JOURNALIST ANNE STEVENSON FINDS CORRUPTION EMBEDDED IN THE CONNECTICUT JUDICIAL SYSTEM

After an extensive investigation, Journalist Anne Stevenson has discovered a broad based web of corruption throughout the Connecticut Judicial System. 

 

Essentially, certain Connecticut Judges and Judicial Branch Managers have been promoting the business interests of a private vendor, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC), a Wisconsin based organization. 

 

In several family court cases these judges while on the Board of Directors of the AFCC have directed business towards family court professionals who are members of that organization. 

Some of the judges whose actions are currently under scrutiny are Judge Lynda Munro and Judge Holly Abery-Wetstone.  Judge Munro is particularly known for her decision in the case Liberti v. Liberti where she handed over sole custody of the parties' son to the father who was alleged to have abused him.  For more information on this case, see the link below:

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/speaking-family/2013/may/20/ct-judicial-branch-vendors-operated-court-employee/#ixzz2TwKWe5sf

Among family court professionals, a name that has come up frequently in regard to a high volume of referrals and questionable billing practices is Dr. Sidney Horowitz who was infamously associated with the Susan Skipp case where Ms. Skipp was wrongly denied access to her children.  And further there is the case of Mr. Paul Boyne who has not  been able to see his children since 2007.

 

The result is that these professionals have obtained a remarkably high proportion of case assignments from the Connecticut Judicial Branch. Again, some of these cases led to fit parents being completely denied access to their children in decisions that appear not to have made any legitimate sense.

 

Furthermore, there have been billing irregularities committed by these family court professionals which should be further investigated. 

 

Apparently, the AFCC has been doing business in this manner for over 30 years "and, at one point, even had a corporate office within the Hartford Superior Court." 

 

What is particularly troubling is that the AFCC has done this even though it is not registered to do business in the State of Connecticut, an outright violation of this state's "Nonstock Corporations Act." 

 

What we ask for--no--what we demand--is a complete investigation into this ongoing corruption and profiteering which has been taking place in our Judicial System, rising now to the highest levels of the system--to the judges and administrators themselves all the way down to modest clerks and low level functionaries who have been convinced that it is in their best interests to join this organization if they want to prosper in their employment with the judicial branch. 

The actions of the AFCC here in Connecticut, and of the legal professionals who run the organization, show an arrogant disregard for the law and for the ethical conduct of legal proceedings.  Above all, their actions represent a gross violation of the public trust which these judges and attorneys are sworn to uphold. 

Yesterday, several citizens appeared at a Judicial Ethics Committee meeting expecting that members of this Committee would address this urgent issue. Instead, the Committee frittered away its time discussing a minor unrelated issue for 30 minutes, and then cut the meeting short. 

The news is that Citizens of the State of Connecticut are sick and tired of getting the brush off, they are sick and tired of judges and abusive family court professionals stealing their children and their life long savings.  Yet these endless Commissions and Committees run by the Judicial Branch waste our time and taxpayer money trying to avoid accountability!

I say--enough is enough!

 

For further information regarding this outrage, please see the link below: 

 

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/speaking-family/2013/may/20/ct-judicial-branch-vendors-operated-court-employee/#ixzz2TwKWe5sf

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


 

Why is anyone willing to allow the "problem" to profit from manufacturing the "solution" to the problem they created for that purpose?

RELATED ARTICLES:

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/heart-without-compromise-children-and-children-wit/2013/mar/1/immunity-guardian-ad-litem-destroys-connecticut-fa/

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/speaking-family/2013/may/20/ct-judicial-branch-vendors-operated-court-employee/

 

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/speaking-family/2013/aug/23/minnesota-court-overturns-moms-conviction-sends-me/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anne-stevenson/top-5-hhs-programs-endang_b_1511613.html

 

 

HB 6387 OUR CUSTODY RIGHTS AT RISK--AGAIN!

