Cost to Orange County, CA, of lying social workers: $10.6

The total cost to Orange County of a case in which a jury found that two social workers lied to take away a woman’s daughters is $10.6 million, according to a new audit.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year declined to hear the county’s challenge to a 2007 jury award of $4.9 million to the Seal Beach woman, Deanna Fogarty-Hardwick. With interest on that amount plus her attorney fees, the total payout by the county was $9.6 million. In addition, the county incurred another $1 million of its own legal costs in the case.

Photo of Deanna Fogarty-Hardwick

For more on the County's response to this award, go to
http://taxdollars.ocregister.com/2012/01/19/cost-to-county-of-lying-social-workers-10-6-mln/146871/

Eight years ago

Late in 2003, three-year-old "Molly" angrily complained about her father's "sausage games." What the State of Rhode Island did to Molly and her older sister "Sara" in the years that followed outraged their neighbors, who convened a community meeting and asked the Parenting Project to investigate. By 2009, we set a goal that finally began coming to fruition this week, when Governor Lincoln Chafee's new director of the Department of Children, Youth and Families, Janice DeFrances, confirmed that DCYF is beginning an assessment as its first step toward getting accredited.

In 2004, DCYF's frontline staff properly helped Molly and Sara by referring them to counselors at Day One.

When DCYF indicated their father for sexual molestation, his defense attorney appealed. The father first blamed his own father, a psychiatrist and convicted pedophile who had sexually abused his own children. But Molly insisted the offender was her father.

Next, he blamed his wife for "alienating" the girls against him--which did not explain how Molly could re-enact male masturbation and draw a graphic portrait of her father.

A year after Molly's complaint, DCYF's legal department flipped the case at an administrative hearing where the father was the plaintiff, and DCYF was the defendant. Since the girls' mother was not a party to this proceeding, DCYF never informed her of it. She was not present when DCYF's administrative hearing officer ruled that the father was credible, while the mother (whom the officer had neither met nor questioned) was not.

She ruled that the mother's alleged demeanor made Molly's complaint unbelievable. (Over a year later, the hearing officer revealed her own strongly worded bias against mothers on the Internet, where she was seeking men as divorce clients.)

The father's defense attorney's friend became guardian ad litem, who orchestrated the case at Family Court, searching for clinicians who would blame the mother in order to remove the girls from her and their lifelong home in 2006. DCYF sent the girls to a foster mother who told them their mother had mental problems, which was completely untrue.

Distraught there, the girls went to their next foster home and then to a state shelter in another city at enormous expense to tax payers.

The father's defense team needed time--three years until his indication for sexual molestation could be expunged. Finally the Court turned the girls over to their father in another state and limited all contact with their mother.

The DCYF legal department's fear of lawsuits has led the agency to fail many other children. Family Court gives enormous authority to guardians ad litem who have close ties to defense attorneys and judges. The Court's confidence in unreliable psychiatric "evaluations" and its use of gag orders to intimidate protective parents has vastly increased the damage, so that the truth is rarely found within this costly system.

As DCYF begins its process toward accreditation, the General Assembly and Family Court are grappling with entrenched problems throughout Rhode Island's child-protective system.

For more about this, paste this link in your browser:
http://custodyscam.blogspot.com/2012/01/praising-architects-of-change.html

While we honor the leaders who are working on these issues, we also must praise the three-year-old who would not be quiet about the behavior that made her feel so angry and frightened.

Rhode Island needs the Attorney General’s Child Abuse Unit

"Molly" and "Sara" were harmed by Family Court, DCYF, and Hasbro Hospital's Child Protection Program, as well as their father, his legal team, and the court's clinicians. The sisters needed the kind of protection promised by the Attorney General's Child Abuse Unit.

Click on the title above or paste this in your browser:

http://custodyscam.blogspot.com/2011/12/rhode-island-needs-attorney-generals.html

Happy Birthday, Mami!

Today is the 54th birthday of "Molly" and "Sarah's" beloved Mami (which is pronounced the same as Mommy). Although I am not in touch with her, I hope this blog will assure their mother that we will never forget or stop writing about what this country and state did to her and her children.

Today, I want to show a page from the picture book Spontaneous! that includes an entry from Mami's journal and photos of the cakes she made to celebrate her daughters' birthdays. (You can enlarge the page by clicking once on it.)

Lise Iwon has been for many years a close friend of Lise Gescheidt, who was hired by the girls' father to be his criminal defense lawyer--if only Attorney General Patrick Lynch had been doing his job when three-year-old Molly angrily protested her father's "sausage games" in 2003.

The two lawyer friends had no qualms about Iwon serving as Guardian ad litem (GAL) on the case, gouging the boundaries of a role that is supposed to remain neutral. Iwon made direct contact with numerous clinicians and many others, including the Child Advocate. Iwon made no secret of her valued role on the father's defense "team." (Iwon is now president of the Rhode Island Bar Association, and Gescheidt chairs the Rhode Island Supreme Court's Ethics Advisory Panel.)

At one point, Iwon and other women lawyers publicly honored Judge Haiganush Bedrosian with an award as a "role model for women," knowing that she was expected to take over this case if Judge John Mutter recused. (Judge Bedrosian is now Chief Judge of Family Court.)

Iwon oversaw the girls' removal from their mother, home and schools more than five years ago. They were forced to live in foster care and a state shelter and forbidden to communicate with their mother.

I do not know where their mother is today, but I know she is profoundly bereaved. I want to honor her on her birthday by telling her daughters what she often told me before Judge Mutter imposed a gag order on her over three years ago.

She said how amazed she was to hear people complain about their children, because her children were always her greatest joy, and they never gave her any problem at all.

Five years ago today

On April 7, 2006, Lise Iwon succeeded in removing "Molly" and "Sara" from their mother and life-long home.

The following year, Family Court Judge John Mutter imposed a gag order, threatening further harm to the children if their mother spoke about them or mentioned anything about this custody case-- including its criminal aspects. Consequently, their mother is unable to communicate with me, and I do not know if she and the children are even able to have court-ordered visits.

To date, no one in law enforcement or in the legal community has held anyone accountable for what was done to these children.

Here are two articles that tell part of the history of how that happened:

www.opednews.com/articles/How-lawyers-manipulate-doc-by-Anne-Grant-110327-242.html

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Dr-Gardner-s-ghost-still-by-Anne-Grant-101219-843.html



More is written about the case in this blog and elsewhere.

Sara's experiences in foster care and a state shelter

We have removed the book Spontaneous! for a while, but we think about "Sara" and "Molly" every day.

Now that Rhode Island's new governor plans to close the state children's shelters and expand foster care, we have been remembering what Sara wrote about her first foster mother, Alice, and how Sara and her little sister were taken into state care at taxpayer expense when they had an outstanding mother, home, friends, and schools.

Some of that true story is in the older posts that appear below.

Can you believe it?

Four years ago tonight, their mother took these pictures:

"Sara," 9, did her homework. "Molly," 5, planted flower seeds in orange peels.

None of them knew it would be the children's last night at home.

The appalling performance of DCYF in this case and in countless others led to public pressure demanding that this powerful, wasteful, and secretive agency must get accredited. It is long overdue for DCYF to be held to professional standards and public accountability.

Eli H. Newberger, M.D., Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, is a pediatrician with 39 years' experience in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of child abuse and neglect. He organized the first child protection team at Children's Hospital Boston, in 1970. He has written:

...the poor performance of some supervisory level staff at the [Rhode Island] Department of Children, Youth and Families is a cause for great concern. In specific cases, I have observed the agency's rigid posture, its ignorance of the standards of professional practice in responding to allegations of child sexual abuse, and its punitive, rather than protective, stance. These rise to a level of intransigence and incompetence unparalleled in all my years of experience in this field . . . .

