Assemblyman Bill Monning has voted to investigate the family court system.
When an Alabama superior court judge issued an order that Amanda Hodge’s two adopted children be returned immediately to her custody out of concern for their safety following a February, 2008 state-ordained forensic interview, the family court of Monterey County, where Hodge’s children were living with their adoptive father, declined to cooperate. Instead, the custody battle seemed only to swing further out of Hodge’s favor. She lost custody entirely, was granted supervised telephone calls only and has now not see her children in two years. She is out $90,000 but is determined to continue fighting, and while Hodge expects the court system to strip her of another $100,000, whether she will see her children again is entirely uncertain.
Hodge’s case is hardly unique. Thousands of others like it, say activists and legal professionals, highlight what they claim is the injustice of the nation’s family court system, the legal branch that handles divorce cases and the baggage that goes with them, including child abuse. Data collected from 362 cases nationwide, including 137 in California, since 2004 by Dr. Geraldine Stahly, a professor at San Bernardino California State University, indicate that family law is failing to protect abused children and, in a shocking pattern of systemic ineptitude, actually granting full custody of the abused to the accused abusers, usually fathers. An activist organization called the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence, in fact, says that 58,000 times per year judges in American family courts grant full custody of abused children to abusive guardians.
The above studies do not differentiate between accused and convicted abusers, and skeptics may point out that groundless accusations of abuse have long been used as a weapon in aggressive custody battles. But jaded attorneys and frustrated activists say there is definitely a problem—and it can be boiled down to financial motives. “It becomes like a feeding frenzy in the courtroom if either of the parents has money,” says Kathleen Russell, a cofounder and staff consultant at the Center for Judicial Excellence, a Marin County community-based judicial watchdog organization.
Judges, Russell explains, frequently defer families to “custody evaluators” for mandatory meetings in which the specialist interviews the parties, evaluates the situation and writes a report for the court. Many family court judges regularly appoint the same mediators, custody evaluators and child counsels time and again to assist in cases, and Russell calls the family court system a “culture of cronyism” from which a “cottage industry” of evaluators and mediators has grown and thrived.
“People get stuck with these custody evaluators and the parent with the money is the one who writes the check, and it becomes a system in which custody of the kid goes to the highest bidder,” says Russell. “This system is in need of serious overhaul by eliminating profit incentives.”
Evaluators are not cheap, either. In Sacramento County, the average rate for an evaluation and report is $15,000. In Marin County, evaluators may charge as much as $60,000. “Families are being ruined emotionally and financially by this system,” says Barbara Kauffman, a family law attorney in Marin County. “This system is taking children from parents who don’t beat them, who don’t do drugs, who are respected, who have morals, and these good parents are the ones receiving supervised visitation.”
One Santa Cruz man now immersed in a six-year-old custody battle voices an opinion shared by many in his position: that the system, with its mandatory court-appointed evaluators and systemic inconveniences, operates with the foremost objective of extracting money from families. “They’ll bleed you dry,” says the man, who would give his name only as “George.” “They’ll never come to a final decision. They just wear you down until you have nothing left. It’s not in their interest to give 50-50 custody. They want to put the squeeze on one parent.”
In the infamous case of Alycia Mesiti-Allen, the 14-year-old Santa Clara girl’s court-appointed attorney, Jonnie Herring, warned the court in 2006 of her concerns for the safety of Mesiti-Allen and her older brother, who had both been placed with their father, Mark Edward Mesiti, in November 2005. Herring later wrote to Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Vincent Chiarello, “I am deeply concerned about both minors, especially Alycia.”
No transfer of custody to Mesiti-Allen’s mother or another relative occurred, and in August 2006 Alycia Mesiti-Allen disappeared. Almost three years later, in March 2009, police uncovered her body. Her father has been charged with her murder.
Meanwhile, “parental alienation syndrome,” or PAS, has become extremely popular and very effective as a weapon in custody battles. Court-appointed evaluators and psychologists regularly diagnose parents with this “condition,” which is supposedly characterized by one parent seeking to “alienate” the child from the other parent. Although PAS is not a scientifically proven theory, the syndrome is admitted frequently as evidence in custody battles, and parents marred with the PAS label often lose custody to the alleged abuser, explains Russell.
Court Reports
In July, Assemblymember Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) called for the Bureau of State Audits to investigate the family courts system in Sacramento and Marin counties. Assemblyman Bill Monning (D-Carmel) signed his support for the audit, which was approved unanimously in August in a joint vote by six members of the Assembly and six of the Senate.
