Discretion
9/22/2019
“The discretion of a judge in the family court is so broad that if they write an order stating that you must have your child play in the middle of the freeway during rush hour, you are stuck with that.” A statement that I made during testimony before the Committee in support of HB232 over 12 years ago.
“If you come in here complaining that you are being denied seeing your children again, I am going to make sure that you never see them again and throw you in jail.”
This was said to one
of the fathers in what became known as the “Kenmore Kids Case” in Summit
County. The father was repeatedly denied access to his boys by the mother. The
boys were found wandering down a busy Akron street barefoot in the middle of
the night when the police found them.
The mother in question was charged with child abuse and ordered no contact after it was discovered that she and her lesbian lover had locked these two boys and another boy in a room, and fed them cat feces while treating a sibling sister royally as they trained her to become a lesbian. The mother and her lover were sentenced to prison and ordered to have no contact with the children.
The father of the girl had also been threatened in the same manner when he brought complaints of abuse to the court in this case.
“I am not accepting that Guardian Ad Litem report, no father is that good.”
Father had raised his two boys for 5 years after the mother walked out and had no contact for the same period. Mother lived in North Carolina, filed for a change of custody and the court granted it. On the father’s trip to “visit” with his boys, he had to stop and get a hotel room and bathe the boys as they smelled so bad he could not stand to be in the car with them and they were covered in fleas.
The couple has split custody where the daughter is with the mother and visits her father every other weekend. Father has a son and he is supposed to allow the son to come with the mother every other weekend but often does not. They are in Court often to try to resolve this issue.
One day the judge gets mad and dismisses the divorce that this couple had and orders them to refile and start over from the beginning. The problem is that both have remarried and by doing this they now are both bigamists.
“Oh kitty, what are we to do with these people?” the magistrate as he stroked his dead stuffed cat that sat on his trial bench.
In this case, the same magistrate has ordered that neither party leave the jurisdiction of the court and issued a restraining order to that effect. Mother moved from central Ohio to the Detroit area and was not held in contempt for doing such.
The child remained on a week-on-week off schedule and was attending two different schools in two different states per court order.
The decision comes in on the divorce and all debt was given to the father and custody was given to the mother. When the father filed for a stay of that decision pending appeal, the court denied the stay and then on its own reduced the father’s visitation even further.
“The child is to make sure that her father does not drink while he has the child during his visitation.”
The child was 8 years old at the time and the father was an illegal immigrant who was an admitted alcoholic. He had no driver’s license. Had the local prosecutor and police chief refused to help when I raised the issue with them directly, this child could well have been killed.
Attorney to a female client:
“If you want to win this case, wear a low-cut blouse and bend over a lot”
She was before a female judge.
The magistrate issues an order restraining both parties from moving from the state or the country during the pendency of the case. The mother moves against that order and despite having a motion for contempt filed against her, she is not found in contempt nor is her failure to follow court orders considered in the following final decision. Failure or the ability to follow orders of the court is one of the factors for determining custody.
Another one:
Children are removed from the mother’s custody under claims that she is in foreclosure on a home that she had paid for in full. Children are placed with the father and no background checks are made. Guardian ad Litem who had not visited with the children finally goes to bring them back to their home county. On the return trip, the boy has medical problems and is taken to a local hospital where it is found out that he was been sexually abused and has Herpes. His sister is also examined and is found to have been abused and also has herpes.
The father is awaiting sentencing on the sexual abuse of both minors.
Another one:
Mother and father were never married and had a daughter together. Both filed to change the plan from the equal custody that is in place.
By the factors (listed in law) father should get full custody. Judge gives custody to the mother.
Case comes back to court. Custody is not changed.
What is changed is their use of Our Family Wizard. The full use of the program is $125.00 per person per year.
The court replaced it with a Parenting Coordinator that charges $200.00 per hour.
A black father contacted us recently about comments made to him, in front of his attorney, about his child and his case.
“Your child is too light skinned to live in Columbus.”
His attorney did not speak up or ask the judge to remove himself due to what we find to be a racist comment.
These are but a small sample of the many poor uses of discretion that I have been told throughout the years. Yet many in this legislature are concerned with the judicial claims of loss of discretion under SB144. These claims are false as this legislation will give the proper direction on how to use their discretion.
It should be clear to see how poorly they use their discretion now. The current broad discretion that these courts have has damaged children because the law lacks a clear direction. We cannot risk further damage to future generations by listening to less than a thousand people wearing robes out of a population of 11 million.
One child damaged is too many.
It is time to make the corrections that better define the judgment and the way that judges view the cases before them.
Ray R. Lautenschlager
Legislative Director
