Child Safety Must Come First by US Representatives
Great news for children and parents being denied protection from domestic abuse, who are often harmed during prolonged child custody litigation.
Please read, share and contact your state’s leaders to join in with their support of this House Resolution No. 72.
Georgia’s children and parents are especially vulnerable, as hundreds of cases across the state now prove. Television and print news media and several independent journalists have documented professional conduct in what is referred to as “sensitive” cases, including by filing Rule 22 Requests to Record judicial proceedings.
The big deal about the conduct being documented is this: the way many Georgia child custody cases are managed often puts children in harm’s way as they are given to the parent most likely to cause stress or injury. It is hard to fathom if you can not see it firsthand, but sometimes court professionals, including child custody experts, go so far as to deny children and adult victims of domestic abuse protection and even necessary medical and psychological care.
If you live in Georgia, you can find your U.S. Representatives here. Please encourage your representatives to read and support this resolution. And, in Georgia, learn how you can encourage leadership to keep our courts and court records open and accessible.
As these cases are usually cloaked by a veil of secrecy, and speaking about what is happening to the family is frowned upon and outright discouraged, it is critical that journalists are not restricted in recording judicial proceedings or in obtaining case records.
Both of these issues, policy to improve child safety and rules governing the ability to record judicial proceedings, need your attention.
Thank you!
Child Safety and Child Custody in House Resolution 72 / Bipartisan Support by Deb Beacham on Scribd
Loudon Sisters Jailed for Refusing to Live with Father
We were 14 years old when a police officer led us out of our school in handcuffs. We hadn’t committed a crime, and were dedicated students who maintained clean disciplinary records. But we could no longer abide by the shared-custody agreement our parents had signed in their divorce nine years earlier.
It mandated we spend half our time with our father, a man we had no relationship with and who largely ignored us except when he wanted something from us. When living with him became unbearable, we made the terrifying decision to use civil disobedience and refuse to go with him.
A Michigan judge imposed the same injustice on three siblings last month. Judge Lisa Gorcyca sentenced the Tsimhoni children — ages 9, 10 and 14 — to juvenile detention for refusing to meet with their father, drawing international attention. Gorcyca dismissed the children’s claims of abuse and insisted that their father, Omer Tsimhoni, is “a good man.” She sent them to Children’s Village before relenting to public outrage and moving them to a summer camp after more than two weeks.
In too many parental custody and visitation disputes, adults belittle children’s attempts to escape homes where they feel mistreated. Our father seemed to derive pleasure from controlling us and crushing our spirits. But like Gorcyca, a school administrator told us our father was “loving” and insisted that cutting him off would amount to throwing our lives away. Our friends’ parents were sympathetic, but believed what happened in our home was family business. Instead of allowing us to live with our mother full time, police sent us to juvenile detention for being “incorrigible” children.
[Editor’s note: Contacted by The Post, the authors’ father sent an e-mailed response: “Did I do everything perfectly? No. But my goal and my motivation is and always was for my children to become strong, healthy, happy people. … From the eyes of the adolescent girl, a parent’s behavior isn’t always seen clearly.”]
Judge Gorcyca justified her action by saying the siblings’ mother brainwashed them to hate their father. She told the children, “one day you are going to realize what’s going on in this case and you’re going to apologize to your dad.” But as 22-year-olds who were once in the Tsimhoni children’s position, we’re still not apologizing.
This article can be found on the Washington Post website here.
Please follow Hope Loudon on Twitter. Call to action: #StopCLA means Stop Court Licensed Abuse, which is what is happening to children all over the U.S. and beyond. Where cases can be exploited to increase profits to certain professionals, children are being punished, denied protection, medical & psychological treatment and silenced. The silencing of these children sometimes includes sentencing them to a detention center when they’ve done nothing wrong, threatening them with detention, or sending them to “treatment centers” for “troubled teens” when they were doing fine and no evidence was presented to prove they needed to be sent away or medicated to keep them quiet.
Hope Loudon is a freelance journalist now on the speaking tour helping other journalists and the public understand what is happening to children and families, how they are damaged by judicial rulings that ignore evidence, ignore the true best interests of children, and cause trauma for children that is virtually impossible to recover from. But Hope, true to her name, has shown that children can go on to rise above the loss and trauma, and can contribute to society in a meaningful way, and can be healthy and happy. It’s just not easy and there are not enough resources to help these kids and their parents fighting for them.
Please read Hope’s work on the Huffington Post, especially related to the detention of the Tsimhoni children and the professional misconduct damaging the children and mother in this case.
Psychology Today Contributor Gets It
No, it’s not your imagination. You heard correctly: a judge ordered children into a detention center and then into a special “camp” because they reported on family violence and asked to not be subjected to further abuse. The children spoke up because they did not want to be separated from the parent protecting them.
