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Leila Marie Tarantino (DOB 10/24/1976) of Citrus Springs, Florida, claims that on July 17, 2011, she was pulled over by Citrus County Sheriff Department officers on South Columbia Street in Beverly Hills, Florida, for rolling through a stop sign, an offense she denies committing. She claims she fully stopped at the stop sign, then a police car did a U-turn to stop her vehicle. She says her two kids ages 4 and 1 were in the car with her and got a full view of the malevolent antics of the police as they pointed a gun in her face, removed her from her car, and put her in a squad car for two hours. She claims that when backup arrived, the cops then proceeded to strip search her along the side of the road, and forcibly pulled a tampon out of her in a search for contraband. She was then released with a traffic citation for violating restrictions on her driver’s license.

Here’s a copy of the lawsuit filed against the Sheriff Jeffrey Dawsy (who is alleged to have personally approved of the strip search in this incident), the department, the Citrus County government, and six other unnamed officers including five men and one woman. The female police officer is the one alleged to have pulled the tampon out from Tarantino.

Tarantino Tampon Lawsuit

According to Florida Statute 901.211, strip searches are unlawful for such a traffic stop:

2011 Florida Statutes: 901.211 Strip searches of persons arrested; body cavity search

(1) As used in this section, the term “strip search” means having an arrested person remove or arrange some or all of his or her clothing so as to permit a visual or manual inspection of the genitals; buttocks; anus; breasts, in the case of a female; or undergarments of such person.
(2) No person arrested for a traffic, regulatory, or misdemeanor offense, except in a case which is violent in nature, which involves a weapon, or which involves a controlled substance, shall be strip searched unless:
(a) There is probable cause to believe that the individual is concealing a weapon, a controlled substance, or stolen property; or
(b) A judge at first appearance has found that the person arrested cannot be released either on recognizance or bond and therefore shall be incarcerated in the county jail.
(3) Each strip search shall be performed by a person of the same gender as the arrested person and on premises where the search cannot be observed by persons not physically conducting or observing the search pursuant to this section. Any observer shall be of the same gender as the arrested person.
(4) Any body cavity search must be performed under sanitary conditions.
(5) No law enforcement officer shall order a strip search within the agency or facility without obtaining the written authorization of the supervising officer on duty.
(6) Nothing in this section shall be construed as limiting any statutory or common-law right of any person for purposes of any civil action or injunctive relief.

Is Tarantino Truthful?

But did this incident happen as Tarantino describes? The Citrus County Sheriff Department says Tarantino is lying and making false accusations. They point to Tarantino’s extensive court history including criminal history including a history of alleged domestic violence in 2011 and numerous traffic violations including hit and run driving, repeated DUIs, and repeatedly driving with a suspended license.
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On April 3, 2012, Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Alan Friendthal was publicly admonished by a 9 to 1 vote of the California Commission on Judicial Performance for abusive conduct in violation of judicial canons of the California Code of Judicial Ethics in five family law cases in June 2007 to January 2009. CJP found that he engaged in improper conduct including verbal abuse of litigants, engaging in ex-parte communications, conducting independent investigations which is clearly not part of his job duties, complaining to litigants about formal legal complaints they had filed against him, and demonstrating that he was personally embroiled in the cases before him.

Laura Lynn is a California mother who has been abused by the family courts of Los Angeles. Commissioner Alan Friendenthal presided over many hearings in her family law case and her case is one of those cited as evidence of Friedenthal’s misconduct in the form of creating apparent bias and clearly showing his personal embroilment in the case before him. In her case and others, Friedenthal improperly acted as an investigator, contacted third parties involved on his own behalf, and outside of hearings reviewed web postings written by litigants and then complained about those postings during hearings. CJP found that he was improperly conducted investigations and engaging in ex-parte communications.

