The Horror of Family Court

Run a list of bad behavior. You can multiply it if no father is around. Higher chance of committing a crime. Higher chance of getting hooked on drugs. Higher chance of winding up poor. Higher chance of landing behind bars. Higher chance of depression. Higher chance of suicide. Higher chance of violent behavior.
And the worst of all, higher chance of doing the same thing somewhere down the road — leaving a family, or walking away from a marriage.
All because a man was plenty interested in having sex, and not the slightest bit interested in the consequences. But what about a Dad who wants to stay? Who wants to do the right thing and then runs into Family Court.
The words “prejudice” and “corruption” do not really convey what family courts are about. They are the linchpin of a massive political machine that thrives and grows by systematically destroying families. Within this machine individual judges are “no more than blind executors of the system’s own internal laws,” as Vaclav Havel has written of another kind of apparat, laws which are “far more powerful than the will of any individual.” What we have, in other words, is a system of bureaucratic terror, the kind of terror that has never before been seen in the United States. I have previously written on my own experiences in Family and Supreme Court in New York in front of the likes of Judge John Sweeny, whose bench practice reeks of conceit and arrogance or Support Magistrates like Rachelle Kaufman whose whole career proves that stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego will get you a long way in New York State’s judicial system.
Let’s consider another part of the problem that’s rarely addressed: a Family Court System that is out of control. From the Families Civil Liberties Union comes the following:
The countdown of NY’s worst judges marches on :
# 13 JUDITH D. WAKSBERG (Kings County Family Court): Waksberg’s actions have caused havoc to numerous families. No more so than what she is doing to a young boy, whom she continues to separate from her father, Lee Carda. In that case, she modified a prior order, from the atypically reasonable Judge Michael Katz, that had allowed the little boy unsupervised access to Mr Carda. Waksberg changed that to supervised visitation, without any hearing on the motion, and effectively endorsing mother’s alienating behavior. She then took no action when the mother failed to make the boy available for visitation, and turned a blind eye when she moved out of New York to Florida. What “Whack-job Waksberg” did do was order a torturous forensic evaluation, costing the parents $15,000, and forced the father to pay 75% of that. She then withheld the final report from the father and his attorney. And when the mother failed to bring the child to therapeutic visitation, she did nothing. In July 2018, the FCLU witnessed Waksberg completely ignore a contempt motion filed by Mr Carda after the mother had blocked all physical contact with the father and allowed him only 10 minutes of phone contact in eight months. Instead of ordering the mother to comply with the order and help rebuild her son’s relationship with her dad, Waksberg told the father to “work on [his] parenting skills”. A court observer was so appalled by this callousness that he called out that this was a “tragedy of justice.” Waksberg ordered one of her armed officers to remove the observer from the court. She then pressured the father to agree to a settlement agreement that would excuse all the mother’s violations and allow him “visitation” with the boy — in FOUR YEARS time. Those settlement negotiations took five hours, further enriching the three attorneys — Andrew Black (dad), Mahmoud Ramadan (mom’s attorney, who has not turned up to five scheduled hearings), and the corrupt Children’s Law Center’s Lauren McSwain (who has failed egregiously to protect the child’s welfare). Those attorneys churned billable time as they debated how many photos of the child the mother should send to the father — eventually agreeing to five photos per month. Waksberg signed off on this order, but took no steps to address the mother’s blatant contempt. Instead, she ordered a forensic evaluation with one of King’s County family court’s worst hacks, Sophie Michelakou, who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars from court appointments. Chances of justice or any improvement to the boy’s life: zero.
Terrified of publicity, Waksberg instructs her court officers to stop people coming into her courtroom, or just to throw them out. She also harasses journalists reporting on her actions. She is slovenly in her distribution of key items of evidence, such as forensic reports. Appointed by NYC Mayor Bill DiBlasio, Waksberg came to the family court bench in January 2017, having received no formal judicial training in family court matters.