The Valley Viewpoint

Fatherhood is shrinking in significance. I’m not just talking about physical absence — a third of American kids now live without their biological fathers — I’m talking about perceived importance. More and more, fathers are being viewed as less than necessary.

A 2016 study concluded that children of lesbian parents fared just as well — if not better — than those from a traditional man-woman marriage. A 2013 book stated “the notion that fathering is essential to children’s … development seems to be a uniquely American preoccupation.”

And take this recent exchange on “The View,” an ABC show with a massive female audience from 2013. A guest host, an actor named Terry Crews, had floated the idea that “there are some things only a father can give you.” He was deluged by objection — both on social media and on the set.

When he said, “A father gives you your name,” cohost Whoopi Goldberg joked, “Like in ‘The Lion King?’ ” When he said “a father gives you your security” and “your confidence,” Jenny McCarthy, who is raising a son on her own, shot back, “I’m a single mother and I guarantee you, I can give (my son) all those things.”

The debate went on for several minutes at a high volume, with the female hosts paying homage to widows, single moms and gay couples, and McCarthy hammering at the idea that her “amazing” son needs no man.

And while I know the show is not scientific, it’s entertainment, it still got me thinking how far we have come, that on network TV, a man suggesting “there are some things only a father can give you” is greeted not with agreeing nods but with cannon fire.

On some levels, we men must blame ourselves. The number of fathers who take no responsibility for parenting — who impregnate and run as if they are pollinating flowers — is despicably high. Same goes for disinterested divorced men and deadbeat dads. They have forced single mothers into playing all roles.

But what about the fathers who stay? The fathers who relish their roles? Is citing their virtues now politically incorrect?

Take the sentence “there are some things only a mother can provide.” Does anyone disagree with that? You say “nurturing,” everyone nods. You say “unconditional love,” everyone nods.

But try saying that sentence about a father — as Crews did — and it’s as if you’re hammering people’s toes. “A father provides security,” you suggest? Oh come on, comes the response, as if a woman can’t? “A father provides discipline”? Don’t single moms keep kids in line? “A father provides a male role model.” So now you’re insulting gay couples?

Whew. When did it become so difficult to extol fatherhood? Perhaps when there became other agendas. An author of that 2010 study on lesbian parenting, for example, also has argued there is no need for marriage whatsoever. She also chided President Barack Obama, saying his emphasis on fathers’ importance was “dead wrong.” Even the New York Times, for Father’s Day in 2013, stirred debate — and presumably readers — by asking, “Do fathers bring anything unique to the table?”

But if they don’t, why does nearly every statistic on kids turn sour when fathers disappear? Youth suicides, five times higher than average. High school dropouts, nine times higher. Behavioral disorders, 20 times higher. Runaways and homeless children, 32 times higher.

Does none of that count?

We all recognize it’s a changing world. And I would not use this space to disparage single parents, or two men or two women raising children. But if it’s now insensitive to even question gay parenting, why does it ruffle no feathers to dismiss heterosexual dads? No one should be made to feel a traditional role is prehistoric thinking. That’s bullying of its own kind.

Fatherhood didn’t suddenly, after thousands of years, lose its value. It may be trendy to dismiss dads as little more than fertilizer, but it’s not true. In fact, it’s pretty foolish. Such is our world, where a comment like Crews’ brings a tsunami.

