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Showing posts with label AFCC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AFCC. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

JOURNALIST COREY DANIELS EXPOSES AFCC ABUSE IN THE CONNECTICUT JUDICIAL BRANCH!

Each year, the CT family courts decide the fates of the State's most vulnerable families, and it is no secret that children are dying while their families are bankrupted by the unethical and illicit services they are ordered to obtain. The purpose of the CT Task Force on Families in the Courts is to assess the systemic problems faced by families who have been victimized by the programs. The task force is supposed to make recommendations that ensure that (a) the court is able to offer fair and honest services that are (b) safe, efficient, and tax dollar friendly.
 

 
It would defeat the purpose of the task force if the professionals who created the problem oversaw it and controlled the outcome of the task force's recommendations.


The CT Legislature and the State Ethics Commission has passed certain laws and regulations requiring State vendors to be free from conflicts of interest, comply with open bidding process when vying to do business with the State, sign contracts and quality assurance and equal access waivers, etc. The reason why these laws exist is to protect consumers from exploitation, ensure that taxpayers are getting the best services for their tax dollars, and to ensure that organized crime does not pervade public services.

The public expects judges, court staff, and attorneys to not only abide by the law, but to uphold their duty to hold others accountable when they violate these laws. AFCC members, as public servants, have failed to even give the appearance of propriety either inside or outside the court:

(1) The AFCC has a history of illegal activity, running afoul of State and Federal laws in various jurisdictions. Historically, the AFCC has run afoul of the law and been suspended from doing business in multiple states including CA, CT, FL, KS, MS, etc. The AFCC headquarters (located in Courtroom 241 of the LA Family Court) was raided by authorities, and the court employees overseeing the AFCC's accounts in a "pay to play" scam were convicted of felonies and sent to prison. 

(2) It is a conflict of interest for CT to do business with the AFCC and its' CT Chapter. According to the Secretary of State and IRS, the AFCC and its Connecticut chapter are private corporations, family court industry trade associations which are owned and operated by CT judges, Judicial Branch staff who serve them, and the court industry professionals who appear before them. The businesses are is funded by tax payers through the Judicial Branch departments said AFCC affiliates work in to fund court projects and vendors that the AFCC affiliated public employees themselves oversee. The AFCC entities are also funded by "donations" and fees received from the same AFCC affiliated court professionals, but they do not disclose this to litigants or the State when doing business in the CT courts.

  • AFCC affiliated vendors are also allowed to run court programs with judges, and at the same time represent clients enrolled in them who frequently appear before those judges. This gives the court and the vendors and interest in the outcome of cases.



(3) Authorities confirm that in the past and presently, the AFCC operated in CT in violation of State and Federal law.  Most recently in Connecticut the Secretary of State confirmed both the AFCC and its CT Chapter are under investigation by  for failure to properly register to do business in the state. The IRS does not list the CT Chapter of the AFCC as an approved charity and it does not currently have an EIN # registered with the State, but none the less has continued to do business here. 

(4) AFCC Members working in the CT courts steer no bid, unwritten agreements and ill tracked public funding to AFCC programs and professionals. Since the AFCC and its' CT Chapter are improperly registered or unregistered, regulators are not aware that there is a need for them to ensure the State's most vulnerable families are safe. Under the leadership of various AFCC Judicial Branch members, the AFCC has received over $80,000 in funding from the Judicial Branch, yet the Judicial Branch is unable to produce a single contract or agreement with the AFCC to prove that the corporation properly engaged in the State's open bidding process. Therefore, we do not know if the AFCC affiliated vendors are giving taxpayers the best deal, and we do not know if the vendors are safe or discriminating against clients, and if they are, we have no proof that the AFCC businesses are properly insured and equipped to sustain the liability if victims choose to sue the state for violating their rights.

