Proof Enough of Judicial Kidnap, Part 4: Books by Keith Snow and Carlos Morales

by Mary W Maxwell

This is a review of two good books on our hot topic: Keith Harmon Snow’s The Worst Interests of the Child (2016),  and Carlos Morales’ Legally Kidnapped (2015).  I received these only this week and they shed new light on the matter.

Keith Snow’s book is mostly about custody cases in Connecticut. Those people have it worse than Australians!  Judges outdo themselves in meanness, and doctors do worse.  And there is a palpable “union” of the bad guys.

The case of Liberti v Liberti was investigated in depth by Keith Snow. The corruption is brazen. Doctors act as “custodial consultants” and freely slander the mother. Judges order the records sealed at the drop of a hat.

The amounts of money in US cases is stupefying. Visitations can cost $10,000 a week. A lawyer may submit a bill for $58,000 and the client is forced to pay it. A judge made one mother sign over her Teacher’s Retirement fund, despite its being legally protected from garnishment.

Keith is known for his human rights reporting of genocide. (He’s persona non grata in Rwanda. His friend Lori Handrahan is another great reporter. The state of Maine has seized her daughter and she asks all of us to help get the girl back.

Note: in a Youtube interview, Lori tells of some amazing help she got – not on her own case but for other cases.  She involved the Internal Revenue Service in a hunt based on the crime of money-laundering. Lori says they were very helpful.  Seems like you can learn something new every day!

GumshoeNews editor Dee McLachlan will be cheered by Keith Snow’s holding the media accountable. He tells of his efforts to get Mike Melia of the Associated Press to cover a hot story of judicial corruption.  After many exchanges, Snow asked Melia:

“I would like to know why you dropped the Sunny Kelley story when it was such a clear case of sexual violence”

“I can’t continue this conversation.” Melia hung up.

Now to Carlos Morales’ book, Legally Kidnapped.

Carlos Morales is well known for his videos on Youtube. He had worked for CPS and wants to share advice from the Inside. Like Snow, he sees money driving the illegal behavior. Morales puts it concisely:

“The money state workers make in the family court system is a redistribution of wealth [upward] through the threat of kidnapping.”

Wow.

Carlos’ book is written for parents who have already had their child grabbed by the state, or who are in fear of that. Among Morales’ strongest suggestions are:

1. If you go to court be calm and organized and well-dressed. Never raise your voice.

2. It may be a disaster if your child is interviewed by CPS, so be sure to let the school know that if CPS shows up they are not to allow an interview, and train your child to say “No.”

3. If they come to your home, record everything, by audio or if possible by video. But do this in the front yard; do not let them in to your house. They only rarely have a warrant.

For me there were new ideas. One is Carlos’ description of feeling like a hero on his first day on the job, as he got to rescue children from a really bad home. He says the CPS is like the police academy or military where they teach you that you are a hero, and perhaps many social workers buy this and subsequently can’t see that they are doing bad things.

He ponders how nice people go wrong. He also points out that fear has been spread in the population so that folks are ready to assume that we need all this extra authority.

The shocker in this book is that federal law allows CPS to decide that since you are not a good parent, all of your future children can be seized at birth. And it happens!

Note that the US has a position called GAL — Guardian ad litem — similar to our ICL (Independent Children’s Lawyer), but the GAL has much more power. She can change the child’s residence, thwart a trip to the pediatrician, and force the mum to participate in “reconciliation” or expensive training sessions.

Although Morales is young, he doesn’t offer hope of changing the system, He soberly advises that hoping for too much will leave you feeling defeated, where instead you could try to get empowered and work for some improvement.

Of the two books, Keith Snow’s Worst Interests of the Child is best for activists and political scientists. Snow worked furiously to get at the political connections that seem to determine outcomes in Hartford. He also looks at members of the boards of relevant charities and state committees.

He has actually found a case where the feds have attacked a state’s corruption:

“The corruption and judicial abuse being perpetrated thru GAL systems … has provoked federal lawsuits. In 2012, the US DoJ raided the family court offices in Lakawanna County, PA and subsequently filed a lawsuit seeking to dismantle the GAL system there.”  (page 42)

The Morales book does not mention child sexual abuse. Maybe pedo-rings are not so crucial? Morales as a CPS worker was focused on drug-using parents. In a video he connects child trafficking to the movement of drugs and guns!

