Investigations Accuse Family Court Judges of Sending Children Into Danger
The murder of at least a dozen children in the past three months puts a tragic spotlight on a disturbing pattern of an American court system that appears to be deliberately putting custody in the hands of a dangerous parent.
According to the Center For Judicial Excellence, a national organization that closely tracks the trend, more than 900 children have been killed by one of their parents in the United States since 2008.
A study of the murders shows that a vast majority of the children were killed by a parent who was granted either sole or shared custody by a judge despite there being either strong evidence or a conviction of child abuse against them.
It also shows that the murders are mostly committed by fathers. Out of the 53 children murdered since 2022 after a custody switch to the fathers, only 7 were mothers.
In Colorado, four children were killed in January and February in a murder-suicide carried out by their father.
As reported by the Denver Gazette and confirmed by The Epoch Times, in all four cases, court records show judges, without explanation, disregarded or just ignored concerns raised by the children’s mothers about their safety if custody was awarded to their fathers.
One of those mothers is Andrea Berry. Her ex-husband Dan Hollins is alleged to have killed their 3-year-old daughter Sophia in February and then himself.
The Elizabeth, Colorado, mom told The Gazette she spent seven years trying to get the police to investigate him on allegations he was sexually abusing Sophia, and using her in child pornography, but that a police commander told her to stop “pestering” the department.
She encountered an even worse attitude from Arapahoe County Family Court Judge Rebecca Moss, who implied Berry would lose custody if she brought up any allegations of abuse.
According to court documents, Berry reported that Sophia came home with ligature marks around her ankles after being with her father and stories about sexual encounters with her dad.
Family Judges Not Following Law
Barry Goldstein, an attorney and the national research director for Stop Abuse Campaign who has authored several books and speaks nationally on the problem, told The Epoch Times that one of the major causes of the disturbing trend is that child abuse is treated more like a family problem than a crime and that family court judges have come to assume the role as a therapist rather than someone charged with applying the law.
“If the offender is a stranger, the person is to be brought up on criminal charges and the goal is a conviction,” said Goldstein.
“When the offender is someone the child knows, especially a close relative, the investigation is led by a social worker and the goal is reunification with the offender.”
In the ultimate in gaslighting, the courts said Goldstein did everything to conceal evidence of the abuse and silence the child—and then turn around to say since there is no evidence of abuse [and] that means the mother is coaching the child.”
Goldstein pointed to two in-depth studies on the trend.
One is known as “Adverse Childhood Experiences” and the other is the Saunders Report, an investigation spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Justice into the practice of family court judges awarding children to abusive parents.
Both studies, he said, provide overwhelming evidence of family court judges not following the law, putting children in danger, and favoring abusive fathers over protective mothers in custody decisions.
Yet, he said judges follow an unscientific theory called “parental alienation.”
Parental Alienation
There is a major debate over the term parental alienation.
Groups like Post Modern Justice Media Project (PMJMP), which promotes the theory, say it is very real and is being used by one parent to interfere with the other parent’s relationship with their children.
Those who denounce parental alienation say it is a made-up theory being used to cover well-established abuse.
While there is no established definition of parental alienation, both sides agree that it is usually triggered by a new event such as divorce, and that a history of abuse should never be construed as alienation.
Grant Wyeth, an Australian-based writer who tracks the way courts treat domestic violence globally, says that parental alienation is being used as a “gatekeeping device” by judges to create what he called “a repugnant market” around child abuse and domestic violence.
In outlining the market in a recent article entitled “The Best Interests of the Abuser,” Wyeth pointed out the league of court appointees that feed off of the parental alienation theory.
These court appointees include counselors, social workers, guardian ad litems (court-appointed people who will protect the interests of someone unable to take care of themselves), reunification therapists, and divorce and custody lawyers.
Attorney Richard Ducote, who also speaks nationally on the growing trend of family court judges awarding custody to abusive parents, pointed out that this court-appointed work is hand selected by the judge, unlike regular court cases where parties choose their own witnesses.