High, exacting, professional standards do exist in this field. They are attainable by any state that seeks them.

Learn more about the Council on Accreditation at www.coanet.org . Urge your legislators’ support and follow the progress of this important legislation (H 7133, S 2346) at www.rilin.state.ri.us .

As always, you may send your family's DCYF experiences to me confidentially at parentingproject@cox.net .

Our Goals for 2010

Did Lise Iwon fail in her responsibilities as guardian ad litem in this case? I believe she did. I summarized and documented some of my reasons for this belief in last week’s post.

Whether she did this for cash, cabal, creed, or all three, one thing is certain: A system that sacrifices children so cavalierly will not be reformed without the best efforts of us all, progressives and conservatives alike. All of us must work together to stop the legal stratagems that hurt vulnerable children at DCYF and Rhode Island’s Family Court.

The Parenting Project’s goals for 2010 include these:

1. to require Rhode Island’s Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) to become publicly accountable under accepted professional standards established by the Council on Accreditation (COA);

2. to persuade the Rhode Island Supreme Court to take steps that assure appropriate standards for lawyers, clinicians, and other professionals involved in custody cases, especially where there have been indications of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and coercive control;

3. to prohibit the use of “parental alienation” and other unscientific forms of forensic psychology in making child custody decisions.

Why did Lise Iwon do it?

The October 2003 issue of The Rhode Island Monthly featured three guardians ad litem (“at law”) in an article called “The Guardians.”[1]



Guardians ad litem often enter a custody case when both parents request a neutral person to represent their children’s “best interests.” But neutrality is rare when a small circle of Family Court lawyers and clinicians rely on friendships and referrals within this closed shop. Free of competition, lax in their rules, and often shielded by confidentiality, they can charge astounding fees in a pay-to-play system that becomes more profitable if it can be stretched out until a child’s 18th birthday.

Since 1996, I have coordinated the Parenting Project, an entirely volunteer effort to research and respond to these disturbing custody cases. We interview people, observe hearings, and study documents from courts, clinicians, children, parents, and the larger community. We analyze how the system works and what reforms are needed. Our goal is to repair a failing government system that traumatizes many families, especially children.

In summer 2006, an op-ed I wrote on the so-called “Parental Alienation Syndrome” [2] brought phone calls from a small town where two young sisters had disappeared amid charges that their mother had “alienated” them against their father. Neighbors denied this allegation and asked the Parenting Project to investigate the case.

By that time, Lise Iwon (above right) had been appointed guardian ad litem even though her close friend Lise Gescheidt was the criminal defense attorney for the girls’ father, who had been indicated by a DCYF investigator for allegedly molesting 3-year-old “Molly” in 2003.

The father’s earliest defense strategy came with photos suggesting that his own father might have molested Molly, for the grandfather had sexually abused his three children. After he became a psychotherapist, he went to prison twice for sex crimes against young patients.

Molly allegedly insisted it was not her grandfather, but her father who molested her. She drew, described, and acted out her complaints about the days when they were home alone.

Her father’s next line of defense was to blame his wife for “alienating” the children against him. Gescheidt brought in private investigator Patricia Azarian to find people who would agree with the father that his wife was “jealous” and “resentful” of him, hoping to sway the administrative hearing officer at DCYF who would rule on the father’s appeal.

DCYF had contracted with private attorney Norbara Octeau to serve as administrative hearing officer though she lacked credentials to rule on child sex abuse cases. In her December 2004 decision exonerating him, Octeau agreed with the father’s theory that his wife had caused “what he termed Parental Alienation Syndrome.”[3]

Though Octeau never met or questioned the man’s wife, she found the woman “highly unorthodox and rather suspicious.” Octeau concluded: “This maternal behavior casts a shadow over the reliability of the child’s statements.”[4]

Psychologist John Parsons examined the family from June to September 2004.[5] But he waited for Octeau’s December 2004 decision, which he used with other reports to complete his January 2005 evaluation, incorporating the same multiple levels of hearsay that Octeau had repeated from the father’s private investigator. Parsons harmonized his views with those and dismissed many troubling comments he had quoted from the girls and their father.[6] Considering the way his conclusions relied on other people’s reports, it seemed ironic that Parsons stopped the girls from seeing their therapists for fear that might contaminate his results.

Lise Iwon entered the case as guardian ad litem in March 2005. Though her role should have been neutral, she made no secret of her teamwork with the defense. Throughout the case, Iwon huddled with the father, his lawyers and DCYF staff, poring over documents in courthouse alcoves.

Attorney Lise Gescheidt defended not only her client, the father, but also her friend, Lise Iwon. Gescheidt accused the mother of introducing motions that “slander the professional reputation of a unbiased guardian ad litem who has consistently acted in the best interest of the children without meaningful compensation….”[7]

When I began researching the case from court files in 2006, the mother provided complete access to family documents and photos. In 2007, my testimony on the case before legislative committees prompted the judge to seal both the divorce and DCYF files, shrouding the case in a gag order.

By then, we had secured all the documents cited here. These show a court record riddled with hearsay and conflicts of interest. From what I could see, the father’s lawyers, DCYF lawyers, and the guardian ad litem appeared to be working in concert to distract attention from Molly’s original complaints against her father and to focus on her father’s campaign of vilification against his wife.

Lise Iwon is a shrewd lawyer, in line to become president of the Rhode Island Bar Association. Before researching this case, I had admired her, in part because I thought she was a progressive.

One early accomplishment of hers occurred on December 4, 1991, when she cross-examined the Family Court’s best known “gun-for-hire,” a term lawyers use for psychotherapists willing to testify in custody courts on behalf of whichever parent pays them.

Psychologist Brian Hayden had reported using Barry Bricklin’s “Perceptual Scale,” to test a five-year-old’s “perceptions of each parent’s skill as a parent.”[8]

Iwon’s questions extracted Hayden’s admission that Bricklin’s test was never scientifically proven to be either valid or reliable and that 75% of the time it favored the “same parent who hired the doctor to administer the test.”[9]

Iwon had skillfully exposed the absurd overreaching of much “forensic psychology” and its recent popularity in custody courts. Ironically that’s the tool she used fifteen years later to remove Molly and Sara from their home and mother on April 7, 2006, when they were 5 and 9 years old, under the pretext that this would be a “temporary” removal for a brief psychiatric evaluation.

Police and DCYF staff went to their schools and took the girls to the first of their foster homes that eventually led to a state shelter where the sisters could not eat together or share the same room.

By separating Molly from her mother and older sister, DCYF attempted to force Molly to recant her accusations against her father in order to “reunite” the child with him. Indeed, Tom Dwyer, then associate director of child welfare at DCYF, informed me that Molly “wants to be with him”--just before they delivered the 7-year-old to her father in August 2007.

The sisters’ year in a state shelter easily cost taxpayers $60,000 in addition to Sara’s two and a half years in foster homes and thousands of hours wasted by state employees and contractors who had been told that the mother had “mental problems.” It was a lie.

Why did Lise Iwon do it?

We may never know why Lise Iwon handled her responsibilities this way. But I suspect it may have been the same three reasons that run like a virus through many domestic violence custody cases: cash, cabal, and creed. Those who examine custody cases should be attuned to all three.

