BRIEFLY: HOW TO DEFEND THE AMERICAN FAMILY Two thousand years ago, Roman Legionnaires were rewarded for service to the empire with a guarantee that their family would travel with them, reside with them outside battle and be rewarded with a pension at the end of their service. Their family model provided brick which supported an empire which lasted for centuries. Immorality, violence and disloyalty contributed to the fall of their empire. Today in the United States there are Constitutional guarantees to Due Process and Equal Protection. There are laws and a presumption of gender equality. Or is there? The “best interests of children are the primary focus of our Family Courts. Or is it? In most States, our families are being torn apart by Judicial Order and by powerful bureaucrats. This is due to money, profits and power replacing the element of family and loyalty to traditional American culture. Traditionally in our nation both parents played important roles in the lives of children. These roles have shifted with each gender now engaging in some or all of the same roles played by the other. However, parenting is not shared. Parenting is now a trophy won in litigation. Our children’s best interest are meted out with Courts rewarding one parent with control while the other person is ordered to be the cash provider. Today, it is commonplace for the non-custodial parent to be treated as a human ATM machine. Children are expensive and must be supported. However, this truism is now implemented with the non-custodial parent having little or no access, little or no decision making to the very children they are working so hard for. This removal of one parent from engaging in parenting is justified as “in the best interests of the child.” The legal rationale is justified with the idea that if both parents do not get along, then one parent must be chosen to have decision making power. Unfortunately, this rationale is dangerously flawed. In lieu of shared parenting plans, money is now the real underpin and such reward the incentive to break apart two parent families. The child custody exploitation business encourages adversity between the two parents. Common sense and social trends show that our family social structure and moral values are not transforming, they are breaking down. Look at our inner cities, look at drug use, child pregnancy, the decline in educational achievement, the replacement of American technical expertise with overseas competition, the importation of technologies once dominated by America. At a minimum, removing one parent from a child contributes to all of these aforementioned negative trends now hurting our society. Do I need not cite sources for this short conclusion? No,..you all know this to be true. The only kind of entity which would dispute this conclusion would be the one profiting from the dismantling of child-parent relationship. Capitalism, government growth and power now feed on our children as a source of revenue and jobs. But this kind of job created is self destructive, it generates no new technology, product or service to sell. It is exploitive to children and damages our family social frame-work. This kind of job creation emotionally damages our victimized citizen parent and hurts their children. This in turn creates the need for more government intervention! The tool which is used for this insidious child exploitation industry is wielded when the Courts designate a “primary caretaker” and the “non-monied party.” Here the government chooses who will enjoy the financial, power and control provided to the “custodial parent.” The other parent is effectively removed with varying degrees of limited access to ones own children. All access the non-custodial parent has to their children is provided only as a result of utilizing the adversarial custody business paradigm. Thus, the power of the Courts prevail over the fundamental right to parent one’s own children. The Billion dollar custody business is now entrenched in our culture and manifests itself as a negative entity, chipping away at our family and traditional cultural values. American cultural power is being eroded. This immoral social trend in turn will lead to the downfall of our nation as a respected superpower. People fight with morale and for moral. The Romans lost both. In conclusion, our government has created a new two class family system of those entitled with permission to receive and control children and those with the obligation to serve the receiver. Law enforcement is used to enforce this two class system. Non-custodial parents to the back of the bus. You will see your children when you want to when they emancipate, if they are not alienated! Every child requires support. But support means more than money. It means two parents equally involved. Already there are substantial sections of our society in which the solo entitled parent, anointed by Judicial decree as the more fit parent, is the neighborhood norm. This is the norm in this authors home turf, Brooklyn, New York. It is time for all American citizens to take back our fundamental family values, remove the government from parenting absent true unfitness and pass national equal parenting laws. This can be done with your help. It is time to recognize those politicians who feed off the exploitation of children and remove them from power. This can easily be done by the power of the vote. Join us. Help us save the integrity of the American Family and our great culture. Stuart Meltzer, Esq.
