospital found that the children and their mother were severely abused by the father. Back in Hennepin County the Family Court Investigator also confirmed domestic violence but conceded that Holly’s fear of her husband was (although unwittingly) indeed interfering in the children’s relationship with their father. And just like that custody was reversed to the very man who terrorized, beat and battered this woman and her children.

Holly eventually fled the country with her children and was the first American citizen granted asylum in the Netherlands. After 14 years in hiding she was found by the FBI. After a lengthy investigation ALL international and domestic kidnapping charges were dismissed. When questioned by reporters in the lobby of the Minneapolis Court House Holly Collins responded that the biggest mistake she ever made was leaving her abuser.

Is this really the message we want to send to abuse victims?

written by Jennifer Collins

The true story of Holly Collins is being made into a Garland Waller film, No Way Out But One.
http://nowayoutbutone.com

Family Court Therapist Janelle Burrill Charged with Misconduct by CA Attorney General's Office

2011-04-09T00:56:00.001-04:00

This story appears at
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/04/janelle_burrill_family_court.php

By Peter Jamison
published: Thu., Apr. 7 2011 @ 2:19PM

The California Board of Behavioral Science and California Attorney General's office have filed formal accusations of misconduct against a Sacramento family-court therapist.

The therapist, Janelle Burrill, is a clinical social worker who works with children and parents as ordered by family courts in Sacramento and elsewhere. Burrill has been the subject of multiple complaints by families unhappy with her work.

Documents filed against her by the Behavioral Sciences board and the office of Attorney General Kamala Harris allege that Burrill "committed acts that fall sufficiently below the standard of conduct of the profession as to constitute acts of gross negligence."

The documents assert that Burrill lied to both the American Board of Examiners for Clinical Social Workers and to a Placer County judge, claiming in both cases that no formal complaints had been filed against her by clients when she knew otherwise. If the accusations are upheld, her social-worker license could be suspended or revoked.

Burrill has been a lightning rod for criticism in Sacramento, and is only one of numerous family-court officials who have come under scrutiny for faulty and potentially dangerous practices in child-custody proceedings. Last month, SF Weekly published a story detailing multiple instances in which family courts had delivered children into the custody of parents with convictions for child molestation or spousal battery.

Kathleen Russell of the Center for Judicial Excellence, a family-court reform group, said Burrill should be removed from cases in which parents or children have concerns while the case against her proceeds.

"It seems prudent for the Courts to remove her from any case in which she is involved, at the request of either parent or child, to ensure the safety and well-being of the families and children they serve," Russell said in a statement. "And major policy reforms are needed to ensure a more timely resolution of these complaints."

How lawyers manipulate doctors: Do-No-Harm vs. Take-No-Prisoners

2011-04-03T09:06:00.000-04:00

This article appeared here:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-lawyers-manipulate-doc-by-Anne-Grant-110327-242.html

A 12-year-old sent his mother this note three years after he last saw her:

When soldiers are ordered to "take no prisoners," it means to annihilate their enemies. Physicians who vow to "do no harm" step onto a treacherous path when they sell their expertise to lawyers trained to take no prisoners in adversarial lawsuits.

For more than two decades, I have researched domestic abuse custody cases in Rhode Island Family Court, trying to understand how this publicly financed process crushes children and families. In many of these cases, lawyers, who are officers of the court, have manipulated clinicians. (Below I am naming only those lawyers and physicians specifically responsible to protect children.)

First Case: At Hasbro Hospital's Child Protection Program (CPP), Providence, Rhode Island, in 1997, a 6-year-old girl sat rigid, a blanket over her head. Children often try to disappear when life gets intolerable.

The girl's father had a documented history of aggression against his first two wives and their children. This child, the youngest, showed symptoms of sexual abuse. CPP Director Dr. Carole Jenny reported: "There is no doubt in my mind that some event happened because of the child's clear and consistent disclosure."

The father harassed those who tried to help his families: a security guard, social workers, therapists, teachers, pastors. He bullied a Providence Journal editor. He took aim at Kevin Aucoin, chief legal counsel at the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), for not responding quickly enough after the father appealed DCYF's findings against him. When he threatened to sue, Aucoin needed Dr. Jenny to revise her assessment.

She listed warning signs in the father's behavior, then minimized them in a summary of court documents. Her new "forensic review" freed the father to demand possession of his children. He held them for thirty months, until the eleventh Family Court judge to hear the case denounced his behavior in 2003 and sent the children home to their mother with damage that has not yet healed.

Second Case: In March 2006, attorney Lise Iwon began writing letters to the CPP about a case in which she purported to be a neutral guardian ad litem. She secured an astonishing report from Dr. Nancy S. Harper at CPP. Instead of medical information, Harper's report glibly summarized court documents Iwon had provided, repeating the conjecture, hearsay, and biased rhetoric in the father's defense strategy.

Harper's supervisor, Dr. Jenny, never saw or signed off on her CPP report before Iwon whisked it off to the judge who ordered DCYF to remove two young girls that day from their mother for a "psychiatric evaluation." Police arrived with a social worker to take them from their schools into "temporary" custody. The children remained in foster homes and a shelter at taxpayer expense for more than sixteen months before the state awarded the younger girl to the father she had accused of sexually assaulting her; the older girl went to yet another foster home.

Scores of neighbors, teachers, and others wrote letters attesting to the mother's superb parenting, but Iwon never interviewed them. Dr. Jenny told me the mother's behavior sounded "bizarre" but candidly admitted she herself might seem bizarre if she believed her children were in danger.

Third Case: A German father, head of a vast multinational corporate empire, retained several law firms in the U.S. and Germany to retrieve his two American sons after his estranged wife brought them here to her parents for one to have surgery in 2007.

The mother told me she had confronted her husband in Germany with evidence that he was sexually abusing their sons. She said she had walked in on this happening and found disturbing photos on a laptop computer her husband had given her. She related that her sons had pointed out a store where their father got hardcore pornography. They allegedly told her that he forced them to watch it and act it out.

The father hired a former U.S. official (at $700 an hour) as one of his lawyers, who reached out to Family Court Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, Jr., and paid the chief's assistant David Tassoni over $2,300 to help. The father's attorneys met alone in chambers with U.S. District Judge William E. Smith and intervened to end the involvement of Family Court, DCYF, and the FBI. They secured attorney Sharon O'Keefe, who had been assistant child advocate in Rhode Island, to serve as guardian ad litem.

O'Keefe contracted with Dr. Jenny to evaluate some of the father's photographs and a stack of German legal documents with apparent translations. O'Keefe's bill exceeded $13,000, including at least $2,000 to be paid directly to Dr. Jenny.

O'Keefe hardly talked with the boys, and Jenny never met them. Both concluded they saw no evidence the father was a pedophile. Judge Smith gave the boys and their American passports to their father, who took them back to Germany in April 2007.

Judge Smith ordered the father to give the boys plenty of time with their mother. But she has not been allowed to see or communicate with them since 2007. On Mothers Day 2010, one son wrote a plaintive note asking why "these people" would not at least let them Skype her.

It is troubling that Dr. Jenny never talked to the boys, who might have helped her interpret the photos. Nor did she demand an independent search of the hard drive by state police who are trained and equipped to examine electronic evidence of child pornography--and who do not accept private payment for their services.

In January, I wrote expressing these concerns and asked Dr. Jenny to improve CPP's protection of children by:

~Establishing ethical standards that forbid CPP staff to produce reports for private clients in litigation without a full investigation into the family's history;

~Making a complete inventory of past reports produced by CPP or its staff to see how these have been used in litigation and to examine the outcomes for children; and

~Providing CPP staff with training in domestic abuse, coercive control, and the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that clinicians need to recognize in protective parents who may seem "bizarre" in their appropriate efforts to protect their children.

Clinicians must recognize the pitfalls when officers of the court reach out to them. Lawyers are hired to zealously represent their clients, no matter who gets hurt. Doctors trained to "do no harm" are easy prey for them; children suffer the consequences.

Notes

In order to protect children's identities, I am referring only to case numbers.

First Case: P92-4797 in Rhode Island Family Court; Carole Jenny, MD, signed the Child Safe Clinic #0629-23-38 report of January 14, 1997. After an extensive sexual abuse assessment by St. Mary's Home (April 16, 1997), DCYF sent a letter (April 18, 1997) to notify the father he had been "indicated." He appealed and a year later threatened to sue DCYF and its senior counsel Kevin Aucoin for failure to schedule a hearing. DCYF asked Dr. Jenny to review her records. Her report (July 29, 1998) was followed by a revised DCYF report (August 6, 1998), and Aucoin's motions (August 6, 1998, etc.) to launch an expedited trial. DCYF investigator Edward J. O'Donnell sent a letter (August 18, 1998) to the father stating that the findings against him "are hereby overturned . . . pursuant to . . . a forensic review of the investigation and all associated material conducted by Dr. Carole Jenny" (DCYF Administrative Appeal of SCR 425142 I/6).

Second Case: N04-0106 in Rhode Island Family Court and 1676-86-32 AC 000119896231 at Rhode Island Hospital. The court file, which is now sealed and presumably held at the Rhode Island Supreme Court, contains Lise Iwon's Motion (March 31, 2006) regarding her communications with Nancy Harper, and Iwon's Motion (April 5, 2006) asking to release clinical reports and court documents to Harper, whose report (March 21, 2006, signed April 5, 2006), shows that Harper already had those documents. I interviewed the mother and secured documents from her and the court file until Judge John Mutter imposed a gag order forbidding all parties to disclose anything further about the case and sealed both the divorce and DCYF files, on or about August 16, 2007.

Third Case: 07-46S in the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island, which holds transcripts, including the ex parte chamber conference of January 31, 2007, and court orders, including the decisive order of March 28, 2007; Jenny's report to O'Keefe (March 15, 2007); and the father's documentation of payments to Tassoni and others. The mother provided scores of documents, including the rental list from the German video store (October 2005), an initial DCYF report by Paul Ventura (January 31, 2007), O'Keefe's bills (March 12 and 28, 2007), hundreds of photographs from the laptop, and her son's letter (Mother's Day 2010).

Anne Grant writes several blogs about legal abuse in custody courts and wrote a chapter for Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody: Legal Strategies and Policy Issues, ed. Mo Therese Hannah, PhD, and Barry Goldstein, JD (Civic Research Institute, 2010).

The tactics and ploys of psychopath aggressors in the family law system

2011-03-18T14:00:00.001-04:00

This important article was posted here:
http://www.childrenwebmag.com/articles/child-care-social-issues/the-tactics-and-ploys-of-psychopath-aggressors-in-the-family-law-system

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011 by Charles Pragnell

In the twenty years I have been advising parents, children, and their legal advisers in several hundred cases in Family Law matters, I have often been asked, “Why is it that children are so often ordered to have contact with, and even into the custody of, parents who have abused them and have perpetrated violence against their partners.”

The answer to this question is not simple and involves an examination of the requirements of Family Laws which stress the importance of children having both parents in their lives after parental separation, the dynamics of legal processes, and the often very clear gender biases of the principals involved in judicial processes.

But one of the most outstanding and consistent features of proceedings involving the care of children post-separation are the conduct and behaviours which can be identified as clearly fitting the definitions of psychopathy/sociopathy.

The major personality traits of the psychopath are supremacy and narcissism. The afflicted individual must be in complete control of their environment and all persons who are a part of that environment or can serve the psychopath’s purposes in maintaining control.

The psychopath is capable of using both aggressive anger and passive anger with cunning and guile, to achieve their goals of exerting control. Examples of such contrary behaviours are the aggressive violence against intimate partners, with the frequent inherent abuse of children, designed to groom friends, relatives, and professionals into believing they are harmless and indeed very stable and friendly. If thwarted in attaining these goals, however, the passive can quickly turn into the aggressive.

In furtherance of these traits, the major tactics and ploys of the psychopath are:

1. denial of wrongdoings in the face of clear evidence;

2. refusal to take responsibility for behaviours and actions;

3. minimisation of the incident and consequences;

4. blame being placed on others;

5. misrepresentation, fabrication, embellishment and distortion of information and evidence;

6. minimisation of all information and evidence regarding wrongdoing;

7. claims of victim status, alleging the victim was the aggressor;

8. projection of their own actions and behaviour onto the victim; e.g. she abuses/neglects the children/ she is an alcoholic or drug abuser. This is based on the belief by the psychopath that attack is the best form of defence.

The grooming of friends, relatives, and professionals is very clear in many cases, and in particular some psychiatrists, psychologists and family evaluators/reporters have been hoodwinked by such tactics and ploys by the psychopathic individual. Their reports, of course favouring the psychopath, have very considerable influence on the Courts and their determinations. Very often clear evidence of intimate partner violence such as convictions, Domestic Violence Orders, Apprehended Violence Orders and Restraining Orders against the psychopathic aggressor and medical evidence of injuries suffered by the adult and child victims are ignored or dismissed as irrelevant by such professionals.

Such professionals now refer to such cases as `high conflict’ cases, when it is clear that they are situations of a violent aggressor/tormentor/persecutor and their victims. It is easy to see how the cases in Austria and America where young girls were imprisoned for many years by controlling individuals and regularly abused in several ways were undetected, when the aggressors/persecutors/tormentors were able to convince their family members, relatives and associates that they were reasonable, normal people. The same often occurs in other cases of violence and murder where neighbours report that the accused murderer is a nice and friendly neighbour. They do not recognise the Jekyll and Hyde aspects of the psychopath’s ploys and tactics and of those they have effectively groomed in their beliefs.

The high conflict which usually occurs in such cases is most commonly engendered by the respective lawyers, conditioned by operating in an adversarial process and arena, whose own major goal is to ‘win’, whatever may be the justness and fairness of the result.

It is not difficult to see, therefore, how the psychopath is able to readily gain the sympathy and support of some of the professionals engaged in the Family Law system and for them to abandon and forfeit their professional objectivity and impartiality in such circumstances. In blaming others the psychopath will allege the former partner is mentally ill and in some cases the former partner may be suffering a Complex Post Traumatic Disorder after suffering years of physical, mental, and sexual abuse and violence. This is often misinterpreted and misdiagnosed as a Borderline Personality Disorder or similar psychiatric term. In effect it is a classic ‘blame the victim’ scenario.

The groomed professionals then enable the psychopath to achieve their primary objective, which is to maintain power and control over their victims, their former partner and children. It is an act of vengeance and spite but mostly it is to maintain the power and control and feelings of supremacism and narcissism. “I am faultless and flawless and in control of my whole environment” are the unvoiced cravings of the psychopath, and “I can continue to inflict my tortures on my victims with impunity” are the psychopath’s continuing behaviours.

The Family Law and their shared parenting provisions and its administration by the Family Courts have become ready enablers for the psychopath.

Charles Pragnell is an Independent Advocate for Children and Families.

California Family Courts Helping Pedophiles, Batterers Get Child Custody

2011-03-02T05:09:00.000-05:00

(Enlarge photos with a single click.)

Here is the beginning of an important article by Peter Jamison on March 2, 2011, in the San Francisco Weekly:

Karen Anderson suspected that something strange was going on between her ex-husband, Rex Anderson, and their 15-year-old daughter. Prior to the couple's separation in 1998, the girl would sometimes put on high heels and makeup, "visiting" her dad while he worked late at night in the family's basement. It was the same retreat in which he stored the dildos and artificial vaginas he used to stimulate himself sexually.

After the divorce, Rex was given primary custody of his daughter, as well as the couple's 8-year-old son. Karen says this was because he had a full-time job as a facilities engineer at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, while she was unemployed. While staying with her on weekends, her daughter would sometimes say she hated herself and wanted to die.

In 1999, Anderson, a resident of San Jose, decided to take her concerns to Santa Clara County Family Court. Like similar courts across the state, it is charged with adjudicating high-conflict divorces — managing the division of property, child support payments, and the often bitter process of establishing a plan for shared child-rearing. She urged the court to investigate whether her daughter was at risk of sexual molestation, and whether Rex's custody rights should be restricted as a result.

Family Court Judge James Stewart temporarily barred the children from seeing their father while the court looked into the abuse claims. But instead of seeking evidence as to whether molestation was taking place, he hired a Menlo Park–based psychologist, Leslie Packer, to evaluate both parents. Among Packer's tasks was to assess, in light of their psychological profiles, whether the accusations were likely to be true. After a series of interviews and personality tests, such as the Rorschach inkblot test, she delivered her opinion: Karen's fears for her daughter were unfounded.

"Karen's suspiciousness goes to the extent of paranoid thinking, particularly in regard to her husband's actions," Packer wrote in an evaluation delivered to the court. "There is a basis in her concerns with her husband's unusual sexual practices, but it appears that most of her speculations about her husband's possible sexualized attitudes toward their daughter are not based upon documented or reality-based evidence." Rex regained primary custody of his children.

Today, Rex Anderson is serving a 23-year sentence at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga. In 2003, he pleaded no contest to 25 counts of sex crimes against his daughter, including child molestation, sexual penetration of a child with a foreign object, and use of a minor to create pornography. When she turned 18, his daughter left his care and reported years of abuse to police in El Dorado County, where they were living. (SF Weekly is withholding her name as a victim of child sexual abuse.)

Seldom are a parent's allegations against an estranged former spouse rejected out of hand, only to be vindicated so completely. Yet observers say the Anderson case represents just one unfortunate outcome of systemic problems in the family courts' methods for investigating accusations of abuse.

Looking out for the children who find themselves in the middle of bitter divorces is the most important function of the state's family courts, and arguably one of the most significant duties of the judiciary as a whole. Yet evidence has mounted in recent years that it is a responsibility in which family court officials are sometimes failing dramatically.

Rex Anderson (left) and Henry "Bud" Parson were both convicted of child molestation after family courts awarded them custody of their daughters.

See the full article here:
http://www.sfweekly.com/2011-03-02/news/family-court-parental-alienation-syndrome-richard-gardner-pedophilia-domestic-violence-child-abuse-judges-divorce/

President of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry Struts His Stuff

2011-02-27T09:54:00.010-05:00

This story from the Los Angeles Times can be found online at
latimes.com/news/local/la-me-kenan-20110227,0,7724924.story

Child custody expert linked to lewd Web photos

Joseph Kenan was removed from one case and has been challenged in others after posting the photos.

By Kim Christensen and Victoria Kim, Los Angeles Times
February 27, 2011

A prominent Beverly Hills psychiatrist who has helped decide hundreds of child-custody disputes was thrown off one recent case and has been challenged in at least two others after posting lewd photos of himself on Facebook and allegedly promoting illegal drug use, unprotected sex and male prostitution.

Dr. Joseph Kenan, president of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, is also being investigated by the Medical Board of California on at least four complaints by parents who hired him to do custody evaluations, according to records and correspondence reviewed by The Times.

Among the postings on Facebook and other websites under the slightly different names of "Joe Kegan" and "Joe Keegan" were photos showing Kenan baring his buttocks to the camera in public and another of him posing with a friend holding a cake that explicitly depicted a sexual act, court records state.

The litigation over Kenan's fitness sheds light on a highly influential, but lightly regulated, group of experts — the evaluators who advise family courts in contested custody cases. Evaluators can earn fees of tens of thousands of dollars for assessing parents' fitness.

Critics of the system say the courts do a poor job of overseeing the work of people who often play pivotal roles in the lives of vulnerable children. A recent state auditor's report faulted two courts in Northern California for how they vet custody evaluators' qualifications and training.

Kenan's detractors have been particularly vehement.

"This man should not be allowed to determine whether any father or mother is a good parent," said Deborah Singer, who persuaded a court commissioner to remove Kenan from her child-custody case last year after she discovered explicit postings on Facebook and elsewhere on the Internet.

Singer and another parent who sought to disqualify Kenan, Deborah Zolla, say their concerns were sparked, in part, by his demands for tens of thousands of dollars, which they considered excessive fees, to develop custody plans for their children.

Kenan declined to be interviewed for this article. In a written statement submitted in Singer's case, he said the Facebook page was never meant for public viewing. He closed it and asked other websites to remove photos of him, Kenan wrote.

"Ms. Singer misunderstands the bawdy humor I occasionally present to my friends, as evidenced by some of those pictures. I do NOT promote what she is concerned I promote. My comments are entirely in jest. In fact, my comments serve to educate the community's problems through satire."

Kenan's lawyer, Donald S. Eisenberg, said the doctor's private life had no bearing on his professional performance. He said Kenan's detractors were unhappy with his evaluations or trying to avoid paying his fees. In court papers, he called the allegations inadmissible hearsay, conjecture and innuendo.

"His entire livelihood is being crushed by information … that is quite irrelevant to the work he does," Eisenberg said. "These allegations show what lengths, in some litigation, that people will go to try to unwind unfavorable opinions expressed by qualified experts in their child custody cases."

Singer and Zolla, who also cited the Internet postings, made their objections to Kenan before he completed evaluations in their cases.

At a hearing last Aug. 3, Family Law Commissioner Steff Padilla dismissed Kenan from Singer's case after reading descriptions of Facebook photographs in her disqualification motion.

In at least one other case, however, a court commissioner in Pasadena ruled the other way, denying a mother's request to remove Kenan from a case involving the custody of her 11-year-old daughter.

"You're saying Dr. Kenan should be disqualified because of a goofy Facebook page. What on earth does it have anything to do with this court?" Commissioner Mary Lou Katz asked in denying the removal motion.

State law sets requirements for evaluators, but county courts oversee their appointments and handle any complaints. The Los Angeles County Superior Court requires private evaluators like Kenan to submit sworn declarations detailing their training and experience, including at least three years of working with families in custody disputes, but does not vet the information or conduct background checks.

Court records show that Kenan, 41, has been involved in at least 250 custody cases in the last 10 years. Kenan began working with the court's custody evaluations office as a medical intern in 2002 and was a part-time employee there from 2004 to 2009, said Margaret Little, Superior Court family law and probate administrator.

When he became a private contractor, his name was added to a directory posted on the court's website, Little said. The list is for the convenience of parents seeking a private evaluation and is not meant to be an endorsement, she said.

Court officials told The Times they had received no complaints about Kenan.

Unlike evaluators on the court's staff, who work at a fixed rate, private evaluators set their own fees, which can be more than 10 times as much, sometimes leading to clashes with clients.

Singer paid Kenan a $7,500 retainer last May, court records state, and she and her lawyer said they were taken aback when he later asked for tens of thousands of dollars more to finish his report.

Her attorney, Dennis E. Braun, said in court papers that Singer already had custody of her daughter, now 5, and supported her financially. Singer's estranged husband had barely seen the child in two years, was serving a one-year jail sentence for a probation violation and faced additional felony charges upon release, the records state.

When Kenan asked for an additional $35,000 and offered to send a "runner" to her house for a $20,000 check, she became alarmed and researched him on the Internet, leading her to the explicit photos, her court papers say. After he was removed from the case, Kenan voluntarily returned the $7,500 retainer to Singer, who later won full legal and physical custody of her daughter.

Some of Kenan's Facebook postings — all since taken down — appeared to promote illicit drug use, including a picture of a woman holding a large straw while kneeling on a mirror with lines of white powder. Another was a photo of Kenan with a party banner that read "It's snowing," a phrase alleged in court papers to refer to crystal meth or cocaine.

Sheriff's deputies have been called to Kenan's home at least twice, records show, once in late 2007 to quell a raucous party and again last Oct. 23 on a report of a possible drug overdose death. The death proved to be from natural causes and no drugs were found in the dead man's body. But coroner's investigators found a burnt meth pipe in the room where he died.

"Dr. Kenan has no idea what that is, or where it came from," his lawyer, Eisenberg, said of the pipe. "He is not a drug user, has never been a drug user and denies any drug use. Period."

Many of Kenan's Facebook postings were explicitly sexual and included ads for parties he co-hosted at nightclubs, including some that appeared to promote unprotected sex. One ad promoted a gay porn site and Rentboy.com, which features male escorts for hire.

"If any of my clients were doing what he's doing, trust me, they would lose custody of their kids," Braun said. "Yet, he is the one making recommendations to the courts — and which the courts have been following."

Hours after he was disqualified from Singer's case, Kenan took himself off the court's directory of evaluators, although he continued to work on some custody cases and accepted at least one new one — Deborah Zolla's — last October. Days before a March 2 disqualification hearing in that case, Zolla and her estranged husband settled their custody dispute, rendering Kenan's involvement moot.

As word of his removal from Singer's case has spread, however, other clients have complained to the medical board or sought to boot him from their cases.

Some lawyers who have worked with Kenan said he was well regarded.

