Bandy X. Lee's Blog, page 13

How Family Courts are the Handmaidens of Murderers (and Other Violent Offenders)

Dangerous Personalities Buttress One Another in Jane Gallina-Mecca’s Court

[Murder cases are disproportionately connected to Family Courts, and yet because of extreme secrecy, it is often difficult if not impossible to find out what happened. An investigation into several murder cases arising from a particular court gives a clue: routine removal of permanent protective orders, regular “custody switches” to the violent parent, and a reprehensible pattern of depraved enjoyment of others’ suffering. Details will follow once the evidence submission is complete.]

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‘What is Wrong with Evelyn Nissirios?’

This is a Question Many Have Asked Me as a Forensic Psychiatrist

[I took this article down, because I have been alerted to my physical safety, given the methods of the Family Courts. I will await the actual proceeding of criminal charges before re-posting.]

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What will Happen in Jane Gallina-Mecca’s Court? — Reprise

What will Happen in Jane Gallina-Mecca’s Court? — Reprise

Legislatures around the Country are Catching on — Will New Jersey be Next?

Legislatures all around the country are slowly catching on that Family Courts are in fact centers of organized crime. The latest was the New York State Senate, which held a historic hearing on November 1, 2023. My testimony was just one among many impressive, impassioned ones that overflowed in time (they overran the 2:00 p.m. scheduled closure time to last beyond 5:40 p.m. — an unheard-of occurrence for senate hearings!). Senators and judiciary overseers sat with faces transfixed for the entire duration, and mouths agape at the atrocities that are occurring through the euphemistically-named, “Family Courts.”

A common theme ran through the hearing: Family Courts are overwhelmingly domestic violence or child abuse cases, where violence “increases multiple times,” once families enter the Courts. Family Courts “favor abusive and manipulative persons”; “[incentivize, enable, and reward] unethical and illegal activity”; cause “women [to kill] themselves, men [to kill] mothers and children, and even judges; and are “built on the backs of the families they destroyed.” Indeed, one of the senators brought up the twenty-four homicides since 2016 of children judges had placed in dangerous environments against urgent warnings by protective parents (children are dying everywhere, whenever Family Courts are involved, regardless of region). It is clear that children are exploitable, and Family Courts exploit them for profit with total impunity.

Thus, the other side is that Family Court personnel are “driving new cars, dining out, and moving into new homes funded with the liquidated assets, homes, retirement savings and college funds of the children and families trapped in these courts,” as they “[abuse] helpless litigants, usurping parental authority, and preying on families with zero accountability.” And no matter how much harm they heap, they can hide all evidence under “court seals,” deflect allegations by blaming “disgruntled litigants,” and totally financially and emotionally deplete victims until they can no longer legally fight back.

Who would ever imagine Family Courts are doing this? Only direct witness will allow the average person to believe.

My direct witness occurred with Judge Jane Gallina-Mecca, who is the most representative of the above prototype I have personally observed, and an independent investigation, just begun, has already uncovered more than one murder. She is exemplary of what has caused a mother to testify: “My son has said, ‘Dad is going to kill us. Mom, help us please!’” All of Judge Gallina-Mecca’s cases are strictly under seal, nominally “for the protection of the children,” but in truth for the protection of herself from accountability for her brutal crimes against children. Family Court judges are engaging in nothing less than the trafficking of children to their torture and death — and they do so because they can.

Despite her doing everything to hide her criminal misdeeds, including concealing vital case information from the innocent litigant, Judge Gallina-Mecca’s formula is not difficult to decipher: First, in cases of child abuse, immediately take away the children from the fit parent, making up any reason to do so. Second, cover up any real abuse, so as to hand the children to their abuser. Third, deny access to everyone the children were previously attached to, since maximal coverup goes with maximal harm. Fourth, drag on time, since every child’s month is an adult’s decade! (how efficient and convenient). Finally, put the children through thought reform “therapy”, and “reunification camp” if necessary, to make them recant the abuse and denounce their prior caregiver. Along with “gag orders” against the loving parent (or, if they do not work, place the parent under conservatorship or incarceration to discredit anything she says), the silencing of all victims will be complete.