In a stunning example of how the courts value money over children and the law, Friedenthal threatened to remove custody from a father who was to have the child with him because of alleged abuse by the child’s stepfather. When the father pointed out he could not afford to pay for a custody evaluation all at once and asked for a payment plan, Friedenthal threatened to place the child with other relatives:

At a hearing on July 3,2007, arrangements were made for the minor child to return by airplane to his father’s residence from his mother’s residence in another state pending a custody hearing set for August 3,2007. A supplementary custody evaluation had been ordered. Commissioner Friedenthal ordered the father to pay over $4,000 in fees for minor’s counsel and the supplemental custody evaluation. When the father raised his hand to address the issue of payment, Commissioner Friedenthal responded by threatening to place the child with grandparents, as follows:

[FATHER]: I’m not refusing to pay. I owe a lot of people money –

THE COURT: Okay. This needs to be grandparentplacement because he can’t afford to pay the rates for the child. f^J Where do the [grand]parents live?

[FATHER’S COUNSEL]: Mexico.

THE COURT: [Mother]?

[10-fl]

[MOTHER]: My parents are in Mexico.

THE COURT: You have brothers?

[MOTHER]: I have a brother in Moorpark.

111… [11

THE COURT: I want [minor’s counsel] to talk to the brother in Moorpark. [f] Will you provide that information?

[FATHER’S COUNSEL]: My client is simply saying he’d like to have a payment arrangement. On that basis, you are going to order –

THE COURT: Marsha Wiley is going to do this evaluation. If I have to stand on my head and walk on my hands all the way down McKay –

[FATHER]: I’m asking for three payments, sir.

[FATHER’S COUNSEL]: Rather than-

[MOTHER’S COUNSEL]: Miss Wiley does not accept that. Most evaluators request –

THE COURT: She wanted 2,500?

[MINOR’S COUNSEL]: No; 3,500 which is very modest.

THE COURT: Follow my order. That’s it. No more discussion. [Tf] What is your brother’s name in Moorpark?

[10 [Mother’s counsel] is to provide his name and number to [minor’s counsel] for appropriateness of some shared custody.

(R.T. 15:5-16:10.)

Commissioner Friedenthal’s threat to award custody of the child to other family members in response to the father’s statements that he was not refusing to pay fees but wanted a payment plan constituted a threatened abuse of authority and violated canons 1, 2A and 3B(4). At his appearance before the commission, the commissioner maintained that his statement concerning a grandparent placement was based on his concerns about the father’s parenting abilities. This assertion is refuted by the fact that the commissioner had already ordered a supplemental custody evaluation report and scheduled a custody hearing for the following month, as well as by the commissioner’s own words: “This needs to be a grandparent placement because he can’t afford to pay the rates for the child” (Italicsadded.)

Commissioner Friedenthal’s conduct in the matters described above was, at a minimum, improper action.

Other cases cited as evidence of misconduct by Friedenthal include those of Tonja Jarrett and Maria Chiarello.

Many other allegations of violations of judicial ethics codes and laws have been leveled against Friedenthal that appear to go beyond the scope of the CJP investigation. See a Topix discussion thread on Alan Friedenthal for more examples such as allegations he was practicing as an attorney while servicing as a court commissioner and alleged failure to file Statement of Economic Interests (Form 700) as required for court judicial officers.

Laura Lynn contends that the misconduct of Friedenthal extends far beyond the contents of the CJP report:

Quoted from Who complained about Commissioner Alan Friedenthal?:

The story is much bigger than the simple little order written. It is my contention that Commissioner Friedenthal was a conspirator to commit fraud and aided and abetted convicted child abductor Crystel Lynn Strellioff to conceal the children she abducted. He and his wife Commissioner Steff Padilla also adopted two children whose mother’s parental rights were completely severed with no apparent reason. The biological mother has a tidy home, does not seem to be using illegal drugs and is a practicing Mormon, married to a substitute school teacher.

Friendenthal was removed from hearing family law cases, but is still a judicial officer in Los Angeles County. LA Times reports that he was reassigned to small claims, civil, and unlawful detainer cases in February 2009.

Friedenthal should be removed from the bench entirely. But as is typical of CJP’s usual glacial paced disciplinary actions that take years to result in a report, the “severe public admonishment” doesn’t go far enough to repair the damage Friedenthal has done to the public and his victims and to prevent his abuses of law from recurring.

