This Weekend’s Child Sexual Abuse Conference in Davis Focuses on Courts Endangering Children’s Safety – Over the course of the last several years, the Vanguard has received a number of complaints about the Yolo County Family Court system, where the complainants allege that local judges have put young children into homes of known sex offenders or otherwise have endangered their welfare.
According to these complaints, the Yolo County Family Court does not consistently ensure the physical and sexual safety of children in custody, nor make good visitation decisions.
Complaints have also been made that the court allows cases to be prolonged unnecessarily, which results in financial burdens to litigants. Litigants are forced to hire attorneys and are ordered to attend expensive mental health evaluations.
Hearings are not recorded or transcribed, attorney fees are assessed against litigants who did not initiate the hearing request, and retaliation is a concern when litigants complain about court mistreatment. This has a chilling effect on remedies.
The family judicial system is one in which oversight and monitoring are difficult to achieve. Most hearings are not conducted within the public light of scrutiny.
In a press release from Connie Valentine who works for the California Protective Parents Association, she writes, “A sizeable minority of California family courts have earned a well-deserved reputation for endangering children of divorce. Certain judges dismiss parents’ concerns about child safety. A whistle blower judge reports that judges are trained to be highly skeptical of children’s reports of abuse, despite research showing exactly the opposite.”
“Shockingly, when protective parents request protection for their children from family court, the court gives the children to the abusers. The problem is so pronounced that an investigative reporter called one court “pedophile-friendly,” Ms Valentine says. For more information about Family Abuse cases, click the link.
“We see it all the time. Children of divorce who report abuse, particularly sex abuse, are disbelieved and ignored. They are often removed entirely from their safe parents and placed with their abusers. These children grow up believing abuse is normal and will carry the belief to the next generation,” said Karen Anderson, Executive Director of California Protective Parents Association.
“We have been fortunate in Yolo County. Our county has been a model of safety in the past,” Ms. Valentine added. “However, California Protective Parents Association has been receiving an increasing number of phone calls from protective parents during the last two years about Yolo County Family Court. This problem is now in our backyard.”
This is not a new issue nor is it isolated to Yolo County. In 2009, there were hearings in the state legislature that led to a 17-month audit of the Marin and Sacramento Family Courts.
Senator Mark Leno and Assemblymember Bill Monning pushed for support of the audit, which was approved unanimously in August in a joint vote by six members of the Assembly and six of the Senate.
“We’ve had families complain to us about lack of integrity in the family court system and about a lack of checks and balances,” Assemblymember Monning wrote. “We’re concerned that the system is not working in the best interests of the child.”
The report came back in 2011 with some ominous warnings about the two counties. For instance, Marin County was not able to demonstrate “that all of the seven mediators on staff during the period we audited fulfilled the minimum qualifications, initial training and continuing education to perform mediations.”
The audit findings include a need for both courts to do more to ensure that court appointees have the necessary qualifications and required training, citing instances where appointees failed to provide or misrepresented their qualifications to the courts.
As Kathleen Russell, who heads up the non-profit group Center for Judicial Excellence, wrote, “Quality control issues dominate the report.”
A recent reevaluation of the audit found that Marin County had fixed many of the problems, but Sacramento County, citing budget concerns, has not.
“This extensive audit validates many of the anecdotal stories we have heard from families who have interacted with Family Courts,” said Senator Leno. “Considering they play such a critical role in settling child custody and visitation disputes, it is no small matter that some mediators appointed by the courts do not meet the minimum qualifications established for their positions, or that the courts failed to document their competence.”
The Senator added, “The fact that professionals who are entrusted with the power to determine where children will be placed in highly emotional disputes are not scrutinized to the same degree as a person with a barber’s or a driver’s license is deeply troubling and should serve as a wake-up call to the courts to more thoroughly monitor their credentials.”
“When the lives of children and their families are at stake, it is especially crucial that our courts adequately serve all parties equally. Litigants should be able to navigate the system easily, with confidence that the professionals making important decisions regarding their families have met specific standards,” the Senator said. “I encourage the courts to move forward quickly to implement the recommendations contained in today’s report. I will also be reviewing their professional analysis for any issues that may need to be addressed through state law.”
Last year, following a controversy in Davis where a 14-year-old was removed forcibly by Davis police carrying out a court order, Connie Valentine wrote a letter to the editor.
She wrote, “We asked Assemblymember Mariko Yamada to assist us in making family court safer for children of divorce, who are often placed with abusive or pedophilic parents. Assemblymember Yamada is a champion for vulnerable people. We are ever so hopeful she will choose to assist us in making family court a sanctuary for children, rather than a haven for abusers.”
However, Ms. Valentine reports that after initial enthusiasm, Assemblymember Yamada’s office has no interest in changing existing law.
According to a statement from Mariko Yamada’s office, “A legislative aide met twice with Ms. Valentine and also had a follow-up phone call with her. After researching her legislative ideas, he advised that for a variety of reasons, her proposals did not require legislation.”
To learn more about this pressing social justice and public safety issue, please come to the Nineteenth Annual Child Sexual Abuse Conference put on by the Incest Survivors Speakers’ Bureau and California Protective Parents Association on Saturday, April 27, 2013 from 9:30 to 5:00 at the Veterans’ Memorial Center, 14th and B Streets, Davis, CA.
The title of the conference is “NATIONAL SCANDAL: Family Courts Give Children to Identified Pedophiles.”
An award will be presented to Senator Jim Beall for his outstanding work on SB 131, a bill to eliminate the statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims.
Speakers include domestic violence expert Linda Barnard, Ph.D., researchers Geraldine Stahly, Ph.D and Nancy Steubner, M.A, who will present their research on children of divorce placed with identified sex abusers; Kathleen Russell, Executive Director of the Center for Judicial Excellence; and journalist Jane Stevens, who will discuss the effects of trauma on children as demonstrated by the Adverse Childhood Experiences study. The award winning documentary No Way Out But One will be shown.
This public service event is free to the public. No reservations are needed. For more information: http://www.issb.us
—David M. Greenwald reporting
This article says there are an increasing number of complaints in Yolo County, not problems.
Connie Valentine: “This problem is now in our backyard.”
Based on what? So far I’ve seen one possible issue which was highlighted on the VG. That complaint was such a dud Yamada stepped away from it.
When Valentine’s opinion was deemed less than worthy of changing the law…the people’s representative spoke loudly.
One must wonder, what else might Valentine be wrong about?
Hmmm…
First of all, Yamada is no champion for justice.
Second, where there’s smoke, there’s fire… and there’s a lot smoke billowing out of the Yolo Family Court.
Just ask some attorneys to share some examples of the judges: mocking the Constitution, flagrantly violating the law, losing their composure, criticizing participants, ignoring their own orders and the orders from other courts, etc. You don’t have to be a genius to recognize that there will be abuses whenever one individual is entrusted with so much power; particularly, when there is virtually no accountability.
One father, who was repeatedly seeking more time with his child, was told that a telephone call was sufficient visitation and to be grateful for even that “courtesy.” There was nothing “wrong” with the father.
Another father repeatedly sought more time with his daughter, to prevent the child from becoming a victim of the mother’s abuse. To punish the father’s persistence, the court gradually reduced the father’s parenting time to zero. As the father feared, the daughter was raped by the mother’s boyfriend. Now the daughter blames the father and refuses to have any contact with him.
I’m confident I could inundate the reader with more examples after just skimming the family court files.
The judges should be prosecuted for their crimes.
@AP, to which ‘Crimes’ do your refer?