Permalink
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-328648?ref=feeds/latest
Sacramento // embed media
September 14, 2009
Dear First Lady, Michelle Obama:
When a father’s right to visit supersedes a child’s right to life, literally, notwithstanding their welfare, I award the Sacramento Family Law Court the metal of BLOOD. Lara DeLuz (In Lieu of Justice)
There is a horrific atrocity occurring in the California Family Law System, with Sacramento and Marin Counties being exposed as mired in the worst of the corruption.
General profile:
Low income mother enters the courtroom “pro per” (without counsel). She is seeking relief from domestic violence from her former partner she is now divorcing. Her ex falls in the targeted 30 percent that comprises most of the misfits that go through the system refusing to move on. These are predominantly males, of which women comprise less than 1% of, who won’t work, don’t intend to pay child support, and are only about using the legal system to further batter their ex. With a restraining order barring the ex from any further physical abuse, like rape or shoving their partner out of a moving vehicle while pregnant, they start battering the children during visitations.
After a few trips to court, mom is forced to share custody and agreeably co-parent with someone who is violent and is anything but a parent. With court orders locking the batterer’s visitation in place, it’s open season on your children, continually. But, you can’t convey this to the court, because they will see it as “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS) against the batterer. Of course PAS has been completely debunked by most of the valid medial community, worldwide. In fact, the man who conceived of it in 1980, Richard A. Gardner, committed suicide!
So off your children go with the ex. If you are lucky, and he is not a killer, they come back with belt buckle marks, all sort of cuts, abrasions and bruises. Without a witness, despite the fact your children are very articulate and capable of communicating how they received their injuries, they are never validated and the judge and mediator target you as a liar. The ex suggests these continual injuries are the result of falls at the park! Without a witness or other tangible evidence, the system now suggests you are harassing him by contacting the infamous Child Protective Services.
Sometime the children tell of being left with complete strangers (some are kind and others are mean) for days on end during visitations. I guess the batterer had better things to do. But you can’t tell the court any of this either. They will point out how uncooperative you are and the fact that you are not fitting their model of, one size fits all. How do you co-parent with someone whose only aim is to harm you any way they can? Sometimes the children witness their father doing drugs or just laying around drunk and angry. Sometimes they complain of being hungry or sick with no attention being paid to either condition. Other times they complain of having to sleep in abandon buildings or sheds with lots of scary spiders and other kinds of big bugs, nearby. In another scenario they describe sleeping in a makeshift tent and waking up with numerous bug bites.
Dad tells them they are camping, while he’s laid up drunk in the house. One day you get tired and hold the kids back from a few visits, as they beg you not to be sent off anymore. He then finds a dishonest attorney who helps him play the system for the right money. It doesn’t matter that the batterer hasn’t worked in almost 5 years, nor does anyone question how he came up with money for a lawyer. The attorney knows a few mediators, and for anywhere from 1 to 3 thousand, he/she will write a bogus evaluation report showing the mother to be anything but the wonderful mother she really is. By playing the contempt and custody cards in his arsenal on you, he can have you thrown in jail and take permanent custody of the children, even if he is a convicted pedophile, batterer, alcoholic, drug addict or murderer.
After this point you are NOT allowed to see or communicate with you children anymore, end of story. He can also force you to pay him child support (which he will live off of happily), while he abuses his children. Possibly over time he grows tired and then he decides to just kill them knowing it will hurt you all the more.
Your children beg you not to let them go, but the court is forcing your hands. So there you stand with no laws in the state to protect you or your children, while they pay the ultimate price at the misfit’s hands. At this point, some choose to run with their offspring. But, if they are caught, off to PRISON they go, while the abuser gets the children. Now your physical freedom is gone and you can say good-bye to the most precious things in your life, your children. Some mothers, at this point of the juncture, simply want to give up and die. FOREVER is a powerful word. You ask how can someone with a criminal battery record that lies habitually and impulsively, has no scruples or conscience, and conceals a desire to harm women, have so many protected rights of which you and your children are denied.