‘They Don’t Want Evidence’
He told The Epoch Times he has represented several mothers stripped of custody after being accused of parental alienation for not just raising claims of child abuse, but actually providing evidence of it.
“They don’t want the evidence, because it doesn’t serve their customer base,” said Ducote.
Missouri attorney Evita Tolu, who is involved in one of the more horrific cases of a judge using parental alienation to benefit court appointees, told The Epoch Times that family court judges, typically considered the lowest in the hierarchy of judgeships, use it as a way to “reward colleagues” and gain political, social, and financial favors.
“All judges are after all … just lawyers who won political appointments,” she said.
Tolu is currently representing Cynthia Haynes in the wrongful death lawsuit of her 14-year-old daughter Mikaela who committed suicide after a family court judge issued an order forcing the teen to live with her father Charles Haynes despite his past convictions and confession of raping Mikaela’s older sister.
Mikaela repeatedly told Judge John Schok that her father had also molested her, but Shock ignored her and instead ordered her to live with her father.
There is nothing in the hundreds of documents that make up the case that show why Cynthia Haynes lost custody of Mikaela with the exception of an allegation of “parental alienation” against her for raising Charles Hayne’s past abuses.
The UN Human Rights Council assembled a special team to study family court corruption globally. It spent a year collecting and studying cases and in October last released its findings and recommendations.
It concluded that the term “parental alienation” and “similar terms” are being used systematically to strip mothers of custody and grant it to fathers accused of domestic violence” in a way that “totally disregards the possible risks for the child.
The report decided the trend was part of a “continuation of power and control” by family court systems.
Solutions Include Retraining Judges
Some efforts have been made to fix the problem and there is pending legislation in some states to stop family court judges from making rulings that put children in danger.
Goldstein authored legislation called the Safe Child Act that he is trying to get adopted in each state.
Under it, family court judges would undergo re-training on domestic violence and child abuse, be barred from excluding evidence, and be prohibited from arbitrarily ordering children into mental health therapy that forces them into a relationship with an abusive parent.
Some states like North Carolina have adopted the Safe Child Act or varying versions of it such as Kyra’s Law and Kayden’s Law, both named after two little girls killed by their fathers after a family court judge ignored warnings the children would not be safe with them.
On July 27, 2016, 2-year-old Kyra Franchetti was murdered by her father who authorities say shot her twice in the back during an unsupervised, court-ordered visit.
In some states, lawmakers have introduced bills aimed at stopping judges from deviating from child abuse laws.
In New Hampshire—where there are several pending Republican-led reform bills against the state’s family courts—two rules that allow family judges to waive rules of evidence and other rules, raised special concern that the court is deliberately sidestepping constitutional rights.
The first rule, Rule 1.2 of the New Hampshire Family Court Division entitled Waiver of Rules, states “As good cause appears and as justice may require, the family division may waive the application of any rule, except where prohibited by law.”
The second one, Rule 2.2, states that the New Hampshire Rules of Evidence do not apply to the actions of the family courts.
“However, the court in its discretion may utilize the New Hampshire Rules of Evidence to enhance the predictable, orderly, fair, and reliable presentation of evidence,” the rule states.
Gender Bias Against Women
Both rules were adopted by the courts themselves. Rep. J.D. Bernardy (R-Rockingham), also an attorney, called the rules problematic, saying they interfere with fundamental constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial.
“Discovery, access to witnesses, and timeliness can be totally upended by them,” he said. “A fair and clear process is important in anything, but it is especially crucial when it comes to one’s children on a court docket.”
Ducote and other advocates like Goldstein and Wyeth all emphasize that attitudes also need to be changed throughout the system, starting with a gender bias against women.
“Anyone who calls this issue men bashing is practicing denial,” said Ducote.
Anne Marie Weisman told The Epoch Times that right after a veteran police officer testified about the child abuse her daughter experienced at the hands of her father, a New Hampshire family court judge proceeded to issue a secret order granting the father full custody with permission to take the child from school without Weisman’s knowledge.
