HOW FATHER'S RIGHTS PEOPLE HAVE IT ALL WRONG WHEN IT COMES TO FAMILY COURT REFORM!

In a recent hearing at the CT State Legislature, father's rights activists demanded that legislators and citizens define the problem with family court as one of parental alienation.  They are wrong, and I will tell you why. 

My introduction to the CT family court reform movement was around 2011 when Keith Harmon Snow, author of "The Worst Interests of the Child", contacted me to discuss the ways in which victims of domestic violence were losing custody to their abusers. Next, on or around 2013, father's rights advocates seized control of the family court reform movement and reframed its agenda.  

Instead of demonstrating concern regarding protective mothers, they insisted that the problem of family court could only be traced back to the celebrated [or debunked, depending upon your perspective,] theory of parental alienation (PA), or parental alienation syndrome (PAS).  This recently culminated in the raised House Bill 7393 [now withdrawn] which proposed either jail or fines for those whom the Court determines have committed it. 

The Bill also included two separate "friendly parent" provisions which would have guaranteed that anyone who reported domestic violence or child sexual abuse would promptly lose custody.  After all, it is most unfriendly to assert that you or your child are the victims of abuse.  [Ok, I know, not funny.  I'm just joking.]

To begin, for those who do not know, what is parental alienation, or parental alienation syndrome?  

For a definition, I'm taking the easy route, and I will simply quote wikipedia. Parental alienation syndrome is, "a term introduced by child psychiatrist Richard Gardner in 1985 to describe a distinctive suite of behaviors in children that includes showing extreme but unwarranted fear, disrespect or hostility towards a parent. Observed repeatedly in families involved in child custody litigation, these behaviors result from manipulation or undue influence, typically by the other parent who may be attempting to prevent an ongoing relationship between a child and other family members after family separation or divorce." 

The clincher in this discussion is the statement that comes next, "The syndrome has not been accepted by either the medical or legal communities and Gardner's theory has been criticized by legal and mental health scholars for lacking scientific validity and reliability."  

Yet despite the fact that this syndrome has no scientific validity, father's rights people insist upon embedding it in our laws here in CT and making it a central factor in all custody determinations.  

Again, in doing this, I believe that fathers' rights people have it all wrong.  

Why?  

If you have a problem, then you need to look for solutions.  However, these solutions will not work as long as the problems haven't been defined properly.  When it comes to the broken family court system here in CT, I have been increasingly disgusted with the incapacity of many advocates -- father's rights advocates in particular, the Task Force to Study Legal Disputes Involving the Care and Custody of Minor Children (2013 - 2014), members of the legislature and the CT Judicial Branch -- to define the problem in an intelligent manner.  

How can you begin to think of developing policies or crafting bills when you have no idea what is going on?  For me personally, as an advocate, I don't get that approach. 

For instance, blaming the victims. For too long now, starting with the "Report of the Governor's Commission on Divorce, Custody and Children" of December 2002, experts on family court, i.e. attorneys, judges, mental health professionals -- have placed the blame for the problems of family court on the litigants themselves. In the words of the Governor's report, which were again quoted in the report of the Task Force on the Care and Custody of Minor Children (2014), the problem arises from "a small minority of parents [which] engages in persistent conflict because of anger, characterological or mental health problems, or the force of personality."  

The theory that character flaw or mental illness repeats itself in fathers' rights advocates insistence that the problem can be understood almost solely within the context of parental alienation syndrome.  Also, that the solution should be strict punishments for PAS, i.e. jail and hefty financial fines, as well as forced shared parenting.  But is this true?

For a closer look at this phenomenon, take a look at the hearing which took place earlier this month on February 5, 2019. I spent a considerable amount of time yesterday reviewing the entire video which is a little over 9 hours long.  For at least the first three hours of this testimony, viewers were subjected to lengthy lectures on parental alienation theory.  First came Dr. William Bernat, a parental alienation expert, who broke down the theory to its 17 recognized behaviors and 8 symptoms.  After he had completed his testimony, we were forced to listen to Dr. Steve Miller, a frequent flyer at the CT Legislature, who talked about parental alienation syndrome as an epidemic plaguing our nation.  Once he was done, then we were bombarded with more lectures on parental alienation from Linda Gottlieb, who I've been informed is not a psychologist. She talked more about planting false memories and false allegations in the light of parental alienation. 

Then after that, we were required to hear the testimony of Ms. Joan Kloth-Zenard who runs the organization "PAS Intervention"--she apparently is qualified by an MFT, whatever that is, as opposed to an LMFT which is what we would ordinarily be looking for.  What is interesting about Joan's testimony is that, for an example, she described a case where the mother was stabbed in the abdomen and labia by the father, and yet the father still got custody.  To me, this looked to be a case of domestic violence.  However, this is the very interesting twist on the parental alienation movement in that father's rights people have couched this theory in the language of the domestic violence movement and so many people, including women, have come to believe that parental alienation theory is just another word for domestic violence.  That, in itself, is an entirely, different, but interesting story that I will hopefully touch upon in another blog.  

Let me get back to my point. This is the dilemma that arises when folks define the problem of family court as a mental health problem among litigants, whether you want to define it as parental alienation or some other ailment.  It simply isn't true.  

If you look at the Governor's Report of December 2002, there is one paragraph in that report on that nasty, chronic, minority of litigators who they said cause all the trouble.  After that, you get the 65 page detailed report regarding all the systems malfunctions within the family court system itself which actually cause the problems in family court.  

Likewise, once you plow through the insistent litany in regard to PA or PAS in the first 3 hours of the video of the February 5, 2019 day of testimony, which father's rights people provided as the ideological context for the later citizen testimony, you will find 6 additional hours of testimony from at least 30 victims of family court detailing the many systems breakdowns within the CT Family Court system itself.  In other words, the problem is not PA or PAS.  The problem is a broken family court system.  

One person spoke about the fact that there are no consequences for disobeying orders, a failure to obey the ADA, and judges would not listen to her testimony or look at her evidence. She lost everything, her job, her home, her income.  Here is another person who spoke of the collusion between court actors, the failure to obey the constitution, in chambers hearings where parents are not included, impacts including alcohol and drug addiction, homelessness, bankruptcy, trauma, and PTSD.  Another person spoke of the denial of due process, attorneys hiding exculpatory evidence, having to be in court so often it was like a full time job, his case discussed behind closed doors without the parties present, financial costs of up to $300,000 - $500,000 and even more.  

