If you’re aware of the December 2009 child custody murders described in our article Killer Bonnie Hoult Made False Abuse Allegations Against Ex [1], you might have been wondering just what father Jason Fontaine has to say about the tragic events. Jason has started to write some about his feelings and thoughts on the horrendous death of his two beautiful little children in what appears be the murder-suicide plot of grandmother Bonnie Hoult and her daughter Catherine Fontaine. One of his recent postings can be found at Dreamcatchers For Abused Children [2] on their coverage of the story. I’ve excerpted it and edited it for typographical errors below.
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Jason Fontaine’s Comment on Deaths of His Daughters
This is Jason Fontaine. I am the father of Julia and Catherine Fontaine, the two beautiful little girls that were murdered by their mother and grandmother on December 14, 2009.
I am devastated and crushed that my two beautiful and wonderful little girls’ lives were taken by two sick individuals that cared more about keeping them from me than focusing on making sure they lived happy, healthy lives. There is nothing that pains me more or haunts me more every night. I followed every court order and did everything I could to try to protect my little girls. In the end, none of it mattered. I spent every penny I had, put myself through every psychological evaluation possible (through court appointed psychologists) to prove that I had nothing but the best interests in mind for my little girls. In the end these two sick individuals refused to listen to the experts and decided, arbitrarily, to take these wonderful little girls’ lives.
I am forever going to remember the good times I had with them and the wonderful things that they had to offer the world. I am also going to be haunted, every day, how their lives were cut so short by two sick people who cared more about themselves than the two little angels whose lives they took.
Jason Fontaine
Parental Alienation Very Common Type of Child Abuse
Jason’s situation is remarkably tragic because of how far it went. But sadly, everything right up to moments before the murders was not particularly extreme at all in the context of child custody cases involving a mentally ill parent.
While it may be unusual for a sick parent and grandparent to be involved in the murder of their own children and grandchildren, it is not at all unusual for parental alienators to use the system as Elizabeth Fontaine and her mother Bonnie Hoult did and then to refuse to comply with the court orders or behave in any reasonable fashion. People like them are narcissists who are accustomed to thinking only of themselves and being unable to separate the needs of their children and grandchildren from their own needs.
Extreme narcissistic behavior is a hallmark of many people with personality disorders, particularly those in the “dramatic” class including Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD), Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD), and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Their sickness runs deep in their psyches. But it is important to realize that often they are as much victims as they are perpetrators of child abuse. Often their psychological problems were created by years of child abuse they endured at the hands of adults in their lives, often from an abusive parent. They develop extreme means to deal with an extreme childhood. Those that go on to become abusers don’t learn that such extreme means are not appropriate when dealing with most people who are not abusive.
In this sad case, the information available to date suggests that Bonnie Hoult entangled her daughter Elizabeth Fontaine in a narcissistic web of manipulation that started during her childhood and continued right up to her pulling the trigger. What Hoult did to her daughter appears to be emotional child abuse. From accounts by Howard Hoult, Elizabeth’s half-brother, the abuse included parental alienation against Charles Hoult, her father.
While I’ve not yet seen any information about Bonnie Hoult’s own childhood, it would not surprise me if she was also an abused child like Elizabeth was and like Catherine and Julia were at the hands of their mother and grandmother. Child abuse, especially pervasive and extended emotional abuse, has a life-long effect. While not every abused child turns into a child abuser, nearly all are affected adversely by the experience. Low self-esteem, depression, substance abuse, and problems with trust and loving relationships are common outcomes from child abuse.
Court Involvement in Child Abuse and Murder
Family law courts are often accomplices in child abuse. Even their well-intentioned attempts to reduce conflict often in reality result in worsening it and its impact on the children.
In this case, Bonnie Hoult was particularly dangerous due to her psychological education and her history of child abuse against Elizabeth, Catherine, and Julia. While educating most parties in child custody conflicts may help them to reduce the impact on the children, education for narcissistic abusers and people like them simply provides more weapons to use to attack their targets.
