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"

3.C. Case Study: Mischief in the court

(This story begins below at 3.A.)


Two court cases—one initiated by each child’s father—sometimes ran simultaneously in different courts creating room for mischief.

For example, on September 27, 2002, the young couple had a divorce hearing in Providence on the same day that lawyer William Holt was fourteen miles away at the Kent County Courthouse asking Justice Rocha to sign an order he said Justice Voccola had issued eight months earlier. The transcript from January 16th shows Voccola saying:

My understanding is Mr. Holt will be preparing an order which will amend the birth certificate for [the younger child] to show the surname of [her father, the former VP], if that is agreed to.

Out of consideration for children’s emotional health, Rhode Island law does not require a child born out of wedlock to use a biological father’s surname, especially when the family uses a different name. But changing this girl’s surname became an issue of paternal control that resulted in a hefty fine and imprisonment for the mother. It also forced the two sisters, who looked alike in grade school, to explain why they had two completely different surnames.

Here’s how the stratagem worked:

Holt wrote his version of the order in a curious passive voice, asserting that Voccola adjudged the former VP to be the biological father and decreed that the child’s birth certificate “shall be modified,” and the child’s surname “shall be changed,” and a “certified copy of this Order shall be provided to the Health Department. . . .”

Voccola never directed anyone to carry out these orders on January 16, 2002. She had already given legal authority for the children to Murray-Rapoza, the guardian ad litem, on May 23, 2001. Holt certified that he had sent an advance copy of this order only to the mother’s attorney, but not to Murray-Rapoza, who should have received all communications about the children. Indeed, she would have been the logical person to change the birth certificate.

Justice Rocha signed the order on September 27, 2002, adding the Latin words nunc pro tunc, meaning “now for then.” Holt took four more months to deliver the unusual order to the clerk, who entered it in the record January 21, 2003, two weeks after the mother's attorney had withdrawn from the case, and more than a year after Voccola mentioned the name change “if that is agreed to.”

The order lay undetected in the rapidly expanding court file for nearly three years. It eventually served as a blunt instrument for punishing the mother, who had stood up in court on July 13, 2004, to accuse attorney Holt, Justice Rocha and Patricia Rocha, his daughter, for perpetrating insurance fraud.

I remember Holt’s astonished expression as a pile of papers flew up from his hands, creating instant distraction. He diplomatically assured the judge there was no need to consider any pending motions for the rest of the summer, since judicial rotation would occur in the fall and “in the interests of judicial economy,” all motions could be re-filed at that time.

Thereupon Justice Rocha and attorney Holt disappeared from the case. When Justice Pamela Macktaz arrived at Kent County Courthouse, attorney Barbara Grady took over as attorney for the former VP.

Family Court custody cases are often played like a waiting game as children grow from one stage to the next. When the baby was old enough to start school, Grady found a way to use Holt’s lurking name-change order to her own advantage.

Two days before Thanksgiving 2005, Macktaz called in four sheriffs to hustle the diminutive mother out of the courtroom in handcuffs for contempt of court, because she had registered her younger daughter in school under the child’s birth name. Attorney Grady was careful not to say the mother had failed to change the birth certificate, for she had never been ordered to do that. Instead, Grady accused her of using a “fraudulent document.”

Macktaz ordered the defendant to be “held at the Adult Correctional Institution . . . until such time that she schedules an appointment for a full psychiatric evaluation with a licensed psychiatrist.” The mother won her release by the end of the day, but Macktaz ordered her to pay Grady’s fee from her escrowed funds at a rate that had become the standard withdrawal for officers of the court -- $5,000.

NEXT: D. Who's Watching the Children?

3.B. Case Study: Going for the gold

(This story begins below at 3.A.)

As their divorces got underway, these couples and their lawyers devoted most of 2001 to their finances.

Intending to marry the mother of his baby, the Textron VP gave her a diamond ring that she later insisted was an outright gift in return for her cooperating with the ruse so they could both keep their jobs at Textron. She says her husband was then unemployed, and she worried that they could not pay the mortgage on their new home if the VP fired her.

As for the VP’s divorce, his ex-wife had no lawyer and no apparent need for one. She gained assets worth over $4.3 million, while he got unspecified amounts in annuities, deferred income, and stock options, plus assets worth over a million.