Don’t run to the good old ACLU, unless you are willing to form a class action suit, or so their San Francisco chapter suggests. That’s a kicker, since they were all for protecting the civil liberties of individual detainees from other nations, and I’m referring to Americans in peril here at home.
My daughter, her two children and I are all victims of this system and have been for nearly seven years. My daughter is a wonderful mother of two young children, a sweet little girl age 6 and an adorable little boy age 4. She has been the sole provider and custodial parent their entire lives. The only wrongthing she ever did was to hold her children back from two visits, because they were being abused. When you report this to CPS, without a witness, nothing is done. Do you think an abuser is going to attack the children in front of witnesses? To date, my daughter’s case holds multiple, inconclusive CPS reports where this pathetic agency has admitted, on record, that they have encountered serious difficulty accessing the batterer’s living quarters (a dirty bedroom in a supposed “farm house” that looks like a fire trap, where he last lived). Given that the abuser was living in a room and board situation, no one in the house was ever checked out, so for all we know the children could have been exposed to killers, other alcoholics (like their “dad”) or drug dealers.
CPS, like the family court system in Sacramento has consistently failed to advocate for and protect victims. We see evidence of this in the constant stream of local horror stories where children have paid the ultimate price, while social safety nets continue to fail left and right. Despite continual out cries, CPS and the Sacramento Family court persist in producing a constant stream of victims. There is no federal law to preempt California’s corruption. California judges and mediators that support the present system want to keep it this way. In all fairness, not every judge or attorney agrees with the system, and I would suppose there are a few exceptions among the mediators, as well. However, my daughter has yet to meet one of these exceptions. Meanwhile, this core group of twisted, warped and corrupt individuals benefit financially off the system, while the innocent mothers and their children are further victimized and receive anything but JUSTICE. Judges appoint a minor’s counsel (often attorneys that are on a list to be assigned cases by the court involving the custody of minors, which tax payers duly pay for in pro per cases), but often, I’m told, do absolutely nothing and actually leave the children in worst peril. This is proving to be the case in our situation!
Presently, my grandchildren are under a court appointed minor’s counsel. My daughter has met with him and in the process laid out her children’s lives in the form of school records, medical histories, a number of home pictures suggesting a loving home and displaying the kind of bedrooms any little girl and boy could ever want. My daughter is not allowed any contact with her children, ever. At least, this is what the mediator advised in her fraudulent report, paid for by the batterer and his attorney. However, the court has never denied the abuser his right to have visitation or make phone calls to the children. These little ones are merely hooks to continually batter my daughter with, while an elicit system further enables him. Despite the fact he has missed numerous visits, has forced us to drive more than 200 miles to deliver the children (one way), up and down this state, and his interference has created major, stressful life disruptions, he proceeds unfettered. He has recently fathered a new baby in a county north of Sacramento (Del Norte) at almost 41 years old, during which time he was also receiving general assistance. The mediation report from up North suggests he has a major substance abuse problem, drives uninsured and without infant seats, and uses vehicles deemed unsafe. Now there are two child support cases against him as he falls further and further in arrearages as a jobless individual, going on 5 years. He is in trouble with Internal Revenue Service for filing fraudulent returns that necessitated a major investigation on my daughter until they realized he was the culprit. He wants to live off of his children via the system.
There are many, out here that know my daughter to be a wonderful mother. So why is she denied contact with her children going on 3 months later, while the minor’s counsel, in this case, Fredrick Cohen, has made no real attempt to vet this man or check up on the children. Meanwhile he collects taxpayer dollars, while my daughter languishes in an emotional agony. This sounds like something straight out of the annuals of Hell. Against the backdrop of all this, a twisted batterer drags two little children over the state. Though we suspect they could be at his sister’s place in San Francisco, we really don’t know where they are. This has been a concern for years and the fact that he lives so far away to check up on. A frustrated local women’s advocate put it this way, “Hell, they’re more interested in protecting the abuser’s rights than a child’s life.”