CASH

Iwon’s October 26, 2005, guardian ad litem report on Molly and Sara was slapdash and full of hearsay. She appears to have made no pretense at fulfilling the standards set forth in the training manual, Guardian ad Litem Practice in Rhode Island, that she had helped to write and teach in 2004.

She charged $200 an hour in this case: $1,000 for her single visit to the family’s home, including $400 for time in her car sporting the vanity plate I WON. By April 2006, the girls’ father had paid her over $7,300. Iwon demanded nearly $5,000 more from their mother, who could not pay.

Three days later, Iwon went to court to remove the girls, even trying to prevent their mother from saying good-bye. For that day alone, Iwon added $1,200 to her bill.

Eventually Iwon’s bill would be about $50,000—much of it for time spent seeking and instructing clinicians in a legal stratagem called “parental alienation.”

New Jersey psychiatrist Richard Gardner developed "Parental Alienation Syndrome" around 1985. He advised that sex between adults and children is natural and lobbied against mandatory reporting of child sex abuse. [10] He advanced his ideas through self-publishing and courtroom testimony in hundreds of child custody cases until his suicide in 2003.

Psychologist Barry Bricklin, whose “Perceptual Scale” had embarrassed Brian Hayden under Iwon’s questioning in 1991, became an avid promoter of Gardner’s “parental alienation.”[11]

CABAL

When DCYF subpoenaed me to testify in the closed courtroom on September 7, 2007, Iwon sat with the father’s defense team in the farthest possible seat from the girls’ mother. Not even pretending to be neutral, Iwon identified herself in itemized invoices as a member of what she called the “team,” which she took to its next level by searching for clinicians who would deliver the products that the team needed in court.

She charged $2,400 for her work with licensed clinical social worker Haven Miles, who reported in horrifying detail how she had forcibly “reunited” Molly with her father, even though Miles acknowledged she could not be certain whether he had actually molested the child.[12]

Iwon sought out psychologist Brian Hayden, who met with the older sister for several months. Instead of reinforcing Iwon’s theory, he rejected it unequivocally. Hayden insisted there was nothing sinister about this mother. In fact he praised her as “cooperative, polite,” “articulate, caring,” and “witty.”[13] His report showed this daughter had genuine fear of her father, and Hayden concluded: “I could discern no intent or actions of her mother to influence” the daughter.[14]

Iwon stopped Hayden’s work on the case and turned to Nancy Harper, MD, a Fellow at the Child Protection Program of Hasbro Hospital. From March 27th to April 7th, 2006, Iwon added $1,750 to her bill in a marathon effort to produce yet another lengthy derivative document maligning the mother, repeating the same hearsay from Iwon, Azarian, Octeau, Parsons, Miles, and others while ignoring actual records of the 5-year-old doing and saying things that caused concern to nurses and teachers. Harper accused the mother of “having a toxic effect on the children”[15] and rushed her report to Iwon without getting her supervisor’s signature.

In Iwon’s hands, Harper’s report succeeded in removing the girls from their mother. The process of “reuniting” them with their father would take longer. DCYF could not expunge its original sexual molestation finding against him for three years—late in 2007.

For that, Lise Iwon went to Boston. DCYF director Patricia Martinez told me she had authorized “up to $30,000” (half to be paid by each parent) for a psychiatric analysis of the family. In Boston, Iwon instructed Bernice Kelly, PsyD, MS, RN, at the Law and Psychiatry service of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In each of her reports, the psychotherapist wrote that Iwon had raised the question “about the possibility of parental alienation.”[16]

Bernice Kelly proceeded to list the “eight primary symptoms” set forth by Gardner,[17] never realizing that the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges had warned half a year before that this theory does not meet evidentiary standards and should be “ruled inadmissible and/or stricken from the evaluation report.”[18]

Kelly’s colleague, psychiatrist James Beck interviewed each of the girls’ parents and found no evidence of mental disorder in either. He noted that the mother’s “narrative about the alleged sexual abuse is filled with the kind of facts that, in other cases, I have tended to accept as evidence that what is claimed did occur. I have found it difficult in the past to believe that people are able to make up this much concrete detail.” He even acknowledged that “psychiatrists … have no special expertise in detecting lying.”[19]

But Beck accused the mother of a “highly idealized” view of her own childhood while concluding that the father had “compensated well” for his early abuse. The doctor was not as troubled by the father’s “history of gender dysphoria” as he was by his impression that the mother who had lost custody of her children was “a woman on a mission.” Evading the question at the heart of it all, the psychiatrist concluded that he was “glad that others with access to the children, as well as to the parents, have made a determination of the allegations in this case.”[20]

The ease with which Iwon persuaded clinicians to overlook their uncertainties and affirm her hypothesis would seem ludicrous if the court were not so reliant on these “expert” opinions. One judge assured me that the role of the expert is essential in custody cases, for judges have no special training in these matters.

Bernice Kelly’s promotion of “parental alienation” and James Beck’s accommodation to it appear at odds with directors of the Children and the Law Program in Massachusetts General Hospital’s psychiatry department. Andrew Clark, MD, Medical Director, and Robin M. Deutsch, PhD, Director of Forensic Services, have joined other national leaders in opposition to adding Richard Gardner’s hypothesis to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. [21]

CREED

By promoting the discredited theory of “parental alienation,” Lise Iwon allied herself with the most radical advocates for fathers’ supremacy. I wondered if she might merely be sympathetic with the girl’s father, a childhood victim of incest who had gender-identity struggles.

As chair of the former Women’s Resource Center of South County, Iwon presided over its name-change to the Domestic Violence Resource Center of South County, underscoring the agency’s services to male victims of intimate abuse.

But notions of “parental alienation” and concern about gender issues may have been less compelling for Iwon than the umbrage she takes at Roman Catholicism.

After the initial DCYF finding of sexual molestation forced the girls’ father to leave home in January 2004, the children and their mother began attending church—something he had abhorred. The Catholic Church in their rural town has a group of conservative activists who instantly embraced the mother and daughters. When DCYF and the Family Court removed the girls from their mother 26 months later, these friends started the first wave of letter-writing and fundraising. They convened a community meeting and flew in Richard Ducote, a lawyer who had defended children in dozens of other states. They sought help from the Parenting Project.

During months of drawn-out Family Court hearings, these neighbors faithfully traveled to court with the mother. They paced the marble corridors praying their rosaries like groups have done in demonstrations against Planned Parenthood and gay rights. The similarity would not have been lost on Iwon.

Just six days after “Molly” and “Sara” were taken from their mother, Lise Iwon faced her own bereavement when her good friend Julie Pell died of cancer. Both had been active in causes that I, too, strongly support.

At Pell’s memorial service, Iwon recalled those struggles and recounted their first meeting in 1986:

It was one of the first years the gay rights bill was introduced. We entered the Statehouse where we were all testifying. It was like being at some horrible camp or prison. We were stuck in this hot, cramped place for a really long time subject to intense questions and testimony. We were surrounded by really strange, scary people. And time just dragged on and on. There were bad, really bad, backroom deals going on. And our consciences were shocked. We were personally attacked. It was an intense bonding experience.

Iwon went on to tell of the 1994 "riot" in the Statehouse rotunda:

We were surrounded by anti-gay religious zealots with huge, offensive signs. Julie signaled the riot by setting off a bullhorn. We all followed by blowing whistles and the noise was absolutely deafening. The troopers stormed in, the Christians fled, and I think Julie got stomped on by a state trooper. . . . But we weren’t leaving. No way. We were resolved. [22]

While I value Iwon’s candor in relating that tumultuous encounter, her passion shows one of the reasons she may have lacked the objectivity essential in a guardian ad litem committed to protecting children.

