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.

ANATOMY OF A CUSTODY SWITCHING CASE: THE KATHI SORRENTINO STORY! PART I!

In headlines recently--January 23, 2015--a young teenager, Storm Sorrentino, who had been missing for at least a month, resurfaced a few miles from his mother's home.  According to police, "Storm was sitting on a stonewall, cleanly dressed and possibly waiting for a ride." 

 

Not long afterwards, his mother, Kathi Sorrentino, was released from Niantic prison. Judge Gerard Adelman had placed her there because he said he believed she refused to reveal where her son was, even though Kathi vociferously stated she did not know.  Throughout the entire ordeal, Ms. Sorrentino repeatedly stated she didn't know where her son was and was concerned about his whereabouts.

 

Reports of this case stated that Ms. Sorrentino and her ex Saverio "Sam" Sorrentino are engaged in a bitter custody battle over their son, Storm, and that Mr. Sorrentino had just been awarded custody last May.  Digging deeper into this matter, it has become clear that this is much more than just a custody battle.  This is the story of a custody switching scheme made possible by a combination of quack psychology, judicial negligence and bullying. 

 

Like many of these cases in family court, the Sorrentino case is not a recent situation, but one that has been going on since 2006 and has resulted in approximately 759 motions as of this date. This more recent custody matter began on May 13, 2013 when Kathi's ex husband Sam Sorrentino submitted a request to the Court to file a Motion For Contempt in regard to custody.  He stated that Kathi Sorrentino had "violated the parties Parenting Agreement" and "alienated the parties children" from him.  In his request for relief, he asked to be given custody of their son, Storm.

 

But lets not be naïve.  The real explanation for why Mr. Sorrentino submitted his motion for contempt was primarily because Kathi Sorrentino had gone to court requesting  more child support.  In the vast majority of these custody switching schemes, it is this request for money that precipitates the decision a father makes to go for full custody. 

 

[As a point of interest, you might wonder why Mr. Sorrentino filed a "request" to file a motion instead of the motion itself. When a case is contentious, many judges will issue an order stating that no party in the case can file any motions without first requesting permission of the Court. The hope is that this will stop litigants from constantly filing more and more motions.  However, the reality is that if there are sufficient problems in the case, all this does is double the number of motions as parties both request to submit motions, then submit the motions, because judges rarely deny such requests.  True to form, if you look at the case detail for this case, it is full of “requests”!] 

 

When he saw the motion, the judge should simply have denied permission for the motion for contempt for one simple reason.  There are two children in this case—one, an older sister, who is already in college and out of the home.  So her custody is not an issue.  The other child, Storm, was around 13 years old at the time.   Storm had grown up living with his mother who had been a full time mother for more than 20 years.  As Storm made repeatedly clear in both written and verbal communications, he wished to stay with her. 

 

Unfortunately, instead of using common sense and denying the request, the Court permitted the motion and thus touched off another lengthy round of litigation which continues up to the present.  The end result of the litigation has been that custody of Storm was transferred to the father despite the fact that this is not what Storm wanted.  But who cares what the child wants, right!

What is ironic is that one of the central factors in the outbreak of this custody battle had to do with what Storm wanted. 

 
Apparently, in the Fall of 8th grade, Storm had become interested in going to a private high school called Notre Dame in Fairfield, CT for which he was hoping to get a scholarship.   In preparation, he decided to go to an open house for the school, and this was where the shit hit the fan because before telling his Mom what his plans were, Storm shared them with his father.  Mr. Sorrentino proceeded to tell Storm that he thought it was a good idea and to go ahead.  However, later on in court, Mr. Sorrentino denied that he had given his son permission.  Instead, he said that Kathi Sorrentino had made all the arrangements without his permission, and cited it as an example of parental alienation.   

 

Imagine being this young man—you can’t even hope and dream for your future without your Dad using it as an excuse to go to court and attack your Mom. 

 

I will also say I have seen this frequently, in my own case as well as others, that when mothers try to improve their children's chances of success by sending them to prep schools, either through a scholarship or the assistance of grandparents, abusive men like to use that as a means to attack the mother.  I mean, God forbid their children gain the advantage of a private school education!  



Such fathers will either use their power to refuse as a means to wrest financial concessions from their ex-wives, or else as in the Sorrentino case, use it as a way to seize custody by claiming they were not consulted, even when the evidence shows they were—another testimony to the concept that no good deed by a mother will go unpunished.

Eventually, in the Sorrentino case,  the father’s motion for contempt appeared before Judge Corinne Klatt on November 8, 2013 who then decided to appoint a Guardian Ad Litem, Dr. Eric Fraser, Miami Institute of Psychology grad, and an expert on the quack theory of parental alienation syndrome which is in standard usage for custody switching schemes perpetrated by abusers and their allies.  And from what I gather from Dr. Eric Fraser, there isn't a custody switching scheme this psychologist doesn’t like. 

 

When she did this, Judge Klatt made the statement that she was interested in hearing from Storm regarding what he wanted stating “ What I want to know is what the child is thinking, and then I’ll issue orders..”  And further she stated, “I don’t know who to believe, that’s why I’m going to listen to what a guardian ad litem’s going to say – hear from the child.” 

 

The question we are left with then is, granting the evidence of recent events, did anyone hear the child? 

 

Apparently, no. 

 

Storm did not wish to have a change in custody.  He stated that repeatedly. 

 

As it stands, he spent two months at Notre Dame High School where he was happy and successful, until his father withdrew him and transferred him to Newtown High School.  So what happened to what Judge Klatt said about wanting to know what the child was thinking?  Was that all a scam? 


At this point, it is my understanding that Storm is being told, among other things, that he can never see his mother or sister again, and this is why he runs away from home. He is also being told that his mother will be thrown in jail if he sees her.  How can this situation ever be considered in the best interests of a child.


More on this story in Part II.

 

ANNE STEVENSON REPORTS GEORGIA COURT GIVING CUSTODY TO POSSIBLE SEXUAL PREDATORS!

"ATLANTA, June 26, 2014 — According to court records, throughout 2011-2012, “Jane’s” children (then ages 2 and 7) repeatedly insisted and showed credible evidence to child psychologist Nancy McGarrah, Ph.D and Ann Shannon, LCSW, that that their father made suicidal and homicidal plans with them, that he routinely watched child porn with them and sexually assaulted them during overnight visits.

Court orders show that Cobb County, Georgia Family Court Judge C Latain Kell has repeatedly ordered Jane’s children back into the unsupervised care of their alleged rapist, even after the Walton County Department of Family And Children’s Services (DFCS) issued a report substantiating emotional and sexual abuse allegations against the father.

Perhaps in retrospect, the Atlanta based divorcee would not have cooperated with child protection authorities if she had known from the start that it would cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal industry professional fees, while at the same time, creating a perverse incentive for the Court to order the children to spend even more time with their alleged attacker."

For more information on this article, please click on the link below:

http://www.commdiginews.com/life/georgia-court-may-have-given-sex-predator-custody-of-child-victims-19453/#7fQ6RXUdQ0mobPXQ.99