We believe the “father” is presently piled up on a sister in San Francisco, because he is homeless. In fact, the children tell us that he is often kicked out of her apartment, because of pulling knifes on her, trying to obstruct phone calls to the police and his uncontrollable temper and involvement with drugs and alcohol. We are also told his sister is the primary caregiver whether he is there or not. The sister has, we are also told by my granddaughter, witnessed the abuser beating them with a belt buckles, which led to a physical altercation, wherein the sister tried to protect the children. As a result she was nicked with a knife and began bleeding. There is no physical violence in me or my daughter’s homes. The children have been removed from a stable and loving environment to a situation where it sounds like violent struggles and loud arguments erupt frequently.
Meanwhile, my daughter sits alone in her home, heartbroken and devoid of the most precious things in her life, her children. What sense does this make? She has broken no laws, she has no record, and she works and goes to school. She is only one year away from a four year degree. She is loving, decent, honest, law abiding and above all a wonderful, wonderful mother. This minor’s counsel will not allow her to see her children nor will he get off his duff and check up on the children. And he does this while stretching out the payment of taxpayer dollars that Sacramento County can least afford to pay in this wretched economy. Everyone assumes the batterer has the basics, when in fact he is a homeless, drunken bum who has serious mental disorders, aggravated by alcohol and drugs.
Though my daughter has secured an attorney from Women Escaping a Violent Environment (WEAVE), the cost is devastating her. She has lost so much money and time from work trying to respond to this twisted abuser in court, where he continually keeps filing against her. He has interfered with her work schedule to the extent that Kaiser Permanente has worked out special arrangements with her, so she can keep court appointments. Even Kaiser, with a zero tolerance policy against domestic violence, recognizes this system is terribly wrong. We cannot continue to fight this vice without some truly serious intervention.
The batterer has managed to show up in court over the last 7 months, replete with counsel, a crooked attorney named Robert N. Kitay, (wherein in one of his own emails that were incompetently sent to my daughter), he suggests the sale of the “The Golden Package deals” to bums, which includes contempt/custody cases. His game is to throw innocent mothers in jail, or better, strip them of custody as the children languish at the hands of a batterer.
My daughter looks like a holocaust victim, she can’t eat, sleep and she cries broken-heartedly continually. What is happening is extremely cruel not only to her, but her children and me as well. You don’t take a 4 and 6 year old and rip them away from their mother, and everything they have ever known and understood as decent, with the admonishment of no communication, what-so-ever. I know my grandbabies are suffering and missing their mother who has done nothing to deserve this. We allow dogs and cats to care for their young, why not a human mother who only loves and lives for her children? This minor’s counsel assigned to my grandchildren’s case, we are told, wants to be a judge. As my daughter sat in his office, she sated he had pictures of his child everywhere, I believe a little boy. She wonders how he, as a father in good conscience, can allow an innocent mother and two little children to suffer so. Do her children ever cross his mind when he hugs and holds his little one?
We are taking a terrible chance by bringing this to your attention, but the children are in a virtual corrupt legal limbo and we are very, very frightened. Judges can be vindictive out here! I have sent many different links that expound on our story (through the perils of others) and expose the system for what it is. But please study the Court Report 2002 put out by the California Chapter of the National Organization for Women, NOW.
If you can bring the light of day to issues like the murder and the exploitation of children, then you can report on this terrible assault to civil liberties and the fact that this is an outright human atrocity against mothers and children across California. Not even the State Attorney General’s office will intervene; and it is their job to do so. The Federal system needs to intervene. For such a progressive state, California has the worst track record of Family Law, especially in Sacramento and Marin counties. The Family Law system is extremely biased against women, especially low-income and minority women. They want women with money so they can pick their pockets clean.