This issue is not about gender but about ignored facts and profit motives of certain professionals; it is just a game that is played in family court, and it harms mothers, fathers, grandparents and always the children.
At My Advocate Center in Atlanta, Georgia, we have been receiving data from and reporting on cases involving (equally) damages to good fathers and to good mothers, cases in which nothing makes sense when you look at the facts and available evidence and testimony.
The gender war (along with racial bias) is encouraged by the professionals profiting from the conflict, so that one group believes the other is benefitting from a bias or “unfair advantage.” Money does often play a role, but it is not always the person with access to money and status who is driving or benefitting from the foul play. This is why our data and reports are valuable to authorities, and why we support both professionals and parties in organizing facts and outcomes; it is overwhelming for those subjected to this misconduct, and even to professionals trying to unwind the case and assist the victims. You might not see who is causing the damages, how they are doing it and how it is being covered up if you do not look closely enough, or look at enough cases, including transcripts, billing records and custody reports (if the report has not been put under seal, if the transcripts are accurate and complete, and if the billing records or file are not withheld.)
The Michigan story this Psychology Today writer reports on could almost as easily be featuring a father who has been wrongfully separated from children who have asked for protection from their mother. That is the situation in an Augusta case covered by The Augusta Chronicle. It was not the father who was violent (per DFCS records which were hidden from the father), the child did testify on his behalf as did a competent, ethical guardian, but the facts and the needs of the child were ignored…while the father was stripped of everything – his rights to and time with his child, his financial assets, his job, and he was put in jail.
This Augusta case and other cases we have investigated show that men also are abused, and men can be the “protective parent” while the mother is the one involved in a “pay to play” game to avoid consequences for her own misconduct. What is being done to parents, to both mothers and fathers, sends the message that you are better off staying quiet about abuse (from addiction, violence, financial or fraud-related abuse) than asking for the court’s help. Ask for help at your own peril…and at your children’s peril…not that you are better off if you stay quiet, mind you. But many are told, “Do nothing, say nothing, or this will get worse; you will never see your child…”
The wrong outcomes are being forced upon good people and abused children as frequently as you see panhandlers near a highway or intersection; it is just something that happens and that many people have become numb to, but this happens to an unsuspecting public and causes irreparable harm. Currently there is no way to recover, including no way to recover or to bring home these children.
Coercion and intimidation tactics, and retaliation methods, rule the day, just like we see in this Michigan case with the children put in detention centers, cut off from their mother and the mother put under a gag order.
As in other cases, the children are old enough to be heard and to be believed, and they were clearly not represented properly by professionals charged with the duty of representing their best interests.
Psychology Today contributor Jennifer Baker, PhD, nails this story and the problems emphatically with her pen, in this article and in others, including this one and this one. This case and the issues is raises are not going away anytime soon.
This is one reason we focus on the needs of children consistently when noting questionable conduct and outcomes. The term best interest has been so badly misconstrued or even corrupted that it has become meaningless, at least in terms of the results shown in thousands of cases across the country, and around the world. Children are being betrayed when they ask for help and often silenced as the judge did in this case.
It is almost impossible to fathom that this is happening, let alone that it is often intentional and done in bad faith and with a complete lack of empathy for the trauma being caused to children and to the parents they need and want.
This is also a reason we emphasize to legislators that loopholes must be closed that allow certain court professionals to block evidence and testimony that should be used to protect children and victims of abuse. Evidence and testimony should be recorded and used for the benefit of our most vulnerable citizens; it is just not that complicated, but our data reveals that the opposite is taking place when cases are easily manipulated and controlled by certain attorneys and select child custody experts. If you read the transcript of this Michigan case and the associated articles, you’ll see what we mean.
What is consistent across these cases is the motive:
It is simply more profitable to keep children and safe parents off-balance, unprotected and ignored. They have to spend money to fight back, until there is nothing left to spend. But typically the other side – the side driving the stress and trauma – will keep on spending. Profit over protection has become a pattern or a formula followed by professionals who typically lack oversight and who believe there will never be any consequences for causing harm to children.
We advocate for children to have the best of both parents, meaning the best that each has to offer, and that sometimes means one or both parents need to receive a “tough love” message from the court or the right treatment for addiction or counseling to manage bad behavior, but it that message should NEVER mean sentencing and locking up children who have not done anything wrong. Unfortunately, children in many states are being convicted and locked away – from safe, loving and available parents and families – when they asked to have a voice and to be protected.
To learn more or to report details of similar cases, please visit our Report Cases form on MyAdvocateCenter.com.
Deb Beacham, Founder and Director
Call to Action: Release Father from FALSE Allegations
CALL TO ACTION FOR MAY: Ask the Augusta Assistant DA and the Court to not prosecute this innocent father.
