I hope this starts a radical overhaul of family courts around the country. I had a matter in the Manhattan Surrogate's Court which led to my heart almost failing on July 22, 2006. As I did not die (obviously), I decided I would help anyone fight the RICO in ALL the Courts.
RICO in the New York State Unified Court System: How the Courts Steal Your Property, Your Children, and Try To Destroy Your Life...And How You Can Stop Them
Betsy Combier
Convicted Late Senator Guy Velella |
Betsy Combier
Chris Christie named in two lawsuits alleging violations by Family Courts
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie |
Chris Christie has been named as a defendant in two cases that are part of series of lawsuits across the country where serious concerns about violations of citizens’ rights in family courts are under scrutiny.
CALIFORNIA
An upcoming civil RICO lawsuit to be filed on behalf of the watchdog group Family Court Accountability Coalition (FCAC) will allege that a feeder system created by the Sacramento County Bar Association Family Law Division, in conjunction with several powerful judges, creates a racket which chooses favored divorce lawyers and makes sure those lawyers get favorable rulings in Sacramento County family court rooms.
In 1991, Judges Vance Raye and Peter McBrien, formed the Family Law Executive Committee (FLEC) to help deal with family law cases in Sacramento County family courts. This FLEC would be a group of lawyers, according to the upcoming suit, chosen by the Sacramento County Bar Association’s family law division which would act as judge pro temp on certain family law cases and in exchange, the suit will allege, the lawyers chosen for this task would be given favorable rulings, deserved or not, when they appeared in divorce court in their regular roles.
One of the most high profile case examples of this scheme which will be featured in the suit is that of Ulf Carlsson who appeared in front of Judge McBrien and whose story received significant media attention culminating with a lengthy feature in the documentary Divorce Corp.
Carlsson told RebelPundit his judge was McBrien and that not only did he lose every single motion and hearing in his divorce but the judge awarded his ex-wife all their marital assets.
About five years ago, an appeals court reversed the decision but only because during one hearing the judge simply left the court room while Carlsson’s side was presenting their case, a blatant violation of due process.
Carlsson said while everyone told him the decisions themselves were egregious, the appellate court didn’t have the power to overturn them and only overturned his case on due process violations.
Carlsson said he was forced to move back to Sweden, where he was born, after thirty years in the USA and receiving multiple “credible threats” on his life.
Carlsson said he’s developed PTSD as a result of the corrupt court process.
NEW JERSEY
In New Jersey two concurrent RICO lawsuits will allege systemic bias against women in two counties of that state and Governor Chris Christie will be a named defendant in both cases.
First, in Bergen County a lawsuit led by Karin Wolf, including more than forty women, will allege that courts ignore abuse on a widespread basis–be it sexual, physical, verbal, or emotional–and instead label women making these allegations as parental alienators or as having a variety of mental illnesses or defects.
Wolf told RebelPundit that the purpose of these false diagnoses is to goad protective mothers like herself to fight false allegations in court, creating a perpetual legal process and a plethora of legal fees.
Wolf’s lawsuit will allege that Christie has culpability because he appointed a number of the judges implicated and because he’s been made aware of the widespread abuse but failed to act.
Kevin Roberts, Governor Christie’s Press Secretary, directed all calls to the state’s Attorney General’s (AG) office, which declined comment.
In nearby Monmouth County, another lawsuit, led by Rachel Alintoff will include seven women in total–five of whom spoke with RebelPundit. Alintoff was featured in a 2012 New York Post article in which nine women made allegations of gender bias against Monmouth County Family Court Judge, Paul Escandon. Judge Escandon will be a named defendant in the upcoming lawsuit and his office declined to comment when reached by phone.
In each case the women described a phenomenon psychologists refer to as Gaslighting, based on a 1944 film which won an Academy Award for Ingrid Bergman.
Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer |
Gaslighting is “a form of mental abuse where information is twisted/spun, selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception and sanity.”
Karen Welch told RebelPundit that starting in 1997 and continuing until 2010, she was stalked by an individual associated with her ex-husband. The court, rather than accepting her allegations, said she was making it up because of a mental illness.
In 2010, her alleged stalker, Joe Pate, committed suicide after the FBI filed for an arrest warrant against him. Her story led to New Jersey anti-stalking legislation and was featured on an Investigation Discovery documentary.
In Alintoff’s case, she was diagnosed by the court-appointed psychologist, Dr. Patricia Baszczuk, with “cyclical outbursts” disorder, a disorder which appears to have been coined by Basczcuk and has never been used widely. This so-called diagnosis was used to take custody Alintoff’s son away from her.
Alintoff said that Dr. Baszczuk will be a named defendant and she didn’t respond to an email for comment. Alintoff said she had a one-on-one meeting with Governor Christie about a year ago–about her case–in which Christie promised to examine her case personally; Christie’s Press Secretary Roberts didn’t respond for comment on this meeting.
Wolf and Alintoff told RebelPundit they have also both spoken with the FBI.
All of the women interviewed for both New Jersey lawsuits said they believe they suffered from PTSD as a result of their experience.
Susan Skipp, whose story was featured in a previous RebelPundit expose, is the only litigant not to file a RICO suit. She told RebelPundit that based on her research of precedent she didn’t believe it was feasible to prove RICO, and instead filed a civil suit, which alleges civil rights and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) violations and is seeking $300 million in damages.
Skipp, who has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which she developed as a result of the stress of the legal process, said rather than having those ailments be accepted and receive accommodations, the judge in her case, Lynda Munro, and the Guardian ad Litem, Mary Brigham, accused her in open court of having an unspecified and untreated mental illness.
“The defendant testified that she looked forward to this counseling. If the court takes her at her word then she cannot help herself in her conduct and this is an unaddressed mental health concern,” Judge Munro said of Skipp during one court hearing.
Rather than allowing her to continue treatment with her own therapist, Skipp said that Judge Munro told her that if she saw a psychologist of Munro’s choosing–at a cost of about $3,000 monthly–she’d be allowed to see her children for a few hours a month.
“This is a common scam,” Skipp told RebelPundit, “Order litigant to buddy, buddy gets 175 a week or more- can’t claim on insurance because no diagnosis.” Skipp said, “(It) goes on for years because it’s an order, and also violates ADA law because a person has a right to have a trusting relationship with her therapist.”
Skipp hasn’t seen her children since the end of 2012.
Judge Munro, who retired from the bench in 2014, didn’t respond to an email at her current employer, the Pullman and Comley Law Firm. Ms. Brigham also didn’t respond to an email for comment.
CONNECTICUT AND PENNSYLVANIA
The allegations made by Alintoff and Wolf are similar to an expose in 2012 by Keith Harmon Snow, that included Susan Skipp’s case in which he alleged that Connecticut family courts painted mothers as crazy in an attempt to feed children into a pedophile ring; Snow believes his expose also uncovered a criminal enterprise:
The family court system in Connecticut, as around the country, involves multiple corrupt organizations where profit motives and personal connections dictate how and why decisions are made, and these are decisions that have altered and ruined the lives of many families, esp. many children in custody cases. A racket is ‘a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, that will not be put into effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket were not to exist’ and this is exactly the case with court-related organizations such as Department of Children and Families; National Council of Children’s Rights; the court-sanctioned institution of Guardian Ad Litemand all its related training offices.
While the cases mentioned all involve civil suits, they match up to a Scranton-Wilkes Barre Independent investigation from 2014 dubbed “Custody for Cash,” which led to several court officers facing criminal charges for bribery and other crimes.