A related sentiment showed up in the online essays of Attorney Norbara Octeau, the administrative hearing officer contracted by DCYF who had overturned the finding against the girls’ father in 2004. In 2007, I found two online essays Octeau had written appealing to fathers to hire her as their divorce attorney. She derided stereotypes of motherhood by evoking an image that Catholics will recognize as their veneration of the Holy Mother:

“It is amazing,” Octeau wrote:

...in today’s modern society that many women revert to touting their traditional roles of cooking, cleaning, laundry and being the tender hands of motherhood to elevate their argument to a pedestal of holy motherhood.[23]

In a later article she mocked “the pedestal which still elicits a knee-jerk reaction to the hallowed image of mother and child.”[24]


Breaking through stereotypes, seeking justice

Iwon’s apparent bias, her piling up of hearsay to vilify the mother, her inaccurate portrayal of their home, her failure to interview scores of people who had firsthand knowledge of the family, her deliberate dismissal of experts who disagreed with her—I believe this evidence illustrates severe shortcomings in Rhode Island’s system of child protection.

The reversals of Lise Iwon and Brian Hayden in this case marked a new awareness for me. Victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, along with their advocates, can no longer claim that an “old boys’ club” at Family Court ridicules the concerns of protective mothers. Many professional women have joined that club and are building their careers as domestic violence deniers.

As a retired pastor and former executive director of Rhode Island’s largest and oldest shelter for battered women and their children, I have worked closely with scores of mothers—the best, the worst, and many in the middle. The mother in this case is extraordinarily good. The drumbeat of vilification against her focuses full attention on the worst failures in our system.

I have written more about the case in other places, most recently a little picture book called, Spontaneous!

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1119986

NOTES:
As always, if I have made any errors in this account, I welcome corrections at parentingproject@cox.net
--Anne Grant


[1] M.E.Reilly-McGreen, “The Guardians,” The Rhode Island Monthly (Oct. 2003), 54 ff., photo by Dana Smith.

[2] Anne Grant, “Family Court Devastation: Discredited ‘Parental Alienation Syndrome’,”
Providence Journal (June 27, 2006) B5.

[3] Norbara L . Octeau, “Decision,” DCYF Administrative Hearing AH/04-55 (stamped Dec. 20, 2004) 14.

[4] Octeau, 20.

[5] Lise M. Iwon, “Guardian ad Litem’s First Report,” October 26, 2005: 3.

[6] John P. Parsons, PhD, “Psychological Assessment/Sexual Offender Evaluation,” January 8, 2005 (incorrectly marked 2004).

[7] Lise J. Gescheidt, “Objection to Mother’s Motion to Allow Further Evaluations of Minor Children,” Juvenile Case No 2006-0882-01, 2006-0882-02, April 13, 2007: 4.

[8] Brian Hayden, PhD, “Psychotherapy Summary,” (F.C. File No. W88-0590), Oct. 28, 1991: 2.

[9] Partial Transcript (F.C. No. W88-0590), Dec. 4, 1991: 53.

[10] Stephanie J. Dallam, “Dr. Richard Gardner, A Review of His Theories and Opinions on Atypical Sexuality, Pedophilia, and Treatment Issues,” (2005). http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/dallam/2.html
Joan S. Meier, “Parental Alienation Syndrome and Parental Alienation: Research Reviews,” Applied Research Forum (Jan. 2009) http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/docs/VAWnet.pdf
The Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence, “Overview of Dr. Richard Gardner’s Opinions on Pedophilia and Child Sexual Abuse” (2005). http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/pas/RAG.html

[11] On December 1, 2009, the Federal Trade Commission promulgated new rules to stop the “false, misleading and unsubstantiated claims” that Bricklin and others were making for the mail-order “Rotation Diet” he had developed in 1985--a year after his “Perceptual Scale,” and at the same time that Gardner was perfecting his “Parental Alienation Syndrome.”
http://rachel-foundation-lawsuit.com/images/Bricklin_charged_by_FTC.pdf
http://www.carbrotationdiet.com/affiliate-policy.html

[12] Haven Miles, MSW, LICSW, “Summary of Contacts, Parent-Child Assessment,” Nov.
28, 2005: 4-5.

[13] Brian Hayden, PhD, “Psychological Evaluation,” Jan. 5, 2006: 1.

[14] Hayden 3-4.

[15] Nancy S. Harper, MD, Fellow, Child Protection Program, 1676-86-32 AC 000110906231, April 5, 2006: 13.

[16] Bernice Kelly, PsyD, MS, RN, “Status Report” (N20040106),” Oct. 22, 2006: 2. Kelly noted Iwon’s concern about “parental alienation” in her subsequent reports on Jan. 11, 2007: 2 and March 6, 2007: 2.

[17] Bernice Kelly, “Status Report” (N20040106),” January 11, 2007: 6.

[18] National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Navigating Custody & Visitation Evaluations in Cases with Domestic Violence: A Judge’s Guide, 2006: 24. NCJFCJ's spiral book with laminated "bench cards" to assist judges describes the same process I believe Iwon used in this case, even highlighting the term in their Guide: “One common flaw in reports prepared by custody evaluators…is 'confirmatory bias'…. When the evaluator develops a hypothesis—forms an opinion about some issue in the case—early in his or her process, finds data to support it, confirms the hypothesis, and then stops testing it against new or different data…,” 25. These cautions are repeated in NCJFCJ's A Judicial Guide to Child Safety in Custody Cases (2009), available online at
http://www.ncjfcj.org/images/stories/dept/fvd/pdf/judicial%20guide.pdf

[19] James Beck, MD, as cited by Bernice Kelly, PsyD, MS, RN, “Status Report,” March 6, 2007: 4-5.

[20] Beck, cited by Kelly: 5.

[21] Janet R. Johnston, PhD, and Joan B. Kelly, PhD, et al, letter to Daniel Pine, MD, Chairman of the Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence Work Group for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, October 12, 2009.

[22] Quoted from “Gay Rights Leader Julie Pell Remembered” by Peter Cassels, Edge Boston, Thursday Apr 20, 2006: http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ci=108&ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=11760

[23] Norbara L . Octeau & Christopher A . Pearsall, Rhode Island Divorce Lawyer Tips for
You–Are the Rhode Island Family Courts against Fathers? http://www .rhodeislanddivorce-
tips .com/2007/02/rhode_islanddi_12 .html . Mr. Pearsall’s name was later removed from this posting, and another article by Octeau was substituted. Both articles reveal similar hostility to mothers.

[24] Norbara L . Octeau, “DCYF Children Abuse/Are the Rhode Island Family Courts against fathers?”
(Feb . 20, 2007), http://rhodeislanddivorcetips .typepad .com/dcyf_children_abuse/2007/02/
are_the_rhode_i .html

Patrick Lynch builds his war chest, Part 2

A current custody case shows Attorney General Patrick Lynch's strange priorities in allocating Rhode Island's scarce resources for prosecuting criminals. His office assigned two Special Assistant Attorneys General, Daniel Carr Guglielmo and Peter Roklan, as prosecutors in a case that should never have come to criminal trial at taxpayer expense. At least a half dozen men entered the courtroom at various times yesterday and today, seeming to advise the two young attorneys. Moments before the trial, one assured them: "I'm here for you."

Why was this case so important to Lynch?