COURT WATCH AUGUSTA: MAY 19-23 IN COLUMBIA COUNT. https://www.facebook.com/events/1424811577781088/
The Georgia Court of Appeals and Supreme Court are also asked to review this case and understand how this case went from a clear civil matter to what it is now.
This is wrong, and the same bad practices are affecting many good and innocent mothers and fathers in Georgia.
PRESS UPDATE:
WFXG Augusta Fox54 reported last night about the innocent father jailed for going to see his daughter.
This group of supporters is building in strength and number, and showing how effective you can be when supporting both fathers and mothers who are being damaged by the same unethical custody experts on these cases.
This father believed he was not violating a court order when he went to see his daughter, but he had been set up to fail.
This is the problem created when certain attorneys use select custody experts to do the dirty work of suppressing evidence and creating or supporting what they know are FALSE allegations. The attorney working this case with the father was told by the judge to stay on this case, but it appears the “work” being done was more that of a collection agent rather than advocate. Now is the time for all Augusta professionals to abandon the bad practices that undermine cases and damage children and good parents. It is time to Turn this Around! No, not too late…
What started this? A psychologist decided this father should not have such a strong bond with his daughter so he cut them off from each other for weeks (6-8 weeks).
When a good, nurturing parent is cut off from a child who truly needs that parent…it causes severe damages for both. Can you imagine being the parent your child relies on the most, and being told you have to avoid seeing her and that she can’t be told what is going on?
Can you imagine also having your career taken from you, your vehicle and work tools, so that you have to leave town to find income to pay the fees put on you by this same custody “expert” who is destroying your child?
She now feels abandoned and confused, and it will take time to learn the depth of her suffering. How can she know what has really happened to her father and why?
Because this father has been denied medical treatment, and is being denied a real defense with full access to the evidence and testimony to support his case, the court found him guilty on civil contempt charges. He is now facing the criminal charges that would not exist but for the bad practices of the custody experts on this case.
Keep it going advocates, supporters and Augusta news media!
If you are outside of Augusta or interested in learning how good parents are being set up to fail, and how our child custody laws are being undermined and our criminal justice system is being misused, this is a good case to examine and follow.
Parents around Georgia and the US who are struggling with similar cases: this is a true team effort here. This group has found a way to strengthen each other, and to leverage the information and tools demonstrated by @MyAdvocateCentr in the Atlanta area cases and news reports. Find people in your area and repeat what we are doing in Augusta – – this is possible!
Augusta:
Keep telling this court:
“Protect children first.”
“No More Fatherless Daughters – and Children deserve the Best of Both Parents”
“False allegations hurt children.”
“Open up the custody records and cases associated with GAL Doug Nelson and Dr. Jody Frey, and others.”
WFXG FOX54 Augusta – Your News One Hour Earlier
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If you haven’t yet read “Green Light Augusta” and seen the series of stories here in Georgia spelling out how parents and professionals are pulling together to undo and recover from bad family court practices, this is a good time to get up to speed and take action.
You’ve heard most likely about false allegations being used to give one parent an advantage over another, right?
Now we can show how certain custody experts play a key role in carrying those false allegations through the process to help the Court reach the wrong outcome in select cases. Join the Augusta Court Watch going on now.
Observe, learn, ask questions and report on how this innocent father is being treated. Ask what can be done to ensure the available evidence and testimony are used to not only exonerate him, but help him restore his life and career – and more importantly get his daughter back in his care. We are expanding on this case and other critical situations on Facebook and Twitter, and using LinkedIn as well.
#GreenLightAugusta
See this Event Page on Facebook to join & follow the updates.
We know that a GAL in Augusta was guiding the Courts there to take custody away from mothers who would not give in to his demands, but other very harmful situations are happening involving fathers as well.
This post is about yet another case manipulated and “thrown” by suspect practices inside of a child custody case in the Augusta district.
Now – this week in early May 2014 – this father is being held while a jury is selected, when he knows that transcripts and other evidence and testimony have been blocked by this court in the past, so that he could not prevail. It is a dire situation for him and his family, but the community is beginning to rally around him. How can YOU help out?
Will you be there to watch how the court handles the evidence and testimony? Will they continue to deny him due process and insist that he serve time when it was the custody experts who suppressed evidence and set him up to fail?
The court has left him jailed for many weeks without bond and has denied him due process throughout his custody case and now into this criminal case (one that never should have been taken in the criminal court to begin with). He was taken into custody because he mistakenly believed he should be allowed to call his daughter and to see her before he left town to start a new job.
