Tribute to Marie Hazard

Two days ago an incredible woman and mother passed away.  It is a travesty and family court is to blame.  They took the one thing she loved more than life away from her 3 and a half years ago, and now her 12 year old daughter will never know the love of her mother.  Her husband and stepchildren will miss her dearly.  Family court didn’t give her a chance.  No matter what she did to “fix” herself they put up more and more roadblocks to prevent her from seeing her daughter.  In fact, she has not been able to spend one minute alone with her daughter in 3 1/2 years.

She was treated like a criminal.  She was an alcoholic, not a criminal.  She went through treatment, she has been sober for over a year.  So why couldn’t she have unsupervised visits with her daughter?  She had never been shown to put her daughter in danger, she had never been drinking and driving, she had never had a DUI.  Yes, she binge drank to deal with the emotional issues of losing her first daughter in a drowning death when she was only 3.  Besides these infrequent binge drinking episodes, she was a good mother.  She loved her daughter and her daughter loved her dearly.  She wasn’t a danger, so why would they order supervised visits for this woman, when alcoholic men simply have to take a breathalizer before a visit?  In fact, the father was the one who had history of a DUI.  But its a double standard.  Marie was uneducated and worked in minimum wage jobs.  She couldn’t afford legal representation.

She fought the courts for 3 1/2 years and never stopped.  She educated herself on the law.  She took speech classes to try and present herself better in court.  It didn’t matter.  She loved her daughter so much that her emotions always got the best of her in front of the Judges.  They labeled her as volatile and emotional and rebellious, because she would cry or she would have to run out to recompose herself.  All the while, her abusive and controlling ex-husband would calmly say, “she is a deadbeat mom.”

Within a year after getting emergency custody awarded, the father moved to Oregon.  Shortly after that he moved to Texas.  He had teamed up with her estranged family to control her time with her daughter and make the determination of when she was “healed”.  As such, they required members of her estranged family to be the supervisors of her visits.  These were members of her family that had betrayes, assaulted or abused her.  They decided that Marie was only “healed” when she reconciled with these family members and “saw the light”.  While part of her intensive alcohol treatment had been to make amends, the other part was to strip away the things in her life that were harmful.  Her family was harmful and dysfunctional, and dependent upon keeping her down and being an alcoholic.  To heal, she needed to make peace and remove them from her life forever.

She had a new life.  She had a husband that loved and supported her.  He stood by her side and helped her help herself.  He admired her and respected her, through good and bad.  He didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs.  He is a wonderful father to his three children and to Marie’s daughter as well.  They all had a very close relationship until this young girl was yanked from her mother and her stepfamily.  Marie waded through all the red tape of family court and objected to the relocations.  She continued to petition to get unsupervised visits, to allow her daughter to come spend time with her and her stepfamily again.  She was continually denied, citing new loopholes on court orders.

Her ex-husband was my boyfriend when he took her daughter from her.  I thought it was temporarily until she went to a treatment center.  The courts turn people nasty, it became about a fight.  The more he went to court, the more he wanted to punish Marie.  He wanted her to never see her daughter again.  There were times he would laugh and say he would just wish the “bag of bones” would die.  He’s a cruel person, and the courts are partly to blame.  It becomes a fight in court, parents battling it out to “win” more time or more money…or both.  The common denominator is that there is always one parent, that no matter how bad they think the other parent is they don’t try to take the kids from them.  These are the parents that truly love their children, these are the parents that the children should be with.

For Marie to see her daughter in Texas the court wrote that she needed to purchase the tickets and then within 30 days, the father would pay her back his 85%.  This was a huge hurdle, as Marie did not even have a credit card; not to mention she was only working part-time.  I fronted the money for her to visit her daughter and she paid me back her portion immediately.  The father then refused to reimburse her the 85%.  He simply told her that she owed him enough in backpay of child support that he would take it off of there.  Marie called me every few days apologizing because she could not pay me back.  I was heartbroken for her.  She tried to motion the courts to get him to pay and they would not listen.

Without his money to reimburse her, she did not have enough money to buy any more tickets to Texas.  She motioned the courts to get unsupervised visits so that her daughter could come spend a weekend or full week here.  The courts denied it, stating the reason being that she had only flown to Texas once to see her daughter.  The courts further told her that she would not be able to get unsupervised visits until she established a consistent pattern of monthly supervised visits in Texas.  I would have left that courtroom and jumped off a bridge.  But not Marie.  She was frustrated, and had a few choice swear words to say when she left the courtroom.  I admire her for that!  All of us want to say those things to Judges, and she did!

