WHAT DOES JUSTICE FOR JENNIFER ACTUALLY MEAN?

In a Court filing requesting a restraining order against her ex-husband, Fotis Dulos, Jennifer Farber-Dulos stated, "I am afraid of my husband.  He is dangerous and ruthless when he believes that he has been wronged.  During the course of our marriage, he has told me about sickening revenge fantasies and plans to cause physical harm to those who have wronged him."  Judge Nelson-Heller denied the request for a restraining order, and in retrospect we all wish she hadn't.  Of course, with a man intent upon murder, it's not very likely a restraining order will stop him.  Still...

When I reviewed the Dulos case, primarily through reading articles published by The Hartford Courant, I wondered if there was anything about Fotis Dulos which could have warned people in advance of what he was capable of. If so, you certainly weren't going to get it from Dr. Stephen Humphrey who was Fotis Dulos' therapist.  Dr. Humphrey did a psychological examination of Fotis Dulos on behalf of the Court and determined that he "had no psychopathology" and presents "as gregarious and confident."  At this point, we'd all like to know how he drew such an absurd conclusion.  

As it turns out, Dr. Humphrey solely used one test--the PAI test (Personality Assessment Inventory) and met with him for 20 hours.  Apparently, the PAI can test for Somatic Complaints, Anxiety, Anxiety-Related Disorders, Depression, Mania, Paranoia, Schizophrenia, Borderline Features, Antisocial Features, Alcohol Problems, and Drug Problems. It is a self report inventory with 344 items that are answered on a four point scale.  What can I say? From my understanding, a psychological evaluation consists of numerous tests, not just one--some of them self report and others not. 

To be certain of this, I did a quick search of the internet and this is what I got from Psychology Today, "Psychological testing and evaluation consists of a series of tests that help determine the cause of mental health symptoms and disorders, to determine the correct diagnosis and follow up with the appropriate course of treatment."  In other words, "a series of tests", not just one.  When I had my last psychological evaluation for family court, I took five different tests.  How is it that Dr. Humphreys just used one?  Did he take one look at the charming Fotis Dulos and say why bother?  Isn't that typical of how narcissists hoodwink not only mental health professionals and court personnel as well?  I'd say it is pretty classic.  

Were there any other indications that Fotis Dulos was capable of murder? For one thing, just before the divorce he purchased an unregistered gun in Florida without a permit.  Jennifer brought this to the Court's attention in one of her filings with the Court.  In it she wrote, "I am fearful of my and my children's safety, especially because he has a handgun in the house."  And further she stated, "I asked my husband to immediately remove the gun from the house, and he insisted that he was keeping the gun for protection."  Once the divorce was filed, Fotis Dulos furned the gun over to the Farmington police and subsequently never picked it back up because he didn't have a permit for it.  You have to wonder why he was running around with a gun just before the divorce.

In another incident Jennifer reported that Fotis Dulos threatened to run her over with a car.  These kinds of incidents are hard to prove because without a witness, they are he said, she said.  However, if that actually happened, it would have far worse implications than in most situations. This is because, in September 2010, Jennifer's mother-in-law was accidentally actually struck and killed by a car the nanny was driving in the driveway of the family home.  It's striking that this kind of scenario rose again within the context of the divorce.  In fact, knowing what we know now, it takes on an ominous tone.

Otherwise, in reading the Courant, I can't say there was anything else that warned me of what Fotis Dulos was capable of.  I do think one incident alerts me to the fact that Fotis Dulos couldn't care less about Jennifer or avoiding unnecessary confrontation.  Specifically, at one point, Fotis had all his kids baptized against Jennifer's wishes.  This is particularly offensive since Jennifer was Jewish and by Jewish law, since it goes by the matriarchal line, the children were Jewish.  In addition, before Hilliard Farber died, Fotis Dulos told his father-in-law that if he didn't keep the money flowing, Fotis would take the kids to Greece and never come back. This is the "congenial" guy which Dr. Humphreys was talking about.  

Given all this, there is no doubt that Fotis Dulos was a jerk and the divorce triggered him. Jennifer Farber-Dulos absolutely outgunned him financially and she clearly felt the need to defend herself.  He spent $45,000 in a year on the divorce, while she spent $69,000 per month.  She was able to get the Court to limit his access to the children and require that he have supervised limitation.  How?  She pointed out that he had allowed the kids to have contact with his mistress, Michelle Troconis against Court orders, and then told the kids to lie about it.  For the rest of us dealing with an abuser who don't have that kind of money and status, no way could we cut off our kid's other parent by making claims like that.  Ordinarily, the Court couldn't care less.  In my case, for six years my ex refused to adhere to medical guidelines for my disabled children's care and the Court didn't do anything about it.  

