Page 3 of FBI Letter

Faces and names of innocent people have been erased partialy with a paint eraser.

I waited paiently for the FBI to contact me, after the complaint went from Westchester [my hometown] to Manhattan where it would need to be investigated due to my complaints of possible child porn taking place and much to my shock I felt like I was playing yet another "the papers have been lost game"

That happens in this case OFTEN.

But as you can see in the above picture of page 3 to the FBI these are serious complaints that need to be investigated!

So- what's going on?

Interesting find

CONSTITUTIONAL BUSINESS
Published By Citizens' Justice Programs
Post Office Box 90, Hull, Massachusetts 02045

Suing Your Federal Government for Civil Rights Violations
By David C. Grossack, Constitutional Attorney
Common Law Copyright © 1994 All Rights Reserved

On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Bill Of Rights, many attorneys may not realize that these rights each contain within them an intrinsic enabling authority for the purpose of redressing violations of these rights by those federal employees entrusted to uphold and protect them.

It is worth remembering that the authors of the Bill Of Rights were heavily influenced by Anglo-Saxon legal theorists such as Sir William Blackstone, who declared that there were "three absolute rights ... the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty and the right of personal property. [1] Blackstone believed the principal aim of society is to protect individuals in the enjoyment of these absolute rights which were vested in them by the immutable laws of nature. [2]

Blackstone's ideas became embodied in the Federalist papers, and in the writings of James Madison on property interests, which he defined in quite broad terms:

"In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right, and which leaves to every one else the like advantage ... [A] man has a property in his opinions, and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties, and free choice of the objects on which to employ them."

"The protection of these faculties" Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 10, "is the first object of government."

As Madison might have anticipated, and as modern students of law and history may realize, in the pursuit of its various other objectives, the federal government from time to time treads on these rights and "faculties" and on the natural rights of mankind whose protection is found in the Ninth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

When Congress enacted Title 42 U.S. Code §1983 and other federal civil rights laws for the redress of violations of these rights, it did not extend liability to federal officials and employees. Instead, these laws were held to apply to "state action", and the actions of county and municipal government (except when federal officials conspired with others. See Fonda v. Gray, 1983(CA 9) CAL 707 F.2d. 435.)

The dilemma on how to obtain compensation for victims of "constitutional torts" by federal actors remained essentially unresolved until the case of Bivens v. Six Unknown Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971).

Bivens has had more impact on the accountability of federal government officials than perhaps any other decision in the history of American law. The central issue in Bivens was whether the Fourth Amendment of the Federal constitution created an implied right of action. This was decided affirmatively in a claim for damages by individuals whose home was searched unreasonably (and hence unconstitutionally) by federal narcotic agents. Jurisdiction was not claimed under title 42 U.S. Code § 1983, which as of this writing, has not yet been held to extend liability to federal officials in most circumstances. Instead the enabling legislation was found under Title 28 U.S. Code § 1331 which grants general jurisdiction on the basis of a federal question.

Subsequent cases have held the Bivens theory of recovery applies to other claims under the various rights enumerated in the Constitution. (For decisions concerning redress of Fifth Amendment claims with Bivens actions, See Young v. Pierce, (DC Tex. 544 F.Supp. 1010) and Eight Amendment claims Mackey v. Indiana Hospital, (DC PA 562 F.Supp. 1251. [3]

Litigants who seek to bring claims against federal officials for abuses of their authority have been confused concerning the proper way to characterize their actions in the pleadings. Generally speaking, how one drafts a complaint and not what evidence is to be introduced determines whether a claim can survive as a federal cause of action. Tully v. Mott Supermarkets, Inc., 337 F.Supp. 834, 844 D.N.J. (1972).

For example, cases have held that if other theories of recovery are pleaded, a Bivens action must fail. This has forced attorneys to select whether they wish to use the Federal Tort Claims Act (Title 28 U.S. Code § 2679) and its strict presentment requirements and other federal law or to rely on a Bivens theory. A complaint alleging both theories are at risk of a dispositive motion. Serra v. Pichardo, 786 F.2d. 237 (6th Cir.)

Another easy mistake to make is in deciding who to name as a defendant. A lawsuit naming the FBI or United States Department of Justice per se as defendants may fail because the agencies are likely to raise certain immunity defenses which have yet to be abolished.

Federal employees may become personally liable for constitutional deprivation by direct participation, failure to remedy wrongs after learning about it, creation of a policy or custom under which constitutional practices occur or gross negligence in managing subordinates who cause violations. (Gallegos v. Haggerty, Northern District of New York, 689 F.Supp. 93)

Although certain federal officials have absolute immunity from private suit, most executive officials enjoy only qualified immunity. The rationale for the distinction is that higher officials require greater liability than officials with less complex and discretionary responsibilities. Hatori v. Haya, 751 F.Supp. 1401.

Any action is considered to be against the "sovereign" and hence fails to state a claim if judgment would "interfere with public administration, or compel the United States to act in foreign policy, or enjoin foreign policy. (Sanchez Espinola v. Reagan, 770 F.2d. 202, Rochfort v. Gibbs, 696 F.Supp. 1151, WD Michigan, 1988.)

Many litigants facing civil lawsuits in which the United States is the plaintiff have erroneously sought to counterclaim against the U.S. The United States, however, to this date has not waived sovereign immunity for claims for damages, (See United States v. Northside Realty Associates, 324 F.Supp. 287, 291 (N.D. GA 1971) (dismissing a counterclaim asserted against the Attorney General where plaintiff in the suit was the United States on the ground that although the suit was initiated by the Attorney General, the real party in interest was the United States).

When lawsuits are brought against federal officials, they must be brought against them in their "individual" capacity not their official capacity. The theory appears to be that when federal officials perpetrate constitutional torts, they do so ultra vires and lose the shield of sovereign immunity. Williamson v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 815 F.2d. 369, ACLU Foundation v. Barr, 952 F.2d. 457, 293 U.S. App. DC 101, (CA DC 1991).

When lawsuits are brought against federal officials, they must be brought against them in their "individual" capacity not their official capacity. The theory appears to be that when federal officials perpetrate constitutional torts, they do so ultra vires and lose the shield of sovereign immunity. Williamson v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 815 F.2d. 369, ACLU Foundation v. Barr, 952 F.2d. 457, 293 U.S. App. DC 101, (CA DC 1991).

Judge Thomas Griesa's final decision in the case allowed recovery under the Federal Tort Claims Act for the intentional torts of invasion of privacy for the use of informants as well as for the F.B.I.'s burglaries, under a theory of trespass. Many other counts were dismissed in the case for failure to adhere to the procedural requirements of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).

Why plaintiff's counsel selected the FTCA rather than the Bivens theory of recovery is not known.

The social consequences of having available remedies such as Bivens and the FTCA are significant. Together with the Freedom of Information Act, The Privacy Act, and the willingness of disillusioned persons within government to act as "whistleblowers," a limited deterrent effect exists to serious violations of civil rights by government.

The sensation caused by the illegal federally sponsored research experiments on mentally disabled children sequestered for nearly 40 years and revealed only recently indicates the changes in public sentiments.

Nevertheless, many courts have considered civil rights claims to be "disfavored actions."

Consider the court in Littleton v. Berbling, 468 F.2d. 390 (7th Cir. 1971):

"The civil damages suit is worthless, especially if the victim of oppression is a social misfit or an unsavory character."

The words of Justice Louis Brandeis however, offer another view:

"Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law, it invites every man to come a law unto himself. It invites anarchy. (United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).

Notes

1. Unfinished Business: A Civil rights Strategy For America's Third Century. Clint Bolick Pacific Research Institute For Public Policy, San Francisco, CA 1990.

2. Ibid.

3. First Amendment litigation concerning IRS tax exempt status for minority political and religious movements is also common. For an historical perspective see Income Disadvantages of Political Activities, (Colum. L. Rev. 273 (1957). Also, Clark, The Limitation On Political Activities: A Discordant Note In the Law Of Charities, 46 VA L.Rev. 439 (1960). See also, Communist Party v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 332 F.2d. 325, 329(D.C. Cir. 1964; Wolfe v. U.S. Tax Court, (1981) (D.C. Colo. 513 F.Supp. 912.

Copyright ©1994 Constitutional Business

Post Office Box 90 Hull, Massachusetts 02045

Tel. 617-925-5253 Fax 617-925-3906

All Rights Reserved

Limited License:
The right to publish this article off-line in print, or via CD-ROM, floppy diskette, tape, laser disk, or any other media, electronic or otherwise, can only be granted by the author and must be in writing. Online usage is unrestricted as long as this article, including the byline, copyright notice, publisher's address, and limited license, is published in its entirety.

Note: Hereafter, brackets signify endnotes.

The author is an attorney in private practice in Boston.

1983

Section 1983


Section 1983 of title 42 of the U.S. Code is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1871. This provision was formerly enacted as part of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and was originally designed to combat post-Civil War racial violence in the Southern states. Reenacted as part of the Civil Rights Act, section 1983 is today the primary means of enforcing all constitutional rights.

Section 1983 provides:

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.
On March 23, 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant sent an urgent message to Congress calling for national legislation that could combat the alarming increase in racial unrest and violence in the South. Congress reacted swiftly to this request, proposing a bill just five days later. The primary objective of the bill was to provide a means for individuals and states to enforce, in the federal or state courts, the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. The proposed bill created heated debate lasting several weeks but was eventually passed on April 20, 1871.