Anja Reinke, a veteran family law attorney, said that although she hasn't always agreed with Kenan's recommendations, she's had no major problems working with him on a half dozen or so cases. Kenan "quickly got a very good reputation" and was particularly knowledgeable in cases involving complex mental illnesses, she said, adding: "I think he's competent."

A volunteer assistant clinical professor at UCLA, Kenan is nearing the end of his term as president of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, which has about 250 members.

Dr. Dean De Crisce, the president-elect, said that Singer complained about Kenan to the association but that it lacks the "legal, financial, and investigative power" to act on complaints and relies on investigations by other bodies, including state medical boards.

Kenan "is respected for the work he does" and his fees are in line for someone with his background, De Crisce said. As for Singer's reaction to the photos, he said: "It's understandable that those were not pictures of the kind of person she would want to determine the fate of her family."

kim.christensen@latimes.com

victoria.kim@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Dr. Kenan (who endorses Dr. Gardner's so-called "Parental Alienation Syndrome") warned his colleagues to distrust children's claims of sexual abuse, as reported here in 2005:

Sexual abuse allegations in a child custody case are not always true, and even professionals who work with these children can have trouble distinguishing fact from fantasy in the children's stories, Joseph Kenan,M.D., said at the annual meeting of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry.

When a forensic psychiatrist evaluates potential sexual abuse of a child in a custody case, he or she considers a host of factors, including the child's age, any physical or mental disabilities, and a child's feelings of alienation toward one parent or history of siding with one parent during arguments, he said at the meeting cosponsored by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

Although psychiatrists use careful questioning and information-gathering skills to evaluate children's allegations, a study of 12 professionals showed that none of them could tell the difference between true and false stories after viewing videotapes of 10 different child testimonies, said Dr. Kenan, chief forensic psychiatrist at the Psychological Trauma Center, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles... http://www.canadiancrc.com/Newspaper_Articles/CPN_Sexual_abuse_allegations_custody_JUN05.aspx

Judges continue to rely on the special expertise of psychiatrists and other clinicians rather than examine reliable evidence of danger to children. For more about the failure of psychiatry to protect victims, see the classic exposé of the Father of Psychiatry by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson: http://littlehostages.blogspot.com/2008/05/freud-knew-about-it-but-protected-his.html

Mediator, Emily Gallup, Blows Whistle, Prompts Audit of Nevada County Family Court Services

2011-02-11T07:50:00.003-05:00

This press release comes from www.CenterforJudicialExcellence.org
Court Took Retaliatory Action Against Mediator for Repeatedly Raising Issues

Nevada County, CA – A Family Court Services mediator has prevailed in her grievance against her former employer, the Nevada County Superior Court, prompting an independent audit of the Nevada County Department of Family Court Services. Emily Gallup claimed that Nevada County Family Court Services violated state statutes and rules of court governing the recommending mediation process, while retaliating against her after she raised these issues with courts officials. M. Catherine Jones of Nevada City represented Ms. Gallup.

“The Nevada County Superior Court and its mediators have been using undue influence to pressure parents into custody agreements,” says Gallup. Among the tactics used by the courts, Gallup explained that parents were routinely shown a picture of a young man who had committed suicide the day his parents had been unable to reach an agreement in court. Mediators were also pressured to complete their cases in one hour’s time.

Violations cited in Gallup’s grievance include failure to review legal files and criminal records, failure to contact collateral sources, and failure to follow domestic violence protocol. Gallup maintains that children and families throughout Nevada County have been harmed by the flawed practices of the family court department. (Italics added.)

Family Court mediators, like Gallup, are required by law to guide parents into reasonable custody arrangements that protect children’s best interests. Mediators in recommending counties, like Nevada County, are also charged with the task of making child custody recommendations to the court in the absence of parental agreement. These recommendations carry great weight with the court, and are usually ordered.

“Emily’s courageous first-hand account proves beyond a doubt what court reform advocates have been saying for years – and what the recent state audit confirms. Complaints about mediators ignoring criminal records, domestic violence protocols and endangering children’s lives are legitimate,” said Kathleen Russell, Executive Director for the Center for Judicial Excellence, which pushed for the recent state audit.

The order for an audit of the Nevada County Superior Court comes just weeks after the conclusion of a 17-month audit of the Family Court Services departments of Sacramento and Marin counties. The audit of those counties revealed that large numbers of mediators are unqualified, untrained and unsupervised, and that the family courts maintained inadequate complaint procedures for the public. Gallup believes that a statewide audit is warranted at this time.

In a final and binding award dated February 6, 2011, Arbitrator Christopher Burdick found that Gallup “had reasonable cause to believe that the Department of Family Court Services had violated or not complied with state statutes and rules of court in regards to the mediations required by the Family Law Code and the California Rules of Court.” He further ordered Family Court Services to undergo an audit to assess its compliance with the law. The cost of this audit will be born exclusively by the court, and the results will be released to the public.

Gallup repeatedly tried to address her concerns about the department with her superiors, including the Interim Director, the Family Law Judge, the Human Resources’ Director, and the Court’s Chief Executive Officer. Ms. Gallup’s efforts to bring her department into compliance with the law were unsuccessful.

Arbitrator Burdick found that “the Court took reprisal actions against Gallup for her repeatedly raising and discussing these issues.” Retaliatory activity against Gallup included negative performance evaluations, denial of her annual pay increase, and a written reprimand delivered to her the afternoon before her scheduled week-long vacation. She was subsequently terminated from her job on December 21, 2010, prior to the conclusion of the grievance proceedings.

Burdick ordered the court to reimburse Gallup for her annual raise, her leave time, and attorney fees. It is estimated that the court’s handling of Gallup’s case has already cost taxpayers at least $100,000.

Dr. Gardner's ghost still haunts Rhode Island (even after David Tassoni has gone)

2011-01-25T03:00:00.033-05:00

As Judge Haiganush R. Bedrosian becomes Chief of Family Court, it is time we banished the ghost of Dr. Richard Gardner, whose coercive tactics in Rhode Island courtrooms have been haunting families traumatized by domestic abuse.

Victims of terror do not present well in court. They are tense, emotional and understandably outraged. On the opposing side, tyrannical controllers can be calm and charming litigants, confident in the damage they have inflicted. Their lawyers, who are often accomplished bullies in their own right, tell astounding lies calculated to trigger a full display of symptoms in the victims.

Psychiatrist Richard A. Gardner designed a stealth weapon in 1985 that he called "Parental Alienation Syndrome." A domestic-violence-denier, Gardner testified for hundreds of fathers and argued that mothers had "alienated" their children against them. Gardner also wrote that sexual relations between parents and children were natural. He told filmmaker Garland Waller that children who report abuse by their fathers should be threatened with a beating. He committed suicide in 2003, but his ghost still haunts our courtrooms. Here are three examples from cases I have been following:

In 2004, Warwick police charged a Family Court deputy sheriff with felony domestic violence when they found his girlfriend handcuffed in their kitchen with a broken jaw and eye socket. Already entrenched in litigation, the deputy sheriff was an often-unruly defendant in the same courtroom where he once kept order. He demanded custody of his ten-year-old daughter, who was terrified of him.

In the corridor during a break, David M. Tassoni, assistant to Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, Jr., told me he was searching for a psychologist who "understood parental alienation." Tassoni found Lori Meyerson, PhD, in a cramped country office and invited her to serve at Family Court, where she testified that the deputy sheriff was a "happy, calm and level person." She had never visited either parent's home when she recommended giving the father sole custody. General Magistrate John J. O'Brien, Jr., praised Meyerson's work and declared this case to be "as close as you can get to parental alienation."

Tassoni told me he was working with Judge Bedrosian and a joint committee from the Court and the Bar Association on a training program to qualify guardians ad litem. Their 2004 course and manual devoted an entire section to Gardner's theory of parental alienation.

Attorney Lise M. Iwon, who is now president of the Rhode Island Bar Association, helped teach that course, though she did not follow its guidelines in writing her report as guardian ad litem in another case. A three-and-a-half-year-old had protested behavior she described as her father's "sausage games" on days they spent alone. A pediatrician's office reported this to DCYF, who ordered the father out of the home. A few months later, the mother filed for divorce.

I asked why Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch had failed to convene a grand jury. He considered the child too young to be believed. Neither DCYF nor the AG used available technology to record this child's "excited utterances" in order to meet standards of evidence. They made no video of her reportedly vivid "reenactment" of an assault. No jury saw the graphic portrait she drew of her father.

Iwon succeeded in getting the girl and her older sister removed from an excellent mother and home. After sixteen months in state custody, the court gave the younger girl to her father and moved the older one from a shelter to a foster home, all at state expense. Iwon's course of action suggested that a Gardner-defense was underway. Like Tassoni's efforts on behalf of the deputy sheriff, Iwon sought psychiatric examiners, and found a pliable group in Massachusetts, where psychologist Bernice Kelly, PsyD, wrote that Iwon, herself, had suggested the possibility of "parental alienation."

In 2007, Kelly's report to the court listed Gardner's "eight symptoms" of alienation. She seemed unaware that the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges had identified this as "junk science" the year before. NCJFCJ had warned judges to strike any report referring to parental alienation from the record because it failed to meet standards of evidence.

This year, as the American Psychological Association prepares to publish the Fifth Edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, its committee has steadfastly resisted pressure to elevate "parental alienation" to scientific credibility.

Yet Blue Cross and Blue Shield apparently reimburses providers for parental alienation "therapy." In 2007, psychologist Peter J. Kosseff, PhD, testified in Rhode Island that his court-ordered efforts to forcibly "reconcile" two teenagers with their father were not what Kosseff considered "therapeutic." Nevertheless, he billed Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut for "miscellaneous medical service" and got paid for those sessions--though they ended badly when the 14-year-old daughter suffered a breakdown and spent ten days at Bradley Hospital, costing the insurer many thousands more.

How long will the ghost of Dr. Gardner haunt Rhode Island's children? I am confident that Chief Judge Bedrosian does not share Gardner's pro-pedophile views. She is now in a position to end his ghostly reign in Rhode Island and to promote the highest standards of evidence in Family Court's handling of custody cases.

But one branch of government is not enough. Will Governor Lincoln Chafee demand thorough reform at the Department of Children, Youth and Families? The General Assembly has mandated that DCYF must, in 2011, start the process toward accreditation.

Will Attorney General Peter Kilmartin use technology and convene grand juries to examine evidence of sex crimes by family members against young children? (Two of the fathers above acknowledged that they were sexually assaulted in childhood, one by his father and the other by his grandfather.)

Children who have suffered from domestic abuse need all three branches of government to work together and unequivocally banish Dr. Gardner's ghost from Rhode Island.

This op-ed is reprinted from
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Dr-Gardner-s-ghost-still-by-Anne-Grant-101219-843.html
and also appeared in The Providence Journal
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_annegrant27_12-27-10_JGL9NV5_v13.8712c4.html

Two weeks later, David Tassoni resigned. Here is the Providence Journal report:

http://newsblog.projo.com/2011/01/andrea-has-tassoni.html

RI Family Court mediator quits amid probe of qualifications
4:31 PM Thu, Jan 06, 2011
By W. ZACHARY MALINOWSKI
Journal staff writer

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Rhode Island State Police are investigating allegations that a longtime mediator in Family Court may have provided false information about his qualifications when he was hired 15 years ago.

State Police Lt. Raymond Studley, assistant detective commander, confirmed Thursday that detectives had opened an investigation into David Tassoni after court officials tipped off the police that the state worker may have "misrepresented his educational background."

"The court asked us to look into it and determine if there is any criminal behavior," Studley said.

Studley said that court mediators are not required to have a law degree.

Craig Berke, spokesman for the state court system, said that Tassoni resigned on Wednesday. Berke said that Tassoni was hired in 1996.

He said that Tassoni, who made $105,398 annually, was an assistant administrator in addition to his duties as a mediator. As a mediator, Berke said that Tassoni primarily worked to resolve disputes in divorce proceedings.

Family Court Chief Judge Haiganush Bedrosian said through Berke that any mediations that Tassoni participated in "are unaffected by this development.''

ABC 10 News broke the story:
http://www2.turnto10.com/news/2011/jan/06/10/court-mediator-resigns-resume-questioned-ar-351568/

By PARKER GAVIGAN
Published: January 06, 2011
Updated: January 06, 2011 - 6:54 PM
» 19 Comments | Post a Comment
A top court mediator resigned amid questions about his credentials.

David Tassoni worked at Rhode Island's Family Court for 13 years.

Tassoni's resume said he graduated law school and earned a degree from Providence College. From there, he rose through the ranks of state's Family Court, recently reporting directly to the chief judge and making $105,000 a year.

NBC 10 learned neither degree exists.

Paul Labonte's case in Rhode Island Family Court is over. He lost custody of his kids to the state. That's where he met Tassoni.

"You're expecting the people to be professional and be qualified in the positions they hold, and when they're not, it's like you get anyone down here to hear the case," Labonte said.

Tassoni's resume, obtained by NBC 10, says he graduated from Providence College and Southern New England School of Law in 1997 -- the same year he began working for Rhode Island's court system. He worked first as a law clerk intern and then as chief mediator, rising fast to the rank of assistant administrator and making $105,000 a year.

Sources say Chief Judge Haiganoush Bedrosian started to look into Tassoni's education and learned he did not graduate from law school or from Providence College.

Earlier in the week, Tassoni's resume, picture and biography were posted on the website of the Massachusetts-based company, Legal Options Inc.

The site said he had mediated more than 750 divorce and domestic disputes. The site also said that in addition to his family law practice, Tassoni is the domestic mediation instructor for Roger Williams University.

After NBC 10 started investigating, the information about Tassoni was pulled from the website.

Many court employees said Tassoni was good at what he did. Labonte doesn't disagree.

"I thought it was a shame. I really did," Labonte said. "He was really listening to what I was saying as opposed to just being at work,"

NBC 10 tried reaching Tassoni at his home and on the phone, but we were unsuccessful.

State police confirmed there is an active investigation at the Family Court, but they wouldn't confirm whether it involves Tassoni.

A representative for the court said the cases that Tassoni mediated are not affected by his resume problems.

State Sen. John Tassoni, David Tassoni's cousin, said the two men haven't been close and that he learned of the resignation from someone else.

Here is David Tassoni's fraudulent resumé (click once on it to enlarge):

He listed these among his duties:
Family Court Mediation Advisory Board (Chairperson), 2001 to present
Attorney General's Domestic Violence Task Force, 2002 to present
National Association of Court Managers, Governors Ideal System of Care, 2002 to present
Supreme Court Indigent Defense Task Force, 2002 to present
Supreme Court Mediation Task Force, 2002 to 2003
Child Support Guidelines Task Force, 2002
Rhode Island Children's Trust, 2003 to present
Guardian ad Litem Task Force, 2003 to present

Psychiatrist Richard Gardner made his own fraudulent claims that he was "Clinical Professor of Child Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University." After his 2003 suicide, his New York Times obituary listed this among his credentials, and Columbia University denied the assertion.

The Hague Domestic Violence Project

2011-01-13T09:19:00.005-05:00

The Hague Convention, once intended to help protect children whose parents are citizens of different countries, has become a weapon abusers now use against parents trying to protect their children from domestic violence and sexual abuse.

Visit the website of the Hague Domestic Violence Project by clicking on the title above or pasting this in your browser:
http://www.haguedv.org/

See Time Magazine's article here:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2036246,00.html

Judges should lose immunity when they use children to "reform" abusive parents

2011-01-05T08:14:00.003-05:00

Son, then father accused of killing children

Lionell Dangerfield, Christopher Dangerfield were supposed to be caring for victims

By Eileen Kelley • ekelley@enquirer.com •

December 29, 2010

This news item is published at Cincinnati.Com
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20101229/NEWS010701/12300339/Son-then-father-accused-of-killing-children

WALNUT HILLS, OH - Tyrese Short was close to 3 years old when he was handed over to his father.

The boy was supposed to help Christopher Dangerfield, a 48-year-old with a lengthy criminal record, turn his life around.

But Dangerfield had other issues to contend with as well: the prospect of losing another son to the death penalty.

And now in the span of seven months, a father and a son are accused of the same crime: killing children they were supposed to be caring for.

Christopher Dangerfield was arrested in the death of Tyrese, and Lionell Dangerfield has been charged in the death of 3-month-old Zhi Merah Binford, his girlfriend's daughter.

Tyrese was pronounced dead Tuesday at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

Zhi was discovered dead on a couch in South Fairmount on May 31. Her skull had been fractured and her ribs broken. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters has recommended the death penalty for Lionell Dangerfield, 26.

That case could go to trial in March.

"Like father, like son," Grace Dangerfield, Christopher Dangerfield's stepmother, said Tuesday evening.

Grace Dangerfield, 77, said Tyrese was a happy child and appeared to be no trouble for her stepson, who had been arrested three times in the year leading up to a court awarding him custody of Tyrese. His 12 other arrests include drug trafficking, assaulting a police officer and theft.

"He had troubles," she said, adding that the family hoped that by raising Tyrese, her stepson would act more like a father.

Since Tyrese was born, caseworkers with the Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services had been involved in his life. That involvement did not stop early this summer, when a Juvenile Court judge awarded custody to his father.

The case file on Tyrese's life is thick.

Included are reports that Tyrese recently suffered a broken leg and was badly burned. He also told a baby-sitter that his father had punched him in the stomach, police told The Enquirer on Wednesday.

Police also said that Tyrese's mother reported that her son's eye had been blackened recently.

Brian Gregg, a spokesman for the Job and Family Services, would not discuss specifics of the case. An emergency meeting on the matter was called Wednesday, the same day The Enquirer reported about the death of another child under the care of the child welfare department, Savon Edwards.

Savon had been on life support for two years after being shaken so badly he stopped breathing Dec. 26, 2008. Savon's caseworkers were implicated for failing to adequately protect him from his abusive father. Savon, 2, died Monday.

Now an investigation is under way regarding Tyrese.

"If we find there are failings at this end, we will take action," Gregg said.

With each recent injury, Christopher Dangerfield had an explanation ready, police said.

Dangerfield called emergency dispatchers from his Walnut Hills apartment just before 3 p.m. Tuesday to say some young kids at the corner store had jumped his son, something they'd done three times before.

It wasn't until deep into the conversation that the dispatcher learned that Tyrese was just 3, not an older child hurt in a street fight.

"He's 3 years old? Who's hitting him?" the dispatcher asked.

Dangerfield again blamed street kids, and then suggested adults were involved, too. Dangerfield said he could see scars on Tyrese's legs and back and that he was barely awake.

The dispatcher walked Dangerfield through CPR chest compressions for his son.

Homicide investigator Sgt. Gary Conner said police have checked all leads, including the possibility that neighborhood boys were involved, but came back with the conclusion that Dangerfield killed his son.

In court Wednesday, attorney William Whalen told a judge that Dangerfield told him the child fell while bathing and struck his head.

Grace Dangerfield thinks her stepson snapped.

She said he had been on medication and has heard her husband, who is Christopher's father, and others in the family say that Christopher has bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder can cause severe mood swings that include serious bouts of depression and extremely anxious behavior. People with the disorder may be explosive and irritable, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

"I think something must have happened with his mind, because I don't think that he could hurt him intentionally," she said. "I didn't picture him as being abusive."

Mothers seek justice for murdered children

2011-01-01T06:31:00.004-05:00

To see this original article, click on the title above or paste this into your browser:

http://couriernews.suntimes.com/news/3056166-418/rosenberg-andrea-daughter-patricia-batavia.html

By Denise Crosby

dcrosby@stmedianetwork.com

Last Modified: Dec 31, 2010 02:38AM
This is another in a series on people and events that shaped our communities in 2010.

I don’t pretend to understand a parent’s pain upon losing a child. But I do know what their desperate hugs feel like.

Over the years, I’ve met too many of these hurting mothers and fathers. And in 2010, two of the most memorable women came to me during the month of October, Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Both had lost beautiful children to men who resorted to murder because they couldn’t stand to lose what they thought were their possessions.

And both mothers came seeking justice.

Justin Boulay, the killer of Patricia Rosenberg’s 19-year-old daughter, Andrea, was getting out of prison in November after serving only 12 years for first-degree murder — and moving to Hawaii with the woman he married while incarcerated.

Riley, Gabriella Ghobrial’s 2-year-old son, had been killed by his own father in a murder-suicide five years ago in Gilberts after a Kane County judge awarded the dad visitation rights, despite Anthony Mangiamele’s repeated threats to harm their child.

Both mothers had been thrust into the media spotlight after such horrendous crimes. And even though years had passed — and both had moved on with their lives —their words, their hugs were evidence the wounds are still as fresh as the tears they shed while talking to me.

Neither had spoken out so publicly before. And in the end, despite their hesitations, both were glad they found the courage to speak.

Ghobrial simply didn’t want others to forget how far from perfect the system still is. And she didn’t want Riley to be forgotten.

With difficulty, she prepared for another Christmas. She worked both the 24th and 25th as a nurse because the holidays are still so very painful. She and her estranged husband had taken Riley to a casino that Christmas of 2004 because her husband had said “her family didn’t deserve” to see the child.

It was just the three of them, she recalls. “It was lonely, but I thought I would be giving Riley a better Christmas the following year. Well, thanks to Judge (William) Weir, I spent it motherless and hurt.”

On Feb. 6, 2005, Riley’s father snapped pictures of his son waving goodbye and labeled the undeveloped roll “Riley’s last weekend.” Then he backed the family’s SUV into the garage, created a makeshift bed for the toddler in the rear of the vehicle and started the truck’s engine with the garage door closed.

About eight hours later, police discovered the murder-suicide along with the film and a barrage of letters Mangiamele had written to Gabriella, blaming her for the child’s death.

The holidays are rough, she told me, but “the true nightmare begins in January, from the 22nd to Feb. 9.”

A national outcry

Patty Rosenberg also lost her child in February — 1998 — when Boulay, Andrea’s estranged boyfriend, lured her to his apartment, then strangled her with a telephone cord, three days before her 20th birthday.

Rosenberg’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month story didn’t keep Boulay behind bars any longer. But the national outcry that followed resulted in harsher parole conditions for the former St. Charles man.

And other tougher legislation may follow.

Like Gabriella Ghobrial, Patty Rosenberg didn’t really want to be interviewed. She even canceled a meeting with me in October because, as much as she wanted to speak out about this topic, her emotions were still too raw.

Later, she changed her mind — after she found out her daughter’s ex-boyfriend and killer was not only going to be released from prison the following month after serving only 12 years for first-degree murder, he would be moving to Hawaii to live with the woman he’d married while incarcerated.

The injustice of it all was just too much for the Batavia woman.

And so we talked. And the story was printed. And the outcry that followed was so swift, so intense, it resulted not only in a barrage of state and national media coverage and a candlelight vigil attended by hundreds, but also that Justin Boulay’s parole requirements were greatly intensified. And there’s even a movement under way to create a registry for murderers, much like the one for sex offenders now in place in this state and many others.

“It was absolutely unbelievable,” Rosenberg said of the masses who came out that cold night in downtown Batavia on the day Boulay was released from prison.

And perhaps just as importantly, the aftermath created a sense of closure for the grieving mother — something that she sorely needed in the years since Andrea Will was found strangled in Boulay’s Eastern Illinois University apartment, yet another victim of domestic violence.

“There never will be total closure until I’m with her again,” Rosenberg said of her daughter. “But I felt healing for the first time. That night (of the vigil) filled an emptiness and a void. And it gave me a voice I never had a chance to use.”

The media exposure also reconnected her with friends she had lost over the years — friends who had fallen by the wayside because they didn’t know how to respond to such tragedy.

“People who had not spoken to me in so long are no longer afraid of my pain,” Rosenberg said.

And on an even larger scale, there is now a growing movement under way on the “Voices for Andrea” Facebook page — started by her daughter’s sorority sisters after Rosenberg’s story was published — calling for a state registry for convicted murderers.

In addition to working on such legislation, Rosenberg wants to see colleges put more emphasis on domestic violence. She wants to see more trained counselors, more support groups and hot lines on campuses.

“Domestic violence is not random. It’s personal,” she said. “And that makes it so much harder for victims to talk about.”

Patty Rosenberg, for the first time, is feeling empowered.

“Before, I was just a victim, too,” she said. “Now I’m becoming proactive.” This “gave me a piece of my life back. And that is a wonderful feeling.”

