In surprisingly harsh terms, an anonymous editorial posted today on The Hartford Courant website attacks Representative Minnie Gonzalez for a strongly worded email she sent to a constituent criticizing Rep. Rosa Rebimbas. The Hartford Courant editorial further speaks of the Gonzalez email as "insulting" and "disgraceful" and proposes that Rep. Gonzalez should be sanctioned publicly by the House.
I still have not had the opportunity to watch the CT-N video of the Friday, April 10, 2015 hearing and so I personally cannot comment upon Rep. Rosa Rebimbas' behavior on that day which resulted in this email. However, I will say that granted how frustrated victims of family court feel about the sufferings that they have endured and the need for reform, I would hardly call the email itself anything but a fairly minor blip on the screen.
Further, I think we have all experienced enough of life at this point to know when particularly rotten individuals, such as the Republicans in this particular matter, attempt to derail the focus which should be on a serious and important matter of family court injustice by hooting and hollering about a relatively minor matter, i.e. this email, and making out that it is second in terms of atrocities to the holocaust itself.
The disgrace here is not in regard to a relatively minor and uninteresting piece of hyperbole on the part of Rep. Minnie Gonzalez, the disgrace is that the Republicans did not have sufficient good judgment and character to overlook this minor disruption in the scheme of things in order to proceed with business and do the jobs that they were hired to do, particularly when we had such significantly important bills on the docket such as the one in regard to videotaping the police and in connection to protecting the victims of domestic violence.
It is laughable that The Hartford Courant would describe Rep. Minnie Gonzalez use of the Central American equivalent of "every dog has its day" or "every pig has his Saturday" as some kind of vicious "threat" against Rep. Rebimbas.
I mean, please--get real. You want to know what a real threat is? A real threat is when you get a summons from a marshall asking you to respond to a debt collection complaint from your former family court attorney including a lien on your house which will result in a foreclosure, a direct consequence of judicial abuse in your recent divorce.
That is a threat--not some silly remark about pigs.
You know, every day I get up and act as parent to my children. Every once in a while during the course of my role as a parent in these past few years, my ex husband has made threats to take me back to court and sue me for custody of my children, implying what a bad mother I am. This does not excuse me from being a parent.
Likewise, just because a few people have a hot under the collar interchange during the course of their work on the Judiciary Committee, this does not justify shutting the entire Committee down.
What is this--Kindergarten?
I was particularly disappointed to see The Hartford Courant's name on this piece of nonsense editorial, but I was not in the least surprised. Contrary to their journalistic ethics, The Hartford Courant has been maintaining a cozy relationship with the CT Judicial Branch by participating in the CT Judicial Branch's Judicial-Media Committee. This has meant that several top CEOs and journalists from The Hartford Courant, other print media around CT, and also television in the State of Connecticut have been conducting regular meetings with Judges, attorneys and other CT Judicial Branch employees ostensibly to improve the relationship between the CT Judicial Branch and the media and to increase media access to legal proceedings.
In reality, what these meetings have done is make the media a captive audience while the CT Judicial Branch has force fed it with their official lines regarding their policies, actions, and excuses for the Branch's widespread corruption. Imagine if any political party or special interest group in the State of Connecticut had anything like this kind of immediate access to members of the media--how remarkable would that be?
What The Hartford Courant is not telling you here is that such a special relationship between itself and the CT Judicial Branch is a complete violation of its journalistic ethics and represents a deeper and more widespread well of corruption than anything Rep. Minnie Gonzalez could concoct.
Many family court litigants during recent years have been talking about how important it is to get their stories out to the media and yet they have not been taken seriously when they've approached journalists with their stories.
In essence, for the last decade or more, there has been a complete media blackout on the struggles of individual litigants in the CT Family Courts although their stories of injustice and exploitation are compelling.