This observation is a large part of why many well-intentioned programs and instructional material for parents involved in high conflict divorces actually worsen conflict and create more danger for the children involved. Ironically, the courts often order personality disordered parents into these training programs, thereby arming them with tools to hurt the children even more.
Commissioner Thomas Schulte, the Orange County Superior Court official presiding over the divorce case, blew this case. He, like many family court officials do, contributed to ongoing child abuse by failing to take measures adequate to protect the children from an emotionally abusive parent, Elizabeth Fontaine, and her emotionally abusive mother, Bonnie Hoult.
Further, he helped create the dangerous situation which was a powder keg for a child abduction or murder. Upset a narcissist and you’ll likely trigger a severe reaction. While child custody murders are at the extreme end of the spectrum, extended alienation campaigns and child abductions by parents involved in a custody battle are not. Yet Schulte failed to order measures that would have significantly reduced the risk to Catherine and Julia from these behaviors which were already evident in the case.
Perhaps Schulte thought he was reducing the chance of child abduction by allowing the move to Texas, thus allowing Elizabeth to get some of what she wanted and reducing her tendency to “opt out” by abducting the children. However, he was quite mistaken in the steps he took.
He was aware, as indicated by his own words, that there was a significant risk of Elizabeth Fontaine reigniting the conflict in Texas, and he cautioned her against doing that. She totally ignored his words, typical of the contempt of court behaviors of many personality disordered parents. But even if she had not done that, allowing the move constitutes judicial complicity in emotional abuse via parental alienation because it significantly reduces the contact between the children and the target parent, in this case the father.
Schulte Inadequately Addressed Parental Alienation and Abduction Risks
As a family court official, Schulte should have been very aware that preventing frequent positive contact between Catherine and Julia and their father and his family was likely going to contribute to parental alienation. The signs of parental alienation being an element in this case were extremely strong.
It’s my belief that Schulte and many family law court officials like him are accomplices in child abuse. The debate about whether “parental alienation syndrome” (PAS) is real or not rages on, much like the flat-earthers denounced the idea of a round earth despite overwhelming evidence. But nobody who has been involved in many contested child custody cases can honestly and realistically deny that parental alienation is a serious problem and that it hurts children severely. It is entirely clear that the target parents and children have no chance of stopping the emotional abuse against them without help from the courts. But the courts fail to do anything substantive in so many of these cases, and in others they greatly aggravate the damage. Family court reform is needed to put an end to parental alienation child abuse [5] because the judges are not willing and able to do their jobs to defuse conflict, promote reasoned adjustment to family structure change, uphold the law, and ultimately protect victims from aggressors when the former methods fail.
Schulte failed to meet his obligations to protect the children from the conflict. Even if they had not been murdered, he failed. What he should have done was to keep the kids in the same vicinity as their father and to have ordered frequent and ongoing contact and therapy sessions for them and their parents.
Elizabeth Fontaine probably could not have been helped much by therapy as personality disorders are very difficult to treat. But having a therapist monitoring and interacting with her and also working with a therapist for the children and one for the father could have helped determine exactly what was going on in the family and helped educate the children on how to resist parental alienation and child abuse.
Often those with personality disorders exhibit memories and recollections of events and words that are vastly different from nearly everybody else. Ordering Elizabeth into therapy with a therapist who does not communicate with therapists for the children and father would have been tantamount to ordering her to falsely accuse the father and providing allies for her to do so. It’s common knowledge that therapists are mandatory child abuse and domestic violence reporters and that alienating parents frequently lie and distort to them to manipulate them into filing false reports, thus engaging the government in the form of police and CPS agencies as allies in their alienation campaign against the target parent.
Judges in cases like these need to be protecting the children’s interests by disarming the parents from being able to use the government to perpetuate their aggressive destructiveness. Nobody can guarantee that parental alienation won’t take hold except by extreme measures such as isolating the children in foster homes and blocking access of alienators to the children. But that extremism is a form of child abuse in an of itself.
