4 ms·

I really do disagree with your premise. My experience in this issue has been expansive, even far outside of just the legal system. The organizations that condu

by p4wnc6 10y ago

I really do disagree with your premise. My experience in this issue has been expansive, even far outside of just the legal system. The organizations that conduct supervised visitation, for example, are basically hard-coded misogyny, and have caused us considerable trouble because they don't enforce their policies at all, have allowed the father in this case to even bring his cell phone into his supervised visits and take pictures, which a private detective we hired later found on VK being used most likely for purposes of grooming -- and, there was already a court order in the civil case that the father was not allowed to maintain that VK page (we had used screenshots of it in one of the hearings) and that the supervision facility's own written policy, which my sister was given a copy of, said that all cell phones were disallowed during visits. She (the supervisor) was forced to admit that she violated that rule in court, or else admit perjury, because we were able to present the photo captured from the VK page showing my nephew inside the visitation facility! The women operating the supervision facility have treated my sister like she is the scum of the earth the entire time. Basically the way it works is they assume anyone who is ordered to interface with any kind of visitation must be a deadbeat, both the mom and the dad, or a drug user, or some kind of criminal unfit to have kids, and that the poor dad is just being railroaded and probably, on balance, deserves custody about as much as or more than the mom. As a result, they sympathize with the dads ordered to have supervised visits, cut them breaks, bend the rules. And then act like hard-asses to the moms, write up court notices if they are 5 minutes late because of a snowstorm, or if the kid has his shoes untied when he shows up. When we first started this whole endeavor, our attorney told us that we should expect, even in the absolute best case scenario when there is smoking gun evidence involving child porn and it is as open-and-shut as it can be, that it will take probably around 4 years to get a conviction, and that the prosecutor and others will focus almost solely on cutting deals to get guilty pleas rather than have it tie up the court for 4 years and be a big headache. That has been true. The opportunity for frivolus continuances, motions, etc., is through the roof, etc. The criminal defense attorney in this case is a real life version of Better Call Saul from Breaking Bad. He's a genuine psycho. He told my sister in one meeting that poor people should just be euthanized, and then basically laughed about because what's she going to do, tell people he said that? And even though trying to get a deal where the father has a reduced sentence and gets counseling is probably what would be in his best interest, his attorney is taking it as a personal vendetta to take it all the way to the bitter end of a jury trial. He said, literally, to our civil case attorney that his client, the father in this case, is a "good kind of pedophile" and laughed about it. Our attorney's mouth just dropped, and he looked like he might even cry when we were all debriefing afterwards. He said in his ~ 20 years of practicing he's never seen a defense attorney like this guy. At a regional level, for me in northeast Indiana, I've even begun researching into the National CASA Association, because some of the higher regional administrators in that organization have actually married regional judges here and things, and it seems like some glaring conflicts of interest regarding sending business their way. They use untrained volunteers, and some of the stuff in their manuals is unbelievable. There actually are online support groups of people (mostly women) who have been absolutely screwed over by CASA, especially in cases involving child porn, sexual abuse, and physical abuse. These people are not trained in psychology, especially the manipulative aspects of dealing with child predators. And most of them are young women volunteers, exactly the people that these child predators manipulate most often. It's really a disgusting Catch-22. When I look at the whole thing, I absolutely do not see a broad US legal system that intervenes too much as you suggest. I absolutely see a system where regional/county level prosecutors do not give a shit ever about child safety, they try to get the cases out the door as fast as possible, mostly by cutting guilty plea deals, they throw people into volunteer-based supervised visitation services that are basically the personification of misogyny, and they utterly do not care if someone raises a fuss about it at all. I have already begun speaking with some attorneys about the possibility of suing the National CASA Association and/or their parent company United Way to recover some of the extreme legal fees we've faced, specifically because their failure to follow their own rules with the cellphone photo incident directly put my nephew in more harm (his photo landing on VK as part of grooming activity), and then we had to pay a bunch of money to file a motion and request a hearing for that, and put the supervisor on the stand and make them admit to it and everything. Anyway, I definitely do not see it the way you describe. The system basically fucks over women and goes to the greatest lengths possible to give white men infinity chances without any serious jail time or serious penalties. Edit: Added detail about the connection between judges and CASA. < http://www.in.gov/judiciary/jud-qual/files/jnc-apps-cherry.pdf http://www.in.gov/judiciary/jud-qual/files/jnc-apps-cherry.p... > Here's a link to some biographical info about the magistrate judge Paul Cherry for the northeast Indiana district court. His wife is mentioned there, Kristi Bachman Cherry, and she is the executive director for Northeast Indiana CASA: < http://www.neincasa.net/meet-our-staff/ http://www.neincasa.net/meet-our-staff/ > Obviously, this mere fact of marriage is not that big of a deal. But in light of all of the other shit I've seen go on in just the tiny sphere of my nephew's single court case, it sure does make me very, very suspicious about how such an incompetent organization as CASA seems to be thriving and receiving tons of business from the courts here.

