Testimony to the Arizona Senate, Part 2

Question-and-Answer Session with the Ad Hoc Committee on Family Court Orders

Sen. Mark Finchem, Chairing the Joint Legislative Ad Hoc Committee on Family Court Orders

(Video recording of my testimony and question-and-answer session: https://youtu.be/gguHiveG9wA.)

The following is a transcript of the question-and-answer session that ensued, following my testimony to the Arizona Senate Ad Hoc Committees on Family Court Orders.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

The public is unaware of the epidemic of violence occurring through the family courts, because judges threaten reporters and journalists…. When a major magazine published an interview with me, [Judge Jane Gallina-Mecca repeatedly threatened them to] “immediately unpublish” the article…. The end result is that this magazine and others vow never to cover family court stories again.

[Since this testimony, several journalists have gotten in touch with me to share how they have been threatened, targeted, and exiled abroad — and of course there are also accounts of deaths of journalists. This explains why reports of murders and murder-suicides of children seldom mention family courts, even though their role in them is overwhelming.]

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Well, that is a mistake.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Excuse me?

Sen. Mark Finchem:

As we have said earlier, Justice Brandeis….

Dr. Bandy Lee:

That is right.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

How about a little sunshine on this? And frankly, ma’am, you put more sunshine on this than many of the people that have testified over the last three hearings.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Well, I have been in a lot of cases, and I have examined all the evidence. It is not insufficiency of evidence. It is not ignorance or incompetence. It is, quite despairingly, deliberate.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

I appreciate that, and we really have run out of time with you. I would let you talk the rest of the day, if I could get away with it. But we do have a couple questions for you, all right. At least I know everybody else is chomping at the bit! One major question for me is, in your professional opinion with all that you have heard and what you have clearly lived through — and I presume that your sister’s case is out of New York.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

New Jersey, actually. Bergen County.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Okay. Same old, same old, to us out in the West. Do you think or believe that judges have been taken in by this — I am going to call it psychobabble, but you called it pseudoscience, pseudopsychology — almost in a “Bengali” kind of way, where they just totally disregard a mountain of evidence in front of them for the shiny object in the room, that has somehow overtaken the thought process of the judge. Could you speak to that?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

I would say the direction is actually in the opposite, that judges go looking for experts who will give them whatever theory that will allow them to give the children to their abusers. “Parental alienation,” for example, is one which has been used as a tactic to divert, to deflect from, and to deny abuse allegations. I would actually say that it is a pretext for predatory alienation of the good parent.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Okay. Have you ever heard of AFCC?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Yes, unfortunately they are quite driven by the “parental alienation” theory, and I believe that is because it brings in profit.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Well, all right, you jumped right to the next question. Good…. I will go ahead and put it out there. It occurs to me that this organization, from everything that I have seen and read, really has a profit motive that it is driven by not necessarily a best interest of the child. Would you agree with that?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Yes. And actually, very distressingly, not only is this prevalent in all 50 U.S. states, I would say — and I have personally been in cases in about 20 to 30 states — it has been used as a business model exported abroad, to the point where the United Nations Human Rights Council put out a major report in 2023 alerting about this family court problem as a public health crisis, because of the model that has been exported from the U.S. to abroad.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

I presume that that report is online that we can pull it out?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Yes.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Okay, if you would, could you give us the report title to that, so that we can pull that in?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Yes. It is by the UN special rapporteur on violence against children and women.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Okay. We will definitely make that part of our report. One last question I have, before I turn it over to my colleagues. Have you heard of something called, “COBI”?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Yes.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

What is your opinion of Court-Ordered Behavioral Intervention?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

I find it to be coercive. In fact, I call it torture, and it is intended to inculcate in children that what they saw, heard, and have experienced is untrue, and it is a form of thought reform, in my view.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

You know where that comes from, right, “COBI”?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

No,

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Phoenix, Arizona.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

I see!

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Thank you, ma’am. Thank you. Representative Keshel?

Rep. Rachel Keshel:

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. So have you ever been called as an expert witness in an Arizona family court? Because I know you said 20-some states.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Yes, in fact I have.

Rep. Rachel Keshel:

Okay. With what you are hearing today from these people in your experience with the Arizona courts, do you feel that the judges are considering actual forensic evidence in any of these cases?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

In my experience, no. I will have to honestly say that out of 50 cases, only one went the right way after unbelievable amounts of argument and fighting, actually. I usually come in after things have gotten bad, but I have to say that no amount of evidence matters. A 4-year-old who is claimed to have been raped, a positive rape kit, three medical professionals having interviewed her and called her “credible”, burn marks, all kinds of injury marks…. It was still considered “unsubstantial”, or whatever CPS says in these cases.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Ma’am — I am sorry, doctor. Are you now or have you ever worked with a U.S. attorney having to do with cases related to this? And I will have a follow-up question to that related to your field of expertise.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

I have not. I have tried to reach out to a number of authorities, including law enforcement, and my experience has been that they have been either unresponsive or protective of the judges.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Do you know what racketeering is, ma’am?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Yes, and I believe that a lot is going on with the faculty courts.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Representative Fink.

