Judge reverses parental alienation ruling

Controversial trend continues because opposing parents lack funds: lawyer

By Heather Capannelli

Publication Date: Monday, 09 November 2009

In another case underscoring the controversy over parental alienation workshops, Justice Thea Herman of the Ontario Superior Court struck down part of an arbitrator’s award earlier this year that would have removed two teenage boys from the custody of their father and sent them to Texas. The decision follows a series of judgments in which Ontario courts have ordered a change in custody and sent the custodial parent along with the children to participate in the workshop.  

In S.G.B. v. S.J.L., the court set aside part of an award concluding that the workshop was in the best interest of the boys because the arbitrator relied too heavily on an assessment of them prepared by Richard Warshak, who admitted he hadn’t met them personally.

In his testimony and written evidence, the psychologist and author explicitly declined to make recommendations with respect to the children because he had never observed them before.

Yet the arbitrator ordered that the remedy was “necessary for the children in this case and completely consonant with their best interests.” Herman, however, decided that in making such a finding, the arbitrator’s order amounted to a “fundamental error.”

Another issue arose prior to the hearing when the father asked the arbitrator to order an assessment to determine the appropriateness of the workshop for the children.

The arbitrator declined to do so, instead relying on his own experience as a custody and access assessor. But Herman rebuked that decision, saying “the arbitrator’s experience can only be brought to bear on the evidence. The arbitrator cannot create evidence.”

In addition, Herman said the arbitrator failed to consider the psychological impact the workshop would have on the younger boy. He suffered from Klinefelter syndrome, a genetic disorder that, among other things, caused a language delay.

The facts of the case were as follows. The applicant, the father, and the respondent mother entered into the arbitration to help resolve issues surrounding their two sons L.B. and J.B., aged 17 and 14 respectively. The parents had been divorced since May 1999 and since then, the mother experienced an estranged relationship with both of her children.

After several attempts to resolve disputes about custody, access, and raising the children, both parents agreed to what turned out to be an unsuccessful arbitration in August 2007.

The proceedings were due to continue on Nov. 20, 2007, but the father brought a pre-hearing motion to prevent the arbitrator from making an order that might result in the children leaving the province given that the mother had been in consultation with Warshak for several years despite the fact that he had never met the boys. The motion was denied.

The arbitration took place in February and March 2008 and, based on Warshak’s report that the children were suffering irrational alienation towards their mother, the arbitrator awarded sole custody of both children to her and ordered that they participate in the workshop to help to restore their ties with her.

Logistically, this meant no contact with their father for the three months that the boys were in the program. Once the workshop concluded, communications could resume as long as those in charge authorized them.

The order also allowed the mother to use transporting agents to take her children to the workshop in Texas if they were unwilling to go on their own volition.

“The work of Dr. Warshak has been submitted for peer review so it’s not as controversial as the media hype may lead some to believe,” says Jaret Moldaver, counsel for the mother. “Dr. Warshak has successfully worked with children who have been alienated, and in cases where conventional approaches don’t work, it’s the only viable option to save the child from abuse.”

A larger issue, however, is that often these cases come down to a battle of costly expert evidence, says the father’s counsel, Jan Weir.

“My concern is that in most of these cases, it appears that one parent has the financial means to retain high-end counsel and experts like Dr. Warshak, but the other parent seems to have modest means and never retains an expert, meaning that they can’t lead evidence against the findings or methodology of Dr. Warshak.”

A week at the workshop costs about US$40,000.
According to Warshak, parental alienation syndrome is “a child’s unjustified campaign of denigration against, or rejection of, one parent, due to the influence of the other parent combined with the child’s own contributions.”

It is recognized as a form of emotional abuse that happens when parents get so caught up in their own problems that they lose sight of their children’s needs.

In an interview in 2008 with Maclean’s magazine, Warshak said the workshop “teaches children how to stay out of the middle of adult conflicts and how to maintain a compassionate view toward each parent” and that it helps the child “recapture a major part of his identity.

When the child no longer feels the need to pledge allegiance to one parent by rejecting the other, that’s enormously liberating.”

But Weir says the test in law for admissibility of expert evidence is whether it’s generally accepted by the profession. That’s because courts don’t interpret the evidence of experts on their own. “Is this a method that’s generally accepted by the profession at large?” says Weir.