Today, November 4, 2009, a Superior Court jury threw out the disorderly conduct charges that Lynch's prosecutors tried to pin on a toddler's mother in a tumultuous divorce and custody case. Finding the mother not guilty took the jury less than an hour.

Jury members never learned the backstory to the case that began when the baby's father came home from work on March 1, 2007, packed his clothes, and took their son to his sister's home. Just one year old, the baby was still nursing. When his mother went to her sister-in-law's house searching for her son, a fight ensued, leaving the baby's mother with a broken nose. Police came and arrested the mother.

Nor did jury members learn about the spate of harassing phone calls allegedly made by the husband, his sister and mother, or the numerous charges instigated, not only against his wife, but against her mother and stepfather--each one a costly ordeal for his wife's family to fight in various courts.

This kind of persistent litigation, dragging a civil case into numerous criminal courts, is a strategy we have come to call domestic violence by proxy.

In this case, the ongoing harassment led to the baby's mother being repeatedly imprisoned on spurious charges, losing not only her child, but her 13-year career as a social worker at DCYF. Prison clinicians diagnosed her with post traumatic stress disorder, and townspeople told me that his stalking and lying about her still continue.

Only two months ago, Special Assistant Attorney General Peter Roklan was at another courthouse trying to get her imprisoned again. To read more about that incident see
http://writingtruthtopower.blogspot.com/2009/01/verbatims.html

Yesterday, Superior Court Judge Gilbert Indeglia briefly excused the jury while defense attorney Jeffrey Pine, himself a former Attorney General, moved for acquittal. He argued that the evidence presented by the state's witnesses fell far short of the legal requirements for disorderly conduct.

The jury never saw the odd performance by Special Assistant Attorney General Guglielmo, who vehemently jabbed his finger again and again at the defendant, inches from her face, as he stammered with vitriol that she had uttered a profanity and threat in the corridor of Family Court. She had plenty of motive to threaten her husband's girlfriend, Guglielmo exclaimed, for she probably did not like the woman's testimony that day.

Judge Indeglia interrupted the young attorney's aggressive behavior and questioned his assumption, but also denied Pine's motion. Later the judge would instruct the jury clearly in the legal requirements for finding someone guilty of disorderly conduct.

Prosecuting attorney Roklan admitted to the jury: "We can all agree" that the man behind the whole ordeal "is a bad person" who "lies" and "cheats" and "uses" people. Still Roklan urged them to believe the testimony that his now ex-wife had been guilty of disorderly conduct against his now former girlfriend.

By noon on their second day, the jury returned, filing past the defendant, Attorneys Pine, Guglielmo, and Roklan. All four stood in a formal sign of respect. Jury members had been unfailingly serious before, but now they smiled. They had reached unanimous agreement: The accused ex-wife is not guilty.

As in other heavily litigated domestic violence cases I have witnessed, Superior Court juries have a gift for promptly concluding matters that would escalate into a vicious, ongoing game of cat-and-mouse at Family Court.

It is hard to fathom why this case matters so much to Attorney General Patrick Lynch except perhaps that the little boy's father hired a well-connected attorney, Scott Partington, who happens to be his town's municipal court judge and husband of Assistant Attorney General Rebecca Partington and son of a legend in Rhode Island law enforcement, the late John Partington.

In stark contrast to Patrick Lynch, Jeffrey Pine's years as Attorney General brought significant progress to Rhode Island in addressing the crime of domestic violence that places a huge burden on private citizens and public funds.

Mr. Lynch's term in that office has tipped the balance back to abusers who become obsessed with using police, judges and state's attorneys to further their own private campaigns--getting the state to drain its low resources on frivolous cases that commit domestic violence by proxy.

Patrick Lynch builds his war chest, Part 1

Attorney General Patrick Lynch has been making personal phone calls, reaching out to prospective donors, building his war chest to run for Governor of Rhode Island in 2010.

Potential donors need to understand how Lynch and his office have failed children held hostage by Family Court, including those I’ve called “Molly” and “Sara” in the Little Hostages blog.

After DCYF’s child protection investigator made a finding that indicated Molly’s father for sexual molestation in 2004, Attorney General Lynch did not convene a grand jury to consider the evidence. Why not?

I interviewed the town police chief who originally handled Molly’s case. Based on his experience, he told me that he believed Molly’s father could not have passed a lie detector test. Nevertheless the Attorney General’s office considered Molly, at 3, “too young” to make a credible complaint of sexual abuse.

But it is well known that children three and younger are especially vulnerable to sex crimes by family members.

Rhode Island children would be better protected from criminal acts within their own homes if Attorney General Lynch worked to assure that these children will no longer be subjected to scores of examinations by one stranger after another, including many whose reports show them to be unqualified, biased, or simply inept with children.

Some counseling agencies, like Day One, have state-of-the-art interview rooms, where a skilled interviewer who relates well to children can help a child disclose traumatic information. A multidisciplinary forensic team can observe the interview on a monitor in a separate room. They can communicate their questions discretely through the interviewer. A DVD of the interview can be made available for grand jury or judge. The recording provides a confidential record so evaluators can steadily improve the performance of interviewers and the integrity of the process.

These DVDs could reassure judges who fear that some interviewers may predispose children to allege crimes that never happened. Where sexual abuse did occur, the value of preserving the child’s first description of a crime is clear. Spontaneous words, gestures, and drawings of young children, unmediated by adults, are often compellingly vivid.

Molly’s energetic reenactment convinced the investigator. But that evidence was not videotaped. DCYF met with the accused father and his defense attorney, buried the investigator’s written report, and hired an administrative hearing officer who overturned the finding that indicated the father had molested his daughter. The same hearing officer revealed extreme personal bias against mothers in her written decision and in her online essays appealing to men to hire her as their divorce attorney.

Neither DCYF nor the Attorney General acknowledged these failings. In 2006, DCYF removed Molly from a mother who had been uniformly praised in scores of letters from neighbors and colleagues. Sixteen months later, in 2007, DCYF took Molly from a state shelter and gave her to the very man she had so vigorously accused.

Our top law enforcement officer should understand the need to collect evidence early and thoroughly in a prescribed process that can be evaluated and perfected. There is no need to subject a child to repeated grilling by countless adults—as was inflicted on Molly and many other children who have suffered enormously at the hands of the state.

Constant repetition quickly makes a child sound rehearsed, giving rise to allegations that the child has been “coached” to lie by the other parent. A victimized child soon grows anxious and despondent and may refuse to talk altogether.

In 2009, Phil West and I met with Attorney General Lynch and his staff to discuss these ongoing concerns. Lynch seemed unfazed by the problem and entirely self-satisfied. He said his staff participates in regular team meetings to consider cases like Molly’s. While insisting that DCYF, not the Attorney General, is responsible for crimes against children at home, one of Lynch’s top staff stated with absolute confidence that “we have the best criminal justice system in the world.”

The rest of the world is not so sure. In 2007, the national child rights organization, First Star, issued its report card showing Rhode Island earned only 25 points out of 100, scoring the lowest of all fifty states, for our failure to assure vulnerable children adequate legal representation:

http://www.firststar.org/documents/FIRSTSTARReportCard07.pdf

When Rhode Island’s Child Advocate Jametta Alston and the national organization Children’s Rights renewed their class action suit against DCYF one month ago, they were joined by sixteen children’s legal aid organizations, law school clinics, and child advocacy experts from across the country:

http://www.childrensrights.org/news-events/press/broad-national-coalition-of-child-welfare-advocates-and-experts-line-up-in-support-of-rhode-island-reform-class-action/

Rhode Island’s Attorney General has failed to protect these children. Instead of helping Patrick Lynch become Governor, consider how he has placed Molly, Sara, and other vulnerable children in far greater danger through his actions and failures to act as Attorney General on their behalf.