He reached a settlement with Textron to protect the company against more claims of sexual harassment, while Textron supported his bid for disability insurance with help from doctors who said he was legally blind.

Pegged to his former salary of half a million dollars, his disability payments from Social Security and corporate insurance totaled $15,000 a month, from which he agreed to give the baby’s mother $1,500 a month child support--the same amount he would give his ex-wife for their teenager.

The baby’s mother reached her own settlement with Textron. Her husband’s attorney, John Lynch, persuaded Justice Voccola on May 18th to “equalize” counsel fees for lawyers on both sides, to be paid from marital assets, though it was not yet clear whether that could include her settlement.

On May 18th, Voccola also appointed the guardian ad litem—Patricia Murray-Rapoza, who four months later secured the judge’s order for the couple to sell their home so they could pay their legal fees. By January 2002, Murray-Rapoza wrote to the young couple's lawyers:

You will note that I severely underestimated my time on this case . . . . I know your clients are 'strapped' for cash at the present time. I would respectfully request that when the house sells that I be paid from the proceeds. I will be willing to wait for the money.

Some suspicion of deceitfulness rankled the judge. Though this was never asserted under oath, Voccola heard that the two former Textron employees, adversaries in the courtroom, were behaving like sweethearts at Sam’s Club. She declared her recusal, clearing the way for the next judge: Gilbert Rocha, whose daughter, Patricia Rocha, was one of Textron’s attorneys that negotiated the VP’s settlement with attorney Holt.

Instead of recusing himself from the case because of his daughter’s involvement, Rocha took the bench in time to intercept insurance company lawyers who came to Rhode Island to investigate transcripts, seeking to find out whether the former executive was truly blind and unemployable. Did he deserve the millions they were paying? Rocha blocked their access to the court record and sent them home for subpoenas.

Meanwhile, in the divorce case, Rocha began doling out escrowed funds to Murray-Rapoza, the guardian ad litem.

This angered lawyers for the divorcing parents, who demanded their share and handwrote a stipulation, using exactly the same words that Murray-Rapoza had used. Though they submitted no bills for their work, Justice Rocha signed the hasty order that awarded each lawyer $5,000 from the couple’s escrowed funds. By signing the order, he unwittingly created a second and third guardian ad litem for the two children.

The wife’s escrowed settlement funds produced a separate feeding frenzy as more lawyers secured non-refundable deposits and submitted bills to the court before abandoning her case. That fund would be managed by the guardian ad litem, Murray-Rapoza, and it would be tapped again by attorneys for the other side.

NEXT: C. Mischief in the Court

3.A. Case Study: Findings of fact

A recorded phone message came last month from a 10-year-old to the grandmother who had cared for her until Justice Stephen Capineri placed her with her father at the end of this school year:

“Hello?” She speaks in a tiny, hesitant voice. Her father interjects: “Nobody there.”

“Oh, eh,” the girl stumbles, but continues to leave her message: “Hello. . . .” She uses her grandmother’s ethnic title and continues: “I miss you. Please call me back. Love you. Bye.” At the last instant, her tone changes to a frantic scream: “I love you!” The message ends.

I recently sat three rows behind the girl and her father at a piano concert. I was surprised to see them. Her father once claimed to be blind, though he seemed to be reading the covers of the CDs for sale.

Knowing their custody case, I had concerns about his character. Seeing them at the concert prompted me to go scan the court files and learn what was happening in her case and that of her older sister.

Some of the allegations this girl’s father and mother have flung at each other may have merit, but others make me suspicious. Litigation clearly is being used as a tool of coercion and control, fueled by the wealth of a Fortune 500 company that has drawn a swarm of lawyers eager to occupy the Family Court calendar.

The case demonstrates several troubling facts about Family Court:

1. The Court is fraught with legal abuse by litigants and officials alike.

2. Conflicts-of-interest involving judges and lawyers produce a defective brand of justice.

3. Adversarial litigation often re-traumatizes troubled families.

4. Frivolous litigation makes Family Court a goldmine for a small group of lawyers (who ironically accuse this mother of being a “gold-digger”).

On May 18, 2001, at Kent County Courthouse, Family Court Associate Justice Kathleen Voccola appointed attorney Patricia Murray-Rapoza as guardian ad litem for two sisters, aged one and two.