Again, corruption, collusion, racketeering, slander, perjury, lack of ethics, no checks and balances, absolute immunity for negligent and incompetent GALs and other vendors, failure to adhere to the rules of court or case law, financial and emotional blackmail, hired guns, perverted custody evaluations and psychological evaluations, no oversight, no accountability, false allegations, inexperienced and unqualified court personnel, unnecessary continuances, documents that disappear from the court files, transcripts that are tampered with, and on and on.  This is exactly the same testimony we heard during the daylong testimony on February 9, 2014 and the breakdown of family court here in CT.

Forced shared parenting, punishments for so-called alienation, and for not being "friendly", will not correct engrained and deliberately engineered systems failures which are kept in place for profit.  In fact, given the introduction of harsh punishments, settling disputes over whether one parent did or did not alienate the other, will invite additional corrupt vendors into the courtroom, and exacerbate already existing problems within the system.

These systems problems were originally detailed in the Governor's Commission report of 2002 and, for the better part, they have gotten worse, and not better.  

Parental Alienation theories are about the gender wars taking place in America.  Forced shared parenting is about the Men's Rights movement and the backlash against the Women's Rights movement of the 1970s. It is about ideology, and it is about indoctrination. If you talk to the people who promote PAS theory, you quickly get the idea that these are people who act as though they are in a cult reciting their treasured mantras.  

Ideology is like religion.  If you try to enshrine it in your statutes and laws, it will lead to endless confusion. Thinking we can solve the problem of family court by sprinkling holy water on it in the form of the ideology of parental alienation, I think is a recipe for disaster.  

Instead, if we are serious about resolving the problems of family court, we have to do the hard work of looking again at the system itself.  In other words, we have to investigate the machinery of the CT Family Court system which is operating on a daily basis. We have to examine what works, and what does not. It is a difficult and painstaking job, one which often does not have any easy answers, but it is at least a fairly concrete task from which we can garner measurable results. 

Every member of the former Governor's Commission of 2002 is currently notable for being at the center of the corruption and malfeasance in family court which we are looking at today.  The membership list is literally a who's who of legal and mental health professionals who later became famous for exploiting and taking advantage of family court victims.  It is paramount that we make sure nothing like that happens again.  When these kinds of criminal court actors take advantage of Moms and Dads, those parents are not mentally ill, they are victims of corrupt family court practices. 

This doesn't mean that the Commission didn't do a good job of laying the groundwork for future reform in its examination of the family court system. It's just that they immediately ignored the outcome of the report and used the network they estalished doing the work to exploit and harm family court victims.  I  simply believe we need to retrieve that work and use it to continue to make progress here and now.

DID "THE HARTFORD COURANT" AND OTHER CT MEDIA OUTLETS ACCEPT LARGE SUMS OF MONEY TO SILENCE CT JUDICIAL BRANCH CRITICS?

In May 9, 2018's Op-Ed "Legislature Fails Judge Subjected To Abuse" by Kevin Rennie, a long time "Hartford Courant" opinion leader, we could get the idea that the Family Court Reform movement here in CT is full of anti-semites and wackos. However, this simply makes no sense considering that a good many of the victims of Family Court injustice are either Jewish themselves or of Jewish origin. My own grandfather was incarcerated in the Marienkirche  Concentration Camp in Berlin, Germany. Further, Judge Jane B. Emons was not subjected to abuse. Judge Emons competence was called into question when numerous litigants reported that she had violated the judicial code of ethics.

12 MYTHS THE CT JUDICIAL BRANCH USES TO BLAME GAL ABUSE ON FAMILY COURT VICTIMS!

1.  The work of GALs and AMCs reduces conflict and keeps the cost of cases down.

There are approximately 11,000 post judgment cases each year where litigants return to court because they are dissatisfied with the agreements in their cases.  That is approximately 1/3 of the cases settled each year.  These numbers do not represent a success rate.  Further, the GAL is supposed to consider in their "analysis" information gleaned from third party sources such as school records, medical providers, and law enforcement, GALs often do no or little "research" into the real cause of the parental conflict - this failure seems to benefit the GAL financially, as they are able to keep the case going by covering up abusive behavior and pretending both parties are the reason for ongoing conflict. 

GOVERNOR DANNEL MALLOY TALKS FAIRNESS. HOW ABOUT FAIRNESS IN CONNECTICUT'S FAMILY COURTS?

HOW CONSERVATIVE ATTACKS AGAINST SINGLE MOTHERS AND FEMINISM HAS IMPACTED FAMILY COURT!

On February 26, 2010, several CT State Agencies came together to sign a multi-agency agreement to coordinate efforts to further the interests of fathers over that of mothers. These Agencies were the Department of Social Services, The Department of Children and Families, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, and the Department of Public Health. The beginning of this agreement made several statements in order to justify this promotion of father's interests over that of mothers in violation of the CT Constitution Article I, Section 20 which forbids discrimination based upon gender. One such statement was as follows, "Children who grow up in families headed by single mothers are five times more likely than two parent families to live in poverty." Subsequent statements continued on to blame single mothers for a high percentage of high school drop outs, juvenile delinquency, drug use, teen pregnancy and mental illness. 

FAMILY COURT INITIATIVES - ADDENDUM 2017! WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE CHANGES!

The CT Judicial Branch reports the following changes in their report on Family Court Initiatives.  Is this enough?  Should we have more?

• Reducing the reliance on the Guardians Ad Litem
• Waiving service of process for a marshal to deliver a complaint to a party in a divorce
• Intensive Case Management
• General Case Management - reducing delays
• Individual Calendaring - Single Judge in a Case
• GAL accountability - Creation of standing committee
• Family Volunteer Attorney Program
• Divorce Navigator - Website Assistance

For more details on these programs, please click on the link below:

http://www.jud.ct.gov/family/Family%20Initiatives%20-%20Addendum%20to%20report%20-%20April%202017.pdf

IS THIS ENOUGH OR DO WE NEED MORE?  SHARE YOUR VIEWS IN THE COMMENT SECTION BELOW!

CT LAW TRIBUNE REPORTS THAT GAL TRAINING HAS BEEN HALTED!

The below article pretty much contradicts several previous articles that have appeared in the CT Law Tribune and elsewhere stating the GALs were refusing to take on these cases because they are terrified of rabid family court reformers.  Clearly, those reports were greatly exaggerated if not false, or there are so many highly qualified  and greedy individuals ready to replace the ones who leave the field that it hardly matters.  Be that as it may, see below:

MICHELLE TUCCITTO SULLO of  The CT Law Tribune reports as follows:

"Any attorneys who would like to add guardian ad litem work to their practice need to undergo training first, but the state hasn't offered it in two years and no new trainings are scheduled.

Attorney Tracey Russo, who has an office in Orange, said she would like to be a GAL, and has been trying unsuccessfully to take the required training class for about three years. A GAL represents the interests of children in family court matters, including custody, care, support, education and visitation.