Copyright © 2011 — Sun-Times Media, LLC

The first American mother and children granted asylum abroad

2010-12-10T09:03:00.016-05:00

Jewish Women International and the National Alliance to End Domestic Abuse have produced a very fine webinar that includes interviews with Holly Collins, Jennifer Collins, and Professor Mo Hannah, who chairs the annual Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany, New York. CEU credits are available. (Click on the title above OR paste the following web address into your browser. Click on the small blue WMV box. It will take a few seconds to download.)

http://jwi.peachnewmedia.com/store/streaming/seminar-launch.php?key=3LshdDpeRBDH6dDPl2I1B8PhL8ylSgTZ0XLJxcHwCdY%3D

After fourteen years living safely in the Netherlands, Jennifer Collins realized that the FBI was about to prosecute her mother for protecting her and her brother Zachary. The young woman mounted an amazing effort to tell their story to people in the United States. Jennifer spoke two years ago at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference.

Psychology profesor Mo Hannah at Sienna College has brought together battered mothers from around the country at the annual Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany, New York:
http://www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/

Custody decision gone bad

2010-12-05T15:13:00.004-05:00

http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/local_news/mobile_county/stepfather-of-missing-children-speaks

Stepfather of missing children speaks
Jonah Heathcock tries to stay optimistic

Updated: Sunday, 05 Dec 2010, 1:47 PM CST
Published : Saturday, 04 Dec 2010, 10:14 PM CST

Paige Malone
MOBILE, Ala. - UPDATE: A search for the bodies of three-year-old Johnathan DeBlase and his four-year-old sister, Natalie continues today. This time at a second locaton in Mobile County according to Mobile Police Department.

Search teams began the second search in an area in the western part of the county. Stay with Fox 10 News. We have a crew on the scene and will keep you updated as information is released.

After hours of searching, police still have not found the bodies of three-year-old Johnathan DeBlase and his four-year-old sister Natalie.

Friday, their father, John DeBlase was arrested and told police the children are buried within a 100- mile radius of Mobile. Even after this news, their birth
mother and stepfather are trying to stay optimistic.

On November 19, police began searching for the missing children. Two weeks later, John DeBlase and his wife were arrested.

"My hope actually went up a notch with them having him," Corrine Heathcock, the children's mother told Fox 10 News earlier this week.

Not long after the interview, Heathcock and her husband Jonah Heathcock got some shocking news. DeBlase revealed to police that Jonathan and Natalie were dead.

"It was an eruption of tears. We just held each other as tightly as possible and cried like crazy. Called friends, called family," said Jonah Heathcock.

After hearing the news, Corrine Heathcock said, "Our hope is that they are found alive and well."

The search for the bodies began early Saturday morning and the Heathcock family was on edge all day.

"I'm just waiting for that phone call from a police officer to either call us or come up here and say we found them," said Jonah Heathcock.

Heathcock said they have been focusing on the good times they had with Jonathan and Natalie instead of looking toward a grim reality.

Today, memories of little Jonathan came to mind.

"He couldn't say hot dogs. He'd say dot dogs, so this morning I woke up with dot dogs on my mind."

Jonah and Corrine have not seen the children in over a year. They said DeBlase was granted custody because they could not provide the environment the children deserved.

"He called his son prince he called his daughter princess. At this point, I don't see where he could call them that anymore," said Heathcock.

Now, they wish they would have fought harder for the children and have a message for DeBlase.

"I do have one thing to say to John, if you know where they are, you say you don't know, but I know you do. Tell them where they are. You say you don't remember, you do. And if you don't, Heather does. So one of you better tell them where they are so we can put closure to this thing"

Police narrowed the search down to the area just north of Vancleave, Mississippi. The search will continue early Sunday morning.

DeBlase is being held in Mobile Metro Jail on two counts of aggravated child abuse and two counts of aggravated assault of a corpse.

His wife, Heather Keaton, is being held in Louisville, Kentucky on two counts of willful abuse of a child. Police say she will be extradited to Mobile within a week.

Announcing BMCC VIII

2010-11-10T04:52:00.001-05:00

Psychology professor Mo Hannah and her students at Siena College in Albany, NY, have done it again!

They have organized the eighth annual Battered Mothers Custody Conference. (You do not need to be physically battered to bear the marks of emotional, psychological, financial, and legal abuse, or to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder--PTSD--due to living with a coercive controller.)

The Court at its worst, just like the abuser, tries to isolate battered mothers from their support system. Mothers who have tried to protect their children from abuse at home find out at BMCC that they are not alone. Lawyers, psychologists and other advocates have joined this effort to protect children from abuse.

Here is the 2011 BMCC flier (Click once on these images to enlarge them):

Parents and advocates march in California

2010-10-11T19:31:00.006-04:00

http://www.centerforjudicialexcellence.org/

Click on the title above for more information (or enter the link in your browser). Tomorrow, parents and advocates will march in California against many of the same kinds of legal abuse that children are suffering in Rhode Island domestic abuse custody cases. Some Rhode Island parents and advocates will also gather in solidarity across from the Garrahy Court House in Providence.

Mothers of Lost Children march on Department of Justice

2010-10-02T13:08:00.003-04:00

Thank you, Mothers of Lost Children. Click on title above or paste this link in your browser:
http://www.wusa9.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=622782249001

The law favors joint custody regardless of safety

2010-09-29T05:00:00.003-04:00

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7219334.html

Slain kids' mom tells of abusive marriage

Court papers detail alleged violence by children's father before their deaths
By LINDSAY WISE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Sept. 27, 2010, 8:02AM

Harris County Sheriff's Office
Mohammad Goher is accused of shooting his son and two daughters as they slept in his apartment.

Norma Martinez said her husband was drunk when he chased her into their daughter's bedroom in May 2006, threatening to shoot her if she didn't tell him the name of the man who asked her out.

"I told him no one had asked me out," Martinez said in an affidavit she later filed in support of a protection order against her husband, Mohammad Goher.

Goher handed her the gun and told her to shoot him, but Martinez took the bullets out instead, she said. He responded by pulling her hair and punching her on the arms and stomach, she added.

Goher was convicted of assault of a family member and placed on deferred adjudication.

The 47-year-old Harris County man now faces capital murder charges in the deaths of the couple's three children. He is accused of shooting son Saeed, 12, and daughters Saeedah, 14, and Aisha, 7, on Sept. 19 as they slept in his apartment.

Court documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle detail Martinez's allegations that her husband physically, emotionally and verbally abused her throughout their 15-year marriage. She said Goher "has thrown objects, broken things, spit at me, pulled my hair, pushed and shoved me, grabbed me, slapped me, and threatened me with a weapon." Several times, Martinez said, he'd threatened to kill himself and kill her, including incidents in July and August 2008, when Goher allegedly tried to strangle her and pointed a Chinese sword at her.

In September 2008, Goher accused her of having an affair with his friend, Martinez stated in the affidavit.

Goher "told me I had to clean his name, that I had to take his gun and go kill this man," Martinez said. She said Goher made her sit right next to him so he would know where she was at all times.

"When I walked away to use the restroom, I had to tell him where I was going," she said. "I left the house the next day."

About two months later, Goher took the children and refused to let her talk to them, Martinez said.

Threats to take children

Martinez described expletive-laced phone calls and voice mails between December 2008 and February 2009 in which Goher allegedly called her names, accused her of running off with drug dealers, threatened to shoot her, and told her she'd never see the children again.

"The children were supposed to be in Pakistan temporarily to study the Koran and then come back here, or we were going to go to Pakistan to live with them," Martinez said in the affidavit.

Martinez's divorce petition, dated Feb. 5, includes copies of correspondence between Martinez and her legal advocate and the State Department, begging authorities to help locate her children in Pakistan.

Martinez said she hadn't spoken to her children since November 2008. That month, officials from the U.S. Consulate in Karachi had conducted a welfare visit at her request to check on the children, who were living at an apartment with Goher's parents in the Garden West neighborhood of Karachi.

Consular officials sent Martinez a letter recounting the visit on Nov. 25, 2008. Officials had only been allowed to talk to the children for 15 to 20 minutes. They were living in a three-room apartment with 10 or 12 people in a lower-middle-class neighborhood. All three children were clean and well-dressed, but their grandmother maintained control of the conversation and did not allow photographs.

"The children were not communicating, especially the eldest," a consular official wrote in the letter to Martinez. "They sought the grandmother's approval before answering any questions."

Not long after the welfare check, Martinez said she received a phone call from her daughter from an unknown number. She said her daughter told her that she and her two siblings had been moved to another location.

"My daughter also asked me to come get her — I was very fearful to hear this," Martinez wrote in a letter to the State Department's Office of Children's Issues on Jan. 12.

"You previously informed me that my children were not considered missing because I had their location in Karachi, Pakistan - but they are now missing!" she wrote. "They have been missing for almost a year now."

Traveled to Pakistan

She asked officials to help her find her the children and requested that they be added to databases for missing children.

"I implore that your office move forward with my case," she wrote. "Every day of not knowing where my children are or how they are doing is devastating."

A desperate Martinez traveled to Pakistan with Bibi Khan, the president of An-Nisa Hope Center, a Harris County shelter and advocacy group for Muslim women.

"If you had seen the way she cried, and if you had seen the way she was begging to see her kids again, I think you, too, would have said, 'OK, I'm going to go to Pakistan to help her find her kids,'" Khan said.

Khan said she helped Martinez scour the area in Karachi where her husband's parents had been living, interviewing neighbors for clues.

"We had to go to each school to see if they were there," Khan said. "You can imagine how many schools there are in Karachi. The only lead we had was her husband's family made her older daughter wear the veil."

Martinez finally reunited with her children at her lawyer's office in Houston, after she filed for divorce from Goher in Harris County's 312th District Court. He brought them back to the U.S. in time for a hearing in March.

"She hadn't seen them in a long time so there were hugs and tears and joy that they were back together again," said Martinez's attorney, Sandra Peake. "They were very, emotional and they were very happy and they just started talking and hugging almost as if they weren't sure that that was mom."

Sought sole custody

In her petition for divorce, Martinez requested sole custody of the children and sought damages for expenses, mental suffering and anguish.

In his response to his wife's suit, Goher denied her "gratuitous and self-serving allegations" and rejected her request for sole custody. He said that Martinez had committed acts of violence against him and the children, and asked the court to order Martinez to pay his attorney's fees and costs.

After a March 9 court hearing, Martinez and Goher were given temporary orders for joint custody of the children. Goher and Martinez were prohibited from contacting each other, or removing the children from Harris County. The children's passports were confiscated. Goher was granted unsupervised visitation with the children every weekend. The rest of the time, the children lived with their mother at the An-Nisa Hope Center shelter.

"The presumption in family law is joint custody; you have to overcome that to deprive the father of his visitation rights," said Syed Izfar, the amicus attorney appointed to assist the court with issues related to the children. "The legal presumption is that children benefit from nurturing and care of both parents. In this case it didn't work out, that's true, but that's the presumption of the law."

Given visitation rights

After the court issued the temporary custody orders in March, Martinez's attorney did not oppose Goher's visitation rights, Izfar said.

Peake expected to request continued joint custody at a divorce mediation scheduled for Sept. 24.

In the absence of specific threats against the children, there was no reason to think Goher was anything but a loving father, Peake said. "I thought that (Martinez) would be more at risk than they were," she said.

"How would you know that he would shoot three kids in the head or however he shot them?" Peake said. "They've been going over there and they've been coming back and they're not bruised and the amicus doesn't seem to have any concerns."

The children never expressed any fear of their dad, Izfar said. "They did say that he was trying to pressure them into staying with him. ... I said, 'Do you want to go visit your dad, or do you want to stop visitation?' One and all said, 'No, we do want to go visit him.' "

"I don't know what happened," he said. "I wish I knew."

Goher's divorce attorney, Fel E. Tabangay, declined to comment without instructions from his client, who was listed in fair condition at Ben Taub General Hospital, where he is recovering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

An-Nisa Hope Center: 713-339-0803; annisahopecenter.com/
DAYA: Serving South Asian Families in Crisis: 713-981-7645; www.dayahouston.org/
Asians Against Domestic Abuse: 713-339-8300; www.aadainc.org/
Houston Area Women's Center: 800-799-SAFE (7233), www.hawc.org

lindsay.wise@chron.com

When authorities do not listen to victims of abuse

2010-09-25T02:17:00.005-04:00

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7683866&pt=print

New details in case of dad accused of slaying kids
Thursday, September 23, 2010
by Jessica Willey
Related Video

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- We've learned that a gun police say a father used to shoot his three children was once handled by investigators. It's new information in a disturbing case.

The gun the father is accused of using was returned to him by the legal system. It was the same gun that was around the children for years, and there's nothing the courts could have done about it.

Mohammad Goher was still at Ben Taub Hospital Wednesday night after surviving what investigators describe as a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. They say he used the same gun to kill his three children, ages 14, 12 and 7, and that gun was once the temporary property of the court.

"It's horrifying," said Steven Halpert.

Halpert has something heavy on his mind. He was the defense attorney for Goher who saw him through a successful deferred adjudication for assaulting his wife.

"This is every human being or every lawyer's nightmare for this to happen," Halpert said. "He was a model probationer."

Halpert also helped him get back the gun investigators say he used to murder his children.

"Had I had an inkling that there was something dangerous lurking or that he would do something improper with these weapons, then I would not have signed my name to that motion," Halpert said.

That motion led to an order on June 13, 2008, from Judge Jean Hughes to return two of Goher's guns taken from him after the 2006 assault on his wife. The two weapons were a 9mm and a rifle.

Harris County investigators confirm that the 9mm was the murder weapon Goher allegedly used early Sunday morning to kill his three children inside the back of his convenience store as they slept.

"There's no fault of the judge for giving back a gun that was used ultimately in a murder here because the judge had no more jurisdiction," KTRK Legal Analyst Joel Androphy said.

Androphy says the judge was legally required to return Goher's property. Any opposition, he says, should have come from the state or family court.

Friends of Goher's wife have described a violent past that sent her fleeing to a local Islamic domestic abuse shelter. Halpert says he never saw it.

"He was just a working guy and a very nice guy," Halpert said.

But he still can't help but feel some guilt.

"If I could go back to June 12, of course; it's a nightmare," Halpert said.

Those close to Goher's ex-wife say he should have never had access to any guns and that the children were afraid of him.

Goher is charged with capital murder. The Harris County District Attorney's Office hasn't said whether it will pursue the death penalty.

(Copyright ©2010 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7678461

Shelter: Dad accused of killing kids made threats
Tuesday, September 21, 2010

by Miya Shay

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- There's new information in the case of a man accused of killing his own children before trying to commit suicide.

Police say Mohammad Goher was afraid of losing custody of the children to his ex-wife, but we're learning more about their split and the unusual demands he made to spend time with his children.

It's such a devastatingly sad story in any way you look at it. Goher is still being treated for a gunshot wound at an area hospital, but he has been charged with capital murder in connection the slaying of his three children. He has a court appearance scheduled on Tuesday, but on Monday, a lot of people who knew about the divorce between him and his ex-wife say this was something they didn't quite expect.

A teddy bear and a few burnt out candles marked the place where three children lost their lives. Attorney Sandra Peake remembers meeting them.

"They were just as cute as they could be, and very loving and affectionate towards their mom," Peake said.

Peake represents Norma Goher, the mother of 14-year-old Saeedah, 12-year-old Saeed, 7-year-old Aisha.

Their birth certificates show the kids were born in America, but Goher, their father, sent them to Pakistan for two years until, family members say, Norma Goher managed to get them returned to Houston this past February.

"She was extremely attached. She was very determined to get the kids back from Pakistan and bring them here so she could raise them," Peake said.

But this past Sunday, the unthinkable happened.

Goher is now accused of killing his three kids during a court-ordered visitation.

"Apparently, someone told him last week that the children would be taken away from him," said Syed Izfar.

Izfar is the attorney who was representing the interests of the children as their parents divorced.

"No one knew this was coming," he said. "This was a bolt out of the blue."

Prior to that visit, Goher had reached out to local Pakistani radio host Manzoor Memon and was willing to go on the radio to talk about his case.

"Our plan was to put him on radio talk show on Sunday at 12 o'clock," Memon said. "And I called him around 11 o'clock to confirm that he will be on the radio, and he didn't pick up the phone and this thing had had already happened."

Norma Goher has been living in a women's shelter for more than a year. She had a restraining order against her ex-husband, who was also arrested in 2006 for beating her.

So why did the children visit every weekend? The women running the shelter An-Nisa Shelter offers some insight.

"Many times, he threatened the children, 'If you don't come back to me, I will kill you. I will kill myself. I will kill myself,'" one of them told us. "They cared about their father."

In fact, the women who run the shelter say the kids often had reservations about visiting their father, but because they loved him and wanted to see him alive and well, they'd often go visit him when he made threats.

Despite these alleged threats, Child Protective Services says not one single complaint had been filed in connection to the alleged mistreatment of the children prior to their deaths. The only records of abuse are between the mother and the father.

Late Monday night, strangers mourned for the three children during a vigil. Kneeling in prayer before freshly lit candles, they also pray most for the mother of the victims.

(Copyright ©2010 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

When authorities fail to protect children

2010-09-25T02:05:00.002-04:00

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2010/09/swatara_township_boys_death_ru_1.html

Swatara Township, PA, boy's death ruled homicide; maternal grandmother says she tried to report child abuse, but was rebuffed

Published: Thursday, September 23, 2010, 12:00 AM Updated: Thursday, September 23, 2010, 12:43 PM
LARA BRENCKLE, The Patriot-News

The Dauphin County coroner’s office announced Wednesday what Tammy Beltz said she’s known since May 25.

Her grandson Jayahn Cox-Phoenix’s death was a homicide.

The coroner ruled Jayahn, 3, died as a result of freshwater drowning and traumatic brain injury, according to a news release.

Swatara Township police issued a news release stating they were opening an investigation into Jayahn’s death.

Jayahn was found unresponsive in the bathtub of a home in the 3600 block of Chambers Hill Road on May 21, police said.

The district attorney’s office, the police and Dauphin County Children and Youth Services, which was involved in Jayahn’s life, declined further comment. No charges have been filed.

But Beltz, of Harrisburg, is talking. She said she has been even before the day her grandson, who loved walking to the store and afternoons at Chuck E. Cheese’s, died.

Jayahn, she said, was being abused. She had proof, she said, but no one would listen.

“I have 11 grandkids,” Beltz said. “I lost my grandson, and I feel like I failed as a grandmom because I couldn’t protect him.”

Born to Beltz’s daughter, Jasmine Cox, in 2007, Jayahn and Cox lived with Beltz in her Crescent Street home.

Stephen S. Dixon, Jayhan’s father, didn’t care for him until January, Beltz said. Initially, Beltz said, her daughter allowed Dixon to care for the boy on weekends. On March 21, Beltz said, Dixon took Jayahn and then refused to return him when the weekend was over.

Beltz and her daughter called police, but were told that with no formal custody arrangement and Dixon’s acknowledged paternity, there was nothing they could do.

Two days later, according to court documents provided by Beltz, Dixon lodged a child-abuse complaint against Cox with Dauphin County Children and Youth’s Childline. Those allegations were unfounded, Beltz said.

Throughout April, Cox and Beltz attempted to contact Jayahn and Dixon.

Those calls, Beltz said, either went unanswered, were blocked or answered evasively.

Beltz made several calls to CYS after reports from other family members and friends told her that Jayahn was being abused.

She said she never heard back from CYS on the findings of her family’s allegations.

“They never came out, never invited us to a safety plan meeting, nothing,” Beltz said.

In a last-ditch effort, Beltz went to Dixon’s home to try to get Jayahn back. The police were called, she said, and refused to let her take Jayahn.

Beltz called CYS during the incident to plead her case one more time, she said. She said she was told to stop bothering caseworkers with unfounded allegations.

The next day, May 7, Cox filed a handwritten petition for emergency custody.

“I also reported to Children and Youth about my son being beat,” she wrote. “I haven’t seen or talked to my son in over two months now. Every time I call and ask to speak to my son, he’s either asleep, not there, just left or half the time they don’t even pick up.”

On May 11, Judge Andrew Dowling denied the petition, saying the court “failed to see sufficient allegations of conditions or facts.”

Eleven days later, Jayahn was hospitalized.

A cell phone number for Dixon was disconnected.

A woman who answered the phone at another number, which Dixon had given in court papers, said Dixon would not be speaking to a reporter about his son’s death and told a reporter to never call her home again.

Beltz and her daughter are grappling with the loss. When she misses her grandson, Beltz plays the message Jayahn left on her phone in one of his last calls, about three days before his father took custody of him. It’s all she has left of him, she said.

“Why nanna not answering phone?” his baby voice asks his mother. Then the line goes quiet.
© 2010 PennLive.com. All rights reserved.

'They still made me send my kids to him'

2010-09-22T16:02:00.005-04:00

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7210150.html

Mohammad Goher is charged with capital murder in the deaths of his three kids.

Mother of slain children says she sounded alarm about abuse repeatedly
By LINDSAY WISE and ERICKA MELLON
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Sept. 21, 2010, 5:27PM

Video: Volunteers from a womens shelter say the man had been abusing his wife and children for years.

A woman whose estranged husband shot and killed their three children while they slept in his Harris County apartment on Sunday says no one heeded her warnings that her husband was dangerous.

"I have documents of everything, all the abuse, and I showed it to everyone, but no one believed me, and they still made me send my kids to him every weekend," Norma Martinez said in a statement read by Tayseir Mahmoud, a board member at An-Nisa Hope Center, a nonprofit that operates a shelter for battered women.

Martinez and the children had been living at the shelter since March, Mahmoud said. The children would visit their father every weekend in accordance with a court-ordered visitation schedule, she said.

"She's been married to this man for 15 years, and she's gone through a lot of domestic abuse," Mahmoud said of Martinez, who was too distraught to speak publicly on Monday. "Since three years ago, she's been trying to tell people her story and raise awareness of what's gong on and nobody really took her seriously."

Martinez's husband, Mohammad Goher, 47, is charged with capital murder in the shooting deaths of son Saeed, 12, and daughters Saeedah, 14 and Aisha, 7.

The children were at the heart of a bitter custody dispute that dragged on for years as their parents' marriage deteriorated.

In May 2006, Goher was convicted of assault of a family member and placed on deferred adjudication, district attorney's spokesman George Flynn said. Official records indicate Goher, who was intoxicated, beat his wife with his hands and fists, leaving her bruised and injuring her right hand.

In 2008, Goher took the children to stay with relatives in Pakistan and refused to tell his wife where they were, said Christina Diaz, the vice president of operations for An-Nisa. Diaz said Martinez, who's Hispanic, sought help from the FBI, consulates and embassies. She finally reunited with the children about six months ago after An-Nisa volunteers helped her locate them in Pakistan.

Custody hearing
Martinez filed for divorce in February. She planned to request joint custody at a divorce mediation on Friday, Mahmoud said. "She was not asking for sole custody of the children," Mahmoud said.

But Goher apparently feared he might never see his children again. He'd threatened to kill or hurt himself if he lost visitation, said attorney Syed Izfar, who was appointed by a court to represent the children in the mediation.

About four weeks ago, Goher called Manzoor Memon, the editor in chief of a monthly journal and weekly radio show serving Houston's Pakistani community.

"He wanted me to help him to get his family back," Memon said. He said Goher suspected his wife had a relationship with another man, who planned to marry her.

Volunteers with the An-Nisa Hope Center denied any improper relationship existed and said Memon's involvement just made a fraught situation worse. Mahmoud said Memon's wife "claims to be some kind of psychic" and told Goher the judge would grant full custody to his wife.

Memon said his wife is psychic, but she never made any predictions to Goher. "She had told him that you need to get your act together otherwise you'll lose your kids," Memon said.

Memon and his wife visited Goher's apartment on Saturday and Goher agreed to discuss his situation on Memon's radio show on Sunday. Memon said he called Goher that morning to confirm his appearance on the show, but no one picked up the phone.

'They were scared'
Goher is accused of shooting the children to death in their beds at about 9 a.m. Sunday before turning the gun on himself at his apartment in the 13000 block of Homestead.

Goher survived and was taken to Ben Taub General Hospital, where he remained unconscious on Monday, said Harris County Homicide Sgt. Ben Beall.

One of the children's former teachers recalled that Saeedah expressed fear that she and her younger siblings had to spend the weekends with their dad.

"She really liked being with her mom. They were scared to go with their dad," said Jodi Fisher, a math teacher at Schindewolf Intermediate in the Klein Independent School District. "They loved him, but they were scared."

Quiet and reserved
Even so, Saeedah told her teacher that her younger sister and brother did enjoy going to their dad's place.

"The reason she went was to protect them," Fisher said.

