9.I. Summarizing Vincent's Case

I did not have time to complete the month-by-month summary of "Vincent's" abuse of his family--and his easy manipulation of DCYF and Family Court. But here is an overall summary:

Rhode Island needs the Attorney General’s Child Abuse Unit

Congratulations to Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin for creating a new Child Abuse Unit that will work with the accredited victims’ advocacy group Day One (“New unit to tackle cases of child abuse,” The Providence Journal, Dec. 6, 2011, page A1). This effort could finally protect children from sex abuse--unless it falls prey to the same pressures that too often sabotage the missions of Family Court, the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), and Hasbro Hospital’s Child Protection Program.

Pressures to impede the unit will be intense, because it is usually family members and friends, not strangers, who perpetrate child abuse. Pedophiles’ motives may not be sex so much as power and control over vulnerable victims. Add to that the enormous profitability of child pornography and the ease of webcam pimping.

But state officials charged with protecting children are so fragmented that they seldom bother to look beyond the boundaries of their individual roles to identify larger patterns of abuse. Each official is insulated from the benefits that a team of equals can bring by intentionally enlarging upon each other’s limited perspective.

In 1997, a Hasbro doctor and counselors at the St. Mary’s Shepherd Program all reported signs that a sister and brother suffered sexual abuse by their father. DCYF “indicated” the father, who sued the agency’s senior attorney for administrative failures. Suddenly under siege, DCYF pressured the Hasbro doctor to change her report.

She complied with a new report that minimized the evidence she once found compelling. By 2000, Family Court General Magistrate John O'Brien gave the children to their father's sole custody.

In 2002 the boy tried to run away. The following year, he had a breakdown. He tearfully testified to Judge Howard Lipsey about a laundry basket of videotapes in their father's bedroom.

Lipsey returned the children to their mother, but apparently never called state police to investigate the videotapes. He declared that he was now prejudiced against the father and could no longer rule on the case.

The next Family Court judge, Michael Forte released the father from paying child support because the children refused to visit him. The mother worked several jobs at minimum salary and raised her children in poverty.

From 1992 to 2006, more than a dozen judges grappled with the case under our failed system of adversarial litigation. In their final hearing, the father stood with photos in his hand and a smirk on his face, saying he wanted to show Judge Forte the stripper’s pole he had installed in his daughter's bedroom. Forte ignored him and ended the hearing.

Like Penn State officials, none of these authorities felt responsible to call in state police to investigate what really happened to these children. (State police exposed the fraudulent credentials of the court’s mediator who worked on this case, and the children’s guardian ad litem was later found to be defrauding the fund that paid him to represent poor litigants. Neither court official was prosecuted.)

Many Family Court custody cases are orchestrated by guardians ad litem--privately paid lawyers with enormous power over families. Judges assume these “guardians” submit objective reports, but many are blatantly biased, depending on which parent pays them and the guardians’ relationships to other professionals profiting from these cases.

Guardians often ask judges to order parents to pay for expensive psychological “evaluations” by one of a handful of clinicians still willing to produce highly questionable reports for Family Court.

Attorneys for alleged abusers often insist that children must stop seeing trusted counselors like those at Day One, arguing that therapy will interfere with clinical evaluations. This calculated strategy keeps children under the thrall of their abusers.

Meanwhile, judges order clinical “evaluations” and forced “reunification” sessions with abusers “in a therapeutic setting” that further traumatize abused children. Rhode Island Blue Cross and Blue Shield told me they do not pay clinicians for court-ordered sessions, since these are not therapeutic. But court-ordered clinicians have learned to couch their reports in therapeutic language and to bill insurers under nondescript codes. Victims of abuse can seldom afford to pay for these sessions, but children regularly pay the cost in night terrors and gastrointestinal disorders.

Based on more than two decades studying Family Court custody cases, I hope that the Attorney General’s Child Abuse Unit will finally bring clarity, ethics, and prosecution to our state’s stymied system of child protection.

Victims need this clarity and continuity of a single, salaried team trained to recognize family dynamics that accompany child sexual abuse. The team must thoroughly understand and care about a family’s history and be available to that family in the future to effectively provide both legal and therapeutic advocacy.

Team members should meet often to build mutual trust. They must disclose and evaluate any attempts by others, especially lawyers, to contact them, and they must preserve the confidentiality of agency whistleblowers and potential victims who might suffer reprisals for coming forward. Team members must recuse themselves from any case where they have conflicts of interest.

