Should this Court be saved?

Since the General Assembly created Family Court and Rhode Island taxes pay handsomely for it, how would you recommend our legislators can control its abuses of power?

Examine the case described at http://TrophyChild.blogspot.com (Click on January 15th, 2012, to start at the beginning) and send your confidential suggestions to Anne Grant at
ParentingProject@cox.net

The Cabals of Court, Part 2: The Cranston Cabal

Click once to enlarge.

The cavernous marble corridor of Garrahy Courthouse was nearly empty. It was mid-afternoon, and the daily rush had cleared. Attorney William Holt stood, a silhouette against the wall of windows above Dorrance Street.

From the way he stared at me, I suspected he had read my "Overcoming Abuse" column in Sunday's Providence Sunday Journal under an editor's bold headline: R.I. court system further victimizes battered families (July 18, 1993, p. E-1).

Was Holt fuming? Or about to offer me some new disclosure? Both proved true.

Barely able to suppress his rage, he scolded: This is called Family Court, not just because it deals with family issues. But we are family. We attorneys call each other "brother" and "sister." Chief Judge Jeremiah is like a father to us. When he is attacked, we will always come to his defense.

What if your family is dysfunctional? I asked. Can you make changes from the inside, or do you need our help from outside?

He said he had to think about it, which seemed promising.

Bill Holt became the first attorney that our Mothers on Trial support group recognized as a key player in The Cranston Cabal, conceived in the hurly-burly of Cranston City Hall during the years Edward DiPrete was mayor, from 1978 to 1984. Holt had proven his value as DiPrete's administrative assistant during a liquor licensing imbroglio in the early 80s.

Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, Jr., had paid his political dues as Republican chairman in Cranston. He spent fifteen years as assistant city solicitor and six more as solicitor while Edward DiPrete was mayor.

After DiPrete became governor in 1985, Jeremiah advanced to the statehouse as his executive counsel. Two years later, when DiPrete's turn came to fill a vacancy on Family Court (before legislative reforms established the Judicial Nominating Commission), the governor tapped Jeremiah. Barely a year later, in 1987, DiPrete acknowledged Judge Jeremiah as his "closest friend" and made him chief of Family Court.

The Cranston Cabal also produced Kathleen A. Voccola, who became Cranston's first woman city lawyer when DiPrete named her to fill Jeremiah's former position as assistant city solicitor in 1979. Governor DiPrete made Voccola the first woman to serve as the state's liquor control administrator, saying the appointment was in line with his "continuing efforts to place qualified women in positions of authority and responsibility."

Voccola was not the first woman that Republicans invited to serve as sacrificial lamb by running her against popular Attorney General James O'Neil in 1988. She lost that race as expected, but a year later, DiPrete made her a judge on Family Court.

By then an ethics complaint had been lodged against the governor for steering state contracts to campaign contributors. Nearly a decade passed before DiPrete made a plea deal to protect his son from prosecution and went to prison himself for bribery, extortion and racketeering in 1998. The whole truth has never emerged, and DiPrete's friends on Family Court escaped unscathed.

Jeremiah skated away from his own brush with the Ethics Commission. He and Voccola sat on the Governor's Juvenile Justice Commission, where she made, and he seconded, a 1997 motion that awarded $56,000 in federal money to a police organization that sublet space from attorney Holt in Jeremiah's Cranston office building and paid some of that rent directly to Jeremiah.

"Holy mackerel!" Jeremiah exclaimed to the press when his conflict of interest became public. "I never even thought of that."

By the time a grievance against him reached the Commission on Judicial Tenure and Discipline in 1998, Voccola had been named to that body, and the Commission found no basis for the complaint.

In 1999, the Ethics Commission also exonerated Jeremiah, rejecting the recommendation of its own staff, who had urged a full-blown ethics trial and provided 64 pages of findings and exhibits.

Rhode Island has a tradition of powerful families with modest headquarters, like the godfather, himself--Raymond Patriarca's mob headquarters at Coin-O-Matic, 168 Atwells Avenue, Providence. Jeremiah's unpretentious office building at 995 Park Avenue gave no clue to the power he wielded. His tenants, like Holt and attorney Patricia Murray-Rapoza, seemed to gain preferential treatment and prominence at Family Court, where lawyers jockey for rich litigants in custody cases that can provide oodles of billable hours until children turn 18.

Consider the Textron Case, where a wealthy vice president, accused of being a "sexual predator," reached a settlement with help from his attorney, William Holt. Patricia Murray-Rapoza had followed Holt as property manager for Jeremiah and bought the building from him on May 2, 2001. This might have relieved Jeremiah of embarrassing conflicts if he had not agreed to take back the mortgage. The Chief and Murray-Rapoza joked in court about the regularity of her payments to him.

On May 18, 2001, Judge Voccola appointed Murray-Rapoza to be guardian ad litem for two young sisters. One girl turned out to be daughter of the Textron vice president, and Holt launched a custody case against the girl's mother in Family Court and a law suit in Superior Court demanding that she return a diamond ring her boss had given her.

Holt described the woman as a "gold-digger" without appreciating the irony of how that word may fit him as well and other lawyers on the case. At one point, two divorce lawyers became so jealous of the money doled out to Murray-Rapoza that they crafted a document identical to hers and got Judge Gilbert Rocha to sign it, giving each one $5,000 of marital assets and creating three guardians ad litem for two children.

When Chief Judge Jeremiah assigned the case to Judge Rocha, he must have known the judge's daughter, Patricia Rocha, was Textron's attorney, who had worked with Holt on the settlement for his client to leave the company in 2001 by claiming the man was legally blind and therefore entitled to enormous payouts from disability insurance.