CJP’s severe public admonishment means so little that he was elected to be secretary-treasurer of the executive board of the California Judges Association two months after his severe public admonishment. California judges want abusers and criminals among them and regard such people as important leaders of their corrupt racketeering influenced organization.

The full text of the severe public admonishment of Alan Friedenthal is available on the CJP website.

Judge Elizabeth Feffer reportedly replaced Friedenthal on a number of contentious family law cases. But there are many concerns being expressed about problems with Feffer’s judicial conduct and integrity, also. One anonymous litigant reports that Feffer cited as reason to change custody of children the fact that the litigant had filed complaints against Friedenthal:

Judge Feffer crossed the line – in her statment of decision to transfer custody to the abusive father, she cited, for 14 pages in her statement of decision, our “harassing complaints of the prior Commissioner”.

Too bad that her Statement of Decision, done in December, 2011, was just a few months ahead of the Public Admonishment of that poor Commissioner.

If that is true, then Feffer should be subjected to the even more severe punishment than Friedenthal has received for his comments about complaints against him. Punishing a litigant for filing a complaint against the court that when investigated turns out to be valid is a ridiculous abuse of justice.

Further Reading

California judicial panel admonishes L.A. County commissioner

CJP Admonishes Commissioner Alan Friedenthal

Musings about the late admonishment of Commissioner Alan H. Friedenthal

CJP Investigation of Judge Lisa Schall Heats Up, Citizen Input Sought

San Diego Judge DeAnn Salcido Resigns Under Fire, Yet Shows CJP Is Corrupt

San Diego Judge DeAnn Salcido Demeans Litigants and Justice to Create Demo Videos for Her Proposed TV Show

Sacramento Judge Peter James McBrien Dismembers Park Trees and Families In Contempt for Law

Two of the most basic premises in Western jurisprudence are impartiality of the judge and that the judge must follow the law and rulings of higher courts. Family Law Judge William Watkins of Putnam County, West Virginia, has repeatedly demonstrated that he is unable to perform either of these basic job duties. West Virginia has a legal obligation to remove this abusive man from the family law bench and to document his abusive conduct publicly to help ensure that no litigant in any court will ever be treated as unjustly and irresponsibly by him again.

Watkins first came to my attention based upon the video below that features him yelling, screaming, and threatening a quiet elderly man named Revered Arthur Hage in a family law hearing over sale of the family home in a divorce. From the very start of the tirade, Watkins makes it clear that he will not allow Hage to speak on threat of imprisonment. He then launches in a verbal tirade making accusations against Hage. The screaming is so loud that it causes the microphone and recording system to distort and clip the audio.

Whether the accusations are true or not, I don’t claim to know. More importantly, the truth or falseness of the accusations is actually besides the point because the judge’s accusations are not about the case being heard but rather about a newspaper article featuring a photograph of Hage’s home and his wife and alleged vandalism of the home that he claims is somehow Hage’s fault. Can there be any kind of conflict of interest more obvious than this?

Watkins has attacked many people in the community over their questioning his impartiality, his lateness on HOA (homeowner’s association) payments, and other problems involving him. His verbal rage at Hage exposes how he thinks he can use his position as a judge to retaliate against people in his courtroom simply because he believes they have something to do with his personal problems.

Watkins had a duty to immediately recuse himself from this case because of his personal feelings and strong conflict of interest. He should have done so by a proper written judicial recusal communicated to both parties, and this would have precluded his ridiculously abusive outburst in court. But Watkins failed to do so, instead holding a hearing to berate a litigant over personal matters and then proceeding to hear the matter thereby showing a complete inability to behave appropriately for a judge.