To this end, team members should regularly disclose, under penalty of perjury, all outside contacts and verify that they have received no payment or benefits other than salary for working on this case.

Finally, the Attorney General’s Office must move quickly to bring evidence of child sex abuse to the Grand Jury where it belongs, to alert Family Court and DCYF, and to assure prompt, skillful prosecution of abusers in Superior Court.


Anne Grant (parentingproject@cox.net) investigates legal abuse in Family Court custody cases. Her writing appears in blogs like http://LittleHostages.blogspot.com and in Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody: Legal Strategies and Policy Issues, ed. By Mo Therese Hannah, Ph.D., and Barry Goldstein, J.D (Civic Research Institute, 2010).

9.H. “Vincent” wins sole custody, 2000

This case study begins at 9.A. below. (Click on August, then 9.A. in the Blog Archives at right.) My comments appear in italicized brackets.

October 2000 Master O’Brien gave Vincent sole custody and permission to go to Illinois and bring back the children.

November 2000 The 10-year-old boy emailed a greeting card (above) to his mother with this message:

mom, keep remembering me. I’ll always be in your heart no matter what. I keep on knitting my scarf. I’ll send it to you. I miss Matt and Andrea so much. I cry every night, wishing and wishing and wishing that I was there, with you. I hope your O.K. I love you with all my heart. Tell everybody that I miss them. I miss playing with Matt soo much! Love YA!!

He also sent a handwritten message:

Dear Mom,

I miss you very much! You’re the best ever! I will do my best on the clarinet. Tell everybody at home that I miss them so much!

I keep on sending you E-cards, but I guess they don’t get through. Anyway, make sure to send pictures of everybody, even kitty and dufus.

Keep on trying to get us back, Day and night. I’ll keep on writing to you. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxo
Love x infinite x infinitity,
[Son's signature]

February 2002 Judge Pamela Mactaz ordered that both children could speak with their mother on the phone without being monitored by their father.

September 2002 Their mother, who had moved back to Rhode Island, filed a motion to regain custody and placement of the children.

October 2002 The son ran away from his father’s home.

[Later, the son, then 13, wrote about their traumatic removal from his mother and his “forever home” in Illinois. I will add more details later from the voluminous court history, which was paid for by Rhode Island tax payers and the victims of the court.]

April 2003 Justice Howard Lipsey described “the scars that each party and each child has suffered from this unending litigation.” He blamed both parents for seeming “to thrive on exposing their children to the pain and suffering of litigation.” But he did not appear to blame the court system.

Lipsey affirmed an “unequivocal” fact:

. . . both children unambiguously and unequivocally desire to be with their mother and not their father. That has always been the position of the children and it has only been through the intervention of the Court that this has not been possible. (Emphasis added.)

He concluded:

. . . joint custody will continue the never-ending litigation that . . . would be detrimental to the well being and best interests of these children.

Justice Lipsey granted the mother sole custody and placement of the children.

May 2003 The son, 14, had a breakdown and threatened to harm himself at school. Bradley Hospital enrolled him in its Crisis Intervention program and notified DCYF.

[While in an abusive parent’s care, trophy children need to be rigorously obedient. They often excel at school, where they find affirmation and relief away from the oppressive atmosphere at home. But once they return to a supportive parent, they often suffer breakdowns. The grades of good students may plummet. Pushed to the limit of their endurance under the thumb of an abusive parent, they can finally allow themselves to feel emotions that they once kept under tight control. This is not unlike the breakdowns that soldiers with PTSD suffer after coming home from the rigors of war.]

June 2003 Vincent filed numerous motions blaming the mother for interfering with his court-ordered visitation and phone calls with the children. He blamed the mother for “psychologically abusing” the children. He even attached an email from his son, who blamed “Vincent” for lying to manipulate the court and to harm their mother.

December 2003 Justice Lipsey summarized Vincent’s numerous motions and also his ex-wife’s motion for child support, but he refused to rule on any of them. He declared that he must recuse himself from hearing the case altogether, for he had become "biased:"

After having had an opportunity over a lengthy period of time of trial, to observe the parties in this case and to observe what their reaction was to the children and what their motivations appeared to me to be with respect to the children, it is clear to me that I could not impartially hear this case because I feel on the basis of the testimony I have heard before, on the basis of my observations of both parties, on the basis of my observations and talks with the children, on the basis of the multitude of motions that have been filed within a very short time after my decision in this case, that I could not be without bias towards the defendant [Father] in this case.