“We’ve had families complain to us about lack of integrity in the family court system and about a lack of checks and balances,” says Monning. “We’re concerned that the system is not working in the best interests of the child.”
The audit is intended to improve due process within the system, shed light upon the criteria used by the court in training, qualifying, and appointing custody evaluators and others specialists, and ultimately lead to placement of children in the custody of non-abusive parents.
And in May 2008 the Elkins Family Law Task Force was appointed to conduct a review of family law proceedings and recommend to the Judicial Council of California proposals that will help provide more effective and consistent rules, policies, and procedures, ensure that due process is followed, and increase access to justice for families and their children.
Robin Yeamens, a family law specialist in Los Gatos, approves of some of the proposals, such as one that recommends allowing litigants to carry tape recorders into the courtroom. Currently, recorders are prohibited and litigants must pay thousands to view transcripts from their own hearings. The task force, however, failed to address PAS, which Russell fears might limit the likelihood that Assembly Bill 612, written by Jim Beall (D-San Jose) and designed to ban the use of PAS in family court, will pass through the legislature this spring.
A public comment period currently open for opinions will close Dec. 4; after that the task force will make its recommendations to the California Supreme Court. The public is urged to participate on the comment form at http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/jc/tflists/elkins.htm.
Kauffmann believes that many of the procedural steps in the family court system are designed to draw money from the pockets of litigants. Connie Valentine, cofounder of the California Protective Parents’ Association, recognizes the same pattern and calls it downright extortion in some cases. She cites the case of the mother of a child allegedly abused by the father who came to Valentine for guidance. The woman, says Valentine, was unable to pay the custody evaluator the $2,200 fee. The judge threatened to give full custody of her child to the father if she could not pay before a deadline. She failed to produce the money and lost custody.
For Schillaci-Lavergne, the wheels of justice are stuck in the mud of family court bureaucracy. She has spent $1.5 million on legal fees in California and Hawaii fighting for her daughter, now 12, who remains in the full custody of her father.
And in Alabama, Hodge’s nightmare goes on. Her children remain in Monterey County, and she is uncertain whether or when she will see them again—and whether she will have any money left if the day comes. But to Hodge, the complete senselessness of the system has, at long last, begun to make perfect sense after all: “They just want my money, and the longer I’m in court, the more money they’ll get.”
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Ingrid Blank Thu, Feb 11, 2010 - 1:46 pm
As a mother and grandmother residing in South Africa I hereby request a forensic investigation of the Riverside Superior Court Indio branch,notably Commissioner LAWRENCE P. BEST, a former district attorney and the mediator EMELINDA MCGINNIS, who grossly violated my daughter’s (ELENA GROSS) and grandchildren’s (JOSHUA GROSS (7) and GABRIAL GROSS (2)) human and constitutional rights under both the US and South African constitution and thus must be held accountable for child abuse and child endangerment (Case No.: IND 098669)This despicable atrocity and miscarriage of justice committed on December 1, 2009 should have never happened in the first place and I’ll make sure that those responsible will pay dearly for their heinous act.Commissioner Best’s decision to award physical custody to the children’s father Tim Gross was solely based on the biased report of the mediator EMELINDA MCGINNIS, whose credentials should be investigated given the fact that her license No. 12726 wa s cancelled on March 31, 2008 and only renewed on August 29, 2008 (new license No. 24875). I dread to think how many parents this “expert” has already plunged into despair. She completely ignored and left out in her report everything my daughter said, e.g. the abuser’s felony charges, drug manufacturing conviction, illegal possession of a loaded weapon, alcoholism, long-term meth addiction, the restraining order granted against him on October 20, 2009 and then lifted by the same commissioner on November 16 because there was “no imminent danger”, proof how many times he has endangered the children in the past, the fact that he admitted that he deliberately did not pay the utility bills thus intending to render the residence unsafe and inhabitable for the children, which constitutes abandonment, she also considered the fact that my daughter is still breastfeeding Gabrial as “inappropriate” and “irrelevant” (an absolute audacity), she omitted to state in her report that the father objected to an evaluation , whereas the mother agreed. She accepted the abuser’s word for it that my daughter’s evidence-based accusations were not true, that she invented them and thus was “delusional” - the typical broken-record response used without fail by all abusers. Elena’s request for a psychiatric evaluation of the abuser on grounds of his long-term meth addiction and alcoholism was totally dismissed and because Elena in the lady’s “expert” opinion was perceived as the parent “least willing” to share custody with her abuser who made her life hell for seven long years, physical custody was given to a man who never interacted with the children because he was too drunk most of the time and subjected them to his drunken rages, he was allowed to take them to his parents’ house in Yucaipa , who severely mentally and physically abused him and his brothers in their childhood and successfully raised three convicted felons in the process. He did NOT inform the court that his parents’ house was in another county out of the court’s jurisdiction. Given the fact that an evaluation of all family members is customary during custody proceedings, why was Elena (and not him) the only parent ordered to undergo an evaluation AFTER the custody order was made, which makes the whole farce even more diabolical in view of the fact that a mother who has been the SOLE caregiver of her children since the day they were born would be devastated and in utter despair which of course would reflect (negatively as hoped for by the willing participants in this heinous crime) in any evaluation, apart from the fact that she would have to pay for one herself which the other party hopes she will never accomplish since the abuser depleted the joint bank account leaving her destitute and the judge is fully aware of it, because just as he did not extend the restraining order because there was no “Imminent danger” despite documentary evidence presented by Elena that the abuser is in possession of an unregistered fire arm,he also declined an emergency hearing on spousal and child support and payment of bills, because he did not consider the destitute status of a mother and her two children an “emergency”, although this clearly constitutes an act of criminal neglect and abandonment on the part of the “loving” father.