Even if Hage had personally spray painted, smashed windows, and littered trash at Watkins’ home and there was absolute proof of this such as by a video recording (to be clear, nobody claims there is such proof), Watkins still would have had no business behaving this way. The correct course of action would be to recuse from the case and let the police and prosecutor deal with Hage.
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Brian Banks was a 16 year old high school football star in Long Beach, California, when a lying girl and the government collaborated to ruin his life. He was falsely accused of rape by classmate Wanetta Gibson after the two had kissed in a stairwell. Gibson concocted an elaborate story claiming that Banks dragged her across campus and raped her. Even though Banks did not commit the crime and in fact there had been no rape at all, his attorney advised him to seek a plea bargain to get a lighter sentence as the government was threatening him with 41 years to life in prison. Choosing what he saw as the lesser of two bad options after his lawyer suggested he would be convicted because he is black, Banks plead “no contest” and was imprisoned for over five years was then put on probation. Upon release, he was forced to wear a GPS monitor, register as a violent sex offender, and was restricted from living near or going near schools.

False accuser Wanetta Gibson is the real rapist (as in financial rape) in this story. She and her family got a large settlement (variously reported as either being $750,000 or $1.5 million) from the Long Beach School District on the basis of her lies and claims that lax school security contributed to causing her “rape”.

Gibson this year admitted Banks did not rape her, but was worried she might have to repay the fraudulently obtained settlement. Students, investigators, and attorneys associated with the California Innocence Project helped to obtain evidence that Gibson had falsely accused Banks which resulted in the overturning of his conviction on May 24, 2012.

As the California Innocence Project web page on the Banks case explains:

Banks was faced with an impossible decision at the time – either fight the charges and risk spending 41 years-to-life in prison, or take a plea deal and spend a little over 5 years of actual prison confinement. Although it would mean destroying his chance to go to college and play football, a lengthy probationary period, and a lifetime of registration as a sex offender, Banks chose the lesser of two evils when he pleaded no contest to the charges.

Teri Stoddard of SAVE (Stop Abusive and Violent Environments) is calling for the prosecution of Wanetta Gibson as part of their effort to quash the epidemic of false allegations of crime and violence that are ruining the lives of many innocent people. She reports that roughly ten percent of Americans have been falsely accused of child abuse, domestic violence, or sexual assault and there are very few protections for such people.

Gibson should be prosecuted for perjury. But that doesn’t go far enough. She should also be prosecuted for criminal fraud that cost taxpayers and insurers an enormous settlement plus legal fees in this case featuring a lying girl and an irresponsible government that encourages more liars to level false allegations by failing to prosecute such crimes.

Significant financial restitution and assistance to Brian Banks and his family is also warranted. It should be paid by the LA County District Attorney, the State of California, and Gibson to Banks and his family.

This boy was placed into prison at the age of 16 years old for 5 years for a rape that did not occur simply because a girl lied against him and the government failed to do its job to determine the truth, instead preferring to bully an innocent child into letting himself be steamrolled by the government because he was male and black and therefore was assumed to be guilty based merely upon a disputed accusation and his race and gender.

Brian Banks is a poster case for the injustices against men and African-American men in particular. If his accuser had been of some other racial group (she is African-American, too), you can get her crime would be the fuse in a powder keg of a potential racial uprising in Los Angeles. There is no doubt that racial bias played a part in the success of the State of California coercing Banks into pleading no contest.
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Soner Yasa is a cab driver in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, who experienced a horrific ordeal that presented a dire threat to his personal freedom. Yasa was falsely accused of a crime against women. As so many men experience, the police are ready and willing to abuse the actual victim of a crime and encourage future criminal conduct when the criminal is a dishonest woman and the victim is a man.

In Yasa’s case, four drunk women reported to police that he had sexually assaulted them as a ploy to refuse to pay a $13 cab fare. It was only thanks to his cab’s audio and video surveillance equipment that he was spared jail.

Yasa had picked up the four women outside a bar on Whyte Avenue. He says they hopped into his cab “uninvited” and then demanded to be driven to a residential neighborhood. At least one of the intoxicated women tried smoking in his cab. He told them they could not do this because it is illegal and could trigger a $500 fine. They demanded he stop the cab and refused to pay the $13 fare. The women then proceeded to falsely report their allegation of sexual assault to the police and to their friends and onlookers, allegedly triggering a mob of people to acting threateningly towards Yasa until police arrived and could investigate.
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Recently I was listening to an Internet talk show featuring Dr. Tara Palmatier of Shrink4Men and Paul Elam of A Voice for Men. A caller related a story about how his friend showed up for a court hearing to finalize his divorce and was physically assaulted in the court house by his ex and then falsely accused by her and arrested by the police. This story and several others I have heard and read provide ample cause for a revision in US laws to permit private video and audio recording in courthouses to be used for the protection of the people who are forced to appear in courthouses.

