Chief Judge Bedrosian is changing the rules

(Click once to enlarge.)

Last week I went to Providence Family Court to observe a hearing in the "Textron Case" (mentioned in my post of March 16, 2012). I learned about another reform of Chief Judge Haiganush Bedrosian -- a new 9-page green version of the old "DR6," the financial form that has been the object of much lawyerly gaming in the past (as the baby shown at the top of this blog discovered in her teens, but that's another story).

No one in the courtroom seemed to have one of these new DR6 forms, but the fact that the Defendant’s attorney knew the form should have been submitted -- and the judge agreed -- suggested that a new wind is blowing.

In the Washington County case that I have been reporting at http://TrophyChild.blogspot.com, "Barbara," the client of Cynthia Gifford and Cherrie Perkins, submitted one incomplete DR6 in four years and failed to include the amounts of her financial resources in that skimpy 2-page document.

Six months ago, Chief Judge Bedrosian promulgated the new rule that requires the green 9-page DR6 to be filed with each Miscellaneous Complaint, Answer, Counterclaim, etc. The color makes it easy to find in the file and hard to fraudulently create without the client's freshly notarized signature.

This strikes me as an important reform. Detailed financial reporting always seemed like a no-brainer that could have avoided hundreds of costly hours wasted in this Court. Chief Bedrosian's reform could seriously crimp the freewheeling style of many Family Court attorneys. It could greatly reduce the number of frivolous motions that now clog the Court.

Another of Chief Bedrosian's reforms makes my work harder, but protects the process against documents mysteriously disappearing or getting hopelessly jumbled in court files. Under this reform, those viewing the file can still copy documents, but may no longer remove the prongs holding them in the file.

It is difficult and expensive to make clear copies of thick files on a photocopier. I could not have figured out the legal abuse in the current TrophyChild case without scanning every document in the public files.

Hopefully Family Court will move toward electronic data, much like the federal courts, which could greatly simplify the filing and retrieval of documents.

I am glad to endure any reforms that mean Family Court is becoming more ethical and just. The three cases I mentioned in this post represent four children--now young women. This month, the youngest (in the Textron Case) turns 12, and the oldest (pictured above) turns 23. I have met them all. Because of them and others like them, I take these reforms personally.

I first opposed Judge Bedrosian at a Judicial Nominating Commission hearing in 1996 because of a decision that she later defended as conforming to the rules. I argued that her decision harmed the child pictured at the top of this blog, a victim of domestic violence. Judge Bedrosian criticized my “ignorance of the requirements of judicial conduct.”

Ironically, her reform of the DR6 hits at the heart of that case and each of the other cases I have mentioned in this post -- the enormous financial inequities that set these three Family Court custody cases on such an unequal playing field. Parents who are forced to litigate pro se, or with pro bono attorneys, seldom prevail for long in this Court.

Their abusers keep returning to assault them again and again. And where will they find the money to appeal to a higher court when decisions harm their children here?

The Court seldom sees these children or how much they suffer. It is good to find Chief Judge Bedrosian addressing problems related to children’s trauma and the bad practices that have prevailed too long in Family Court.

She deserves credit and encouragement to keep working at those parts of this system that are most unjust, including:

1. The abuse of so-called “emergency” motions that
a. are not true emergencies or that
b. should be referred to Superior Court’s domestic violence court (without placing the financial and emotional burden of legal defense on alleged victims).

2. The abuse of ex parte motions that
a. prevent judges from hearing the other side in a timely manner
and
b. produce orders that spread misinformation in the community.

3. The failure of lawyers to complete paper work in a timely manner
a. when drafting orders after hearings,
b. when submitting documents to the other side for review before getting the judge’s signature, or
c. when completing paperwork for child support.

4. The Court’s use of clinicians that violates
a. HIPAA regulations,
b. ethics of mental health professionals, and
c. rules of the insurance industry against reimbursing for court-ordered services.

5. The need for judges to sanction lawyers under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_11

Family Court needs a roadmap for the countless people struggling to find their way through these labyrinthine rules and procedures that often seem intentionally confusing and inconsistent from one judge to the next. Despite my worst fears, maybe this is exactly the time when we need an experienced teacher in charge.

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.

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

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

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.