Note that in 2007, 10 mothers and a victimized child (now an adult) and national and state organizations filed suit against the United States with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. They claimed that the human rights of abused mothers and children were not protected because custody was awarded to abusers and child molesters (Klein, 2007; Stop Family Violence:
The fact that a devoted and loving mother must prove her “sanity” and a meth addict and alcoholic is not required to do so, is proof that this whole case was rigged from the outset.
Irreparable harm will be done to the children if they are allowed to stay in the hellhole they’ve been plunged into by COMMISSIONER LAWRENCE P. BEST for one minute longer. The latter’s actions constitute abuse of discretionary power, in addition to violations of judicial procedures and incredible bias against my daughter. No less than 5 certificates from physicians and other professional bodies, including an evaluation of the Institute on Violence, Abuse & Trauma in San Diego, confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt that ” nothing was found in this testing administration to indicate or validate the removal of her children from her care”. Yet, COMMISSIONER LAWRENCE BEST denied a reconsideration of custody decision with the ludicrous argument ” but what IF the mother is mentally unstable” as claimed by her abuser. Actually, if an unsubstantiated statement is all it takes to take children away from the only caregiver they have known and hand them to the abuser on a platter, then we should meander into family courts claiming that judges, commissioners, mediators are mentally unstable and get them removed from the bench this way. My daughter’s ordeal at the hands of self-anointed megalomaniacs is by no means an isolated case where capricious decisions were made and discretionary power abused in the Riverside Superior Court, Indio Family Division. An urgent forensic audit must be conducted and I hope that someone out there is reading this and set it in motion. My grandchildren are suffering, the little one is screaming his head off for his mommy. A fortnight ago I witnessed his reaction over the telephone when the children were with my daughter. Whenever his brother Joshua mentioned the word “daddy”, little Gabrial was terrified and screamed “I don’t want daddy, mommy don’t leave me”. This is court-ordered child abuse in its vilest form and judges subjecting little children to such terror need to be removed from the bench and charged with intentional infliction of emotional and psychological abuse.
Ingrid Blank, mother of ELENA GROSS and grandmother of JOSHUA and GABRIAL GROSS
Tiffany Cameron Sun, Mar 14, 2010 - 8:52 pm
Indio Supperior Court in098669 Commishiner Lawrence P Best is the worst offender ever!! He has given my grandchildren to my daughters ex-boyfriend who never wanted them in the first place try to force her to ABORT them she refused he psychologically bashed her day after day so instead of 4grandchildren I have only 2 She lost one in 2nd trimister we’d already named her but NO she didn’t make it!’ the other baby was lost almost immediately!! The Judge is suppose to do what’s in the best interst of the children what a croc! It’s all about evaluate,monitor,threrpy!!’ in other words he who pays wins!!!! That means 99.9% time if the man is abusive you bring that up because your trying to protect your babies!!‘n when you do I’m warning you DO NOT!!!! Judge Best is looking just for you!! Say GOODBYE to your children,grandchildren FOREVER because nothing you say or do will be good enough for him ever!!!! Been fighting with this man for two yrs. The more evedence you have against the (father?) the worse off you’ll look!!!You will be called CRAZY a LIAR and ALIENATOR!! FORCED into730 EVALUATION dad will pay for but beware that’s the catch!‘n HE PAYS HE WINS!‘n Judge Best will hand pick his HENCHWOMAN=Diana Herrington and she is a WOMAN HATER!!! You say fathers pinching,slapping,spanking,flicking mouths uh oh your screwed!! Bring in possible sexual abuse which your child brings up not you and off with your head say goodbye to life as you know it!!! Cause it’s over the fat lady has sung!! You’ll be jumping through hoops decided periodically and don’t count on passing!!! That’s the point!! The longer you’re babies are gone the more you have to spend on psychs remember YOUR CRAZY! This creep dressed in a monkey suit fir court this creep who you know in your heart doesn’t love nor want your babies couldn’t possibly be all that bad mam your just bitter cause he’s moved on your bitter cause he doesn’t pay court order childsupport so you have to drag your poor inocent babies to WELFARE to feed them!!’ even if you work Mothers don’t make as much don’t work as many hours so YOU ARE NOW a LEACH and no good living off the backs of hard working tax payers! Yeah like that’s what we all ASPIRE to BE!!