I know this, because I literally saved the life of a mother, and by extension perhaps her children. It is a case in which Judge Gallina-Mecca is refusing to make a ruling: an initial trial date in July was moved to August, and then September, October, and now mid-November 2023. Who knows if she will rule? (the measure seems to be whether or not the children and the mother have yet been “broken” — since there is never an evidentiary hearing, and the children remain exactly as they were abruptly and violently extracted from the fit parent, loving home, and all previous primary supports, without reason). This particular divorce has been ongoing for over three years, but others speak of six, nine, or even twelve years!

Observing Court-connected players is how I have learned of her methods (naming the players is crucial, not only as a mandated reporter, but the reason our First Amendment guarantees free speech is because transparency is a chief means of combating government corruption and oppression — as well as others who are “in” on the profit-making):

‘Child Therapist’ Barbara Maurer

As the Family Court-mandated children’s “therapist”, she charged exorbitantly high rates, with barely a non-social work master’s degree. Since the predatory father was paying the bills, she did not have to return calls, did not have to protect children — even after they became suicidal because of the father’s abuse, and they were always more suicidal, not less, after her sessions. Under Court protection, she could break all laws around mandated reporting, since she could care less about the young lives under her “care”. She was eventually caught abusing the children herself and was removed from the case by her licensing board. But this did not matter: Family Court simply mandated another “therapist”, this time without allowing anyone who could protect the children to know the identity.

‘Guardian ad litem’ Evelyn Nissirios

More brutal than a street gangster, this guardian ad litem “for children” from the start worked only for “the best interest” of the monied predator of children. After effectuating a violent police raid for made-up reasons to tear crying and clinging children from their mother at the onset of their weekend together, she lied to the Court over 177 documented times to cover up her crimes. She imprisoned the children with a man who was coming out of a restraining order for almost killing each of them on different occasions — the same man the children used to vomit or become immobile with panic before visiting, because he was “the scariest person,” with whom spending time was “torture” and “worse than death.” Ms. Nissirios buried suicide notes, suicide attempts, emergency room visits, and letters to the Court asking to fire her, so that she could send them to their real torture.

‘Judge’ Jane Gallina-Mecca

That the Family Court “Judge” was the orchestrator of these grotesque acts is evident from the fact that she endlessly appointed needless actors, simply to increase the number parroting her concocted narrative. As Judge, she could “fix” the evidence for “selling” the children to their predator by: refusing to hear medical testimonies; obstructing all Child Protective Services (CPS) investigations; forbidding the children from seeing a psychiatrist but mandating them to false “therapists”; falsely arresting potential witnesses of the children’s abuse, including renowned medical professionals; and discarding or destroying as many as nine psychiatric reports in order to declare a fit mother “mentally ill” — based on the only “qualified” report Evelyn Nissirios selected, by an unlicensed “associate counselor” Tara Devine, who contradicted all nine, highly-credentialed psychiatrists.

The Father

The hirer of Jane Gallina-Mecca will be named in an upcoming book, a documentary, and a national television series. A corporate lawyer and student of Alan Dershowitz, he hid his extensive background of psychopathic abuse and neglect, in order to marry into a family he could exploit financially and to improve his social standing. He attempted murder on his wife five times, twice with the assistance of his hired hand. He is also a criminal mastermind in financial fraud, and, unlike Allan Kassenoff, his firm protects him. After all, he pulled off a scheme where his former boss was fined 38 million dollars but he got off scot-free. He pled poverty to extract money from his in-laws, while stashing away 29/30 of his million-dollar salary. He was on a restraining order for almost crushing the skull of his 7-year-old son and nearly killing his daughter by head injury as an infant, shortly before he was permitted to kidnap both of them so as to extort six-figure “child support” from the mother (his real interest, and the Court’s interest, in the children).

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Testimony to the New York State Legislature

By Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div.