Why do we hear of the injustices in so many other arenas but not in the area of the corrupt CT Family Court System? I'll tell you why--because media outlets such as The Hartford Courant long ago sold out to the CT Judicial Branch for the ego enhancing privilege of rubbing shoulders with the CT Judicial leadership whom they appear to worship blindly.
They should be ashamed.
The Hartford Courant should look to itself and its own glaring flaws before daring to criticize a leader such as Rep Minnie Gonzalez who is, though clearly very human, doing the best she can to assist the most vulnerable.
Rosa Rebimbas started all this by publicly insulting Gonzalez for no reason and wrongly trying to treat the public hearing like a trial, which it's not. It was live and I would have fast forwarded over her comments if I could because Rosa Rebimbas just likes to hear herself talk, but no one else does. Her demeanor was offensive...not professional. Maybe she should be sanctioned. Maybe they all should be passed over for re-election for allowing this nonsense to take up all their time. It was completely irrelevant and did not serve their constituents at all.
ReplyDeleteActually, Minnie is giving all of you the impression that she is fighting for you and on your side. At the end of the day, she voted for Chase Rogers. And, I would add that nothing about your cases will change because of her so called advocacy. Also, Minnie has a lot of colleagues that she caucuses with who are lawyers. Do you really think that she asked any of them to take your cases. The answer is no. Minnie is nothing but blue smoke and mirrors. She is using your cases to do nothing but grandstand. And, she is so acidic that she achieves very little even she did go to bat for you in a real way. You are being fooled by the bluster...
ReplyDeleteYou may be correct in what you say re genuine help versus fake help--point well taken--but given the mentality of the legal community, any criticism of the family court system no matter how matter how minor would be characterized as "acidic" and "bluster". For me, personally, I am certainly looking at direct results. Talk is cheap. I am specifically going to be asking in the months that come how many individuals were assisted by state legislators in regard to their cases, how did Bill #494 make a specific difference in terms of averting problems, to what extent has there been a reduction in these cases of excessive billing to the tune of hundreds of thousands. So, I am on your page in regard to looking beyond the rhetoric to the actual reality of change and reform within the CT Judicial system. So I hear you in terms of wanting to make sure that there is no BS here because we will not accept it.
DeleteCatherine, all of you are being fooled by Rep. Gonzalez. She is simply using these cases to grandstand. The beauty of it is that all the people testifying get to vent at the system and Rep. Gonzalez appears to be fighting for them. In fact, the opposite is true. It is all nothing more than a dog and pony show. And, actually, Rep. Gonzalez is so acidic that even if she could get help, not too many people in positions in government would help her simply because she is not well liked. In any event, no one on the Judiciary Committee that I am aware of has or will file an appearance for anyone who testified during the Chase Rogers hearing. Despite all the feigned sympathy, the reality is they just want to give the impression that they are listening. In a way it is patronizing to hear them give that impression because at the end of the day, they will offer you no help.
DeleteI don't find Rep. Minnie Gonzalez "acidic" so I'm not sure what exactly you are talking about. Rep. Gonzalez, along with other members of the Judiciary, during the course of examining the widespread problems in family court has asked straightforward and direct questions. Nothing the matter with that!
DeleteTo my knowledge, Rep. Rebimbas attempted to discredit a non custodial mother/probation officer called Diane Hart, when she spoke about her experiences in the family court before the judiciary committee. The GAL on Diane's case - Atty. John Major - testified at her Child Custody Trial that he spoke to Diane's therapist (whom he identified by name) who purportedly said she was unfit to be reunited with her children. This statement wound up in the decision and order of Judge Gerard Adelman which denied her access to her children. Diane's therapist later gave her a sworn statement that Atty. John Major had never attempted or been in any sort of communication with same named therapist and that was not the professional opinion at all. To the contrary. This is a major allegation of perjury. Rep. Rebimbas did not want to hear this crystal clear evidence of corruption by GAL John Major. Why? Because Rep. Rebimbas derives most of her income from working as a solo practitioner Family Court attorney. Much of her work is as a GAL herself. She is part of the problem. She is also a Director of a company called "Guardian ad Litem Services". When Diane Hart was upset after the Hearing, Minnie texted her that Rep. Rebimbas is busy brown-nosing judges etc because she is a GAL so there is no point trying to talk to her. Instead of focusing on the clear CONFLICT OF INTEREST of Rep. Rebimbas being on the judiciary committee (separation of powers?) the Hartford Courant make racist attacks on the prototypical passion of a Puerto Rican politician who called a spade a spade. While Minnie may not have Rep. Rebimbas education and eloquence, she has a lot of heart and has done more for the people of Connecticut than Rep. Rebimbas ever has... and for the right reasons. By the way.... Minnie has helped get lawyers for many people and to say she does little is about as ignorant as attacking her for having a dialect.