On that same day, attorney William Holt launched a custody suit against their mother on behalf of a vice president of Textron, for whom she worked, who claimed to be the younger girl’s father.

Voccola, Murray-Rapoza, and Holt were all close to Family Court Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, Jr.

In 1979, Jeremiah was Cranston’s city solicitor under Mayor Edward DiPrete when Voccola became assistant solicitor. Holt worked with them as an administrative assistant in the mayor’s office while going to law school.

Voccola oversaw liquor licenses for the city until DiPrete became Governor in 1985 and made Voccola the State’s liquor control administrator.

Jeremiah served as executive counsel to Governor DiPrete, who appointed him to the Family Court bench in 1986 and made him Chief Judge a year later.

In 1988 – despite revelations of corruption in DiPrete’s administration – Voccola agreed to fill out the Republican ticket in a doomed race for Attorney General. She lost, but DiPrete won re-election as Governor, and in 1989, he appointed her to a coveted lifetime seat on the Family Court bench.

In 1998, DiPrete pled guilty to 18 felonies. This saved the state the cost of a trial, but it denied citizens the opportunity to learn details about his crimes and co-conspirators. The former governor spent a year in prison and lost his pension.

Jeremiah, Voccola, Holt, and Murray-Rapoza have not been linked to DiPrete’s wrongdoing.

Skip ahead to May 2, 2001. Murray-Rapoza purchased Chief Jeremiah’s Cranston office building, where both she and Holt had been tenants. The building had become an embarrassment to Jeremiah when he awarded public funds to a police group that paid him part of the grant as rent.

Murray-Rapoza bought the building. Jeremiah took back the mortgage and joked in court that she made regular payments to him.

On May 18th, Judge Voccola signed the order making Murray-Rapoza guardian ad litem for the two young sisters in a custody case that promised to pay well.

Three weeks after that, in June 2001, Textron fired its VP, Holt’s client, for cause amidst allegations against him of sexual harassment. The daughter born to him and his subordinate in 2000 grew to look like a twin of her older sister.

Today, the woman’s former husband says it was the worst day of his life when DNA proved the younger child was not his. He says he still loves the children as if both were his. He and his daughter see the younger girl and her father each week. He wants them to grow up close to each other and respecting all three parents.

When the girls were little, he thought they should stay together with their mother. But then she began travelling to other states, pursuing careers elsewhere, leaving the children in the care of their grandmother, who could not drive or speak English. He said the older woman seemed overwhelmed.

When his former wife had both girls living with her, he tells me, she “missed most of the major holidays with them and never notified the fathers that she would not be there.”

Each father went to court after Christmas 2009, when they said their daughters spent the holiday with their grandmother, but without any of their parents. Early this year, each father won temporary sole custody, though the girls were allowed to finish the school year where they were.

Now their mother lives in Texas, where she says she is married again and pregnant. She tells me she commuted to her home in Rhode Island when the children were there. She sends daily emails to the fathers, demanding to speak with each girl on the phone, but the court has forbidden her to communicate with them. Both fathers allege that she encouraged the girls to lie and be disruptive. When the court scheduled a trial for June 30th, she sent a note from her Texas obstetrician saying complications in her pregnancy made her unable to travel.

Meanwhile she says that her right to due process has been violated in both cases. She is seeking writs of certiorari from the Supreme Court.

Should we be spending public funds to sort out such interminable chaos?

The wealthy father has no lack of lawyers. The other father represents himself, though his motions appear to be prepared by the wealthy father's lawyer. The mother researches law and submits countless motions, sometimes without help of a lawyer. The cost to the state is enormous in salaries for judges, clerks, stenographers, sheriffs, and overhead. But the children have most to lose.

As far as I can tell, this is not a domestic violence case like those I usually write about--though all sides have felt abused. The mother alleges that her former supervisor, father of her younger daughter, committed domestic violence by "pushing, shoving, hitting, yelling obscenities, threats and intimidation" and (according to her daughter) made the little girl sleep in the same bed with him when he took her to hotels for his visits. Sadly, from my own study of this case over six years, I believe that only the original father seems focused on the children and their needs. The other two parents seem obsessed with litigation in a system that appears to be destroying them all.

The cost is enormous to the state and far more to the children. But some have reaped rewards.