LETTER FROM PRIVATE ATTORNEY  GENERAL, MR. MICHAEL NOWACKI SENT TO ALL MEDIA OUTLETS IN  REGARD TO THE AT RISK CUSTODY RIGHTS OF ALL CONNECTICT PARENTS!

 

Dear Editor:

I am writing to your readers on a matter of great urgency concerning a legislative bill which is going to the General Assembly for a vote in the next ten days.

HB6387 was endorsed by 39 of the 40 members of the Joint Committee on Judiciary on March 4, 2013.  HB6387 is known as a “raised bill”—meaning that there was no “legislator sponsorship”.

HB6387 is an omnibus bill—cleverly entitled A Bill for Court Operations.  Sounds innocent enough on the surface?

HB6387 directly emanated from a public administrative judiciary committee named the Family Commission --chaired by Honorable Lynda Munro.  The Family Commission is composed of seven other Superior Court family judges, six lawyers, who voted on November 14, 2012 to send this language to the Chief Administrative Judge Barbara Quinn, to submit to the legislature.

In short, the bill proposes that a Superior Court judge, upon the motion of any party, would have the “judicial discretion” at any time during the course of a divorce  or post-divorce (even after a parenting plan has been signed) to remove custody of a parent “ex-parte” without a hearing.

If passed by the General Assembly, parents, children, grandparents, uncles or aunts could be stripped of their rights to the love, care and companionship of family members, without any due process or equal protection.

“Non-enumerated” rights of the governed are protected by the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution—but only if you defend these generic rights to life, liberty and property.

Judges should not be writing laws of self-empowerment. 

The Connecticut legislative judiciary committee is filled with a super-majority of part legislators who engage in full-time legal practices before the same judges who they are empowering.

If you oppose the constitutionality of HB6387, send a letter to your State Senator and Representative to vigorously oppose this clear and present danger to the “liberty” interests of familial association.

For more information on the history of the family court corruption in Connecticut, please visit my website www.no-wackileaks.com or call write to me at mnowacki@aol.com.

 

Michael Nowacki                                             mnowacki@aol.com

319 Lost District Drive                                    (203) 273-4296 (cell)

New Canaan, CT  06840                                  (203) 966-6474 (home and fax)

 

CT JUDICIAL BRANCH FAMILY COMMISSION DISBANDING, HOPING TO EVADE PUBLIC SCRUTINY!

Recently, I was reviewing the online page for the Family Commission located on the CT Judicial Branch website.  As I did so, I was quite surprised to read commentary in the September 10, 2014 minutes of the Family Commission meeting indicating that the Commission is planning on shutting down its operations. The pertinent wording is as follows:

Under Section V.

"The Commission discussed the past, present, and future missions of the Family Commission.  The Commission was originally created to review and update the practice book rules for family cases.  All members present agreed that the Commission has gone beyond its original charge."

They did?  They said they had gone beyond the original charge?  How?  We would all like to know.  One way, I would suggest, is to become involved in the legislative process and personally write some of the Connecticut General Statutes.  This strikes me as a violation of the concept of the separation of powers.

To continue:

"The members also agreed that it was no longer necessary to meet on a regularly scheduled basis [emphasis added].  The Commission will continue to meet from time to time when there are issues brought to its attention by the bench and the bar for discussion.  All members agree that the family bar has always been comfortable bringing important matters to the attention of the bench when needed [emphasis added]."

What does that mean?  Does it mean that in cases the family bar speaks to judges in chambers and pretty much gets its way?  If so, this is a privilege self represented parties clearly aren't allowed!

So, in essence, they are taking discussions regarding the operation of family court outside of the public eye and into back corridors and private rooms.

I wonder if the increased scrutiny on the operations of the Family Court Section of the CT Judicial Branch has led to this outcome? I am aware that the much maligned AFCC has shut down its operations here in Connecticut.  Could the one event have led to the other?  Who knows?  One thing is for certain, the Family Commission has certainly not appreciated the increased scrutiny on its activities which has included a considerable number of interested citizens and family court victims attending its proceedings.