During the first ninety years of the act, few causes of action were brought due to the narrow and restrictive way that the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the act. For example, the phrase "person … [acting] under color of any statute" was not interpreted to include those wrongdoers who happened to be state or municipal officials acting within the scope of their employment but not in accordance with the state or municipal laws. Those officials were successfully able to argue that they were not acting under color of statute and therefore their actions did not fall under the mandates of section 1983. In addition, courts narrowly construed the definition of "rights, privileges, or immunities."

But the Supreme Court decisions in Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S. Ct. 473, 5 L. Ed. 2d 492 (1961), and Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S. Ct. 2018, 56 L. Ed. 2d 611 (1978), finally recognized the full scope of Congress's original intent in enacting section 1983. The Supreme Court began accepting an expansive definition of rights, privileges, or immunities and held that the act does cover the actions of state and municipal officials, even if they had no authority under state statute to act as they did in violating someone's federal rights.

Jurisdiction

Federal courts are authorized to hear cases brought under section 1983 pursuant to two statutory provisions: 28 U.S.C.A. § 1343(3) (1948) and 28 U.S.C.A. § 1331 (1948). The former statute permits federal district courts to hear cases involving the deprivation of civil rights, and the latter statute permits federal courts to hear all cases involving a federal question or issue. Cases brought under section 1983 may therefore be heard in federal courts by application of both jurisdictional statutes.

State courts may also properly hear section 1983 cases pursuant to the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. The Supremacy Clause mandates that states must provide hospitable forums for federal claims and the vindication of federal rights. This point was solidified in the Supreme Court decision of Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131, 108 S. Ct. 2302, 101 L. Ed. 2d 123 (1988). The Felder case involved an individual who was arrested in Wisconsin and later brought suit in state court against the police officers and city for violations of his federal rights. The state court dismissed the claim because the plaintiff failed to properly comply with a state procedural law. But the Supreme Court overturned the state decision, holding that the Wisconsin statute could not bar the individual's federal claim.

To bring an action under section 1983, the plaintiff does not have to begin in state court. However, if the plaintiff chooses to bring suit in state court, the defendant has the right to remove the case to federal court.

Elements of a Section 1983 Claim

To prevail in a claim under section 1983, the plaintiff must prove two critical issues: a person subjected the plaintiff to conduct that occurred under color of state law, and this conduct deprived the plaintiff of rights, privileges, or immunities guaranteed under federal law or the U.S. Constitution.

A state is not a "person" under section 1983, but a city is a person under the law (Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 109 S. Ct. 2304, 105 L. Ed. 2d 45 [1989]). Similarly, state officials sued in their official capacities are not deemed persons under section 1983, but if sued in their personal capacities, they are considered to be persons. Thus if a plaintiff wants to bring a section 1983 claim against a state official, she or he must name the defendants in their personal capacity and not in their professional capacity. Like a state, a territory, such as the territory of Guam, is not considered to be a person for the purposes of section 1983.

The Supreme Court has broadly construed the provision "under color of any statute" to include virtually any state action including the exercise of power of one "possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law" (United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 61 S. Ct. 1031, 85 L. Ed. 1368 [1941]). Thus, the wrongdoer's employment by the government may indicate state action, although it does not conclusively prove it. Even if the wrongdoer did not act pursuant to a state statute, the plaintiff may still show that the defendant acted pursuant to a "custom or usage" that had the force of law in the state. In Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 90 S. Ct. 1598, 26 L. Ed. 2d 142 (1970), the plaintiff was able to prove that she was refused service in a restaurant due to her race because of a state-enforced custom of racial segregation, even though no state statute promoted racial segregation in restaurants.

A successful section 1983 claim also requires a showing of the deprivation of a constitutional or federal statutory "right." This showing is required because section 1983 creates a remedy when rights are violated but does not create any rights itself. It is not enough to show a violation of a federal law because all federal laws do not necessarily create federal rights. A violation of the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures or a violation of the Commerce Clause are examples of federal constitutional rights that may be deprived. Deprivation of federal statutory rights is also actionable when it can be shown that the statute creates a federal right. To show that a federal statute creates a federal right, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the federal law was designed and clearly intended to benefit the plaintiff, resulting in the creation of a federal right. For example, the Supreme Court held that a person's entitlement to welfare benefits under the federal Social Security Act is a federal right stemming from a federal statute that can be protected by section 1983 (Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1, 100 S. Ct. 2502, 65 L. Ed. 2d 555 [1980]).

If the plaintiff can demonstrate that a federal law granted her a federal right that was then violated, the defendant can defeat the plaintiff's claim by demonstrating that Congress specifically foreclosed a remedy under section 1983 for the type of injury that the plaintiff is pleading. The Supreme Court has held that the defendant must prove that a section 1983 action would be inconsistent with the cautious and precise scheme of remedies provided by Congress. For example, if a federal law specifically provides for a means to privately enforce that law, or if the statute does not create "rights" within the meaning of section 1983, the defendant may prevail in showing that Congress did not intend a section 1983 remedy to apply in that circumstance. It is the defendant's burden to demonstrate congressional intent to prevent a remedy under section 1983.

Absolute and Qualified Immunities

Although section 1983 does not specifically provide for absolute immunity for any parties, the Supreme Court has deemed that some officials are immune. The Supreme Court reached this conclusion by applying the common-law principles of tort immunity that existed in the United States at the time section 1983 was enacted, assuming that Congress had intended those common-law immunities to apply without having to specifically so provide in the statute. State and regional legislators are absolutely immune, as long as they are engaged in traditional legislative functions. Although the Supreme Court has not had the opportunity to extend this rule to municipal legislators, lower courts have done so (Reed v. Village of Shorewood, 704 F.2d 943 [7th Cir. 1983]).

Judges have also been held to be absolutely immune from section 1983 actions, as long as they are performing adjudicative functions (Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 87 S. Ct. 1213, 18 L. Ed. 2d 288 [1967]; Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 98 S. Ct. 1099, 55 L. Ed. 2d 331 [1978]). Judges are considered to be performing their adjudicative functions as long as they had jurisdiction over the subject matter at the time they acted and the action was a judicial act. A minority of lower courts have extended this absolute judicial immunity to quasi-judicial agencies, such as parole boards, when they have performed functions similar to those of judges (Johnson v. Wells, 566 F.2d 1016 [5th Cir. 1978]). Absolute judicial immunity has also been extended in some cases to those judicial employees who act under the direction of the judge, such as a law clerk, court administrator, paralegal, or court reporter (Lockhart v. Hoenstine, 411 F.2d 455 [3d Cir. 1969]).

State prosecuting attorneys who are acting within the scope of their duty in presenting the state's case are also absolutely immune from suits for damages under section 1983 claims but are not absolutely immune from suits seeking prospective relief (Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 96 S. Ct. 984, 47 L. Ed. 2d 128 [1976]). Other state officials who act in a prosecutorial role are similarly immune. The Supreme Court differentiated public defenders, however, in Polk County v. Dodson, 454 U.S. 312, 102 S. Ct. 445, 70 L. Ed. 2d 509 (1981), holding that they do not act under color of state law when performing their duties and therefore are not in need of immunity because their conduct is not covered by section 1983.

Witnesses who testify in court are absolutely immune from section 1983 actions for damages, even if the claim arises out of the wit- ness's perjured testimony (Briscoe v. LaHue, 460 U.S. 325, 103 S. Ct. 1108, 75 L. Ed. 2d 96 [1983]).

The Supreme Court has also recognized a qualified immunity defense to section 1983 actions in certain circumstances. Most state and local officials and employees, who do not enjoy absolute immunity, are entitled to qualified immunity. Thus, a prosecuting attorney who enjoys absolute immunity in performing her prosecutorial functions may also enjoy a qualified immunity in hiring and firing subordinates. The Supreme Court has held that school board members, state mental institution administrators, law enforcement officers, prison officials, and state and local executives have qualified immunity (Wood v. Strickland, 420 U.S. 308, 95 S. Ct. 992, 43 L. Ed. 2d 214 [1975]; O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563, 95 S. Ct. 2486, 45 L. Ed. 2d 396 [1975]; Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 87 S. Ct. 1213, 18 L. Ed. 2d 288 [1967]; Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U.S. 555, 98 S. Ct. 855, 55 L. Ed. 2d 24 [1978]; Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 94 S. Ct. 1683, 40 L. Ed. 2d 90 [1974]). Most federal circuit courts have deemed that parole board members and prison disciplinary committee members have qualified immunity (Fowler v. Cross, 635 F.2d 476 [5th Cir. 1981]; Thompson v. Burke, 556 F.2d 231 [3d Cir. 1977]). Lower courts have extended the defense of qualified immunity to a number of other officials, such as city managers, county health administrators, and state Department of Veterans' Affairs trust officers.

If the defendant can raise the defense of absolute or qualified immunity, then it is his duty to plead it (Gomez v. Toledo, 446 U.S. 635, 100 S. Ct. 1920, 64 L. Ed. 2d 572 [1980]).

Remedies

The Supreme Court has held that section 1983 creates "a species of tort liability" (Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 96 S. Ct. 984, 47 L. Ed. 2d 128 [1976]). Thus, the Supreme Court has held that, as in tort law, a section 1983 plaintiff is entitled to receive only nominal damages, not to exceed one dollar, unless she or he can prove actual damages (Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 98 S. Ct. 1042, 55 L. Ed. 2d 252 [1978]). The jury is not entitled to place a monetary value on the constitutional rights of which the plaintiff was deprived (Memphis Community School District v. Stachura, 477 U.S. 299, 106 S. Ct. 2537, 91 L. Ed. 2d 249 [1986]). Plaintiffs bear the burden, therefore, of presenting evidence of all expenses incurred, such as medical or psychiatric expenses, lost wages, and any damages due to pain and suffering, emotional distress, or damage to reputation. The plaintiff is also under a burden to mitigate his damages, and the award of damages may be reduced to the extent that the plaintiff failed to do so.