V.P. Equal Parenting Party
A CHILD’S “LAWFUL” TESTIMONY
Recently I had an interesting conversation with a knowledgeable person who works in the New York City Court System. This individual pointed me to a recent case decided in New York City Criminal Court which speak volumes regarding how children testify and how they may be used to gain the upper hand in litigation. I learned from my conversation that the central focus of a finder of fact in any hearing or trial is the credibility of the witness. In determining the credibility of the witness he or she must be able to have the ability to tell truth from fiction. This is most important when the witness is a young child. Decisions, Orders and Judgements are often made based on a young child’s description of events. In Family Court, I learned that the Judge or Hearing Officer alone makes this determination. In Criminal Court the accused may be able to have a Jury to decide the credibility of the child witness. My conversation revolved around a recent New York City Criminal Court case which was published in the New York Law Journal. The name of the case is People v. Childress. The case spoke about the competency of a six year old child’s assertion of physical abuse. The child was deemed by the Judge not to be competent. I learned that the case involved a loveable little child who had no access to dad and whose mother lost her child to the foster care system. The six year old was injured while in foster case. While in foster care, mandated reporters told law enforcement about bruises to the child’s legs. They sought a person to criminally charge for the injuries. See People v. Childress. Soon after, a case was brought against two adults. During this case the lovable little six year old was asked by law enforcement to give the “corroborating” facts necessary to “convert” the misdemeanor complaint into what is called an “information.” This allows the prosecution to go forward to trial. A hearing was requested by the defense lawyer to determine if the child understood the difference between truth and a lie. I was informed that in New York State it is in the Court’s discretion to decide if a six year old child understands the moral concept of truth verses a lie. The Judge decided that this child could NOT tell the difference between truth and fiction despite law enforcement extensively interviewing and consulting with the child prior to testimony. The questions raised in this author’s mind are; How many young children are successfully coached by their handlers to give testimony damaging to one parent in favor of the other parent? How many parents lose children due suggestive “interviewing” by an adversarial parent, law guardian, foster care worker, social worker, forensic workers, law enforcement official, prosecutor, CPS worker, activist, and more? How many people are wrongfully convicted of crimes, lose custody and/or are denied visitation after an adult successfully coaches a young child to give testimony against a parent or third party? What factors come into play which may influence how the adult “interviews” the child? Will the child’s handler coach the child, influence the child and use techniques to obtain or suggest testimony from a child which is misleading, a half truth or lie? This author has heard numerous stories of a child being coached to give false, misleading or partial testimony in order to benefit one parent to the detriment of the other, or benefit the foster care parent, government, law enforcement or other agency. The case that I became aware of is People v. Childress. The case was decided in the Criminal Court of the City of New York a few months ago. The Childress case involved a child already in foster care who was interviewed by law enforcement to give testimony against a third party. Lastly, I learned from my conversation that a good lawyer has the ability to cross examine a witness to bring out competency, bias, motive, falsehood and intent. However, when it comes to cross examination of a child, the lawyer is sometimes limited to written questions submitted to the Judge or limited in other ways never done when an adult is subjected to questioning under oath. In conclusion, this author’s point is that children may be easily manipulated to give the testimony sought by the adult who controls that child. This manipulation would be reduced if the adversarial system which pits one parent against another is changed. A presumption of shared/equal parenting for presumptively fit parents is the next civil right which must be recognized and strongly enforced. Mandated equal parenting would curtail the need for child testimony! Requiring a child to testify may be child abuse..but such abuse currently plays an integral part of the growing government intervention in American Family Life. It is time for change. Young children can and are routinely manipulated by third parties for their own agenda. The roll of the dice judicial “fact” finding process involving testimony from young children is imperfect. The Judge in the Childress case recognized this fact. Fortunately the Judge in the Childress case had the intelligence and unbiased courage to make a decision based on fact, and not based on political, third party or Family law policy (which is in need of serious overhaul). Hank Baron,
Equal Parenting Party USA. copyright- Hank Baron-EPPUSA
New decision from Nassau County courts re: alienation
From the Editor-in-Chief of the Hofstra Law Review Subj: New decision from Nassau County courts re: alienation A Long Island judge has sentenced a woman to six weekends in jail for repeatedly undermining her ex-husband's relationship with their two daughters.
