Family Courts in US: GALS, Doctors, Custody Consultants — One Hand Washes the Other

by Keith Harmon Snow

Editor’s Note: This article is taken from Keith Snow’s 2016 book “The Worst Interests of the Child: the Trafficking of Children through Family Courts.” It show that the role of doctors is worse than in Australia, while the position of GAL – guardian ad litem – is similar to Australia’s ICL – independent children’s lawyer. Bolding added by Gumshoe.

Records show that most of the professionals at the pivotal positions in the CT [Connecticut] Family Court network became increasingly abusive against Sunny Kelley [the mom] on one hand, and dismissive of her concerns on the other. Some were openly hostile.

For example, after repeated attempts by Sunny to address recurring infections in Max’s genitals throughout the summer, fall and winter of 2010, Max’s pediatrician Dr. Whelan turned against her: the infections were never resolved and have not been resolved to this day.

What was worse, unfounded accusations–and outright lies–leveled against the mother were repeated and perpetuated by other professionals, from Dr. Whelan to Dr. Robson, from Dr. Robson to Robert LaMontagne, from LaMontagne to Dr. Linda Smith, from Dr. Smith to Dr. John Collins, from Dr. Collins back to Dr. Robson — on and on — until the original false accusations took on lives of their own.  Dr. Whelan, her child’s pediatrician, accused Sunny Kelley of having a vendetta against the father, and he eventually demanded she stop trying to use his office to prove that sexual abuse had occurred.

One expert, Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, sidestepped her responsibility to diagnose Max on the sexual abuse question by deferring to the expertise of pediatrician Dr. John Collins.  “If Dr. Collins, who sees this child regularly, isn’t going to weigh in on the sexual abuse diagnosis, I’m not, either.”  Dr. Carlson’s findings included something that would slightly disturb the status quo, but her report was produced after the February 2011 visit to the Yale Emergency Room.  Dr. Carlson was called in specifically by Dr. Kenneth Robson to see if Max’s behaviors were being caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain or by Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

Documents are packed with aberrant ‘facts’ fabricated by court-appointed professionals, twisted to fit the aberrant diagnoses that these court professionals relied on to perpetuate uncertainty, prolong their ‘professional’ client-patient relationships, by court order, enabling them to bill Sunny Kelley hundreds of thousands of dollars. But no one used such baseless myths and outrageous fabrications against Sunny Kelley so damnably as attorney Maureen Murphy and her close confidante Dr. Kenneth Robson.

COURT APPOINTS GUARDIAN AD LITEM

In the spring of 2010, CT Judge Holly Abery-Wetstone appointed CT attorney Maureen Murphy as guardian ad litem [GAL] to Max’s case.

Jim Smith was one of Sunny Kelley’s nine lawyers, including those who made appearances and those whom she only consulted, whose collective fees amounted to more than $300,000.  From April 2010, GAL Maureen Murphy began billing Sunny Kelley at the rate of $300 an hour and, as time went on, Murphy became more and more enmeshed in the day-to-day business of ‘parenting’ Max.  Sunny Kelley was billed $83,100 for 277 hours of what amounts purely to interference and harassment by Maureen Murphy.

As GAL, attorney Maureen Murphy was tasked to effectively be the court’s eyes and ears and Max’s defender against harm from any and all parties. According to the court’s final decision, delivered by Judge Lynda B. Munro: “[t]he interests of the minor child were protected by an experienced guardian ad litem.”

In fact, the decision delivered by Judge Munro reads like GAL Maureen Murphy wrote it.

“Maureen Murphy is the primary person responsible for the harm that has been done to Max,” says Ada Shaw, a close friend of Sunny Kelley who moved out from Los Angeles to help provide emotional and logistical support for the past two years. “Maureen Murphy was the person appointed to look out for Max’s best interests and one word from her at any time would have stopped the abuse.”

And according to the American Bar Association:

“A lawyer appointed as ‘guardian ad litem’ for a child is an officer of the court appointed to protect the child’s interests without being bound by the child’s expressed preferences.”

