Pro Tem Commissioner with a Vengeance

To date, my worst experience in King County family court was August 4th, 2011.  I was having an endless summer of court dates after I finally had to petition for minor adjustments and modifications to our parenting plan.  This little spark sent my ex and his new wife over the edge and created an expolosion of retaliation.  Part of the retaliation was a first motion of Contempt alleging 7 violations.  All of these were from the prior 2 years.  My attorney, Christine Hook, did a wonderful Memorandum showing how none of these allegations were backed by any legal guidelines or RCWs.  The most notable of the allegations was a series of text messages that i had supposedly sent to my 11 year old daughter 4 months earlier.  The only “evidence” they had of these text messages was a blurry and completely ineligible picture supposedly of my daughter’s phone.  His declared his evidence to be his own typed up version of the texts that i had supposedly sent her.

In early July, I found out from the mother of a friend of my daughter’s that my ex’s step son had been inappropriately examining and viewing both my daughter and her friend.  As my daughter revealed more, i became very concerned because of the shame she was displaying.  I informed my ex via email that i knew about what had happened and that we needed to work together to get her some help and determine exactly what had gone on.  He refused to work with me and said I would need to wait until he returned the children from his 2 weeks at home vacation time starting in 2 days.  I told him i would not let her be around this step-brother until we figured out what happened.  I went on getting my daughter in to see our family doctor and a therapist.  This has been a long, slow healing process of which i continue to see new ways that this has negatively impacted my daughter.

My ex ended up filing another contempt motion against me for not allowing him his chosen vacation time, during which time my daughter was getting medical help and i was advised to keep her away from her stepbrother by multiple professionals.  Due to a combination of delays where my ex failed to confirm his first contempt hearing and he did not receive my response for the continuance, both of these Contempt motions ended up being heard together.

This brings us to August 4th, where we were in front of Pro Tem Commissioner Leslie Savina.  We end up being last on the docket as usual, since my ex makes it a practice to check in just minutes prior to any hearing to lengthen my attorney’s time and increase the bill.  My attorney did not know anything about her, but was told she typically handles DV cases so we thought this would go well.  When Ms. Savina was handling the other cases before us, it was pretty clear she had not thoroughly read through any of the documents.  She was even confusing motions between Adjustments and Modifications, which is a major difference when dealing with child support.  At one point, she held up a huge stack of documents and told the attorneys of one case to excuse her unpreparedness as she had been reading the docs at 11pm the night before.

I still didn’t feel concerned, nor did my attorney.   Our case should have been open and closed.  There was no evidence, and certainly withholding a young girl from an alleged child suspect of sexual abuse was for good cause.  When i saw that it was a woman, i told me attorney to be prepared.  My large 240 pound, shaved head, 6’2″ ex always cries in front of women judges and commissioners.  I timed it, within 20 seconds of speaking he started sniffling and crying; apologizing profusely to Ms Savina for his emotions and her having to read such lengthy documents that i had submitted.  I also knew immediately that something was wrong.  She looked at him empathetically and darted evil scowls towards me.  My ex has the most uncanny ability to appear to be a victim, though i am just 5’2″ and have wrinkles embedded in my face from laughing and smiling.  I guess what i’m saying is that i don’t look mean or cold; my boss even tells me i need to stop smiling and laughing so much in meetings.  “uh oh”, I thought; she believes him.  This man that I have found no less than 100 lies in all of his court documents and depositions; honestly, it would be easier to count the true statements, like his age or sex.

My attorney tried to speak and was cut off nearly every time with, “that is hearsay.”  Which made us all seem to believe that she had not read the 3rd party declaration from the mother of the other girl that had been victimized and allegedly touched by this boy.  In all fairness, we could not thoroughly dispute all the claims due to the King County mandated page limits.  We were only allotted 40 double spaced pages of declarations to dispute all 8 of these contempt allegations.  There were over 10 declarations from 3rd parties that we could not submit, because they brought us over page limits.  Still, there was no legal basis for the contempt charges as they did not meet the criteria or have purging mechanisms.

In the end, Ms. Savina apologetically told my ex that she could only find me in contempt of 2 of the 8 charges.  The text messages and not allowing him the vacation time.  When my attorney brought up that there was no evidence for the text messages, Ms. Savina claimed that my ex and his new wife’s recount of the texts was enough.  Ms. Savina also stated that she beleived i purposely made up the allegations of the step brother to interfere with the father’s time.  My purging mechanism was to provide all 3 children for a week of vacation the end of August.

All my friends and family in the courtroom that day sat dazed and in shock for minutes.  My attorney was literally dumbfounded.  She told me would should do a reconsideration and include medical records when i received them. This was the beginning of the worst times in court for my children.

The effect of having these contempt charges against me has colored every ruling afterwards and permanantly tarnished my character in the courts.  I was just being a mother and trying to do whatever i could to protect my daughter.  This woman has caused me to now have an anti-harassment protection order against me.  This has been used by my ex and his wife to have me flee from my kids’ school events, extracurricular activities and exchanges.

