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Why is it that government seems so resistant to punishing sociopaths in family law disputes? These people frequently use false allegations, lies, distortion and vilification campaigns, perjury, false reports to law enforcement and child protection agencies, and other tactics to badly harm an ex-spouse and his or her family and friends. Many of their abusive and illegal actions are crimes that trigger significant unwarranted expenses on the part of government including law enforcement, child protection, and courts. Given the adverse financial impact on taxpayers that is tantamount to committing fraud, society should have a strong incentive to punish these people and to make them pay restitution for their crimes. Yet this virtually never happens, even when there is clear proof of criminal conduct by these people.

There must be a reason for why these people are not being held accountable for their crimes. Often judges and lawyers say perjury is not punished because it is “too expensive” to prosecute perjury and false reports to law enforcement agencies. The few cases of perjury you do see prosecuted are usually pursued for political reasons even when there is little to no identifiable harm done by the particular lies made under oath.

When you consider other examples of crimes the government does prosecute people for doing, that “too expensive” argument rings false. The government routinely prosecutes people for minor drug crimes that have created nowhere near the damage caused by sociopathic attacks in family law disputes, and they often spend many tens of thousands of dollars pursuing these minor offenders even when there are no identifiable victims besides the drug abuser himself or herself.

Who does more damage to society, the casual drug addict or the sociopath in a family law dispute? The drug addict who gets high in his or her home a few times per week for years but doesn’t drive under the influence and doesn’t sell drugs might do some damage to others, but often it is hard to even identify what that damage is.

On the other hand, the sociopathic liar who files false child abuse reports, lies about domestic violence or rape, and triggers many years of law enforcement investigations, court hearings, CPS actions, and causes the victims of the lies (the children and the falsely accused parent) to be deprived of their rights and financial security. Sometimes people are even incarcerated on the basis of the lies.

The damage often continues for many years, sometimes even decades. Not infrequently, it leads to severe damage to the children and even death by stress or suicide of the falsely accused. Such a sociopath also causes financial damage to taxpayers running into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars over the years.

But judging by the almost zero prosecutions for perjury and malicious false reports to law enforcement agencies in obvious cases of malicious lying in family law disputes, it is evidently public policy to not prosecute such a sociopath’s crimes, even when there are multiple identifiable victims and the damages are often extreme.

Why is it that the government may be willing to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute and imprison a drug user who has hurt possibly nobody but himself or herself but is not willing to prosecute and imprison a perjurer or false reporter who has hurt many others?

One commonly cited reason is that it is against the government’s financial interests to stop extorting the life savings from people stuck in family court. They would much rather keep these conflicts going for years and even decades, lining the pockets of many involved in the courts.

However, there is certainly job security and money to be made that could be found prosecuting sociopathic liars as there are so many of them to be found in family law disputes. Thus there must be another reason for why perjurers and false reporters are not being prosecuted.

A second and possibly more important reason why government does not prosecute perjurers and false reporters is that prosecuting these people would also call unwanted attention to the tactics they use. The government does not want these tactics to be seen for what they are because the abusive and illegal tactics used by a sociopath in a family law dispute are similar to tactics frequently used by government employees including politicians, law enforcement officers, child protection social workers, and court employees such as judges. Character assassination using lies, making false allegations, and harassment including vilification campaigns are the common tools of sociopaths in family law disputes and sociopaths in government.

The government does not want to punish sociopaths in family law disputes because government itself is filled with sociopaths who use the same abusive and illegal strategies to get their way. If they prosecute sociopaths in family law disputes, they increase their own risk for prosecution, too. Much better for them to protect the sociopaths and protect themselves, too.

As a result, I strongly believe that anybody who is seriously interested in advocating for family law reform must also join up with and support groups fighting against other forms of abuse and corruption in the government. Government will consistently oppose necessary reform of family law not just because of greed, but also because such reforms might pave the way to action against the liars, cheats, crooks, and fraudsters that fill the ranks of the political class. Without cleaning up the government and replacing the sociopaths in it with people who will follow the law, there is no real hope of family law reform ever succeeding.

Further Reading

Abusive Conduct and Failure To Follow Law by Judge William Watkins Requires His Removal From Bench

Los Angeles DA Must Prosecute Wanetta Gibson for False Rape Allegation Against Brian Banks

Former Gov. Jesse Ventura Rightly Labels United States the “Fascist States of America”

San Diego Custody Evaluators Generate Cash Flow by Victimizing Families Using Restraining Orders

How Sociopathic Parents Use Police Reports for Defamation

Prosecuting Civil Perjury Is Unusual, but It Can Mean Prison

What is the one thing a sociopath does not want other people to know? The truth. More specifically, sociopaths do not want the truth about them to be known as they are insecure, malicious, and devious people. Beyond being embarrassed by the truth of their behaviors and thoughts, they have a deathly fear of being exposed and rejected. That’s in large part because they use lies, manipulations, and distortions to control other people and get what they want. If others were to know about their true nature, they realize that most would want nothing to do with them. They would lose the support networks of malicious minions they control and incite to abuse other people. Therefore sociopaths have a strong motivation to attack, discredit, harass, and ruin anybody who presents arguments and facts that might tend to raise questions and doubts about their behaviors and their false statements.