NEXT: B. Going for the Gold

1. Will the new Chief Judge of Family Court raise the bar?

This oped ran in the Providence Journal on Monday, August 16, 2010:
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_grant16_08-16-10_VTJDP0E_v22.2983051.html


Rhode Islanders have a fleeting chance this summer to help decide who will lead our beleaguered Family Court. On August 10th, at 5:15 p.m., the Judicial Nominating Commission (JNC) will interview six candidates to be next Chief Judge of Family Court: Haiganush R. Bedrosian, Stephen J. Capineri, Laureen D’Ambra, Michael B. Forte, John E. McCann, and Kathleen A. Voccola.

It may not be easy for these judges to criticize a system that already gives them life tenure, generous salaries, health benefits, pensions, and enormous power. But some will have valuable insights to stop an escalating spiral of abuse that re-traumatizes many families trapped there.

The list of nominees prepared this month by the JNC and the final choice by Gov. Carcieri in the fall may shape our Family Court for decades to come.

Twenty-three years ago, Gov. Edward DiPrete famously made his “best friend” Chief of Family Court. DiPrete later pled guilty to 18 felonies and spent a year in prison for crimes he committed in office. Though Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, Jr., was never linked to DiPrete’s wrongdoing, conflicts-of-interest have seeped into Family Court proceedings at many levels.

The process of nominating judges has always been subject to enormous political pressure, even after the 1994 constitutional amendment that established merit selection for all Rhode Island judges. One quarter of our legislators are lawyers and one-half of the JNC is required to be lawyers. Lawyers rely on judges to preserve and protect their livelihood, while judges rely on legislators to fund their salaries.

For several years, professional journals have recognized that adversarial litigation does more harm than good in many civil cases, especially those involving crimes like domestic violence or sexual abuse, which become inadmissible in custody deliberations after a no-fault divorce. Mediation ignores past patterns of abusive control that judges need to recognize. New research shows damage being done by guardians ad litem, “experts” and court-ordered “therapy.”

The Rhode Island Family Court needs to move to a better model in attempting to resolve these critical custody cases. Perhaps a new model will require specialized training in collaborative law with centralized salaries instead of the private contractors who profiteer on adversarial law and pride themselves on cutting the other side to shreds.

A new blog, “Trophy Child,” at http://trophychild.blogspot.com, will discuss some of these issues—especially when the court gives children to the very people identified as harming them. A variety of subjects emerge from these cases: the role of gag orders; ex parte emergency orders; supervised visitation; frivolous litigation; trust funds; the problem with the Supreme Court’s friendly-parent factor in Pettinato; and more.

I have presented one confidential account of a “trophy child” to the Governor, JNC commissioners, candidates, and a small number of news professionals who agreed not to reveal specifics of that case for the safety of the child. This case does not reflect directly on any of the candidates presently under consideration, but it illustrates a culture of control, intrigue and deceit that has led many fine lawyers and mental health professionals to avoid this court altogether.

Candidates for Chief Judge of Family Court must show whether they possess the insight to recognize these problems, the candor to name them, and the resourcefulness to raise the bar and assure the highest standards of justice for families in crisis.

Candidates must also suggest a safe way for whistleblowers to expose abuses of favoritism throughout the system whether by judges, magistrates, officers, guardians, employees, contractors, or others.

Which of these six candidates can envision and inspire change? Which one has stamina to lift the bar to a new standard of civility and diligence so that this court appeals to the highest caliber of lawyers?

Even in summer, when many would prefer to relax, concerned citizens must listen to these candidates’ presentations to the Judicial Nominating Commission on August 10th. A week later, on August 17th, members of the public may comment on the candidates.

Unless the public steps up to listen, learn, and demand the government we deserve, Rhode Island will continue to create new generations of trophy children.


Under the Open Meetings Law, the public is welcome to attend most meetings of the Judicial Nominating Commission. These take place at 5:15 p.m. at the Department of Administration in Providence, One Capitol Hill, Second Floor Conference Room B, Providence, Rhode Island (the modern building across from the State House on Smith Street).

On August 10th, at 5:15 p.m., the six candidates for Chief Judge of Family Court will present their visions for the Court. On August 17th, the public may sign in to make brief comments about the candidates. For more about the JNC, visit their website:
http://www.jnc.ri.gov/