Bill Holt finally gets caught committing fraud on the court

http://www.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/content/20130807-r.i.-family-court-judge-finds-lawyer-abused-process-in-handling-of-divorce-case.ece

Thank you, Judge McCann. (This reminds me of the Textron Case a dozen years ago and the glaring areas of dysfunction in Rhode Island's Family Court. More to come.)

CBS Atlanta gets the story: child sexual abuse ignored by family court

 Jeff Chirico at CBS Atlanta makes the connection between money paid to court officials and the state's legal abuse of children.

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/22820142/investigation-custody-expert-charges-133000-recommends-girl-live-with-alleged-abuser

Shame on the judges who fail to look at the evidence of child abuse

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/22786860/protestors-judges-are-putting-children-back-with-abusers

ATLANTA (CBS ATLANTA) -

About two dozen protestors held signs and wore neon green shirts that read "Shame on you, Judge Goger" and "Shame on you, Judge Lane" as they marched outside the Fulton County Courthouse Monday.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge John Goger came under fire because of a recent order requiring a 10-year-old girl to live with her father, who was twice arrested for abusing her in a recent custody hearing.

CBS Atlanta News is not using the names of the parties to protect the child.

The mother of the girl told CBS Atlanta News reporter Jeff Chirico that she believes the judge did not consider the evidence and was influenced by her ex-husband's attorney.

Criminal charges against the girl's father were dropped for lack of evidence, but according to court records and the mother, five independent assessments supported the girl's story of repeated abuse.

Despite the allegations, the custody evaluator and court-appointed guardian ad litem, recommended the child be placed in the father's home because the mother was subconsciously "re victimizing" the child.

Deb Beacham, executive director of My Advocate Center, a resource group on child custody issues, said this isn't the only case in which a judge has placed a child back with his or her alleged abuser.

She said she believes judges sometimes consider their relationships with attorneys rather than what is in the best interest of the child.

"The judges are loyal to the relationships they have with attorneys and custody experts rather than heeding the evidence of the case and the needs of the children," said Beacham.

According to Beacham, the guardian ad litem in the case of the 10-year-old girl has charged the family $150,000 for his services.

"Why would a guardian ad litem make $150,000 suppressing evidence? Why would a custody evaluator make $65,000 on a case where the evidence is overwhelming?" asked Beacham.

"They don't need to make that kind of money, when they're preventing a child from being protected."

Goger's judicial assistant told CBS Atlanta News that he has no comment.

Protestors also railed Goger's fellow family court judge, Bensonetta Lane, for recent rulings that they said put children in danger and hurt relationships between children and a parent.

One father, who wanted to remain anonymous, said Lane drastically slashed his custodial time given by a judge in another state "to zero. For no reason. I didn't see my children for a whole month."

"It is strictly politics, hidden influence, backroom dealings," said Beacham.

She said she is asking Goger to sit down with the evidence and the experts that did the forensic evaluations. 

"We can't hide evidence. We can't hide damage to children," said Beacham. 

Copyright 2013 WGCL-TV (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.

 by Taboola

NV family court officer sexually assaults and arrests a woman and the judge does nothing

When will the American public take seriously the abuses going on in our family courts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytUl2Ie4E8Y

What happens to children's brains when DCYF and Family Court give them to their abusers instead of their protectors?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130601133735.htm

Specific Changes in Brain Structure After Different Forms of Child Abuse

June 1, 2013 — Different forms of childhood abuse increase the risk for mental illness as well as sexual dysfunction in adulthood, but little has been known about how that happens. An international team of researchers, including the Miller School's Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D., Leonard M. Miller Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has discovered a neural basis for this association. The study, published in the June 1 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, shows that sexually abused and emotionally mistreated children exhibit specific and differential changes in the architecture of their brain that reflect the nature of the mistreatment.

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Researchers have known that victims of childhood abuse often suffer from psychiatric disorders later in life, including sexual dysfunction following sexual abuse. The underlying mechanisms mediating this association have been poorly understood. Nemeroff and a group of scientists led by Christine Heim, Ph.D., Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology at Charité University of Medicine Berlin, and Jens Pruessner, Ph.D., Director of the McGill Center for Studies in Aging at McGill University in Montreal, hypothesized that cortical changes during segments of mistreatment played a role. To study these potential changes, the researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the brains of 51 adult women who were exposed to various forms of childhood abuse.

The results showed a correlation between specific forms of maltreatment and thinning of the cortex in precisely the regions of the brain that are involved in the perception or processing of the type of abuse. Specifically, the somatosensory cortex in the area in which the female genitals are represented was significantly thinner in women who were victims of sexual abuse in their childhood. Similarly, victims of emotional mistreatment were found to have a reduction of the thickness of the cerebral cortex in specific areas associated with self-awareness, self-evaluation and emotional regulation.

"This is one of the first studies documenting long-term alterations in specific brain areas as a consequence of child abuse and neglect," said Nemeroff, who is also Director of the Center on Aging. "The finding that specific types of early life trauma have discrete, long lasting effects on the brain that underlie symptoms in adults is an important step in developing novel therapies to intervene to reduce the often lifelong psychiatric/psychological burden of such trauma."