We have been researching some of those cases for future posts.

2009 books on sex crimes against children

Our extended family includes a convicted pedophile. This year, under an assumed name, he published his memoir, in which he describes his obsessive search for friends, jobs, and travel destinations that gave him sexual access to young boys, much like “Molly” and “Sara’s” paternal grandfather.

Both men went to prison for these crimes--but not for their crimes against children in their own families. (An editor removed accounts of incest from our relative’s book, apparently because these “complicated” his story.)

http://www.amazon.com/Made-USA-Memoir-Sex-Offender/dp/1887650504

The late Richard Gardner, psychiatrist, author, and self-publisher, created “Parental Alienation Syndrome” in 1985 and built it into a cottage industry. He lobbied against mandatory reporting of sex crimes against children. He argued that society was too restrictive when it prohibits sex between adults and children.

His theory held that children who complain of abuse by their fathers should not be believed, since their mothers had probably alienated, brainwashed, and coached them to lie. These children, Gardner advised, should be taken from their mothers and awarded to their fathers.

"Parental alienation" was the false pretext used to removed "Molly" and "Sara" from their mother in order to "reunify" them with their father.

The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has emphatically rejected “Parental Alienation” for failure to meet evidentiary standards. But Rhode Island’s Family Court has groomed psychologists who actively promote it.

This year, some superbly written books have been published that challenge pedophile assumptions:




Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed

Journalist Kathy Marks tells of a historically Christian society where men routinely raped and assaulted children while women acquiesced on the Island of Pitcairn that was settled more than 200 years ago by mutineers. Marks went to the remote island in 2004 to report on the trials of village leaders and others for raping children. She provides an astonishing account of this sexually permissive criminal culture and some of its profoundly disturbing consequences.

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Paradise-Modern-Day-Pitcairn-Revealed/dp/1416597441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253114284&sr=1-1




Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History

History Professor Lynn Sacco meticulously documents centuries of denial, steeped in class, race, and gender, that refused to prosecute white fathers for incest. She describes the manipulation of medical evidence to shore up patriarchal power at the expense of girls’ physical and emotional integrity. With concern for their own careers, otherwise progressive professionals have preferred to help defense attorneys "detect ‘malicious prosecutions’ and false allegations" rather than reporting actual medical evidence of abuse.

http://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu:80/ecom/MasterServlet/GetItemDetailsHandler?iN=9780801893001&qty=1&source=2&viewMode=3&loggedIN=false&JavaScript=y




Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals

Sociologist Amy Neustein exposes collusion between a district attorney and council of rabbis intent on suppressing sex abuse allegations against yeshiva administrators, therapists, and rabbis. In 2000, a Yiddish-language newspaper in Brooklyn, NY, published a full-page notice signed by fifty prominent rabbis reminding readers of the “severe prohibition” against informing non-Jewish authorities against another Jew. This includes reporting child abuse to police. The record shows similarities to the Catholic Church's history of covering up sexual abuse of children by priests.

http://www.upne.com/1-58465-671-9.html





My Body Belongs To Me

Assistant District Attorney Jill Starishevsky prosecutes sex crimes against children in New York City. Her book uses simple words in readable rhymed verse to give young children a sense of ownership over their bodies. If an adult touches them in ways that scare them, they can tell parents or teachers. “He said it’s our secret/ and told me not to tell./ But I ran away real fast/ and then began to yell.” Sara Muller has illustrated the book with expressively whimsical drawings to help children understand their personal right to feel safe and respected.

http://www.mybodybelongstome.com/




Angela Shelton’s Warrior Workbook

Filmmaker Angela Shelton, who escaped childhood incest along with her siblings, has designed a therapeutic step-by-step journal that she subtitles “Be your own hero" with the reminder: "It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” Her outspoken humor is healing and smartly illustrated by James Murray. Disarmingly clown-like and powerful, Angela’s infectious, can-do spirit and spontaneity help the wounded to take heart and find their unique voices.

http://store.searchingforangelasheltonstore.com/swordwb.html

Memorial Day Captives: 1,144 Days & Nights

"Sara" and "Molly's" maternal grandparents, who live in Switzerland, nearly died this year. Almost 90 and heartsick, both were hospitalized and not expected to recover. But they pulled through and came home to care for each other once again.

Sara and Molly are their only grandchildren. The girls' mother took this picture during their last visit with their beloved Nona and Non in 2003. The State of Rhode Island has not allowed the children to visit their maternal grandparents since then.

But astonishingly, DCYF permitted the girls' father to send 8-year-old Molly on a plane alone to visit his mother in France for Christmas--even though his mother did not protect him and his siblings from incest by their father in the 1960s and 70s.

What kind of state agency would do this? What kind of father would send an 8-year-old on such a trip alone instead of letting her spend Christmas with her own mother and sister?

There are many questions that need to be answered in this case. And in other cases, too.

As we observe Memorial Day, remember the children held captive in Rhode Island, who never should have been removed from healthy, protective parents.

When Sara was free to talk, she spoke of being "tortured" by the people assigned to take them from their mother and to "reunify" them with their father.

This Memorial Day marks the girls' 1,144th day and night in state custody.

As we uncover the answers to our questions, we will find out why Rhode Island scored only 25 out of 100--the lowest of all fifty states--for our failure to assure children genuine legal representation. http://www.firststar.org/documents/FIRSTSTARReportCard07.pdf

We will find out what the girls' court-appointed guardian ad litem, Lise Iwon, did or failed to do to protect them and whether she had any conflicts of interest.

We will find out how the State at every level of government failed to protect them.

Maybe we will find out why the State of Rhode Island lost $215,266 in federal funds for not meeting basic standards of child protection and foster care--in a review that monitored only a sample of cases from merely 6 of more than 37 months that Sara and Molly have been held in State custody.
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/cwmonitoring/final/primary/ri_2007.htm

What Rhode Island has done to Sara and Molly will be exposed for many years to come. But the friends and family who sold and mortgaged all they could in a futile attempt to protect these children from Americans are now wondering whether Non and Nona will ever again embrace their granddaughters.

On Memorial Day, we honor those who sacrificed themselves for our freedom. But our patriotism rings hollow if we do not struggle against Americans who abuse their power by suspending the rights and freedoms of others.

1,096 Days & Nights

Today marks the third year, since police accompanied a DCYF social worker to "Molly's" daycare center and "Sara's" school on Friday, April 7, 2006, to take them into state custody at the behest of a Family Court attorney paid by their father and serving as guardian ad litem.


They have not seen their home since then.


Inside their home, boxes of photographs spanning nine years testify to the joy they found in each other and in their mother. Separated from each other at taxpayer expense, these sisters illustrate why the Rhode Island General Assembly must provide oversight to protect children from an unregulated industry.

To that end, we have worked with legislators to introduce bills that would help Sara, Molly, and children like them.


If the legislative branch fails to oversee and regulate the lucrative industry that thrives in this hidden world, children suffer. Good legislators, like good parents, know their task is not easy, but they work diligently at it, gaining new insights, and growing ever more responsible in their protective role.


One bill now before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees would make DCYF more transparent and accountable in protecting children (S 0363, H 5667). Another would enable judges to heed the concerns of protective parents (S 0690, H 5484). If we want justice, we must change the laws.