 "I think parents are looking for there to be more guardians ad litem to choose from," Russo said. "I have been trying to do this for years. If you are going to require training, you should have training at reasonable intervals..."

Read more:

http://www.ctlawtribune.com/id=1202743088535/Court-System-Puts-Guardian-Ad-Litem-Training-Sessions-on-Hold#ixzz3t0r7roKB

JUDICIAL BRANCH FAMILY COURT INIATIVES, FALL 2015!

"Prologue

The Connecticut Judicial Branch is committed to providing parties who come to court for family matters with the most expeditious, cost-effective way of resolving their cases. As such, the Judicial Branch has invested in various ways to manage these cases to achieve the best outcomes. Moreover, while it is important to note that every case is unique, an explanation of certain general areas will help highlight where improvements have occurred..."

This report is approximately 30 pages and can be accessed at the link below:

http://www.jud.ct.gov/family/family_court_initiatives15.pdf

THE POLITICS OF MENTAL ILLNESS WITHIN THE CT JUDICIAL BRANCH!

It was six months into my divorce when I finally realized that my attorney was acting in a way that was seriously incompetent.  As a result, I recognized that I had to find a new attorney and so I started the process of interviewing attorneys to see who would be a good replacement.  

It was then that I ran into Attorney James T. Flaherty who immediately asked me for a copy of my parenting plan. "Parenting Plan, I responded, "I don't have a parenting plan!"  Apparently, the fact that I had no parenting plan was extraordinary and Attorney Flaherty seemed truly surprised that I didn't have one. Why was Flaherty surprised?  Well, that was a bit of play acting, but more on that just a bit later.   

Apparently, in December 2002, the Report of the Governor's Commission on Divorce, Custody and Children came out.  This report was the basis for major statutory changes in the way divorces are supposed to be handled in the State of Connecticut.  Included in these changes was the requirement that divorcing couples submit a parenting plan to the Court within the early weeks of the divorce and obey a list of automatic orders which assures that the parties don't dissipate the marital assets, among other things.  

Nonetheless, as you can see, I soon learned that it was standard for attorneys to blow off parenting plans and allow their clients to violate the automatic orders at will. Attorneys did this intentionally to gain advantage in the case, to generally disrupt the process, and get as much money as possible from their clients.

In spite of that, if you then asked such attorneys, why do we have so many problems with family court, they'd never mention the ignored Connecticut Statutes I just talked about. Instead they'd blame the mentally ill--as per usual.  So goes the politics of mental illness within the Judicial Branch, i.e. if under fire, or facing criticism, put the responsibility on the shoulders of the "crazy people." This approach is, as we will see, a fundamentally feminist issue.

If you look at the discussion which preceded the results of the Commission Report--i.e. the Report of the Governor's Commission on Divorce, Custody and Children of December 2002--the Commission placed responsibility for the problems of Family Court squarely on the shoulders of "a small minority of parents [who] engage in persistent conflict because of anger, characterological or mental health problems."  

Twelve years later, another group gathered together to investigate problems with Family Court in Connecticut, i.e. the Task Force to Study Legal Disputes Involving the Care and Custody of Minor Children of 2014.  This Task Force published an additional report.  

Hearing about this Task Force, dozens of citizens came forward to provide their testimony in person during Task Force hearings while many others wrote letters and sent emails contributing information regarding their personal experiences of Family Court.  

However, instead of addressing the concerns these citizens spoke about, the Task Force Report  simply borrowed a lengthy quotation from the 2002 Commission Report in place of a discussion. The authors of the Report apparently did not even think to add one single bit of additional insight they might have acquired from lessons learned in the twelve years since the prior report.  Even worse, in a terribly short sighted manner, the particular section the report quoted was the one that put the blame on people with mental illness.

The fact that those responsible for writing the 2014 Task Force Report were so lazy they had not a single original idea to put into a discussion says boatloads about the lack of commitment of those individuals to the process of investigation that they were involved in.  

In that regard, I would like folks to recall that when the two co-chairs were appointed--Attorney Sue Cousineau and Attorney Sharon Dornfeld--there was widespread discontent with these appointments, but the legislators responsible didn't want to hear about it.  Thus, the careless,  derivative, negligent, and divisive report that the Task Force of 2014 ultimately produced is the outcome of these legislators' poor choices.  

Mental illness, the spotlight of both reports, is a feminist issue given that Family Court uses accusations of mental illness as a means to deny mothers custody.  Thus, another aspect of the original Commission Report of 2002 and the Task Force of 2014 which I find quite striking is how both are weighted to benefit the father's rights agenda.  

The Members of the Governor's Commission is practically a who's who of father's rights people.  Both Thomas C. Foley and Mr. Pat D'Angelo are long time father's rights people.  I believe Pat D'Angelo was among the original founders of the Divorced Men's Association of Connecticut. Other people such as Dr. Kenneth Robson, Judge Lynda B. Munro, Dr. Sidney Horowitz, and Judge Herbert Gruendel are notorious for their stands in opposition to mothers.  

Likewise, in the Task Force of 2014, members Jennifer Verraneault and retired Judge Thomas Weissmuller are both father's rights advocates.  I don't believe there is an abusive father that Dr. Elizabeth Thayer won't embrace. You have Stephen Grant in the Commission of 2002 and Joseph DiTunno in the Task Force of 2014 both responsible for the distribution of federal government fatherhood initiative money within the CT Judicial Branch.  We can assume they both support fathers in that role.  

The end result, of course, were reports on Family Court that largely support policies and programs that benefit the interests of men.  

For instance, in the Task Force of 2014 there is an extended section on how the CT State Legislature could establish a policy of shared parenting in this state. Shared parenting would be an absolute disaster for the women of the State of Connecticut, particularly those who are victims of domestic violence.  

It is typical of father's rights people that even though so many of the citizens who demanded a hearing on the abuses of family court and who came to testify were women, this Task Force, weighted with father's rights activists, simply took advantage of the political influence these women provided them and pushed forward a father's rights agenda in their final report, thus stabbing those women in the back.  

But this is not my primary point.  I want to address the issue that has now come up in two reports -- this business of blaming people with mental illness for the problem of Family Court abuse.  Can you imagine for a minute if these reports had said something like, the problems of family court arise because of the various character flaws of African-Americans (or whichever minority group is currently unpopular--the Jews, the Hispanics, the Muslims).  

If any group tried to publish a report blaming a particular group based upon race, gender, sexual orientation, class etc.  they would be stopped immediately.  So, why is it acceptable for these reports to make unfounded accusations at folks labeled with mental illness? Somehow this is acceptable?  Isn't this just like the whole gun discussion.  We know that people with mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence than perpetrators, and yet all these conversations in the media about stopping gun violence are all about taking civil rights from people diagnosed with mental illness, even though it has been proven that mental illness is not a decisive factor.  