(5) AFCC services and affiliates in the CT courts unsafe. They have helped get serial killers and violent offenders custody of victims, bankrupted parents and children, and created a coercive environment for the honest judges and court professionals who would otherwise help victims of the fraud. It could reflect badly on the private interests of the corporate officers and the court if any member of the AFCC were disciplined for misconduct. No AFCC member in CT has ever been disciplined, despite the following examples of severely questionable services they provide:

  • AFCC Presenter Judge Barry Pinkus gave mass murderer Joshua Komisarjevsky custody of his 5 year old daughter, despite the fact that (a) Josh spent the past 5 years in prison for nighttime burglary and never knew the kid outside prison walls, (b) Josh wore a GPS bracelet to the hearing, (c) Josh was living in a halfway house for drug addicts with sex offenders, (d) Josh gave the kid to his parents to raise, even though he admitted on the record his parents facilitated his own rape as a child. A week later, Josh and another career criminal addict on parole he met in the halfway house raped and killed the Petit family women.
  • Susan Skipp Case: AFCC judge Lynda Munro gave custody of children to violent addict at the recommendation of AFCC custody evaluator Sidney Horowitz, despite the fact that Horowitz admitted to insurance billing fraud on the stand. Munro ordered Skipp to spend thousands of $ per month to purchase parenting time and counseling services from AFCC affiliates such as Visitation Solutions, Inc. who were also directly affiliated with Horowitz. Skipp filed for bankruptcy and so she has been starved out of her custody rights. Horowitz is now under investigation by the State Department of Health for his alleged misconduct on Susan's case. 
  • Paul Boyne Case: AFCC judges appointed AFCC member Horowitz and GAL Susan Hamilton onto the case, and paid them for services that were questionable and perhaps not provided. Munro then approved Horowitz's payment invoices, charged at more than twice the state rate, despite the lack of court order which was required to authorize her to do so.

(6)  AFCC Programs deliberately misuse funding and place children in homes with violent offenders.  Some of the Responsible Fatherhood, Access and Visitation and Department of Justice funded projects require judges to deliberately and arbitrarily reduce the amount of time fit parents spend with their kids, and instead place children in the custody of violent, unfit, and unwilling parents. Safe children do not need experts to assess and treat them for abuse they do not sustain, and they do not need a GAL or attorney to speak on their behalf, making safe children an undesirable demographic for the court industry professionals paid by these programs. For instance, some programs go directly into prisons to recruit fathers to sue for custody, or look for mothers who are poor drug addicts not willing or able to care for the kids they abandoned.  For these reasons, it is possible that only corrupt court professionals benefit from AFCC programs.



(7) The AFCC is cross affiliated with MANY pedophile advocates and militant fathers rights groups which target victims through the courts. Examples include:

  • The Children's Rights Council-Militant Fathers Rights group that has historically had many known pedophile advocates, even NAMBLA members on the board of directors.
  • Incest Promotor Warren Farrell, who published his "research" in skin rag Penthouse glorifying family sex, men having sex with their young daughters.
  • Pedophile advocate Dr. Richard Gardner, who manufactured the pedophile's legal defense of choice, Parental Alienation Syndrome. PAS is not a legitimate mental health condition, and it is not recognized by the APA or the AMA. PAS is a legal technique that allows pedophiles and violent offenders to shift the blame for their attacks onto victims and the advocates who try and rescue them. He committed suicide by stabbing himself in the heart.


(8) AFCC is a "Set Up To Fail" Business Provider. The following AFCC Directors, Presidents, Board Members, Presenters, and affiliates are also Judicial Branch employees/vendors who are responsible for overseeing the very problematic court programs and funding that the Family Court Task Force now seeks to "fix." Many of them also run the Court's GAL training program or sat on the 2002 Child Custody and Support Task Force which is responsible for much of the dysfunction we see today. *


 

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

AFCC INVOLVEMENT IN THE VERY HEART OF THE JUDICIARY!

Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 11:59:52 +0000
To: Giovannucci, Marilou<Marilou.Giovannucci@jud.ct.gov>
ReplyTo: mnowacki@aol.com
Subject: Re: Your phone messages

Ms. Gianvannucci:

Pursuant to the FOI Act, your duties in the judiciary are strictly administrative in nature.

The AFCC is not a division of the judiciary, but a registered independent organization with the Secretary of State's Office as of March 26, 2013.

You were listed in the papers filed by Mr. Robert Zaslow on March 26, 2013 with the Secretary of State's Office as President Elect as President Elect of the Connecticut Chapter of the AFCC.

In addition to the documents requested that you produce yesterday, Pursuant to the application of the FOI Act, I am asking you to produce all expense reports which were filed with the State of Connecticut which involved your reimbursement for expenses associated with your membership and participation of the creation of the AFCC, CT Chapter paperwork on a State of Connecticut computer or email address.