So we are standing there totally shocked that Jennifer was able to impose limited and supervised visitation with the kids on such patently weak grounds.  If we objected to our ex parading around a mistress in front of our kids, we'd be told by the Court to move on or get over it.  I will say, you may have the ability to grind someone down, but is it wise under the circumstances to do so, particularly when they may crack and do something as horrific as Fotis Dulos did? Bottom line, divorce is an vulnerable and unstable time for most people.  It is not the time for extreme accusations or extreme custody orders--at least not without a solid basis. Why try to push people over the edge?

Returning to the question of what does justice for Jennifer mean.  Historically, if we could rewind the clock, I think it would have meant handling the Dulos divorce more equitably and not allowing it to become money driven.  In the present, I believe it means preserving Jennifer Dulos character and reputation.  This has not been done, and to the extent that it has not been done, the murderer wins.

From the start of the Dulos divorce case, Fotis Dulos tried to smear Jennifer Farber-Dulos reputation by calling her crazy.  In a Hartford Courant article of May 30, 2019, less than a week after her death, reporters stated, "Dulos also made serious allegations against his wife saying she was an unfit mother because she was taking medications and had been treated for mental illness and had a relative that committed suicide."  Fotis Dulos made this statement because he felt it would give him traction in Family Court where accusations of this kind can still be fatal to a mother's attempt to retain custody of her children.  

Under the ADA signed by President Bush in 1990 discrimination against people based upon the ADA is prohibited by law.  Yet discrimination is alive and well in the family courts of Connecticut at the present time.  If we were to talk about justice for Jennifer, what we can do now to give her justice posthumously, it would be to absolutely prohibit statements like the one Dulos made equating having a mental illness or anyone in the family with a mental illness to being an unfit mother.  How disgraceful that the Court allowed it then.  How disgraceful that they continue to allow it now.

The other thing I would like to point out is that Judge Nelson-Heller sealed the Dulos custody report and Dr. Stephen Herman's testimony in regard to that report.  Then there was the incident on February 15, 2024 where Michelle Troconis posted the sealed custody report on her computer screen for all to see. Carrie Luft reported her actions and Michelle was charged with contempt.  On March 6, 2024, Taylor Hartz reported this incident in The Hartford Courant as follows:  "Apparently, the page Michelle was looking at included part of the psychological report of Jennifer Dulos.  It referenced the name of a particular doctor and the words Borderline Personality Disorder."  

This information, including the diagnosis for Jennifer Dulos, was placed on the warrant for Michelle Troconis' arrest.  Subsequently, the report that Jennifer Dulos had been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder was stated repeatedly in other Hartford Courant articles. Why?  I thought the content of the custody report was sealed.  It was entirely possible for Carrie Luft to report on the incident without mentioning the diagnosis which was part of Jennifer Dulos' private medical information.  The same goes for the arrest warrant and the later Hartford Courant reports.  By disclosing the diagnosis, Carrie Luft, the warrant, the newspaper were all acting in contempt of the Court order sealing the contents of the custody report, just the same as Michelle was.  They should all be charged.

Why do I care about that?  Applying this diagnosis to Jennifer Dulos is simply defamatory.  Find me a mother whom the Court has demonized, and she will be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Seriously, the mere existence of this diagnosis in the custody report leads me to wonder whether Family Court was indeed setting Jennifer Dulos up to lose custody as Fotis Dulos and Michelle speculated.  BPD is the diagnosis given to any troublesome woman who dares to stand up for herself.  Its sexist political history and implications are extensive and decades long. 

Ultimately, l find it hard to believe that BPD was Jennifer's diagnosis.  Across the board friends of Jennifer have talked about what a great person she was.  Here is one person's description of Jennifer, "She was lovely, kind, and shy and a little funny and very private and very quiet."  She was a person who had many friends and worked well with teachers and administrators at the school where her kids got their education.  Suffice it to say, a person with a Borderline Personality Disorder is not at all like that and I'm not going to defile Jennifer's memory by defining it further.  All I have to say is that justice for Jennifer would have meant not allowing that diagnosis to make it into public view.  I am asking how it did, given that it is information from a sealed custody report.  