Last night, I found myself trying to organize all those things that one keeps labeled under the heading of ‘family stuff’. There’s something intriguing about poring over old photographs. Whether the photos are black and whites from the Old Country or yellow-stained images from the days of our own youth, looking at them is like peeking through a window at another world. There was other things as well. Since my uncle’s passing in 1976, I kept his ‘stuff’. Now, this includes not only photographs, but mementos from his life. His 8th grade class autograph book, where salutations from fellow classmates read along the lines of ‘2 good 2 be 4 gotten’ and other similar notations that harken back to how kids spoke to each other in the 1920’s. Then I revisited every report card that he received while attending Xavier High School in the 1930’s and painstakingly saved. Now, since I attended the same high school as my uncle, there was a deep bond between him and me. There were letters that several Jesuits sent to my uncle as a young man that he kept. In particular, there were letters from one Jesuit named Gerry Cuddy. While my uncle was alive, he spoke of this Jesuit as being one of the best teachers he had. The report cards bear this out. He received ‘second honors’ during the year that Mr. Cuddy, then a Jesuit Scholastic, was his home room teacher. The report cards then take an ominous turn when, in the following year, he found himself in academic trouble. ‘You son is in danger of failing the following subjects; Latin Composition, Latin Lit, Mathematics. He will need to take remedial examinations in the above checked subjects in order to continue at Xavier’, another saved letter stated. The Jesuits charged 5.00 for each examination and my uncle kept the receipt for these tests, as well. Like a detective, I tried to understand what happened. As I reviewed each card, I saw him standing in from of his parents asking them to sign these report cards and they did. My grandparent’s signatures are on each card under the red circled grades. The shame must have been overwhelming. John was asked to leave Xavier going into his senior year; yet he kept those cards and letters from Gerry Cuddy. Last night, I decided to find out more about who this Jesuit was and, because of the internet, I found myself corresponding with a present day Jesuit, Francis X. Hezel, who worked with Father Cuddy in Micronesia. Father Hezel, thanked me for reaching out and promised to share some insight into who Gerry Cuddy was with me. He sent me the attached photos of Father Cuddy. What kind of man was he that made my uncle save every small piece of correspondence sent from him? When I think of the Jesuits I had, I can recite a number of them who had profound impact on my life. Duminuco, Aracich, Keenan, Biaggi, Hoefner, Wood are Jesuits who helped me in my own life. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence—just getting through to the real part of your life—but it’s more than that. Sometimes your whole life happens in those years, and the rest of your life is just the same story playing out with different characters. I’m eternally grateful for going through those years with these Jesuits and I’m grateful that my uncle had, even for a brief time, Gerry Cuddy. A teacher, wrote Henry Adams, attains a kind of immortality because one never knows where a teacher’s influence ends. I hope that Father Hezel shares with me some stories of who Gerry Cuddy was. His influence on my uncle’s life was unquestionable and I thank him for that.

So, as I closed the box on the items I have kept, I will miss my uncle no more or no less than I did yesterday. In a strange way, I found myself missing Gerry Cuddy although I never knew him. There’s no magic wand that has filled the void of my uncle’s absence. Nor would I want there to be. There is no expiration date on grief. Grief, after all, is just a measure of the vastness of love. Grief never really ends because love never ends. I’ll never get rid of those report cards or Gerry Cuddy’s letters.

With this upcoming Sunday being Mother’s Day, I’ve received a lot of requests to rerun something that I wrote about for the anniversary of my Mom’s 84th birthday.

How can I tell you about my mother? This might sound silly. But in the 1941 movie “Dumbo,” there’s a scene where the captured mother elephant, through the bars of a cage, cradles little Dumbo in her trunk and sings:

Baby mine, don’t you cry

Baby mine, dry your eyes

Rest your head, close to my heart

Never to part

Baby of mine

I choke up whenever I see that, because I know that feeling. Forever loved, forever comforted, through whatever bars may separate you, never to part. If this is the last column I write about my mother, then you should know. That was what it felt like to be her son. And it was glorious.

She was born during the Depression and was raised in Manhattan in a ‘railroad’ apartment. She arrived the last of 6 six kids, fully 17 years between she and her oldest sister. Her father drove a bus, her mother stayed at home; sometimes keeping her out of school for company. She used to like telling the story of staying at home and sitting on the ‘stoop’ waiting for her brother to return from WW2 when her family was notified he was on the way home from his duty station in Iceland. They knew he was coming home, but didn’t know when he’d arrive. No worries, she was allowed to stay home from school because her mother felt that there was some things more important than school. She also was fond of telling the story that, while on an earlier Army leave, her brother John was late in seeing her school Christmas show. When he showed up at the school, the nuns of St. Ignatius school stopped the performance and had the kids restart it. Her 4th grade heart, she told her kids, swelled with pride because her brother was there. She and her school friends would hang out on the fire escapes. Her mom left this world when she was 11 and she was left with her dad and brother in that railroad apartment. That same year, in sixth grade, she met a boy who would one day become her husband. Later on when he was in the Army, he became part of the Old Guard. He walked the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington. She would often travel, chaperoned by her aunt and brother to Arlington, to just watch her boyfriend guard the tomb.

She was married at 21 and her own motherhood began at 23 with the birth of her son; followed 2 years later by the birth of her daughter.