A section 1983 plaintiff is also required to prove that a federal right was violated and, similar to tort law, that the alleged violation was a proximate or legal cause of the damages that the plaintiff suffered (Arnold v. IBM Corp., 637 F.2d 1350 [9th Cir. 1981]).

The Supreme Court has also held that, similar to tort law, punitive damages are available under section 1983 (Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30, 103 S. Ct. 1625, 75 L. Ed. 2d 632 [1983]). A plaintiff is entitled to punitive damages if the jury finds that the defendant's conduct was reckless or callously indifferent to the federally protected rights of others, or if the defendant was motivated by an evil intent. The jury has the duty to assess the amount of punitive damages. Because the purpose of punitive damages is to punish the wrongdoer, such damages may be awarded even if the plaintiff cannot show actual damages (Basista v. Weir, 340 F.2d 74 [3d Cir. 1965]). As in tort law, the judge has the right to overturn a jury verdict if the jury awards what the judge considers to be excessive punitive damages.

Courts also have broad power to grant equitable relief to plaintiffs in section 1983 actions. Equitable remedies that courts have provided in the past include school desegregation, restructuring of state mental health facilities, and restructuring of prisons (United States v. City of Yonkers, 96 F. 3d 600 [2nd Cir. 1996]; Wyatt v. Stickney, 344 F. Supp. 373 [M.D. Ala. 1972]; Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678, 98 S. Ct. 2565, 57 L. Ed. 2d 522 [1978]). When the court does provide equitable relief, it usually also provides ongoing evaluation and supervision of the enforcement of its orders.

The Civil Rights Attorney's Fee Awards Act of 1976 (42 U.S.C.A. § 1988[b]) allows for the award of reasonable attorneys' fees to the prevailing party in cases brought under various federal civil rights laws, including section 1983. This provision applies whether or not compensatory damages were awarded. This provision also applies whether the plaintiff or the defendant prevails. However, if the defendant is the prevailing party, attorneys' fees have been held to be appropriate only where the lawsuit was "vexatious, frivolous, or brought to harass or embarrass the defendant" (Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S. Ct. 1933, 76 L. Ed. 2d 40 [1983]). In addition, section 1988 does not require that the attorneys' fees awarded be in proportion to the amount of damages recovered (City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 106 S. Ct. 2686, 91 L. Ed. 2d 466 [1986]).

Rule 68 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure can lead to the adjustment of the amount of damages awarded by a jury in a section 1983 case. Enacted to encourage parties to settle their matters out of court, rule 68 provides that if the plaintiff rejected a settlement offer made by the defendant before trial that is better than the award the plaintiff ultimately received in the trial, the defendant is not liable for plaintiff's attorneys' fees incurred after the time the defendant made the settlement offer (Marek v. Chesny, 473 U.S. 1, 105 S. Ct. 3012, 87 L. Ed. 2d 1 [1985]). Under rule 68, section 1983 plaintiffs need to carefully consider any settlement offers made by the defendants.

Bars to Relief

Section 1983 does not provide a specific statute of limitations, which is a time limit in which a claim must be brought after the alleged violation occurred. But 42 U.S.C.A. § 1988 (1976) states that where the federal law does not provide a statute of limitations, state law shall apply. In determining which state statute of limitations to apply in a section 1983 case, the Supreme Court has held that in the interests of national uniformity and predictability, all section 1983 claims shall be treated as tort claims for the recovery of personal injuries (Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 105 S. Ct. 1938, 85 L. Ed. 2d 254 [1985]). If the state has various statutes of limitations for different intentional torts, the Supreme Court mandates that the state's general or residual personal injury statute of limitations should apply (Owens v. Okure, 488 U.S. 235, 109 S. Ct. 573, 102 L. Ed. 2d 594 [1989]).

The Supreme Court has also held that state tolling statutes, which provide a plaintiff with an additional period of time in which to bring a lawsuit equal to the period of time in which the plaintiff was legally disabled, apply to section 1983 cases (Board of Regents v. Tomanio, 446 U.S. 478, 100 S. Ct. 1790, 64 L. Ed. 2d 440 [1980]).

Under section 1983, the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the cause of action accrues. The cause of action accrues when "the plaintiff knows or has reason to know of the injury which is the basis of the action" (Cox v. Stanton, 529 F.2d 47 [4th Cir. 1975]). However, in employment law cases, the Supreme Court has held that the cause of action accrues when the discriminatory act occurs (Delaware State College v. Ricks, 449 U.S. 250, 101 S. Ct. 498, 66 L. Ed. 2d 431 [1980]). Thus, if an employee is being terminated for reasons that violate section 1983, the statute of limitations begins on the day that the employee learns of the termination, not when the termination actually begins (Chardon v. Fernandez, 454 U.S. 6, 102 S. Ct. 28, 70 L. Ed. 2d 6 [1981]).

The legal rules of res judicata (claim preclusion) and collateral estoppel (issue preclusion) apply to section 1983 claims. This means that federal courts must give state court judgments the same preclusive effect that the law of the state in which the judgment was rendered would give. Plaintiffs need to be careful to raise all potential federal claims in cases brought in state court because they will not be allowed to bring those claims later in federal court after the state court has rendered a decision on the issues before it.

A plaintiff may waive his or her right to sue under section 1983, but such a waiver may be deemed unenforceable if "the interest in its enforcement is outweighed in the circumstances by a public policy harmed by enforcement of the agreement" (Town of Newton v. Rumery, 480 U.S. 386, 107 S. Ct. 1187, 94 L. Ed. 2d 405 [1987]).

Reversing Alienation

By MITCHELL ROSEN

It is almost impossible to know if a child has truly been victimized by parental alienation syndrome (PAS). There is no test for it, no X-ray can be examined and lengthy psychological evaluations have a certain amount of subjectivity regardless of the clinician's efforts to be impartial.

Assuming a parent is able to convince the court his or her child has been manipulated into hating him or her, then what? If the child is 15, 16 or 17 years old, the chances of reversing the alienation are not great. Just hearing from a court-appointed psychologist that alienation has occurred would not take away the child's anger, mistrust and apprehension.

If the alienated parent is successful in educating the court that he or she has been unfairly separated from a child, he or she then faces the choice of either leaving the child with the parent responsible for the alienation or risking further estrangement by forcing the child to move.

Switching custody to the estranged parent, completely and suddenly, is referred to as immersion therapy. The child is immersed into the custody of the parent he or she has been taught to fear. Not only is the child in the care of a parent he or she may not have seen for years, but an essential part of the therapy is to either limit or stop any contact with the parent the child has known as the "good" parent.

For immersion therapy to be successful, the alienating parent must either be denied any contact or have all interactions with the child monitored and supervised so further alienation cannot take place.

A therapist skilled in working with alienated children monitors all discussions about the family. It may take months, maybe even close to a year, before the child exhales and relaxes into the care of the parent he or she used to loathe and fear.

The good news is that it is possible to reverse alienation. The child must also be given individual therapy to sort through the myriad of feelings he or she will experience when understanding how the once-trusted parent could have violated his or her trust so completely.

Each child responds differently. Some, especially younger children (younger than 10), may be able to adapt fairly quickly. Other children may need an inordinate amount of reassurance, patience and stability, with no outbursts of parental anger. Rages from the formerly estranged parent will only reinforce the notion that the child should fear the parent, that he or she really is emotionally out of control. The parent should remember this is a time when the child needs stability and consistency above all else.

No therapist who makes a recommendation for immersion therapy does so easily. The consequences are grave and the risks considerable. The only thing that could be worse would be to leave an innocent child with a parent so emotionally ill that the child will learn most of life's lessons backward.

Mitchell Rosen, M.A., is a licensed marriage and family therapist with practices in Corona and Temecula. Contact him at family@PE.com

Happy Birthday Wish For Hillary

Here is a chance to Let Bill and Hillary know what we think of her It Takes A Village Theory...

Dear american, In 36 years, Hillary and I have shared a lot of birthdays, and each year I'm amazed at everything she has accomplished. This is a very special year: we're celebrating Hillary's 60th, and I hope you'll join me in sending her a birthday message, sharing your wishes for her and your hopes for the coming year.

I'll make sure to share your message with Hillary. And please encourage your friends and family to send their messages as well. You can see my birthday message to Hillary and add your own here: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/action/birthdaymessage/?sc=1421&utm_source=1421&utm_medium=e I know how happy Hillary will be to hear from you on her birthday. Thank you for helping me to make her day special. Sincerely,

Sincerely, Bill Clinton

_______________________

Thought you would appreciate this womans wish..

Hillary, I do not wish for you a happy birthday, instead, what I wish for you is the capacity to stop, sit down, for a time and THINK ABOUT what you have contributed to the life of American Familiels. Your promotion of "It takes a village to raise a child" is the MOST ANTI-FAMILY statement a person could ever make. This is obviously how you "think" and feel, so with that, may your birthdays NEVER be filled with the presence of a grandchild and may your daughter NEVER know the joy of motherhood. You see, what you have done and are doing is supporting FAMILY DESTRUCTION by Child Protective Services and the Family Courts. There's HUGE PILES of $$$$$$$$$ for doing that. The Federal Adoption Bonus Incentives PLUS all the other federal funding they "gravy boat" in for DESTROYING the Family and TAKING into custody the children from their families even WHEN there is NO ABUSE nor NEGLECT in the home. CPS and the Family Courts ARE operating ILLEGALLY. I personally HAVE PROOF of it~!!! Would YOU like to see the documents and records of that??? I will gladly show them to you~!!! CPS is committing Medicaid FRAUD and I have ADMISSION on tape recording by CPS supervisor and caseworker. I turned it in. NO-one from State office cares as that means $$$$$$$ in the state operating funds. Where do you stand in this CORRUPTION??? SHOW ME. So for this Birthday Wish -- I WISH for you some Solitude time to THINK ABOUT what you are promoting and supporting for American Families, and yet, you want to be a President???? FOR WHOM??? It certainly wouldn't be the American FAMILY as they are all being DESTROYED.