I'd like to dig in a little deeper here:  who do we mean when we talk about parties who have mental illness? Aren't we really talking about women?  As you know, in our society where gender discrimination and oppression remain rampant, women have many more mental health difficulties than men, particularly depression as the result of the ongoing deprivation of rights and the disrespectful manner in which they are treated.  Not only that, women are far more willing to get the help that they need from mental health professionals because they feel more comfortable with caretaking and helping types of professionals.  

As a result, when women walk into Family Court, they are considerably more likely to have documented mental health histories than men are.  These histories are immediately used against women in family court when custody is under dispute.  

So what these two reports are saying--the Commission Report of 2002 and the Task Force Report of 2014--is that the problem isn't just folks with mental illness; it's those crazy women.  

Such attitudes accord well with what we know about the influence that the massive influx of fatherhood initiative money into Connecticut was having starting in 1996.  This money would have been flowing into Connecticut in a very healthy manner by 2002, just in time for the Commission report.  

But again, this is still not my entire point.  Ok, so the problem is this difficulty with all these women who have mental illness.  Here is what bothers me.   What this really means is that the CT Judicial Branch has no intention of adjusting its methods to address the needs of this very special population--cultural sensitivity be damned.  Instead, it prefers to exploit prejudice and social stigma and declare itself helpless to deal with this group, even though there is every evidence that with the proper accommodations and protections against discrimination, the outcome of legal proceedings can be quite successful with folks who have mental health challenges.

Instead, the way members of the Commission and the Task Force reported it, the Judicial Branch is helpless against this enormous, impenetrable monolith of mental illness that resists any and all attempts the Family Court system implements to address it.  

Based upon this bigoted attitude towards mental illness--in other words, that it is unchangeable and always a negative, family court has used mental health diagnosis as a litmus test for who should get custody, i.e. the fathers.  

But why?  Why this presumption of hopelessness?

Even the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services has adopted the recovery model in the work it does here in Connecticut with people who are dealing with mental health and substance abuse problems.  This means that they operate with the underlying assumption that people can change and that they can improve.  

Unfortunately, the Connecticut Judicial Branch is far from having that approach. The Branch prefers to maintain this hopeless view of people with mental illness so they can use it to advantage in custody switching schemes perpetrated against women. The only reason that Family Court in the State of Connecticut orders psychological evaluations of parties in family court is so that they can find some kind of damning diagnosis (usually for a mother) so that diagnosis can be used to deny custody. For example, a fabricated diagnosis of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) usually does the trick!

The Connecticut Judicial Branch maintains a policy of discriminating against people with mental health disabilities because it works to their advantage in their war against women.  For years the record shows that the Branch has been rigorous in refusing to comply with the Americans With Disability Act, and particularly disregards its prohibitions against discriminating against people who have disabilities.  This means that people with mental health disabilities who face legal proceedings in custody matters routinely do not receive the accommodations they require under the ADA in order to access those proceedings.  The majority of these people are mothers who are essentially excluded from the process.  

You would think, under the circumstances, that mental health professionals could bring some equity to the situation, but this is not the case.  This is because a good many of these diagnoses are fabricated and pinned on mothers as part of custody switching schemes to transfer custody to abusive fathers.   But there are other reasons as well.

The Commission Report includes some of the history of custody and divorce in Connecticut and mentions how starting in the late 1950s, the Judicial Branch began to bring mental health professionals into the Branch to assist the Courts in custody matters.  This is also when the family services unit of the court was established.  

If mental illness were the problem, you would think that the influx of all these  mental health professionals into the process would eliminate that supposed group with mental illness that is causing the big problem.  However, this is not the case.  

Often, psychologists or psychiatrists hired to do this work produce lengthy and detailed investigative reports full of unsupported gossip and innuendo that simply adds another layer of lies and inaccuracies to the entire proceedings.  Since many of these mental health professionals are adherents of the father's rights movement or receiving father's rights money to write these reports, they are again, frequently weighted against the mothers and used to deny mothers custody.  

What is interesting is that no one tracks what these mental health professionals are doing and holds them accountable.  How can it be that even judges are subjected to performance evaluations, but not mental health professionals?  Is there any evidence at all, anything beyond an intuitive assumption, to indicate that the involvement of mental health professionals in divorce improves outcomes?  Where is the data?  

One guess I would like to venture, however, prior to any such investigation, is that the outcome will show that for the better part, particularly since the influx of fatherhood initiative funding into the family courts, Judges have used older, white male psychologists or psychiatrists such as Dr. Kenneth Robson, men in their 60s and 70s to trash women and transfer custody to the fathers.  

These women who lose custody are the "mentally ill" of the two reports, because, as we all know, mothers will fight for their children to the bitter end and thus "inconvenience" the Court.  Of course, those mothers have to be crazy.  

What this means is that when the two reports talk about people with mental illness causing the problems in family court, they are really talking about mothers.  But what these reports do is describe them in code language that professional insiders within Family Court immediately recognize.  Essentially, this means that women haven't benefited from either of these two investigations into family court abuse.  As per usual, our voices and our life experiences remain absent from the public discussion, as we are labeled as mentally ill and not considered worthy of consideration.  The time has come to change that dynamic.

BRITISH NEWS ORGANIZATION REPORTS ON CORRUPTION IN FAMILY COURT IN AMERICA!

Peter S. Green and John Mazor of "The Guardian" report as follows:

"When Margaret Besen, a 51-year-old nurse from East Northport, Long Island, filed for divorce from her husband in March of 2010, she believed justice was on her side.

Judge William Kent’s preliminary ruling seemed like a first step toward compromise. Margaret and Stuart Besen, who agreed their marriage was beyond repair, would remain in their suburban Suffolk County house, living in separate rooms – and keeping away from each other – while sharing custody until a resolution could be reached.

But within weeks, the situation deteriorated. Stuart Besen, a politically connected attorney for the town of Huntington, had an anger problem, Margaret told authorities. The couple’s screaming matches left Margaret feeling intimidated and their children – a daughter, 11, and son, 7 – terrified, she said. So in August of that year she obtained an order of protection prohibiting Stuart from harassing her. Three weeks later, Stuart entered Margaret’s bedroom and hovered over her as she slept, she told police. They arrested him for violating the order, reporting that Stuart had stared down at Margaret with his arms folded on three consecutive nights. She got temporary possession of the family home.

In the years that followed, Besen’s hopes for an equitable settlement dwindled as she battled a series of harsh and hard-to-explain decisions against her..."