Many sociopaths are so insecure and malicious that they feel similarly motivated to go on the offensive, perhaps with lesser severity, in reaction to people who might embarrass them with obviously nasty (to them) comments like “Is that lettuce stuck between your teeth?” or “Your car is filthy! There’s a $3 carwash special across the street.” If that gets them unhinged, just imagine what being exposed as a child abuser, false accuser, liar, or thief will do.

Sociopaths Experts At Blaming Others, Greatly Fear Being Blamed

Nobody likes to be blamed, but a responsible person will accept blame for something appropriate. Sociopaths don’t like to accept blame for anything, even if it is well-earned. While part of this is likely from their typically narcissistic “I’m better than you” and “rules don’t apply to me” attitudes, there’s more to it than that. They may realize that blaming is how they control others to harm the targets they viciously attack, often family members or former love interests. They understand both the destructive and defensive powers of blaming and make regular use of both.

Sociopaths may be especially cognizant of the risk that people whom they have used to abuse others might even turn against them, especially those who might be greatly angered by how they were manipulated into participating in destructive and harmful activities against others. People like to blame others. While sociopaths do it with extraordinary intensity and dishonesty, the people they manipulate are likely to do it, too. After all, a sociopath was able to manipulate them into unjustly attacking a former partner, a child’s other parent, teacher, doctor, counselor, therapist, or some other party the sociopath doesn’t like and that clearly demonstrates they are the sort of people who are into blaming others. Who is to say they won’t turn and attack the sociopath when they realize how they were used?
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Personality disorders are a growing problem in the United States. Recent NIH studies indicate that 20% or more of Americans suffer from one or more personality disorders. Author Bill Eddy points out that in his experience about half of “High Conflict Personalities” (or HCPs) involved in destructive divorce and child custody battles probably do have one or more full-blown personality disorders. The other half may not meet all the criteria for a full-blown personality disorder yet still show many traits consistent with troublesome personality disorders such as BPD and NPD.

(from Don’t Alienate the Kids! Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High Conflict Divorce)

I believe that about half of HCPs have a personality disorder and about half have some of these traits, but not a full personality disorder. This means that they are still difficult, but may respond more easily to approaches designed for people with personality disorders.

It helps to understand some of these traits, but it is important to not tell someone you think they have a personality disorder. They may become very defensive and angry with you, as defensiveness is a common characteristic of those with personality disorders and those just with traits.

I fully agree with Eddy’s advice about not telling a person they may have a personality disorder. To be clear, this is not because it is better for them but primarily because hearing this news seems to turn them into even more destructive abusers than they were in the first place. Even if you are only trying to help, they will probably interpret your words as dire threats and redouble their efforts to destroy you. There is also a substantial risk that you will be ridiculed for your reasonable beliefs by divorce industry “professionals” who have an agenda that does not make room for unpleasant truths unless they are stated by an expensive paid expert.
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Ben Vonderheide of Daddy Justice is well on the way to assembling a documentary film of his experiences dealing with the abusive courts and government in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We summarized his story in our article Ben Vonderheide Exposes Pennsylvania’s Abusive Child Profiteering Racket last week. While Vonderheide particularly identifies with these abuses being done against fathers, he’s clearly aware of the state attacking and destroying mothers, too, as evidenced by various videos he’s produced and put on his website.

Below is what he has been calling a “trailer” for his movie. At over 21 minutes, it’s much longer than the typical trailer. It features Vonderheide, his son Quinta, and many of the dirty players in the Lancaster County courts and government, and his ex Wendy Flanders and her new boyfriend, Ted Yoder, both of whom were convicted for filing false police reports to get Vonderheide falsely arrested. Video that Ben recorded was important evidence for obtaining the convictions. Flanders then was given probation, rather than jail time, and sole custody of their son. The message is that false accusations pay in Lancaster.
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Melinda and Andrew Thompson

On September 9, 2010, law enforcement finally caught up with parental child abductor Melinda Thompson, formerly Melinda Stratton. On April 24, 2008, she had disappeared with son Andrew Thompson after leaving Australia to go to Germany on a Singapore Airlines flight from Sydney to Frankfurt. Her professed intent was to keep the boy away from his father, Ken Thompson of New South Wales, Australia. After more than a year searching for his son, in mid-2010 he traveled to Europe to do a bike tour across the continent in search for his son. He biked over 3000 miles across nine countries raising awareness of his missing son. He wore clothes covered with pictures of Andrew.