Like many women of her generation, she concentrated on what she had: a family. She was a strong matriarch, vocal in her love. She kissed. She lectured. She enjoyed being part of a large family. She inspired with her tenacity. Once, when her son was being treated unkindly by a nun that questioned his ability, she took the long ride to the convent to point out to the good sister how wrong she was.

She made her kids breakfast, dinner and Halloween costumes. She was the one they woke at 3 a.m. after a bad dream. She was the one who got up early to put the kitchen oven on in her own railroad apartment so that her kids could dress in front of the open stove in winter. She made sure that her son knew that there was a neighbor of hers named Flip Finnigan who never made it home from Europe during WW2 and she kept a picture of him with her as a young kid sitting on his lap during one of his leaves. At one time she wanted to be a nurse, but she put those deferred dreams into her children and her family.

She became sick early on in her life. Multiple Sclerosis. She saw her ability to move become increasingly difficult, yet she didn’t really complain. She still had her family around her. It must have been hard. She saw her children grow, graduate college, marry and have children of their own. Sadly, she didn’t get to really enjoy or know her grandchildren or live long enough to see her two great granddaughters and of all the trials and tribulations she experienced in her short life, I know that this is the one that she would most regret as her grandchildren have grown into fine adults.

I guess she was like millions of great mothers and, of course, she was to us. In blogging as much as I do, I’ve written about a lot of things but for some reason, I have never really written about her. Sometimes I can almost hear her ask “When do you tell my story?” Today. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

And thanks to all the Moms out there for doing what they do.

I recently received from a cousin the census and baptismal records of our grandfather who was born in Ireland. I learned that that our grandfather lived in the same house with his father, our great grandfather, and that our great-great grandfather, too, lived with them and was listed as the head of that household at the age of 78! As I reviewed these records, I got to thinking that we inherit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted. Each of us contains this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise. I also thought about the richness of our family’s ancestry and the fact that I don’t spend enough time being thankful for the family that I have. How many calls have I not made, how many emails have I not sent? I guess we are all guilty of not paying attention to those of us who are still here, yet, it’s ironic,we look back and share records of our common ancestry almost wistfully. I wonder how those folks who lived so long ago would feel about their descendents not keeping in touch with each other? I have some emails and phone calls to make………….

For me, Superman is and has always been America’s hero. I had an uncle who was a weight lifter. When I was 5 or so, I remember asking my mother if my uncle, John, was really Superman. She looked at me and very seriously told me that she couldn’t tell me because ‘no one was supposed to know’. That sealed it for me. From that day on, my uncle was Superman and I was now entrusted with this knowledge. I mean, after all, he carried my sister and I up three flights of stairs using nothing but the palms of his hands. Who, but Superman, could do that? But the real reason he was Superman was that he stood for what we believe is the best within us: limitless strength tempered by compassion, that could bear adversity and emerge stronger on the other side. He stood for what we all feel we would like to be able to stand for, when standing is sometimes the hardest.

We could all use a little Superman these days, couldn’t we? And we could all use a lot more TV shows like this one that you could watch with your kids and be reminded of its message. So, on the nights when you can’t sleep, and during the times when the darkness of uncertainty presses in on you, find a couple of these old ‘Adventures of Superman’ episodes. They’re a reminder that hope must lead the way. They’re a reminder that courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. Take it from me, because, you see, I was related to Superman.

Today, at work, I heard that a coworker’s daughter has a friend who is turning 16 and is saddened that her birthday celebration is bittersweet because no one on her ‘invite’ list has responded that they will go.
I’m not sure who to blame for this. Is it the parents of the kids who haven’t even responded or the kids themselves for being rude?
This story made me remember this. As many of my friends know, my mother was confined to a wheel chair/hospital bed for the majority of her short life due to MS. This didn’t stop her, however, from keeping tight control of her household; particulary her children.
Coming home, one day, in my 16th year, I was ‘summoned’ to her room. ‘Eddie, I got a phone call from Mrs. Williams today. ‘You remember her daughter, Nancy, don’t you…..you went to grammar school with her………remember?’
By this time, I was sweating……….’Nancy needs a date to her junior prom at Notre Dame High School……you’re going’.
My reaction can only be compared to Jimmy Cagney’s performance in ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’ where, in the death row scene, he is dragged to the electric chair, crying, screaming, grabbing the radiator, etc.. If you haven’t seen this movie, I’ve attached the scene so you can get a visual of what I went through……My performance didn’t work and guess what? I went and actually had a nice time. So, to the kids who don’t want to go to my coworker’s daugther’s friends party and, particularly, to the parents of these ‘Im too busy to respond’ young people……… too bad…you’re missing out on a good time…..