READ MORE:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/18/judge-bias-corrupts-court-cases

MICHAEL VOLPE COMMENTS ON THE INCOMPETENTS INVOLVED IN THE TSIMHONI CASE!

Michael Volpe of "Communities Digital News" reports as follows:

"WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2015 — The individual chosen to implement a five-day reunification therapy in an explosive Michigan custody case had little more than a high school education, was working with a suspended psychiatrist and revealed an inherent bias toward the father.

A Michigan judge ordered three Tsimhoni children to engage in controversial “reunification therapy” after they refused to spend time with their father, Omer Tsimhoni. Judge Lisa Gorcyca of the Oakland County Family Court had previously sentenced the children to juvenile hall after refusing to have lunch with their father, who they say has been repeatedly abusive toward the children.

CDN has now learned that the three Tsimhoni children completed the five-day reunification therapy with Dorcy Pruter, who runs the Conscious Co-Parenting Institute. Pruter stated in a Wyoming deposition for another case that she ran the Tsimhoni children’s reunification therapy, despite statements on her web site that “this is not therapy.”.."

Read more at:

http://www.commdiginews.com/life/tsimhoni-children-cultists-or-abused-50007/#RsSC155PZB1j7gfr.99

PEOPLE MAGAZINE REPORTS CHRISTIE BRINKLEY SUPPORTS KELLY RUTHERFORD, CRITICIZES BROKEN FAMILY COURT SYSTEM!

Michele Corriston of "People Magazine" reports as follows:

"After getting the attention of A-listers like Kim Kardashian West with her international custody battle, Kelly Rutherford has the support of another major celebrity: supermodel Christie Brinkley. 

Brinkley, who endured her own bitter fight for custody of her children with architect Peter Cook, posted a goofy photo of the stars posing by a pool Thursday. 

"I'm using this fun picture to catch your attention to a serious issue that every good parent needs to be aware of," wrote Brinkley, 61. "The problem with our broken family / divorce court system and how the person with the slickest lawyer can wreak havoc on our children, their lives, and their future." 

READ MORE:

http://www.people.com/article/christie-brinkley-supports-kelly-rutherford-custody-battle

JENNIFER VERRANEAULT: VICTIM OF THE CT JUDICIAL BRANCH'S DEVIOUS STRATEGY OF DIVIDE AND CONQUER!

On November 14, 1996, police in Canton, CT received a phone call from a Jean Eichelman of South Windsor.  She was worried about her parents who had called her earlier stating that their son, Neil Cretney, and Jean's brother had been threatening them.  Neil, who was 44 years old at the time, had an extensive history of schizophrenia and had not been taking his medication.  

Eventually, Neil Cretney barricaded himself in his room with an axe and refused to come out.  Canton Police who had already managed two earlier violent incidents with Mr. Cretney, instead of doing something personally, decided to hand the situation over to the North Central Regional Emergency Services Team--a 20 member SWAT team--that stormed Cretney's room and shot him dead after he swung at one officer with the axe, cutting through his bullet proof vest.  

Subsequent to Neil Cretney's death there was a lot of soul searching.  Why did Canton police decide to call the SWAT team?  Would it have been better if the Canton police had tried to talk Neil Cretney down before storming his room?  Could anything have been done to prevent the tragic outcome?  I can recall feeling very saddened by this situation at the time and I am aware that everyone concerned--the police, Mr. Cretney's family, members of the community--felt devastated by what happened.  I believe that after that incident, the Canton police voluntarily participated in additional training to learn how to deal more effectively with people who have mental illness who are in crisis.

Why I am telling this story now is to say that when Jean Eichelman, Neil Cretney's sister, called up the police in order to safeguard her parents, it was never her intention to get her brother killed.  She was in an impossible situation where if she did nothing, her parents could end up being injured.  However, if she made a phone call to police, there was a considerable risk that her brother could end up manhandled, handcuffed, and carted off to a psychiatric hospital as had happened before.  

I'm sure it never crossed her mind that Neil Cretney would end up dead, but that is always a possibility in any encounter that a person with a disability has with police.  According to statistics, over half of the incidents of deadly violence that take place between police and civilians occurs in cases where people with disabilities, particularly individuals with mental illness, are involved.  As soon as you pick up the phone to call for assistance from police, the fire department, or ambulance services, etc., pretty much the situation is out of your hands and there is nothing you could do about it.  

Should we blame Ms. Eichelman and call her a murderer?  No, she was in an absolutely difficult position where anything she did had the potential for harm.  In the end, she chose the better of the two evils which was to safeguard the wellbeing of her elderly parents.  

Likewise, with Jennifer Verraneault, who made the difficult decision to report Ted Taupier to authorities, she was similarly in a very difficult position trying to decide between the better of two evils, and with no absolutely fool proof way of determining which was better.  

There were aspects of Ted Taupier's statements in the email for which he was arrested that were laughable, i.e. the quotations from Charlton Heston and the comments about the space station on the moon, or whatever that was.  On the other hand, Mr. Taupier's other remarks were very intense and potentially very upsetting to anyone who didn't know him that well.  

Thus, Jennifer Verraneault's concern about Ted Taupier and his wellbeing and the Judge's safety, from her perspective, made absolute sense.  

It also made sense within the heated and intense debate that has been going on in the state legislature, in the streets, and in our court houses regarding the corruption of CT Family Court.  

As Jennifer stated, "Try to put yourself in my situation and understand how scared I was for this family and for others."  

I believe Jennifer's expression of concern is absolutely genuine.  The problem is that once Jennifer reported her concern to other people and the situation snowballed, she had no control over the outcome and no control over the outrageous and excessive manner in which the State of CT chose to handle the situation, any more than Jean Eichelman did when that SWAT team went after her brother. 

Jennifer had real fears regarding Ted Taupier and his wellbeing and that of Judge Bozzuto that should be taken seriously.  As she states, "At the time I was alarmed and felt a tremendous amount of sadness for a father trapped in this unjust system.  I immediately replied to his email prior to contacting anyone.  I sent him an email to say I am worried about you.  Do you have your children this weekend?  The goal I had at the time was for Jerry and I to meet him on our way back from Mass. But he didn't reply to me at all.  I felt so sad for him, his children and his family.  For anyone to write what he wrote was extremely alarming to me.  I am not used to having anyone share that type of information with me."  

That is the thing.  Some people, depending on their background and experience, would find what Ted Taupier said alarming, but many would not have found it alarming.  I read that email and read all that stuff about Charlton Heston and I was like, don't be silly.  In my own life, I've spent a good deal of time with people who have mental health challenges or who have dealt with extremely difficult life circumstances, so my radar for violence has a much higher threshold than for most people.  

