In March, a Yolo County jury returned a guilty verdict for Nan-Hui Jo on a single count of parental abduction. Ms. Jo was a Korean mother who fled with her young daughter back to South Korea in what she thought was the ending of a stormy and abusive relationship with the girl’s father.
However, five years later, last July, upon landing in Hawaii, she was arrested by custom’s officials and flown back to Yolo County where she awaited trial. After a hung jury in December, the second trial brought a guilty verdict after one of the jurors recused herself, believing that the laws were unjust and failed to protect both the mother and the child.
The trial of Nan-Hui Jo is one of many each year that the Vanguard Court Watch monitors and reports on. While the Court Watch focuses primarily on the criminal court system and various injustices, over the years one of worst systems has been the family court system.
Over the years, we have heard accounts of grave injustices within the Family Court system. Children in particular are vulnerable and are in need of protection, but, all too often, the court system favors those most able to afford an attorney and leave millions of children in situations where they are in dangerous conditions.
Family court has to deal with highly emotionally-charged and high-conflict problems of divorce and child custody, which often bleeds into issues of substance abuse, domestic violence and child abuse.
The judges, lawyers and counselors often lack the training to deal with these highly complex problems.
Keynote speaker of our upcoming event, Kathleen Russell, helped to found the Center for Judicial Excellence in 2006, as a non-profit “established to improve the judiciary’s public accountability and strengthen and maintain the integrity of the courts.”
They have helped to expose court failures and push for judicial accountability through the media. “The Center has been especially effective at working to protect the rights of children whose parents are going through divorce, and the organization has been in the forefront of exposing a national crisis in the family court system that is harming millions of innocent children,” they write.
The Center has had some critical success, working with Assemblymember Fiona Ma on AB 1050, that grants California children the right to testify in family court, a law that took effect in January 2012.
In 2011, the Center worked with Senator Mark Leno to secure an audit of the Marin and Sacramento County Family Courts. The California State Auditor issued an alarming report in January 2011 about the significant lack of training or accountability for court appointees in these counties.
This year, Senator Bob Wieckowski has introduced a new bill to bring more consistency statewide to the laws involving the counselors and evaluators who advise the court on child custody decisions. It would require the Judicial Council of California to develop a child custody evaluation form by Jan. 1, 2016 to be used by every investigator or evaluator conducting child custody evaluations.
The event will also feature a panel discussion of parents, children, lawyers and advocates familiar with the family court system who can discuss its shortcomings from first-hand knowledge.
Join us on Saturday May 9 for the dinner and panel discussion. Doors open at 5:30 and the event begins at 6 pm at the Davis Community Church located at 421 D St, Davis, CA 95616.
Tickets are $45 in advance and $50 at the door with a limited number of $25 tickets reserved for students and those with economic hardship.
To purchase tickets please go to: https://secure.yourpatriot.com/ou/dpd/150/1545/eventsignup.aspx
I have personally been involved with over one dozen battered women. The only aspect of this case that perplexes me is the bit of info that the mom pushed her baby in the face of the dad. Would a battered woman push her baby into the face of her batterer? This case confuses me. No offense intended to any of the parties. Domestic violence is a very serious offense and a very serious accusation for any man or woman to make.
sisterhood
“Would a battered woman push her baby into the face of her batterer? “
I am sorry for the delay in response. It took me a while to process this comment. I finally figured out what was troubling to me here. I believe that your question is based on the assumption that she was acting rationally and with forethought. It does not take into account that this may have been out of temporary lack of tolerance or temporary desperation to get help with a child who had exceeded her capacity in that moment to meet the child’s needs. I think as parents that we can all think of that dark moment when all we wanted was for a child to stop crying. I have placed children in their infant swing, or in their crib crying and left the room, or placed in them in their car seat and driven around at three in the morning in the desperate hope that they would just stop crying and go to sleep. I have, in exhaustion, handed my children off to their father ( who although not violent, was far, far from the loving caring parent I had hoped for) when I was at the end of my rope. This incident apparently occurred before he had grabbed her by the throat. Domestic violence tends to be episodic and tends to escalate. I do not believe that without much more information about her mind set at the time, too much should be read into this one episode.
The woman’s motivation seems clear enough to me. From the start, she has used the baby as a bargaining chip and passport.
I find it disgusting that so many seem to be taken in by her charade.
;>)/