Goldstein said the problem also is “just that rampant.”
In high-conflict custody cases involving child abuse, the judges “are getting it wrong just about 100 percent of the time,” he said.
Court System Turns It Into a Gender Issue
They all agree that most fathers in custody disputes would never think of harming their children and that there are definitely cases of mothers who are the abusers.
Tolu said the ones who primarily turned child abuse into a gender issue is the family court system. She said she has been accused of promoting false narratives of misogyny simply by representing victims of it.
“It’s funny that this kind of criticism doesn’t come out of the woodwork when it’s a story about a priest or a scout leader molesting little boys,” she said.
Several national organizations have also called for the elimination of absolute immunity for judges.
“Unfortunately, history shows us we can’t rely on the checks and balances to hold judges accountable,” Keith Neely, an attorney for Institute for Justice, told the Epoch Times.
The legal group launched a national campaign against judicial immunity earlier this year. Neely said when judges do something so egregious as to send their child to their death, they barely get a slap on the wrist, because of the immunity they enjoy.
Others like Stephen Gillers, a law professor, who also talks nationally about eliminating absolute immunity for judges, have said that the practice of “judges judging judges undermines the system’s ability to prevent misconduct on the bench.”
Some parents are also filing lawsuits against some of the court appointees. Tolu is known to be the first to win a federal judge’s approval to bring a civil suit against a guardian ad litem in a custody dispute.
On Mar. 2, six mothers filed a class action lawsuit against a Colorado evaluator alleging he deliberately concealed evidence of child abuse and recommended custody be granted to abusive fathers.
When Biases Turn Deadly
A Utah father’s alleged recent murder of his five children and their mother is a recent example of such attitudes.
At first glance, Michael Haight seemed like just another distraught dad who inexplicably killed his entire family. The violent shooting of his family came after his wife Tausha Haight filed for divorce.
Haight’s friends portrayed him as a loving family man who coached little league sports.
However, a closer review of the killings reveals that Haight had a long history of violent assaults on his wife and children along with controlling tendencies. According to police records, reported allegations of the abuse date as far back as 2017.
The Haights’ eldest daughter Macie, as the records show, recounted times when her father would choke and shake her and bang her into hard objects such as a wooden back of a couch.
She talked about his verbal assaults against her mother and how he would take her cell phone away from her to review her text messages.
The case was handed over to court prosecutors, but Haight was never charged. Records show that when Haight was asked about the abuse, he simply denied it.
Two weeks after Tausha filed for divorce, Michael Haight is alleged to have killed her and their children: 17-year-old Macie, 12-year-old Briley, 7-year-old twins Sienna and Amon, and 4-year-old Gavin.
Two Horrific Cases
A Gofundme started in Tausha’s name passed $100,000 in January.
Just before the Haights family murders, 12-year-old Angelique Ahearn was shot by her father Leonard Ahearn after a family court judge in Tennessee gave him custody despite past confirmed cases of child abuse severe enough to warrant a no-contact order.
In between the two horrific cases came the murder of 8-year-old Cameron Lynn and 6-year-old Audrey Jane by their father Adam Zipperer in Fort Collins, Texas.
All three cases fell upon the same month of a verdict in the murder trial of Michael Valva, who killed his 8-year-old son Tommy Valva after a New York family court judge ignored his mother’s warnings and gave the father full custody.
The murder happened only a few months after the federal passage of Kayden’s law, named after a little girl who was beaten to death with dumbbells by her father Jeffrey Mancuso.
A family court judge gave Mancuso shared custody despite documented evidence he was a danger to his daughter.
Children aren’t the only ones in danger.
According to her family, Esmeralda Casillas, 36, informed a family court that her husband repeatedly threatened her and her boys with guns. The judge granted the father shared custody anyway.
In November in Los Angeles, California, Salvador Velasquez gunned down Esmeralda Casillas in front of her twin sons.