I reviewed the number of meetings of the Family Commission which have taken place from its inception in 2008 up to the present.  There has definitely been a considerable decrease in meetings and an increase in the cancellations of meetings as the public has taken it upon itself to observe in person many of the Family Commission meetings, and has expressed greater concern about the misdeeds of family court and its exploitation of Connecticut citizens.  

A chart following this trend is posted below:

YEAR          #MEETINGS          #CANCELLED MEETINGS

2008                     5                                              0

2009                     7                                              1

2010                     7                                              0

2011                     8                                              1

2012                     4                                             3

2013                     6                                             3

2014                     3                                             2

2015                     1                                             0

I also think it is interesting that the founding members of the Family Commission have remained on the Commission for the entire seven year period that it has been in existence.  While the Family Commission has added additional members, earlier members have stayed.  So the culture of this Commission has remained the same, and the people dominating the Commission from the start and establishing the agenda on a meeting to meeting basis has remained steady.

Some of these legal professionals whose names dominate the Commission are known AFCC members or legal professionals whose names are considered notorious among family court critics because they are perceived as corrupt.

The names of the founding Commission members are as follows:

Hon. Holly Abery-Whetstone
Hon. Sandra Sosnoff Baird
Hon. John Boland
Attorney Steven Dembo
Hon. Anne Dranginis
Attorney Gaetano Ferro
Hon. Steven Frazzini* (no longer a member)
Attorney Constance Frontis
Hon. Elaine Gordon
Attorney Johanna Greenfield
Hon. Lynda Munro (Chair)
Attorney Maureen Murphy* (Now a judge)
Attorney Thomas Parrino
Hon. Elliott Solomon

Members who have been added to the Commission since its original founding are as follows:

Hon. Elizabeth Bozzuto (Current Chair)
Attorney Michael Blanchard
Attorney Michael Fasano
Attorney Deborah Grover
Attorney John Colella
Attorney Alan Palmer
Hon. Barry Pinkus

These are the individuals who apparently no longer feel they ought to be held accountable to the public, despite the fact that it is their failed policies that have generated so much dissatisfaction in recent years.  

Judge Elliott Solomon is one judge who has stated that he is responsible for training pretty much all of the judges in Hartford Family Court and that they would all do what he said.  If so, he is the first one who should answer for the gross miscarriages of justice which has taken place there in recent years.

JUDGES CONSPIRE TO KIDNAP YOUR CHILDREN!

Many of us have had multiple experiences of judges acting capriciously and outside the bounds of the law, putting our children at risk and causing them harm and damage. Thus, it will probably be no surprise for you to hear that, in a recent meeting of the Family Commission of the Connecticut Judicial Branch, observers noted additional behavior of this kind.

On Wednesday, November 14, 2012, the Family Commission headed by Judge Lynda Munro met at the Middletown Courthouse at 2:00 p.m. 

Number 2 on the agenda was the use of ex parte motions for custody. 

The judges in that meeting were there to discuss how to expand the power of judges to make ex parte custody decisions almost unlimited by drafting legislation to this effect which it intended to submit to the State Legislature. 

This is a violation of the separation of powers of government which dictates that judges are not allowed to draft legislation or approve of legislation in order to submit it to the legislature.  While judges are required to support the constitution and uphold the law, they are by no means supposed to draft it.  In other words, as Citizen Attorney General Michael Nowacki has stated, "Judges rule on and apply existing law." they do not create it. 

So, what is an ex parte custody decision?  An ex parte decision is where the judge makes a decision with one party in the case, but absent the presence of the other party.

Now we know ex parte communications with a judge aren't legal, so how does it become legal to have ex parte hearings where the judge is allowed to make decisions about matters as important as the custody of your children?  Imagine how this kind of situation could go.  Your ex gets an ex parte hearing for custody of your child, and the next thing you know he or she is standing at the door demanding you hand over your child, judge's orders in hand.  That is really, really frightening, and very possible the way this legislation is being drafted.