“This kind of evidence is getting in because the parents who are on the receiving end just don’t have the funds to retain an expert to say that it’s not, that it’s untested.”
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Commentary by the Ottawa Mens Centre

 

Parental Alienation is encouraged by our Family Court Judiciary who have evolved the encouragement of mothers to firstly abduct children upon separation to establish status quo. The courts refuse to hear "urgent motions" regarding access after separation, there is no legal presumption of equal parenting, quite the reverse, there is an assumption that fathers are unfit parents and criminals unless they prove otherwise and in any contested case, odds are the father will have his pleadings struck, summary judgment issued and only a very small percentage of applications filed in contentious custody matters ever reach trial.

Ontario's Family Court Judges habitually flagrantly abuse their judicial discretion to the point that most men realize there is almost no point in litigating.

The Judicial Child Abuse is systematic and widespread with
"Power Orders" and "Sheffield Orders" effectively that terminate children's relationships with their father for no other reason that a judges court rage, that is, a pathological hatred of fathers and in particular self represented fathers.

The worst of the worst, the very worst child abusers, the worst examples of Parental Alienation are caused by the underbelly of the judiciary who do so with impunity and immunity.

It is this same underbelly who encourage an underbelly of the legal profession to personally fabricate evidence and obstruct justice, all with impunity and immunity provided by their counterparts with similar ethics in the Judiciary.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com

 

 

The most obvious solution is a legal presumption of equal parenting, it is the goal of the alienating parent to gain total control. Parental Alienation is minimized when the the issue of custody and or access is removed from the equation.

A legal presumption of equal parenting will never be a solution for mental illness and or personality disorders which most family courts in most jurisdictions don't want to hear about and refuse to order disclosure of when they know that the disclosure just might not be favourable for the mother.

Ontario treats any suggestion of mental health problems about a father as gospel however its heresy and highly improper not to mention offensive to the feminist judiciary to suggest that mother just might have a mental health problem and or a personality disorder.

It's that failure of the judiciary to make those recognitions that raises serious questions as to why they ware so willfully blind to those particular subjects and one very obvious conclusion is that their decision is based on thinking of that of a person with a mental health problem or more likely a personality disorder whose key symptoms are a lack of empathy, a propensity to abuse and inflict suffering.

Their names are very well known in any Ontario legal community.

That of course, is another taboo subject.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com

 

February 13, 2009The judiciary would have us believe that Parential Alienation is a real issue. The fact is most cases never ever get to trial.

In Ottawa, less than 5% , thats right, less than five percent of cases on the "trial list" get to trial.

Most fathers give up, they are told that "she will get everything she wants" and with Justice Sheffield, Power, Madam Justices McKinnon, Desousa and of course Robertson leave a trail of destruction, father's who are removed out of the legal process.

Take Robertson, she issues orders, draconian orders for costs that cannot be paid, which permanently terminates a child's access with a father.

Robertson is probably the most attractive and on the surface, an apparently "effective judge" with compliments from the rich and famous in the legal profession who have connections with her and who receive windfall orders for costs.

Power and Sheffield simply issue "vexatious litigant orders" "orders striking pleadings". Desousa is a lot more forthright, she just lets her own personal hatred of men overwhelm any ability to think rationally or logically. Her decisions are exactly what "she said" and to hell with any evidence that might not agree with the conclusion she wishes to make.

These are not legal decisions, they are decisions based on hatred of men, personal friendships with lawyers and law firms and a psychopathic ability to create destruction to new families, second wives, mothers, aunts sisters and female cousins.

Robertson is known as the only judge in Ontario who will send a father to jail on a "no show" at a default hearing.

McKinnon sets up men like setting up an opposing hockey player for a massive disabling hit that looks legal but is not.

She refuses adjournments when its impossible for justice to be done on that date. It's an order for a "peremptory hearing" taking away a future judges ability to grant an adjournment.

With dirty players in a dirty world, children's rights are forgotten for tactics to get an opposing self represented litigant "out of the game" and in the minds of the underbelly, its not about children, its about operating a corrupt cartel to pay their friends and destroy those they don't like.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com
 

 

We have judges in Superior Court including Ottawa who are next to saints, their long track records are at least relatively well known without any complaints or suggestions that they are less than deserving their position.

The above judges don't need to go to classes on parental alienation, with decades of family law and relevant experience, they could probably teach the experts a lot themselves.

At the other extreme end you have the personalities, who appear to get real satisfaction out of flagrantly abusing their power and leaving trails of destruction that include bringing the administration of justice and the judiciary into ill-repute.

Their cowardly despicable acts of injustice and destruction are well known throughout the legal community who are all, almost without exception willing to make any complaint what soever.

Equally gutless is the supervisory judges who hear and see "the complaints" not to the judicial council but in the court room where litigants speak out. Its those paticular litigants who incur the "revenge" of the judiciary who just can't resist the urge to , well, keep in practice in abusing their powers.