WHY was he having to leave town to start a new job? Because the Court and these custody experts made him turn over his work vehicle and tools – and all of his premarital assets – to cover their fees. Fees that were NOT necessary on this case. He lost his ability to work there near his daughter, so he was forced to take a job out of STATE in order to earn enough to pay both child support AND the outrageous and unnecessary fees on his case. He merely wanted to say goodbye to his daughter before leaving town. He tried to file an appeal to better manage an unmanageable custody outcome, and the Court chose to jail him instead of allowing him to move forward on appeal.
Can you even fathom how complicated and challenging it is to defend yourself against something like this? Unfortunately this is the reality in many counties when the wrong custody experts get involved in your case. This is the reality for many families in the Augusta and Atlanta areas.
Back to this case and to this father. This is URGENT that leaders and news media learn more and investigate this case!
His daughter needs him and misses him, and doesn’t understand why her good father cannot provide for her as he was doing before this case was interfered with like it was. The mother in this case was led to believe it was right to allow the Court and police to believe he posed a threat, when he did not. Now she and her daughter are unable to get child support, and her daughter faces losing a devoted father on top of that financial support.
Yes, this case shows the same issues as the cases that have been in the Augusta and Atlanta news. The custody experts used on these cases should be investigated and have their billing records and reports thoroughly reviewed.
Judge Rules: States “Something Wrong with You” for Molesting a Child
It is a good day in Georgia when evidence and testimony are allowed into Court, and allowed onto the record, showing that a crime was committed against a child.
This is the lead-in to this story in The Daily Report, crediting Oprah Winfrey’s show with giving a teen girl the courage to report the crime committed against her when she was younger:
“A man who was convicted of child molestation after an Oprah show prodded a teenage girl to report him received a 20-year prison sentence and some stern words from a Cobb County judge.”
This should not be such a surprise that this happened, but based on large numbers of cases we have seen this is not happening as often as you would hope given the evidence and testimony available to the Court.
We posted about this story recently because the Court so clearly stated, “You have a hole in your soul…” for molesting a child.
The Court found this man guilty and it will be a long time before he is out of prison. There is more in his history that supports keeping him in jail, but our focus here is not on his time being served, but on the fact that the Court did not shy away from the damages to the child, to the egregious nature of the crime and did not help to deflect the evidence and testimony, or to explain it away.
The Court in this situation did not act to allow a crime against a child to be covered up, rewarding the criminal and highly-paid court professionals to help “deal” with the crime by denying the evidence.
This is quite the contrast from what is happening in many Superior Court cases when profits are driving the conduct of family law attorneys and court-appointed child custody experts. It is one thing for a criminal defense team to use laws and due process to help protect a client against charges. But what is happening on child custody cases in Georgia, where attorneys and Guardian Ad Litems are choosing not to advocate for children, or attorneys for their own clients, is something completely different. (Please note the emphasis online in comparing Augusta “Outside The Gates” to our Atlanta news stories.)
If there is money to be made from helping to keep evidence off the record in a criminal matter, while denying a child protection in a child custody case, there is much that can go wrong. My Advocate Center is working with news media and local and State leaders to show that much IS going wrong on these cases in Georgia.
Sadly, there is repeated interference with rulings that should lead to larger investigations and, most importantly, to the protection of children.
There are pending cases in Fulton County, Cobb County, Dekalb County, Forsyth County, Columbia County and Richmond County where My Advocate Center has seen enough evidence and heard enough testimony to know that teams of investigators are needed to correct these situations. Law enforcement and ethical attorneys have a different opinion of this situation, and are not the problem.
Our hope is that real investigations can happen before more children die, and before more parents commit suicide due to the trauma of seeing their children suffer and having their rights removed on top of the loss of all of their property and income. Parents are in dire straits, and it’s time for our State to take action. This cannot continue being swept under the so-called “rug” as it is a filthy, soaking-wet, and thread-bare “rug” at this point.
Below are some examples of coverage on the story in which the Court properly recognizes the nature of the criminal and rules to protect children:
One Judge Properly Calls a Crime Against Children what it is…TERRIBLE. We are asking that more Cobb County Judges wake up to the fact that children are being left unprotected even in light of clear evidence and substantiated reports of abuse. Why not allow investigations based on the evidence & testimony available?
In other sections of this website you will see reports about good parents who are falsely accused and even imprisoned when evidence exists to exonerate them. It is the same problem in those cases, that for some reason certain professionals do not want evidence and testimony heard that would lead to proper rulings based on our laws – and based on common sense and what would serve the needs of children.
If you have not seen the Divorce Corp. or No Way Out But One documentaries, now would be a good time to get up to speed by watching those. The Kids for Cash documentary is also being screened in Atlanta in June, so you will not want to miss that if you care about what certain judges are doing — abusing power while exploiting those who fall under their power.
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