I feel he is utilizing this court system for his own purposes. I feel that he is abusing the court system for his own purposes. I feel that he has no real interest for the best interest of the children. I feel further that he is taking advantage of a system, taking advantage of his children, taking advantage of his oldest son who is in the courtroom here. I think he is taking advantage of his former wife. I think he is devious. I think he has no desire to really look to the best interest of a child and children, and if anyone is not allowing them to reestablish a relationship with him and with their sibling, it is he who is doing it. . . . on the basis of my review of all the facts in this case, . . . for me to be able to impartially judge the motions that have been filed before this court would be a physical and a metaphysical impossibility.

[After examining the evidence, Justice Lipsey saw exactly what was happening. But he claimed that the Judicial Code precluded him from ruling on the case. He did not end the cycle of abuse by Vincent or by the Court. His failure to award child support condemned these children to grow up poor. Their mother patched together minimum-wage jobs day and night, sought charity, and neglected her own medical needs, while Vincent refused to pay court-ordered child support. This was particularly galling to his children, for they knew he was lying about his income. They had accompanied him when he picked up cash payments from numerous tenants.]

The next judge, Michael Forte, has a reputation for misogyny. He cut Vincent’s debt to the children’s mother in half, and he brought in David Tassoni to “mediate” child support.

NEXT: 9. I. How David Tassoni and Judge Forte punished the children and favored “Vincent.”

9.E. How "Vincent" got the Chief Judge to apologize, 1995

This case study begins at 9.A. below. (Click on August, then 9.A. in the Blog Archives at right.) My comments appear in italicized brackets.

[I am reporting on custody cases sometimes called “high-conflict.” But I call them “high-control” because one parent is using Family Court as a tactic to control the family. After two decades studying these cases, I believe that adversarial litigation does irreparable damage to families in this court. We need a chief judge willing to work at changing this court in ways that would make it less profitable to private contractors and less costly to families and taxpayers.]

One common tactic of control used by abusers is to provoke their families and then to videotape their enraged response. This “evidence” is taken to judges and news reporters to document the alleged “instability” of victims of abuse. Vincent had testified before Judge Shawcross about using video to raise his son:

I videotaped [my 3-year-old son] throwing a temper tantrum . . . I bought a VCR camcorder and videoed the children’s every move . . . dozens of hours of the children doing everything, including going to the bathroom and eating and just being cute. . . . [Once when my wife went out] the child dropped to the floor and started to cry. . . and I tried video taping him whimpering and crying . . . it shows me being relatively quiet, I might have said, are you done, are you done yet. It’s –- Your Honor, the purpose of the taping is nothing but a parent in regards to what a child does” (Transcript, 10/28/93: 12-13)

Vincent's pattern of humiliating his wife and children with embarrassing videos and photos continued throughout this case for the next thirteen years. (In 2003, his then 14-year-old son asked Judge Howard Lipsey to let him and his sister return to their mother after 30 months in their father's sole custody. The teen testified to a laundry basket full of videotapes in his father's bedroom.)

October 1994 When his wife and children moved to Illinois, Vincent had hired a detective agency to trail them. In October he used these private investigators to supervise his visits in Illinois and had them write reports criticizing the mother when she argued with Vincent.

November 1994 Trying to meet Vincent’s demands, Chief Judge Jeremiah agreed to let the children, then 4 and 5, visit Vincent, his parents, and his older son in New Jersey for Christmas. The Chief agreed that Vincent's parents could supervise the visits.

March 1995 Judge John Mutter ordered "Vincent" to pay his first wife $11,670 in delinquent child support, but Vincent claimed a change in circumstances made him unable to pay child support to either wife.

April 1995 In one hearing, Chief Judge Jeremiah worked out details for the father’s supervised visit and an evaluation of the daughter. The next day, the father’s lawyer, Michael Hagopian, said no, they had not agreed to the evaluation. Jeremiah exploded. He left the bench, then returned to the courtroom to apologize and said: “I was wrong to lose my temper.”