It occurred to me that some people may think being arrested for being a victim of assault in a courthouse sounds far out, but in fact it is not unusual conduct for abusers to go after their target in a court or public setting by staging attacks or simply making up false allegations. For details on this particular incident, listen to the radio program about 64 minutes into the show if you don’t have the time to listen to the whole program.

Another person who has been attacked by his ex in a courthouse is family law reform activist Ben Vonderheide of Pennsylvania. His ex and her new boyfriend conspired to attempt to frame him for assault in a courthouse and made false reports to police to attempt to get him arrested. But because he relentlessly employs audio and video recording devices, even when he is threatened over how they are not allowed and he thereby risks his own false arrest, he was able to prove they assaulted him. This resulted in what is claimed to be the one and only prosecution for perjury in a family law case in the United States.

Ben Vonderheide Exposes Pennsylvania’s Abusive Child Profiteering Racket

Vonderheide’s abusive ex and her latest boyfriend Theodore Yoder were convicted of repeatedly lying to police to try to get Vonderheide arrested on false allegations. The convictions occurred in part because Vonderheide had very convincing evidence. He video and audio records constantly because of his extended experience with pathological liar Flanders, especially if she might be in the area. If he didn’t have those recordings, he might have wound up in prison for a very long time. That’s because in the US, domestic violence and restraining order violation allegations are treated as guilty until proven innocent crimes in violation of the US Constitution. You have to prove your innocence, yet even when you do, you can still be hounded with persecution via a record of criminal accusations that will cost you jobs, income, and your reputation potentially for the rest of your life.

Vonderheide finds himself a frequent target for physical violence and false allegations because he asks questions of backers of the abusive family courts and gender-biased domestic violence laws. These people seek to intimidate and harass him any way they can. When he showed up at the US Senate to ask questions of those backing renewal of the sexist VAWA law, National Organization of Women attorney Lisalyn R. Jacobs physically assaulted him. This abusive physically violent woman is a domestic violence expert for CNN and the New York Times. She espouses the “men are violent, women are victims” drivel that is one the primary reasons behind the total failure of the DV industry to put a stop to violence in families, yet she herself is violent and her actions prove she is a liar when it comes to the DV claims pursued by her gender-biased organization.
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Pop culture would have you believe that summer is a carefree time for kids and the holidays are a wonderful time of the year for family. But many parents suffering from the psychological warfare campaign of a psycho ex dread the summers and holidays because it is often at these times of the year that the psycho ex creates even more conflict than usual. Whether the dreaded ex best fits the label of a psycho, an alienator, a Borderline, a Narcissist, or a sociopath, the behaviors regarding summers and holidays are usually highly disruptive and destructive to both the quality and quantity of time you have with the kids.

School Schedules Help Ensure Child Time Share Consistency

When the kids are in school, there is often consistent structure and predictability to the time you can see your kids. Picking up kids from school and dropping them off there often works very well for several reasons. First and foremost, the other parent has no business being there at those times so the loyalty conflicts and emotional and verbal abuse that go hand-in-hand with the presence of the psycho are often not so severe at school. Secondly, the kids see that school pickups and dropoffs are exactly what all their other classmates are doing, too, even the ones whose families haven’t been destroyed by divorce and child custody battles. This generally means they don’t feel as stigmatized or traumatized about exchanges done at school. Finally, the school schedule tends to be rather consistent. This means the kids know what the expect. The reduced uncertainty takes a bit of their worries away and you don’t have to renegotiate your time with the kids every week.

But when school is out, you are stuck with having to find alternate pickup and dropoff locations. With a psycho ex, you may be best off hiring a professional custody exchange service or using a police station that has extensive video surveillance to help reduce the chances of being falsely accused or stalked.