Ordinarily, making an ex parte decision is not legal, but I am aware they are allowed when there is a need for a restraining order in circumstances where there has been an allegation of domestic violence.  In a case like this the court would order another hearing 14 days later in order to hear the other side of the story.   

Ex parte motions in regard to custody are granted under Connecticut General Statutes 46b-56(f). I assume under circumstances where there is an emergency or a situation where a child is in imminent danger, an ex parte motion for custody could be granted under Connecticut General Statutes 46b-56(f).  

The problem is, from what I am hearing, there are multiple cases in which judges have taken children from fit parents in Connecticut through the use of ex parte hearings, and then not followed up with an evidentiary hearing with both parents present to state their arguments, in actions that essentially amount to taking children hostage.

This is a serious denial of the due process rights of the parents involved in such cases. 

At the present time, under 46b-56(f) there is very little guidance for judges in regard to ex parte motions and yet it has been used as the basis of a number of famiy court decisions which are currently on appeal. 

The wording of this section is as follows, "When the court is not sitting, any judge of the court may make any order in the cause which the court might make under this section, including orders of injunction, prior to any action in the cause by the court." 

If this seems a little vague and unclear to you, it comes across the same way to the judges who have used it as the basis for using ex parte hearings to take custody from parents without a hearing as they acknowledged in a Family Commission Meeting held on April 11, 2012. 

For example, the phrase "When the court is not sitting..." has historically been understood to mean when the court is on vacation, yet many ex parte motions have taken place when the court is in session and not on vacation.  Try to figure that one out!  I suspect that is when judicial discretion kicks in.  We are not on vacation, but I'm going to do this anyway kind of thinking! 

Further, while the Members of the Family Commission Meeting agreed that judges have the authority to grant ex parte custody orders in the April meeting, the preamble to the draft legislation prepared for the November meeting states clearly that some judges believe that the current version does not give judges "present authority for the issuance of such ex parte orders". 

If this is so, you have to wonder why judges are issuing these orders when their authority to do so is so tenuous.

In an effort to what appears to me to be an attempt to cover their tracks retroactively, in the fact of upcoming lawsuits in Appellate Court, the Commission prepared a draft amendment in order to specify more clearly what elements would have to be present in order to grant an ex parte order for a change of custody. This draft amendment is quite alarming because it allows for an ex parte change of custody for the most flimsy circumstances. 

The wording in the draft is that an ex parte motion can be made when there is an allegation of "an immediate and present physical or psychological danger to the  child."  This is extremely non specific, broad wording which can be used to apply to almost any situation. 

Then, even more alarming, the draft continues on to allow the judge to issue additional orders in an ex parte motion such as, for example, Item #4 "such further orders as the court determines to be in the child's best interest."  That pretty much includes everything! 

The proposed draft legislation is a tremendous power grab on the part of the judges of the Family Commission.  Not only is it a power grab, it is also, as Mr. Michael Nowacki has pointed out, "a clear and unambiguous abuse of judicial administrative authority." 

As Mr. Nowacki reminds us the Connecticut General Constitution defines the limited authority of the judiciary branch of the government in the "Constitution State" in Article Sixth:  "The powers and jurisdiction of these courts shall be defined by law." 

Thus, creating laws is the exclusive province of the legislature. 

Despite this, in their meeting on November 14, 2012, the judges of the Family Commission sought to go beyond their jurisdiction and create legislation.  

The danger this represents to us is very clear.  If they continue in this track, parents will have no protection from Judges who abuse their authority and take children from their parents and hold them hostage on frivolous grounds.  

Divorce in Connecticut will continue to keep a close eye on this situation and report on new developments as they arise.

A POSSIBLE 50% OF FAMILY COURT LITIGANTS ARE VICTIMS OF FRAUD AND CORRUPTION PERPETRATED BY THE LEGAL PROFESSION!