So there is this continuum in terms of how people assess situations of this kind and when it comes to understanding how Jennifer responded, we should be charitable and keep that in mind. She just saw things differently than other people did who were copied on the email. As Jennifer stated, "I was torn about what to do with the email from day one."  And she states further, "When I saw the video where Ted's kids were taken out of school.  I didn't know all the details.  I was unaware that Ted had taken the video himself and it was only a month later I found that out. I thought OMG a judge ordered the police to take the kids out of school? I didn't know it was the ex-wife who had brought in the police.  I thought how horrible!  I thought, if I was disturbed by this image, how will Ted feel?  His kids are crying and being taken out by police...I thought in the light of the email he sent five days earlier, he might possibly carry out what he put in the email...You see reaching out to let others know what was going on with Ted was not a calculated and evil thing that I did.  I was sincerely worried about everyone."  

I believe Jennifer 100 percent when she says this.  

As with Jean Eichelman, once the report had gone out, there was nothing Jennifer could do to prevent what happened with Ted.  Who could anticipate the kind of vicious, vengeful and excessive response to Ted Taupier on the part of law enforcement and on the part of Judge Gold.  At the most, I would have thought that Ted would have been ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation and to cooperate with a treatment program to address his anger issues.  But six years of jail, fines, house arrest, major legal expenses, etc., etc.  That would be far beyond my ability to imagine, and I'm sure the same is true for Jennifer.  

When it comes to the Family Court Reform movement here in Connecticut, everyone brings something different to the table.  It is remarkable the broad range of economic, cultural, religious, ethnic, gender, and disability based backgrounds we all have.  It seems as though the Family Court Abuse has been an open opportunity for pretty much everyone--it's a very democratic experience!  In my earlier blog regarding the Ted Taupier Case, I spoke about Jennifer as having mixed motives, and I'm sure people were like, "Yes, we know, she's such a terrible person!" 

This, actually, was not on my mind.  

In our movement, because of her experience on the Task Force last year regarding child custody, Jennifer has the unique perspective of understanding not only how we feel as victims of the corrupt family court system, Jennifer has also heard extensively from people who work within that system in regard to the frustrations they experience from their perspective.  I know everyone wants to say, yeah, from their criminal perspective, but that would not be fair.  There are many good people within the CT Family Court System who are working hard to ensure just and proper outcomes for the litigants who make their way through Family Court.  These are the people we need to learn to connect with and work with in a productive way.  

I am sure that with this recent situation, those who are responsible for the criminal activities within the CT Judicial Branch are feeling overjoyed.  First of all, they are probably really thrilled they finally nailed Ted Taupier who was such a pain with his honest and incisive testimony regarding the abuses he and his family endured in family court.  But most of all, they are probably as delighted as can be that Jennifer Verraneault, who has been such a dynamic part of the Family Court Reform movement, is now crippled and undercut by these attacks on her character and on her motivations for working in the Family Court Reform movement.  

Ha ha, all the corrupt attorneys, GALS, judges, and court personnel are probably saying--we've killed two birds with one stone!  

I have to say that I do not agree with Jennifer in a lot of areas, particularly in regard to her support of theories of Parental Alienation.  I think everyone knows that I'm not everyone's favorite player in the battle for Family Court Reform.  As a general rule, it is true that my focus is considerably more on supporting the welfare of women than men.

But if there is one thing I want to say emphatically, it is that we need to stop fighting among ourselves and stand together shoulder to shoulder to fight for justice within the Family Court system.  Let's focus on what really matters.

Of course, we are not going to agree on everything, but if there is one thing I constantly hear about from pretty much everyone it is that we all believe in fairness, we believe in justice, we believe in due process; we protest lying, cheating, and stealing, and we all believe that we need to get the children out of the line of fire so that they can live happy and fulfilling lives devoid of trauma and heartbreak.  

We cannot allow ourselves to succumb to the temptation that our opponents in the corrupt CT Judicial Branch dangle before us to fight among ourselves, to backstab one another, or to smear each other's reputations.  

I also want to say that I personally saw members of the that task force attack Jennifer and attempt to undercut her success.  There is no doubt that she suffered a lot and gave a lot while she was in that role.  If she stumbles and falls.  If she is not perfect all the time.  If she makes mistakes, in that, I believe, that she is no different than any one of us.  

Under the pressure of the abuse of family court, who cannot say that they haven't said or done things that they regret.  So what I'm urging everyone to consider is that we need to support one another, no matter how flawed we are, and reserve our challenges, our criticisms, and our calls to arms for the real enemies, those within the Family Court System who have exploited and harmed family court victims.  United we stand.  Divided we fall.  

THE CT JUDICIAL BRANCH, DESPERATE TO DEFLECT ITS CRITICS, HIDES BEHIND LEGAL MUMBO JUMBO TO CONVICT FAMILY COURT REFORM ACTIVIST TED TAUPIER AND NULLIFY THE FIRST AMENDMENT!

On August 29, 2014, a SWAT team of 75 officers along with two armored vehicles stormed Cromwell resident Mr. Ted Taupier's house with their weapons drawn, threw him to the ground and arrested him. [I am hearing that there was no need to throw him on the ground; he was apparently quite cooperative and just stood there!  Anyone else is welcome to comment!] 

The basis for this arrest?  

Apparently, late in the night on August 22, 2015, Mr. Taupier sent an email to six other friends which appeared to threaten the life of Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Bozzuto, some of it couched in the language of movies and science fiction and other parts of it appearing to be more serious.  One of the recipients of this email, Jennifer Veraneault, was frightened by the email and so after consulting with a friend, and a failed attempt to reach Mr. Taupier, she reported the email to authorities.  

The result was the absolutely dramatic arrest scene which I have described, and subsequent charges filed against Mr. Taupier for 1) threatening in the first degree; 2) threatening in the second degree; 3) two counts of disorderly conduct; and 4) breach of peace in the second degree.  He was released on bail of $75,000, was required to wear an ankle bracelet and was put on house arrest.  

Did Ted Taupier deserve this dramatic response to his late night diatribe against Judge Bozzuto?

On June 11, 2015, Attorney Norm Pattis, a highly regarded civil rights and criminal attorney blogged about the Ted Taupier case on his website stating, "Just how the state perceives [the email Ted Taupier sent] to be a threat to anyone is beyond my comprehension.  The speech is certainly ugly, even irresponsible, but if there is a specific intent to cause alarm or harm to Judge Bozzuto in the email, I can't see it."  

Commenting on his observations regarding the subsequent trial in the case, Attorney Pattis stated, "there's little doubt that the state failed to prove Taupier guilty of threatening.  His reckless bluster among folks he thought were friends and fellow travelers cannot be construed as an intent to threaten the judge.  No evidence suggests that he intended, or foresaw, that anyone would forward the email to Judge Bozzuto."  