While there is no guarantee of outcomes, realistically it was possible to ensure that the children would have had a reasonable chance to overcome the programming being directed at them by their alienating mother and grandmother. Schulte did not do enough in this area. He resorted to erratic and extreme decisions in approving a move out of the area and then ordering a custody change to the paternal aunt. He foolishly failed to put in place the protective measures involving law enforcement that were necessary to keep risk of parental abduction controlled. Those measures probably would have been enough to prevent the murders, too.
Schulte didn’t pull the trigger on the children, but he gave their sociopathic grandmother and mother the excuse to abduct or murder them without removing the means to do it. He should have been able to discern how irrationally they were behaving and that there was greatly elevated risk in this case, but either he was unable to see this or did not understand what he needed to do to mitigate the risks. So in at least this way, he and the family law courts are negligent accessories to murder of two innocent little children.
Killer Bonnie Hoult Made False Abuse Allegations Against Ex [1]
No abuse evidence against girls’ father found [6]
KTLA: Mom Lost Custody of Kids Same Day as OC Murder-Suicide — Cher Calvin reports [7]
Report: Grandmother Likely Fired Gun in OC Murder-Suicide [8]
KTLA: New Details in San Clemente Family Killings– Chris Wolfe reports [9]
Investigator: Grandmother likely killed 4 in Talega [10]
Talega: Molestation charges troubled judge [11]
Further Reading
Escaping Sociopathic Abuse Almost Impossible When Children Are Involved [12]
Stopping Parental Alienation Requires Family Court Reforms [5]
Alienating Mother Ordered to Pay $286,641.75 in Fines and Fees [13]
Richard Smulczewski Parental Alienation Case [14]
California Democrat Jim Beall Supports Child Abuse [15]
Kids’ Parental Alienation Book: “I Don’t Want to Choose!” [16]
Breaking Mental Illness, Violence, Divorce, and Murder Cycles [17]
The Gregory Mantell Show: Parental Alienation Syndrome [18]
Murderous Mentally Ill Mothers and Government Negligence [19]
Custody Dispute Leads to Child Involvement in Murder Attempt on Father [20]
False Feminists and Abusive and Murderous Women [21]
12 Comments To "Jason Fontaine Speaks Up About Child Custody Murders"
#1 Comment By GOOD DAD On January 4, 2010 @ 8:31 pm
(editor’s note: see our story [22] for more on this judge)
The following injustice is happening right now, in Montgomery County, Texas, under our laws & in our courts.
I was recently massacred in a 3½ year custody battle for my 6 year old daughter.
Convicted child molesters have more access to their children than I do.
I have seen my daughter only 1 hour since Sept 2008 & have talked with her less.
Calls & letters are intercepted, & I have no visitation.
The mother secreted her 2 month and 14 month old babies 1200 miles from their father and for 15½ years, her family prevented all contact.
[23]
The Honorable Judge Suzanne Stovall continued the case for years because the mother’s discovery was incomplete, but then suddenly signed a Final Decree, without compelling the mother’s discovery and ignoring the overwhelming certified/certifiable evidence of her violence and abuse.
Honorable Stovall punished me with 20% +$100 monthly child support. She inconsistently ruled on motions, laws, or rules to favor the mother. My lawyers repeatedly complained that she favored the mother.
For 3 years, I pleaded for a trial or in some way, to present a case. Despite 3 years of hearings, Rule 11’s, hundreds of emails, letters, & conversations, Honorable Stovall refused to compel the mother to provide discovery, yet granted the mother 2 years of continuances because her discovery was incomplete; including continuing a preferentially set trial.
The mother & lawyers knew how devastating her discovery would be, but Honorable Stovall refused to compel production.
She disregarded 3+ years & 300+ exhibited provable charges of Contempt against the mother, including failing to pay child support, interfering with child custody, and worse.