Shall we say --- NO CLINTON GRANDCHILDREN???? How about it Hillary??? Maybe we could have CPS "TAKE" your grandchildren "just because they CAN" and then "fabricate a case based on Bill's infidelity" against your family saying your daughter has been influenced by him negatively, terminate your daughter's rights to the children, and then SELL YOUR grandchildren into their arranged adoptions for the Federal Bonuses they can get for doing it, AFTER the children have spent 15 months in glorius abusive foster care where you are NOT allowed to see them = legalized black market child trafficing BY our government~!!!.

What are you willing to do to STOP the destruction of the SPINE of this country which IS the American Family?????????

(I seriously DOUBT you will get this card, but I can hope that you will and that you will stop and think about what you are doing.)

Gail Head
Paradise, TX

Columbia Child Psychiatrists Battle in Court

By Sarah Portlock
Special to the Sun

October 23, 2007

*Psychiatrist David Shaffer is the "architect" of TeenScreen .

* Teen Screen is where most of the truth on this blog about the abuses of psychotropic medications comes from.

Two child psychiatrists at Columbia University's medical center are at the center of a legal dispute over what one alleges was a wrongful termination, charging that his colleague spread rumors about him that resulted in his sudden departure from the university.

According to a lawsuit seeking nearly $15 million filed in state Supreme Court late last week against the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, a former director of the Ruane Center for the Advancement of Children's Mental Health, Peter Jensen, is charging that the chief of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry, David Shaffer, systematically orchestrated a "Machiavellian ouster" of Mr. Jensen that started the moment he arrived at Columbia in 1999.

According to the complaint, the animosity stems from a dispute in the 1990s, when Mr. Shaffer allegedly misattributed the denial of several research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health to Mr. Jensen, who was working there at the time.

The two mental health professionals first met in the early 1980s, when Mr. Jensen, who is 57, was completing his post-graduate work in child psychiatry. Mr. Shaffer, 71, served as Mr. Jensen's "long-distance mentor" for years, the suit says.

In 1998, the Ruane Center's benefactor, the philanthropist William Ruane, offered Mr. Jensen a position as its director, at which time, according to the suit, Mr. Shaffer began disclosing his "personal animus and resentment" toward Mr. Jensen.

Since he arrived, Mr. Shaffer has allegedly accused Mr. Jensen of "incompetence," and has told colleagues that one of his continuing goals before retirement was to "get rid of Jensen," according to the suit. At one point, Mr. Shaffer allegedly told Mr. Jensen to "just leave" the position, the suit says. An attorney for Mr. Jensen, Neal Brickman, said Mr. Shaffer was enacting "a personal vendetta" out of "jealousy." Mr. Jensen further charges the university did not follow the proper protocol when terminating his position at the Ruane Center. According to his initial work contract, he was to be entitled to three years' pay should he be removed from his position, but the suit charges his compensation was cut in half in March and that since June the school has stopped paying Mr. Jensen entirely. Attempts to negotiate with the school failed, Mr. Brickman said. A spokesman for Columbia, Robert Hornsby, said the university would not comment on the suit. Messages left for Mr. Shaffer were not returned.

Original Article

Columbia Child Psychiatrists Battle in Court - October 23, 2007 - The New York Sun

2007 DC Rally pics and videos

2007 DC Rally

Over the weekend of August 18 - 19, 2007 a historic event transpired at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

The Family Preservation Festival brought together concerned citizens from over 40 organizations around the nation.

These groups represent citizens concerned with the effects of government policy on family life across a broad spectrum of issues including: family law, adoption, welfare, veterans issues, youth medication, mandatory mental health screening, and the general deterioration of parental autonomy in the area of child rearing.

Organized by Reverend Ronald Smith of Children Need Both Parents, Inc., Dr. Stephen Walker, Vice-Chairman of ACFC and Bessie Hudgins of Three Sides to Every Story, this annual rally will become a change catalyst for years to come.

Click this link to see pictures and hear videos of what is going on with the children of America..
OUR CHILDREN!

American Coalition for Fathers and Children: ACFC

Please Vote lets show this school we are behind them!

A school board in the state of Virginia was brave enough to take a stand by sending out the real story about the "Mental disorder" known as ADHD and the drugs prescribed to treat it.

ADHD is not a medical condition and there are no blood tests, brain scans or chemical imbalance tests to prove any child has a "brain condition" requiring the administration of drugs.

ADHD drugs have been documented by the US FDA to cause psychosis, hallucinations, heart attack, stroke and sudden death. Psychiatric/Pharmaceutically funded front groups like CHADD

(mentioned in the below article) want to keep parents in the dark .

Please vote here: http://...com/yob4bu

(right side of article)

Should the Portsmouth School Board have sent a flier on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to parents?

Yes 67.22%

No 31.84%

http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=135015&ran=160257&tref=po

This is Child Protection?

Though states' "child protective services" intervene readily in family situations, using as a guideline for intervention whether a child "is at risk of maltreatment," even after 40 percent of allegations of child abuse are initially screened out, a further 66 percent of the remaining allegations of child abuse are found to be unsubstantiated. (This number includes the cases labeled on the chart as "Alternative Response Nonvictim," where no investigation of the reported child abuse was undertaken, yet it was determined that there was no abuse.)

By Gregory A. Hession, J.D.

The New American magazine, July 23, 2007http://thenewamerican.com/node/4632

Imagine your terror and panic: you are awakened by an armed SWAT team in the middle of the night, demanding to be let into your home to take your children away. The grim-faced agents show you no warrant, no court order, and no mercy. They give you no reason for their presence, other than having received an unspecified report about child abuse. They bark commands and menace you and your children with their weapons. The children are taken out of your home screaming, shoved into cars, and whisked away into the night.

This is not a Soviet-era movie script, but a reality in thousands of homes in the United States every year, courtesy of state child protective services agencies.

The least reported and understood social crisis of our time is the vast new police state run by these state social services agencies, which are generically referred to as “child protective services,” or CPS. The states have different names for them, such as Department of Social Services or Department of Children and Families, but they are all operating under a federal mandate. Whatever they are called, our next generation of children may never recover from their predatory intrusions into families.

Some may dismiss these concerns as hyperbole, but the numbers are appalling. In 2005 alone, over 3.3 million reports involving six million children were made to state child-abuse hot lines, the vast majority of which eventually proved to be untrue. Over 500,000 children currently are in foster care. Another 300,000 or so are forcibly removed from their homes by the system every year. Tens of billions of dollars are expended every year on the care of these children, and on the juvenile court systems which enable it, along with costs of therapy, drugs, lawyers, and related services.

This system is relatively new. In response to professional agitation to “do something” about the problem of child abuse, Congress set forth standards for state child protection agencies in 1974, in the Child Abuse Protection and Treatment Act, also called the Mondale Act for its senatorial sponsor. If a state conformed their system to the federal mandate, it could get generous reimbursement from the feds. The states immediately complied, and modern child protection was born.

The system does not work, and never has. Thirty years, hundreds of billions of dollars, and millions of ruined families later, the problem of abuse is little improved.

In almost all cases, children are traumatized by their experiences in state custody. A large number of the children taken into captivity never return — many are adopted out to other families, killed, injured, or caused permanent psychological harm. Parents are rarely helped, even when they need some improvement.

Can this happen in America? It can, and it does. What follows is a brief tour through the seamy underbelly of the CPS system. That these agencies engage in such despicable behavior is often not believed by anyone who has not been directly affected by it. CPS structures and systems resemble those used by totalitarian regimes.

The Snitch Network

The entry point of most children into the child protection system is through a government-mandated “snitch network” consisting of 50-odd professions that are required by law to report any suspected child abuse or neglect to a state “hot line.” Teachers, police, therapists, doctors, nurses, even clergy, must report to CPS, under threat of prosecution. In addition, CPS propaganda has convinced many neighbors and friends and personal enemies to make such reports.

Once a report is made, the CPS agency has to decide whether it is credible, and if so, what to do about it. Of about 3.3 million calls to state hot lines in 2005, about 40 percent were screened out before going any further. For the remaining calls, the agency had to decide whether it was an emergency, or could be administratively investigated in due course.

Why are so many reports of child abuse being generated? A large contributing factor is that the legal definitions of abuse and neglect are so elastic as to encompass virtually any parental behavior, from spanking their children to letting them eat too much “fast food.” Also, supply sometimes creates its own demand, since an army of professionals has arisen to service the industry, and must be kept well fed.

In response to child-abuse emergencies, real or imagined, the agency usually sends CPS agents and police to a home. The police pry the children’s little fingers off their mother, with everyone screaming hysterically during the “pull,” as they call it.

In other cases, children are snatched from school or from buses after school, without notice to parents frantically waiting at bus stops. Often they are taken late on a Friday afternoon, so parents cannot challenge the action in court over the weekend, and so that the children can be held incommunicado and given medications — drugged — during that time. The goal is to soften the kids up to make “disclosures” about parental abuse in order to allow CPS to get a court order for custody. Sometimes CPS agents go to court to get an order before taking the children, but when they do so, it is almost always done in secret in a closed courtroom, without the parents or attorneys present.