ReplyDeleteI just finished listening to the section with the inquiries Minnie was making of Justice Chase during the Judiciary Hearing of April 10, 2015 Unfortunately, it has taken me a while to get to this section because I have a very bad internet connection. I was very offended by Rep. Rebimbas overall and I share in the general indignation people feel about her blanket denial that there are any problems with the Judicial Branch as well as her laughable suggestion that litigants should not complain about the lack of conference rooms at court and plan on meeting in their attorney's offices instead. Oh, and I also find simply hilarious the implication that the problems connected with the family court system have no relation to the judges and that attorneys are solely responsible for the corruption that has been going on. Talking about a white washing! In regard to Rebimbas' comments, I am also offended about the implication that Diane Wiest had somehow been dishonest in her presentation of the incident that occurred in Court. I am very familiar with Diane's case and it is another one of those gross miscarriages of justice. I have every respect for what Diane has to tell me about what goes on in her case. For Rep. Rebimbas to bring up the name of a litigant in a current case and put that case at risk by holding her up to public scrutiny, I think is wrong. But again, that is the level of disrespect that people like Rep. Rebimbas who are seeking to deny the reality of the corruption of family court demonstrate. So no surprise there. I will say definitively that it is absolutely disrespectful of every person who for the past several years has come before the Judiciary Committee and provided testimony for Rep. Rebimbas to state that there was anything at all inappropriate in Rep. Gonzalez' demeanor or behavior or course of questioning in connection to the hearing on the reappointment of Justice Chase T. Rogers. Rep. Gonzalez was respectful and restrained in regard to her questioning of Justice Chase T. Rogers, and I will say she was also patient and tolerant in the face of Justice Rogers' responses which were in my view evasive and non-responsive in general. The attempt by the leadership of the Judiciary Committee to scapegoat and publicly shame and humiliate Rep. Gonzalez is disgraceful, is is easily seen through as a slanderous campaign and it shows profound disrespect for the many hundreds of litigants throughout the State who have shown the courage to speak up regarding the injustices they have experienced in the Family Courts in the State of Connecticut despite direct intimidation from those Courts.
DeleteCan you name for me any case where Rep. Rebimbas was the GAL?
DeleteAs to Rosa Rebimbas, I saw nothing offensive other than disagreement on matters in which reasonable people can disagree. I suppose Rep. Rebimbas could have simply said "I hear you" and "You have been heard" and it would have fooled everyone into thinking she is working for you. I think that the views on this page show just how easily the public can be fooled by petty grandstanders who are using you.....
DeleteI think that you are one of the petty grandstanders if you really want to know. I certainly thought it was offensive to hold attorneys solely responsible for the current problems with family court and to excuse the Connecticut Judicial Branch from all responsibility for the problems that have arisen there. Judges are responsible for enforcing the law and when they choose to ignore it or act independently of the law or when they choose to engage in legislating in violation of the separation of powers clearly they bear responsibility as well.
DeleteIf you look up Rep. Rebimbas on the CT Judicial Website under Attorney Case List, you should find a list of every case she is on. If you click on the link to these cases, you will see whether she is listed as the Attorney for the parties or as the GAL. I hope that is helpful.
Delete