Meanwhile, Fotis Dulos, the killer, supposedly had no psychopathology.  It certainly makes you wonder how psychiatry is weaponized and distorted within the family court system.

Every once in a while, I drive back and forth over Avon Mountain and I see the shrine for Jennifer Dulos.  It is a very touching demonstration of love and caring for the memory of Jennifer Dulos.  But it isn't enough.  If we want Justice for Jennifer and for others just like Jennifer, we have to go further.  We have to hold the Judicial System accountable for their mistakes and we need to demand that the same things that happened to Jennifer don't happen to the next person.  That's what Justice for Jennifer actually means.

MICHELLE TROCONIS: THE FIGHT OVER THE CUSTODY REPORT!

On Friday, March 1, 2024, Michelle Troconis was found guilty of all the six counts she was charged with, i.e. conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of conspiracy to tamper with physical evidence, two counts of tampering with physical evidence and one count of second-degree hindering prosecution.  The basis for the conviction was grounded in DNA evidence from the trash bags Fotis Dulos dropped off along Albany Avenue in Hartford while Michelle was in the car.  It also came from interviews Michelle participated in with police at different times.  There was other evidence, but my point is that very little evidence arose from the Dulos custody report.  Very little evidence came in from assessments as to whether the victim, Jennifer Dulos, was or was not a nice person.  Certainly, the whole "Gone Girl" concept never made it to the stand and so pursuing that line of thought was a waste of time.  Why then did Attorney Jon Schoenhorn spend so much of his time (and by reference his client's money) pursuing the custody report and associated hearing transcript which added nothing to Michelle Troconis' defense? I think that's where thoughts of skullduggery in the judicial system arise, which Michelle was indirectly hinting at by posting articles on the disgraced medical examiner, Henry Lee. My primary question, talking about skullduggery, is why didn't Attorney Schoenhorn simply tell Michelle that the custody report and hearing transcript were irrelevant? After all, what could possibly be in the Dulos custody report which could exonerate Michelle?  Logically, nothing.

It is with this question in mind that I will now examine the issue of the Dulos custody report because it tells you a lot about how the legal system works, or doesn't work, depending upon your viewpoint. Here it is important to note that there are two forms of evidence that Michelle Troconis and her attorney were attempting to access.  First, there was the custody report itself.  Second, there was the transcript of the hearings where Dr. Stephen Herman provided testimony in regard to his custody report.  The custody report doesn't in itself provide complete information.  It is only when it is combined with the Court testimony of its author that legal professionals can fully understand the implications of the report and how it will impact future custody decisions.  When the author of the report is on the stand, attorneys for both the plaintiff and the defendant have the opportunity to challenge the content and hold it up for scrutiny.  When we hear of the legal controversy over this issue related to Michelle's criminal trial, it is important to note that Michelle and her legal team obtained the custody report quite promptly.  Attorney Jon Schoenhorn requested a copy of the custody report in March 2021 and received a copy of it a month later in April 2021.  Where the controversy arose was in his attempt to obtain copies of the transcript of the hearing on the report which took place on March 14-15, 2019.  This is where Attorney Jon Schoenhorn faced one obstruction after the other, some of them, interestingly enough, of his own making.  Why?  Was he doing that deliberately?

The sequence of events is as follows.  In March 2021, Attorney Jon Schoenhorn asked the court clerk for a copy of the transcript of the hearings in regard to the custody report. In response, the clerk said no because it was sealed from the public. To verify that point, Attorney Schoenhorn went through the case file and was unable to find the Judge's sealing order.  He pointed that out and again asked for a copy of the transcript.  This is when the Attorney General of the State of Connecticut decided to intervene.  This is quite puzzling.  Why would such a high ranking official immediately become involved in a matter like this?  In my case, I had ten legal documents disappear, not just one, and that situation was simply handled by one of the judges in my case.  The fact that William Tong immediately jumped to attention and investigated the missing sealing order right away is quite striking.  It tells you how much attention Michelle's conspiracy trial was accorded all the way through the judicial system right to the top.