jessaustin 10y ago
Wow this is the second instance of Indiana judges' egregious nepotism I've heard about this month. It reminds me of Heidi Humphrey of the Indiana Supreme Court Ethics and Professionalism Committee and her handling of a case involving one Judge James Humphrey. I'll stipulate that as awful as the USA justice system is, the family courts are among the worst parts of it. The capriciousness is a feature, not a bug: that's how they extort more money out of both parties to a divorce. The intensely personal nature of the conflicts leads wives and husbands both to irrational, win-at-all-costs mentalities that harm children, and the family courts encourage a feedback loop of escalating conflict. All the various hangers-on (psychologists, facilities, etc.) get their share of money that could otherwise have stayed with the family and its children, and they're careful to donate enough of the windfall to judges' reelection campaigns. One way to win would be to hire the local judge's favorite lawyer. The better way to win is not to play the game in the first place. Don't have children with unsuitable partners, and if you've made that mistake, don't compound it by dragging the whole family into court. In other words: since the family courts do such a poor job, why would we want them to do more?
- p4wnc6 10y ago
  Well, what we have received for our huge sum of money + stress + dealing with this abusive legal apparatus is that my very young nephew has not been physically alone with his biological father for several years, thus ensuring that he hasn't been sexually abused by his father, nor has his picture been used to trade with others in exchange for pictures they might have, nor used to signal in his father's online accounts that he is open to exchanging pictures (apart from the one photo that was wrongly taken while he was at a supervised visit). And through the civil case we gathered affidavits from counselors and psychologists which are also useful to the criminal case and may end up being a cornerstone in the criminal case. How to put a price on ensuring your 5-year-old nephew is kept away from a highly probable source of abuse? Had we not pursued this through the abusive, misogynistic legal system, we would have had no enforceable way to keep my nephew out of immediate risk of grave and really, truly serious harm. Not the false, inflamed stereotype of harm you described earlier about dead beat dads who get railroaded. Not that. But real sexual and/or physical abuse, and well as the potential for psychological harm related to seeing or being made to take part in child pornography. The legal apparatus, for all of its horribleness, allowed us to convert metric shitloads of money into safety for my nephew. At least we've gotten several years of safety for him, even if the father ultimately slips through the cracks and gets off easy in some way. At least we've given my nephew the chance to have some years of a safe and normal childhood routine, and allowed him to age and hopefully get to a point where he could recognize if his father ever tried to do something wrong to him in the future. One way to put it is that you love them so much you agree to basically free fall into PTSD and financial instability if it spares them the strong risk of harm. You hate that that's what the scammy legal apparatus makes you do, but you do it for them. Avoiding it to keep the money really, really won't be better for them if they are significantly abused. People can go on and on about how you shouldn't throw yourself into ruin, much as how you should eventually embrace hospice care and physician assisted suicide when you're terminally ill instead of cranking up the medical bills hoping to prolong life in vain. I see a lot of people mistakenly think the same sort of logic applies when a young, defenseless child is at risk of serious abuse or harm. It doesn't. If the best you can do is throw all your resources at it and you still come up empty handed, well you still have to try. Having saved all those resources and secured a more comfortable life in other ways in the future is completely devoid of meaning or utility if your defenseless young family member really does suffer the harm you failed to relentlessly try to prevent. I think a lot of your comments are moralistic as well. Of course no one wants to "play the game." The mother in this situation, my sister, was extremely young, uneducated, and in no way even remotely close to a life situation in which she should have made these sorts of decisions. Now she's older, busting her ass at a decent job, raising her kids as a single mother who receives no child support, went back and finished college while working. Frankly she's one of the most impressive people I know. And yet her life is defined by living with mistakes she did not even understand she was making at the age of 21. Being punished over and over for decisions made out of youthful ignorance and small, isolated moments of rebellion. Yeah, if you're lucky to emerge from youth not happening to have made these mistakes, it's great to turn around and blame others. Or, in my case I didn't make mistakes myself, and in fact managed college and grad school really well, and still had my life ruined by extension when it fell to me to bear the bulk of financial responsibility, and then later also a whole bunch of other things too. I'm sure the same thing happens to drug users and their families, and all sorts of other hardships. It's like what Philip K. Dick wrote: these people were punished entirely too much for what they did. And what's so sickening is that the other side, the biological father who has caused all of these problems, is not punished at all. His license is suspended and he drives around town anyway, never gets in trouble. He's thousands of dollars in arrears on child support, never pays it back, doesn't matter, no one does anything to him, even as he is delinquent in payment for years. His family are close friends with a local attorney who has basically worked his civil case for free, meanwhile we've paid a huge sum of money just to secure bare minimum supervised visits (which aren't even conducted properly). The victims in these situations are the ones who are punished. Not the perpetrators. And they are punished for decisions they did not comprehend or understand -- often which they could not have comprehended at all. Yes, it's better if you don't "play the game" but truly no one ends up there through their own volition -- not even when it was based on a choice like drug usage or unprotected sex. When these things are lifelong problems for which you are perpetually punished for something you did before you could even legally buy alcohol, it's really just an unlucky lightning strike that you'll be punished for forever. It's not "your fault" in any realistic sense. But grandstanding moralists who want to blame the victim will still say it is. Oh, you don't want to have to spend > $100k in legal fees to protect your son from a child predator when you're in your late 20s? Welp, then when you were extremely depressed that one semester in college 6 years ago, you shouldn't have accidentally drank too much and then had unprotected sex that one single time and gotten pregnant. Since you did "choose" that, you are hereby punished for decades. Ugh.