If there is one piece of nonsense that bothers me the most about CT Family Court it is the mythology the legal community likes to spread around that the people who are being defrauded and exploited in Family Court are just a small minority of crazy people. 

 

The first time I heard this theory of the small crazy minority was from the discussion in the December 2002 report of the Governor's Commission on Divorce, Custody and Children.  This report stated as follows, "Conflict between parents during and after separation presents a major risk to children and a major challenge to the system.  The majority of divorcing and separating parents recognize their personal responsibility to meet the financial, emotional, and developmental needs of their children.  These parents, with some assistance from the Family Services Unit, private mediators or therapists, do their best to work out arrangements for the future life of their children within the changed family.  However, a small minority of parents engages in persistent conflict because of anger, characterological or mental health problems, or force of personality." 

 

I had forgotten this discussion regarding the cause of the problems associated with the CT Family Court system.  However, in January 2014, when the report was published of the Task Force to Study Legal Disputes Involving the Care and custody of Minor Children, to my surprise, instead of providing new insights based upon the testimony of the many individuals who came to speak to the Task force, the members of the Task Force simply repeated what the 2002 Commission had to say--blaming CT Family Court problems on a small minority of mentally ill people. 

 

But where did this claim originate?  That is what I don't get. 

 

We actually do not have any statistical basis for that conclusion; there has been no study, no investigation of CT Family Court records, nothing that establishes this claim in fact. 

 

During the testimony in regard to CT Family Court I heard victims of family court talk of Guardian Ad Litems who couldn't be bothered to meet with their child clients, I heard about attorneys who padded their bills and who created conflicts deliberately in order to increase their legal fees.  I heard about judges who refused to allow victims of family court to present their witnesses or their documentary evidence.  I heard about mental health professionals who deliberately manipulated family court litigants, pushed quack theories regarding Parental Alienation Syndrome, and aided and abetted in custody switching schemes. 

 

I certainly heard about people being driven to desperation and despair by the CT Family Court system, but I did not see that you could line up a group of people who had been labeled with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or personality disorders and point at them as the source of all the complaints directed towards the legal system.  

 

I asked myself:  could it be that pointing fingers at people with mental health labels was simply a way that corrupt family court officials--judges, attorneys, and GALs--had of scapegoating an unpopular social class in order to explain away their wrongdoing? 

 

This is why I was extremely interested in the Biannual Report of the CT Judicial Branch 2012-2014.  As soon as it came out, I grabbed the report and quickly flipped to the back where the statistics are located.  So this is the story I got out of these statistics. 

 

Based upon the stats in this biannual report, there are approximately 34,000 divorces more or less filed each year in the State of Connecticut.  According to the report, half of these cases go to trial, and half of them are disposed of in other ways.  So that means approximately 17,000 go to trial.  According to retired Judge Lynda Munro, 35% of those continue on to appeal.  So that is 5,950 per year that are high conflict, simply by virtue of the fact that not even the trial was sufficient to settle matters. 

 

The CT Judicial Branch and the Legal profession want to say that the people involved in high conflict divorce are a tiny minority.  Does approximately 5,950 cases per year seem like a teensy, tiny minority to you guys? 

 

Of course, I am just associating high conflict with the concrete numbers of individuals who are unable to resolve their family court issues to the point where they continue on to appellate court.  What about the many more who are also high conflict, but can't afford the legal fees to go any further.  What about those who simply give up and accept the fact that they have lost all of their money or won't ever see their children again.  What about the additional group of individuals who may never end up in Appellate Court but continue on with years and years of post judgment legal issues.  Then there are those who have been blackmailed and intimidated by family court professionals that they are afraid to speak out.

 

Now you may be getting up to numbers that include at least 50% of litigants or more. 

 

Of course, you could get to 50% simply by saying that any divorcing couple that has to go to trial is automatically high conflict.  The bottom line is that any significant trial can cost up to $30,000 for a single litigant, and as much as $60,000 for both.  If you are willing to pay that much to go to trial, yes, I would say what you have is high conflict.