This is a difficult email to write for me. Many of you who follow my Facebook blogs know that I have written extensively on the clerical sex abuse scandals that, all too often, have been widely publicized. Most recently, I published the letter that I wrote to John Cecero SJ about his letter that identified Jesuits who, over the past 50 years, were credibly identified as being guilty of abuse.

I previously wrote of the obfuscation that the Jesuits used in attempting to shield assets with the 166 million dollar judgement that was levied against them when it was found that Jesuits from the Oregonian province were guilty of sexually abusing Alaskan villagers over a period of 25 years. Anyone who visits my page can see these posts.

Like many of you, these scandals have shaken my faith. Last week, the NY Post reported on new suit filed on behalf of a plaintiff who, during the 70’s, alleged that he was sexually abused by Father Hoefner. His full complaint is posted below. Father Hoefner….Jake….known to my family since 1953. Was on the altar when my parents were married at St. Ignatius in 1956. I was a member of the choir and an altar server for most of my grammar school days as well as my high school ones at Xavier. Not once did I see or hear of Father Hoefner doing anything, anything to any of my friends. Not once. But yet, here is another salacious allegation. I’ve shared this with the guys that I knew from my choir and altar days and I’m happy to say the consensus is all the same. But at the same time, I’ve heard stories from these same guys that all have the following in them- “Jake,,,,,no…but did I ever tell you about Father…….’

I don’t know where this will end. I will always be grateful for my Jesuit education and having been influenced by the likes of Woods, Duminuco, Reilly, Keenan, Dineen, Aracich and many others. I’m old enough and have spent so many years in corporate America to know that any organization is weakened by the secrets that it keeps. I hope that these allegations against Father Hoefner are proved false……

https://nypost.com/2019/04/13/horace-mann-alum-details-horrifying-new-sexual-abuse-claims-in-lawsuit/

I have a very good young friend who is struggling with feeling lonely. A talented, attractive person who is going through what we all go through regarding finding the ‘right person’. I’ve tried to convey to her that we’ve all been there; The danger for young folks with new relationships that, sometimes, end is that those first relationships happen but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.
I get it….
Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one person, no different from any other person, wanders into your life… You give them a piece of you. They don’t ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like “maybe we should just be friends” or “how very perceptive” turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love.

It hurts to let go, to say goodbye for the final time and remain distant in your closure, it may even tear your heart out to the point of insanity; but somehow in it all you find the pieces of your worth and you start creating yourself again, and in that journey of transformation you find the essence of what truly matters, inner happiness. It’s life, we all fall at some stage but it’s up to you, to decide how long you want to stay there.

Hang in there, my young friend……..

Of all the things that I have been asked to do in life, today I was honored to be asked to deliver one of this year’s commencement speeches at a local school. Seems that the school’s Headmaster, who has listened to me on Tom Sipos’s Hudson Valley Life Show, feels that I may have something to say worth listening to…..Feeling humbled but suspecting that others may disagree with this, and recognizing that Commencement Speech Season is about to begin, I wanted to share, here, a brief outline of one of the better commencement speeches I’ve heard delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts at the Cardigan Mountain School in 2017.

‘Now the commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I’ll tell you why. From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.

Now commencement speakers are also expected to give some advice. They give grand advice, and they give some useful tips. The most common grand advice they give is for you to be yourself. It is an odd piece of advice to give people dressed identically, but you should — you should be yourself. But you should understand what that means. Unless you are perfect, it does not mean don’t make any changes. In a certain sense, you should not be yourself. You should try to become something better. People say ‘be yourself’ because they want you to resist the impulse to conform to what others want you to be. But you can’t be yourself if you don’t learn who are, and you can’t learn who you are unless you think about it.

The Greek philosopher Socrates said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ And while ‘just do it’ might be a good motto for some things, it’s not a good motto when it’s trying to figure out how to live your life that is before you. And one important clue to living a good life is to not to try to live the good life. The best way to lose the values that are central to who you are is frankly not to think about them at all.

So that’s the deep advice. Now some tips as you get ready to go to your new school. Other the last couple of years, I have gotten to know many of you young men pretty well, and I know you are good guys. But you are also privileged young men. And if you weren’t privileged when you came here, you are privileged now because you have been here. My advice is: Don’t act like it.

