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.D. How "Vincent" finagled Chief Jeremiah's order, 1994

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.


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.

February 1994 After eight months and fourteen hearings, Justice Raymond Shawcross, found the mother’s testimony of the father’s abuse credible. He kept a restraining order on Vincent and assigned sole custody and placement of the children with their mother in the marital home. He required Vincent’s visits with the daughter to be supervised.

April 1994 Chief Judge Jeremiah found that Vincent was stalking his wife and failing to pay court-ordered bills for child care or utilites. Mother and children relied on charities for food. The bank was foreclosing on their home. Jeremiah gave the mother permission to move the children to Illinois, where she could work in her brother’s law office and have free housing with her mother. Vincent could visit their son, and the mother must have the daughter evaluated by authorities there.

June 1994 The mother drove back to Rhode Island for a hearing and brought their son to visit his father. Chief Jeremiah expressed frustration with the two attorneys, John Lynch and Nicholas Colangelo, who had failed to agree on drafting the order from the prior hearing. Without a court order, Illinois officials could not provide an evaluation or supervise the family as Jeremiah required. He told the lawyers they were “prohibited from leaving this courthouse” until they had written an order based on the April transcript for Jeremiah to sign.

In the same hearing, Colangelo asked for his client, "Vincent," to have telephone contact with both children in addition to supervised visitation with the daughter in Illinois. Chief Jeremiah responded emphatically:

No, Mr. Colangelo, no visitation and no telephone contact until I get this [evaluation report]. That is an important issue. I need to see the report, and I will continue the matter until I get the report . . . . But there will be no visitation and no telephone conversations until I get the report. (Transcript 6/9/94:9).

September 1994 Attorney Colangelo withdrew, and Michael Hagopian entered as Vincent’s lawyer. Chief Judge Jeremiah approved arrangements for Vincent’s supervised visits with his son in Illinois, plus telephone contact with his daughter on Thursdays from 7 to 7:30 p.m.

Vincent prepared a one-page “synopsis” of the transcript of that hearing that misrepresented Jeremiah’s order. (Click on documents to enlarge.)



In his synopsis of Chief Jeremiah's order (above), Vincent wrote:

After consideration, the Court concluded that it would be appropriate for [the mother’s] brother to deliver the child to [the father] for an unsupervised visit with his daughter (p. 6 lines 12-18). [I have italicized key words here and below.]

In fact those lines in the transcript refer specifically to the son alone, for Jeremiah instructed the mother:

… your brother will be there to have the child go with his father.

In his synopsis, Vincent misrepresented another point:

The Court went on to review the report of Childhood Trauma Treatment Program and concluded that there was not a credible story of molestation (p. 7 lines 1-11).

But in fact, Jeremiah’s reference in those lines applied only to the son, not the daughter:

. . . in reviewing the report of the Childhood Trauma Treatment Program, it stated my professional opinion these do not constitute spontaneous disclosures that list the father sexually abused him.

Here are excerpts of the transcript to compare to Vincent's synopsis. His synopsis referred to his former wife's complaints on page 2. In the transcript she is talking about his astonishingly low child support. (Click on documents to enlarge.)





On pages 6 through 8, the transcript refers to supervised visits with his son and phone calls with his daughter. (Vincent's synopsis of the transcript changed this to unsupervised visits with his daughter, with no mention of his son.)





When he drafted the final order, Hagopian did not go as far as Vincent’s synopsis had tried to revise Jeremiah's words. Hagopian drafted the order to give his client unsupervised visits and weekly phone calls with both children, but no overnights. And he got Judge Jeremiah's signature:



But a full decade later, Justice Michael Forte incorrectly described this order as if it had "reinstated unsupervised overnight visits."

After the results (unfounded) of the Illinois evaluation, the Chief Judge reinstated overnight visitation with both children by Order of July 29, 1994. (Forte, Decision, 7/6/2004:2)

[In fact Jeremiah clearly said "no overnights" on July 29. Forte is referring to the written Order of September 26, 1994, pictured above, which followed the Illinois evaluation, but also did not allow overnight visits. Later I will relate how mediator David Tassoni, with Justice Forte punished Vincent's children.

[Lawyers’ paperwork is a frequent cause of delay, expense, inaccuracy, and emotional distress in Family Court due to the failure to follow through on filing essential documents, the misrepresentation of judges’ orders, and the lack of clarity in many orders. Family Court does enormous harm when it uses adversarial litigation in these cases.

[A better option could be for evidence of crimes like domestic violence and sexual abuse to go to the Attorney General, Grand Jury, Superior Court, and jury trials. Helping families resolve ongoing crises would be far better served with a single multidisciplinary team from beginning to end, as described in the prior post. That team could include a writer and clerk responsible for timely filing of coherent and accurate documents. The Court needs to steadfastly remove opportunities for private contractors to profit from inflaming these cases.]

NEXT: 9.E. How "Vincent" got the Chief Judge to apologize.

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

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/