 

I am speculating here with a broad range of numbers.  It is good speculation in that I think that the conclusion I've drawn is correct that we have at least 50% or more of litigants entangled in devastating and fraudulent divorce proceedings. 

 

On the other hand, I think that the CT Judicial Branch could go a long way towards ensuring greater accuracy if the Branch actually collected more concrete numbers in a way that was geared towards understanding the actual causes of the problems, rather than just blaming people with mental illness as a way to avoid accountability. 

KEITH HARMON SNOW'S "SCREW THE BITCH": A QUICK OVERVIEW

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL ABUSE CASES GROSSLY MISHANDLED.

On February 15, 2011 eight year old Max Liberti's behavior was so extreme that his mother, Sunny Kelley, had become desperate. All the evidence indicated that Max was being raped and tortured. At the time, Dr. Eli Newberger, M.D., an expert in child abuse who teaches at Harvard Medical School, heard that Max was having suicidal thoughts. Dr. Newberger was seriously concerned for the boy's life.

Furthermore, Max had become increasingly psychotic and uncontrollable, running around groping adults' privates, singing songs about killing himself, or dissociating, staring off, lost in space, unreacheable by his mother or the other women trying to protect and care for him. Max was hitting himself in the face, and talking about death.

Similarly, Lori Hanrahan faced her own nightmare. Her daughter, Mila, was being raped by her husband. As she explains it, in June 2009 her daughter, Mila, came home with a shredded vagina and experts concluded that her husband, Igor, had raped her.

Both Sunny Kelley and Lori Hanrahan are well respected members of their community. Sunny is a white, middle class, affluent, 38 year-old professional sound engineer living in Southern Connecticut.

Lori Hanrahan is a Professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C. Her credentials are impeccable: Over 20 years of work in international development and human rights all over the world. She was a guest on CNN and her op-eds about human rights and sex trafficking were often published in The New York Times.

AUTHORITIES AND FAMILY COURTS COLLUDE WITH SEXUAL ABUSERS TO PERPETUATE THE ABUSE.

"I spent two years in Maine, from 2008 to 2010, where by court order I was forced to traffick my daughter and deliver her to her father." Lori breaks down and sobs over the phone. "They made me traffic my daughter or go to jail."

In Sunny's case, there was a divorce trial which was held over the course of fourteen days in August 2011 with four additional days in October. The end result was that the Judge in the case, Lynda Munro, gave full custody of Max Liberti to his father on a silver platter. Since that time, Sunny has been denied access to her child.

Instead of the protection that they deserved from the legal system, that system delivered both Lori Handrahan's daughter, Mila, and Sunny Kelley's son, Max, to their sexual abusers. Both of these abusers were supported by the courts and appear to be part of sex crime networks. Both mothers are fighting for their children's lives at the expense of their own. They have been slandered, disabused, ridiculed, harassed, ignored, humiliated, threatened and attacked. They have been financially devastated.

Still, they have fought back on behalf of their children, but the more they have fought the more the system has restricted hammered and punished them. Every move they have made has brought further retaliation upon them. And they are not alone. It is the same story for Susan Skipp (Tittle v. Tittle), Sandra McVicar (McVicar v. Buggy), Marlene Debek (Bhatia v. Debek), Lisa Foley (Foley v. Foley), Elizabeth Richter (Richter v. Richter), and many more.

Yet, unlike some protective mothers who now live on the streets or in their cars or committed to mental health asylums, mothers like Sunny Kelley, Lori Handrahan, Susan Skipp, Sandra McVicar, Marlene Debek, Lisa Foley and Elizabeth Richter have not succumbed to the institutionalized corruption and criminality served on them in an effort to silence and destroy them--and deliver their children to the abusers. They are broke; they are exhuasted; they are depressed and disillusioned: How can society have let them down so badly? And yet, they are courageous beyond belief. And they are still fighting.

