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Banned
Near Boston
More chicanery from the underworld
of family law.
by
Stephen Baskerville
by Stephen Baskerville, PhD
       
Nearly ninety
years ago, when divorce liberalization
was being advocated by feminists,
G.K. Chesterton warned in
The Superstition of Divorce
that undermining the family
would imperil civic freedom.
His warning
was vindicated recently when
Massachusetts family court judge
Mary Manzi outlawed a book that
criticizes government officials.
Manzi herself is sharply criticized
in the book but obviously did
not recuse herself from the
proceeding.
On March 24,
Kevin Thompson received an order
prohibiting distribution of
his book,
Exposing the Corruption in the
Massachusetts Family Courts.
The court also impounded the
records of Thompson’s custody
case, reinforcing the secrecy
in which family courts like
to operate.
The standard
justification for secret courts
is the one Judge Manzi now extends
to censorship: "privacy
interests of the parties' minor
child." Thompson’s son
has already been forcibly separated
from his father, and his life
is now under the total control
of state officials. What "privacy"
does this child have left? Thompson
understands that the true reason
for the secrecy and censorship
is not to protect privacy but
to invade it with impunity:
"The only interests that
are protected are the interests
of the racketeers and hypocrites
who invade ‘family privacy’
by removing loving fathers from
the lives of their children
against their will and without
just cause to fill their pockets."
Many people
have trouble believing the harrowing
tales of human rights abuses
now taking place in American
family courts and wonder why,
if they are true, we do not
hear more about it. Perhaps
because in many jurisdictions
it is a crime to criticize family
court judges or otherwise discuss
family law cases publicly. In
other words, censorship works.
Thompson’s
case is not isolated. Under
the pretext of "family
privacy," parents are gagged
and arrested for criticizing
the courts:
- Alice Tulanowksi of New
Brunswick, New Jersey, was
placed under a gag rule
in 2000, though judges and
the New Jersey Chapter of
the Association of Family
and Conciliation Courts
were left "free to
discuss the intimate details
of Alice’s case" in
public.
- Stanley Rains of Victoria,
Texas, in 2001 was gagged
"from speaking, writing,
or publishing his opinions"
about why he was cut off
from his daughter for more
than two years, according
to court documents. The
order covers private conversations
and discussions with mental
health professionals and
his minister. Issued with
no evidentiary hearing,
the order followed an article
Rains published in Fathering
Magazine. He was also prohibited
from criticizing a city
council candidate who was
a divorce lawyer. The order
precluded Rains from photographing
death threats written on
his mother’s car.
- The former husband of
singer Wynonna Judd was
arrested and jailed for
talking to reporters about
his divorce.
- A California judge shut
down the web site of the
Committee to Expose Dishonest
and Incompetent Attorneys
and Judges in 2001.
- In 2005, Texas Attorney
General Greg Abbott formally
asked a federal court to
punish Charles Edward Lincoln,
for criticizing the state’s
family courts. Abbott termed
the criticism, which consisted
in filing some court papers,
"bloodless terrorism."
Outright censorship
is only the start, since judges
usually prefer more subtle methods
for stopping the mouths of their
critics. Thompson is also being
forced to pay the attorneys
who advocated the book ban.
This practice has the marvelous
double effect of providing booty
for the judge’s cronies and
justifying incarceration of
critics who cannot pay the instant
"debt." Following
his criticism of the family
courts in testimony to Congress,
Jim Wagner of the Georgia Council
for Children’s Rights was stripped
of custody of his two children
and ordered to pay $6,000 in
fees of attorneys he had not
hired. He was soon after arrested
for nonpayment.
Censorship
of speech and press is only
the tip of the iceberg and serves
to cloak even more serious constitutional
and human rights violations.
Writing in the Rutgers Law Review,
David Heleniak recently revealed
the "due process fiasco"
of family law. Calling family
courts "an area of law
mired in intellectual dishonesty
and injustice," Heleniak
identifies six major denials
of due process by which courts
seize children and railroad
innocent parents into jail:
denial of trial by jury, denial
of poor defendants to free counsel,
denial of right to take depositions,
lack of evidentiary hearings,
lack of notice, and improper
standard of proof. In family
law, "the burden of proof
may be shifted to the defendant,"
according to a handbook for
local officials published by
the National Conference of State
Legislatures. Dean Roscoe Pound
writes that "the powers
of the Star Chamber were a trifle
in comparison with those of
our juvenile court and courts
of domestic relations."
In fact, even
this only scratches the surface.
One can run point-by-point down
the Bill of Rights and other
constitutional protections,
and there is hardly a clause
that is not routinely ignored
or violated in family law, where
practices include mass incarcerations
without trial, summary expropriations,
presumption of guilt, coerced
confessions, ex post facto provisions,
bills of attainder, and more.
Family courts and their hangers-on
are by far the greatest violators
of constitutional rights in
America today.
Journalists
of both the left and right studiously
ignore these violations, as
do "human rights"
groups, even when shown undeniable
evidence. It will be interesting
to see if they can ignore censorship
that touches their own profession.
For his part,
Thompson says he intends to
ignore the censorship. "Everything
that I am doing right now is
for my son," he declares.
"I will not be shut up."
April 4, 2006
Stephen Baskerville
[send
him mail] is a political
scientist and president of the
American Coalition for Fathers
and Children. The views expressed
are his own.
Copyright
© 2006 Stephen Baskerville
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