Back to Keith Snow’s The Worst Interests of the Child

Snow also analyzes the new Fathers’ Rights groups and considers them to be part of the racket. He agrees (p 22) with a the writer of the Carver County Corruption blog:

“There are many honest and wonderful fathers’ rights groups [but] Fathers’ Manifesto Groups are corrupt groups that sell children into … severe traumatic situations for monetary gain and feelings of superiority over helpless persons.”

Whew.  One quote by a mother in The Worst Interests of the Child is a worry. She says her son came home from Dad’s house (p 111) singing “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy electrocution.” At age 7 he said, during a supervised visit, “Electric shock is what they do to you to make you forget the bad things they do to you.”

In Adelaide, I’ve heard that they also use scopolamine for that purpose — so the child won’t be able to tattle.

The strongest part of Snow’s book is the Preface, where he pins down the whole operation as being organized crime. “It’s not a metaphor for organized crime,” he says, “it is organized crime.” It involves the state house, the media, and the judiciary as well as a very well-heeled legal profession.

Like Morales, Snow tries to figure out why folks treat one another so bad. He chalks much up to cognitive dissonance. We are uncomfortable trying to hold two differing views of a situation at the same time. “War is peace.”

Being an experienced overseas reporter Keith Snow knows that the media won’t cover much revelatory stuff. Thus, US citizens continue in their traditional, optimistic belief that government is essentially good.

No. Sorry. “It’s organized crime.”

Three Little Lists – Comparison with Gumshoe

Here are items on which Snow’s book accords with what Gumshoe has been publishing (citing his page numbers):

* PAS-minded doctors get confrontational with child (175). [Richard Gardner thought it would be nice to cite a kid for contempt – for not wanting to leave the care of Mother!!!]

* The phrase “best interests of child” is cited to conceal reality (41). [I suspect the phrase was purpose built for obfuscation]

* The game of “conflicting-out” narrows the pool of attorneys that could represent the wife (68) [as Maurice Kriss told us].

* Child-stealing may qualify as racketeering in US under the RICO Act [my all time fave law] (96).

* The Judge can, and does, refuse to recuse herself (189).

* Mums are accused of Munchausen by Proxy syndrome (113)

* False Memory Syndrome is the predecessor of PAS (50) [So glad he said that].

Keith Snow’s book also delves into things that I have not written about, but which are familiar in Australia:

* Hospital personnel don’t write down evidence they see (115)

* Visitation centres can become lucrative privatized businesses (109). [So far Pru Goward, as Minister in NSW, tried doing it]

* Slow grooming is used to teach kid normalcy of sex (61). [The example given in Keith’s book is a Dad who teaches his son the game “Tickle the weenie.” Of course the mum was ridiculed – almost jailed — for saying that this was a sign of trouble.]

* An investigation into abuse can be halted on the basis that the kid is now “safe” (73).

* Transcript gets changed if it incriminates the guilty (178).

* Kids are photo’d for porn under guise of ‘modeling’ (191). [The present Minister for Child Protection in SA was once the owner of a modeling studio. I must ask her if she knows these things.]

Here are some of Snow’s points that I hadn’t heard of:

* You can get a proper, structured interview of kid (59).

* Out-of-state lawyer, if a truth-teller, gets banned:  judge won’t issue a pro hac vice (152). [Actually, Jack Remington Graham had a heck of a time getting accepted by federal the Court in Boston for Tsarnaev’s case merely to deliver an affidavit!]

* A judge may backdate his orders to conceal his/her error (47).

* Protective parent is accused of Stockholm syndrome! (105). [That made me imagine someone at Tavistock leafing through random textbooks of psychology to pick out any arrows for Family Courts to carry in their quiver.]

Lastly, a mother wrote to Keith  “Rules do not apply in these courts” (254). That made me think of “casual day” at schools in Australia when kids don’t have to wear a uniform — the dress code is whatever you want it to be. As far the rule-of-law goes in Australia’s Family Court and Childrens Courts, every day is Casual Day. The rule of law is whatever the judge wants it to be.

That sometimes means no law at all. And who cares? The media looks the other way (or enables it); Parliament is full of zombies; the Church has lost its authority; the legal profession draws rewards from it; the Academy is “on sabbatical.”

No worries, the people can handle it. We didn’t get from Caveman to here by being incompetent you know. We can do it.