It has required the threat of a Writ of Habeas Corpus for the mother to surrender my daughter to me.
I paid the jury fee and adamantly insisted on a trial, but Honorable Stovall signed a Final Decree that she knew would alienate me from my daughter.
Aggravated perjury, forged letters, falsified evidence, unsupported, inconsistent, & unchallenged false accusations, by the mother, CPS, et al., outweighed exhaustive undisputed facts, certified evidence, sworn statements, & objective/testable/verifiable documentation, disproving the accusations, & proving neglect & abuse by the mother.
For years, the mother has secreted our daughter to doctors, & medically mistreated her.
For at least 15 months, the mother yo-yoed my daughter on steroids.
But when pediatricians & specialists examined, x-rayed, diagnosed, & ordered treatment for my daughter, for a real & progressing condition, the mother refused to comply.
The opposite diagnosis & falsified evidence of an undereducated CPS investigator, prevailed over the professionals, with Judge Stovall.
Even with the mother’s sworn statements of medically abusing/neglecting my daughter & with the doctors corroborating records of her mistreatment, Judge Stovall took my daughter from me & placed her into the mother’s sole custody.
The mother continues to deliberately, medically mistreat my daughter, neglects her dental care, & the high risk lifestyles exposes my daughter to diseases.
Depositions, CISD records, Sworn statements, & other Certified & Certifiable evidence revealed a home with an AGGRAVATED SEXUAL ASSAULT FELON, wrist CUTTING, daily VIOLENCE, runaway teen, destruction, criminals, drug abuse (METH, COCAINE, XANAX, OXYCOTIN, etc), frequent police visits & a SEARCH WARRANT confiscated drug paraphernalia, multiple sex partners, multiple suspensions for drugs & violence, burglary, vandalism, shootings, disease, fighting, screaming, profanity, pornography (incl BEASTIALITY), boys & men sleeping over, my daughter sleeping at men’s homes, being taught obscene language & gestures, & so much more.
With the knowledge and support of the psychologist, therapist, ad litem, and CPS, the mother has so thwarted my 6¼ year old daughter’s education that she only counts to 12, and is a significant disciplinary problem.
The mother provided her young children GRAPHICALLY SEXUALLY VIOLENT entertainment.
Her children became criminals, who had to attend alternative high schools.
The mother’s family and friends have threatened me at my home and away, and my property has been vandalized.
I have received harassing, obscene, and middle of the night phone calls.
The well paid, well insured mother has lived rent & utilities free for 3 ½ years, but claims to be deep in debt from medical expenses.
The mother has committed tax, CHIPs, Medicaid, & insurance fraud at least since 2003.
I have neither a history of, nor is there any evidence that I have ever been violent, destructive, abusive, etc.
My debt exceeds twice my gross annual income & is increasing.
Fees and expenses have exceeded 4 times my gross annual income.
I have recorded nearly every contact with the mother, CPS, ad litem, & many others.
I love and want my daughter and will never, ever, ever give up trying to rescue her.
PLEASE HELP MY DAUGHTER.
I can provide:
medical & doctors records of years of mistreatment
CPS reports of violence, drugs, medical mistreatment, etc
psychological evaluations include lying, abuse, etc
depositions of lying, violence, drug abuse, sex, etc
CISD records of violence, drugs, sex, etc
police reports of violence, drugs, shootings, etc
myspace of violence, drug abuse, sex, pornography, etc
emails to/from the: ad litem, psychologist, therapist
local.yahoo.com/info-19096883-teresa-burbank-pc-conroe
[24]
#2 Comment By FramedFather On January 5, 2010 @ 10:36 am
Once again another GREAT article! Thanks for staying on top of things!
#3 Comment By Dr. Ann Blake-Tracy On January 6, 2010 @ 11:18 am
All it would take for both a mother and a grandmother to both make false allegations of abuse (generally sexual abuse) and for both to be complicit in committing something so horrifyingly violent as this murder/suicide is what I have seen regularly for two decades – both a mother and a daughter sharing one thing – a prescription for an antidepressant. Moms hooked on these drugs will constantly encourage their daughters to take them.