And when the insurance company's lawyers arrived in Rhode Island, seeking a transcript relevant to the man's two-million-dollar disability claim, Judge Rocha sent them home without it. They returned a month later with a formal motion to get the public record.

While both Holt and Murray-Rapoza contended the man was legally blind, neither Social Security nor the insurance company agreed. Indeed, the evidence of deceit led U.S. District Court Judge Mary Lisi to deny his bid for U.S. citizenship in 2006 on grounds that he "has not established the statutory prerequisite that he 'has been and still is a person of good moral character'" ("Memorandum and Decision," CA 05-398ML, p. 9).

Since that time, the man has secured U.S. citizenship and will return to Family Court next month. I described this case more fully in August 2010. (In the index below, click on 3. A, B, C, D, E.)

It is time for the General Assembly to examine the exorbitant waste of public funds and the damages done by the cabals of Rhode Island Family Court.

Legal Watch under way to take custody cases to SCOTUS

Legal experts are watching for the best test cases to get violations of Constitutional due process to the U.S. Supreme Court. For more, click on the title above.

The Cabals of Court, Part 1

In January 2011, NBC 10 news reported that Chief Judge Haiganush Bedrosian had called in state police to investigate the Family Court's head mediator David Tassoni. Bedrosian's predecessor, Chief Judge Jeremiah Jeremiah, had made Tassoni a law clerk intern in 1997.

Though Tassoni had neither the college nor law school degrees he claimed, he rose quickly to a top administrative position at Family Court, reporting directly to Jeremiah. He seemed ubiquitous, moving from courtroom to courtroom, case to case.

In 2004, Tassoni told me he was working closely with Judge Bedrosian on the training manual for guardians ad litem, which promoted the Court's use of the so-called "parental alienation syndrome" (PAS)--a legal strategy by which abusers can control their families and often claim sole custody of their children. PAS has proven lucrative to lawyers and psychologists and deadly to victims of domestic violence.

David Tassoni told me he had found a psychologist who "understood parental alienation." He brought Lori Meyerson, PhD, from her cramped country office to Providence, where she moved into the Regency Plaza and became one of the Court's expensive favored clinicians to "reunite" children with parents they dreaded.

In her first case as a guardian ad litem, Meyerson testified for a father who bragged that he owned Family Court. He relished intimidating his ex-wife by sitting at the entrance to the courtroom in the chair he had autographed when he was deputy sheriff in that same room before his well publicized arrest for felony domestic violence in 2004.

Dr. Meyerson told the Court that the man's legal problems were settled and that he should win sole custody of his eleven-year-old daughter, who was terrified of him. Applying the PAS theory, Meyerson blamed the girl's mother for "alienating" the girl against her father.

Meyerson did not fulfill the basic requirements of the manual for guardians ad litem. She never visited the two parents' homes. She did not interview school officials or local police, who had visited Chief Judge Jeremiah to ask why seven judges had recused themselves instead of giving the deputy sheriff's ex-wife a restraining order.

Fortunately the Court knew the man better than Meyerson, and the girl stayed with her mother. But she grew up with constant anxiety that the Court's psychologist might give her to her father.

In 2006, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) warned that the "parental alienation" argument does not meet evidentiary standards and should be stricken from custody evaluations. But it was already well established in Rhode Island.

(Click once to enlarge:)

The fact that Bedrosian quickly dislodged Tassoni when she became chief judge suggests that she might be on course to bring some of the transformation needed at Family Court.

In the past, I have criticized her for failing to protect victims of domestic violence. But she is using her authority to build awareness about trauma and hopefully will continue to confront the schemes that make even the best-intentioned judges subject to the cabals of court.

In 1992, I was facilitating a support group called Mothers on Trial that discovered the cabals by connecting the dots from one case to another. The same lawyers and psychologists kept appearing in their cases, pursuing similar strategies, and competing for the most bankable litigants.

The cabals have made Family Court a very dangerous place for families trying to escape violence or child sexual abuse.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

For more on "parental alienation," see my post, "Who is Norbara Octeau?" on February 14, 2012, at http://LittleHostages.blogspot.com

Chief Judge Haiganush Bedrosian is proving me wrong . . .

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 far too long.

The keynote presentations by James E. Greer, MD, and Robert B. Hagberg, LICSW from The Mind + Body Project focused on brain development in children who suffer abuse and neglect. Mr. Hagberg is deputy Director of the RI Division of Casey Family Services, and Dr. Greer is Medical Director of the Child and Family Unit at the Providence Center and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Brown University Medical School. (Dr. Greer's perspective sounds entirely different from the Brown clinicians who serve as "hired guns" at Family Court. Mr. Hagberg, though a therapist himself, insists that words in a therapist's office are not as helpful as physical activity to relieve a hurting brain.)

Much of their message could also pertain to children traumatized, not only by parents, but--often far worse--by legal abuse and neglect after they have been caught up in the machinery of DCYF and Family Court.

A panel of former foster youth from the RI Foster Parents Association Youth Leadership Board spoke compellingly about their experiences and affirmed the need for more youth involvement in future trainings. Their motto could be the focus of an entire conference: "Nothing about us without us."

One teacher told me the training was full of A-ha! moments that helped her understand things going on in her classroom. The governor, a mayor, both U.S. senators brought words of strong affirmation.

Dr. Janice DeFrances, director of DCYF, was scheduled to speak on "Putting Children First" in the context of DCYF's educational initiatives, but could not attend due to a death in her family. But her leadership, alongside Chief Judge Bedrosian's, is key to the depth of content and the breadth of participation--judges alongside former foster youth, teachers and front-line staff.

Such a paradigm-shifting event signals new readiness to hold powerful decision-makers accountable to shared standards and to finally break through the cabals of court that have held sway too long.

That process will not be quick or easy, but it has finally begun.

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

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

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