Saeedah never mentioned if her father was violent, Fisher said, but the girl would tear up at times talking about her family.

"But I never ever thought anything like this would happen," said Fisher, who taught Saeedah last school year and her younger brother, Saeed, this school year.

Both children were quiet, Fisher said, but they always asked for help with their work and were very bright.

"They were two of the best kids," Fisher recalled. "Very reserved, but, oh my goodness, they were so sweet."

Saeedah was a freshman at Klein Collins High School this year and was on the track team. Saeed was a seventh-grader at Schindewolf, and Aisha was a second-grader at Lemm Elementary.

Vicki Bevan, Saeedah's track coach at Klein Collins, said the teenager didn't have track experience but called her over the summer to ask to join the team.

"She just said she wanted some normalcy in her life, and she felt like being part of a team could bring that," Bevan recalled.

Reporter Allan Turner contributed to this report.
lindsay.wise@chron.com
ericka.mellon@chron.com

Father fears losing visitation and kills the kids instead

2010-09-22T14:05:00.004-04:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39259068/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

A court-appointed guardian ad litem (GAL) planned to recommend unsupervised visitation for this father, even though he had threatened to kill or hurt himself if he lost visitation. This case exposes the danger of believing that a violent spouse can still be a safe parent. It also shows the danger of courts taking too long to decide custody cases.

msnbc.com news services

updated 9/20/2010 1:37:53 PM ET

A father accused of shooting his three children to death as they slept had previously threatened to kill or hurt himself if he lost visitation rights, an attorney said.

After Mohammed Goher's two daughters, ages 14 and 7, and a 12-year-old son were killed Sunday, authorities said Goher shot himself in the mouth in an apparent suicide attempt. He was in fair condition Monday at Ben Taub Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Goher was charged with three counts of capital murder, said Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Jamie Wagner. It was unknown whether he had an attorney.

He is divorced from the children's mother, Norma Goher, but had court-ordered visitation rights, according to the statement. Records show he was convicted in 2006 of beating his wife, who lived in a shelter for battered women.

The father's visitation rights were to be the subject of a court hearing in Houston later this month. Syed Izfar, appointed by the court to represent the children in the hearing, told the Houston Chronicle he was going to suggest Goher receive standard visitation.

Izfar did not immediately return phone calls from The Associated Press.

On Friday, as had been the custom since the Gohers' separated, the children went to stay with their father at his apartment, which is attached to a convenience store where Goher worked, about three miles south of Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport.

He was to have returned them Sunday afternoon to their mother, who had custody of the children during the week, authorities said.

"By all appearances, this was a man who loved his children. What a nightmare," Izfar told the Chronicle. "He had it in his mind that the children would be taken away from him forever."

The 47-year-old father had threatened to kill or hurt himself if he lost visitation, Izfar said, adding that he was unaware of Goher ever harming the children.

On Sunday morning as the children slept, Goher got out a handgun, authorities said. Harris County Homicide Sgt. Ben Beall told the Chronicle Goher shot one of his girls in a bedroom and his son and other daughter who were asleep in another room. Then, Beall said, Goher shot himself.

According to the Harris County Sheriff's office, Goher was expected to survive.

A family friend visiting from Pakistan reported seeing Goher with a handgun and fled the apartment, the Chronicle reported. Neighbors did not return telephone messages by The Associated Press.

One neighbor, Julio Rodriguez, told the Houston Chronicle that he dialed 911 after he saw a woman screaming when she left the apartment at the time of the shooting.

"I heard her screaming, "Gun! Gun! Shoot! Shoot!' I got scared because I knew there were kids in there," he said. Muhommad Riaz, Goher's co-worker at a convenience store near his apartment building, told the Chronicle that he had spoken with Goher Saturday. He found him to be upset over the upcoming court date and the fear of losing his visitation rights, Riaz said.

Goher said "everyone was lying" about him having a violent temper, Riaz told the newspaper.

© 2010 msnbc.com

When will judges stop gambling with children's safety in domestic violence cases?

2010-09-20T13:43:00.003-04:00

39online.com /news/local/kiah-father-shoots-three-children-story,0,7132460.story

Father Charged With Deaths of Three Children

Mayra Moreno
KIAH-TV, Houston, TX
September 19, 2010

A father of three young children commits an unthinkable act. He's been charged with three counts of capital murder after killing his kids while they slept. That man is now resting in a hospital bed he apparently turned the gun on himself after killing his own children but he survived.

Police found 47 year old Muhammed Goher unconscious and the three children dead on the residential side of his business The A and D Food Market is located in northeast Harris County on the 13000 block of Homestead.

A friend of the man told me he was upset he didn't have custody of his children. Neighbors claim the couple had separated for quite some time and police say there is a history of domestic violence. Goher who only had visitation rights was suppose to drop off the kids with their mother on Sunday afternoon.

"Yeah he was stressed," said Raez Muhammad, friend of the father.

Muhammad spoke to a frantic father on Saturday, a person he had met a few months ago. He was helping Muhammed Goher deal with the stress of losing custody of his three children.

"So he said okay you come tomorrow (and) we will talk that's it," said Muhammad.

Muhammad arrived at three o'clock just like he promised but instead of walking inside the home to see his friend he waited outside as police combed through a homicide scene.

"We didn't even know he used a gun," said Blanca Gonzalez, who worked at Goher's store and lives across the street. She heard when a woman ran out of apartment screaming.

"She was just screaming yelling for help," said Gonzalez.

Police say the woman was living at the home to help care for Goher's three kids. She apparently witnessed as the father shot the three children; two girls ages 13 and 7 and a 12 year old boy.

"There is a good possibility they may have been asleep when they were shot," said a Houston Police homicide officer.

Police say Goher then turned the gun on himself. They found him unconscious on the floor with a gun shot wound to the head.

"The ambulance came they took the guy out he was bleeding," said Gonzalez.

Muhammad does admit Goher didn't want his children to live with their mother. The woman, a victim of domestic violence, is living in a half way house. Goher only had court order visits on the weekends.

"He said I have (a) home (and) I have (a) business why (don't) they give me (the) kids," said Muhammad.

Still, Muhammad never imagined his friend would be charged for the murder of the three children he loved so much.

Copyright © 2010, KIAH-TV

Governor Carcieri's Legacy in Family Court

2010-08-30T15:35:00.001-04:00

The Parenting Project has set up a new blog to report on Family Court custody cases that illustrate systemic problems in this court:

http://trophychild.blogspot.com

We are urging Governor Carcieri to begin the process of reforming this burdened court by asking the five candidates for chief judge (Justices Bedrosian, Capineri, D'Ambra, Forte, and Voccola) about their proposals for change.

These five candidates represent nearly 90 years on this bench. We have much to learn from their recommendations for court reform.

Two of the candidates, Justices Capineri and D'Ambra, spoke in their public interviews before the Judicial Nominating Commission about plans they had submitted to the Governor. We have asked the Governor to release these and any other proposals as public documents. We do not need a chief judge who is satisfied with the status quo.

Rhode Island is the only state that gives judges life tenure with no review.

Governor Carcieri knows that successful businesses need good methods of performance review.

For Rhode Island to "race to the top," our schools must develop sound procedures to evaluate teacher performance.

Likewise, successful courts need reliable methods to evaluate the performance of judges and court officers. Performance review will help to assure greater independence of judges. If it is well designed and properly done, it will guard against conflicts of interest.

We have asked Governor Carcieri to select a chief judge with a clear vision for reforming Family Court. Which of the candidates would endorse a request for private funding to begin a pilot project on judicial performance review in Family Court? That pilot project could set an example for our other courts.

We need a chief judge:
• who is not satisfied with the status quo that rewards political connections and cronies;
• who is committed to identifying systemic problems that place vulnerable children and families at risk;
• who possesses the managerial skill to implement a sound plan for reform; and
• whose strength of leadership can overcome apathy and entrenched resistance to reform.

We ask Governor Carcieri to select a new chief judge of Family Court who will make court reform a major part of the Governor's lasting legacy for Rhode Island.

When children are not believed

2010-07-23T20:05:00.004-04:00

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/07/mother_sues_state_workers_for.html

Mother sues state workers for ignoring danger signs that led to ex-husband's 2007 murder-suicide that killed her 9-year-old son

Oliver Braman

Nicholas Braman

Published: Tuesday, July 20, 2010, 7:02 AM
Updated: Tuesday, July 20, 2010, 8:59 AM
John Agar | The Grand Rapids Press

MONTCALM COUNTY -- A federal lawsuit alleges Children's Protective Services workers ignored obvious danger to 9-year-old Nicholas Braman, and kept him in his father's care despite the father's abuse conviction for using an electric cattle prod on two older sons.

"The death of Nicholas Daniel Braman would have been avoided if defendants had simply done what they were obligated to do by law to protect (the boy) from further abuse and neglect ...," attorney Gregory Wix wrote in the civil lawsuit, filed earlier this month by the boy's mother.

The tragedy gained wide attention when Nicholas Braman, along with his father, Oliver Braman, and his stepmother, Elaine Kaczor-Braman, were found dead Oct. 16, 2007, in their Stanton home. The boy was drugged before his father attached his pickup exhaust to the dryer vent of their house, flooding a bedroom with carbon monoxide.

The deaths occurred 11 days after Braman failed to appear for sentencing hearing on child abuse charges.

Adding to the heartbreak was a suicide note young Nicholas had left behind, scrawled in his childish hand, saying he wanted to be with his father and stepmother "forever and ever." While authorities say the boy was too young to make such a decision himself, a portion of his note read, "I take care of my mom and dad just like they take care of me."

The lawsuit alleges Children's Protective Services, under the state Department of Human Services, ignored evidence the boy was at risk with his father. Both a prosecutor and the boy's mother, Rebecca Jasinski of Saginaw, raised red flags.

A month before the deaths, Assistant Montcalm County Prosecutor Misty Davis told CPS that "An investigation should definitely be commenced ... . Oliver literally 'shocked' his older boys with a cattle prod repeatedly. As you know abuse to one child is abuse to all. In my opinion, there is no justification for the youngest boy to remain in the care of this man."

Two weeks later, she told authorities that Braman had pleaded guilty to child abuse charges. The response, just hours before the deaths were discovered: "We've never felt that Nicholas was at risk."
Jasinski had "begged" CPS workers in Saginaw to remove her youngest son from Braman's home, but was denied.

The state agency has admitted that the boy should have been removed from his father's home and placed with his mother.

Named as defendants are: CPS workers Sheri Tyler and Mary Sommers; supervisors Jamie Lovelace and Rhoda Dietrich: former director of the Department of Humane Services Marianna Udow; Laura Champagne, former chief deputy director; Ted Forrest, manager of CPS: and Chad Campbell, director of Community Hope Christian Counseling and Mental Health Center.

Edward Woods III, spokesman for Department of Human Services, said he could not comment on pending litigation, but said the agency continually works to improve services to children.
"Obviously, we're very concerned about the safety of children."

Children's Protective Services workers are represented by the state Attorney General's office, which would not comment on pending litigation. Harvey Heller, attorney for Campbell and the counseling center, declined to comment.

The lawsuit cited the father's "long history of abuse" of his children, including the older boys, Oliver and Tyler.

Among complaints investigated -- and denied -- by CPS, beginning in 1998, were:

• The father abused the children, and struck one so hard blood vessels broke in the child's nose.

• The father threatened to kill Nicholas, who feared his father. The father and his live-in girlfriend pulled out the children's teeth before they were ready to come out on their own.

• The father threw son Oliver off the porch and kicked him because the boy could not find his glasses.

• The father, believing that Oliver was afraid of the dark, left him miles away at night to find his way home. He did the same with Tyler. The boys told CPS workers they were beaten on their bare bottoms, and pliers were put on their fingers.

In 2006, the father was investigated for molesting a child. During that investigation, authorities learned the boys were disciplined with a cattle prod.

"Again, CPS, including defendant Lovelace, denied that the children were being abused or neglected and completely failed to 'investigate, collect evidence, or reach a disposition on the allegation that Mr. Braman used a cattle prod on his children,' according (to) the Office of the Children's Ombudsman," Wix wrote in the lawsuit.

The three boys were living with their father on Aug. 1, 2007, when the older boys called their mother and said they were running away because of abuse. The mother called CPS workers in Saginaw, but was threatened with arrest for kidnapping if she picked them up, she said.
She picked up her two older sons and brought them to Saginaw.

The next day, the boys told CPS workers about the use of a cattle prod. Braman did not deny the abuse, and was arrested by Montcalm County sheriff's deputies.

Sheri Tyler, a CPS worker in Montcalm, confirmed in an e-mail that there was no investigation, which was proper because Saginaw authorities "'did not seek removal,'" the lawsuit said.

The Office of Children's Ombudsman said that regardless of any action by Saginaw authorities, Montcalm CPS should have acted "at the earliest point it became aware of Mr. Braman's egregious acts of abuse ... ," the lawsuit said.

E-mail John Agar: jagar@grpress.com

GA: Father accused of smothering 5-year-old son

2010-07-14T12:11:00.003-04:00

http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=146287&catid=8

5-Year Old May Have Been Smothered By His Father

Posted By - Ben Mayer
Posted By - Kevin Rowson

Last Updated On: 7/12/2010 10:00:42 PM

DECATUR, Ga. -- A Decatur man is accused of doing the unthinkable. He's charged with murdering his own child, a 5-year old boy.

Police have issued a warrant for Gary DeToma Sr., who was taken into custody at the Eastlake Drive apartment where his son was found dead Monday afternoon.

. . .

Police were . . . called by an attorney who represents DeToma's wife, because the children were not returned to her after spending a weekend visitation with their father.

. . .

According to DeKalb County court records, DeToma and his wife, Melanie, were in a heated divorce and custody battle.

. . . .

Why we need independent investigation units to inform custody and visitation decisions

2010-05-13T13:57:00.004-04:00

Police: Utah man beat, disfigured slain boy
Prosecutors expect to file charges against mom, stepfather on Friday

By JENNIFER DOBNER, PAUL FOY
Associated Press Writers
The Associated Press
updated 9:15 p.m. ET, Wed., May 12, 2010

SALT LAKE CITY - The Utah stepfather held in the slaying of a 4-year-old child beat him for days before the boy died, then used a hammer to disfigure his face and teeth before burying the body in the mountains, according to police records released late Wednesday.

The body of Ethan Stacy, wrapped in plastic, was unearthed by police on Tuesday.

Interview summaries filed by Layton police detectives documented a pattern of increasingly harsh treatment of the boy, who was sent by a Virginia judge to Utah for a summer visit with his mother.

Investigators said they obtained photographs and video images of the boy's progressively worse condition from the mother's cell phone, starting more than a week ago.

Parents went off to get married
The stepfather, Nathanael Sloop, 31, acknowledged hitting the boy, which caused his face to swell, and leaving him in a locked bedroom on May 6 while the couple went off to get married, according to the probable cause statements.

For the rest of this report, see:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37120003/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

How are custody decisions evaluated?

2010-04-27T11:25:00.004-04:00

Elizabeth Brown wiped tears from her eyes Friday morning as she implored a judge to reconsider a plea deal that allows Matthew Roland to serve life in prison instead of receiving the death penalty for the beating death of their daughter, 4-year-old daughter Kristina Hepp, a year ago.

By Karen Voyles
Staff writer

Published: Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, April 23, 2010 at 10:56 p.m.

To see the entire story, go to:
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20100424/ARTICLES/4241018/1002?p=all&tc=pgall

TRENTON, FL - Almost a year after 4-year-old Kristina Hepp was found lifeless inside her Waccasassa mobile home, her father pleaded no contest Friday morning in her death and was ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Matthew Roland, 24, pleaded no contest to first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse. Circuit Judge Ysleta McDonald sentenced him to a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

Kristina died April 27, 2009, inside the home where Roland had been living with her and his girlfriend, Chelci Folds, 20, of Mayo. Following an autopsy, the Medical Examiner's Office issued a determination that Kristina could have survived had she received medical care.

In court on Friday morning, Chief Assistant State Attorney Jeanne Singer told McDonald that if the case had gone to trial, witnesses would have testified that Roland had been "torturing or maliciously punishing, causing corneal and genital injuries and other injuries."

Singer also said there would have been testimony that the injuries found on Kristina during an autopsy "had been inflicted over time" and were the result of Roland using his hands and a belt to beat Kristina.

. . .

Absent from court was Folds, who had moved into Roland's home in February 2009, a day or two before he was awarded custody of Kristina.

. . .

Roland allegedly told deputies that while watching his daughter, he "got into it" with her that night and spanked her. Deputies also said Roland told them he hit her with a belt the afternoon of April 26.

. . .

Early the next morning, Roland woke Folds and told her Kristina was not breathing. Roland and Folds said they took the child to the living room, according to the Sheriff's Office, and put her down on the floor. Roland then tried to give her another nebulizer treatment and CPR before calling 911, the Sheriff's Office reported.

According to investigators, Folds spent at least 12 hours with Roland and the injured child without taking steps to care for her injuries.

Folds was charged with child neglect with great bodily harm. She received five years' probation as part of a plea deal in the case. Prosecutors identified Folds as the key witness against Roland.

Eighth Judicial Circuit Medical Examiner Dr. Martha Burt, who went to the Waccasassa mobile home where Kristina was found dead, told Gilchrist County sheriff's investigators that Kristina's multiple injuries were survivable had she received timely medical attention.

Where do Fathers' Rights end?

2010-03-31T22:13:00.004-04:00

http://www.azfamily.com/news/slideshows/89605277.html

by Jennifer Thomas
Posted on March 31, 2010 at 10:09 AM
Updated today at 5:21 PM

SCOTTSDALE, AZ -- A father reportedly shot his two children and then himself at a Scottsdale home Wednesday morning.

According to Scottsdale police Officer David Pubins, at approximately 8 a.m. 39-year-old Andre Leteve called 911 and said he had shot his child.

When police officers arrived at the home near Lincoln Drive and Scottsdale Road, they forced entry and found two small boys dead from apparent gunshot wounds. The kids ages are reportedly 5 years old and 15 months old.

Pubins said the father also shot himself. He was transported to a local hospital with non life-threatening injuries and is expected to survive.

3TV has learned Leteve was going through a divorce. Both he and his wife had completed parent education classes and were scheduled to appear in court on April 19.

The mother of the children reportedly had plans to take the kids out of state for a vacation and Leteve was attempting to stop those plans.

When social services fail children

2010-03-12T16:10:00.003-05:00

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2889353/RAPIST-dad-dubbed-Britains-Josef-Fritzl-threatened-daughters-with-losing-their-children.html

Terrorised ... daughters were raped 1,000 times
By ALASTAIR TAYLOR
March 12, 2010
THE monster dad dubbed Britain's Josef Fritzl told his two sex-slave daughters: "If you ever tell, you'll never see your kids again."

Caged ... the evil dad
The sisters were raped 1,000 times and had nine babies by their brutal father - leading to a grovelling apology this week from social services who failed to help them.

Today The Sun can reveal he forced the terrified girls to keep quiet by warning them social workers would seize their babies if they spoke of their 25-year ordeal. One sister sobbed as she said:

We love our kids more than anything in the world. As I got older, he said if I told anyone my children would be taken away from me. I was too scared to tell anyone. Besides, I didn't think anyone would believe me.

When my mum asked me who the father of my first child was, I told her it was a local boy - but I knew the real father was my dad.

Fritzl ... Austrian incest beast
I lost count of how many times he raped me. He started touching me when I was about five. It was going on for years, but I didn't know my sister was also being abused until much later.

Pleaded
At one stage a few years ago I even paid him a few times from my benefits just to stop him. There was no way out.

No one was there for us and we were too terrified of him to tell anyone what was happening.

I pleaded for him to stop but he wouldn't. It took us years to build up the courage to report him. We were under his control.

There was no reaction or heart in him. He would just tell us to go to the bedroom.

Now we just want to get on with our lives. We don't want anyone to know who we are.

I don't know how I'll be able to tell the children who their father is. It's going to be very difficult.

The evil dad, a 57-year-old self-employed businessman, was given 25 life sentences for rape at Sheffield Crown Court 18 months ago and will serve a minimum of 14½ years.

The case had chilling echoes of Austrian incest beast Fritzl, who kept his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years.

The two girls were made pregnant 18 times.

Seven of the children survived, two died the day they were born and the other pregnancies ended by miscarriage or abortion.

The pair are still traumatised and are receiving counselling. A damning independent report on the case revealed on Wednesday that social workers had suspected the girls' incest nightmare for 11 years.

But instead of taking action, they waited for the victims to speak out. Some social workers were too afraid of the violent, bullying father, the report said.

Senior Department of Health official Professor Pat Cantrill, who wrote the harrowing report, said that it had been wrong and unrealistic to simply expect the sisters to reveal their ordeals.

She added: "These children had been subjected to grave offences and emotional abuse.

"It would have prevented most people from taking the phenomenal step of disclosing what had been happening. Action should have been taken."

Bosses from two bungling councils flanked Prof Cantrill as she spelled out their failings.

Relatives insisted yesterday they DID try to stop the abuse but their tip-offs were not acted upon.

The rapist's cousin blasted: "Social services should have done something. Family members were reporting him but it never went anywhere. This could all have been stopped nearly two decades ago."

The cousin's wife said she told social services more than 20 years ago. It happened after she heard the dad order his daughter, who was getting dressed, to "come back to bed."

She said: "They said they would need corroboration. I kept ringing but I was always being put through to someone different and it never went anywhere."

The dad's mother-in-law - now dead - also reported him to police after catching him in bed with a daughter. And the sisters' brother made allegations but they were never properly investigated.

The horror began as far back as 1980. But the divorced father moved his family to new homes around Sheffield and Lincolnshire 67 times in a bid to escape notice of the authorities. At his trial, it was revealed several children born to his daughters were severely disabled.

But even after he realised genetic damage was being done, the sadistic thug "carried on impregnating his daughters".

He even threatened to kill the girls and their children.

All the family were frightened of him. When they heard his car pulling up outside, the children and their mother hid to avoid beatings. The girls were threatened with "a real hiding" if they refused to have sex.

One said he would hold her head next to the flames of a gas fire if she struggled.

At one stage the sisters were so desperate to halt the abuse they dosed their alcoholic father with huge amounts of whisky in the hope he would die.

One fuming relative blasted: "He's evil - but the social services are a disgrace. They should have done something."

a.taylor@the-sun.co.uk

By ALASTAIR TAYLOR
EXCLUSIVE
THE boss of a social services that failed to stop the abuse of the "British Fritzl" sisters now runs a consultancy firm - advising councils how to manage their care departments.

Matt Bukowski was director of social services at Lincolnshire County Council from 1996 to 2005.

Care workers suspected as far back as 1997 that the two sisters were giving birth to their rapist dad's children - but took no action to stop the abuse.

Now Mr Bukowski's consultancy Social Care Strategies advises councils on how to run their services.

Its website boasts that the company "built its reputation by helping social care and health organisations make change happen".

Cambridge graduate Mr Bukowski's profile adds: "He is a whole systems thinker with extensive experience of enabling organisations to work more effectively to deliver improved outcomes for their customers."

A social services source said: "He was the man in charge of the department in Lincolnshire at that time. There were concerns about what was going on but nothing was done to stop it."

There is no suggestion Mr Bukowski - whose department got several one-star ratings from Government inspectors - was personally aware of the sisters' case.

But this week a damning report blasted errors by unnamed "professionals" in Lincolnshire and Sheffield.

Prof Pat Cantrill, a Department of Health official, said: "Nearly all the services involved with the family suspected or were aware of the suspicions of incest."

She said a "substantial picture" had emerged by 1997 and added: "Action should have been taken."

Mr Bukowski was not at his Lincoln home yesterday and was not responding to phone calls and messages.

Dr. Amy Castillo tries to change Maryland law to "preponderance of the evidence"

2010-02-25T09:18:00.003-05:00

Click on the pages to enlarge:

Why judges and police must learn to connect the dots of domestic violence

2010-02-19T10:16:00.002-05:00

Death now a 1st-degree murder case
By STEPHEN THOMPSON and NEIL JOHNSON

spthompson@tampatrib.com njohnson@tampatrib.com

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/feb/18/na-deathnowa1st-degreemurdercase/

Laura Taft said her boyfriend threatened to kill her if she ever left him.

On Wednesday, with Taft still mourning the suspicious death of her 5-week-old son, Craig Wall made good on those threats, police say.

Wall, a 34-year-old ex-convict and father of the dead boy, was charged with first-degree murder in Taft's stabbing death. The slaying and arrest, authorities say, came just days after Wall was released from jail for violating a temporary domestic violence injunction filed by Taft.