I helped her buy another ticket to Texas again early this year.  She would not take the money, knowing that she would not be able to pay me back since the father was again not going to reimburse for his share.  Instead she came to my home and helped me paint and get my house ready for sale.  We had so much fun.  I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time!  She was in absolute pain with a hip injury, but she still managed to find the humor in everything.  Ok, mostly it was about what an absolute moron her ex-husband (my ex-boyfriend) was.  She talked about how amazing her current husband is, how great her step-children are.  We were brought up in totally different worlds, but were similar in so many ways.

She inspired me every day when i thought my life was tough, and my struggles in family court were bad.  Marie had 2 daughters ripped out of her life and never got a break.  The system beat her down over and over again.  She kept getting up and fighting.  She fought for her daughter and cried for her daughter.  She dreamed of the day when they could be a family again, knowing it was so close she could almost taste it.

The stress was too much on her fragile psyche and fragile body.  Curse you family court for the lives you have destroyed and the lives you have taken.  Somebody needs to stand up and make a change!

 

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To Blog or Not To Blog

Since I began this blog last week, and more importantly, since I told people I was doing this blog I have received a number of wonderful comments, careful warnings, encouraging words and a small number of harsh critiques.  My number one fear is that I am scared to death of not protecting my children, my number two fear is that I am scared to death of not preventing harm to other children when I might have made a difference.  I believe in a higher being and a divine plan for my life.  I believe that we are all handed struggles and they are first a lesson learned; secondly, they are a lesson shared with others.

I know many of you think I should keep quiet in order to make my legal situation better, but I am already tarnished.  They have already blackballed me in the family circus.  My last hearing was a threat from a Judge that essentially said that I will lose custody of my children if I keep this up.  Well, that pretty much kills my opportunity to appeal or even motion for a revision.  Furthermore, this Judge sent the copy of this Order to my assigned Family Court Judge to ensure he knew of my actions.  My mistake was making a decision to protect my daughter in the instant that i found out about improper sexual conduct.  Apparently, the Circus does not like when you make a decision on your own.  They need the control, they want to rule everything with regards to our children.  So there was my punishment….no legal basis for a Contempt charge.  Then I had the audacity to challenge the ruling and motion for a reconsideration.  How dare I do that.  Fortunately, my attorney encountered a glitch in the mandatory efiling which led my motion for reconsideration to be transmitted 13 minutes late.  It was denied.  Forget about the victim, forget about the wellbeing of my daughter; it was late darnit.

Then I made my second mistake.  I went online and searched myself to get a protection order that would last until we could motion family court for protection.  It instructed me to go to the nearest district court to get a temporary order.  After explaining my story to the District Court Judge he carefully wrote the order to not interfere with the Contempt Order Purging.  Apparently, this was the biggest insult to Family Court unknown to most lay people simply searching the website.  Never undermine their authority by going to a lower court to fill in the gaps of their timing issues.

My last mistake was then taking the Motion for Reconsideration Denial and filing for a Revision by an elected Judge.  Which brings me where I am today, threatened by the last Judge in a completely frivolous Anti-Harassment Temporary Protection Order hearing.  She read a whole bunch of baseless and unsubstantiated lies which not only did not occur, but even if they had occurred they in no way met the legal definition of harassment.  This Judge knew nothing about the struggles I have endured as primary custodian in the last 6 years.  She had not clue that my children’s father has not been to a single medical appointment, not one parent/teacher conference, has disregarded every court order in the last 3 years, has not paid a penny to any of our children’s activities, and is 6 months behind in his childcare payments.  Regardless of these facts, she had the lack of integrity to threaten me with losing custody of, or possibly never seeing my children again, if i kept up my actions.  The only confrontational thing i have done in 6 years is keep my daughter from going to her father’s home after she and her friend alleged sexual misconduct.  Apparently, my daughter does not even have the right for a fair investigation.  She and I are victims, and now I am being threatened and prosecuted for this.

For this reason, I will blog.  I will not let the system that is supposed to be protecting our constitutional rights, use my children as pawns to threaten me.  If I back down to their threats, they will continue to do this with others.  These are our elected judicial officials that are unconstitutionally chilling my first amendment rights.

I appreciate all of you that have voiced your concern to protect me, but I feel that a judicial system that is purposely trying to control our free speech is the one area that needs to be exposed.  So please pass this on to anyone and everyone you can.

GAL from _ell – Karen Glassman

Years ago in 2008 when my ex was dating his current wife, she was really nice to me and my kids.  Granted, I did not see her that often and my ex was always a much better father when he had an audience to play to, so I welcomed the new audience with open arms.  She even wanted to meet with me to deal with our “blended family” situation.  We met for dinner and she didn’t eat, but she downed a few glasses of wine while our children played at McDonald’s across the street with my ex.  I thought maybe she was nervous or something.  She eventually blurted out that she wanted to make sure there was no chance left of my ex and I getting back together.  The thought made me nauseous.  It took everything I had to not vomit all over the table first and then start laughing hysterically after.