Rep. Lisa Fink:

Thank you. Dr. Lee, thank you for coming. If you would not mind sending me your testimony, there is a lot there that I need to digest. There is quite a bit there, but one of the things that has gone back and forth is this “parent alienation,” and they have bankrupted families. What I have heard, yes, they are trying to change the mindset of the children. When I first heard of it, I thought of reeducation camps like North Korea, the way I was listening to that. But I have heard people say, “Well, no, actually you need to take that into consideration.” No, you do not. From your professional opinion, is “parent alienation” truly a syndrome or a clinical diagnosis at all?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Not at all. It is not taught in any mental health educational program. It only exists in family courts, and the cases that are labeled “parental alienation,” if they were to come out of family court, they would just be clear-cut child abuse and domestic violence, without any ambiguity, and they would be adjudicated in a matter of weeks in criminal court.

Rep. Rachel Keshel:

Mr. Chair. To that point, have you ever witnessed in any of the states that you have testified in that there are judges that disregard the whole “parental alienation,” because I feel like they are using, taking real physical abuse versus the abusive parents saying, “parental alienation.” Are you seeing — I guess I am looking for hope today — have you seen any judges within the family court that see that for what it is? Or is it just so much the standard that, do you kind of see what I am saying?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Well, I have actually seen a lot of judges move away from that phrase because of the stigma around it. Not so much because they denounce it, as all the major health associations have done, but because it was first “parental alienation syndrome” in the 1980’s that got so much criticism and lack of scientific support, that it started to be turned into other types of terminologies. Whatever they call it, it is a pretext, as I said, for predatory alienation of the good parent.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

It seems like the squishy balloon, no matter where you grab it, it’s always kind of morphing into something else, like a balloon tie.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Yes. One thing I wish to say is that, in terms of solutions, education of the public is extremely important and also open courts. But I would not so much emphasize education of judges, because if the incentive to give the children to the wrong parent is still there, then no amount of education, no amount of correction of theories, will help.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

So, two observations. One, the court is incapable of being a super parent. It has seized that responsibility. The second is — and I know we need to move on to the rest of our witnesses — it occurs to me that there is quite literally no test, right up front, to establish — and we have got this in Arizona law, 25-403 — 12 factors that are supposed to be considered in the award of parenting time, in the award of custody. Yet, the court took it upon itself under Gutierrez to say, well, temporary orders do not count, because they are just temporary. Yet, they can go on for a child’s lifetime until they age out of the system.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Exactly. I think that is the goal, that the children are taken for no reason at all. In my sister’s case, she was given no reason. They were taken by force, by a police SWAT team, and I believe that was to maximally traumatize and maximally incapacitate her and the children’s ability to fight back. And then there is no….

Sen. Mark Finchem:

I am sorry, did you say that the child was taken by a SWAT team?

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Yes.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

From a mother….

Dr. Bandy Lee:

… who was simply carrying out her parenting time with them….

Sen. Mark Finchem:

… unarmed in her home….

Dr. Bandy Lee:

With no warning, no concerns about her parenting ability whatsoever. It was only the father who was on a restraining order earlier for slamming his children’s — at this point, the 7-year-old son’s — head against a window, almost crushing his skull, and yet [Guardian ad Litem Evelyn Nissirios overrode the objections of eleven psychiatric experts, other forensic and medical experts, and numerous parents and teachers she did not even interview, to send the children to their violent abuser]. He was just in the process of regaining parenting time, and that was when the custody was switched.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

This is quite an indictment of the system, ma’am.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

… And no plenary hearing, going on for four years.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

All right. Thank you very much for your testimony. We will be in touch. Thank you.

Dr. Bandy Lee:

Thank you very much.

Sen. Mark Finchem:

Thank you, ma’am.

*Please sign the petition to impeach Judge Jane Gallina-Mecca , which now exceeds 2700 petitioners! She exemplifies Family Court abuses of authority, hiring of hitwomen like Evelyn Nissirios to kidnap children for their endangerment, persecute the good parent who tries to protect them, and intimidation of journalists! Help us to continue the national momentum to hold Family Court judges accountable, so that we may save our children!

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