Robert Zaslow was listed on the papers submitted to the Secretary of State as a member of the Board of Directors and he indicated that there was a meeting of the AFCC Chapter Board of Directors on February 22, 2013.

I am requesting that your provide all communications which you either received or sent from your mailbox associated with the judiciary, specifically from your mailbox Marilou.Giovanucci@jud.ct.gov for any communications with any member of the Officers or Board of Directors of the CT AFCC Chapter, "The CT AFCC Coordinating Committee", or any of the 690 people you emailed commencing on the date of January 2010 through the date of your compliance with this FOI request.

Inasmuch as you participated in a panel discussion (Listed as Panel 37) at the Los Angeles AFCC Convention in between May 29 and June 1, 2013.

Since this AFCC activity is not a "job responsibility" associated with your position as Manager of Court operations, please provide the email which was sent to your supervisor which granted you permission for you to attend this conference and whether you took personal vacation time for the participation in a non-judicial function or whether the taxpayers of the State of Connecticut funded your trip to Los Angeles.

If there were expenses which were applied for reimbursement for you personally or any other members of the Officers or Board members of the AFCC which were submitted by you or through your offices, who are not employees of the State of Connecticut through grants of the judiciary to private contractors from 2010 to the date of compliance, whether through you or CPS budgets, for the GAL and AMC seminars conducted at Quinnipiac University (which were outline in the materials for AFCC 50th Anniversary Convention Workshop 53: Improving Connecticut's Child Advocates), please provide all "private contractor" reimbursements for participants in the GAL and AMC training seminars .

It is apparent that you, members of your staff, in an administrative capacity may have been asked by members of panel 37 (you and Karen Largent, LCSW) and panel 53 (The Honorable Lynda Munro, Sharon Wicks Dornfeld J.D., Howard Kreiger Ph.D. and Sydney Horowittz Ph.D.) the AFCC to prepare presentations for the panelists, the majority of whom are not employees of the State of Connecticticut's'Judiciary.


Pursuant to the application of the FOI Act, all records stored on State of Connecticut computers which are administrative in nature, relating to members of you and your staff which were allocated to the preparation for the AFCC CT Chapter meeting on April 12, 2013 you assisted in organizing as a Connecticut State employee.

Included in this FOI request for records, is any payments which may have been made to the AFCC for the attendance of judiciary employees to attend the AFCC conference at taxpayer expense which may have been approved by you.

Any payments from judiciary funds for panelists from Connecticut Judiciary funding for the April 12, 2013 CT AFCC First Annual Conference must be also produced as part of the FOI compliance. and all records stored on State of Connecticut computers.

All internal communications you may have sent or received from you mailbox Marilou.Giovanucci@jud.ct.gov relevant to the April 19, 2013 decision by the Committee on Judicial Ethics which raised issues of potential violations of the Canons of Judicial Conduct which you either sent or received from April 19, 2013 to the present between Officers or members of the Board of Directors must be produced as part of the FOI compliance.

Similarly, all relevant communications sent or received by you from your Connecticut judiciary supplied mailbox relevant to the manpower allocated to the physical preparation and reproduction of materials distributed to AFCC members at the Los Angeles AFCC Convention must be produced at this time.

It is quite apparent that significant time of employees of the Judiciary of the State of Connecticut and financial resources of the taxpayers of the State of Connecticut have been expended on the GAL/AMC training, the AFCC CT Chapter's First Annual Conference on April 12, 2013 and the preparation and attendance at the AFCC Conference.

On April 19, 2013, the Committee on Judicial Ethics issued four advisory opinions regarding the close association between judges and lawyers raises serious issues of disclosure and conflicts of interests which compromises the "integrity and impartiality" of the judiciary members---including the support staff who may have been directed to utilize State of Connecticut Resources to support a non-judiciary function of the AFCC.

Ms. Giovanucci, you are reminded to the obligations to acknowlege the receipt of this FOI request within four days of its receipt with an expression of intent to comply within thirty days to avoid an FOI Commission complaint from being filed.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation in compliance with the FOI Act.

Please do not hesitate to call or email me with any questions you might have about the requests for compliance with the FOI Act.

I am copying Attorney Melissa Farley on this communication in order to ensure efficiency on the FOI compliance requests previously lodged with Attorney Farley.

Cordially,


Michael Nowacki