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unusual order to the clerk, who entered it in the record January 21, 2003, two weeks after the mother's attorney had withdrawn from the case, and more than a year after Voccola mentioned the name change “if that is agreed to.”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