[Observing this in the courtroom, I thought the Chief finally saw the mind games that abusive controllers play as they make agreements one day and deny them the next. This is one of the reasons mediation should never be attempted in custody cases where one parent has a history of coercive control. I found the Chief’s reaction understandable and appropriate. His explosion, followed by self-doubt and an apology, were the same reaction abusers expect from their victims.]

May 1995 Appellate attorney Lauren Jones completed a pre-briefing statement for Vincent to appeal the decisions of Jeremiah and Shawcross to the Supreme Court. While spending significant funds on litigation, Vincent continued to say he could not pay court-ordered support for his three children.

September 1995 Justice Kathleen Voccola held two hearings and determined that there was no change of circumstance warranting the children to be placed in Vincent’s custody in Rhode Island, and they could remain in Illinois.

November 1995 After his October visit with the children, Vincent sent an underwater photo of his 5-year-old daughter’s crotch in her bathing suit to his 6-year-old son. The strap of a life jacket had tightened between her legs revealing her labia. She was outraged when her brother received that photo among others their father had sent him from their visit.

[The drawing with the words “vary, vary, vary angree” was made with a counselor at St. Mary’s Shepherd Program to represent the girl’s feelings about her father humiliating her with this photo. She said she was angry enough to smash soda bottles.]

March 1996 The mother, who had grown up in Illinois, learned to drive in winter weather. She always carried a shovel and sand in her trunk, and they often made the trip back to Rhode Island for hearings on Vincent's motions. Once they came through a terrifying ice storm, and her son, 7, became distraught. At school, he was learning to write by phonics. So she asked him to focus on writing a story about their trip. Here it is:


They reached Rhode Island, but when their mother went to court, she discovered that Judge Voccola had gone on vacation, and the hearing was cancelled. Some courts might notify litigants traveling from a distance. But such courtesies are not common in Rhode Island's Family Court.

May 1996 Vincent felt he was gaining the upper hand. He purchased the children’s plane tickets to Rhode Island for Father’s Day and announced that he would keep them an additional week. He told their mother:

I urge you to consider my offer of $10,000 to ease your way to Rhode Island. The actions of the Court ... should give you a realistic idea of the progress I am making toward re-uniting myself with the children with you or without you….

NEXT: 9.F. How Dr. Carole Jenny rescued Kevin Aucoin from "Vincent"

9.A. How "Vincent" drove judges crazy

[This case study will extend through several posts. My comments appear in italicized brackets.]

In the early 1990s, I watched Chief Judge Jeremiah make a strong effort to respond to some domestic violence cases, especially when people contacted him directly about the dangers they faced. He sometimes took over judging those cases himself.

Sometimes he favored abusers, like the police officer who held custody of his daughter for a dozen years while he kept getting his ex-wife arrested on false charges.

Often Chief Jeremiah brought in his close circle of lawyers and staff to work on cases. [I thought some of them abused their power, as in the Case Study, at 3, below.]

People who received the Chief’s personal help were grateful, while the Family Court system as a whole continued putting vulnerable children at risk-- along with the parents trying to protect them, who were traumatized by the Court as much as by their abusers.

Pettinato’s “friendly parent” standard (see post 8, below) required judges to force children into damaging relationships with aggressively manipulative personalities—like one I will call “Vincent,” who drove judges crazy.

Vincent’s relatives said he had suffered extreme child abuse, but he would not talk about it. As an adult, he refused to take orders from anyone. He married three times and insisted on controlling his wives and children.

Vincent’s bullying behavior distressed professionals outside and within Family Court, including a series of judges. He tried to control his second family through the court for 14 years (1992-2006). He manipulated the court process at enormous cost to his children, to his former wife, and to taxpayers who funded those fourteen years in operating costs, overhead and salaries of judges, sheriffs, clerks, stenographers, DCYF staff, and many others on public payrolls.

Vincent drove a series of judges to distraction—especially Jeremiah, O’Brien, Lipsey, and Forte.

Lipsey finally figured out what was going on and even named it. But instead of making a finding, he did something extraordinary and recused himself. He explained that Rhode Island's Code of Judicial Conduct precluded him from ruling on the case because, after studying all the evidence, he had become biased against Vincent!

The case went next to Forte, its twelfth judge, who revealed intense bias against Vincent’s wife, but never showed any qualms of conscience about Canon 3E of the Judicial Code.

Most judges preferred to blame both sides without recognizing (as Lipsey did) that one side was very clearly at fault.

NEXT: 9.B. A chronology of Vincent’s case