ANATOMY OF A CUSTODY SWITCHING SCHEME: THE KATHY SORRENTINO STORY, PART III

In the book "Man's Search For Meaning" Viktor Frankl stated that of all the many sufferings he endured in the Nazi Concentration camps, the worst he had to bear was not the physical privations, but the verbal abuse he had to put up with on a daily basis.  "Why was this so?" he was asked, Because it was so unfair." he answered.

This is no truer than within the context of Connecticut Family Court when, like Kathi Sorrentino, you find yourself a victim of a custody switching scheme, and are subjected to lie after lie after lie in your case where the court demonizes you, ascribes false motives to you, and makes you out to be some awful human being.  The intention is to demoralize you, to break you, and ultimately convince you that you are that terrible person they are describing you as. 

It must have been extremely tough for Kathi Sorrentino to listen to Judge Klatt pretend that she cared about Kathi's children when the judge was in the middle of implementing a fraudulent custody scheme against her.  Witness the following interchange that took place in Court during one of the hearings in this case:

Judge Klatt:  "I watched the torment on [your daughter's] face when she listened to your testimony.  I watched her break down in tears...I am not going to allow your daughter to testify.  You may not care about her well-being and mental health..."

Kathi:  "No, I do."

Judge Klatt: "...but I certainly do and I will not allow her to go through any more torture.  It was horrendous watching her face listening to you testify.  It was heartbreaking..."

Kathi:  "And the reason why she was upset is because she's not being heard."

The real reason Kathi's daughter was upset was because she had to watch the Court bully and mistreat her mother, and yes, she was not being heard.  

Legally speaking, Judge Klatt had no authority to deny Kathi's daughter the right to provide her testimony before the court because she was over 18 and no longer a minor.  Even if she were a minor, she had the right to provide her testimony and were this taken to appeal, my best guess is that Judge Klatt would be criticized for denying the daughter's testimony.  Of course, the problem is Judges do what they do, their victims don't always know the law, and so Judges figure they are quite likely to get away with it, as in this case.

Another legal point that is worth making is that the Court allowed Mr. Sorrentino to provide a broad range of testimony and speak at length complaining about his ex-wife.  However, he never provided one iota of evidence--in terms of documentation or witness testimony--to prove any of his claims. The Court just gave him credit for what he said on face value.  In contrast, when Ms. Sorrentino provided her testimony she backed up everything she said with considerable documentation to prove each one of her points, as well as testimony, but the Court simply dismissed her defense with snide remarks. 
 

Judge Klatt's disrespect and hyperbole was the kind of "blaming the victim" behavior she indulged in through the hearings and which, again, should have disqualified her from the case. 

Did Judge Klatt have the faintest idea what was going on with Kathi's daughter or with the Sorrentinos? 

No. 

The Judge's deliberate misinterpretations and her disregard for any testimony provided to support Kathi Sorrentino's position are exactly what Viktor Frankl found so unfair when the Nazi's did the same thing to him and other Jewish concentration camp victims. 

 

Judge Corinne Klatt was legally obligated to allow Kathi's daughter to provide her testimony.  But she chose not to.  Her words were a disingenuous exercise in hypocrisy, pure and simple--a means to avoid allowing the daughter to testify on the stand and bring the truth out into the open. 

And what is the truth? 

The truth is that in Kathi Sorrentino's case Dr. Eric Frazer produced a report that was grossly substandard and negligent in its content and format. 

The report was simply a tool for  a custody switching scheme, one which I have no doubt that Judge Corinne Klatt was complicit in because she is not a fool.  All the defects that I notice regarding Dr. Frazer's report as a layperson, I have no doubt Judge Klatt was aware of as well. She has seen hundreds of these reports in the course of her work as a family court judge, and she knows exactly how these reports should be written.  So when she saw the piece of trash that Dr. Eric Frazer provided, it would be naïve to think she didn't know. 

So what, you ask is the matter with the GAL report that Dr. Eric Frazer submitted to the court in the Sorrentino case? 

The answer is that Dr. Frazer took one only month to conduct the investigation before providing his report, and the report itself is only a single page in length. 

There is no way that a GAL can conduct an adequate investigation in a single month.  In addition, some of that time constituted the Christmas and New Year's season which shaves off at least a week of that time, so he probably spent just three weeks on it.  

Further, in terms of witnesses, Dr. Frazer stated in the report that he consulted only five individuals other than the parties and the child, Storm, himself.  He does not indicate that he spoke to the daughter, although it makes no sense  that he wouldn't.  Even if the daughter disagrees with him, all of that is important data and any fair minded evaluator would have included it.   

One of these witnesses, Diane Safran, a co-parenting coordinator, had not been involved with the Sorrentino's case for over twelve years, and for that reason she simply stated that she refused to discuss the case with Dr. Fraser at all.   Nonetheless, Dr. Fraser cited her as providing the basis for his determination that Ms. Sorrentino was an alienator.  How could he do that without talking to her?  Another co-parenting coordinator Dr. Fraser mentioned had not been involved with the family in three years. 

Ordinarily, in a properly written GAL report, I would expect testimony included from a broad range of individuals--friends, family, school personnel, mental health professionals--the whole gamut--at least up to ten or more, in order to get a full picture of what is going on in a family.  Not to emphasize quantity over quality, but there should be some visible attempt to actually do the job and collect information from a reasonable variety of sources who have actually had recent contact with the family.

I understand this is a GAL report and not a custody evaluation, but I do think I there are minimum standards. 

The majority of GAL investigations take at least three months, and, at least in my case, a final report of seven pages single spaced typed is more what you would expect from a reasonably qualified GAL. 

I have a copy of a friend's custody evaluation through family relations which took six months to complete, and is 20 pages long--again, single spaced typed.  And when I look at my own custody evaluation, it took a year to complete and was 27 pages single spaced typed.  Each of these reports includes input from 15 - 20 witnesses.

How do you take a 14 year old boy who has spent his entire life in the primary care of his mother and remove him from the only home he has ever known based upon a three week investigation resulting in a one page report focused on a single topic:  parental alienation disorder, a diagnosis that doesn't even exist in the diagnostic manual for mental health disorders and which is widely known to be quack science--a report that includes lots of opinion, but no actual facts.  If that isn't a setup, I don't know what is.