My name is Bandy Lee. I am a forensic psychiatrist and violence expert who taught at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School for seventeen years before transferring to Columbia University and Harvard Medical School. I am cofounder of the Violence Prevention Institute and president of the World Mental Health Coalition. I have served as an expert consultant for several states including New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Alabama, and California, and for several countries including Ireland and France, on prison reform and violence prevention programming. I helped author the United Nations Secretary-General’s chapter on “Violence against Children” in 2007 and have led a project group for the World Health Organization Violence Prevention Alliance since 2011. I am a recipient of the National Institute of Mental Health’s National Research Service Award and author of the textbook, Violence (Lee, 2019), over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, and over 300 opinion articles on issues related to violence prevention. My clinical practice specializes in treating violent offenders, and I have served as an expert witness for criminal and civil courts in approximately 70 cases and for family court in approximately two dozen cases.

As wars are being waged in Europe and in the Middle East, it is important to note that wars are waged in households every day. We know, at least, that the trauma and the mental health effects are equally severe. For a significant percentage of women and children, the home is the most dangerous and deadliest place to be. That family courts are failing to recognize abuse, but routinely sending children to their abusers and severing contact with their primary caregivers, aggravates this harm and is currently one of the greatest human rights emergencies on U.S. soil — especially since this has lifelong and intergenerational repercussions.

Yale Law School’s Robert Cover said: “Interpretations in law … constitute justifications for violence” (Cover, 1986). Nowhere does this seem truer than in family courts, and nowhere does the application seem more deadly, arbitrary, and unnecessary.

Family court judges are granted wide “discretion” with the law, initially with good intentions, but the lack of oversight and the power to conduct all proceedings in secrecy have — much like the prison system I have studied — led to disastrous results. That a world of brutality and violence flourishes not only in prisons behind concrete walls, but also in courts of law behind sealed records and gag orders, is disturbing beyond anything I have witnessed in my 25 years of forensic practice — especially since the victims are innocent children.

The statistics are stark. Three-quarters of women in the U.S. who are killed by their abusers are murdered after they leave the abusive relationship. Of the approximately 100,000 contested child custody cases each year in the United States, a vast majority are actually domestic violence cases involving the most dangerous individuals our society produces. Abusive fathers are more than twice as likely to seek sole custody of their children than non-abusive fathers, and family courts award them joint or sole custody almost three-fourths of the time (https://rcdvcpc.org/facts.html). Many fathers who are thus granted custody kill their children, such that a sizeable portion of the nation’s child murders by parent are the result of placement by family courts.

The Center for Judicial Excellence (2023) has tracked over 940 children murdered by a divorcing or separating parent over a fifteen-year period in the United States. A detailed study of 175 child murders by fathers in relation to contested custody showed that family courts had in many cases given the access they needed to murder their children (Bartlow, 2017). For every murder, there are many more suicides, and for every death, there are hundreds of injuries that require medical attention. Yet, these numbers are an undercount, as near-universal record concealment, sometimes against the litigants themselves, makes it virtually impossible to track the true number of child murders family courts enable.

Deaths are only the extreme end, since the “soul murder” that children endure with the experience of abuse is unseen from the outside. More than 58,000 children a year are ordered into unsupervised custody by their physical or sexual abuser following divorce in the United States (Silberg, 2008). These children are maximally exposed to lifelong psychological and physical illness, substance abuse, relationship problems, vulnerability to future abuse, as well as decades of loss of life, according to the highly-respected, federally-funded nationwide Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) studies (Felitti et al., 2002).

Not only that, in a disproportionate number of family court cases, the “protective parent” loses custody for simply bringing up the abuse, thus stripping the children not only of their primary attachment figure and primary support, but the greatest mitigating factor of abuse. The result is that there is no greater tragedy for growing children, no greater loss for loving parents, and no greater danger to societal safety — as we are breeding the next generation of perpetrators.

Family courts’ denial of abuse allegations is highly consequential, since child abuse and neglect are extremely common. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in five Americans are sexually molested as a child, one in four are beaten by a parent to the point of leaving a bodily mark, and all these children experience some form of emotional abuse. Five children die per day from abuse in the United States, and four will have involved a parent. One in three couples engage in physical violence, and one out of eight children witness their mother being beaten. Almost one in three abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children, continuing this horrible cycle of abuse — and the trend is worsening, with family courts being more than a small contributor.