Supreme Court Justice Robert A. Ross in Nassau County ruled that the mother, Lauren R., willfully violated a court order by deliberately alienating the elementary school-age children from her ex-husband, Ted R.
Justice Ross held Ms. R. in civil contempt and ordered her to report to the Nassau County Correctional Facility every other weekend this summer.
Her term was to have begun on Friday, but was temporarily stayed pending appeal by a judge from the Appellate Division, Second Department, on Thursday.
"The evidence before me demonstrates a pattern of willful and calculated violations of the clear and express dictates of the parties' Stipulation of Settlement," Justice Ross wrote in Lauren R. v. Ted R., 203699-02.
The Nassau Supreme Court decision appears on page 17 of the print edition of today's Law Journal.
"The extensive record is replete with instances of attempts to undermine the relationship between the children and their father and replace him with her new husband, manipulation of defendant's parenting access, utter and unfettered vilification of the defendant to the children, false reporting of sexual misconduct without any semblance of 'good faith,' and her imposition upon the children to fear her tirades and punishment if they embrace the relationship they want to have with their father."
The extraordinary hearing to determine whether Ms. R. should be held in contempt for violating the couple's stipulation of settlement began in May 2009 and stretched over 23 days of hearings over the next nine months.
During the hearing, Mr. R. testified to dozens of occasions in which his ex-wife either interfered with his visitation rights or purposefully alienated the children from him.
The judge described about a dozen such incidents or patterns in his eight-page decision. In the winter of 2007, for example, Ms. R. prevented Mr. R. from seeing his daughters for six weeks, Justice Ross wrote. "I observed the plaintiff smirk in the courtroom as defendant emotionally related how he was deprived of spending Hanukkah with his children, and was relegated to lighting a menorah and watching his daughters open their grandparents' presents in the back of his truck at the base of plaintiff's driveway," the judge wrote.
Mr. R. also testified that Ms. R. consistently scheduled theater outings and social activities with her children so that they would conflict with his visitation, thereby putting him in the position of either consenting to a missed visit or risking disappointing his daughters.
The "crescendo" of Ms. R.'s contempt involved false accusations of sexual abuse against Mr. R., the judge wrote.
"Allegations that defendant had injured the child were found to be baseless and, by making such allegations, plaintiff needlessly subjected the child to an investigation by Child Protective Services, placing her own interests above those of the child," Justice Ross wrote. "This report was not made in 'good faith'—rather, the investigating agency warned the mother not to re-utilize the allegations and her children in her custodial litigation with the defendant."
In addition to the contempt finding and the temporarily stayed jail sentence, Justice Ross ordered a hearing to consider a change of custody and to hear Mr. R.'s application for more than $134,000 in attorney's fees. Those hearings were postponed pending Ms. R.'s appeal.
Ms. R.'s attorney, Kieth I. Rieger of Barrocas & Rieger in Garden City, praised Justice Ross, but criticized the decision, likening it to last week's missed umpire call that cost a Detroit Tigers pitcher a perfect game.
"I think all of us make mistakes, and I think he's just made a good-faith, honest mistake in his assessment of this case," Mr. Rieger said. "That's why there's an Appellate Division. I think he just did not accurately assess my client."
Stanley Hirsch, also of Garden City, represented Mr. R.
"I'm very hopeful that this case will be some type of warning to those who don't have the children's best interests at heart when they conduct themselves with their spouses," Mr. Hirsch said. "It has great significance to my client, but I think it has a terrific overall impact on people who are going through a divorce and not getting along and involving the children in their disputes." | 
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