Childcare Centers and Camps

Childcare centers can be convenient pickup and dropoff locations as they share some features with school exchanges. A childcare center is more likely to be neutral and safe than a private residence. Also only one parent needs to be there at a time regarding child pickups and drop-offs.

Sometimes the summers and holidays result in the whole schedule going up for grabs, even if the court orders are not written that way. Some psycho parents put their kids in childcare virtually all the time, even when the other parent volunteers to provide free childcare for the kids during weekdays and let the psycho ex have the weekends. Then the psycho ex sends the other parent the bill for the needless childcare, demanding the abused parent pay half or all of the childcare expenses. Some of these psycho parents are so mentally ill that they would prefer to have little time with the kids so they can stick it to the ex for childcare expenses.

But sometimes instead of a basic childcare center, the psycho parent instead seeks out camps that have schedules that will interfere with the other parent’s time with the kids. Psycho dumps the kids in all-day camps or even overnight away camps that make it more difficult for you to retrieve the kids. For instance, she or he may sign them up for a camp that buses the kids to some location an hour away or has them on the water or at an amusement park on rides where they cannot be readily retrieved when your time with them is supposed to start. So your regular midweek visit with the kids suddenly gets cut short an hour, two, or more because of this active interference.

Court Order Violations

Dumping the kids into camps that curtail your time with them is often a direct violation of court orders that state that parents are not to schedule activities for the kids during the other parent’s time without prior written agreement. But if you have a psycho ex, you know that these mentally damaged people interpret court orders to constrain your actions while believing court orders have no effect whatsoever on them.
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In the heavily contested election race for San Diego mayor, there’s one candidate whom you should clearly not support: Bonnie Dumanis, the District Attorney of San Diego County. It’s probably impossible to create a full list of all the nefarious actions and inactions she has committed during her career, but the following are a few highlights to give you a flavor of what Dumanis represents. You can also find additional concerning reports regarding Dumanis on Maura Larkins’ summary of coverage on the suspicious actions of Bonnie Dumanis.

Dumanis Ignores Crimes By Lawyers and Government Employees

As the San Diego Union Tribune reported, the San Diego DA office frequently fails to prosecute lawyers and other current or former government employees for serious crimes. DA Bonnie Dumanis is well known for her pattern of irresponsible failure to prosecute people who have connections to the courts and government.

Quoted from Critics: DA should prosecute problem lawyers:

After a trial late last year, the State Bar Court of California concluded that Carlsbad lawyer Patricia Gregory improperly withdrew more than $112,000 from client trust funds.

A judge recommended Gregory for disbarment in March, and the attorney is fighting the decision. She is not eligible to practice law while the review process runs its course.

Gregory has not been prosecuted, nor have several other attorneys who faced such findings from the bar. Critics say the District Attorney’s Office should act in such cases, but the staff says there are many complicating factors, such as different standards of proof and the need to set priorities.

In San Diego County, you can expect that short of mainstream media raising a crime by one of these people to the public’s attention, there will be no prosecution even when it is warranted. A lawyer stealing funds from a client such as former DA employee Patricia Gregory (who was eventually prosecuted for taking over $100,000 in client funds), government employees and contractors perjuring in court and causing millions of dollars in damage to their victims, and engaging in malicious false prosecutions are all among the types of crimes the San Diego DA would like to ignore. Failing to prosecute such crimes in presence of compelling evidence they did occur thereby encourages such criminal conduct to continue.

In the case of Patricia Gregory, Dumanis was forced by public pressure to prosecute her and a conviction was obtained. But how many other cases were brushed under the carpet and stayed there because the public didn’t press the DA to prosecute obvious criminal behaviors for which credible evidence was available?

San Diego family court critic Eileen Lasher has also criticized District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis for failing to protect the community from lawyers committing crimes. One of her examples is how San Diego attorney Theresa Erickson engaged in “baby selling crimes” violating California adoption and surrogacy laws for years as DA Dumanis and the San Diego courts looked the other way. Seemingly because of the severe corruption throughout government and courts in the San Diego region, it took US federal government intervention to put a stop to the baby selling ring.