Ken discussed in an interview with BBC news about how he discovered Andrew had been found. He had stopped cycling in Germany between Nuremberg and Stuttgart to check his email. There was an anonymous message stating that Andrew had been found and Australian authorities would contact him.
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Rob’s recent comment pointing out the Ben Vonderheide case in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania made me curious. After all, it’s not often that you see the government actually prosecute somebody for making malicious false reports to the police to terrorize a father and block access to a child. On the surface, it looks like the government got it right in this case. Dig deeper, however, and you find that Ben Vonderheide is a poster case for government-backed terrorism against a parent who has been repeatedly abused by the government. The government is now using his son, Quinta Xavier Vonderheide, as a pawn in its vindictive battle to hide its crimes against the state’s children and families and attack those who attempt to expose them.

Alienating Ex Convicted of Lying to Police Gets Sole Custody

Quinta’s mother is Vonderheide’s ex-girlfriend Wendy Flanders. She has systematically alienated her son from his father and engaged in access blocking, denigration, defamation, and false police reports to destroy the child’s relationship with his father. She is unable to accept that their son should have time with both his parents and is willing to break the law, scheme, manipulate, and conspire to ensure that he will never see his father again. As is typical, family law courts reward such behaviors unless a parent can afford to bring contempt of court charges against the abuser.

She even attempted to change his name to Quinta Xavier Flanders, a common stunt for alienating parents who alter their children’s names to remove all mention of the hated ex.

This is nothing new for Flanders as she is a serial parental alienator. She has engaged in this child abuse not only involving Quinta, but also regarding her daughter Bryna Elizabeth Flanders-Harris and that girl’s father John Harris. In that case, she used false allegations of child sexual abuse among other methods. There are also reports that she attempted similar family terrorism against another previous ex, a Mr. Caruso who is no longer alive to defend himself and his child Emily from the sociopathic Flanders.
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Protecting citizens from crime is a good goal. Technology has contributed many new tools to the effort such as burglar alarms, car security systems, and cell phones. But some technological tools have vast potential for abuse. GPS monitoring devices being used for family law and civil restraining orders are one such application fraught with serious abuse potential.

GPS Monitoring Raises Risks of Convincing But False Accusations

The potential for false accusations and harassment is aggravated dangerously if GPS tracking devices are used in family law and civil restraining order cases in which there has not been any conviction in a criminal court. That’s exactly the common case for many people falsely accused of domestic violence who have temporary retraining orders (TROs) slapped on them with no evidence, no chance to contest the false allegations, and no due process. This is business as usual for abusive judges like Lorna Alksne and Lisa Schall of the San Diego Superior Court as well as other similarly abusive judges across the United States. They issue such orders routinely without even a shred of evidence and no chance for a defense until much later.
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CCFC co-founder Cole Stuart was recently wrongfully arrested due to what appears to be manipulation of the police by his ex-wife Lynn Stuart and possibly various elements of the San Diego family law system. While malicious alienating parents using courts and police to abuse their children’s other parent is commonplace particularly in a broken family court system such as that in San Diego, she has been aided at this by a particularly dirty San Diego lawyer. Lynn Stuart hired Jeffrey Fritz. He has earned a reputation as an attorney who is a “shark” who will resort to all manners of abusive and unethical tactics to “win” cases for his clients while driving up huge billings that severely damage the finances of all but the very wealthiest. He typically attracts high-conflict clients such as Lynn Stuart.
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John Van Doorn has announced he is running for San Diego County Supervisor in 2010. We believe he deserves strong consideration for your vote in the June 2010 primaries.

The corruption and abuse within the County of San Diego government threatens the well-being of the citizens and particularly children and parents of the county. Bill Horn, the incumbent candidate, has participated in hiding and continuing these abuses. Despite two decades of San Diego Grand Jury reports detailing how San Diego CPS has wrongly removed children from families, fabricated evidence, perjured, and acted in a malicious fashion against many parents and children, Bill Horn has not lifted a finger to correct these problems despite being a member of the County Board of Supervisors during this long era of egregious CPS misconduct.
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As I previously reported in DCF Poaching on the Tiger Woods, Elin Nordegren Kids?, Florida’s Department of Children and Families visited the home of Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren to investigate a child abuse complaint.

Now State Senator Ronda Storms of Florida is calling for an investigation of the complaint that led to this visit. She believes that the complaint was filed falsely and maliciously and if evidence exists to prove this, she wants the Orange County State Attorney to prosecute those responsible for the complaint. She’s concerned that false child abuse reports waste state funds needlessly and take away resources from children who really do need help.
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