Unfortunately, CPS often gets it wrong both ways — genuine abuse is often missed or ignored, while most of what is reported as abuse or neglect does not rise to any reasonable level of seriousness. (See chart Top of page.)

Into the Belly of the Beast

After the snitch network does its part to get the children into the CPS pipeline, the cases either go into an elaborate administrative process, or to a so-called “shelter” court hearing, held within a few days in order to determine whether the removal of the children from the home was proper. At that court hearing, usually conducted in secret without the press or public allowed, the court will appoint separate lawyers for the mother, the father, and the children. Many of these hearings are conducted so quickly that parents do not have time to prepare a defense, and the lawyers often cut corners by telling their clients to just agree to keep the children in custody until a trial, which could be a year or more away. Only later do the parents find out that they had agreed that their children needed state protection and had waived any possibility of getting them back quickly, or even at all.

The cases that do not go to court are shunted into a surreal, nightmarish administrative system, and the children are often allowed to stay at home or with relatives while the bureaucrats dither.

A social worker will eventually make up a document called a “case plan” or “service plan,” in which the alleged failings of the parents are summarized. The case plan includes a set of tasks and social services intended to “fix” the parent, much like one might repair an appliance. In order to get the children back home if they were taken, or to foreshorten an administrative case, the parents must do all the activities mandated on the plan, such as going to parenting classes, meeting with a social worker, going to substance-abuse treatment, or getting psychological evaluations.

Social workers, often severely maladjusted and working out their own tortured past vicariously through their clients, frequently treat the parents with whom they work as property, ordering them around at whim. They set up services to be done during work hours, causing people to lose jobs and placing the family in financial distress. They can order that a man suspected of spanking his children must leave the home, putting additional emotional and financial burdens on a family.

As with most government programs, there are unintended consequences that no one considered when putting the scheme together. Since social workers are so easily duped, divorcing spouses have made extensive use of CPS reports as a weapon in family court. Want to get custody fast? Just call CPS and accuse the other spouse of abuse. CPS will also do the bidding of schools that have trouble handling difficult children, and will threaten parents who do not want to drug their children with ADHD chemicals.

When children are placed in foster care, the agency usually treats them with mercenary callousness. Social workers and foster parents do things to children that if done by parents would likely have triggered removal of the child. Children are routinely kept out of school for weeks, are denied needed medical care, and are even abused physically and sexually. Children with asthma are often placed with heavy smokers, and children with speech impediments are often placed with immigrants who struggle with English. Almost all children are heavily drugged, with up to six powerful mind-bending medications, in order to ensure their docility.

Even in little ways, the system continually shows contempt for its captives. Social workers leave a home without putting the children in car seats, cancel visits with the parents if they have better things to do, or place the children in homes far from the parents in order to make it harder to have visits. The grinding banality of socialist-spawned child care is soulless, loveless, and arbitrary.

Abuse committed against a child while in foster care is supposed to be investigated by a special outside unit, similar to an internal-affairs division in a police department. However, mindful of potential lawsuits if abuse were discovered, the investigators usually don’t find any. Statistics reported to the government about abuse in foster care are low because the agency gets to do its own investigations. In my experience representing parents, most of whose children have been actually abused in foster care, the CPS usually sweeps the allegations under the rug and fails to stop the abuse.

Your Day in Court

Juvenile or family court is where the fate of millions of children is decided. Not many years ago, these courts were a sleepy sinecure for a few political hacks. Now, with the child-abuse industrial complex in overdrive feeding them, juvenile courts have come into vogue. Crowds of sad-faced parents shuffle around the court’s waiting areas, lining the halls. Lawyers, forgetting the indescribable pain that their clients are enduring, openly laugh and gossip with CPS attorneys and therapists.

At court hearings, the parents usually cannot speak, and the children’s wishes are almost never heard or considered. Hearings often last only a few minutes, or even seconds. The traditional rules of evidence and notions of due process are rarely observed in these special courts, which are neither criminal nor civil. Hearsay on top of hearsay, sometimes three or four layers deep, is often admitted into evidence, which would never be allowed in any traditional court.

The burden of proof for taking children away from parents on a temporary basis is merely to show by a “preponderance of evidence” that the child was abused, which is a weak and ill-defined standard. By contrast, the state has to prove guilt in a speeding ticket case beyond a reasonable doubt. A final termination of parental rights requires that the state prove unfitness by “clear and convincing evidence,” still well short of the quantum of proof required to prove jaywalking.

Most juvenile cases end with a judgment against the parents, allowing CPS to keep the children until they are 18, or to farm them out for adoption. The home team — that is, the CPS prosecutor and social workers — are in front of the judge every day. The process becomes a choreographed dance, like a Mozart-era minuet, with all the players moving in lockstep and the outcome often determined before the first witness is called.

By looking at the numbers, one would conclude that there is an epidemic of child abuse in America. However, the evidence shows that there is actually an epidemic of hysteria about child abuse, because most of the official complaints are either false or greatly exaggerated. It is a squalid business. Big “non-profit” companies have arisen to service the insatiable demand for warehousing children and providing therapy, education, and other services. Special needs children can sometimes fetch thousands of dollars per week for these sub-contractors from the state and the feds, which make millionaires out of the subcontractors owners and officers.

Tens of thousands of parents have their parental rights terminated every year, and their children taken for adoption to other persons or families. In 2005 alone, 67,000 children were removed for adoption. Another 110,000 were waiting for adoptive homes. Each of these children has been through a painful removal from parents, a lengthy court process, numerous foster homes, large amounts of drugs and therapy, and sometimes years of waiting.

The Adoption and Safe Families Act, passed by Congress in 1997, sets out adoption quotas for the states, with money bonuses for exceeding them, and even larger bonuses for processing a larger number of “special needs” children. Thus, adoption becomes the goal for many children who should not be taken from families in the first place. For CPS, it becomes just a commercial sales transaction: meet the quota, collect the cash.

Some parents do abuse children, and states have comprehensive criminal laws to deal with those cases. Most persons would likely disagree with CPS in how it defines abuse or neglect. Families are attacked for home-schooling or spanking their children, for not overseeing all play activities, or for when a child has an accident. Sometimes a child’s illness, poverty, or parents who are going through a time of conflict will trigger CPS involvement. There is also a palpable animus against families who are religious, or who do not like state interference. Only a very small percentage of the 3.3 million reported cases annually prove to be genuine abuse, and the system does a bad job of sorting them out.

There are reasons why the system does a bad job. Colleges churn out hordes of 23-year-old social-work graduates, childless and clueless, who are sent into homes to make life-changing decisions. Their formal education is grounded in doctrinaire Marxism and feminism, and they believe in their viscera that the state should communally raise children.
Another disincentive to changing the system is the fact that social workers are given legal immunity for almost any discretionary decision no matter what harm results to the children. Social workers exercise virtually unlimited power over families, with little accountability to anyone for overreaching or even for egregious offenses.

Federal reimbursement is the locomotive that drives the child-protection business. Regardless of what families actually need, CPS determines where to place its resources based on what returns the most reimbursement. The vast percentage of federal reimbursement (90 percent) comes from taking children into custody, while only a tiny fraction (10 percent) is available to help intact families. In other words, taking children pays, helping families costs.

The game of cadging federal CPS dollars has become so intense that states often hire multi-million dollar consultants to assist them in maximizing federal reimbursement for the children they take. For instance, Massachusetts hired the now-defunct Arthur Anderson Consulting, at an estimated fee of about $8.6 million, to structure the state program to take advantage of as many federal reimbursement categories as possible.

What Can Be Done?

Is the system really as corrupt, incompetent, destructive, and ineffective as this article portrays it? No, it’s actually far worse — if you ask a parent whose children have been victimized by it! The public perception is that CPS is doing a tough job, and standing against child abuse. However, any family caught in its web would testify to a completely different reality. When I take on a new case and forewarn a family about CPS dirty tricks, they usually think I am exaggerating. Surely it can’t be that bad. However, after the first court hearing, or if their children are removed, those families uniformly confirm that I didn’t tell them the half of it.

What should be done to address the problem of child abuse and the problem of abuse by the system of parents and children? It won’t be easy because CPS policies and actions are based on a deeply flawed world view. Moreover, the agencies are run by inept and agenda-driven managers and social workers, and are enabled by a dysfunctional legal system.

Real reform would cut at the very heart of the premise of child protection — that the state is a better parent, a legal doctrine called parens patriae in Latin. Some fixes are obvious — end federal standards for and funding of state child protection agencies, set objective standards for child abuse, require traditional due process in juvenile courts that are open to the public, and eliminate immunity for social-worker malfeasance.
Millions of children are imperiled by this imperious, abusive CPS system, which works quietly without much public scrutiny. Change will likely come only when its cruelties have been exposed, and the public reaffirms that raising children is the responsibility of families, not the state.

Posted by -

Robert Littlejohn
National Co-Director
United Family Rights Association

State’s Child Protection Agencies Collude with Judges to Defraud Federal Government

This was originally published in 2002, By Nev Moore

Sad part- is it still holds true!

1974 Walter Mondale initiated CAPTA (the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act), the legislation that began feeding federal funding into the state’s child welfare agencies. With remarkable foresight Mondale expressed concerns that the legislation could lead to systemic abuse in that the state agencies might over-process children into the system unnecessarily to keep, and increase, the flow of federal dollars.

Shortly after CAPTA was enacted there was a dramatic increase in the number of children in foster care, peaking at around 500,000 during the mid-70’s. George Miller, the Chairman of the federal Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, initiated an intensive investigation of the nation’s foster care system after the effects of CAPTA started to become apparent by the soaring numbers of children who were being placed in foster care.