by p4wnc6 10y ago

jessaustin 10y ago

Wow this is the second instance of Indiana judges' egregious nepotism I've heard about this month. It reminds me of Heidi Humphrey of the Indiana Supreme Court Ethics and Professionalism Committee and her handling of a case involving one Judge James Humphrey. I'll stipulate that as awful as the USA justice system is, the family courts are among the worst parts of it. The capriciousness is a feature, not a bug: that's how they extort more money out of both parties to a divorce. The intensely personal nature of the conflicts leads wives and husbands both to irrational, win-at-all-costs mentalities that harm children, and the family courts encourage a feedback loop of escalating conflict. All the various hangers-on (psychologists, facilities, etc.) get their share of money that could otherwise have stayed with the family and its children, and they're careful to donate enough of the windfall to judges' reelection campaigns. One way to win would be to hire the local judge's favorite lawyer. The better way to win is not to play the game in the first place. Don't have children with unsuitable partners, and if you've made that mistake, don't compound it by dragging the whole family into court. In other words: since the family courts do such a poor job, why would we want them to do more?

p4wnc6 10y ago
Well, what we have received for our huge sum of money + stress + dealing with this abusive legal apparatus is that my very young nephew has not been physically alone with his biological father for several years, thus ensuring that he hasn't been sexually abused by his father, nor has his picture been used to trade with others in exchange for pictures they might have, nor used to signal in his father's online accounts that he is open to exchanging pictures (apart from the one photo that was wrongly taken while he was at a supervised visit). And through the civil case we gathered affidavits from counselors and psychologists which are also useful to the criminal case and may end up being a cornerstone in the criminal case. How to put a price on ensuring your 5-year-old nephew is kept away from a highly probable source of abuse? Had we not pursued this through the abusive, misogynistic legal system, we would have had no enforceable way to keep my nephew out of immediate risk of grave and really, truly serious harm. Not the false, inflamed stereotype of harm you described earlier about dead beat dads who get railroaded. Not that. But real sexual and/or physical abuse, and well as the potential for psychological harm related to seeing or being made to take part in child pornography. The legal apparatus, for all of its horribleness, allowed us to convert metric shitloads of money into safety for my nephew. At least we've gotten several years of safety for him, even if the father ultimately slips through the cracks and gets off easy in some way. At least we've given my nephew the chance to have some years of a safe and normal childhood routine, and allowed him to age and hopefully get to a point where he could recognize if his father ever tried to do something wrong to him in the future. One way to put it is that you love them so much you agree to basically free fall into PTSD and financial instability if it spares them the strong risk of harm. You hate that that's what the scammy legal apparatus makes you do, but you do it for them. Avoiding it to keep the money really, really won't be better for them if they are significantly abused. People can go on and on about how you shouldn't throw yourself into ruin, much as how you should eventually embrace hospice care and physician assisted suicide when you're