Family Courts: A Breeding Ground for Disease
Psychopathy and Violence Flourish in Family Court, by Virtue of Court Actors’ Own Pathology
It is not a mystery why Family Courts are obsessed with disease. Without any health or mental health background — and often without even a command of their own field of law — Family Court judges are quick to label healthy, prosperous, and upstanding parents “mentally ill” and “mentally incompetent.” There are reasons. First, it is to take their children. Second, they are trying to hide their own sickness, incompetence, and unfitness by reversing the definition of what is mentally healthy and fit. And the ease with which they do so indicates their degree of detachment from reality.
A meeting with one of the nation’s premier legal minds revealed that what is occurring in Family Courts is not entirely unknown to the top echelons of the profession. “Family Courts are where scumbags and sociopaths — the dregs of the judicial system gather!” I was astonished to hear him say, but he is correct. I had heard Family Courts be called “the sewer” among courts and “the bottom of the totem pole” — which is why judges with little respect from the world and even less self-respect obtain their “kick” from tyrannizing and terrorizing innocence and goodness. It was initially astonishing — and telling — to me that Family Court judges are so exceptionally demeaning, dehumanizing, and debauched in their treatment of litigants, when even criminal courts are respectful of the human rights and dignity of those who come before them.
As Family Court judges side with likeminded criminals, and regularly persecute model parents and successful citizens by taking their children, their courtrooms become killing fields. Violent perpetrators commit crimes with impunity and turn tables on their victims, punishing them with the force of “the law.” In Family Court, they can gain custody of the children they are raping, torturing, battering, and murdering, while demanding exorbitant “child support” for it and incarcerating the good parents if they cannot pay. Family Courts are complicit, not just for the under-the-table envelopes and suitcases of cash (a regular fare in Family Court), or the judges’ selection and retention by “Fathers’ Rights groups” (which I call “Abusers’ Rights groups,” since they do not help good fathers), but for the intrinsic, sadistic glee of seeing those under their power suffer.
Such a dark world of brutality and cruelty is made possible through a structure of total secrecy and total power, unknown to the public and unbound by the Law, while populated by unfit judges who in turn appoint unfit “officers of the court” (such as guardians ad litem who prey upon the children they are supposed to protect); hire unfit “experts” (such as masters-level counselors who are willing to generate fraudulent reports for lucrative returns), and make a mockery of the “justice” they swore to serve.
The holiday season is a prime “opportunity” for sadistic minds. My own sister is facing having to vacate her home in the next month, pay all her ex-husband’s legal fees, pay six-figure “child support” for his imprisoning her children for the fourth year in a row without allowing her one minute of contact — and, of course, go to jail if she cannot pay. This shocking scenario is standard operating procedure in Family Court, as is the loss of health in previously thriving mothers. My sister just came out of five days in the intensive care unit, as a result of dangerously high blood pressures from discovering that her children have not grown at all — in addition to suffering injuries and missing half of school (their father was on a restraining order for almost killing each of them by head injury before Family Court gave him full custody).
This is the context in which I received the remarkable story, below, of a fellow mental health professional scheduled to be incarcerated the day before Christmas Eve. With the Family Courts, it does not matter how highly-educated, professionally-trained, and well-respected one is in the community — in fact, successful persons are the very targets of Family Court actors, who envy and punish those who do better than they by stripping them of their wealth, their possessions, their reputation, and ultimately their dignity.
Essay on Family Court, by Dr. E.C.
This road has been one of humiliation, degradation, violation and silencing. I haven’t spoken publicly about the last six years out of fear. I have a doctorate in clinical psychology and spent my career working with trauma survivors. The stories of the many survivors I have worked with since 2010 and the profound personal and institutional abuse they have endured shaped me personally and professionally. I have witnessed these dynamics on a societal level with the R. Kelly trials, Heard v. Depp, Farrow v. Allen and other famous abuse cases. I have seen civilian cases in the news and on social media with the same dynamics and very few instances of justice.
I have always stood on the side of the oppressed even when it cost me personally. However, fighting for myself has been one of the most challenging and lonely experiences of my life. I have heard far too many times, “there are two sides to every story,” and “I don’t want to get involved.” I have known far too many people who virtue signal alignment with the marginalized yet when it is their neighbor look the other way.
I write this because my story, though horrific, is not unique. If you thought that women were no longer “burned at the stake,” institutionalized or lobotomized, donned with a scarlet letter, beheaded or put in the scolds bridle in 2024 think again.
My own custody trial was nothing short of a witch hunt with actual unsubstantiated accusations of practicing witchcraft. In the months since losing my children I chose to break my silence in order to garner help for us. I posted audio clips and screen shots of the abuse. I posted true statements about what I have experienced, what my children have outcried. I have only interacted with my children in public, monitored by our abuser or by the paid supervisors he has mandated necessary for the children’s “best interests”…. I am now facing state-sanctioned silencing, threatened with further financial ruin and jail time. They are also threatening further limitation on my ability to see my children.
The expert I obtained for the trial, whom opposing counsel had struck on a technicality, rated my ex-husband as High Risk. With a substantiated pattern of abuse, multiple adult victims, threat of violence, use of a gun in his domestic violence against his wife and due to systemic failure and enablers a lack of any consequence, he is a very real threat both to her and the six children in their home. My prayer is for someone, a champion for human rights, women’s rights, civil rights to hear me.
Dear friend and supporter:
I will be going to jail on December 23rd. My ex had an unconstitutional permanent injunction slipped into my divorce decree that I was not made aware of until 2023 when I filed the modification. The language states that I cannot make public statements that would disparage his professional reputation.
When I took to social media, I was careful to not speak to his employment, work ethic or abilities in his field of finance. I spoke true things, I shared matters discussed in an open jury trial court case, I critiqued the justice system, law enforcement and child protective services (CPS), I spoke out about widely known corruption within the — th district court.
My story is not mine alone. I spoke out about the increasingly known family court crisis in America and globally that weaponizes the justice system against abuse victims and their children.
In a hearing in mid-December, in which I proved indigence, requested court-appointed counsel, was denied due process and made to represent myself pro se on the spot, the judge signed a temporary restraining order. The citation served to me requests punishment of 180 days in jail for the offense of executing my First Amendment rights, manipulated to claim it could negatively reflect his professional reputation.
The totality of the violations my ex-husband cites amount to 1,620 days in jail — 4.43 years. The normal worries of life, how to rebuild my career and even the pressing issue of protecting my children have fallen away to the singular focus of my own incarceration, despite my own heart’s desire to focus on them.
I know that fighting for myself is how I love my children best at this time. I have been told that the way I have challenged the system itself has triggered a need to make an example out of me. I would like to meet that intent. I am willing and desire to be an example of the injustice survivors of gender-based violence face when they speak out.
If I must go to jail, I want it to mean something. I want this experience to impact the lives of the women I have worked with in my 15-year career in my state and virtually with women across the country. I want my story to change the society my daughter’s burgeon into womanhood within.
Being a woman who has experienced rape and gender-based violence comes with an intentional social shaming. The social myths around these topics are meant to keep the truth silent and place the guilt inside the victim who then becomes complicit in her own abuse by feeling she is to blame for it. I refuse shame; it is not mine but theirs to bear.