The arrest affidavit requested that he be held without bail because he was suspected in the death of Craig Wall Jr.

A judge set bail at $1,000, and Wall was released.

Two days later, Taft, 29, was dead.

Courts spokesman Ron Stuart said it is unlikely Pinellas Circuit Judge George Jirotka had a copy of the arrest affidavit before setting bail.

Stuart said the charge against Wall, that he violated a temporary restraining order, was a misdemeanor. At a hearing after Wall's arrest, an assistant state attorney asked for bail of $2,500 and Wall's public defender asked for $500. Jirotka went with $1,000, Stuart said.

"This is a very tragic thing, but I don't think anybody did anything wrong," Stuart said.

Wall first came to the attention of authorities Feb. 5 when he emerged as a suspect in the death of his son within hours of the infant being flown by helicopter to All Children's Hospital.

He was the only adult with the child on that day, and a CT scan showed the baby had swelling on the left side of his brain, leading a doctor at the hospital to suspect the child had been shaken or thrown, court documents state.

Wall was videotaped saying he "was sorry that he did something to the baby," the documents state.

He was not arrested.

Taft showed the videotape to a Clearwater police officer. On Feb. 8, two days after the infant was taken off life support, Taft was granted the injunction against Wall.

Wall filed a petition of his own because he wanted to attend his son's funeral Sunday at St. Dunstan's Anglican Church in Largo. His petition was denied. Wall drove to the church parking lot and was arrested.

Clearwater police said Wednesday that they don't have enough evidence to decide whether to charge Wall in his son's death.

Elizabeth Watts, the city's public safety spokeswoman, said it would have been premature to arrest him because the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office has not determined how the boy died.

"That's why it's not a homicide," Watts said. "That's why it's called a death investigation."

A preliminary examination showed trauma to the brain and fractured ribs, but the results of forensics tests on the child's brain and eyes are not in, court documents state. Watts said investigators don't expect them for a couple of weeks.

In her petition for a temporary restraining order, Taft mentioned that something happened to her infant son while he was in Wall's care.

In 1994, Wall was sentenced to 17 years in prison after he burst into a St. Petersburg home with a long-barreled handgun and told an elderly couple he wanted the keys to a Ford Taurus parked outside, court documents state.

He was released two years ago after serving 14 years. On Wednesday, he was arrested in Sumter County after being found on State Road 44 in his vehicle.

Children need court protection

2010-02-17T19:47:00.001-05:00

NJ man tells police he tossed baby off bridge

By SAMANTHA HENRY, Associated Press Writer Samantha Henry, Associated Press Writer – 33 mins ago Feb. 17, 2010

WOODBRIDGE, N.J. – A man who told police he threw his infant daughter off a highway bridge into a New Jersey river has been charged with kidnapping and attempted murder.

Police using boats, dogs and a helicopter scoured the area beneath the Garden State Parkway's Driscoll Bridge Wednesday searching for 3-month-old Zara Malani-lin Abdur.

Authorities say the girl's father, 21-year-old Shamsiddin Abdur-Raheem of Galloway Township, pulled her from the arms of her grandmother Tuesday in East Orange.

The child's mother, Venetta Benjamin, had sought a restraining order against him, but her lawyer said the baby was snatched before the order was served.

The father was arrested four hours after the abduction at a relative's home in southern New Jersey. He is being held at the Essex County Jail.

(This version CORRECTS APNewsNow. corrects infant's last name, per attorney general's office. Will be led. AP Video.)

Father kills 18-month-old for crying

2010-02-16T15:00:00.006-05:00

http://www.kmbc.com/news/22521985/detail.html

Father Charged In Daughter's Death

Police Claim Guenther Confessed To Striking 1-Year-Old

POSTED: 11:14 am CST February 10, 2010
UPDATED: 7:50 pm CST February 10, 2010

LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. --

A 22-year-old man is charged with assaulting his 18-month-old daughter while she was in his care. Elizabeth Guenther was pronounced dead Wednesday morning.

Jackson County prosecutors charged Mark A. Guenther with three counts of first-degree assault. Additional charges are possible.

Police said Guenther was at his grandparents' home in Lee's Summit Monday evening when a 911 call came in that the toddler wasn't breathing. The child lives with her mother.

Lee's Summit police claimed that Guenther confessed to striking the child several times. Guenther first claimed his daughter hurt herself when she fell in the bathtub.

According to court documents, when detectives later told him the hospital said the injuries were not consistent with his story, Guenther said he punched the girl on the back of the head with a closed fist because she was crying in her high chair and her head hit the table. When detectives asked him how she acted after that, Guenther said she was quiet and laid there.

The girl was taken to a hospital, but she later died from her injuries, which included a fractured and a bleeding skull, as well as bruising around her neck. "Most significant, though, the medical examiner noted was hemorrhaging in her eyes, which is a term that indicates that the blood vessels in her eyes had burst. This is common in strangulation cases, and that's why we charged one of the assault counts as strangulation," Jackson County Prosecutor Jim Kanatzar said.

Kanatzar said the case demonstrates that suspected child abuse cases need to be taken seriously. There were two previous suspected cases involving the girl from spring 2009 in Cass County.

KMBC's Peggy Breit reported that Guenther's arrangement with the child's mother was that he would take care of his daughter on the weekends.

Guenther is being held on $300,000 bond. Kanatzar said he plans to upgrade the charges to second-degree murder in the coming weeks.

Elizabeth Guenther will be an organ donor, Breit reported.

When asked whether this was a custody case, the reporter responded: I haven't been able to ask about custody details. If I had to guess, I would say they were court-ordered, especially considering the mother had filed several police reports and a domestic assault charge. We filed an open records request to see what resulted from the two separate Department of Family Services investigations in Cass County.

Here is a comment below the online article:
You have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about. Her mother tried and tried to get something done so that she did not have to go see her father. She had DFS out to his house, they found nothing...She filed for an order of protection on a couple different occassions...they were dismissed...She refused to let her see her dad until her back was up to the wall...the court systems had tied her hands and she had no other choices but to let her sweet baby go to her dads house and hope that everything was ok...as far as your 'information' is concerned it is inaccurate...attacking her mother in this of all times???? You have no idea!!!!

This child should have been protected by the judge from visitation

2010-02-15T13:39:00.004-05:00

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/201002140500/NEWS01/2140327

Meaghan M. McDermott and Nestor Ramos
• Staff writers • February 14, 2010

GREECE, NY — A Greece man who killed his son and himself Friday was receiving counseling but had lost hope, his mother said.

Carol Gurgel said she’d urged her son, Mark P. Resch, to seek help, and he’d met with a
counselor in the days before he killed his 7-year-old son Hunter and then fatally shot himself.

“I was in contact with him every day. I knew he was overwhelmed with it all,” Gurgel said.
Resch had lost his job and his car at the beginning of the year, and learned recently that his wife was seeking a divorce.

“Just these last couple of days … he’d kind of given up,” Gurgel said. She said Resch, a
recovering alcoholic, had been telling relatives not to bother worrying about him.

“He’s a very generous, gentle kind person,” Gurgel said. “But he did have mental issues.”

According to police, Mark Resch's apparent motive was revenge against his estranged wife.

"There was an ongoing domestic dispute, and this act was definitely a very spiteful, very aggressive act," said Greece Police Chief Todd Baxter. "This person was a mean person and was doing this pure out of spite."

According to a statement released Saturday by the Greece Central School District, Hunter T. Resch, 7, was a first-grader at Paddy Hill Elementary School on Latta Road. The district will offer counseling for students and their parents.

In a written statement, Hunter T. Resch's teacher, Cathy Carpenter, said he was a wonderful child and was well-liked.

"He loved to learn and explore and was so excited to be with his friends," she said.

Police were called to the yellow-clapboard house on Island Cottage Road about 7:30 p.m. Friday, alerted by a 911 call from Hunter T. Resch's mother asking that they check on the welfare of her son, who was staying with his father as part of a court-ordered visitation.

Baxter said the woman was alarmed by a phone conversation she'd just had with her estranged husband, who told her "you'll never make it here in time" to pick up the boy.

Baxter said the woman had left her husband on Jan. 25, the same day she secured a temporary order of protection against him in Monroe County Family Court for alleged threats against her life.

As part of that order, the man was prohibited from owning any guns, so police removed one shotgun from the Island Cottage Drive home at that time.

The man denied owning any others.

Baxter said police were investigating to see how the man got hold of the shotgun used in the killings.

On Monday, Baxter said, Family Court had issued a permanent restraining order against the man. The order included visitation with his son on some weekdays and alternate weekends, he said.

After the 911 call, police arrived at the home within six minutes. Through a front window, they could see a severely injured child on a couch in the living room.

In an effort to save the boy, officers immediately entered the house, where they found the man dead of a gunshot wound just inside the back door. The child was also dead.

Baxter said police found a long note, written over more than a week, that outlined the man's plan to kill his son.

He would not discuss details of the note, which he called "five or six pages of a lot of hate, anger and spite," but said it proved the act was premeditated.

"He thought about this for more than a week, with no indication to us, his wife or the courts," said Baxter. "He talked about how he was going to do it, and our investigation reveals that he pretty much carried out his plan in how he did it. That kid had no chance."

Police held debriefing and counseling sessions for involved officers and the victim's family on Saturday.

Christopher and Cheryl Irick of Island Cottage Road awoke Saturday to news of the murder-suicide. The couple said they never knew Resch or his family and that the neighborhood has always been quiet.

"That's one of the things that attracted us to here," said Christopher Irick. "And the fact that this happened across from the police station makes it even more shocking. It's such an incredibly sad story."

Calling hours for Hunter T. Resch will be from 2 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 16, at Vay - Schleich & Meeson Funeral Home, 1075 Long Pond Road, Greece. A service will be held at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 17, at St. Charles Borromeo Church, 3003 Dewey Ave.

MCDERMOT@DemocratandChronicle.com

Includes reporting by staff writers Chad Roberts, Ernst Lamothe and Gary McLend

Why do judges fail to protect children from forced visitation with dangerous parents?

2010-02-15T10:46:00.005-05:00

Father, young son found dead in apparent murder-suicide in Greece, NY
CHAD ROBERTS • OVERNIGHT EDITOR • FEBRUARY 13, 2010

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20100213/NEWS01/100213001

GREECE -- Police said a 39-year-old man shot and killed his 7-year-old son and then committed suicide in a house at 491 Island Cottage Road last night.

Chief Todd Baxter of the Greece Police Department said names of the victims have not been released yet, pending identification by the Monroe County Medical Examiner's office.

Baxter said the mother of the child, who was estranged from her husband who lived at 491 Island Cottage, called 911 last evening asking police to check on the welfare of her child.

The house is located directly across Island Cottage Road from the access road leading to the Greece Police Department.

"The wife was responding to the house at the same time we were responding," Baxter said. "She was coming from another location."

When officers arrived at the address at about 7:30, they first checked the exterior of the house, then discovered the grisly scene when they looked inside.

"They peered through one of the windows and they saw an apparent gunshot victim inside the location, in the living room," Baxter said. "They immediately made entry into the house to try and secure that victim. Upon entering the house, the officers found a second victim just inside the back door of the house. That victim was also apparently dead on arrival from a gunshot wound."

Baxter said that the father picked up his son earlier Friday from the mother's residence for a scheduled visitation period. The mother had received an order of protection against her husband on Jan. 25, and at that time, weapons had been cleared from the Island Cottage Road address by police, Baxter said. A second order was issued on Feb. 8.

Baxter said that yesterday evening, the boy's mother became concerned with his welfare after speaking to the boy's father on the phone.

"She called from an area on Ridge Road," Baxter said. "She got worried about her son based on conversations she was having with the male at the house. So she was starting to respond here. While she was responding, she also called 911 and asked us to go check on the welfare of the child. The officers beat her to the scene and were just doing the preliminary check on the exterior of the house when she arrived."

Baxter, who is in his first week as chief of police in Greece after a long career with the Rochester Police Department, said the situation was a difficult one for everybody involved.

"It is very traumatic on the family, the family is extremely distraught, both sides of the family," Baxter said. "The officers are quite upset, the ones that had to go inside and see the child in that condition. It is a very traumatic situation."

Baxter said that the father had left at least one note inside the house that referred to Friday's shootings.

Baxter said the weapon used in the shootings appeared to be a shotgun.

Includes reporting by staff writer Gary McLendon.

Dead baby beaten by father for being a girl

2010-02-12T17:22:00.003-05:00

Polk Man Gets 15 Years for Baby Girl's Death
Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:55 pm (PST)

http://www.theledger.com/article/20100210/NEWS/100219971?Title=Polk-Man-Gets-15-Years-for-Baby-s-Girl-s-Death

By Jason Geary
THE LEDGER

Published: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 12:26 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 12:42 p.m.

BARTOW A Winter Haven man accused of beating his 4-month-old daughter because he wanted a boy instead of a girl was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison for the child's death.

Marcos Gomez-Romero, 30, pleaded no contest to aggravated manslaughter. A charge of child abuse was dropped as part of a plea deal.

Originally, a grand jury indicted Gomez-Romero on Jan. 10, 2008, on charges of first-degree murder and child abuse. Prosecutors had been seeking the death penalty.

But the cause of death for the child was further explored as the case proceeded to trial.

“It became clear that, while the attitude of the father of the child was horrible, there were problems related to determining the actual cause of the child's death,” said Chip Thullbery, a spokesman with the State Attorney's Office.

The plea agreement was a difficult decision to make, he said.

During Wednesday's hearing, Gomez-Romero's lawyer, Austin Maslanik, described the child's death as a terrible tragedy.

He said his client loved both his daughter and his son.

Ariana Rodriguez Romero died on Christmas Day in 2007.

Rescue workers went to the girl's home on 3145 Ave. Q N.W. after being called about the baby being unresponsive. The girl was taken to Winter Haven Hospital and pronounced dead at 9:59 a.m.

An emergency room doctor told detectives that the girl's trachea was full of baby formula, which was consistent with the girl choking on the food, according to investigative reports.

However, an autopsy later found the baby suffered from numerous injuries, including multiple new and old rib fractures.

In addition, the baby had a bruised liver, a hematoma and laceration on her spleen, a hemorrhage in her left eye, a bruise on her shoulder blade, a hemorrhage to a back muscle, and bruising on each side of the mouth near the lower jaw.

Gomez-Romero told a detective that he had been bottle-feeding the girl when she began to choke from eating too fast and stopped breathing, reports state.

He suggested some of the girls' injuries could have been caused as he tried to revive her.

The child's mother, Juana Rodriguez, told detectives that Gomez-Romero hated the girl and was violent toward the baby, but he would threaten to leave with their 2-year-old son if she called the police.

Rodriguez told the detective that Gomez-Romero “loves and worships” their son and was never abusive toward him.

Under further questioning, Gomez-Romero told the detective that he would spank the girl on the buttocks, and grab and squeeze her torso, and would carry her by her hands and arms allowing her to hang, reports state.

“He would become so bothered and angry if Ariana slept too long that he would slap her on the rib cage to wake her,” the report states.

Gomez-Romero told the detective that he wanted a boy instead of a girl, and in anger would call her ugly and a prostitute as well as say that he did not love her, reports state.

King of his Castle: Custody murders in 2010

2010-02-11T19:54:00.004-05:00

Jan Kurth compiled a list of custody murders in 2010. When will custody courts notice?

AUSTRALIA
Freeman, Arthur Philip. Threw 3-year-old daughter off bridge, killing her. Had court-ordered visitation.

CALIFORNIA
Fuentes, Jesus Roman. Shot to death 4-year-old son during visitation.

Garcia, Stephen Charles. Shot to death 9-month-old son during court-ordered visitation. Mother's pleas ignored by 3 judges.

Brown, Cameron. Facing third trial for murdering 4-year-old daughter by pushing her off cliff. Allegedly wanted to avoid child support.

CANADA
McKenzie, Kelly David. Murdered girlfriend while 9-year-old son was in his home on an "access visit."

CHINA
Kang, Liu. Beat to death 12-year-old daughter. Appears to have been custodial father (divorced from girl's mother, girl lived with father).

IDAHO
Bacon, Nicholas. Shot to death 9-month-old son during visitation. Had joint custody.

INDIANA
Bohannon, Ronald A. Shot to death 14-month-old son during visitation. Convicted of reckless homicide.

KENTUCKY
Frazier, Timothy. Murdered 21-month-old son after obtaining custody with police help through fraudulent EPO. Mother is now suing the police and the City.

MISSOURI
Robinson, Nathaniel. Murdered 3-year-old son after obtaining custody 1 month before.

OHIO
Mammone, James III. Stabbed his two children to death, beat to death former mother-in-law. Had been granted visitation rights.

OREGON
Cockerel, Donald L. Along with girlfriend, charged with starving, beating to death 3-year-old daughter. Dad had "shared custody," but had been refusing to return the child to her mother.

SWEDEN
Hensvold, Martin. Shot his ex-wife "execution style" while she was picking up their 2-year-old son.

TEXAS
Desormeaux, Leo IV. Murdered 21-month-old son during visitation.

Watrous, Duke Lawrence. Custodial father who shot to death 10-year-old daughter.

UNITED KINGDOM
Copland, Andrew. Murdered his 4-year-old daughter and her mother while the mother was dropping off the child for an "access visit."

Second father-son murder-suicide in two weeks

2010-02-10T15:43:00.005-05:00

Hesperia boy, 4, found slain in vehicle with father

http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_14363281

By Melissa Pinion-Whitt
Posted: 02/09/2010 06:55:44 AM PST

A Hesperia man shot his 4-year-old son and then turned the gun on himself Monday in the county's second shooting involving a father and son in less than two weeks.

Jesus Roman Fuentes Jr., 34, and his son were flown to a hospital, where the boy died of his wounds. Fuentes was in critical condition, San Bernardino County coroner's officials said.

Motorists found the pair at 6:11 p.m. after Fuentes intentionally crashed his car into a guard rail on Highway 138 north of the entrance to Lake Silverwood.

Paramedics discovered both occupants of the car had suffered gunshot wounds. Coroner's officials said Fuentes shot his son and then himself after crashing the vehicle.

San Bernardino County sheriff's homicide detectives are investigating the shooting.

The incident came nine days after a Pinon Hills man and his 9-month-old son were found dead in Twin Peaks. Sheriff's officials said Stephen Garcia, 25, took his son Wyatt Garcia, of Yucca Valley, during a court-ordered visitation. He threatened to kill the child and then commit suicide.

Their bodies were found Jan. 31 inside a vehicle in the 26000 block of Old Toll Road. Homicide detectives are investigating the apparent murder-suicide.

When custody courts don't care about children

2010-02-09T16:23:00.005-05:00

This account comes from the following blog:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/02/a-us-soldier-waterboards-his-own-child.html#trackback

08 Feb 2010 10:21 am
A US soldier waterboards his own child

The British Daily Mail - a populist right-wing paper - reports this:

A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet. Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry. As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline. Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water . . . .

[T]he terrified girl was found hiding in a closet, with bruising on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat. Asked how she got the bruises, the girl is said to have replied: 'Daddy did it.'

. . . a foreign newspaper uses plain English to describe torturing victims by use of near-drowning: the "CIA torture technique."

No US paper has yet to report the story. . . .

When judges don't believe the violence

2010-02-04T16:26:00.003-05:00

A massive new study out of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services claims a decline in abuse of children. Is it true? Or is it just that authorities do not believe mothers and children who report domestic violence?

Deadly consequences: Judges rejected mom's bid for restraining order

by Beatriz Valenzuela
2010-02-03 17:48:43
http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/order-17122-bid-rejected.html

VICTORVILLE • A woman whose ex-boyfriend murdered their infant son and then killed himself had sought a restraining order from two San Bernardino County judges only days before the murder-suicide, according to court records (click here to view records) obtained by the Daily Press.

Katie Tagle petitioned two San Bernardino County court judges for a restraining order only days before her former boyfriend, Stephen Garcia, killed himself and their 9-month-old son, Wyatt. Both requests were denied — in spite of Tagle telling a local judge that Garcia had threatened to kill their son.

“My suspicion is you’re lying,” Judge Robert Lemkau said, according to transcripts from a Jan. 21 hearing in Victorville court, “but I’m keeping the custody orders in full force and effect.”

Wyatt was then turned over to Garcia that day. Both Garcia and the child were found dead 10 days later on a Twin Peaks dirt road, after Garcia took Wyatt during a court-ordered visitation.

“Having that restraining order really could’ve helped this situation and possibly may have swayed a judge to grant supervised visitations,” said Anita Gomez, case manager for A Better Way Domestic Violence Shelter.

Lemkau, who couldn’t be reached for comment, denied to make permanent a temporary restraining order signed by another judge — who at first denied Tagle’s original restraining order request.

Family members said when Tagle went in front of Judge David Mazurek in a Joshua Tree courtroom on Jan. 12, Mazurek denied the permanent restraining order despite the 23-year-old reporting Garcia had recently been abusive to her.

Beatriz E. Valenzuela may be reached at (760) 951-6276 or at BValenzuela@VVDailyPress.com.

Suicide-murder of infant son planned on Facebook

2010-02-02T15:52:00.007-05:00

Stephen Garcia with his 9-month-old son, who were found dead in the San Bernardino Mountains.

http://www.vvdailypress.com/common/printer/view.php?db=vvdailypress&id=17062

Pinon Hills man plans murder of infant son, suicide on Facebook
Beatriz Valenzuela
Daily Press, February 1, 2010
vvdailypress.com

In a chilling letter posted on Facebook for anyone to see, Stephen Garcia, 25, of Pinon Hills appears to detail how he planned his suicide and the murder of his 9-month-old son.

“I led everyone on my side of the family to believe I wouldn’t of done this because I did not want them to know...” the letter reads. “I had been thinking about doing this for months.”

The post may help San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Homicide investigators piece together what led to the Sunday morning tragedy, when Garcia took his infant son during a court-ordered visitation, drove to a dirt road in Twin Peaks and ended both of their lives.

In the letter posted to his Facebook profile, Garcia claimed the deaths were an attempt to save his son from a difficult life — and to punish the baby’s mother, Katie Tagle, for refusing to come back to him.

“Our deaths are a lot for her,” the post continues. “It will have to suffice as her punishment. But that is not the reason I did it. It was the only way we could be happy without Katie. I did this out of love for our son, to protect him and myself.”

Saved letters, text messages and massive files containing e-mails and other correspondence give a glimpse into Garcia’s obsession, cursing Tagle and her family in some posts and asking her to return to him in others.

Court documents tell more of the story, with Tagle filing a request for a domestic violence restraining order on Dec. 11, 2009. On Jan. 12 that order was denied, as it was found Garcia was not a “threat to petitioner or the minor child.”

A search of his criminal record showed no history of domestic violence, battery or similar offenses in San Bernardino County. However, in one of a slew of other online letters attributed to Garcia, it states, “I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for hitting you. I’m sorry I made the wrong choices.”

On Jan. 17, shortly after the final visit with Judge David Mazurek, Garcia joined a Facebook group called “Organ Donor.”

In the days leading up to the murder-suicide, Garcia posted a half-dozen videos and dozens of photos of Wyatt with cryptic captions such as, “Please, it’s not too late.”

On his MySpace page, his mood over the last week was listed as “tested,” “bummed” and “scared,” with “one more day :(” his final post.

Hours before officials got a call Saturday night that Wyatt was missing and Garcia had threatened to kill him, he made his final online post: “We love you all.”

The suicide note was posted on Garcia’s Facebook profile Sunday, about eight hours after Hesperia Sheriff’s deputies found the bodies in Garcia’s car. It appears Garcia left directions for someone to post the letter and make it public for everyone to see.

The lengthy post also reads as a will, with directions for how to distribute his possessions and personal notes to family members and friends. It also states that Garcia left a signed letter in his truck, confessing to the killings and explaining why he did them.

Though Garcia mentions using a gun, investigators have not released information on how he killed Wyatt and himself, stating only that they both died from “traumatic injuries.”

Anyone who may have information about this case is asked to call Detective Ryan Ford or Sgt. Frank Montanez at the Sheriff’s Homicide Detail at (909) 387-3589 or call WeTip at (800) 78-CRIME.

Brooke Edwards and Natasha Lindstrom contributed to this report.

Beatriz E. Valenzuela may be reached at 951-6276 or at BValenzuela@VVDailyPress.com.