The ONLY grandmothers I have seen in two decades of tracking murder/suicides who have taken the lives of their grandchildren are on antidepressants. And the VERY LARGE MAJORITY of mothers are on these drugs when they take the lives of their children. You can find a long list of cases here:
[25]
How do the drugs produce both false allegations and violent murder/suicides?
The antidepressant increases serotonin producing very vivid and horrifying nightmares, often both sexual and very violent in nature. The nightmares are SO VIVID that the patient begins to believe they are “remembering” abuse that happened which they have forgotten. None of it is real – only in the individual’s mind! But to the patient it seems all too real making them very convincing to others because they believe so firmly that this false reality actually happened. Because of this false accusations of sexual abuse have always been a very common adverse reaction to antidepressants. [I discuss this at length in my book that first came out in 1994.]
According to the judge in this case these false allegations had been ongoing for some time which should have served as a warning so that additional steps could be taken to prevent this tragedy. If only someone had been aware of this chemical adverse reaction to medication that would only grow increasingly worse producing additional paranoia which could lead to a murder/suicide based on false drug-induced beliefs! Patients who survive will often use the very words “I had no choice!” That is because based on their false belief system induced by the drugs they believed firmly they had no other choices.
These tragedies all need to end, but will not until the world wakes up to the deadly effects of these most popular drugs – antidepressants which are far too similar in action to LSD or PCP! [Yes, that statement can be documented scientifically and has been used successfully in court evidence in wrongful death cases brought in these antidepressant-induced murder/suicide cases.]
Ann Blake-Tracy, PhD, Executive Director,
International Coalition for Drug Awareness
[26] – [25]
#4 Comment By Rob On January 6, 2010 @ 2:59 pm
Dr. Tracy,
Your cautions about SSRI antidepressants touch on a very real risk to these kinds of medicines. This class of drugs comes with a “black box” warning regarding increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. It’s critical for anybody changing dosages of SSRIs to be carefully monitored by family and friends for altered behaviors and thinking, especially during the first couple of months when starting the medications.
That said, I haven’t seen any indication that Bonnie Hoult and/or Elizabeth Fontaine were taking antidepressants. Can you point to information you’ve seen on this?
I also think that there’s a strong reason to believe that part of the problem with SSRIs is that there is no cheap and easy way to monitor their effect on serotonin levels. It’s possible that these drugs can help some people and severely harm others in part because their effects can’t be monitored easily and objectively. It’s not like being able to take medication for diabetes control and being able to monitor glucose levels cheaply and easily on a daily basis. Diabetes drugs can kill people, too, by producing pancreatic failure and other side-effects. But it’s very easy to monitor what the medications are doing between daily glucose tests and less frequent CBC and HbA1C tests.
IMHO, what’s needed for SSRIs to work more safely is a good way to monitor them. Lacking that, I believe that nutritional supplements such as DHEA, omega-3 fish oils, 5-HTP, and L-tryptophan are much safer ways to boost serotonin levels in the brain and reduce depression symptoms without significant risk of side effects. Unfortunately, mainstream medical doctors are usually not familiar with these approaches and resort to SSRI medications as a first-line effort when they should probably only be used after trying safer approaches first.
Rob
#5 Comment By Jason Fontaine On January 7, 2010 @ 8:37 am
[27]
Throughout my 10 year relationship with Elizabeth and Bonnie neither one of them were on anti-depressants. In fact they were attacking me in court saying I was depressed due to being on an anti-anxiety medication (which is part of the SSRI family) that I started taking shortly after the abuse allegations were made against me. Bonnie and Elizabeth were too proud and ignorant to admit to any illness on their part. However, once the police investigation is complete along with the autopsy and toxicology reports we will know for sure. Thanks.