An official at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare admitted to Miller that the government had no idea where many of the nation’s 500,000 foster children where living, what services they were receiving, if any, or if any efforts were being made to reunite them with their families.

To address the obvious free-for-all snatching of children that CAPTA had stimulated, the Committee crafted new federal legislation with the intent of creating accountability and clearer guidelines for the states child welfare agencies. During the crafting of P.L. 96-272 Chairman Miller’s concern was that the federal government was footing the bill for warehousing children in institutions and inappropriate settings without accountability.

In 1980 the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act PL 96-272 was enacted. The act included provisions that "reasonable efforts" be made to prevent children from being unnecessarily removed from their homes and placed in foster care.

Although CPS has always tried to buffalo the media and the public that they are involved with families due to some sort of horrific child abuse or neglect, there has never been any debate among national policy makers, researchers, and federal agencies that the vast majority of CPS cases are due to poverty or frivolous/social reasons and do not contain elements of real child abuse.

If the cases did actually involve acts of abuse they would be criminal, identified and investigated by law enforcement, rather than social workers, and prosecuted as such. PL 96-272 came into effect partly because Congress determined that a large number of children were being unnecessarily removed from their homes, and, once removed, they were lost in the limbo of foster care for years, many until they just grew too old, when they were then put on the streets at the age of 18.

The Child Welfare League of America testified before a senate subcommittee: "In fact, there were many instances then, as now, of children being removed unnecessarily from their families. It is important to recognize that children are almost always traumatized by removal from their own families." So, accountability from each states child protection agency was also written in.

To receive the federal money the states would have to submit an annual report to the federal government, known as an AFCARS report, that specifically accounts for each child in state "care." ACLU Children’s Rights Project attorney, Marcia Robinson Lowry, explained in her testimony to Congress: "As a condition of federal funding, states must have a reasonable information system to identify children in federally-funded state custody."

These requirements were implemented in 1980. Up until 1999 some states were still not filing their federally required AFCARS report to the federal government. According to Jeffrey Locke, former Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, the excuse to the legislature was that they "couldn’t figure out how to work their computer system."

When I called Senator Therese Murray in 1998 to ask how many children had died in foster care in Massachusetts, her aide replied: "We don’t have those statistics." At that time Senator Murray was the Senate Chair of the Committee on Health & Elderly Affairs, and therefore responsible to oversee the collection and filing of AFCARS data.

The "reasonable efforts" requirements were designed to address these issues by requiring the states child welfare agencies to have specific investigation and assessment policies to minimize frivolous removals, to provide "services" to address and ameliorate conditions that were detrimental to the child’s well-being, to place children with relatives when removal from the home was absolutely necessary, and to make efforts to reunite families in a timely fashion.

Methods to audit and track compliance with federal requirements were also built in. The states were to establish "citizen review panels" comprised of a specifically designated representation of the population which would include not only members of collateral professional communities involved in child protection, but "parents, foster parents, and former foster children."

Each state was to have at least three citizen review panels. The panels would essentially act as a standing jury of peers and would review CPS cases. Twenty years after PL 96-272 went into effect the citizen review panels have never been established in most states.

Another means of creating accountability was to have the federal authority, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, conduct compliance audits, which are known as Section 427 reviews. The method of enforcement that Congress devised to ensure that the states followed the federal law was to provide incentive funds to the states that documented their compliance with the federal regulations.

The states would self-certify compliance, but could be subjected to "periodic" 427 reviews by the Dept. of Health & Human Services. Were the states to find themselves in noncompliance they would simply return the incentive funds.

It would seem that providing cash to agencies that are allowed to self-document compliance is a somewhat less than intelligent system. It would be interesting to track down exactly how much money the states child "protective" agencies have returned to the government because they found themselves in noncompliance Gee, maybe this is rocket science.

Like CAPTA, PL 96-272 could only have worked if the federal government demanded compliance and meticulous accountability, and then imposed sanctions for noncompliance.

Even better – criminal charges for racketeering for intentional fraud. Mark Soler, director of the National Youth law Center in California explained:
"The Department of Health & Human Services has failed to promulgate meaningful regulations to implement the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. It has applied even the minimal federal regulations that were developed in an inconsistent and arbitrary manner, and only token implementation of the laws protecting children."

Even when HHS finds overwhelming evidence of lack of compliance during 427 reviews, no sanctions are imposed and they continue to keep the fed $$$ pouring in – in violation of their own regulations. Not so much as a slap on the hand or even token admonishment.

Certainly explains how CPS developed their arrogance and contempt for any authority – because there is none.

Their confidence that they are free from the feds insisting on compliance with the law is well illustrated by the foster care numbers which increased dramatically after CAPTA began feeding federal dollars into the states child protection agencies, then dropped equally dramatically after the enactment of P.L.96-272, which was supposed to create more specific federal regulation and accountability.

However, once the state agencies saw that the federal government was not enforcing compliance, the foster care numbers soared once again.

Michael Petit, Deputy Director of the Child Welfare League of America, stated in his testimony before Congress: "A 427 is a meaningless process for most of the states. It represents no kind of sanctions to the states whatsoever for noncompliance" Marcia Robinson Lowry told Congress: "States are passing HHS audits with systems in which no reasonable person could consider that children are being well treated. It is virtually impossible to fail a 427 audit."

The initial concept of "reasonable efforts" was the only conclusion that any rational person could come to: rather than disrupt children’s lives, and traumatize them, by seizing them from non-abusive situations and placing them with strangers (who are often no better, and sometimes far worse), assist families in overcoming their obstacles and problems by providing support and services.

The idea never worked though because it has always been more profitable to too many to remove children rather than keep them at home.

Rather than offer support and simple, practical services to families, CPS forged contracts with vendors. Now private businesses, under the guise of "service providers", could mushroom into existence knowing that their sugar daddy, CPS, would provide a never-ending flow of coerced clients.

The market potential is unlimited – potentially every mother, father, grandparent, and child in the country.

Rather than offering practical, meaningful services that are germane to the families circumstances, CPS clients are ordered to engage in "services" with CPS-contracted vendors; special interest groups who are dependent on CPS for their income and profit by maintaining the levels of children in foster care, and whose interests are protected by a bureaucracy intent on securing it’s own survival and protecting unlimited growth.

The extent to which CPS is allowed to continue to operate while being so far out of compliance with the existing state and federal laws is mind boggling.

It would be a challenge to find any other agency in our country's history that operated in such gross and blatant violation of the law with absolutely no intervention from the administration.

Tens of millions of tax dollars are being squandered on a system that is destroying families and causing lifelong emotional ruin to children – and those are the lucky ones who live through it.

The most egregious area of outright criminal fraud is CPS’s practice of filing their federally required documentation of compliance in secrecy through the courts.

The federal foster care reimbursements are channeled through the Title IV-E section of the Social Security Act. Each state's child welfare agency enters into a contract with the federal government, which is referred to as their Title IV-E state plan.

It is this contract that spells out the responsibilities that CPS must, by law, comply with in order to receive their federal funding. To document compliance with the fed regs, CPS must file a form through the courts in each individual case.

In Massachusetts these forms are referred to as a "29-C." 42 U.S. Code, ss 672 reads:
"These requirements are not mere formalities. The Finance Committee of Congress, in preparing its summary for final passage of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, PL 96-272, stated; " The Committee is aware of allegations that the judicial determination requirement (sic: that a judge makes a determination that a child needs to be removed from the home) can become a mere pro forma exercise in paper shuffling to obtain federal funding.

While this could occur in some instances, the Committee is unwilling to accept as a general proposition that the judiciaries of the States would so lightly treat a responsibility placed upon them by federal statute for the protection of children."

1980 U.S. Code Cong. and Admin. News: "A judicial determination of those efforts (reasonable efforts, as defined in the Act) serves to closely examine, in the case of each individual child, whether reasonable efforts were made to keep the family intact."

In accordance with the federal requirements the Massachusetts legislature enacted G.L. c.119 Ss 29b, which requires all judges to certify that the Department of Social Services met the obligation grounded in the federal statute of making reasonable efforts to protect the child short of removing him or her from the parents, and, if the child was removed, making it possible for the child to return home in a timely manner.

Rather than "closely examining", in Massachusetts this grave responsibility is carried out by judges by rubber stamping stacks of 29c forms that simply contain three "yes" or "no" check boxes.

In many instances making three check marks is even too much work for Massachusetts judges and they rubber stamp the forms while leaving them blank – never mind actually verifying that the "reasonable efforts" were made.

In return for these forms DSS receives it’s federal money. The three questions are:

1. Continuation in the home is contrary to the well being of the child?

2. Reasonable efforts have been made prior to the placement of the child to prevent or eliminate the need for removal of the child from his/her home?

3. Reasonable efforts have been made to make it possible for the child to return to his parent/guardian?

I discussed this issue a few years ago with Veronica Melendez at the Children’s Bureau (the federal authority). She told me that the federal government was under the impression that all parties were present in the court room at the time of the filing of the 29c’s, so that the parents attorneys had the opportunity to object, rebut, or verify the "reasonable efforts."

In reality, no one sees the federal forms except the judges and a representative of DSS’s main legal department. Attorneys ask us how we ever "got our hands on" the 29c forms, as we have never yet met an attorney who has seen the forms, let alone have been notified of the filing hearing.

We even have forms on which the "no" boxes were checked, yet the children were still removed from their homes and federal funds collected for them.

By seizing children illegally in violation of the Title IV-E requirements, then filing false documents in secrecy through the courts to obtain federal funding, CPS is defrauding the federal government with intent.

CPS should be subject to investigation and prosecution by the U.S. Attorneys Office.