LOS ANGELES (CBS/AP) Stephen Garcia clearly didn't want to live without his ex-girlfriend, Katie Tagle, or share custody of their infant son, so in an apparent murder-suicide, the angry California father killed his child, then himself. Hours later he was still telling the world just how he felt, in a suicide note on Facebook, possibly posted by a friend.

"There! Now we're sleeping with you,” the Facebook message read on top of a photo of Garcia and his sleeping son. “Find it in your heart to forgive me. It's my job to protect him. I know God will welcome our son with open arms."

The bodies of the 25-year-old Garcia, of Pinon Hills, Calif. and his son, Wyatt, were found early Sunday on an isolated dirt trail in the San Bernardino Mountains.

The discovery came after authorities learned that Garcia had taken the boy during a court-ordered visit and threatened to kill him and commit suicide.

Officials are looking into whether a third party was involved in posting the suicide note and collage to Garcia's Facebook page, and whether Garcia prepared the items prior to his death.

In the days before his death, Garcia posted seemingly desperate messages to his ex-girlfriend, along with pictures of him and Wyatt, and video clips of the baby at a younger age. On his MySpace page, he set his mood to "scared," and wrote the words, "one more day."

The baby's mother, Katie Tagle, filed a request last December for a restraining order in San Bernardino County Court, but it was denied on Jan. 12 because Garcia was not considered a "threat to petitioner or the minor child."

According to the Hi-Desert Star, Tagle sought restraining orders against Garcia several times, amid claims he sent her threatening messages, but was denied by at least two judges. A restraining order was granted eventually, says the paper, but another judge did not uphold it.

According to the newspaper, Tagle's mother, Maria Brown, said, "This was preventable. This didn't have to happen."

One blogger wrote:

Facebook Gives Murdering Father The Last Word
http://crabbygolightly.com/mt/2010/02/facebook_lets_murdering_father_get_the_last_word.html

By Elizabeth C.
TO THE TWISTED AND CONTROLLING MIND OF STEPHEN GARCIA, it wasn't enough to kill himself and his nine-month-old son to spite an ex-girlfriend. He had to have the last word.

In his final vengeful and selfish act, Garcia, 25, shot his son Wyatt to death before turning the gun on himself in a parked vehicle on a rural road in Twin Peaks, Calif.

The murder-suicide was the final act of a tragedy that had played for weeks on the social medium Facebook, the Internet, and in a Joshua Tree, Calif. superior courtrooms.

Garcia was enraged and bitter that his ex-girlfriend, whom I will not mention out of spite to him, had become involved with another man.

So in exhaustive, obsessive detail, he had for weeks begged, pleaded and threatened his ex-girlfriend through Facebook, text messages and his personal website.

"HOW DO YOU THINK THIS IS GOING TO AFFECT ME FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE?," Garcia wrote. "HOW IS IT GOING TO AFFECT WYATT? DO YOU HONESTLY BELIEVE IM (sic) GOING TO JUST SIT BACK AND WATCH WYATT BE RAISED BY ANOTHER MAN? HOW LONG BEFORE I DO SOMETHING STUPID?"

A final video and obituary was posted on Garcia's Facebook page within hours of Garcia's death but it remains unclear if it was posted before or after the crime. In it, he makes the ridiculous claim that he killed his son to protect him. He also characterized the deaths as "punishment" to his exgirlfriend.
In another post, he wrote, “I am crazy, crazy in love, YOU did this to me. YOU. I'm not psycho, I'm not obsessive, I'm not a stalker.”

Garcia’s words and deeds were so threatening that his ex-girlfriend of two years unsuccessfully sought a restraining order against him in court.

Three judges denied her request -- with one going so far as to accuse her of lying to bolster her case in a pending custody matter, according to published reports.

"I get concerned when there’s a pending child custody and visitation issue and in between that, one party or the other claims that there’s some violence in between,’’ Judge David Mazurek said in denying the woman’s request for a restraining order. “It raises the court’s eyebrows because based on my experience, it’s a way for one party to try to gain an advantage over the other.”

A day after Mazurek's ruling, after being told by Garcia to check her email, the mother received an anonymous email containing a story entitled Necessary Evil that had alternate endings.

One ending depicted the female character happily returning to her estranged partner; in the second, the male kills his son with Benadryl. The estranged girlfriend immediately notified authorities who obtained an emergency restraining order. But the following day, a third judge refused to uphold that order.

A family member told reporters that that judge, Robert Lemkau, had pointed to the mother in court said, “One of you is lying and I think it’s you.”

Justifiably so, the case have provoked an uproar over the jurists’ indifference to the mother’s claims.

“This was preventable. This didn’t have to happen,” the child’s grandmother told a Hi-Desert Star reporter. “The system failed Wyatt. It cost him his life.”

Why Joint Custody Is Wrong. . .

2010-01-14T12:46:00.009-05:00

...whenever there is a history of domestic violence, sexual abuse, or coercive control.

Alexis Pounder, 3, was found beaten and starved to death Jan. 9.

Donald Cockrell, 27, and Michelle Smith, 24.

January 13, 2010 7:35 AM
Three-Year-Old Alexis Pounder Starved, Beaten to Death by Father and Girlfriend, Say Oregon Cops

SANDY, Ore. (CBS/AP) In a small town outside of Portland, three-year-old Alexis Pounder was found beaten to death and severely undernourished and Oregon police say her father and his girlfriend are responsible.

Story and pictures here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/01/12/crimesider/entry6087397.shtml

Mother of slain children seeks changes to state laws, procedures

2009-12-26T10:46:00.003-05:00

http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics/story/1647694.html

Posted on Wed, Dec. 23, 2009
Mother of slain children seeks changes to state laws, procedures
By MARK MORRIS
The Kansas City Star
A mother whose two children were killed in 2004 after her estranged husband kidnapped them proposed changes to state laws and procedures Wednesday that would better protect children.

Surrounded by law enforcement authorities and legislators at a morning press conference, Tina Porter asked for an appeals procedure for denied Amber Alert requests and more complete record-keeping on protection orders in police databases.

Porter said that if those changes had been in place five years ago, authorities may have moved more quickly on the disappearance of her children.

“We have a very short window of finding (missing children) and finding them alive,” Porter said.

In June 2004, Porter’s husband, Dan Porter, picked up her children — Sam and Lindsey, ages 7 and 8 — for a weekend visit. He soon killed them, but for more than three years refused to tell authorities what happened to them.

Dan Porter confessed in 2007 and is now serving a life sentence.

Legislation to make the proposed changes is being drafted.

Rep. Jason Kander, a Kansas City Democrat, said the changes would establish an appeals procedure for parents whose request for an Amber Alert has been denied by a local authority.

Currently, if a local law enforcement agency, such as a police department, denies an Amber Alert, the parent has no procedure for asking other agencies, such as a sheriff’s department or the Missouri Highway Patrol, to reconsider.

“This puts into place an appeals procedure so more people get their eyes on it,” said Jackson County Prosecutor Jim Kanatzar.

Another change would require the courts to enter details of temporary and full orders of protection into state law enforcement databases so police can ask about the welfare of children when they encounter a parent.

Jackson County Sheriff Mike Sharp said that when officers now call up a name from the databases, they learn only that an order of protection has been entered. Under the proposed changes, the officer would have details about the children and custodial and visitation arrangements.

If a parent cannot account for a child during the interview, and if the officer has reason to believe a child is in danger, authorities could hold the parent for up to 20 hours until the child is found.

Sharp acknowledged that the procedure could be time-consuming for officers.

“But when it comes to the welfare of the child, we have all day,” Sharp said.

To contact Mark Morris, call 816-234-4310 or send e-mail to mmorris@kcstar.com.

City official kills wife and daughters, but not son

2009-12-02T12:52:00.004-05:00

For the original link, click on the title above or go to this link:
http://www.fox4kc.com/wdaf-kahler-murders-lawyer-120109,0,7315787.story

Divorce Lawyer Not Surprised Man Killed Wife And Daughters, But Not Son
Stephanie Hockridge, FOX 4 NewsMeagan Kelleher, FOX 4 Web Producer

December 1, 2009

Ex-Mo. City Official Charged With Murder In Death of Wife, Teenage Daughters
COLUMBIA, Mo. - A former Columbia, Missouri city official has been charged with capital murder in the shootings of his wife and two teenage daughters in eastern Kansas. The divorce attorney for 46-year-old James Kraig Kahler's wife said the man had serious problems with women, going so far as to call him misogynistic.

While attorney Dan Pingelton admits Kahler has never been psychologically evaluated, he says all the signs were there.

"My first thoughts were, 'I hope that's not Karen and her children,'" Pingelton said. "Based on the case my second thought, because I heard there had been one survivor, I said, 'That survivor is going to be Sean.'"

Pingelton was representing Karen Kahler in her divorce when he learned of Saturday's shootings in Burlingame, Kansas. Police said Kahler shot and killed Karen and their two teenage girls, Emily and Lauren. Karen's grandmother was critically injured in the attack. The sole survivor was the couple's 10-year-old son, Sean, who was there but wasn't hurt.

"Ambushing your entire family, killing the three women and trying to kill the fourth woman and your son lives...he's a monster, an absolute monster," Pingelton said.

Pingelton said Kahler was a rigid and controlling individual, who emotionally abused the girls.

"We had a schedule set up for him to see the children, he declined to see his daughters," Pingelton said. "These were wonderful girls. I mean, wonderful people. And they did not take sides in this divorce."

Kahler was expected in court on Wednesday on a domestic assault charge stemming from an incident with his wife in March.

That case, along with the divorce, were warning signs to the Columbia city manager, who said he asked Kahler to resign from his position in September as director of Columbia's Water & Light Department because of his difficult family issues.

Still, Pingelton said Kahler knew it wasn't the end of the road and neither the assault charges nor the divorce needed to get ugly.

"He could have been an involved parent and moved on with his life," Pingelton said. "So, when you say, was the timing of it precipitous, no, it wasn't. He had been well counseled that this thing was going to work out all right."

Pingelton said the 10-year-old is staying with family in Kansas. In the meantime, Kahler is scheduled to be in court December 10 and bail has been set at $10 million.

California I-Team investigates Family Court Costs

2009-11-02T15:45:00.003-05:00

I-Team Examines High Costs Of Family Court (Click on the title for the original link.)

Parents Say They Are Drained Of Money By Court Professionals

Lauren Reynolds
10News I-Team Reporter
POSTED: 2:18 pm PDT October 29, 2009
UPDATED: 11:55 am PST November 2, 2009

SAN DIEGO -- Jim Wittmack's home is lined with hundreds of pictures of the two children who no longer live with him.

"The whole custody thing was about money," he said.

He has strong feelings about the family court system.

"It is very well crafted by the professionals to extort money from the parents and ramp up fees," he explained.

It's a complaint the 10News I-Team has heard several times over the past year while investigation several stories in family court.

Connie Valentine of the California Protective Parents Association said, "It's pay to play."

She said the problem is not unique to San Diego or even to California, but is nationwide.

"It's a money industry at this point; a completely unregulated money industry in which the professionals can charge what they want," she said.

The professionals include attorneys, evaluators, special masters and mediators. Sometimes one person will take on different roles in different cases. For example, a mediator in one case might be a custody evaluator in a second and a special master, or tie-breaker, in a third.

Among the higher priced services provided by psychologists in San Diego is a custody evaluation. There are a dozen psychologists routinely used in San Diego Family Court.

"The fact that they use the same 12 people over and over again just confirms that it's like a cartel," said Wittmack.

He said the professionals know each other well and refer each other work.
Wittmack had two evaluations over three years with the same psychologist. The cost was $14,000.

"You just have to come up with the money whether it exists or not. In my case, I borrowed it from my sister," he explained.

The evaluators often will not release their reports until their bill is paid; they even get judges to compel payment, the I-team learned.

The I-Team found one example out of Northern California in which an 11-year-old boy, Coby, was the center of a custody dispute. His mother was ordered to pay $2,200 upfront to a custody evaluator. In the ruling, the judge wrote, "If mother does not pay the fees ... primary custody shall be changed."

The mother did not come up with the money and she lost custody. She told the I-Team she didn't have the money and the boy's father had missed child support payments.

Valentine said, "It's a shocking case."

She reported it to the Judicial Council, which oversees California courts.
Evaluators counter that their work provides valuable insight, especially given that judges get limited time with family members involved in disputes.

Stephen Sparta, Ph.D., spoke before a gathering of family law attorneys, judges and evaluators last spring and pointed out that evaluations are thorough and can help spot the psychosis in parents. He gave examples of violent outcomes of custody battles to make his point.

"Sometimes I feel badly that people without money don't get these evaluations," he told the crowd.

The I-Team confirmed that low income families, even those with documented conflict, are not ordered to get the custody evaluations because there is nobody to pay for it.

The reports are only used for families with financial means.

Since even some judges question the value, the I-Team asked Supervising Judge Lorna

Alksne why they are used for people in the middle or upper classes.

She responded that parents often request or demand these evaluations hoping their side will be favored. In most cases, she said, it is the parents and their attorneys who provide the court with the names they want to be selected as the evaluator. Judges do not control the costs, but they may rule on how parents should split the bill.

Alksne also pointed out that some judges try to dissuade parents from getting the evaluations because of the time and expense involved and the fact that it does not always solve the problems relating to custody sharing arrangements.

Parents have told the I-Team that attorneys or even judges steered them into the evaluation.

One local Judge, Jeffrey Boswick, is openly critical of the process. He spoke frankly about the evaluations while giving a presentation to court professionals. The presentation was videotaped and provided to 10News.

"It's too expensive, it takes too long to do, and it often times doesn't solve anything in the case," he said.

Wittmack said he had 50-50 custody of his children and that he and his wife typically were cordial to each other until the lawyers and professionals became involved.

He said he agreed to the first custody evaluation, but made it clear that he couldn't afford the second one.

In a letter, the custody evaluator who worked on his case said Wittmack failed to pay the entire "cost of the assessment" up-front.

The evaluator wrote it "resulted in the court changing custody."

Wittmack has his pictures of his children all around him, but he only has his children every other weekend.

Peoria murder-suicide victim sought help from court

2009-10-20T14:42:00.004-04:00

Peoria murder-suicide victim sought help from court
Peoria woman later killed in apparent murder-suicide
by Dustin Gardiner - Oct. 20, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

A Peoria mother whose body was found Friday had recently tried to leave Arizona after receiving threats from her apparent slayer, but a judge denied her request, court records show.

Two weeks before she was killed, Dawn Axsom pleaded with Judge Jose Padilla of Maricopa County Superior Court to let her leave Arizona with her son because she feared Gabriel Schwartz, the toddler's father, would harm her or their boy.

Padilla denied the 26-year-old's request and ordered the pair to attend parental counseling together.

Axsom's body was found in her Peoria residence Friday. Police also found the bodies of Schwartz, 28, and Linda Braden, 56, Axsom's mother.

Schwartz is suspected of shooting and killing both women before turning the gun on himself, Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef said Monday.

Tellef said the violence likely began in the downstairs kitchen, where Schwartz shot Braden. Then, Schwartz went upstairs, shooting Axsom in the master bathroom and killing himself in a bedroom.

Police discovered the grisly scene at about 10 a.m. Friday after Axsom didn't show up for work and a friend and the friend's mother went to the home, located in the 7400 block of West Sierra Street, to check on her.

When the friend knocked on the door, she heard Axsom and Schwartz's nearly 2-year-old boy crying upstairs.

The woman called police, who arrived and found the child unharmed inside his crib.

"When the officer took the baby outside, he covered (the child's) eyes so he couldn't see anything," Tellef said, recounting the scene.

Friends and co-workers who gathered outside Axsom's residence Friday said she was having ongoing custody problems with Schwartz and expressed frustration that the court system wouldn't let her leave Arizona when she knew Schwartz might harm her.

Court records show Padilla granted Axsom a protective order against Schwartz four days before the Oct. 6 hearing where he ordered her to attend parental counseling with him and denied her request to relocate to Maryland with the pair's son.

Axsom's son was placed into the custody of state Child Protective Services.

* * *

3 found dead in Peoria home
by Nathan Gonzalez - Oct. 18, 2009 05:38 PM
The Arizona Republic

Peoria police believe three people found dead inside a home Friday morning may be a case of murder-suicide, but are awaiting autopsy results, a spokesman said Sunday afternoon.

Detectives hope the autopsies on Lisa Braden, 56, her daughter Dawn Axsom, 26, and Gabriel Schwartz, 28, will provide answers on how the three died, said Mike Tellef, a police spokesman.

"There are too many unknowns as of yet," Tellef said, noting that the incident looks like a possible murder-suicide. However, he fell short of naming it as such.

Police believe there are no outstanding suspects.

About 10 a.m. Friday, a woman and her mother went to the home on the 7400 block of W. Sierra Street, after one of the victims failed to show for work, police said previously.

When one woman rang the doorbell, she heard Axsom and Schwartz's 2-year-old child crying inside. The woman called police, who arrived and found the child unharmed inside the home.

Police have thus far declined to say how Braden, Axsom and Schwartz died, only that violence was involved and their bodies were found in different areas of the home.

The 2-year-old boy was placed into the custody of Child Protective Services.

Custody courts are not helping

2009-09-18T17:26:00.005-04:00

On Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009, neighbor Hailey Erickson brings a flower and a stuffed animal to a makeshift memorial in front of the apartment where a father and his children were found dead in the 2700 block of White Ridge Place the day on Wednesday, Sept 16, in Thousand Oaks. (Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer)

Jobless dad, kids in murder-suicide

By Connie Llanos, Jerry Berrios and Kevin Modesti, Staff Writers
Updated: 09/17/2009 09:53:39 PM PDT
published in the Los Angeles Daily News

THOUSAND OAKS — After losing his job in the midst of fighting a child-custody battle, a Thousand Oaks father apparently stabbed his two children to death in their own beds and then killed himself, police said.
The murder-suicide stunned this suburban Ventura County community which hadn't seen a single homicide for more than a year.

The children's mother found the bodies of her ex-husband, James Mulvaney, 52, son Jason, 12, and daughter Jennifer, 7, when she went to pick up the children from their father's home Wednesday evening, said Ventura County Sheriff's Department spokesman Ross Bonfiglio.

The Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office determined the two children died from multiple stab wounds. Mulvaney's cause of death is pending toxicology reports, which could take anywhere from 12 to 16 weeks. But officials said it appeared he overdosed on prescription medication.

Shocked neighbors described Mulvaney as a quiet family man who was often seen outside watching his kids ride their bikes or swim in The Knolls apartment complex pool. They said he had lived there for about six months.

Karla Jackson, a neighbor whose 11-year-old son often played with the Mulvaney children, said the kids always seemed happy.

"They had beautiful blond hair and always had big smiles on their faces," Jackson said as she teared up. "It will be a long time before we will be able to get over this."

She said the scene at the apartment complex was like a movie. A crime scene investigations truck was parked in front of the apartment, as well as several police cars. Dozens of residents watched the crime scene.
"I was out here until 1 a.m. last night," Jackson said. "I couldn't sleep. I just can't believe this happened."

Mulvaney's ex-wife called 911 at 5:42 p.m. Wednesday, police said. She had become concerned after learning the children had not attended school or after-school activities Wednesday.

She also identified the bodies.

Authorities believe Mulvaney killed the children between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 2 a.m. Wednesday, then killed himself between 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

"It is believed he overdosed on multiple prescription medications," said Craig Stevens, a senior deputy medical examiner.

They recovered the presumed murder weapon from inside the house, a large, fixed-blade knife covered in blood.

The couple was recently divorced and were in court over custody of their children, Bonfiglio said.

Grief counselors were at Lang Ranch Elementary and Los Cerritos Middle School Thursday to help students and teachers deal with the tragedy.

"It's a tightknit community and we all rely on one another," said Janet Cosaro, assistant superintendent of instruction at Conejo Valley Unified School District.

Cosaro said the tragic event was not only heartbreaking but uncommon for the quiet suburban neighborhood.

Bonfiglio said Mulvaney had lost a job recently.

Mulvaney previously worked at a Citibank branch in Camarillo, a branch employee confirmed Thursday. A Citibank corporate spokesman would only confirm he once worked for the bank.

"We are deeply saddened by this tragic incident. Our thoughts and condolences go out to all the friends and families who are affected by this tragedy," Citibank spokesman Robert Julavits said in a written statement.

Investigators worked overnight Wednesday combing through the apartment in the 544-unit upscale Spanish-style complex for clues to the gruesome crime. By Thursday afternoon, a crime scene cleanup crew arrived at the corner apartment.

Bonnie Shapiro, one of Mulvaney's neighbors, said she came out to console Mulvaney's ex-wife after she heard her screams at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

"You don't think you are going to come home to something like this," Shapiro said. "My heart goes out to her."

Thursday afternoon, gold and blue glittery hula hoops lay by the entrance to Mulvaney's apartment. His gray Lexus sedan was parked out front with a red and white soccer ball in the front passenger seat and pink tennis shoes in the back seat.

Neighbors identified a blue Volvo station wagon, parked askew two doors from the apartment, as belonging to Mulvaney's ex-wife. She also had children's items scattered throughout her car including soccer cleats, knee pads and a My Little Pony video game.

The tragedy follows a recent rash of family murder suicides in the Southland in the past two years, including incidents in North Hollywood, Porter Ranch, Covina, Yorba Linda, San Clemente and Wilmington.

Dr. Lanny Berman, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based American Association of Suicidology, said the role of marital strain and child-custody battles in such violent incidents is "a common theme."

Berman said evidence is mixed on whether job losses and other elements of the national economic downturn have contributed to any increase in suicides and violent behavior.

Berman said that during the recession, operators of some suicide-prevention helplines have reported an increase in calls in which financial stress seems to be a factor, but others report no difference.

Because there's typically a two- to three-year lag in the reporting of suicide data, statistical evidence of a correlation between the recession and suicide attempts is not yet available, and a direct tie-in may never be proven.

"All we have is anecdotal reports, and the media picks up on these things, because everyone suspects there's going to be an effect," Berman said. "I would caution against rushing to judgment on it.

"That's not to say it couldn't be a factor. But the economy has affected millions of people in this country. To commit suicide, somebody would have to have a lot more going on. (Financial stress) is not a sufficient explanation."

Daily News research
Updated: 09/17/2009 09:43:53 PM PDT

Other slayings
Parents killing kids

Wednesday: Thuy Le, 38, of Garden Grove, is suspected of stabbing her 3- and 5-year-old daughters with a kitchen knife at a cousin's home in Westminster, then stabbing herself. The 5-year-old girl has been placed on life support but is expected to survive. The 3-year-old girl suffered superficial wounds. Authorities said they plan to charge Le with attempted murder.

Sept. 2: Diana Moreno, 17, and Edith Moreno, 11, die when their throats are slashed at their North Hollywood home. Their mother, Antonia Gomez, has been charged with capital murder. She pleaded not guilty during a hearing Thursday.

Jan. 27: Ervin Lupoe of Wilmington kills his wife and their five children before turning the gun on himself. Lupoe and his wife, Ana, had just been fired from their jobs as medical technicians at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in West Los Angeles.

Dec. 24, 2008: Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, of Sylmar, dressed in a Santa Claus costume, commits suicide after killing nine people at a Christmas Eve party at the Covina home of his former in-laws. An unemployed aerospace worker, Pardo had recently divorced.

Oct. 6, 2008: Karthik Rajaram, an out-of-work financial analyst, kills his wife, three sons and mother-in-law before committing suicide in their rented home in Porter Ranch.

May 2008: Five members of a close-knit Turkish-American family in San Clemente die in what authorities say was a suicide pact. A motive was never determined.

Feb. 23, 2008: Orland Cho, 41, killed his wife and three of his children in their Yorba Linda condominium before turning the shotgun on himself. A 14-year-old stepson was shot but survived.

What happens when a mom is alleged to "alienate"

2009-09-08T17:52:00.004-04:00

Click on the title to watch a custody court at work.

Court-ordered child abuse

2009-09-06T12:49:00.002-04:00

In this news story, an adult who was given to the custody of an abusive parent by a California court, writes of being forced to commit crimes. To read that letter, click on the title above.

StopFamilyViolence.org reports bias in court decisions

2009-08-30T16:16:00.005-04:00

Irene Weiser at StopFamilyViolence.org, writes:

We're uncovering what seems to be a national trend of murders that occur
during divorce proceeding and/or custody disputes.

More often than not, it's the man who kills the women and/or children, but
we've certainly seen it go the other way too.

In one way or another it relates to the disturbing trend of court's not
believing the mother's allegations of abuse, and favoring the (abusive)
father.