At the very worst, Attorney Pattis anticipated that Ted Taupier would be acquitted of threatening and perhaps be convicted of disorderly conduct or breach of peace.  Instead, much to my surprise, on October 2, 2015 Judge Gold found Ted Taupier guilty of all charges in a 56 page decision that at times comes across as rambling and at other times obscure.  

While I never expected that Ted Taupier would get off scott free from these charges, it does appear excessive and vengeful that the Court convicted him on all charges and he now faces a six year prison sentence simply for speaking in an exaggerated and hyperbolic manner about a family court judge.  This is particularly true when you consider that Mr. Taupier never directly addressed Judge Elizabeth Bozzuto with any vituperative language and anything he said was written in an email sent people he believed were likeminded friends.  

Make no mistake, this Judge's decision was a purely political act, a blatant attempt to silence and intimidate current and potential critics, and has nothing to do with the law.  

I say this because in the last few years there has been escalating political unrest directed towards the CT Judicial Branch, particularly in connection to accusations that the family court system is corrupt. Along with many others, Mr. Ted Taupier, who has played a central role in advocating for reform of the legal system, has faced systematic retaliation from the CT Judicial Branch.  I myself have reported that this blog has also been the focus of vicious retaliation from the legal profession in the last year.  

What can be done when the judges of the CT Judicial Branch use their power within the judiciary to wreak revenge upon their critics?  

First of all, it should be noted that Tanya and Ted Taupier are typical of the kinds of successful couples that the CT Family Court likes to exploit and that in the course of obtaining their divorce they suffered the full gamut of the kind of corrupt behavior standard in family court.  

Tanya Taupier has a high level position at Aetna Insurance Company and Ted Taupier, prior to his arrest, had a solid position with Citicorp.  They have two children -- a son and a daughter.  Ms. Taupier filed for divorce in the fall of 2012 and had sufficient income to hire two divorce attorneys--Attorneys Geraldine Ficarra and Michael Peck--who continue to remain her attorneys.  At the same time, she also hired a criminal defense attorney Chris Morano formerly a prosecutor in the Michael Skakel case, no doubt also highly expensive.   

For his part, Ted Taupier hired in succession Brown, Paindiris and Scott, a highly regarded divorce attorney firm, then Attorney Henry B. Hurwitz, and then finally Lobo and Associates, LLC and then went pro se.  

In addition, the parties hired Attorney Margaret Bozek as the guardian ad litem for the children--Attorney Bozek has been associated with other problematic cases.  Attorney Bozek quickly racked up a bill of $30,000 and counting.  

It took three years before the divorce was final and, from what I've heard, a whole bunch of legal professionals cashed in before the case was over.  

So what happened specifically that so deeply radicalized Ted Taupier and ultimately led him to express his anger so strongly in regard to Judge Bozzuto in a private email to fellow advocates.  We just don't know because there is no information regarding Mr. Taupier's perspective in the entire October 2, 2015 decision. 

This is true despite the fact that Judge Gold stated on page 3 of his decision, "the determination of whether a defendant's allegedly threatening statements may be prosecuted and punished under the law requires that they be examined and considered in the light of their entire factual context and with reference to all surrounding events."  We got something in the Memorandum of Decision of October 2, 2015, but it certainly wasn't the "entire" story.

Instead, the Court summarized two very sanitized and edited stories in which Ted Taupier's perspective is entirely eliminated--one in regard to where the Taupier children would go to school and the other in regard to Mr. Taupier's disposal of his antique gun collection told from the perspective of the prosecutors.  

I certainly experienced this kind of repeated editing in my case and I know many others have experienced this.  What Judges do when they write Memoranda of Decision is simply pick and choose among the facts they like, and ignore or suppress the evidence they don't want to hear or acknowledge.  Along the way Judges often invent several extra stories for good measure just because it fits in with the legal picture they are attempting to develop.  

So even while making pompous and high minded sounding remarks about how all the evidence must be heard, Judges regularly edit or eliminate essential information from the record.

Not only do Judges tamper with court cases by suppressing the defendants side of the story, they also refuse to listen to witnesses at will.  Thus, in Ted Taupier's case, the Court simply dismissed as not credible the witnesses who came in support of Mr. Taupier and put their testimony in footnotes.  Meanwhile, inexplicably the Court stated that the one witness who felt threatened by Mr. Taupier's remarks was credible, even though we all know that she acted out of mixed motives that everyone is well aware of.  

This is not justice.  This is not the "entire factual context." 

What it actually adds up to is a legal exercise in judges using their superior status and the benefit of the doubt they receive from people who have watched too many episodes of "Law and Order" to smear the reputation of a vulnerable citizen who doesn't have anything like the same social and financial resources.  

We should also be troubled by Judge Gold's heavy reliance on the Supreme Court case State v. Krijger which came out on September 2, 2014.  For one thing, the State V. Krijger involves a defendant who made a direct verbal threat to the complainant (an attorney--surprise, surprise!).  In contrast, Ted Taupier never made a direct threat towards Judge Bozzuto--he was merely speaking with several friends in a private email.  And while Judge Gold from his standpoint thinks it was inevitable that one of those friends would communicate with authorities regarding the content of Ted's email remarks, that is not a given in my view.  Despite Judge Gold's insistence that all his conclusions were purely objective, reasonable people cannot help but think that subjective biases might have influenced Judge Gold's thinking process.  Therefore, what we have here are two very different circumstances, yet Judge Gold is treating them as if they are identical, which makes no sense to me.

Another point to keep in mind is that this case wasn't even the law at the time the alleged criminal act had taken place.  In many respects, the timing of when the decision in this case was issued, immediately after Taupier was arrested, bears the mark of case law especially formulated to target a particular individual such as a political activist.

What is additionally troubling when it comes to the State v. Krijger decision that acted as the basis of the Judge's determination in this case is that it essentially eliminates our first amendment right to freedom of speech in the State of Connecticut.  Take a look at the content of this decision on page 24 of Judge Gold's decision: "a state may punish those words that by their utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace....Furthermore, the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except when such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."  

This language is so broad that it really encompasses and identifies as illegal, even criminal, pretty much any meaningful political action that is time honored in most democratic countries.  For instance, with a definition of this kind, what would happen to someone like Malcolm X who stated that he intended to gather together an army to defend African-Americans "by any means necessary."  

What happens to someone like Martin Luther King who advocated acts of civil disobedience, i.e. the freedom riders, lunch counter sit ins, thus "inciting or producing imminent lawless action."  What about my friends in wheelchairs who have protested violations of their ADA rights by blockading intersections with their wheelchairs in violation of the law.  Are the discussions they held planning that political demonstration a violation of the law?  If they are, all of us who hope to create social change for the better are in serious trouble.