They should be held liable for the restitution of all illegally obtained funds, and prosecuted for perjury obstruction of justice, and the fraudulent collection of federal funds under the False Statements and Accountability Act of 1996, PL 104-292 110 stat 3459, 42 U.S.C.S. 670-679a; PL 96-272; C.F.R. part 1356; and Title IV-E.

I have discussed this issue with the Inspector Generals Office and they felt it could possible be prosecuted under RICO, yet they have also failed to act, possibly because it isn’t just CPS/DSS who is committing federal fraud, but also the judges who are signing the documents.

In 1988 George Miller, the original architect of PL 96-272, and Chairman of the congressionally appointed Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, recognized the fraud being committed in the name of child "protection", and stated:

"What has been demonstrated here is that you have a system that is simply in contempt.

This system has been sued and sued and orders have been issued and they just continue on their merry way.

And HHS just continues to look the other way.

You have a system that is not only out of control, it’s illegal at this point.

What you are really engaged in is state sponsored child abuse."

Original Article - Commentary - SierraTimes.com

America held hostage by the Judicial System

If a top lawyer says the system is broken and needs to be fixed. That says it all. Dr. Richard Cordero is part of a growing number of Americans fed up with the way our American Judicial System is operating and is taking action to reform it.

Please see - The Stark Raving Viking

For full story and U-Tube Video on this subject

TOO MANY KANSAS KIDS ARE UNDER STATE CONTROL

This effects us all, a must read-

BY RICHARD HARRIS:

Columnist Mark McCormick reported that there's a shortage of juvenile correction officers ("Do juvenile offenders get enough help?" Sept. 30 Local & State). That's not the problem.

There are too many kids under state control, in systems designed to fail, produced by politicians eager to pretend to help society while actually preying upon it.

The basic problem is that Kansas is much too eager to arrest, prosecute and seize control of children. It's the same as the problem with the child protection system. Control freaks from the governor on down to the average voter have made Kansas one of the most aggressive and reckless states in the nation for intervening forcibly in the lives of young people.

Our Kansas politicians, liberal and conservative alike, acting through state government, cannot resist the temptation to exert unnecessary (and often unreasonable and destructive) control over others without real, analytical, sober regard to cost or outcomes.

The Kansas child-control industry -- juvenile "justice" and child "protection" -- has a long history of over-intervening in the lives of children, at a rate higher (often much higher) than the national average. Current data from the renowned Kids Count Data Book of the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that Kansas fairly consistently ranks among the 15 states most likely to lock kids up, and clearly above the national average for placement in foster care.

This is further fueled by an entire industry of people-controllers (tens of thousands in Kansas alone) --judges, lawyers, court service officers, law enforcement officers, social workers, psychologists, wardens, jailers, prison builders, commercial foster care operations, and entire government agencies of bureaucrats. They all feed off the poor judgment and misfortune of the least powerful among us, mostly at taxpayer expense.

The result is children going from fair to bad to worse -- often in a system of amateurish mind games and incarcerations that leave a child much worse after the horrors of reckless state intervention than before it.

The No. 1 solution is a system of performance measures, based in scientific research. These must be applied to a set of rational, explicitly defined criteria that take into account all the costs of public intervention in children's lives -- including the massive cost borne by those in whose lives the intervention happens. Then apply these rational performance measures against all the government and private players who claim to be "beneficial" in their interventions -- rewarding the constructive and terminating the destructive.

At the core of the problem is a need for all of us -- voters, reporters, editors, social workers, law enforcement officers, bureaucrats, judges, legislators, governors -- to be more intellectually honest with ourselves and one another about what is and isn't reasonable, civilized, effective and constructive.

We need to discipline ourselves before we take too much control of others and destroy what we claim to be saving: the next generation of Kansans.

For replies on this story and it's original version [which I've copied word for word]

Click here-

Kansas.com 10/04/2007 RICHARD HARRIS: TOO MANY KANSAS KIDS ARE UNDER STATE CONTROL#recent_comm#recent_comm

Custody Battles A Special Kind Of HELL!

I found this amazing article this morning on custody battles..

I was not able to copy and paste [probably for reasons of "stealing" the work of the author].

I have no desire to claim anyones work as mine, proven by always adding the original link to my blogs, however this time I was not able to copy the article here.

THIS IS A MUST READ..

The original article can be found at the link below..

Life in the country..: Custody Battles Are A Special Version Of Hell..

A few excerpts from the original blog are ..

"NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO DO THESE ABUSIVE THINGS TO INNOCENT CHIDREN"!

The author also states..

"In a situation like divorce, you have to chose to take the high road 100% of the time. If both parents did that, things would be simple and easy. But there is often one party that refuses to behave in an acceptable manner. Sometimes one party believes their needs trump everyone else's needs. To these people I say - karma is going to get you eventually. Trust me on that. I've seen it happen".

This person's blog is a must read..here it is again..

Life in the country..: Custody Battles Are A Special Version Of Hell..

A few thoughts of my own,

I pray my children see more and more of these articles, and figure out for themselves that they are being abused by the parent that is claiming to be "protecting them".

Once they figure it out I also pray- they come back into my life-

They need to know-

(1) I understand why they acted like they did to me.

[They had no choice]

(2) I am not angry for the things they have said or done to me.

[They had no choice]

(3) Everything that was done is already forgiven, I do love them unconditionally, and always will.

[They had no choice]

(4) There is always a place for them in my/our home and in my/our heart, and when they figure this out and want to get away from the emotional abuse they are living in, all they have to do is say so!

Allan and I are mature adults, we both understand the whys of what I have lived through for the last six years, and we both agree, when they are ready THE DOOR IS ALWAYS OPEN!

My only goal in life is to have all of my babies- all five of them-at the Christmass dinner table with me before I die.

I wish they could all be at the dinner table every night with me, but that's not doable, two of them are living on their own already, and one has a wife that I adore- the other has a live in girlfriend that I would love to meet!

The offer is out there, anyone reading this that knows my children, please pass this on to them.

I do understand [THEY HAD NO CHOICE] !!

Were all screwed- Wake up America!

I've waited with baited breath hoping one of these newspapers would pick up on my lawsuit against the city for destroying my families lives. So far Ehh nothing- There was a family court story that showed what's going on in the paper the other day; but I think they were forced to pull the story.

God forbid the public gets to see the practices destroying families by our courts.

Then this morning I read this [below] I'm so disgusted you have no idea- this crap gets printed and stories about our future generations being destroyed by this wonderful system, get protected from appearing in print were all *F%$%ED! What a shame!

This is apparently what they want you to read -

NY Woman Sues Apple For $1M Over iPhone Price Cut

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A New York woman is so angry at Apple for lopping $200 off the price of the iPhone that she's filed a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages.

The Queens woman claims the company violated price discrimination laws when it slashed the price of the 8-gigabyte iPhone from $599 to $399 within two months of its June debut.

According to the lawsuit, the price reduction injured early purchasers because they cannot resell the product for the same profit as those who bought the cell phone following the price cut.

While they'll "protect" you from reading this-

MEDIA RELEASE:
CONTACT: Louise Uccio
PHONE: (917) 806-8301
FAX: (914) 965-3823
Email: HaveUmistakenMe@aol.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE :
MOTHER EXONERATED:

SUES ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN’S SERVICES
FOR MALICIOUS PROSECUTION, AND NEGLIGENT MISREPRESENTATION

September 28, 2007

New York, Ms. Louise Uccio via her civil rights attorney has filed a lawsuit in The Supreme Court in the State of New York after the devastating affect of a false 2001 “Substantiated” Child Protective Services case against her. Defendants named in the lawsuit include: The case-worker, Noreen Boffa and various “John and Jane Does” unknown officers in the Administration for Child Protective Services, as well as the City of New York.

Ms. Uccio, a loving and devoted mother, and her children’s lives have been irreversibly destroyed over the last six years. She was accused and falsely found guilty of being a drug addict who attempted suicide. Ms. Uccio is alleging that her estranged abusive husband’s relentless pursuit to destroy her for leaving the marriage was the basis of four investigations by The Administration for Children’s Services in N.Y. and Division of Youth and Family Services in N.J. In 2001; leading to this lawsuit.

Ms. Uccio has been kept from her children for years with no visitation, no phone contact, and no access to medical or school records. Her estranged husband has successfully managed to alienate the children from her and erase her from their lives. This loving mother who diligently took care of her children according to her daughters pediatric cardiologist [Dr Putman] has lost six precious years from her children’s lives, during which time two of her children have aged out of the system.

Ms. Uccio has no history of drug abuse, as proven in the original documentation that was used to over turn this case, which was available and should have cleared her from the beginning had this case ever been properly investigated.

She was falsely accused, and maliciously prosecuted while she was able to prove her innocence from the start. She feels the case was able to be substantiated as a combined result of her civility, and respect for "authority", as well as her naive innocence and not knowing her constitutional rights.

Although the false “substantiated” case was over turned on July 12, 2006, Not only have Ms. Uccio and her children not been reunited there has been no visitation to date.

# # #

If you would like more information about this lawsuit or to schedule an interview with Louise Uccio please call (917) 806-8301 or contact her @ HaveUmistakenMe@aol.com
[End]

What happened to this- was it pulled the day after it was printed? Cant find it anywhere-

Mom’s Custody Petitions Were Too Late, the State Courts Said

14-Year Legal Battle Ends With Moot Issues And Ripe Sorrow

By Elizabeth Stull

Brooklyn Daily Eagle NEW YORK —

A mother's 14-year battle to keep her two children ended earlier this month when the state's highest court rejected her request for review in a one-sentence ruling.