See our collection of stories on this topic here:

http://www.stopfamilyviolence.org/get-informed/custody-and-abuse/news-on-custody-abuse

(Or click on the title above to reach this link.)

How can we help courts hear the anguish of children before it is too late?

2009-07-28T11:08:00.002-04:00

Click on the title above for the original article.

Prosecutor: Dad killed girl to avoid child support
By GREG RISLING (AP)

LOS ANGELES — A father who had no interest in his 4-year-old daughter did the unimaginable — hurling her off a 120-foot cliff to avoid paying child support, a prosecutor said Monday during the man's murder retrial.

Cameron Brown, 47, was charged with one count of murder and the special circumstance allegations of murder while lying in wait and murder for financial gain in the death of Lauren Sarene Key in November 2000. Brown, a former American Airlines baggage handler, has pleaded not guilty and faces life in prison without parole if convicted.

Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum said during his opening statement that Brown killed Lauren because he didn't want to pay about $1,000 a month in child support.

Defense attorney Pat Harris countered that it was an accident when the girl fell from Inspiration Point in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Hum portrayed Brown as an uncaring father who tried to shirk his parental responsibility at nearly every turn. After Brown learned the girl's mother, Sarah Key-Marer, was pregnant with Lauren, he first wanted her to have an abortion and then sought a paternity test that eventually proved he was the father, Hum said.

"Does he show any interest in the child he fathered?" Hum asked. "Absolutely not."

Only when he was forced to pay child support did Brown finally see his daughter — about three years after she was born, Hum said, adding that the total number of hours Brown spent with his daughter during her life amounted to about two weeks.

Hum argued that Brown and Lauren went out to the cliff where nobody could see them, and he "hurled" her into the Pacific Ocean.

"This man picked up Lauren, whom he fathered but was never a father to, and threw her off a cliff into the water below," Hum said.

Brown, wearing a dark suit and a red tie, stared at Hum during his opening statement and showed no reaction.

Harris gave a different account of his client's relationship with his daughter, insisting the case was nothing more than "character assassination." He dismissed the prosecution's contention that it was a "good-versus-evil" struggle between Brown and Key-Marer.

"It was two parents trying to work out arrangements so they could have a happy child," Harris said.

Harris said Brown carried a picture of Lauren in his wallet, gave her gifts and toasted with his friends when he learned he would get visitation rights. Two weeks before her death, Brown filed court documents seeking more visits with Lauren, Harris said.

"It doesn't make sense," he said.

The prosecution's first witness was Key-Marer, a British immigrant, who described her relationship with Brown as amicable but deteriorated during the child custody dispute after she said in court documents that he was showing little interest in Lauren's life.

Key-Marer testified that her daughter wouldn't share what she did with Brown and Lauren was upset the day she died once she learned Brown would pick her up at school.

"She said, 'No, no I don't want to see him today,'" Key-Marer said. "She was crying and I had trouble getting her out of the car seat."

In a wrenching moment, Key-Marer said after talking to her daughter on the phone she decided to leave work early and pick up Lauren. But she soon learned that Brown had arrived early and she wouldn't be able to get there in time.

She described waiting for Lauren that night, looking out her window for her daughter and Brown to return. Distraught, she and her husband decided to notify authorities because they thought Brown may have kidnapped Lauren.

"We knew something really bad had happened," she said.

Key-Marer broke into tears when she recounted how a female police detective told her that her daughter had died.

"I remember hearing the words 'cliff' and 'Lauren was dead,'" Key-Marer said before court recessed for the day. "I just couldn't believe it."

Brown was tried three years ago, but a mistrial was declared after a jury deadlocked on the severity of the crime. Some jurors favored a first-degree murder conviction, while others voted for second-degree murder or manslaughter.

Both sides intend to call experts to give their opinions on how Lauren died. Jurors will also take a trip to the cliff to see where the alleged crime occurred.

(This version CORRECTS UPDATES with afternoon testimony, details. corrects reference to number of times Brown visited daughter from 12 times to two weeks.)

Are there ways we can correct systemic failures and avert tragedies?

2009-07-10T10:08:00.006-04:00

How can our systems detect problems in advance to avoid tragedies like this? Click on the title above for the link to the original story below.

Suspect in San Jose murder-suicide lost custody of daughter three months ago

By Sean Webby and Lisa Fernandez
Mercury News
Posted: 07/08/2009 06:16:24 PM PDT
Updated: 07/08/2009 06:16:24 PM PDT

Three months ago Jian Ming Liang was convicted of child endangerment and had his 9-year-old daughter legally handed over to her mother in San Jose, according to San Jose police. This week Liang came from Southern California on an unexpected and tragic family visit — armed with a semi-automatic pistol.

Liang shot and killed his ex-girlfriend Ying He — and then himself — because he was upset over losing custody of their child, San Jose police said their preliminary investigation showed.

The child and He's husband escaped the carnage.

Local police have released little else about the murder-suicide or Jiang, 39.

"We don't know what his intentions were,'' said Lt. Rikki Goede, commander of the SJPD homicide unit. "We are still investigating."

But Arcadia police released a troubling story of how Liang had contacted school officials earlier this year to say that he "could no longer afford or wanted to care" for the girl.

The department launched a child neglect and abandonment investigation in March.

The girl was turned over to the Department of Children and Family Services and was later released to her mother.

Liang was arrested by Arcadia Police Department officers on March 23, 2009 when he attended a child custody hearing at Family Court in East Los Angeles. He was booked for felony child endangerment and abandonment.

Liang later plead no contest to a misdemeanor count of child abandonment and was sentenced to three years probation, police said. Liang's only criminal case in Santa Clara County shows a 2003 stalking charge that was dismissed. Online records show Liang had filed for bankruptcy in 2005.

San Jose police say they are not sure what Liang did before the Monday morning shooting.

Liang showed up at the Montecito Vista townhouse and confronted Shane Coffman, He's husband, in the garage area, police said. He fired a shot which grazed Coffman's earlobe.

Then, he went into the home and shot the girl's mother multiple times.

"It appears she was mortally wounded before the first officer arrived on the scene,'' Goede said.

Police later found Jiang's body. He had killed himself.

The dead mother's domestic problems with her old flame were dark shadows that rarely appeared on her sunny, public face.

Colleagues at the tight-knit respiratory therapy department at El Camino Hospital where Ying He worked, remembered her as "the sweetest person ever."

The 35-year-old San Jose woman went by her Chinese name "Ying" at work, and was known as "Brandi'' to others, including her husband's family. Shane Coffman, who survived the apparent murder-suicide, has declined to speak through relatives because the tragedy is simply too raw.

"It's such a horrible tragedy,'' said Ritu Joshi, who used to work with He, a night-shift therapist who regulated the breathing of patients in the intensive care unit. "She was awesome. She was kind to all her patients. She had sincere eyes and you just knew that she really cared. You would have never thought anything like this was going on in her life.''

Joshi and others didn't pry too much, but there were snippets of He's life that had dribbled out. Something about an ex-husband taking her daughter away from her. Then, her winning custody of her child a few months ago. She recently brought her daughter to work for the first time, colleagues said. She seemed so excited and proud to show her off .

Why do courts underestimate the danger to children?

2009-07-06T19:34:00.002-04:00

Arizona dad kills his 3-year-old daughter and himself during his court-ordered visit. For video and story, click on the title above.

Who will protect children against parents who prey on them?

2009-07-05T12:47:00.003-04:00

Click on the title above for the original story in the Tampa Tribune.

Child porn's dirty secret: Dads often behind lens

By ELAINE SILVESTRINI
esilvestrini@tampatrib.com

Published: July 5, 2009

RELATED LINKS

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children website
TAMPA - He told his young daughter he was going to make her a model.

He shot pictures of her in skimpier and skimpier outfits.

And when she slept, the Tampa man photographed himself molesting her.

He created a Web site, charging strangers to view graphic photos of his daughter. Pedophiles could write in and say what they wanted to see her wearing.

The man was discovered when investigators searching his child-pornography collection noticed that sheets in some of the pictures matched the sheets on his bed.

They also saw explicit pictures of a young girl being molested. Investigators recognized her from family pictures.

The case was not unusual, authorities say.

That's because when children are victims of pornography, the photographers and abusers often are their fathers, stepfathers and grandfathers.

"Some of the darkest stuff you see is produced in people's basements," said Stacy Arruda, who supervises the Tampa FBI's computer crimes unit. "The most common that we see in this area ... is parents and stepparents abusing their own children."

Nearly twice as many children in a nationwide child-porn database were photographed by their parents as were victims of online enticement. The number victimized by parents was nearly seven times that of children exploited by strangers.

There was the case of a Tampa man traced by a Pennsylvania state trooper investigating child pornography on the Internet. When investigators searched his home, the man's 12-year-old daughter was there. Later, as agents reviewed pornographic images on the man's computer, there she was posed on a bed when she was 7.

'Our secret'

Several years ago, prosecutors say, the parents of a 14-year-old girl established a Web site with graphic photos of their daughter. The mother bought the girl provocative clothing; the father took the pictures and molested her. When investigators searched the Tampa-area home, the girl's closet was full of garter belts, stockings and platform shoes.

Then there was the man who took pornographic pictures of his 9-year-old great-granddaughter.

"Make a pretty face," he would tell her.

"Don't tell anybody," he would say afterward. "It will be our secret."

The Bradenton man was prosecuted after his great-granddaughter told her grandmother about the photo sessions. Investigators reviewing photographs discovered the man's 7-year-old great-grandson also was a victim.

When investigators asked the girl why she took off her clothes for her great-grandfather, she said it was because you're supposed to do what your grandparents tell you.

These cases are a dirty secret, and not only in families.

Media reports almost always leave out the relationship between perpetrator and victim in order to protect the child's identity. Most media organizations, including The Tampa Tribune, have policies that bar publishing the identities of sexual assault victims, especially children.

For that reason, the suspects' names also are being withheld in this story.

"Most people would not suspect that a girl's own father would do it," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Colleen Murphy-Davis, who prosecutes such cases.

"It's really shocking," said another Tampa federal prosecutor, Amanda Kaiser. "When you first start, you think, 'How could parents do that? How could they sell their children?' ... It's just sickening."

Some fathers are seeking financial gain, Kaiser said. Others want sexual gratification.

"I think they're sociopaths," she said. "I don't think they have any conscience. I think they lack empathy, and to them, children are just a commodity to be used."

Since Arruda began her job 31/2 years ago, she estimates the office has investigated about 100 such cases. Technology costs are falling, making exploitation easier.

"Anybody with a digital camera can take pictures of whatever they want," she said.

Sometimes male relatives trade photographs with other pedophiles online, Arruda said.

Fathers can get away with being abusers because they can exploit the bond of trust, authorities say. They groom their children to accept what is happening and have the leverage to keep them quiet.

Sometimes, the mothers know.

"You've got one of two situations," Murphy-Davis said. "The mother knows about it, so they figure it's fruitless to tell mom, or they've told her in the past and she's like, 'You're lying.' Or there's just too much shame with going to the mother and saying, 'This is what the man you love is doing to me.'"

Sometimes, the mother supports the abusing father at the expense of the child. One Tampa mother wanted to kick her teenage daughter out of the house and make her live with her grandmother so the father could remain there while his case was pending. The judge was so disgusted he ordered the father jailed. The mother's letter in her husband's defense angered the sentencing judge.

Prison sentences

The charge of producing child pornography carries a prison sentence of up to 30 years; possessing child porn carries up to 10 years; and transporting or shipping child porn brings a minimum mandatory sentence of five years and as long as 20 years.

The Tampa man who created a Web site with graphic photos of his daughter pleaded guilty to all three of those charges and was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison.

"What law enforcement tends to be seeing is that the children who are being used to produce these images are kids being abused in bedrooms and basements and living rooms across the United States and elsewhere," said Michelle Collins, executive director of the Exploited Child Division of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The division is a clearinghouse for law enforcement to share information when children depicted in pornography are identified. Collins said this helps prevent defendants from arguing that the children in their pornography collections aren't real.

Since the program started in 2003, more than 2,300 children have been identified in pornographic pictures and videos, Collins said.

Of those, 27 percent were photographed by parents or stepparents; 24 percent by neighbors or close family friends; and 10 percent by other relatives.

Just 4 percent were photographed by strangers. The rest were photographed by coaches, babysitters, their parents' boyfriends and girlfriends, or by themselves, often after being enticed by someone they met online.

"The individuals who sexually molest are most likely to molest children who they're a trusted adult toward," Collins said. "That's why there is such a low disclosure rate of children who are abused."

Reporter Elaine Silvestrini can be reached at (813) 259-7837.

When courts deprive kids of great parents

2009-06-25T13:06:00.007-04:00

Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald was also a battered wife who lost custody of her three children. Click on the title for a link to the following story.

Doctor in 1999 South Pole rescue dies in Mass.

AP – FILE - In this 1999 file photo released by the National Science Foundation, Dr. Jerri Nielsen, a National …
By MARK PRATT, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jun 24, 6:39 pm ET

BOSTON – Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald, who diagnosed and treated her own breast cancer before a dramatic rescue from the South Pole a decade ago, has died after the disease recurred. She was 57.

Her husband, Thomas FitzGerald, said she died Tuesday at their home in Southwick, Mass. Her cancer had been in remission until it returned in August 2005, he said Wednesday.

She was the only doctor among 41 staff at the National Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in winter 1999 when she discovered a lump in her breast. At first, she didn't tell anyone, but the burden became too much to bear.

"I got really sick," she told The Associated Press in a 2003 interview. "I had great big lymph nodes under my arm. I thought I would die."

Rescue was out of the question. Because of the extreme weather conditions, the station is closed to the outside world for the winter. She had no choice but to treat the disease herself, with help from colleagues she trained to care for her and U.S.-based doctors she stayed in touch with via satellite e-mail.

She performed a biopsy on herself with the help of staff.

A machinist helped her with her IV and test slides, and a welder helped with chemotherapy.

She treated herself with anti-cancer drugs delivered during a gripping mid-July 1999 airdrop by a U.S. Air Force plane in blackout, freezing conditions.

In a headline-grabbing rescue, she was lifted by the Air National Guard that October, one of the earliest flights ever into the station when it became warm enough — 58 degrees below zero — to make the risky flight.

After multiple surgeries in the U.S., including a mastectomy, the cancer went into remission.

"More and more as I am here and see what life really is, I understand that it is not when or how you die but how and if you truly were ever alive," she wrote in an e-mail to her parents in June 1999 from the South Pole.

Nielsen FitzGerald never lost her adventurous spirit and even returned to desolate Antarctica several more times.

"She had incredible zest and enthusiasm for life," said her husband, whom she first met 23 years ago when they were both on vacation in the Amazon. "She was the kindest soul I ever met. She was intelligent, with a great sense of humor, and she lived each day to the fullest."

She documented her ordeal in the best-selling book "Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole." It was later made into a TV movie.

The disease made her stronger, she said in November 2001.

"I would rather not have it. But the cancer is part of me. It's given my life color and texture. Everyone has to get something. Some people are ugly, some people are stupid. I get cancer," she said at lecture in Denver.

Nielsen FitzGerald spent the last decade speaking around the world about the cancer and how it changed her life, and she worked as a roving ER doctor in hospitals all over the Northeast.

"She fought bravely, she was able to make the best of what life and circumstance gave her, and she had the most resilience I have ever seen in anyone," said her husband. "She fought hard, and she fought valiantly."

The couple would have celebrated their third anniversary next week.

Indiana University cancer specialist Dr. Kathy Miller, who by e-mail and videoconference helped Nielsen treat herself for nearly five months before she could leave the South Pole, said Nielsen's willingness to speak about her fight against cancer helped give hope to other cancer patients.

"She was very passionate about continuing to live her life," Miller said. "She continued to work for many years, she married again, she traveled extensively. I think that gave a lot of our patients hope that even when disease recurs life can still go on and we can still find a lot of good things in that life."

Miller said Nielsen's advocacy helped cancer patients much like that of Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong and actress Christina Applegate.

"It's easy to underestimate the importance of those public messages," Miller said. "We see increases in screenings when people who have public lives come forward in this way."

Nielsen FitzGerald's passion for life shone through during a visit to the University of Toledo medical school last October, even though her cancer had metastasized to the brain and she knew she did not have much time left, said vice provost Patricia Metting.

"You couldn't help but be moved by this woman and her profound words and just the optimism that she had," Metting said.

Besides her husband, the Youngstown, Ohio-area native and graduate of the University of Toledo medical school is survived by parents Lorine and Phil Cahill, brothers Scott Cahill and Eric Cahill and three children from a previous marriage, Julia, Ben and Alex.

Memorial and funeral arrangements were pending.
___
Associated Press writers Doug Whiteman in Columbus, Ohio, and Tom Davies in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

Why do courts underestimate the danger to children?

2009-06-24T16:52:00.002-04:00

Well-behaved 7-year-old, forced to spend summer with his father in Massachusetts, is dead within a month. Click on the title for the Boston Herald story.

Why do courts underestimate the danger to children?

2009-06-19T21:06:00.005-04:00

Click on the title above for this story of a new bill in Florida secured by a mother in memory of her two children who were killed by their father in a custody case.

Rates At Which Batterers Get Custody In America (75%)

2009-06-13T10:33:00.007-04:00

The following posts by attorney Joan Meier from October 9, 2008, can also be seen by clicking on the title above or entering this link in your browser:
http://abusesurvivors.meetup.com/boards/thread/5575497

Rates At Which Batterers Receive Custody
by Joan Meier, Esq.

One statement in Breaking the Silence: Children's Voices that has provoked controversy was my statement that "the studies are showing" that up to 2/3 of accused or adjudicated batterers receive joint or sole custody in court. While no empirical study can definitively determine a universal statistical rate, the key point is that the research consistently shows that accused and adjudicated batterers receive joint or sole custody disturbingly often. This confirms the anecdotal experience of domestic violence attorneys and victims around the country. The following research supports this perspective.

I. A History of Domestic Violence is Common among Contested Custody Cases.

The remarkably consistent research on this issue is compiled in my previously-issued statement, Research Indicating that the majority of cases that go to court as 'high conflict' contested custody cases have a history of domestic violence (Nov. 9, 2005).

One good example is a study cited by Janet Johnston, a leading researcher of parental alienation, which found that, among custody litigants referred to mediation, "Physical aggression had occurred between 75% and 70% of the parents . . . even though the couples had been separated. . . [for an average of 30-42 months]". Furthermore, in 35% of the first sample and 48% of the second, [the violence] was denoted as severe and involved battering and threatening to use or using a weapon."

- Janet R. Johnston, "High-Conflict Divorce," The Future of Children, Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 1994, 165-182) citing Depner et al., "Building a uniform statistical reporting system: A snapshot of California Family Court Services," Family and Conciliation Courts Review (1992) 30: 185-206.

II. Domestic Violence Perpetrators are More Likely to Contest Custody than Non- Abusers.

The American Psychological Association's Presidential Task Force on Violence in the Family, the leading review of the research as of 1996, found that men who abuse their partners contest custody at least twice as often as non-abusing fathers. They are even more likely to contest custody if the children are boys.

- American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence in the Family (1996) at p. 40.

III. Accused and Adjudicated Batterers Receive Joint or Sole Custody Surprisingly Often.

The research on this has only emerged in the past few years and most studies have been small and local. Nonetheless, they document disturbing trends, which surprised even me when I first discovered them.

A. Multiple studies have documented gender bias against women in custody litigation.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that women are favored in custody litigation, both the experiences of battered women and the empirical research are showing that women who allege abuse are deeply disfavored in custody courts.

- Janet R. Johnston, "High-Conflict Divorce," The Future of Children, Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 1994, 165-182) citing Depner et al., "Building a uniform statistical reporting system: A snapshot of California Family Court Services," Family and ConciliationCourts Review (1992) 30: 185-206

II. Domestic Violence Perpetrators are More Likely to Contest Custody than Non- Abusers.

The American Psychological Association's Presidential Task Force on Violence in the Family, the leading review of the research as of 1996, found that men who abuse their partners contest custody at least twice as often as non-abusing fathers. They are even more likely to contest custody if the children are boys.

- American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence in the Family (1996) at p. 40.

III. Accused and Adjudicated Batterers Receive Joint or Sole Custody Surprisingly Often.

The research on this has only emerged in the past few years and most studies have been small and local. Nonetheless, they document disturbing trends, which surprised even me when I first discovered them.

A. Multiple studies have documented gender bias against women in custody litigation.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that women are favored in custody litigation, both the experiences of battered women and the empirical research are showing that women who allege abuse are deeply disfavored in custody courts.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Gender Bias Task Force was one of the first states to document the gender bias against women in family courts. This court-initiated study expressly found that "our research contradicted [the] perception" that "there is a bias in favor of women in these decisions." Moreover, it found that "in determining custody and visitation, many judges and family service officers do not consider violence toward women relevant." The Court's study further found that "the courts are demanding more of mothers than fathers in custody disputes" and that "many courts put the needs of noncustodial fathers above those of custodial mothers and children."

- Gender Bias Study of the Court System in Massachusetts, 24 New Eng.L.Rev. 745, 747, 825, 846 (1990)

More recently, and since the evolution and widespread adoption of "parental alienation syndrome," a multi-year, four-phase study using qualitative and quantitative social science research methodologies by the Wellesley Centers for Women found "a consistent pattern of human rights abuses" by family courts, including failure to protect battered women and children from abuse, discriminating against and inflicting degrading treatment on battered women, and denying battered women due process. Histories of abuse of mother and children were routinely ignored or discounted.

- Wellesley Centers for Women Battered Mothers' Testimony Project, Battered Mothers Speak Out: A Human Rights Report on Domestic Violence and Child Custody in the Massachusetts Family Courts (Nov. 2002)(hereafter "BMTP"), Executive Summary at 2.

A comparable study by the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence found that most of the women surveyed felt the history of abuse was not taken seriously and that they were ignored, disrespected and discriminated against by court personnel.
- Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Battered Mothers' Testimony Project: A Human Rights Approach to Child Custody and Domestic Violence (June 2003), pp. 47, 49, 6.

A study of the Domestic Relations Division of Philadelphia Family Court conducted by the Philadephia Women's Law Project in cooperation with the court, found that litigants are often denied due process, and that applicable legal standards are "not always observed, particularly in the consideration of abuse in custody proceedings, leaving families at risk."

- Tracy, Fromson & Miller, Justice in the Domestic Relations Division of Philadelphia Family Court: A Report to the Community, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE REPORT, Vol. 8, No. 6 (Aug/Sept. 2003), p. 94.

B. Studies show Accused and Adjudicated Batterers Receiving Sole or Joint Custody Surprisingly Often.

My own survey of the case law in 2001 identified 38 appellate state court decisions concerning custody and domestic violence. To my astonishment, 36 of the 38 trial courts had awarded joint or sole custody to alleged and adjudicated batterers. Two-thirds of these decisions were reversed on appeal.

- Meier, Domestic Violence, Child Custody, and Child Protection: Understanding Judicial Resistance and Imagining the Solutions, A.U. J. Gender, Soc. Pol. & the Law, 11:2 (2003), 657-731, p. 662, n. 19, and Appendix.

These cases included a case in which the perpetrator had been repeatedly convicted of domestic assault; in which a father was given sole custody of a 16-month old despite his undisputed choking of the mother resulting in her hospitalization and his arrest; in which the father had broken the mother's collarbone; had committed "occasional incidents of violence"; and had committed two admitted assaults. More such instances can be found in Meier, supra.

The American Judges Association has found that approximately 70% of batterers succeed in convincing authorities that the victim is unfit for or undeserving of sole custody. Another way of saying this is that 70% of batterers obtain sole or joint custody.

- American Judges Association, "Domestic Violence and the Courtroom: Understanding the Problem . . . Knowing the Victim" http://aja.ncsc.dni.u... (at "Forms of Emotional Battering. . . Threats to Harm or Take Away Children")

A survey of battered women by the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence found that courts awarded joint or sole custody to the alleged batterers 56-74% of the time (depending on the county). Many of these cases involved documented child abuse or adult abuse.

- Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Battered Mothers' Testimony Project: A Human Rights Approach to Child Custody and Domestic Violence (June 2003), pp. 33-34, 47-49

A study of 300 cases over a 10-year period in which the mother sought to protect the child from sexual abuse, found that 70% resulted in unsupervised visitation or shared custody; in 20% of the cases the mothers completely lost custody, and many of these lost all visitation rights.

- Neustein & Goetting (1999), "Judicial Responses to the Protective Parent's Complaint of Child Sexual Abuse," Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 8 (4): 103-122.