‘n the cycle begins your a human guiena pig of the Indio court system! Round and round you’ll go NEVER gettting ANYWHERE!! Because they do not want you to that’s why! You pay their saleries!! Yep,all the hard earned cash pays for their cushy lifestyle!!! Why most of them don’t even need lisence or much traing to steal your children!! CPS no experence needed!!! GOD BLESS ALL YOU MOTHERS and GRANDPARENTS!‘n KEEP PRAYING and FILING REPORTS against this judge Lawerece P Best cause he’s a very well paid BABY STEALER!!!’ please HELP I’m dying piece by piece everyday because grandparents HAVE NO RIGHTS!! Except to babysit for the ex when he worked 90hrs a week!!!! Now zero contact because he has SOLE CUSTODY and hates my daughter and myself more than he loves his children!! Oh one last thing he Now told court he works 15hrs a day and babies go to anyone he can find to watch them but there better off with him? No stablity. No home life no schedule. And now hrs spilt the children up and they have never been away from each other since 2yr old was born!!! She’s left to fend for herself,never taken anywhere left with people we don’t even know or her either!’ Anit life grand?!!!
Tiffany Cameron Sun, Mar 14, 2010 - 10:47 pm
Every word Ingrid Blank has written on this site pertaining to Comishner Lawerence P Best and Emalinda Mcgennis is true!!!! Add Diana Herrington MFT to the list! I’ve signed every pettion every site I can find to complain about them I do and will continue to sign pettions and file paper to rid the Indio Supperior Court of these baby stealers!!! An investigation into Commishner Best is immediately needed he came here from Orange/La county as insurence Judge!!!! Not Family Law!!! INSURENCE!!! Does he even have a family,chidren,grandchildren? U doubt it because how can he sleep at night taking chilldren from loving,caring,non drinking,non smoking taking pride in being the best Mothers and Grandmothers who would walk in front of a bus take a bullit for our babies give our lives for our babies work only to support them not to get away from them as exs do 9.9times out of 10 PLEASE SIGN ANYTHING IT TAKES to GET RID of THESE people especially Commishner Best!!!!!!!!! HELP SAVE OUR/YOUR BABIES!!!!!!!!!
Ingrid Blank Tue, Mar 16, 2010 - 2:47 am
Tiffany, your and my daughter and grandchildren are by no means the only victims of COMMISSIONER LAWRENCE BEST’s despicable abuse of discretionary power and blatant violation of judiciary procedures and violation of our daughters’ and grandchildren’s human and constitutional rights enshrined in the US constitution. The fact that he removes children from devoted and loving mothers who want to protect them from their abuser and hands them over to the abuser on a platter makes him and his henchmen/women accessories to child abuse and child endangerment which is a criminal offense. On top of that this court displays an immense bias and discriminates against residents of Hispanic origin. From my daughter’s first name (ELENA) they erraneously concluded that she was Hispanic and when they discovered that she was not, the remark was made revealed to us by a reliable source that “since she is not Hispanic, she will be back in court”. Furthermore, it is unacceptable that there is not one single pro bono attorney available in this town (INDIO)and parents, particularly mothers, are literally bulldozed into the ground by these self-anointed little tin gods playing God with our grandchildren’s lives.
No person, particularly senators and other decision makers, could possibly close their eyes to the immense pain and suffering inflicted on our daughters and grandchildren by the likes of Commissioner Best and other well-remunerated whores of the court. A forensic audit of this court needs to be conducted and each and every case where children were placed at the mercy of an abuser needs to be reviewed. failing which we might as well start a collection to dismantle the Statue of Liberty.
Ingrid Blank, mother of ELENA GROSS and grandmother of JOSHUA and GABRIAL GROSS