I keep replaying this day in my mind and wondering how any woman could have ruled the way she did.  I researched Leslie Savina online and found that she works as a legal advocate to ensure representation of low income people in court.  This seems to be a clear bias against me and for my ex, who is pro se and whines about how he has been unemployed for over 2 years; to start off with, he should actually look for a job.  Additionally, I found a very interesting article written by Leslie Savina that clearly shows another bias she has against specifically young, aggressive women attorneys.  She obviously is one of those insecure women, that wants to evoke her power and hold other women that threaten her to higher standards than that of a man.  Being that i walked in with an aggressive female attorney and the fact that i am employed in a large technology corporation that employs mostly men, this really left nothing but a big hole for her to bury us in.  I was shocked that this type of discriminatory article exists and is written by a pro tem commissioner.

Here are the highlights:

“Since that long ago hearing (when women lawyers were more of a rarity in court) I’ve had many opposing counsels. The ones I’ve enjoyed the least – okay, the ones who have made me seriously consider a career move – are the young women who learned their trial practice skills watching “Conan the Barbarian” re-runs. There seems to be a prevalent myth among recent, female, law school graduates that to be successful in a male-defined field, you had to litigate like a guy. This was loosely translated into being aggressive, uncooperative, curt, and (did I mention?) rude.”

http://www.law.washington.edu/PService/Voices/011Savina.aspx

My First Experience in Family Court

After a number of years living in absolute relationship hell, I gained enough courage to petition for divorce. I had been a stay at home mom for 3 years and my children were only 1 1/2, 3 1/2, and 5 1/2. It took weeks to finally coordinate my life to be able to meet with an attorney. Between breastfeeding, potty training, cooking, cleaning, unpacking, searching for a job and managing a yard and home; nothing was simple.

My attorney, Christine Hook, was helpful and straightforward. I was able to get all the finances in order and get my own cell phone. We arranged to have him served when I was visiting family in Oregon for the week, to ensure he did not blow up and get physically or verbally abusive in front of the kids again.

The whole temporary parenting plan and financial declarations and all that other stuff was absolutely foreign to me. All I knew was that I needed to protect my children from the conflict and abuse that was happening with their father in the home. They were all scared of him and slept in bed with me, while their father had slept in a different room for months. I hoped that by removing myself from the relationship with their father, that he would stop trying to be mean to them to hurt me. I did not want to ask for restrictions, or expose his prior abusive behaviors since I had thought I was responsible for causing them. Apparently this is common.

When I received his response to my motion and petition for divorce, I nearly collapsed. The entire document was full of accusations of me being the abuser of him and that I had serious and untreated psychiatric issues. He was still calling me regularly professing his love and begging me to give it another try.

I was incredibly hurt and betrayed by his comments. I was caught back in the same trap of our marriage; if he loved me so much, then he must be telling the truth. I went to see therapists and psychiatrists, thinking there must be something wrong with me if he said so. This was my first time where experts told me that I was abused and there was nothing wrong with me. I did not want to believe that either. I am a strong woman, and I never would admit to being a victim.

I went to King County family court to motion for temporary orders on February 11th, 2005. We had our proposed parenting plan, which I had worked on with my attorney. It allowed for one overnight, plus two weekend days for my older 2 every other weekend. For my baby, it would be 2 weekend days until she turned 2 at which point she would move to one overnight. I had my older 2 kids in therapy at the time, because they were so frightened of their father and they were crying to not have to spend the night at his new home. I assured them they would be together and it was only one night.

In the hallway of the courthouse that day, I was unprepared. I thought we would talk to a nice Judge that would see how my kids were really frightened and we could ease them into full weekend visitations after a few months. Instead, we never saw a Judge. My attorney went over and talked to his attorney and they scribbled on and scratched out items on our proposed parenting plan. My attorney would come back to me with an “offer” and I would send her back with a counter “offer”. It was like buying a used car.

In the end, I had to agree to my older daughter spending 2 nights every other weekend with her father. I was crushed and did not know how i could explain to her that she would have to go. My attorney then blurted out, “well, you better take this offer. If we have to present to the Commissioner, he may believe all this stuff your ex wrote and you could end up with worse.” This baffled me. Who the f##k is thinking about what is best for the kids?

I accepted and the attorneys went in to get the agreed order signed by the judge. I sat out on the bench and cried. Minutes later my attorney comes rushing out asking me if i need help. Apparently, my ex had gone into the courtroom right in front of the Commissioner and told my attorney that I was having a complete nervous breakdown and needed medical attention. I just needed a tissue, and maybe some friggin duct tape to shut his mouth.

We were the last ones sitting in the hallway that day, and true-to-form, my ex starts acting creepy as hell. Down the long hallway, he starts whistling all the songs from our wedding over 8 years earlier. Loudly echoing down the hallway I could hear his whistling rendition of Unchained Melody, the Righteous Brothers would not have been proud that day. He went on like this for over 15 minutes. I really needed that duct tape.