Dumanis Prosecutes Based Upon Political Agenda

If you are a decision-maker working for the government who is friendly to her or are a wealthy friend of somebody in such a role in San Diego County, Bonnie Dumanis will tend to ignore your violations of the law. That is unless you are running for office against her or one of her friends. Then she is ready to abuse the powers of her office to wrongly harass you for daring to oppose her, even when no crime has been committed. She organized a “Public Integrity Unit” run by Patrick O’Toole which was obviously used to implement this policy.
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NOTE: This collaboratively written article incorporates text by multiple authors including Rob, Alison, and Chris.

Divorce is one of the most stressful experiences most people endure, right up there with a death in the family, job loss and extended unemployment, or a medical catastrophe such as cancer. When you add to the mix a child custody battle with a Personality Disordered Abuser as your adversary, you will likely experience years of false allegations, be kicked out of your home, see your kids and family suffer the abuse of parental alienation, experience frequent misconduct by the courts, see your reputation ruined by defamation, suffer job loss and chronic underemployment or unemployment, and many other damages. During such a hellish experience, it is only natural to be depressed, anxious, and suffer chronic sleep problems. The continual stress results in what may initially appear as psychological problems but which inevitably result in physiological damage to one’s health.

Many suffering from this nightmare will seek medical help from their general practitioner or psychiatrist. At some level they know the stress-related symptoms they are experiencing are not “all in their heads” as some may claim. Sometimes medical practitioners do help, other times they begin another series of upsets to their patient’s health. That’s because the mainstream therapies used by many doctors often include too quickly prescribing common antidepressants and anxiolytic medications that have a plethora of adverse effects on health. Fortunately, there are alternatives that can often help without the need for these medications or can help to reduce the prescription medication dosages required and thereby help avert some of the worst of the side effects.

Psychotherapy Is Not A Cure

When you visit your doctor or psychiatrist and explain how you can’t sleep and are depressed and anxious from the horrors of the family law system, first of all you should realize that most of these medical practitioners don’t really understand you or your situation. Unless one has been through the nightmare of the family law courts or has seen the destruction they inflict upon a close family member or friend, it’s hard to have any real understanding of this miserable reality.

Some medical providers may brush off your request for medication, pointing out that your stress is temporary and will go away in a few months and advise you to see a psychologist or therapist. While good psychologists and therapists can certainly provide some help, what they can do is often not enough as the manifestations of the family law crisis often include physiological illness brought on by chronic stress.

Many psychotherapists simply aren’t much use in such difficult situations. First of all, for a chance of good results you must find one who has some experience with the family law system and forms of child abuse including parental alienation. If you pick a therapist who has never set foot in a family court room and seen how dysfunctional the system is, you are far less likely to get competent treatment or helpful advice.

Many psychotherapists have zero experience in family law battles. They may be experts at substance abuse, marital arguments, or helping people suffering job loss but know nothing about extreme divorce and child custody battles. Even those who do have some experience often lack a full appreciation of how abusive, arbitrary, and destructive the family law courts are to their victims and how it frequently takes nothing but an unproven false allegation to put a good parent who has broken no laws and abused nobody into a no-contact or expensive supervised visitation situation that is itself a form of emotional abuse.

Naive therapists may be operating under the mistaken impression that you can’t be kicked out of your home and have all your property and assets taken from you without a chance to present your side of the story or at least some evidence of wrongdoing. But in today’s family law courts, it is not unusual for that to happen. One lie is all it takes to ruin months or years of the lives of the falsely accused parent and his or her children. A second lie is often all it takes to amplify the damage tenfold. The general public fails to understand this, and so do most therapists.

A really excellent therapist for you should also be expertly familiar with personality disorders and sociopathic abuse patterns. Some therapists run away from personality disorder cases as fast as they can. They know how dangerous these people can be to them personally. Others are totally ignorant of how destructive personality disorders can be to the misfortunate ones who married and/or had children with a person suffering one of the DSM-IV Axis II Cluster B personality disorders including Borderline, Narcissistic, Histrionic, and Antisocial personality disorders. Ideally, you want a therapist who knows a lot about personality disorders and is brave enough to help you face off with one of these people. “Brave” applies here because it is common for the Personality Disordered Abuser to seek to defame and even file complaints seeking to revoke the license of a therapist who dares to challenge their abusive behaviors or help their victims.