Child abuse not only affects the current levels of violence in society but has measurable impacts on the levels of heart disease, cancer, obesity, high blood pressure, mental illness, substance abuse, crimes, suicides, and life expectancy (Petruccelli et al., 2019). The economic cost of child abuse and neglect in the United States was estimated at $592 billion in 2018 (Klika et al., 2020).

In spite of all this, a U.S. Department of Justice-commissioned study found that “domestic violence is frequently undetected in custody cases or ignored as a significant factor in determinations of custody and visitation” (Saunders et al., 2011). Furthermore, biases against women, children, and allegations of abuse endemic in family courts help dangerous individuals, especially men, to weaponize the courts to further their abuse. Family courts have essentially crafted a subculture that sharply deviates from the norm, quickly turning child custody disputes into a surreal, upside-down situation where abuse does not exist, violence is “good” for the child, and attempts to protect children are labeled as “mental illness.”

Popular yet unscientific theories such as “parental alienation” that thrive in family courts but nowhere else are designed to defeat mothers and children reporting abuse. This hypothesis, originally based not on research but on the personal biases of Richard Gardner, has been debunked scientifically and denounced by reputable professional associations as well as the United Nations Human Rights Council (United Nations, 2023). Yet, this “pseudo-concept” continues to dominate as a tactic abusers use to manipulate family courts and is being exported internationally at alarming rates. It enables the abuser to portray that child sexual, physical, and psychological abuse is made up and the children rejecting him are “coached” by the primary caregiver to “alienate” him, rather than being a survival mechanism against his harmful actions.

According to a notable study by Dr. Joan Meier (2020) of 240 electronically published court opinions, when courts believe a father’s claim of alienation, fathers win about 95% of the cases regardless of whether or not the mother claimed abuse. If there were domestic violence reports, they won almost three-fourths of cases, and were especially successful with child sexual abuse reports (four-fifths). Indeed, the study found that courts disbelieved 94% of the child sexual abuse reports when, in fact, studies have repeatedly established that not only is deliberate false reporting rare — as little as 0.1% (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010) — but that child abuse is greatly underreported. False allegations of “parental alienation,” on the other hand, are almost exclusively on the part of the abuser.

As a result, whether through ignorance or willful blindness, bad decisions have become the norm in family courts. A major National Institute of Justice-sponsored family court outcomes study came to the astonishing conclusion that if all family court custody decisions were reversed, they would be more correct (George Washington University, 2018). A cottage industry of lawyers and poorly-qualified “experts”, backed by abuser groups (which call themselves men’s rights or father’s rights groups) has developed because in domestic violence cases, the abusers usually control the money, and it is more lucrative to help the abusers. The most dangerous abusers use children as pawns to torment protective parents or to gain child support, seize marital assets, and even institutionalize protective parents, with shockingly high rates of success. The greatest casualties are the children, who suffer immeasurably and not only lose the opportunity ever to reach their full potential but in large part become the next generation of angry murderers and rapists, not to mention destroyers of their own lives.

What is the solution? Leaving court reform to court officials has been unproductive, as the sheer magnitude of the problem is more likely to be met with defense and denial. There are also insurmountable financial incentives not to reform. Instead, there needs to be meaningful judicial oversight at nationwide scale, which can begin with New York State. It may occur in the form of transparency, accountability, journalistic reporting, and expert whistleblowing of actual litigant experience. Absolute immunity must not be allowed where there is corruption, fraud, and felony-level crimes such as kidnapping and complicity in murder. Judges and their court-appointed personnel must be indictable like everyone else when they cause the deaths of children and their loving mothers (or fathers), which is allowed to occur at alarming rates (Thomas, 2023). A system of impunity, abuse of power, and self-imposed secrecy has proven not to work. According to Justice Louis Brandeis (1914), “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” for institutional abuses.