I also want to take some time out to make a point that has been on my mind for a long time related to Attorney General William Tong.  Beginning in 2013, dozens of family court litigants made their way to the judiciary committee of the CT State Legislature and presented testimony regarding the corruption, exploitation, and dysfunction they experienced in the CT Family Court system.  In response, they were mocked, disrespected, and generally disbelieved and treated as though they were crazy.  In 2018, during William Tong's tenure as Chair of the Judiciary Committee, he presided over hearings where he was particularly rude, disrespectful and uncaring of the family court victims who came to provide testimony of the tragic and horrific experiences they'd had in family court.  In particular, Tong demanded that people who gave testimony remove T-shirts they were wearing which expressed their views, a demand for which he had absolutely no legal basis.  In fact, it violated their first amendment rights to freedom of speech. I can't help thinking that if the Judiciary Committee had exercised a modicum of wisdom in respecting the effort it took for these advocates to come to the State Capital and speak up about the legal abuses of family court, if they had only taken that testimony seriously and passed essential reforms at that time, Jennifer Dulos might still be alive today.  Instead, ironically, we have the infamous William Tong, who I believe gained his current position as Attorney General by frustrating the hopes of family court reform advocates, intervening in the details of the prosecution of Michelle Troconis.  It is interesting how everything intersects.  

Anyway, getting back to the main point, Attorney General William Tong investigated the missing sealing order.  He found that there was a public sealing order, but due to clerical error it wasn't properly posted in the case file.  He also stated that due to clerical error, the entire transcript of the hearing that day was sealed including the discussion about closing the courtroom and sealing Dr. Herman's testimony.  In fact, the only part of the transcript that should have been sealed was Dr. Herman's testimony, not the hearing on the motion to seal Dr. Herman's testimony.  That's quite a bit of clerical error.  Just like the ten documents which disappeared from my file was the result of clerical error.  What the clerical error in the Dulos case was hiding is that the courtroom was closed illegally during Dr. Herman's testimony and the transcript of the hearing was also sealed illegally.  What a convenient clerical error.  In this case, and in my own case of the missing ten documents, like Michelle, you start to think maybe there is some skullduggery involved here.

So how was the court closed and the transcript sealed illegally.  Apparently, if you wish to close the courtroom and seal a transcript, you are required to provide a 14 day public notice in advance and provide a record of a compelling reason to override the public interest in judicial transparency.  This was not done.  Presiding Judge Donna Nelson-Heller simply ignored the legal requirements and did what she wanted to do because she had the power and she could.  Now, I will acknowledge that it is standard to seal custody reports and the court transcripts of testimony by the authors of those reports.  In fact, the custody report in my case was sealed and I was glad that it was.  Who wants all that private information, much of it detailed mental health evaluations, not only of the parents but also the children, available to the public.  Of course, no one wants that.  On the other hand, the law is the law, and it is intended to be obeyed.  There are proper steps that are supposed to be taken according to state statute if you intend to seal information from the public.  They were crafted as a consequence of lengthy negotiations with the media and private citizens after considerable abuses related to the issue. Yet this cavalier disregard for legal requirements is typical of family court judges.  They simply do whatever they want to do regardless of the law, regardless of case law, and regardless of the CT Practice Book which is supposed to guide their actions and their decisions.  The failure of judges to obey the law is what has undermined the public trust in the legal system and led to the family court reform protests of 2013-2018.

In an attempt to access these court transcripts, Attorney Jon Schoenhorn submitted motions to two other Superior Court judges asking them to overturn Judge Nelson-Heller's sealing order.  But again, why?  Of what possible value could the transcripts be when it came to Michelle's defense?  Help me here, because I seriously have no idea.  Both of these Superior Court Judges denied Attorney Schoenhorn's motions based upon Valvo v. Freedom of Information Commission which declared it illegal for one Superior Court judge to overturn another Superior Court judge's decisions.  I have to say even I knew that.  How is it that Attorney Schoenhorn didn't know?  Can he honestly say he was ignorant of this fundamental legal insight?  I find that hard to believe.  What was he doing?  Putting on a big act for Michelle instead of just telling her this transcript won't help you in the least?  Next, Attorney Schoenhorn took his request to the Supreme Court and again asked for access to the transcripts.  In response, the Supreme Court asked why Attorney Schoenhorn didn't simply go to criminal court with his request.  Exactly!  Why didn't he?  The end result is Michelle Troconis wasted her time during her criminal trial looking at a custody report, and putting herself at risk of a contempt, for a document that really didn't have much of an impact when it came to convincing the jury of her innocence.