Some mothers have taken the law into their own hands and attempted to flee. For example, the documentary film "No Way Out But One" tells the story of Holly Collins, a protective mother persecuted by the family court system for trying to protect her children. A family court ignored Holly Collin's complaints of sexual and domestic violence, and the physical evidence of serious child abuse, and gave full custody of her children to her abusive ex-partner. Holly Collins became an international fugitive when she fled the United States in 1994 and became the first U.S. citizen to gain asylum in the Netherlands.

In January 1993, Linda Wiegand, a resident of the State of Connecticut, found out that the father of her second son, Thomas Wilkinson, had sexually abused her older child Ben as well as Thomas. Even though there was overwhelming evidence that the children had been sexually abused, it was not enough evidence for the Connecticut Family Court System. Thus, in January of 1994, Linda Wiegand disappeared with her children. Then in July 1996 Wiegand was found and arrested in Las Vegas, and both children were delivered to their abuser.

THE MEDIA IS SILENT.

Every effort to get media exposure for these two women's stories--whether through the New York Times or Nightline or the Associated Press, or CBS-affiliated local TV stations like WABI in Portland, or regional papers like the Portland Herald Press or the Hartford Courant--was initially met with great interest as journalists and bureau chiefs recognized "hot" stories. After a short time one promise of imminent and certain publication after another turned into refusals to return phone calls or emails. Threatened or silenced by someone, the "hot" stories went cold.

While Sunny Kelley ad most other protective parent's stories of judicial abuse and destruction remain disbelieved, unheard and unknown, Lori Handrahan's efforts to save Mila have resulted in a very high profile case garnering national atatention--thanks to the internet and the outrage of thousands of people across the country. Still major social netowrking media--Twitter and Facebook and others--have also censored Lori and Mila's story.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

The roads to these mothers' hell are virtually the same, and they are unique only in particulars, not in generalities. Each year, tens of thousands of families across America are being ripped apart through Family Courts and private profiteering, protecting and growing trafficking in women and children in America.

Investigations have uncovered a web of corruption involving state agencies from Connecticut to Maine, from Georgia to California. Investigations have involved FBI agents, but as often as not the FBI is part of the problem, not the solution and information delivered to the FBI is suppressed, ignored or used against the people trying to defend children and mothers from abuse.

The problems with Family Courts pervade all levels of the federal and state systems, and no United States citizen are immune: rich and poor are exploited, only differently. At the root of the problem are these central truths:

1. The five billion dollar a year budget of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) provides a black hole of funding that filters millions of dollars down to "gatekeepers" posted to key positions in Family Courts, State Agencies, Law Enforcement, and affiliated non-profit organizations that have learned to milk the system;

2. Over the past 40 years, the destructive 'Father's Rights movement has evolved into a hydra that has overtaken judicial systems and social services, and it now uses them to persecute mothers and destroy families according to the otherwise reasonable dictate that access and visitation with both parents is in 'the best interest of the child';

3. The United States is both a domestic and an international hub for a trillion dollars a year sex industry trafficking in women and children.

Of course, it is not only women and children who are abused--across the nation, good men and good fathers are waking up to the national epidemic of pedophilia and sex trafficking involving federal and state governments and officials, and the horrors of 'Family Courts'.

READ ON.

For more information on these matters, please locate the more lengthy article at the following link:

http://www.consciousbeingalliance.com/2012/05/a-life-sentence-family-courts-sacrificing-mothers-and-children-in-america/

AFCC INVOLVEMENT IN THE VERY HEART OF THE JUDICIARY!

From: mnowacki@aol.com

Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 11:59:52 +0000

To: Giovannucci, Marilou<Marilou.Giovannucci@jud.ct.gov>

ReplyTo: mnowacki@aol.com

Cc: Iaccarino, David<David.Iaccarino@jud.ct.gov>; Martin Libbin<Martin.Libbin@jud.ct.gov>; <melissa.farley@jud.ct.gov>

Subject: Re: Your phone messages

Ms. Gianvannucci:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cordially,


Michael Nowacki