When you get to your new school, walk up and introduce yourself to the person who is raking the leaves, shoveling the snow or emptying the trash. Learn their name and call them by their name during your time at the school. Another piece of advice: When you pass by people you don’t recognize on the walks, smile, look them in the eye and say hello. The worst thing that will happen is that you will become known as the young man who smiles and says hello, and that is not a bad thing to start with.

You’ve been at a school with just boys. Most of you will be going to a school with girls. I have no advice for you.

The last bit of advice I’ll give you is very simple, but I think it could make a big difference in your life. Once a week, you should write a note to someone. Not an email. A note on a piece of paper. It will take you exactly 10 minutes. Talk to an adult, let them tell you what a stamp is. You can put the stamp on the envelope. Again, 10 minutes, once a week. I will help you, right now. I will dictate to you the first note you should write. It will say, ‘Dear [fill in the name of a teacher at Cardigan Mountain School].’ Say: ‘I have started at this new school. We are reading [blank] in English. Football or soccer practice is hard, but I’m enjoying it. Thank you for teaching me.’ Put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and send it. It will mean a great deal to people who — for reasons most of us cannot contemplate — have dedicated themselves to teaching middle school boys. As I said, that will take you exactly 10 minutes a week. By the end of the school year, you will have sent notes to 40 people. Forty people will feel a little more special because you did, and they will think you are very special because of what you did. No one else is going to carry that dividend during your time at school’.

Pretty good, don’t you think?

“Please don’t be afraid of me”, the man said when I was seven or so and sitting on the ‘stoop’ of the building that my family and I lived in on 83rd street in Manhattan. I was terrified. He had a hard time getting the words out; his body twisted in spasms as he walked towards me. That man, named Joe, lived in our neighborhood. He was known to my family, having lived there with his wife in a small apartment. He worked as an accountant, I was later told by my uncle who knew him before some neuromuscular disease took hold of him. Disease took everything Joe had; yet he kept going. The kids would shriek as his contortions made the mere act of his walking down the block an agony. As he walked away from me that day, my uncle explained that Joe was sick, his wife had left and he was trying to manage as best as he could. I remember many of our neighbors giving Joe a dollar or two. Sometime later, I remember being told that Joe lost his apartment. He still stayed in the neighborhood. The local deli guys and the bar on the corner would let him wash up at thier businesses.

“Please don’t be afraid of me”…….

I don’t know what ever happened to Joe, nor do I know why God allowed his life to be so hard. I don’t even know why he popped into my mind yesterday. There is a form of prejudice in our society that surrounds disability — a discomfort, a subtle fear of that which is different and unfamiliar. It manifests as pity, avoidance or mockery. When we see someone with a profound disability, a fleeting thought occurs: “What if that were me?” from which we quickly turn with a shudder.

Naturally, many people, especially young people, tend to avoid those who make us feel uncomfortable or guilty. Not knowing how to act or respond to someone very different can be scary, especially for a young person. I glad that some adult took the time to explain to a seven year old what it was he was seeing and that Joe didn’t need to be feared. I wish I could have done something more for Joe. I wish the other kids didn’t run away when he rounded the corner. I thank my uncle for taking the time to explain to me what I was seeing and I hope that Joe is now at peace.

Here are a few words and phrases that liberals use all the time that are conundrums in as much as the words themselves actually say just the opposite of what liberals mean by them.

“You should be open minded.” This means you should agree with liberals and be closed to everything else.

“Pro-choice.” In actuality this means being against the ability of a woman to chose to keep her child. It also means being against the choice of life for the infants.

“We are patriotic, too.” This actually means “we love the dreamy-dream of what we want America to be but we don’t love what she is.”

“We love American democracy.” This means “we love the fact that we can subvert America at every level, especially by implementing vote fraud.”

“Democrats are for the little guy.” If that little guy is a millionaire, then I guess they are for the little guy. Other wise, not so much.

“Freedom fighter.” To a liberal a freedom fighter is anyone that would fight against the U.S.A. You know, like the Taliban, al Qaieda, folks like that.

“Freedom of speech.” To a liberal, free speech means that they should be allowed to say everything. On the other hand, if you are a conservative YOU shouldn’t be allowed to say anything. You should shut up because YOU are dangerous.

“Separation of church and state.” To liberals this means the elimination of church, not merely the separation of religion from government.