The Wellesley Battered Mothers' Testimony Project found that 15 out of 40 cases resulted in sole or joint physical custody to the fathers, all of whom had abused both the mother and the children.

- BMTP, supra at Appendix A.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Gender Bias Task Force found that 94% of fathers who actively sought custody received sole or joint custody, regardless of whether there was a history of abuse. While fathers received primary physical custody 29% of the time, mothers received primary physical custody in only 7% of the contested cases. The Study also cited other research which similarly found that fathers who sought custody received primary physical custody 2/3 of the time, with mothers receiving it less than ¼ of the time; and another study which found that fathers seeking custody received joint or sole custody 79% of the time, with mothers receiving sole custody in only 15% of those cases (compared to fathers' sole custody in 41% of the cases).

- Gender Bias Study at 831-832 and citing Middlesex Divorce Research Group relitigation study and Phear et al., 1983.

While the Massachusetts study and those it cited were not able to identify what proportion of the contesting fathers were batterers, the studies cited in my other Statement indicate consistently that 75% of cases have a history of domestic violence, with a substantial proportion of severe violence. Hence, it is likely that a substantial proportion of the fathers receiving joint or primary physical custody in this study had committed domestic violence.

- Meier Statement, Research Indicating that the Majority of Cases that go to Court as 'High Conflict' Contested Custody Cases have a History of Domestic Violence (Nov.)

What good legislative leadership can do

2009-06-12T16:16:00.007-04:00

Rhode Island's Senate agreed to establish a Commission to examine problems in Family Court, but did not have the leadership to chair it. Here is what legislators in California are doing. To see the original article, click on the title above or paste this link into your browser:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_12573211

Public officials call for major changes in family law
By Kamika Dunlap
Posted: 06/11/2009 06:54:02 PM PDT
Updated: 06/11/2009 09:03:13 PM PDT

OAKLAND — One by one, parents around the Bay Area are beginning to step forward to share heart-wrenching stories of the injustices they experienced in California's family court system.

These parents have joined with thousands of others statewide to reform the family courts and protect child victims of violence and sexual abuse from judicial decisions the parents say place children in harm's way.

"I'm living proof this is happening today," said Susan, a California Family Court litigant and mother whose daughter was placed with her accused molester. "The family courts crisis is a plague and it's destroying peoples' lives."

About 58,000 children per year in the U.S. are ordered into unsupervised contact with physically or sexually abusive parents following divorce, according to experts at the Leadership Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence.

Many people concerned about the systemic problems with family court attended a daylong public forum Thursday at the Alameda County Conference Center.

Some compared the family court crisis to the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals because of what they call an institutional level of collusion of harm against children. Event organizers said they hoped the forum would inspire families who have survived traumatic family court ordeals to come forward in order to shed more light on the breakdown of the family court system.

Participants, including family court litigants, child advocates and the general public, gathered to discuss the family court crisis and take a closer look at problems and solutions. The forum's session featured public testimony by speakers and a panel of legal experts and attorneys who gave free general legal advice about how to best protect themselves in the family court.

The event was organized by the Center for Judicial Excellence in partnership with UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, California Protective Parents Association, Justice for Children, California Safe Child Coalition, Child Abuse Solutions and the Incest Survivors Speakers' Bureau.

Their collective goal was to push to improve the judiciary's public accountability and strengthen and maintain the integrity of the courts.

In addition, the center produced a documentary, Family Court Crisis: Our Children at Risk, and screened a 12-minute clip at the forum.

The American Judges Association found that approximately 70 percent of batterers succeed in convincing authorities that the victims of their abuse are unfit or undeserving of sole custody.

Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele and actress Nancy Lee Grahn from ABC's "General Hospital" are family court reform advocates and also participated in the panel discussions.

Steele announced a new initiative to help better protect vulnerable children in family court. It includes her support of the passage of new proposed legislation by Assemblyman Jim Beall, D-San Jose, and Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, to reform family court. Her initiative also calls for the passage of Sen. Mark Leno's request for a legislative audit of Marin and Sacramento Family Courts. She also is pushing for ombudsman positions to be created in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, where parents can go for help and to plead their case.

"The system has to change in California and across the country," Steele said.

Grahn did not talk in detail about her $1 million family court battle but said her experience was "maddening and perplexing."

She was upset to learn that some laws were unfair and that some court procedures were abusive and treated children like hostages or assets that need to be divided up.

After a three-year ordeal, Grahn finally gained custody of her 11-year-old daughter. She now works with community organizations and travels the state to meet with lawmakers and inform them about the about pitfalls of the family law system.

"I met people who were in similar or worse situations," Grahn said. "There are thousands of women who were protective parents and their children were taken away and handed over to their abusers."

For more information visit, www.centerforjudicialexcellence.org

Why don't custody courts consider evidence? Part 2

2009-06-11T22:23:00.005-04:00

This article by Karen de Sá appeared on Thursday, June 11, 2009, in the San Jose Mercury News.To see the original story, click on the title above or copy the link into your browser:

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/739503.html

Did system do right by the children?

Powerless and tormented, a Campbell mother awaits the story her daughter's bones will tell.

The remains of Alycia Mesiti, 14 when she vanished in August 2006, are in the hands of toxicologists and coroners. Since March, when cadaver-sniffing dogs found her body buried in the unkempt yard of her father's former home in Ceres, detectives have scoured for evidence from the girl's petite frame.

Last week, Mark Edward Mesiti was charged with the murder and rape of his daughter. He remains in a Los Angeles County jail on $205,000 bail on unrelated charges of child endangerment and running a methamphetamine lab.

Girl's dad accused of murdering Ceres teen in 2006, as well as drugging, molesting her

With a lengthy criminal past, the 41-year-old still was granted custody of Alycia and her older brother in Santa Clara County Superior Court less than a year before the girl disappeared.

The death of the smiling teen, who loved horses and the singer Shakira, lays bare the intractable choices that Family Court judges face every day, but the tragic outcome has everyone who worked on Alycia's case looking back wondering what more could have been done.

"Dad's story was he was getting phone calls periodically" from the missing girl, said Ceres police Sgt. James Robbins. "But it doesn't appear she ever left the house."

Legal thicket

The family's legal history is a tangle of allegations traded through restraining orders and court filings. A court investigator described Alycia's mother, Roberta Allen, now 39, as an unfit mother who had battled with depression.

Alycia and her brother, now 19 and in the military, were placed in Mesiti's care by the Family Court in November 2005. During the previous seven years, court records show, Mesiti had been convicted of state and federal charges, including bank fraud and drunken driving. He was charged with domestic violence and ordered to attend anger-management classes after pleading guilty to a lesser charge. After failing to comply with court orders to attend drug and alcohol programs, he landed in prison for violating probation.

Nonetheless, Allen described her yearslong legal battle as "very angled toward Mark. I couldn't afford an attorney. He had one."

Over the nine months the children lived with their father before Alycia disappeared, police and child welfare workers fielded repeated warnings of danger in their single-family home in a neat, unremarkable Ceres neighborhood.

Beginning in 2005, the children's court-appointed lawyer, Jonnie Herring, reported her concerns, recommending only a supervised, temporary placement with Mesiti because of "sufficient issues and risks to these minors." In 2006, she reported that Mesiti had failed to comply with court orders to enroll his children in school and remain in touch.

"I am deeply concerned about both minors, especially Alycia," Herring wrote in a report to Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Vincent Chiarello.

Allen said she also reported that the children often were hungry, subject to abuse and unable to call their mother despite her court-ordered visitation and contact rights. Police confirm they made visits to the home.

Clearly, the Family Court had a complex case on its hands with few ideal options when Chiarello granted Mesiti custody. The legal battle had raged for eight years without resolution. The children had been bounced between aunts and grandparents and, in a reflection of the case's complexity, the judge appointed Herring to grant them an independent voice in court. Their parents had gone through mediation, counseling and psychological evaluations.
"There were a lot of issues with both parents," said Scott Sagaria, a San Jose attorney who represented Mesiti in claims his client made against Allen, including that she'd attempted suicide and once hit her son. Noting that attorney-client privilege limited his ability to discuss the case, Sagaria added: "There was a lot of conduct by the mother in the case where, in my opinion, the court had very little alternative."

'Cases with no good options'

Chiarello, too, has declined to comment. But Supervising Family Court Judge Su-san Bernardini, who spoke only in generalities and not specifically about the Mesiti case, described the difficulty of serving on her bench.
"Cases with no good options are a centerpiece of being a judge in Family Court," she said. "We have to make a decision no one else will make."

In the case of a tragic outcome, she added, "You wonder and you look back and you always say, 'Is there anything anyone could have done?' "

Allen, a former assembly worker now working for a restaurant, was deemed unfit by the court. She had made a frank admission to feeling depressed after what she described as years of persecution by her children's father. Before Chiarello's decision, records show, Allen told the court she had fled multiple states to get away from Mesiti and even to Canada, where she and the children stayed in battered women's shelters.

But while Mesiti's court filings were formal, typed responses from his private attorney, Allen's pleading letters to judges were handwritten. She reluctantly agreed to sign off on the custody order -- in large part, she says, because she could not afford to raise the children without the child support payments Mesiti had been ordered to make.

"There were plenty of red flags going up all over the place," she said, "but they wouldn't see them."
When Alycia disappeared in 2006, Allen said she never believed the girl had run off.

"I knew in my heart of hearts that she was gone, but no one would listen to me. I was fighting with police, saying, 'She's not a runaway, she's a missing person!' " Allen recalled. "But the police stopped taking my calls. They said, 'She'll come home, she'll come home.' "

Years of anxiety

So for 2½ years, Allen went mad with worry. Alycia's disappearance was not elevated to a homicide investigation until the longtime detective on the case retired and Robbins, the Ceres investigations supervisor, ordered a fresh round of interviews.

Robbins declined to give specifics because the case is pending, but he said those interviews turned up "detailed information we didn't have the first time."

Police obtained a search warrant for Mesiti's former home on Alexis Court, which he is said to have abandoned a few months after Alycia vanished.

The case broke open with the discovery of Alycia's remains. Within days, police burst into Mesiti's Los Angeles apartment and said they found evidence of a meth lab. Now, he and the girlfriend he had lived with in Ceres face a series of court hearings on drug and child endangerment charges; the girlfriend's 12-year-old daughter had been living with the couple when they were arrested March 28.

Mesiti was in jail when his daughter's memorial was held in April in a Cupertino chapel. During the service, a lifetime of classic childhood moments beamed from photos spanning her short life: Alycia mugging in an oversized T-shirt, stirring a pot of macaroni and cheese and hugging a Snoopy doll. In the last photos, she posed for her eighth-grade prom, a fleeting brush with adolescence.

For her part, Allen tosses endlessly most nights. She tries to stay focused on her last day with Alycia, when she and her daughter ate tuna sandwiches and splashed in a downtown San Jose fountain.

Their next encounter would be three years later at the Stanislaus County coroner's office in Modesto.
"I couldn't even pick up her personal effects," Allen lamented. "There was nothing. There's just nothing left of her."

Why don't custody courts consider evidence? Part 1

2009-06-11T10:04:00.007-04:00

This story by Natasha Chen appeared on Channel 25 in Hillsboro, Texas, on Tuesday, June 9, 2009. To see the news video, click on the title above or paste this link into your browser:

http://www.kxxv.com/Global/story.asp?S=10505660

Father stated concern for daughters' safety before murder

The Hillsboro woman who killed one of her two daughters and critically injured the other had allegedly attempted suicide in the presence of the children on May 21, according to petitions from the girls' father.

The father, Lee Jeter, filed for divorce the day after that incident and also petitioned for a restraining order on the mother, Debra Janelle Jeter. He filed for sole custody of the children, and requested that visits from Debra Jeter be continuously supervised.

After the attempted suicide, Debra Jeter was transported to the De Paul Center on a mental health warrant. In a supporting affidavit, Lee Jeter stated, "I am concerned about her possible actions regarding the children."

But during the divorce hearing on June 4, Lee Jeter's attorney did not bring up the filed petitions. In fact, during the hearing, Lee Jeter voluntarily agreed to unsupervised visits from the mother on the first, third and fifth weekends of the month. The night of Debra Jeter's attack was the first of such scheduled visits.

Because the petition for a restraining order and the request for supervised visits did not come up in the hearing, Hill County Judge Harris made his ruling based only on what was presented in court. The judge thus permitted Debra Jeter's unsupervised visits. The transcript of the hearing shows that neither party discussed Debra Jeter's attempted suicide in detail, but did mention that she has been taking prescribed anti-depressants.

When Judge Harris spoke with News Channel 25 off camera, he appeared extremely shaken from the tragic events. The Jeters' divorce is still pending.

The role of adult denial in child sex abuse

2009-06-11T09:59:00.002-04:00

The article below by Amanda Richardson appeared originally at newssun.com on June 10, 2009. To see the original, click on the title above or paste this link in your browser:

http://www.newssun.com/opinion/col-0610-richardson

Mothers need to protect their children from sexual predators

In Michigan, the mother of missing 5-year-old Nevaeh Buchanan says person of interest and registered sex offender George Kennedy was like a "father-figure" to her daughter. Mother, Jennifer Buchanan, admits to looking past Kennedy's previous child sexual offense and allowing him to build a relationship with her daughter.

While my sympathies go out to this mother over the disappearance of her daughter, we can all learn a lesson from this mother's mistake. Buchanan minimized this predator's offense and put her daughter directly in harm's way. Allow me for a moment to speak from personal experience and be a voice for survivors and children everywhere.

As a child, my own biological father severely abused me both mentally and physically. I was just 10 years old when his abuse became sexual. After four years of silently dealing with my father's abuse, I finally got the courage to tell my mother. My mother's reaction was a common one: denial. She became a contributor, if not an equal contributor, to my abuse.

In my early 20's, after years of brainwashing, denial, and silent suffering, my brother was able to validate my abuse. As a child, he had suspected my abuse and placed a tape recorder in the bedroom, catching my father's abuse in the act. My brother's tape marked the beginning of a very long and difficult healing process: confronting my father, saying goodbye, forgiving, and eventually having the courage to press charges. Despite all of these revelations, my mother continued to deny and minimize my father's abuse, leaving our relationship behind in order to continue a relationship with him.

Though my situation differs from little Nevaeh Buchanan, the lesson here is the same. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and a mother of a 3-year-old little girl, I find myself wanting to scream out, "Mothers - Protect your children!" Current statistics indicate that at least 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. We need to use the National Sex Offender Registry to our advantage and not be in denial about the potential of these predators. Be on the lookout for common signs of sexual abuse in your child:

1. Unusual interest in or avoidance of all things sexual in nature.

2. Aspects of sexual abuse in drawings, games, or fantasies.

3. Sleep problems or nightmares.

4. Sudden fear of a person or place where the child was previously comfortable.

5. Depression, withdrawal, eating disorders.

We have come a long way in our country in bringing awareness to childhood sexual abuse, but with an estimated 60 million survivors in our country today, we still have a long way to go. Mothers - be a voice, a protector, and an advocate for your child. If ever you need help with identifying or reporting abuse, please call the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4ACHILD.

Amanda Richardson is author of 'Saved From Silence.'

Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities & Child Sex Scandals, ed. by Amy Neustein, PhD

2009-06-11T09:56:00.002-04:00

This book review by Anne Grant originally appeared in the Providence Journal on Sunday, May 10, 2009.

For decades, while victims of child sex abuse fought Roman Catholic bishops in New England, dozens more in Brooklyn, N.Y., met a wall of resistance from District Attorney Charles “Joe” Hynes and the informal council of Orthodox Jewish leaders who assured Hynes’ long tenure in office. Jewish victims feared reprisals against their families in Orthodox communities even after five non-Jews, beginning with an Italian-American boy, persuaded a grand jury to indict a charming yeshiva administrator, child therapist, and rabbi, Avrohom Mondrowitz.

The New York Times gave the story a few lines in 1984, when Mondrowitz, charged with sex crimes against children, disappeared. The Times reported nothing further for 23 years. This book skillfully gathers the voices of those who struggled against official silence to speak truth and demand justice in this case and others.

The editor, sociologist Amy Neustein, has midwifed an endangered subject matter to safety in the Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, & Life. She dedicates the book to the memory of her father, an Orthodox rabbi.

Among the startling histories recounted is the case against Rabbi Solomon Hafner in 2000, when a Yiddish-language newspaper in Brooklyn published a full-page notice signed by 50 prominent rabbis. They reminded readers of the “severe prohibition” against informing non-Jewish authorities against another Jew. This included reporting child abuse to police. The ad warned in religious Hebrew that such a mitzvah [positive commandment] entitled any Jew to kill the informer.

Mitzvahs like this defended against Czarist goons and Nazi storm troopers. But what if a rabbi sets up a fraudulent yeshiva to scam Pell grants? If secular authorities and media pursue these crimes, will they be smeared as anti-Semites? What if authorities allow Jewish leaders to assault Jewish children with impunity? How will modern ethicists parse the caveats of the people who gave us the Ten Commandments?

Neustein’s fascinating collection includes perspectives from rabbis, lawyers, psychotherapists, social workers, and educators who seek to empower children against predators. One chapter tells the parallel history of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“In a place where no one will take responsibility,” advised the sage Hillel, “try to be responsible.” Attorney Michael Lesher pursued Mondrowitz to Israel, where authorities arrested the rabbi in 2007. If the Israeli Supreme Court denies his appeal, the prisoner will return to Brooklyn to face his accusers. This book helps us begin the discussions we have resisted too long.

Brooklyn D.A. shamed into action

2009-06-11T09:48:00.002-04:00

To read about the plan for reporting abuse, click on the title above or paste this link into your browser:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a15385/News/New_York.html

Here is that article from The Jewish Week, June 11, 2009

BREAKING: Brooklyn DA Announces New Plan To Urge Reporting Of Abuse
by Hella Winston
Special To The Jewish Week

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, who has been accused by some of not doing enough to prosecute alleged pedophiles in the Orthodox community, announced Wednesday a new initiative aimed "at helping sex-crime victims in Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish communities report abuse."

The effort, dubbed Project Kol Tzedek (Voice of Justice) and unveiled at a news conference at his Hynes' office, is being billed by the DA as a joint project between their office and a number of Jewish organizations, including Ohel Children's Home and Family Services, Tikvah at Ohel, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty and the Jewish Board of Children and Family Services, all of which had representatives at the conference.

Conceived as an outreach program, Kol Tzedek will offer a confidential hotline and access to
"culturally sensitive" social workers and prosecutors from the office's Sex Crimes Bureau. It will be coordinated by Chana Widawski, a social worker who previously worked at the DA's office on a project that addressed domestic violence in the Orthodox community. Rhonnie Jaus, the chief of the office's Sex Crimes Bureau, Sarah Ellis, director of Victim Services and Henna White, the DA's community liaison to the Orthodox community, will also be involved.
Acknowledging the community's insularity and the cultural taboo against reporting abuse to the secular authorities, Hynes stressed the importance of partnering with Orthodox institutions and leadership in this effort.

"It is my belief that with the cooperation of these stakeholders who stand with me today, who have broad credibility within the Orthodox community, we will encourage victims of sexual abuse to come forward, utilizing communication channels to make them feel comfortable," said Hynes. He added that "by working together with the help of the leadership present today, and ... with community organizations, yeshivas, schools and other points of contact in the Orthodox community, we can best educate victims and potential victims and their families about the resources available through Kol Tzedek."

This is not the first time the DA has created a program specifically targeted at the Orthodox community, or at the issue of sexual abuse in that community. In addition to the domestic violence program, known as Project Eden, and a project to address drug abuse in the Orthodox community, Hynes' office launched, in 1997, the Offender Treatment Program to treat Orthodox child molesters.

That program, now defunct, was a partnership between the DA's office and Ohel. According to a 2000 article in The Jewish Week, the program had, at the time, 16 participants, half of whom had been through the court system and were receiving treatment in place of incarceration. The remaining half was comprised of offenders whom the community pressured to seek help without notifying authorities.

Indeed, these communities have a long history of dealing with abuse cases internally, in some instances convening religious courts to hear allegations, something that both victims and legal experts see as highly problematic. Such bodies not only lack the skills and training to evaluate abuse claims, but they are also highly susceptible to corruption. In addition, according to Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo Law School and the author of "Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children," "Religious courts have no capacity to protect the public. They cannot put convicted criminals in jail or send those that are guilty but mentally ill to mental health facilities. The secular criminal system is created to be accountable to the people and to the needs of the people, no matter their religious faith. Accountability of religious courts does not share this feature."

Hynes suggested his new program would address this problem, emphasizing that "the key component of this project is to encourage the rabbis to encourage victims to come forward. And that is what has begun to happen. ... Will there be some who will be resistant? Sure. But I have been debating the [religious court system] for 19 years and I have said over and over again to rabbis who have become very good friends of mine, 'That is not your jurisdiction or authority. The authority to handle criminal cases lies within Kings County and I'm the elected district attorney.'"

Michael Lesher, an attorney and author who has long worked on this issue, is cautiously optimistic about Hynes' new effort, though he contends that this was not always the DA's position. In a chapter in a new book entitled "Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals," edited by Amy Neustein, Lesher and Neustein discuss the 2000 case of Shlomo Haffner. In this case, Lesher says, "all the facts suggested that the DA let a panel of rabbis make the decision about whether to prosecute a 96-count criminal complaint against a chasidic Jew. They pulled the case while the grand jury was still sitting."

However, Lesher "[likes] what the DA is now saying about the rabbinical courts," and told The Jewish Week that "This program sounds like the right sort of idea. But," he added, "[the DA's office] has many years of poor history to compensate for. [They] had [the Offender Treatment Program], whose record was troubling. There was a lack of transparency there, you didn't know how many offenders were involved, or what happened to them after they left treatment. I would hope that this [new] program shows that they have learned from the errors of the previous one."

77 arrested for sex crimes against children in Florida

2009-06-10T22:35:00.007-04:00

In a Florida sting, authorities removed five children from the homes of some of the 77 men arrested for sex crimes against children. To see news reports, click on the title above or paste these link in your browser:

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/news-article.aspx?storyid=139523

http://www.tallahassee.com/article/20090610/NEWS0102/906100322/77+arrested+in+child-porn+sting

77 arrested in child-porn sting

Leon County man among those charged in 'Operation Orange Tree'

BY BILL KACZOR • THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • JUNE 10, 2009

State, federal and local authorities have arrested 77 suspects on child-pornography charges and rescued five young victims in what officials are calling "Operation Orange Tree," Gov. Charlie Crist said Tuesday.

Among those arrested was Nicholas Andrew Martin, 19, of Leon County. He was arrested on charges of 10 counts of sexual performance of a child.

"America's Most Wanted" TV host John Walsh and Attorney General Bill McCollum joined Crist at a news conference to announce results of the 10-week crackdown.

The suspects range in age from 17 to 83 and include two registered sex offenders. The last person was arrested Tuesday in Tallahassee. Nearly all have been charged with possession of obscene material or child pornography. One each has been charged with distributing child pornography, molesting children and obscene communication.

Five children were removed from suspects' homes, including three who were subjects of videos, said Florida Department of Law Commissioner Gerald Bailey. He said authorities found evidence the other two children also had been sexually victimized.

Seventeen suspects were in possession of a step-by-step manual on how to molest children, Bailey said.

Twenty-three law enforcement agencies participated. The Polk County Sheriff's Office was most active with 45 arrests. Other suspects were scattered throughout the state. Authorities executed 90 search warrants and seized thousands of child pornography photos and videos.

Walsh called the crackdown "historic" and heaped praise on Crist and McCollum, saying he hoped both Republicans win their next political races. Crist is running for U.S. senator and McCollum for governor.

"The cooperation between different agencies in the state of Florida I think is unprecedented," said Walsh, whose 6-year-old son was abducted from a Hollywood mall and murdered in 1981. "They are a SWAT team for children."

Crist said he "cannot think of a more despicable action and more harmful crime."

McCollum, who has made fighting cybercrime a hallmark of his term as attorney general, said he's determined to bring violators to justice.

"We're going to get 'em and where we don't get 'em, we're going to educate children to protect themselves," McCollum said.

Joyce Murphy, accused of kidnapping her daughter, testifies in California

2009-06-10T18:04:00.007-04:00

It will not be easy to teach children to protect themselves from sex crimes in their own homes, for authorities seldom believe children who protest these crimes.

Sex offenders are often convicted for molesting and raping other people's children before authorities believe the pleading of their own families. For Joyce Murphy's testimony, click on the title above or paste this in your browser:

http://www.10news.com/video/19596398/index.html?taf=sand