After taking a few deep breaths, i was able to regain my composure and answer the question strategically.  On one hand, I wanted to be completely honest about what an absolute jerk he was; but on the other hand I knew that having him in another relationship would keep him from stalking me and invading my life.  I was torn between the conflicting views and finally said that he was a good person, but we just brought out the worst in each other.  In retrospect, I am thinking that I probably should have told both of them that I was a lesbian.

After that dinner, she acted like my best friend.  She offered to watch my children anytime I needed to have some time to go out.  Of course I did not actually trust her, so i never took her up on that offer.  She spent a lot of time telling me about her “Jerry Springer” life.  She had  2 year old and 6 year old sons from 2 different men that she had not married.  Apparently, both of these men were crazy, abusive, alcoholics and deadbeat dads.  I sort of felt sorry for her, but my red flag meter was on full blast every time she spoke.  A month or so into this, she explained to me that the Guardian Ad Litem assigned to her case would like to talk to me about her and her parenting.  I agreed, though found it odd that they would even want to talk with someone who had spent less than 5 hours total with her, most of which without the children around.

After the interview, things started to get worse at my ex’s house.  The kids started complaining about their step-mom screaming, yelling and swearing all the time; even kicking them out with their dad on some weekends.  Towards the end of 2008, she forwarded me Karen Glassman’s GAL report.

In this report, the father had made allegations of alcohol abuse, physical abuse and possible psychiatric issues related to a thyroid condition.  To back his concerns there were seven 3rd party witnesses that testified to her verbal and physical abuse as well as her drinking issues.  There was also a video tape of an exchange with the other father that showed this woman yelling obscenities, striking the father, and threatening that he would never see his son again.  The whole scene went on for 20 minutes in front of 6 children; including the 2 year old being carried by my ex right smack in the center of all the conflict.  Karen Glassman refused to look at this video.  She also went very far to twist words and take parts of the interviews out of context to slam the father.  For example, a realtor friend of the fathers had commented that he had been hurt and devastated by the mother with regards to her physical and emotional abuse; she claimed that he was very protective of his son.  This was twisted to say, “He is an absolute wreck, and can’t even put his son down for a minute.”

So, of course, this mother turned around and filed the same allegations against the father about alcohol abuse and psychiatric issues.  The only people that shared the same sentiment regarding the father, was the mother’s mom and dad.  There were no 3rd party witnesses to back any of her allegations.  Furthermore, the father had a number of character witnesses and friends that talked about his gentle nature and responsible actions.  I also found it interesting that the father had looked into my ex’s background and found his history of domestic violence.  He also looked over our public divorce records and saw the accounts of violence towards my children.  Despite these concerns being brought to her attention, Karen Glassman did not look into any of the.  Furthermore, she did not even ask me about the history of domestic violence, or physical harm to the kids…or why our parenting plan specifically states that my ex cannot spank or strike the children.  Additionally, the other father had filed a report with CPS only 6 months earlier when his 6 year old son showed up at an exchange with a bloody fat lip, claiming that his stepdad (my ex) had punched him in the mouth.  When it was finally investigated by  RPS (Referrer Prosecution Services), the child had changed his story and said he accidentally hit it on a water bottle.  Because of course, he just forgot…right.

What Karen Glassman did with the whole CPS thing is purely insane.  Even though the father she was investigating did not make the report to CPS, but was later called and interviewed by CPS; she ended up saying that he had conspired with the other father to persuade him to call CPS.  Absolutely crazy.  I think the person that most needed the psych eval was the GAL.  She has clearly been reading to many Grisham novels and is somewhere between disillusionment and full blown psychosis.

Her psychic state was even more evident in the Recommendations she made to the court.  Even with her obvious theory-first-concoct-evidence-to-back-it approach, there was no credible testimony or proof that there was anything wrong with the father.  Yet, her recommendations were as follows (note the mother’s classy explanations in brackets when she sent these to me):

#1. Child should reside with the mother the majority of the time.

#2. Father’s visits with childshould remain as they are currently scheduled (from noon to five PM every other Saturday and Sunday) until all of the Court Ordered services are complete.

#5. Father should access the age appropriate S.T.E.P. parenting class.

#6. Father’s substance abuse evaluation did not include collateral contacts; the Court may order the evaluation be done again usingmother as a collateral contact and providing the evaluator with a copy of the GAL report and any other collateral contacts the evaluator requires.

#7. Father should comply with all and any recommendations resulting from the substance abuse evaluation.