UPDATE: Since the bills above were drafted, we have been developing substitute bills with others who share these concerns. The SubA for S 0690 and H 5667 would begin a process to accredit DCYF through the Council on Accreditation. For more information, visit their website:
http://www.coanet.org/front3/index.cfm



Thanks to Rishwanth Jayapaul for his photos of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, March 17, 2009.

966 Days & Nights

As you prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, please remember that this will be "Molly" and "Sara's" third Thanksgiving away from their lifelong home and community. Thanksgiving will be their 966th day and night separated by the State of Rhode Island from their mother.

It will be the sisters' 458th day separated from each other, since the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) gave "Molly," 7, to the father she had accused when she was 3 of playing "sausage games" while her mother was at work and her sister at school. She had drawn a picture of him ejaculating and she re-enacted male masturbation.

DCYF's first line of responders did exactly as they should. DCYF notified local police to remove the father from the home. A child protective investigator interviewed Molly. Based on the child's words, demeanor and re-enactment, DCYF issued a finding of molestation against the father. A DCYF social worker referred Molly and Sara to counselors trained in child sex abuse at Day One.

Then came a series of legal maneuvers that DCYF contractors, lawyers, and supervisors call "Family Reunification." As we analyze the documents in this case, we recognize the strategy of their father's criminal defense attorney, Lise Gescheidt, who succeeded in getting DCYF to overturn its original finding of sexual molestation against her client.

When Ms. Gescheidt and the father appealed that finding in 2004, DCYF assigned attorney Norbara Octeau to serve as hearing officer. Ms. Octeau's online essays have shown her bias against mothers and her outreach to fathers to hire her as their divorce attorney. DCYF gave Ms. Octeau no reports whatsoever to document their investigators' original finding against this father.

Gescheidt attended that hearing in October 2004 with her client, the girls' father. But DCYF never informed the girls' mother or her attorney of the hearing. Ms. Octeau never met or questioned the mother before condemning her solely on hearsay and rendering a decision in favor of the father in December 2004.

Gescheidt's friend, attorney Lise Iwon, served as guardian ad litem. Her bills total nearly $50,000, and reveal her vigorous search for clinicians to blame the mother--contrary to evidence provided by scores of others, including neighbors, colleagues, and counselors.

After Octeau had overturned the finding against the father, Gescheidt and Iwon, with a team of attorneys and clinicians added to the confusion.

By December 2007, Gescheidt, Iwon, and their team had succeeded in delaying the matter for three years since Octeau's decision. That was the time limit needed to expunge the father's record at DCYF. The agency had already given "Molly" to him four months earlier and had sent "Sara" to a foster home.

DCYF had to do something with the girls, who were living in a state shelter at a base-cost to taxpayers of $60,000 a year. Unable to prove their mother was mentally unfit, DCYF finally said she had neglected her children.

But did she? When neighbors asked the Parenting Project to investigate the case in 2006, we visited the home. We saw thousands of photographs their mother had taken of "Sara" and "Molly," invariably grinning together at countless activities indoors and out. We found an extraordinary, child-friendly home, as Phil West's photographs document:

The side entrance welcomes guests with a yellow triangular warning in a child’s script.



Bright with sunlight, the traditional “mud room” is entirely devoted to crafts:



Worktables hold paper, paints, crayons, clay, yarns, beads, seashells--an endless variety of objects, textures, and tools. Hand-made mobiles hang from the ceiling. Walls display collages, posters, and children’s vibrant paintings.

Crates overflow with their creations.



Mother and children worked together on their own dollhouse, with tiny furnishings created from spools.



We found no television there, except a small one in the mother's bedroom. "They never asked for one," their mother said. "They had no time for it."



The furniture throughout the home is a positive blend of adult and child-sizes--a futon low to the floor, a full-sized rocking chair, bookshelves with hundreds of books and games for children and adults to share.







A piano where their mother once gave them lessons:



The girls’ zest and humor have left their mark everywhere: "Hi Mommy!" says the window, and "Switzerland is cool!" in the language they grew up speaking, which DCYF forbids them to use during their two-hour-a-week visits with each other and their mother--for fear they will use it to criticize their father.



The last thing the children did at home was to prepare this cage for a new tenant. Their mother had promised to take them to the pet shop to buy a hamster after school on April 7, 2006.



Instead, Lise Iwon brought an emergency motion to Judge Mutter to remove the children from their mother and home "temporarily" for psychiatric tests. Police went to their schools with a DCYF social worker.

Their mother asked where they were taking her children. The officer said, "I don't know." The girls were only 5 and 9 years old.

They have not seen their home, their art projects, piano, rocking chair, books and games since then--966 days and nights ago this Thanksgiving.

Who will spend time on Thanksgiving thinking about "Molly," "Sara," and the other children that Rhode Island holds hostage?

If we do not know about them, it is because we do not want to know.

Which of our legislators will examine this case and others like it? They are the ones responsible to oversee the courts and agencies that our General Assembly established to handle such cases.

Which organizations committed to better government or to child welfare will consider the hidden plight of children like these? Who will dare to question attorneys like Lise Gescheidt, Lise Iwon, Norbara Octeau, Deborah Tate, and the lawyers of DCYF?

Their legal stratagem is not unique to Rhode Island. Do Rhode Islanders have it in us to stop the state from removing these children?

To hear about the same thing happening to children elsewhere, watch this video:

766 Days & Nights

As of today, Mother’s Day 2008, the State of Rhode Island has held "Molly," 7, and "Sara," 11, (not their real names) in custody for 766 days and nights, nearly eleven months longer than Iranian militants held Americans hostage during a tense standoff from 1979 to 1981. Should we compare these two events and the political agendas they represent?

In one, 52 adults were held together under armed threat for 444 days before being released and returned to their loved ones. In the second, two young sisters have been removed from their mother and life-long home, and then isolated from each other for 766 days and nights. They have not yet been released or returned to their home and loved ones.

Today is their third Mother's Day without the mother that both adore. You decide if Molly and Sara are "hostages" to a political agenda that violently assaults their freedom and rights as Americans.

Police removed the girls from their schools on April 7, 2006, when they were 5 and 9 years old—at a time in life when one week at summer camp can be traumatic. Given no other explanation, the older girl wrote that a foster mother told them their mother had "mental problems." It was a lie, and the children knew it.

More than two years later, the girls, who once did everything together, are permitted to see each other and their mother for only two hours a week at the DCYF office. While voices of wisdom plead for parents to listen to their children, Rhode Island has made it impossible for these sisters to have any meaningful contact with their mother or with each other.

Why? How did it happen?

To their neighbors, friends, and especially their mother, these days, weeks, months, and years have brought a sense of horror that such a thing could occur anywhere in the United States.

Their mother is neither abusive nor neglectful. Quite the contrary, she is an extraordinary parent who wrote and illustrated whimsical journals for each girl since birth, a series that grew into more than ten handwritten books.

She wrote mostly in Swiss-German, the birth language that state authorities now forbid the girls to speak, for fear they will speak against their father. She recorded their adventures . . .



and ordinary things like gardening and handcrafts, the things they noticed in nature, the comments they made, and early childhood experiences they might otherwise forget.






Their life changed in 2003 when Molly, at the age of three, began to protest the "sausage games" that she said her father insisted on playing when her mother was at work and her sister at school. She drew graphic pictures of him, and reenacted male masturbation so convincingly that DCYF investigated and issued a finding of sexual molestation against the father.