References

Bala, N. M., Paetsch, J. J., Trocmé, N., Schuman, J., Tanchak, S. L., and Hornick, J. P. (2001). Allegations of Child Abuse in the Context of Parental Separation: A Discussion Paper. Ottawa, ON: Department of Justice Canada. https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/fl-lf/divorce/2001_4/pdf/2001_4.pdf

Bartlow, R. D. (2017). Judicial response to court-assisted child murders. Family and Intimate Partner Violence Quarterly, 10(1), 7–54.

Brandeis, L. D. (1914). Other People’s Money: And How the Bankers Use It. New York, NY: Saint Martin’s.

Center for Judicial Excellence (2022). U.S. Divorce Child Murder Data. San Rafael, CA: Center for Judicial Excellence. https://centerforjudicialexcellence.org/cje-projects-initiatives/child-murder-data/

Cover, R. M. (1986). Violence and the Word. Yale Law Journal, 95, 1601–1629.

Fang, X., Brown, D. S., Florence, C. S., and Mercy, J. A. (2012). The economic burden of child maltreatment in the United States and implications for prevention. Child Abuse and Neglect, 36(2), 156–165.

Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., and Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258.

George Washington University (2021). Draft Summary: Overview of Family Court Outcomes Study. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/302141.pdf

Klika, J. B., Rosenzweig, J., and Merrick, M. (2020). Economic burden of known cases of child maltreatment from 2018 in each state. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 37, 227–234.

Lee, B. X. (2019). Violence: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Causes, Consequences, and Cures. New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell.

Meier, J. S. (2020). U.S. child custody outcomes in cases involving parental alienation and abuse allegations: What do the data show? Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 42(1), 92–105.

Petruccelli, K., Davis, J., and Berman, T. (2019). Adverse childhood experiences and associated health outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Child Abuse and Neglect, 97, 104127.

Saunders, D. G., Faller, K. C., and Tolman, R. M. (2011). Child Custody Evaluators’ Beliefs about Domestic Abuse Allegations: Their Relationship to Evaluator Demographics, Background, Domestic Violence Knowledge and Custody-Visitation Recommendations. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238891.pdf

Silberg, J. (2008). How Many Children Are Court-Ordered into Unsupervised Contact with an Abusive Parent after Divorce? Baltimore, MD: Leadership Council. http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/med/PR3.html

Thomas, E. (2023, September 4). Family courts: Children forced into contact with fathers accused of abuse. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66531409

United Nations (2023). A/HRC/53/36: Custody, Violence against Women and Violence against Children — Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, Its Causes and Consequences, Reem Alsalem. New York, NY: United Nations. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5336-custody-violence-against-women-and-violence-against-children

U.S. Congress (2018). H. Con. Res. 72. Expressing the Sense of Congress that Child Safety is the First Priority of Custody and Visitation Adjudications, and that State Courts Should Improve Adjudications of Custody where Family Violence is Alleged.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2010). Child Maltreatment 2010. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/index.htm

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An ‘Alternative Court’ of Unspeakable Criminality, Violence, and Abuse, Part 2

The Fraudulent Psychological Report of Jessica Biren Caverly

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An ‘Alternative Court’ of Unspeakable Criminality, Violence, and Abuse

When I worked as a psychiatrist in the inner city, one often spoke of an “alternative economy,” which usually meant criminal drug dealing, where an alternative “code” applied and the rules of law-abiding society were reversed. Never did I imagine that there would be an “alternative court,” however, which means child trafficking, where an alternative “law” would reign and even the rules of human decency no longer applied.

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Criminal Personalities Seek to ‘Turn Tables’ on Victims

… And Family Courts Oblige

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Child Predators as ‘Guardians ad Litem’

Guardianship Exploitation through the Family Courts Makes Them Often More Harmful than Helpful

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Family Courts are Not Just Killing Fields of Children; They Also Kill Mothers

Finally, an Empirical Report on the Deadly Family Courts

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My Federal Lawsuit against Jane Gallina-Mecca and Evelyn F. Nissirios

How Far Should Judicial Abuses be Allowed?

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