#8. (My personal favorite!) Father should access a psychological evaluation…and comply with all and any recommendations resulting from the evaluation.  The GAL report will be provided to the evaluator.  (Can you say wack-job??)

#9. Father shall provide mother, her Attorney and the GAL if the GAL is still involved in this matter, with the results of all and any completed evaluations.

#10. (Close runner up for favorite!) Father should access mental health counseling as soon as possible with a WA state licensed mental health therapist and remain in counseling until the therapist concludes counseling is no longer necessary.

#13. Father should no longer involve himself in the concerns of mother or any other prior or current relationship regarding mother.

When this finally went to trial, the GAL also added to her recommendations that the father could only have supervised visitations until the psych eval was complete.  As the father continued to attempt to schedule supervised visitations, the mother simply disagreed with or would not comply with any of the supervisors that he chose.  After a year of trying, the GAL then ordered that he could not even have supervised visits until he completed a full psych eval.

Almost 2 years had passed since this father had seen his son before the psych eval came back.  The psych eval was interesting, to say the least.  A few quotes from it were:

“This psychological assessment is more troubling than many others in the sense that the allegations againstFather appear to be a mirror of his concerns about Mother.  In fact, the pattern is one of Father makingallegations, e.g., physical and emotional abuse, problematic drinking, financial irresponsibility, followed by similar accusations directed toward Father.  Of course, such allegations are
not mutually exclusive.  In all likelihood, though, one parent is telling the truth and the other is not.

The GAL did not come to any conclusions regarding the most serious allegations.  This is true with respect to both parents.  The GAL’s primary concern seems to be one of perceived abusive use of conflict on Father’s part, especially his drawing of Father2 into the conflict, with subsequent CPS involvement.  The problem with this approach, as far as this psychological assessment, is that it does not really offer anything at all about the major allegations of physical/emotional abuse and alcohol/drug addiction.

First, no independent evidence is presented suggesting a pattern of the behaviors alleged by Mother.  The GAL talked with Mother’s first husband(no children).  I wish she would have conferred with PastGirlfriend, with whom Father lived for about five years.  There are no independent witnesses (direct observation) to the problematic behaviors alleged by Mother, e.g., police reports (with comments/observations about Father instead), arrests (e.g. domestic violence or DUI), firings for cause, on-going interpersonal difficulties (other than with Mother).  More than anything else, the psychological testing reveals that Father is both dependent and compulsive.  On the one hand, he is not the kind of person who tends to create conflict.  Generally speaking, Father seems to subordinate
his desires.  On the other, he can’t let go (compulsive) when he is pursuing what he thinks is right.

In contrast to the lack of a pattern of problematic behavior on Father’s part, I do perceive a pattern of problematic relationships with Mother.   Granted, this is not a psychological assessment of Mother.  However, Father’s credibility must be assessed relative to Mother’s.

Mother may aver that each of her accusers has an ax to grind.  For my part, that is more difficult to discern with respect to the real estate agent and the neighbors.  In fact, their accounts of Jennifer’s volatility are consistent with what is described by Father2 (especially the August 2009 incident), Charlene as of July, 2010, and with the separate incidents involving Father’s mother and aunt.  I am generally not inclined to give much weight to those who may hold a grudge or are family members. The point is that there is a pattern here and it is consistent in showing Mother’s volatility.  Father’s mother was a Salvation Army minister.  She may be lying.  I am inclined to believe her.  Simply put, Mother’s credibility is suspect.

Father may have engaged in abusive use of conflict.  The CPS worker did not substantiate Father2’s concerns and concluded that Father was inappropriately injecting himself into the situation.  A more benign interpretation of this is that Father was compulsive in establishing the pattern of Jennifer’s volatility.  From my perspective, Mother’s allegations regarding Bryan’s abuse and alcohol/drug dependent behaviors were much more serious than the problem with abusive use of conflict.  If proven, they were much more deserving of .191 Restrictions.  There remains nosubstantial evidence to support them outside of Jennifer’s allegations.

Two years down the road, and Father still has not seen his son.  This psychological assessment finds no basis for .191 restrictions on parenting.  More than anything else,
Father comes across as trusting and somewhat naïve.  This does not constitute an emotional impairment.  ”

For the hearing that ensued months after this psych assessment came back, Judge Castleberry still had some harsh criticisms of the father.  The GAL did not change her position or even try to correct her obvious mistakes years earlier.  In fact, she simply worked in concert with the mother and the mother’s attorney to try and discredit this experienced psychiatrist.  They went so far as to steal some confidential patient notes from the files of a dead therapist that had seen the father more than 5 years earlier.  In the notes it apparently showed that the father had been prescribed an SSRI, that he took 2 pills of before he discontinued.

What a sham.