The primary root cause, of Parential Alienation, is not parents, its the psychopaths, the borderline personalities, the extremely nasty underbelly of the Judiciary who just love permanently terminating a child's relationship with a father by "any means".

Its "the underbellie's" propensity and willingness to engage in a "mission of destruction" that shows their true colours.

There are the Power and Sheffield Orders that order support when father's are unemployed and full time child care providers, coupled with orders that prevent "any further proceeding" that is "by striking pleadings" "orders for costs" (to their friends) that "end the litigation" and win brownie points from above.

Obviously these underbellies have a serious personality disorder, they quite obviously don't value their reputations or even think of the long term consequences that every one who knows them will read comments like this and notice that "they have the air of reality".

Its when you do the research, when you speak to the lawyers who went to law school with these creeps that you find out their personality problems have been around for a very long time and in some cases, were very predictable by their peers.

To end Parential Alienation, the Ontario Government should start by having psychological screening of all applicants for judicial positions.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com
 

Peter Roscoe is labled was "a vexatious litigant" by Justice Denis Power who said "enough is enough" that is, he wanted the case to go away and so he made a string of orders to "end the litigation". The orders included preventing him from even responding to litigation.

That was an open invitation to be abused that was taken up and that's another story.

Peter appealed Power successfully "in part" and the Court of Appeal just hit him with more costs, to do indirectly what Power tried to do and the court of appeal said he could not.

Power's order has resulted in Peter's little boy Karl, not having any contact with him in four years, that's right, the mother simply stopped facilitating access because she knew, sorry , her lawyer knew that , thanks to Denis Power, Roscoe did not have anyway of bringing any motion to "enforce the order".

More of the story. Power's order set up support that could not be paid, on an income that never existed, a common tactic by the Underbelly in Ottawa. Power knew that it would go to a default hearing and indefinite repeated incarceration.

And that's whats been happening, because DENIS POWER decided to flagrantly abuse his power, Roscoe has been in and out of jail, abused in jail, they even refused to give him his reading glasses.

The Ottawa Police took a "nudge nudge wink wink" from Denis Power, and "smelled gas" when the gas was disconnected and broke into his home to arrest him and throw him jail, a sure way of making sure
Peter Roscoe never got to see his son, or respond to the litigation that Power so conveniently set him up to be a victim of.

Its these extremely cowardly acts by the Judiciary that cause Parential Alienation.

The very worst, the most vile child abusers in Canada are not in jail, they are the underbelly of the Ontario Family Court Judiciary who have got there because there is NO psychological screening for a job that probably requires it most of all.

What is most insulting is that the Judiciary have no checks and balances.

It is Obvious, that some supervisory judges, are also close to puking hearing the endless complaints about the low lifes who they are supposedly supervising.

At the end of the day, its not an employer employee relationship, its more akin to a brotherhood of child abusers who operate in a code of silence and enforce that silence with far more destruction than any other criminal cartel.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com

Sylvia's story has "that air of reality" and it does happen to either gender.

It's most likely to backfire on parents female or male who genuinely want an equal parenting arrangement but the other person has a mental health problem and or a personality disorder that has as one of its features, control, greed and hatred.

The problem is that Family Court do not want to hear about "Mental Health issues" there is an almost guaranteed negative reaction to even make the suggestion that the other parent has a mental health problem.

Generally, its women who make the allegation and who get in a knee jerk reaction, orders for mental health assessments when its her who has the mental health problem.

Its cases like this that cry out for experience and wisdom, a lawyer with decades of experience in any other area but family law should simply not be hearing as a family court judge.


That aside, the present presumption in Canada is that men have no legal rights, are not suitable to be equal parents and even drug addicted mentally ill violent mothers should have a presumption of being a primary parent, read he gets every second weekend and she gets support.

That assumption is not reality, go to any swimming pool and see who is doing the parenting, increasingly its men who are the primary parent. Just look at university graduations, females increasingly take on the career role while the male, if there is not another female, take on the parenting role, and that can be a hell of lot more work for next to nothing. Those men frequently end up as full time slaves without any income and also who end up never seeing their kids again in the event of a separation.

That's why there is a need for a Legal Presumption of Equal Parenting in Most CAses, Most of the time. It should not preclude making arguments when violence, anger, abuse, mental health and personality disorders raise their head in one or both the parties.

At the end of the day, if doctors and airline pilots operated like the Family Court Judiciary, only 5% of flights would ever get off the ground and most of those would crash en-route.

Its enough to make you want to puke.


www.OttawaMensCentre.com