The bottom line is that when the Judicial Branch of the State of Connecticut becomes so afraid of its critics that it creates laws that eliminate CT citizens' first amendment right to free speech and then uses that law to jail possibly for six years the first innocent man it can find, we have a problem!  

More seriously, I question the focus here.  Why are we looking at a citizen's potential threat to a judge, when what we really need to do is look at the threat that is leveled upon many citizens by the actions of that judge.  

Further, we are not just concerned about a single judge; we are concerned about the entire CT Judicial Branch.  As Mr. Michael Nowacki pointed out succinctly a few years ago, the CT Judicial Branch has been creating law for several decades in violation of CT General Statutes 51-14, and in violation of the Constitution which mandates the separation of powers.  

Further, investigative journalists have discovered serious RICO violations within the CT Judicial Branch.  One commentator stated, "We know that an unregistered, sub regulatory corporation has been running through the CT Judicial Branch for 30 years, with member and directors in all positions of administration, from grant writing, program administration, and even regulation and oversight.  We know the judges and professionals they appoint onto cases they preside over are tied in profitable business relationships.  We know that numerous CT agencies, departments, and branches (DCF, DOC, judicial and others) are beholden to an agreement to collude in order to fix case outcomes to maximize funding over all other factors, including constitutional rights, due process, and human rights.  We know that judges are deliberately placing children in the most dangerous homes available to them, including violent pedophiles and murderers, in order to generate endless billing hours for their business partner lawyers, evaluators, and treaters, all of whom judges are appointing in the first place.  We know that many judges have non-profits that contract with the judicial branch, some even list a business address in their chambers.  We know that hundreds of millions of dollars are running through each of some of those non-profits per year.  We know that the Office of Inspector General audited some official judicial accounts in 2010 and found $13 million missing and unaccounted for." 

I'd forget chasing an insignificant (ok maybe not to himself!) individual like Ted Taupier around the block.  What about our State government that fails to protect its citizens? 

I am also aware that there are a considerable number of family court litigants and their children who have spoken about experiencing discrimination against them based upon their disabilities.  They have talked about how the CT Judicial Branch is completely non-compliant with federal ADA law as well as the ADAAA and denies people their reasonable modifications which are required for them to be able to obtain testimonial and participatory access to legal proceedings.  

Yet nothing has been done about any of these illegal activities--not a thing--despite the CT Department of Justice major announcements that they intended to investigate.  

Further, the CT Department of Justice specifically stated they would have a report on the compliance of the CT Judicial Branch with the ADA at the end of August 2015, and yet they still have not produced one and it appears have no plan to produce one. Further, they have broken the back of this so-called investigation by stating that they have no intention of looking at the specific complaints that people with disabilities have made against the CT Judicial Branch.  Aren't those complaints with their associated documents essential evidence in regard to whether the CT Judicial Branch has complied with the ADA or not?  Basically, the refusal to investigate complaints represents a complete indifference to the many disabled victims of the CT Judicial Branch's indifference and disregard of their fundamental civil rights.

How is it that all these State resources--police, a 75 man SWAT team, prosecutors, etc. etc. and CT Judicial Branch resources could be used to persecute a single man who made a few off color remarks in a bad moment, yet law enforcement personnel disregards and ignores the widespread human rights and civil rights violations and corruption for which the CT Judicial Branch is responsible?  

How is it that within only a few months of denying Adrianne Oyola a protective order which could have stopped Tony Moreno from tossing Baby Aaden off a bridge to his death, Judge Barry Pinkus is apparently back on the bench in Middletown adjudicating complex DV cases which he is clearly incapable of handling.

Someone please explain this to me.  What can we do as citizens to protect ourselves from the foolish and negligent actions of the Connecticut Judicial Branch when it is that very Branch we are supposed to turn to in order to obtain relief!

I am also surprised that Mr. Taupier's attorney did not argue self defense in this case.  Of course, there could be a very clear cut answer to this as I am not an attorney.  But consider the various ways in which CT Family Court destroyed Ted Taupier's life and cut him off from his relationship with his children.  Yes, it is true the Court made sure none of that evidence made it on the record.  Still, I am pretty sure that what this family went through was pretty devastating.  

Under the circumstances, couldn't Mr. Ted Taupier's remarks be construed as self-defense.  I was reading the 2008 OLR Research Report entitled "Castle Doctrine and Self Defense in Civil Cases."  This report describes the  Castle Doctrine by stating that the doctrine "establishes the circumstances under which a person can use physical force and deadly physical force to defend himself or someone else without being convicted for assault, manslaughter, or murder."  These are so called "stand your ground" laws.  Could stand your ground law apply to verbal defense as well as physical defense?

Wouldn't it be fair to say that a good many family court litigants have reported that the CT Judicial Branch is corrupt and that its employees are doing violence to their families and children, destroying their lives, bankrupting them, putting them out to live on the streets, snatching their children, allowing their children to be medically neglected or physically abused.  

Under these circumstances, couldn't we argue that the true threat here is not to Judge Bozzuto; the true threat here is to Ted Taupier and his family and to all the many family court litigants who have been exploited and taken advantage of in CT Family Court?  Yes, Ted Taupier made a statement which could be considered a threat, but wasn't he grievously provoked?  

Yet I don't believe this Castle Doctrine was ever raised, because the Court System carefully crafts the grounds upon which it will prosecute a defendant; it excludes anything it doesn't want it or the public to hear and then sets out to orchestrate these highly sophisticated show trials carried out as public relations gambits and media spectacles intended to divert attention from their own sordid crimes.  This is how a case which should be about a family court victim attempting to defend himself gets transformed into legal debates over whether a few exaggerated comments made in private to close friends is a true threat to a judge who wasn't even a part of the conversation.

One last point: if you look at the Memorandum of Decision of October 2, 2015 in the Taupier case and attempt to understand the Judge's explanation of the CT General Statutes and the case law which he used to justify convicting Ted Taupier, the more convoluted and incomprehensible it gets--after all it is 56 pages, plus an additional 12 to discuss the recent U.S. Supreme Court Elonis decision.  

If the average person makes the simple assumption that he or she has the right to freedom of speech--and most people do that---how could they possibly comprehend or even know of the Judge's extensive listing of the broad and extensive exceptions he and his pals have made to our Constitutional right to free speech.  Doesn't that make any one of us subject to entrapment within any context that we express ourselves--on social media, in letters to friends, on blogs--pretty much anywhere--because we aren't aware of the many exceptions.  Personally, I consider that thought chilling as should any reasonable Connecticut citizen.