One additional note, the mediator in this case, Joyce Madari (?), who did the fraudulent evaluation report (we are told) knows the batterer’s attorney personally, though we can’t prove this. However, we are told many attorneys know mediators here, and this isn’t unusual. But doesn’t this raise the question of impropriety and conflict of interests? My grandchildren were literally sold for the price of 1,000 dollars. If this isn’t human trafficking, then what do you call it? I feel as though we are locked behind the iron curtain, in a place like the former Soviet Union, without any rights.
In closing I refer you to Karen Winner, the award winning author of the bookDivorced from Justice that deals with “the abuse of women and children by divorce lawyers and judges.” Her book suggests the kind of women they want in family law courts so they can pick their pockets clean and leave them on welfare or by the side of the road. Don’t think that only poor bums constitute the 30 percent, I referred to earlier. Men of means can be vicious, too. What Family Law is doing to women and children in California is straight out of the caveman era before laws were conceived of. You don’t realize this hell exists here until you literally walk into the devil’s lair.
This is an issue that will require a lot of continued heat from the media. Sadly the media in California looks the other way. Because you are an award winning program that delivers the “true” story and exposes the corruption, I ask that you please focus you efforts here….. In doing so, you will lift the banner for women and children across this state and in the process change laws and save thousands of lives. Please help my daughter and her children, PLEASE! This is a nightmare. I have never seen corruption of this magnitude! I am watching my daughter literally wither away before my eyes, while I hide my tears and torn heart from her. We have been told, because this case has become so bazaar, to turn to the media. You may be the only hope we have of getting my grandchildren back. We are out of money with only our prayers to sustain us. If you are still not convinced, then check out the lengthy and ever growing roll call of murdered women and children noted in the links below. These victims say it even better than me.
Lara DeLuz (laradeluz@aol.com
Tags: ireport_for_cnn
In response to assignment: iReport for CNN
Technorati Tags: Batterers,children,Sacramento,September,Dear,Lady,Michelle,Obama,father,life,welfare,Court,BLOOD,Lara,DeLuz,Lieu,Justice,California,System,Marin,corruption,General,income,relief,violence,vehicle,custody,parent,orders,Parental,Alienation,Syndrome,fact,Richard,Gardner,killer,marks,mediator,liar,result,park,Child,Protective,Services,Sometime,size,fits,Sometimes,attention,times,scenario,tent,kids,attorney,money,lawyer,mediators,evaluation,contempt,arsenal,drug,addict,murderer,misfit,PRISON,abuser,freedom,Some,juncture,word,battery,lies,scruples,conscience,rights,ACLU,action,Francisco,chapter,Americans,peril,daughter,victims,girl,provider,reports,agency,Given,room,situation,horror,Despite,judges,individuals,cases,records,pictures,interference,Norte,assistance,mediation,North,substance,infant,seats,Internal,Revenue,Service,investigation,culprit,Fredrick,Cohen,agony,Hell,Against,backdrop,Though,apartment,involvement,altercation,environment,arguments,degree,payment,basics,Women,Violent,WEAVE,cost,extent,Kaiser,Permanente,arrangements,appointments,zero,tolerance,policy,intervention,Robert,Kitay,sale,Golden,Package,victim,admonishment,communication,human,office,limbo,links,expose,Report,National,Organization,exploitation,State,Federal,needs,Joyce,Madari,interests,curtain,Soviet,Union,Karen,Winner,author,courts,road,devil,lair,efforts,magnitude,tears,heart,bazaar,response,assignment,misfits,abrasions,injuries,strangers,detainees,nations,killers,dealers,histories,disruptions,vehicles,disorders,issues,suggests,laws,Tags,ireport,visitations,batterer,visitation,drugs,doesn,exceptions,attorneys,grandchildren,months,taxpayer,dollars,sister,alcohol,bums,pocketsNote: Cross posted from [blogger angelzfury] Battered Women, Battered Children, Custody Abuse.Permalink