"Our data point to a precise association between experience-dependent neural plasticity and later health problems," said Heim. Pruessner agreed that the "large effect and the regional specificity in the brain that corresponds to the type of abuse is remarkable."

The scientists speculate that a regional thinning of the cortex may serve as a protective mechanism, immediately shielding the child from the experience of the abuse by gating or blocking the sensory experience. However, that thinning of the cortical sections may lay the groundwork for the development of behavioral problems in adulthood. The results of this study extend the literature on neural plasticity and show that cortical representation fields can be smaller when certain sensory experiences are damaging or developmentally inappropriate.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided byUniversity of Miami.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Christine M. Heim, Helen S. Mayberg, Tanja Mletzko, Charles B. Nemeroff, Jens C. Pruessner. Decreased Cortical Representation of Genital Somatosensory Field After Childhood Sexual Abuse. Am J Psychiatry, June 1, 2013

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University of Miami (2013, June 1). Specific changes in brain structure after different forms of child abuse. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 10, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2013/06/130601133735.htm

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Even in France, "Sara" and "Molly" remember that today is their Mami's birthday

The shocking failure of Rhode Island's Attorney General, DCYF, and Family Court to believe "Sara" and "Molly" when they reported their father's sexual abuse and domestic violence makes it all the more important to join EVAWI and its Start By Believing campaign. 

http://www.evawintl.org/Default.aspx

Molly and Sara's case has been reported at Rhode Island's Little Hostages blog. Five years ago they were living in a state shelter:

http://littlehostages.blogspot.com/2008/05/mami-visits.html

Dominique Buccafurri Goes To Washington

Last weekend, Dominique Buccafurri, 24, of Cranston, Rhode Island, went to Washington, D.C., and met other young adults whose lives have been turned upside down by family courts that fail to protect them from abuse in their own homes.   

One of those at the conference, Damon Moelter, was six, when he first accused his father in San Diego ten years ago of sexually abusing him. Authorities were unwilling to believe the boy and gave him to his father’s sole custody. Damon eventually escaped and went into hiding.  At 14, he posted videos online protesting the courts’ refusal to protect him. Recently, at 16, with his mother’s permission, he got married in Reno as the only way he could win legal emancipation from his father.

Dominique and Damon went to Washington, D.C., last weekend with scores of others for the Tenth Anniversary of the Battered Mothers Custody Conference at George Washington University Law School. On Mothers Day, several dozen joined the Mothers of Lost Children in front of the White House before that group lobbied Congress to establish and ensure due process for children when they become victims of crime in their own homes. Yet state courts persist in giving them to the sole custody of abusers.

A Dutch Embassy official accepted an award honoring the people and government of the Netherlands for granting amnesty to Holly Collins and her children in 1994, after they escaped Minnesota, where domestic violence had left one child with a fractured skull while the court kept returning them to their assailant. The family’s Dutch attorney, Els Lucas, also received an award and was featured in Garland Waller’s documentary, “No Way Out But One.”

University of Bridgeport psychiatry professor Liane J. Leedom shared her research on the “parasitic and predatory lifestyle” of psychopaths and the family courts’ difficulty understanding the impact of this disorder on children and non-offending parents. Donna Anderson’s workshop, books, and website, LoveFraud.com, offer resources to help victims of sociopaths and psychopaths.

Camille Cooper spoke about the work of the National Association to Protect Children. Cooper spearheaded two successful acts of Congress along with state legislation that has rescued thousands of children (www.protect.org). White House Advisor Lynn Rosenthal described the recently reenacted Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and its new recognition that non-offending mothers are often subjected to legal abuse when they try to protect children from court-ordered visits with abusers.

Dominique Buccafurri encouraged those at the conference not to give up on their children. For twelve years, her father, a police detective, held sole custody of her and claimed that her mother was a “dangerous drug addict and a whore.” In 2003, at the age of 14, Dominique realized those words were lies, and she appealed to the twelfth family court judge to hear the case. Associate Justice Stephen J. Capineri finally let her go home to her mother, but then sealed the file that Dominique now wants to see.

In the decade since then, she says, her father has denied her any contact with the two half-sisters she still loves. He refuses to put her on his medical insurance. “I know the lies he told about my mother when he used to say he only wanted my ‘best interest,’ and I wonder why all those judges chose to believe him.”

Her parents’ family court case, that started 24 years ago, the year she was born, illustrates the way judges in family court allow mental health experts to harass and endanger victims of domestic violence.  A workshop focusing on their case showed how mental health experts were used:

1. to authenticate lies by reporting hearsay as if it were true,

2. to accuse victims of crime as if they were the perpetrators,

3. to harm vulnerable children and adults by forcing them to meet with their abusers, and

4. to delay resolution and healing.  

 The case demonstrates that:

1. Domestic violence is a crime that cannot be resolved in a civil court.

2. These crimes should be heard by a jury.

3. Domestic violence is a criminal matter, not a mental health matter.

4. Victims of crime should not have to hire lawyers and psychologists to protect themselves and their children from abuse.