terminally ill instead of cranking up the medical bills hoping to prolong life in vain. I see a lot of people mistakenly think the same sort of logic applies when a young, defenseless child is at risk of serious abuse or harm. It doesn't. If the best you can do is throw all your resources at it and you still come up empty handed, well you still have to try. Having saved all those resources and secured a more comfortable life in other ways in the future is completely devoid of meaning or utility if your defenseless young family member really does suffer the harm you failed to relentlessly try to prevent. I think a lot of your comments are moralistic as well. Of course no one wants to "play the game." The mother in this situation, my sister, was extremely young, uneducated, and in no way even remotely close to a life situation in which she should have made these sorts of decisions. Now she's older, busting her ass at a decent job, raising her kids as a single mother who receives no child support, went back and finished college while working. Frankly she's one of the most impressive people I know. And yet her life is defined by living with mistakes she did not even understand she was making at the age of 21. Being punished over and over for decisions made out of youthful ignorance and small, isolated moments of rebellion. Yeah, if you're lucky to emerge from youth not happening to have made these mistakes, it's great to turn around and blame others. Or, in my case I didn't make mistakes myself, and in fact managed college and grad school really well, and still had my life ruined by extension when it fell to me to bear the bulk of financial responsibility, and then later also a whole bunch of other things too. I'm sure the same thing happens to drug users and their families, and all sorts of other hardships. It's like what Philip K. Dick wrote: these people were punished entirely too much for what they did. And what's so sickening is that the other side, the biological father who has caused all of these problems, is not punished at all. His license is suspended and he drives around town anyway, never gets in trouble. He's thousands of dollars in arrears on child support, never pays it back, doesn't matter, no one does anything to him, even as he is delinquent in payment for years. His family are close friends with a local attorney who has basically worked his civil case for free, meanwhile we've paid a huge sum of money just to secure bare minimum supervised visits (which aren't even conducted properly). The victims in these situations are the ones who are punished. Not the perpetrators. And they are punished for decisions they did not comprehend or understand -- often which they could not have comprehended at all. Yes, it's better if you don't "play the game" but truly no one ends up there through their own volition -- not even when it was based on a choice like drug usage or unprotected sex. When these things are lifelong problems for which you are perpetually punished for something you did before you could even legally buy alcohol, it's really just an unlucky lightning strike that you'll be punished for forever. It's not "your fault" in any realistic sense. But grandstanding moralists who want to blame the victim will still say it is. Oh, you don't want to have to spend > $100k in legal fees to protect your son from a child predator when you're in your late 20s? Welp, then when you were extremely depressed that one semester in college 6 years ago, you shouldn't have accidentally drank too much and then had unprotected sex that one single time and gotten pregnant. Since you did "choose" that, you are hereby punished for decades. Ugh.