This was not the first time his family faced allegations of child sexual abuse. On June 17, 1981, the District Court in Winterthur, Switzerland, convicted his own father at age 55 of molesting three boys, two of them in foster care and mentally handicapped, and one a deaf mute.

The Swiss newspaper, Landbote (June 18, 1981), said the defendant was a psychoanalyst and served as part-time caretaker for one of the boys. He professed his shame and remorse, insisting that the boys were not seriously handicapped and he only meant to help them. He considered himself a "frustrated rebel" with self-destructive tendencies and possibly split personality. The court found that he had abused a position of trust and sentenced him to eighteen months in prison plus five years on probation.



He left prison and soon offended again, facing charges of child sex abuse and child pornography. His family hid incriminating photographs and helped him escape, but he was arrested in France and returned to prison. He now lives as an admitted pedophile in the Philippines, where poor families have few alternatives to accepting money from those who molest their children.

After his granddaughters were born in Rhode Island, the aging pederast came to visit. Eventually his status as a convicted sex offender barred him from entering the United States. Rhode Island records show that the grandfather had molested other children--not only unrelated boys in Switzerland, but also his own sons. His family apparently never reported this to Swiss authorities.

One of his sons is now a leading divorce lawyer in Zurich, where websites quote him as an advocate for fathers. He complains of the hysteria of mothers using sex abuse allegations to keep children from fathers. Society’s fear of pedophiles is too extreme, he says, and the Swiss courts' failure to assure joint custody for fathers "almost invites you to play blackmail."

Erpressungsspielen is the German word the brother used for blackmail, and it may have begun in earnest in 2003, when he gave his brother in Rhode Island a Swiss article about American psychiatrist Richard Gardner’s success accusing mothers of "alienating" their children against their fathers.



According to the girls' mother, her husband threw the page at her, saying, "This article describes you exactly," as she and the girls were leaving home on the morning of March 3, 2003, for their drive to Providence.

That summer the girls and their mother flew to Zurich to visit her elderly parents, who eagerly welcomed their only grandchildren. Their mother documented the trip in a special journal.






Now in their late 80's and too frail to travel, the couple have not seen their grandchildren since that visit in 2003.



Back in Rhode Island, an angry father met his wife and daughters at the airport. His wife remembers him saying: "You’ll pay for this." By Christmastime their younger daughter complained of the sausage games, and early in 2004, DCYF issued its finding of sexual molestation against him.

Yet he was never criminally prosecuted. His brother, the Zurich lawyer, came to Rhode Island to fight the finding against him. They met with police, DCYF staff, and others.

The brothers' earliest defense strategy was to use photos of their father with Molly to suggest that he could have molested her. In the Philippines, the grandfather insisted he had not done this, for he is solely interested in boys.

Molly never wavered from insisting that it was her own father who played the sausage game. She re-enacted and drew it emphatically.

More than two years have passed since neighbors began to bring this case to the attention of Rhode Island officials. Why was the case never prosecuted? Why are the girls now deprived of each other, their mother, and their home?



Molly and Sara are not the only children suffering in a system that offers ample opportunity for blackmail. How can we discern the whole truth in a system of adversarial litigation that lawyers and clinicians pump for billable hours? The process itself, functioning under the cloak of confidentiality and virtually devoid of rules, splinters cases down to meaningless motions for years on end. Working together, lawyers for the defense and for DCYF keep judges from grasping the entire story in its fullest context.

Which Rhode Island officials will use their subpoena power to investigate and find out which side has waged the campaign of misinformation that still travels like a virus through this case?


Confidential comments may be sent to Anne Grant at parentingproject@cox.net

Mami-Visits

"Sara" and "Molly" had eagerly prepared the hamster cage for a new tenant. On April 7, 2006, they waited excitedly for school to end and their mother to drive them to the pet shop.



Instead the guardian ad litem produced an emergency motion to remove the girls from their mother for psychiatric evaluation. Police went to their schools and took them into state custody. They were 5 and 9 years old.

At a foster home, they met their foster mother, Alice. Always an organizer, Sara worked out a plan. She would write messages to Mami (which means and sounds like "mommy") in her notebook. She would ask Mami to bring another notebook just like it when she visits, so they could write to each other all week long and exchange notebooks (secretly if necessary) to read what the other had written, then write some more.

"Mami, I asked Alice why I am a foster child," Sara writes. "She said that the father is 'not guilty.' Then she said that you have 'mental problems.' I can’t believe it."



Sara signs her name with an arrow pointing to a drawing of herself crying.

Mami writes to reassure Sara:



"Alice has never seen me, has never talked to me, she has no idea what happened in our family. Forget about what she said, don't worry."

Mami decorates her message with hearts, a smiling sun and flower:

"I am normal. I am simpler, more fun to be around than most people. If I were sick in my head, I wouldn't have so many friends, and all those friends would have noticed a long time ago."



Molly and Sara will be allowed to see their mother under strict supervision in a DCYF office building for two hours each week. Mami brings music, food, flowers, games, crafts a day ahead to be thoroughly searched.

Molly makes a drawing of them all smiling, with their cheerful Swiss balloon floating nearby. Under the circumstances, it is a happy time just being together: "I am having a wonderful Mami-visit," writes Molly.



"I can't wait till I see you again next week," writes Sara, "till I can stay overnight. Until I can live with you again. Alice said that she doesn't believe [Molly], that the father has done the sausage game with her. Then I asked, 'How could a child make something up like that?'





"Then Alice said, 'They do it all the time!'"

Is this what DCYF staff told the foster mother? Other staff later reveal that they, too, are being told false information about Molly "recanting."

Mami reassures Sara: "Believe what you have seen and heard. Be honest & true to yourself."



"I stand by [Molly]," writes their mother. "She has a rough time. She needs you and needs your trust, [Sara]. You are strong together . . . .



"My life is broken," writes Sara, "and I can't stand it anymore. . . . [Molly] doesn't seem to eat much."



"[Sara], you are never alone," writes her mother. "Pray, pray, pray. God has a plan for you, and for [Molly], and for everyone."



"Be strong and full of confidence that everything will work out in the end. I can’t wait till both of you are with me again."



"I think of you all the time: What are you doing? How are you doing? I am looking so forward till you are here with me. I love you. Tell [Molly] many hugs and kisses. Your Mami."

"Good night, Mami. You are the best! See you tomorrow in my diary. You are the best Mami in the world."



They are strictly forbidden to speak Swiss-German, which their father calls their "mother tongue." His lawyers say Mami uses Swiss-German to tell them bad things about him. They are moved from one foster home to another, and finally into a shelter before school starts.

By Christmas Eve, they have been in custody for 262 days. They are not allowed to sing Christmas carols with Mami, because they only know them in Swiss-German. But Mami brings a Christmas tree, candles, food and gifts anyway.

The Children's Museum receives federal funds to provide free supervised visits for parents and children under the government's "reunification" policy. But DCYF does not approve the girls and Mami for the Families Together program. Instead they intend to remove Molly and Sara from their mother and to "reunify" them--or at least Molly--with her father.

If Mami wants extra visits, she can hire the Families Together director as a private contractor at $75 an hour, including travel time for her girls and the director. Mami will also need to pay their cab fare from the shelter--about $24. Less than a two-hour visit could easily cost $200. There is no way Mami can afford it.

Sometimes people take the girls for a weekend away from the shelter. But always, they bring them back. Molly draws this picture of herself and Sara waving goodbye to the people who are leaving them behind. It is a nightmare they cannot escape.




Confidential comments may be sent to Anne Grant at parentingproject@cox.net