However, from the very beginning to the bitter final decision, attorney Maureen Murphy took the father’s side. Murphy also appears in several other cases where protective mothers in Connecticut have been slammed.

The guardian ad litem serves a gatekeeper function placing lawyers in positions of power, manipulation and coercive control. The corruption and judicial abuse being perpetrated through GAL systems in Pennsylvania has provoked federal lawsuits.  On March 16, 2012, a lawsuit was filed seeking to dismantle the GAL system in Lakawanna County, PA.

As it is in Pennsylvania, so it is in Connecticut, where the CT courts conspire to assist GALs like Mary Brigham (Tittle v. Tittle) in abusing and denying the constitutional and human rights of protective mothers like Sunny Kelley and Susan Skipp (Tittle v. Tittle).  GALs have quasi-judicial powers allowing them to commit procedural crimes and threaten protective parents — it’s not just moms — with sanctions that include reductions in visitation rights with their children.  The decisions by these GALS have been rubber-stamped by the CT courts.

In February 2012, Susan Skipp (Tittle v. Tittle), was hauled into Waterbury court and forced by Judge Robert Resha to sign over her $41,000 State of Connecticut Teachers’ retirement account, an account legally protected from garnishment.  “The judge and the self-appointed guardian ad litem, Mary Brigham, had a Connecticut State marshal sitting there with shackles to take me to Niantic women’s prison if I didn’t sign it over,” says Susan Skipp.

Susan Skipp is another mother accused of alienating her children from their father and inventing charges of abuse.  “When I couldn’t pay the $5700 in GAL fees to Mary Brigham they told me I was going to jail.  I signed. My daughter (23 years old) was buying our groceries and paying my car insurance. I didn’t have anything left. I paid my ex-husband’s back child support and alimony for his first wife, his student loans — a conservative estimate of $246,000 — plus all the education and career advancement I put off to enable my former husband to pursue his own.”

In Max’s case, attorney Maureen Murphy used her court position to favor contacts who would punish Sunny Kelley equally harshly for trying to protect her son.  Most of the professionals that Murphy brought onto the case were court-appointed custody evaluators, and willing adversaries against her.

In the Connecticut Court system the biggest offenders–showing up in one judicial abuse case after another — are Dr. Jerome (Jerry) Brodlie, Dr. Bruce Freedman, Dr. Donald J. Hiebel and Dr. Keith Roeder (Hiebel and Roeder) Dr. Sidney Horowitz and Dr. Howard Krieger (Connecticut Resource Group), Dr. James Black, Dr. Kenneth Robson and Dr. Donald Tolles. Dr. Kenneth Robson deserves special focus.

The case of Sandra MacVicar, whose October 25, 2010 trial document is available online offers another example.  But these cases are almost a dime a dozen.

In Watson v. Watson, for example, Judge Marylouise Black (in 2008 became Marylouise Schofield) cites the work of Dr. Kenneth Robson from some workshop or course, clearly indicating the extent to which courts rely on the expertise of ‘experts’ like Dr. Robson and Dr. Horowitz.

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND FRAUD (DCF)

The problem of violence and judicial abuse in Family Courts would not be possible without the support of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.  The DCF provides one of the portals through which massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services funding is going. Like the judicial abuse, there are no serious checks and balances on the DCF system.

Consider the case of Kimberley Wigglesworth, a young mother whose boyfriend savagely beat her newborn six-week old son in 2009.  “When I came home from work that day my son was crying differently. When I picked him up I knew something was wrong.  His arms went limp to the side. No bruises, no marks, no nothing.  I took him to the hospital.”

While the boyfriend eventually confessed to police to punching and throwing the infant, DCF began a process of criminalizing the mother. “When I told the hospital that I don’t want the father near my baby they said ‘he’s got rights — you need to contact DCF or the police.”   The DCF began probing Kimberley Wigglesworth’s history, and before long they had scheduled her for a drug test and a visitation with her child, who remained in intensive care, on the same day.”