Jason Fontaine
#6 Pingback By Deadly Divorces: Bonnie Hoult, Bruce Pardo, and Many More | angiEmedia On January 7, 2010 @ 7:48 pm
[…] Jason Fontaine Speaks Up About Child Custody Murders […]
#7 Pingback By Does Texas Judge Suzanne Stovall Deserve Re-election? | angiEmedia On January 9, 2010 @ 7:19 pm
[…] Murders on the Fontaine murder/suicide case in California, a commenter identifying himself as “GOOD DAD” posted about his concerns regarding judicial misconduct involving Judge Suzanne Stovall of Montgomery […]
#8 Pingback By Montgomery County 221st Judicial Election Candidates | angiEmedia On January 11, 2010 @ 1:51 pm
[…] People who have been following our website know that family law is a very important function for the courts. Judges who do a good job can protect children and families from psychological and financial devastation and harm. Those who do not may create a nightmare from which the children will never recover, leading to parental alienation, parental abduction, and even murder as recently seen in the Fontaine case in Orange County, California. […]
#9 Pingback By Judge Lorna Alksne in Cindy Dumas v. Eric Moelter | angiEmedia On January 12, 2010 @ 6:55 pm
[…] Jason Fontaine Speaks Up About Child Custody Murders […]
#10 Comment By dab5628 On June 24, 2010 @ 11:57 pm
[28]
We are going through the same thing you went through. The judge was Stovall. May I ask who the attorneys were?
#11 Comment By mindy On September 22, 2010 @ 2:47 pm
I think if we were dig a little deeper into this case that we would find much more than meets the eye in the reports of this case thus far. I could be completely wrong, but ….I bet we would find a Temporary Restraining Order against the more powerful, abusive spouse in this divorce file. I bet we would find that he or she was an abuser during the marriage and after, I think we would find that the abuser was an uninvolved parent during the marriage, but very aggressive in seeking custody after the breakup up in the Courts, I bet we would find a parent trying desperately to protect the children from abuse in the care of the other parent. I bet the Judge or Commissioner looked upon the protective parent with suspicion of ulterior motives as the protective parent attempted to shield the children. I bet there were combinations of court appointed evaluators, therapists, minor’s counsels, reunification therapists, etc., involved in this case… lining their pockets with money, wiping out family assets and churning the case…. as they fed off the system, enriching themselves, as they destroyed the protective parent’s reputation and… favored the abuser…. to the detriment and the eventual death of these children… I think a deeper look might reveal some, if not all of what I have mentioned above in this case. Sadly, it happens every day in the Family Law Courts of this country. 75 children have died in the US since the beginning of this year under similar circumstances as a result of the Courts not listening to parents trying to protect. We have a broken Family Law System…I do not know how to fix it other than to abolish it and to send these bad judges and evaluators packing. I do know that children are being neglected, abused and killed under it’s wing. I do know that the commissioner in this case is on a list of bad actors causing harm to children in this travesty called the Family Law Courts.
Heads up Reporters! Start connecting the dots in these cases! Look up Baby Wyatt, San Bernardino County,shot to death, Look up Conner and Jack stabbed to death March of 2008 in Illinois.
#12 Comment By Dale Jones On October 2, 2010 @ 2:38 pm
[29]
Hi Jason, my heart goes out to You, I’m sure You are one strong individual.
I thought I was the only one who had issues with this particular judge and the way it works with His cronies, I could tell from the jump that no matter what attorney I retained nothing was going to go good for Me with Him and My Ex’s attorney in the drivers seat.
Do You ever think the way this system works can be truly equalized? Or at least the true injustices realized?
These individuals are the most greedy people an earth. This judge told me out front from the bench that He was real sorry that the system could bankrupt the average person. Every mediator, every evaluator, every court ordered item, they all nail the Man in the case for some kind of fee. I would be curious to know who the attorneys were in Your case.. in closing, I will make sure Myself and everyone I know will be reading Your book, what is the title and when will it be out?
Thank-You
Dale Jones