The state Court of Appeals found that the underlying custody issues in the case of Renzulli v. McElrath were moot.

Her youngest child turns 21 next month, but the issues are still raw for the Staten Island mom who lost her kids, apparently because of an omission in her divorce papers. She still becomes teary and distraught when telling the story, as she remembers the day five years ago when she almost regained custody of her teenage daughter.

"It's kind of an anniversary," Nora Renzulli told a reporter yesterday. "Rosh Hashanah is always a hard time for me."

Renzulli secured a divorce from her absentee husband in state Supreme Court in September 1996, which identified her as the custodial parent of her two children. In January 1997, the judicial hearing officer (Royal S. Radin) issued an eight-page opinion reiterating that she had custody. But six months later, in June 1997, Renzulli signed an amended supplemental divorce judgment that had no custody provision, although the father was ordered to pay child support. Instead of filing a motion to add the crucial assignment of custody, Renzulli fired her lawyer. The children were ages 10 and 12.

Making the Case in Family CourtA year and a half later, in February 1999, the children were still living with their mother in the family home when their father, Ronald Renzulli, now living in Yardley, Pennsylvania, filed an action for custody in Staten Island family court. Nora Renzulli moved to dismiss, claiming that the case should be heard by the state Supreme Court that issued the divorce judgment.

Family Court Judge Terrence McElrath rejected her motion, because the family court has concurrent jurisdiction in custody matters. Both the state Supreme Court and the Appellate Division agreed with him.

In August 1999 Renzulli, an attorney who works for the state, tried to represent herself in family court against Norman Rosen, a veteran clubhouse attorney with a bull-dog reputation. In spite of her legal training, Renzulli felt outgunned.

Rosen drafted an order granting temporary custody to the father and argued that because the state Supreme Court did not decide the issue, the family court could make an initial custody decision without considering whether there had been any material change of circumstances.

The children, now 12 and 14, were spending the summer with their father in Pennsylvania. After they testified at a fact-finding hearing, Judge McElrath granted the father temporary custody. An outside observer later suggested that the children's father was a more lenient parent than their mother. The appellate court denied a stay and the children remained in Pennsylvania where, Renzulli claims, their father was poisoning them against her through "parental alienation."

Although she claims she was owed several years' worth of child support by her ex-husband, Judge McElrath's order required Renzulli to pay him child support.

"McElrath ripped off Nora," said attorney Peter Lomtevas, who represents her on a financing matter related to the sale of the marital home. Lomtevas said he wished he had represented her 10 years ago. "I might have had some impact" on the custody matter, he said.

Procedural Mis-stepsRenzulli appealed to the state court, again claiming the family court did not have jurisdiction and that custody should be decided by the state Supreme Court. In June 2000, acting state Supreme Court Justice Joseph Maltese wrote that McElrath should have given her custody — but Maltese did not have the authority to revise another trial court judge's decision. The appellate court affirmed.

"Rather than dwell on the omission of the requisite form language awarding custody in the judgments, this court acknowledges the substance of the written decision of JHO Radin," Maltese wrote in June 2000. "For this court to find otherwise is to negate the reality of a prior judicial decision of this court and the history of how this family lived. There is absolutely no testimony in the record or any other evidence that the parties or the Supreme Court changed or abandoned the award of custody to the mother expressed in JHO Radin's decision."

A month later, Justice Maltese amended the original divorce judgment to show that the mother had had custody prior to Judge McElrath's ruling. (By this time Judge Radin, who originally handled the divorce, had died.) In his second ruling on the matter, Maltese suggested that the children's father intentionally avoided the state court because he knew he could not win there.

"Had the father petitioned the Supreme Court for custody this court would have dealt with this as a 'change of custody' matter, notwithstanding the lack of a decretal paragraph awarding custody in the divorce judgment. Perhaps that is why the father went to Family Court with the knowledge that the custody award was never inserted into the divorce judgment. Therefore, he would be able to convince a Family Court judge (as he did) that this was an initial application for custody. Accordingly, prospectively the standard in any application for custody in any court of competent jurisdiction should be a change of custody standard."

Maltese noted that in the 1999 Family Court proceeding, law guardian Richard Katz stated that, "Judge Radin clearly awarded custody to the mother on September 18, 1996 and reiterated this on January 31, 1997." Katz also stated that he would have "'no objection to a carefully worded nunc pro tunc [retroactive] order which indicates that Judge Radin's previously award of custody of the children,'" Maltese wrote.

In October 2000 Judge McElrath issued a final order of custody to the father. Renzulli's appeals were dismissed in August 2001 for failure to prosecute. (In other words, she failed to appear in court or answer papers; the court did not rule on the merits of the case.)

Desperate MeasuresA year later, in the summer of 2002, Renzulli's children were ages 15 and 18. She still hoped to bring her daughter home to New York for her last few years of high school. By July 2002 acting state Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Sunshine had been sent to Richmond County to work through the backlog of matrimonial cases. Renzulli had a new lawyer, Alison Aplin. But Justice Sunshine declined to give Renzulli any additional visitation with her 15-year-old daughter and put the matter over for a date in mid-September — two weeks after the school year began.

In August 2002 Renzulli received news that her ex-husband's cantankerous attorney had died. Rosen's death apparently gave Renzulli new hope. She tried to contact her own lawyer, who was away on vacation.

Frantic to bring her daughter back to New York before school began, Renzulli went to court without her lawyer on Friday, Sept. 6, 2002. A friend and colleague, who was also a lawyer, went with her. That afternoon they pleaded with a judge who was sitting in for Judge Sunshine during Rosh Hashanah.

The ex parte judge signed Renzulli's custody order and said that if the father was served by that Sunday, Sept. 8, the daughter could begin the school year at a private academy in New York on the following Monday. During her scheduled weekend visit, Renzulli brought her daughter back to Staten Island and told her that she could stay for the school year.

Six days later, on Sept. 11, 2002, the parties appeared before Justice Sunshine. He roundly rebuked Renzulli for appearing in court without her lawyer, misleading the ex parte judge and reporting the history of her court proceedings "in a manner which at the very least lacks clarity and at worst is deceptive." The judge proceeded to review the procedural history of the custody proceedings in the case, noting that he himself had denied the mother's application for custody in July 2002.

"It also appears that plaintiff with this second Order to Show Cause is trying to re-litigate the Family Court Order of nearly two years ago on constitutional grounds," Sunshine continued. "That order is the last order of custody and as such, that order is a valid order.

"Any subsequent application for this relief must be in proper form by the attorney of record and address the basis that this court would have to grant such relief based upon constitutional grounds in a post-judgment matrimonial proceeding nearly two years after the Family Court decision where the appeal to the Appellate Division had been dismissed for failure to prosecute," the judge concluded. He admonished Renzulli that she could not appeal a family court decision in the state Supreme Court.

Sunshine's scathing decision was published in the New York Law Journal later that month. Renzulli believes he intentionally blackballed her career by mentioning that she is an attorney and worked in the office for Mental Hygiene and Legal Services. She claims she was nearly fired and has been passed over for promotions. In February 2006 Renzulli went to the Richmond District Attorney, who has not responded to her complaints.

Back Where She StartedOn Sept. 11, 2007, five years to the day after the hearing before Justice Sunshine, the state Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York, declined to review Renzulli's case because the underlying issues are moot. Her daughter turns 21 in October.

Renzulli's most recent attorney on the custody matter, Alison Aplin, did not return calls requesting a comment for this article. Mr. Renzulli could not be reached, either.

Although the Renzulli case was extremely unusual, family courts in New York State are known to be overcrowded and overburdened. Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye has sought to consolidate the state's byzantine system of trial courts to reduce the areas of overlapping, concurrent jurisdiction.

"There should be only one court that deals with family matters, so that unscrupulous litigants can't play games and pretend that something didn't happen in one court and get a do-over in the other court," Nora Renzulli said.

Mom's Custody Petitions Were Too Late, the State Courts Said

Brooklyn Daily Eagle - Brooklyn,NY,USA... a stay and the children remained in Pennsylvania where, Renzulli claims, their father was poisoning them against her through "parental alienation. ...See all stories on this topic

Be don't worry they'll keep feeding you shit like this-

Spears Temporarily Loses Custody Of Children

LOS ANGELES -- Britney Spears has temporarily lost custody of her two sons.
Superior Court Judge Scott M. Gordon ruled that her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, will take custody of 2-year-old Sean Preston and 1-year-old Jayden James.

Wednesday "until further order of the court."
Last month, Gordon ordered Spears to undergo random drug and alcohol testing twice a week, after saying that she engaged in "habitual, frequent and continuous use of controlled substances and alcohol."

The judge also has ordered both Spears and Federline to refrain from drinking and using drugs around their two young sons.

They're also forbidden from drinking or doing drugs 12 hours before either one cares for the children.

Spears, 25, filed for divorce from Federline, 29, last November after two years of marriage. The divorce became finalized in July with a joint custody agreement. Federline has since been seeking greater custody of the children.

Spears Temporarily Loses Custody Of ChildrenA judge has ruled that Britney Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline, will take custody of 2-year-old Sean Preston and 1-year-old Jayden James.

MORE DETAILS:
http://www.wnbc.com/tu/5si22roVk.html

Although in this [Britney] case I think they did the right thing [She needs to calm the hell down] most of us are being denied our civil rights without reason-

Wake up america- the family is being destroyed worse than ever and the why's and how's of it all are being carefully protected -when you find yourself in the position of feeling like your in the Twilight Zone- and you've come to understand why I have this blog-

Join us in the fight- Sign up for our class action lawsuit - get involved- and be part of the solution -

Indiana Civil Rights Council (Class-Actions!)

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