“I have never used drugs in my life,” said Kimberley Wigglesworth, who was traumatized by the events that soon unfolded.  “But because they learned that I was sexually assaulted as a child suddenly I was an unfit parent. They dragged me into court saying I have PTSD and severe mental illness.  I realized the first Friday I was in court that DCF had taken my baby and they did not intend to give him back.  Even the baby’s attorney stood up in court and said “This is a good mom and she deserves to have her son back.”

DCF harassed and punished Kimberley Wigglesworth, and her story is only unique because she is a middle-class mother who fought to get her son back and won.  The odds and prejudices are so heavily stacked against low-income families that trafficking children into foster homes is a multi-billion dollar business.

Some of the same people who violated the rights of Sunny Kelley also violated the rights of ‘Mrs. Wilson’, a protective mother whose two daughters were allegedly being physically and emotionally abused by the father.  Here the court empowered the guardian ad litem — from the high-profile firm Cohen & Wolf — and silenced the mother with a gag order based on the extortionary threat of taking away a protective mother’s children.

“Neither parent will report allegations of physical or sexual abuse to the police, DCF, or the pediatrician,” ordered Judge Richard E. Burke in Mrs. Wilson’s case, “the court will direct such allegations to the guardian ad litem who will review them (with Dr. Robson if necessary) for their merit before they are passed on to any or all of those agencies.  A parent who violates that pathway through the Guardian ad Litem invites an immediate review of the parenting plan and alteration in access to the minor children.”

Meanwhile, GAL Hurwitz did not present the evidence of Mr. Wilson’s destructive behavior to Dr. Robson or to the court, but instead kept it buried in her file. Hurwitz also did not correct Dr. Robson’s testimony or his report.  The evidence supported the complaints that Mrs. Wilson’s two girls had made against their father.

The decision by Judge Richard Burke is fraught with irregularities. GAL Jocelyn Hurwitz violated CT state laws by faxing a copy of the full custody decision to the officials at the school attended by the two children in Darien CT, prior to it being a final decision.

Mrs. Wilson’s case also involved Dr. Kenneth Robson — the pivotal agent of the court historically used to protect pedophiles — who fraudulently diagnosed Mrs. Wilson with multiple mental illnesses.  Dr. Robson and Judge Richard Burke are both on record documenting that father Mr. Wilson hit, yelled and swore at his two children — even knowing how much this scares them.

In the now-sealed custody study, Dr. Robson confirmed that Mr. Wilson admitted that mother Mrs. Wilson did none of the things he noted about Mr. Wilson (hitting, yelling, and swearing at his children).  Even with Dr. Robson’s documentation, Kathy Bella at the Stamford DCF closed the case against Mr. Wilson — claiming it was ‘unsubstantiated’ — in September 2011.

The court awarded custody to the abusive father Mr. Wilson.  Making matters worse, Mr. Wilson couldn’t care for the two girls, and he didn’t want to. After dragging the family through a $300,000 custody battle, Mr. Wilson attempted to bully the two girls into signing themselves into foster care in August 2011.

When that didn’t work he dumped the kids back with their mother on August 10, 2011.  While Judge Richard Burke, the Superior Court for Juvenile Matters and the CT Appellate Court are all aware of the current custody realities, no court will hold a hearing to transfer custody back to Mrs. Wilson.

Same Names

In some fifteen or twenty cases of judicial abuse reviewed for this story, the same names keep coming up as custody evaluators, psychologists and psychiatrists. The relationship between the GAL and custody evaluators is similar to the relationships between judges and attorneys.  No attorney wants to anger or alienate a judge, because they want to win cases, and so, generally, they do not defend their clients too vigorously.  Custody evaluators rely on guardians ad litem for recommendations and court appointments, and so they don’t in any way discourage or alienate these GAL lawyers.  One hand washes the other, and lucrative contracts are awarded to the custody evaluators.  The children do not matter.