“Rule of law.” To a liberal, rule of law is not a fixed thing. It is a capricious, instantly changing amalgam of temporary and convenient rules meant to give cover to their every momentary whim and situational ethic.

“Bipartisan.” Give up your own ideas and agree with them and you are indulging their perfect idea of bipartisanship.

Well, certainly there are a lot of others that I have not touched upon here. But, you get the idea. The sad fact is that when you hear a liberal speak when they are trying to convince others to join them, they are often speaking in terms that contradict their real meaning.

In its continuing efforts to expose what’s going on in NY State’s Family Court, the Families Civil Liberty Union continues with its summary of horrific tales of Family Court Judges.

LORI CURRIER WOODS (Supreme Court, Orange County): Woe betide any parent who questions or appeals this wellspring of rage. Woods’ weapon of choice is to threaten parents that she will send their children into foster care if they so much as whisper an objection to her. She makes snap decisions on who is the ‘targeted” parent, and who is ‘protected’, and then sticks to that decision, no matter what the concrete evidence.

Woods’ anger issues may stem from a tragedy in her family. Her son Zachary, a student at Penn State, died on May 6, 2014, when his car fell a hundred feet from an overpass. Since then she has told parents in her courtroom, “you should consider yourself lucky you even have your children.”

In the milestone case of Joe Picone v Frank Golio, which the FCLU has closely monitored, she made legal history by removing two children from the custody of the biological father (Golio) and giving it to his ex-boyfriend (Picone). She even ordered the five-year-old twins to be uprooted from their home and school in Florida to move to New York, and start their lives again under her nose. The biological dad, Golio, sought intervention from the Appellate Division, and successfully secured a record EIGHT STAYS on Woods’ successive temporary orders. Enraged, Woods set about to destroy Golio. She ordered the kids to come to her courthouse for a private ‘Lincoln hearing’, but when they expressed a wish to return to Florida and live with Mr Golio, Woods ignored their wishes and said that “the children do not know what they want.” Once she had secured a lifting of the stay by the Appellate Division (thanks to the Brooke decision issued by the NY Court of Appeals in August 2016), Woods retaliated brutally against Mr Golio. In the trial, she allowed Picone to cite the kids as legitimate testimony, but dismissed similar reports by Golio as hearsay. A whopping four years after the case came before her, Woods issued a 13- page Final Order of Custody, captioned RPF v FG, which, along with decimating Golio’s time with his children, reads as a vindictive, ad hominem character assassination of Golio. Emboldened by Woods’ support, Picone violated Mr Golio’s visitation and access rights. Golio complained to the court, but Woods neglected to step in, simply ignoring his violation and modification petitions, and stonewalling his entreaties to enforce her own order. Merciless, Woods then foisted a massive child support bill on Golio, way above what it should have been because she used his attorney bills as “imputed income”. These bills crippled Golio financially, and forced him to declare bankruptcy in 2018. Woods refused to downwardly modify the child support order, and then sought to have him jailed for contempt. Meantime, the kids’ lives are in turmoil.

Woods has her favored “experts”, whom she appoints at great expense to the families who come before her. Woods’ cronies include Marc Mednick, who receives tens of thousands from each family to conduct “forensic evaluations” of dubious quality.

A chorus of critics says that being in her courtroom is “traumatizing”, that “if there was ever a reason to vote it’s now get this loony off the bench. It’s insane what she gets away with.” Another parent writes: “Arrogant and rude. I appeared before this judge making a lawful citizen’s request and was made to feel like I was a criminal the entire time. I was not allowed to speak, and it was clear the judge had not reviewed the materials I submitted. My request was rejected in all of 3.5 minutes. I felt railroaded and disenfranchised, further impacting my trust in my government.”

Born in 1958, she is a lifelong Republican. Woods began her career in 1983 as an attorney in the California-based Law Offices of Mikin & Kohn. She then served as a deputy district attorney in Orange County, California, from 1984 to 1985. In 1985, she became an Orange County assistant district attorney. She then worked as an attorney for the law firm of Larking & Axelrod from 1988 to 1992. From 1997 to 2001, she was an attorney and law guardian for the Children’s Rights Society. She then became a councilperson for the Town of Monroe. Her own resume says she worked in these positions through 2005. She took the family court bench in 2006, and was re-elected in 2015 on a wholly inaccurate slogan of “Compassionate, Competent. Fair.” Unless removed, she will hold office until December 31, 2025.