Unfortunately, finding a suitable therapist is often very difficult to do. For many people, joining a high conflict divorce or parental alienation support group or web discussion forum and asking for referrals from the people there may be one of the few realistic means they have to find a therapist who might be of some help.

If you are fortunate enough to find a good therapist familiar with family court abuse, you are likely to get some useful support and advice that may help you weather the long storm. But even when you have found a good therapist and are starting to build some rapport, the odds are strong that by then you will be suffering physiological symptoms of extreme stress that even an excellent therapist cannot resolve. Lots of talk therapy isn’t enough on its own to turn around severe depression, anxiety, or sleep disorders. Realizing this, you’ll probably go back to your doctor again looking for medical help.

Psychiatric Medicines Are Not Panaceas or Candy

After hearing that you’ve got a psychotherapist and are still suffering, even conservative doctors are going to whip out the prescription pad if they haven’t already. They are likely to quickly prescribe an antidepressant, an anxiolytic, and possibly a sleep medication from their list of favorites. Every doctor has favorite meds, ones they have used for years or new ones they want to try because they got a box full of samples or a fancy $100 surf ‘n turf dinner, golf outing, or a week long tropical vacation in the dead of winter from a big pharma rep pushing a lucrative new pill. So what you will be prescribed may often have little or nothing to do with what will actually work.
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Eileen Lasher of the California Coalition for Families and Children was interviewed twice in 2011 by Walter Davis on his show Progress in San Diego. Dr. Emad Tadros, an outspoken critic of the San Diego family courts, joined them in the first interview. The second interview was shown in two segments.

In the interview segment below, Lasher discussed her experiences with the misconduct of minor’s counsel attorneys and how taxpayers and parents are paying for what is in her view an organized criminal enterprise. She says children and parents are being abused by the courts and points out the taxpayers and the abused parents are paying the financial costs for this misconduct.

San Diego Family Courts: Organized Crime Ring Targeting Middle and Upper Classes

Lasher contends the San Diego family law courts are operated as a criminal business that siphons the wealth from families and places it in the hands of the attorneys and experts such as custody evaluators. She views judges who appoint custody evaluators and minor’s counsel attorneys and many of those attorneys as particularly culpable. A minor’s counsel attorney is to participate in a custody case by representing the children. However, such attorneys often have conflicts of interest. They also typically run their own family law attorney business and are also in some cases are attorneys who are involved in probate cases and serve as “pro tem” judges in family law court.

Discussion focused on how low income families seldom have minor’s counsel attorneys and psychological evaluators ordered by the courts. These families have little money, so it is not lucrative to put them through the family court extortion process reserved for people who have some money. Middle income or higher income families often suffer from these expensive costs because they have significant assets and income that can be exploited by the divorce industry.

You have a house, so the attorneys and court want your house to be forced into sale so they can keep the proceeds and ensure their own wealth and job security at the expense of you and your children. You have retirement savings, the attorneys want those, too. There are college savings for the kids? Those can be raided, too.

How better to extort all or nearly all of a family’s wealth than to threaten their children? The attorneys and judges know how lucrative this extortion is and are eager to bring it into play when they see income and assets that can be pillaged.

If the parents don’t have substantial assets, the grandparents might. The court and its allies know that threatening their grandchildren is often an equally effective means to “financially gang rape” the family.

Generally speaking, San Diego family law courts operate by finanically raping the parents and deep-sixing their children’s futures. While there are probably some judges in the system who do not approve of the corruption and criminal conduct of other judges, it is evident that many do. It is in the judge’s own self-serving interests to increase the amount of litigation in the system. Busy inefficient courts mean more judges are “needed.” It is also in their interests to line the pockets of their attorney and custody evaluator friends, many of whom contribute to judicial re-election campaign funds or who may support them in future runs for political offices. And if they decide not to run for re-election, having funneled millions into the hands of their friends makes it easier for them to secure other employment in the same corrupt divorce industry.
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