Dear Friends,
It is with great sadness that I write to inform you that my rights to my precious son J**** were officially taken from me on Friday, January 25, 2008.
Why? Well, for many reasons:
- I wasn't willing to use my son as a weapon and someone else was.
- The child's representative assigned to the case was a close friend of opposing council and proclaimed on his first day of assignment that he had already made up his mind; that he never bothered to meet the child and myself as required by his position, that he never bothered to return the numerous messages from mental health providers who had vital information on the serious mental issues of the child's mother; that he was unwilling to consider the report for the Department of Child and Family Services that identified the child's mother as "completely unreliable" --- a level of indication that DCFS avoids assigning except in the most extreme cases relating to mental stability issues; and that I was not in a position to grant his demand for a bribe and brought this to the attention of the regulatory committee.
- I wasn't willing to make up lies about anyone else even when lies were being told about me
- Like the mother in the story of Solomon, I would rather my son live in the care of someone else than have to suffer.
But the biggest reason that I had my rights to my son ripped from me is that the Cook County Court System of Illinois runs on a system of selling custody to the highest bidder.
There is a recognized practice that has been identified as being utilized by attorneys of little or no moral character and professional ethics. It's a system of forcing financial starvation.
The attorneys advise their clients to force the other parent into such utter financial hardship they literally can't proceed.
That's what happened with me.
Before filing for divorce the other party withdrew all my money from the bank: savings, checking, and retirement leaving me literally penniless.
I was tricked into wasting nine months of legal fees coming to a joint parenting agreement that once finalized and ready to sign, the other party revealed it had all been a ploy to get me to spend what little money I had been able to borrow and now that I was out of money they were embarking on their intent they had the whole time - to rip all rights to his father away from J***.
The other side interfered with my employment costing me three positions to prevent me from maintaining an income and forcing me into bankruptcy.
The other side agreed to file joint taxes as that deductions had not been decided by the court, but then revealed it was only a decoy agreement to provide enough time to file separately and cause me to have to spend a year incurring more debt going back and forth with the IRS over the undecided deductions fraudulently claimed by the other party.
And finally when they knew I was down to less than $60 in the bank and we have notices that the electricity is going to be turned off, the other side made a motion for a court 604 (b) process which would require me to immediately provide a retainer fee of several thousand dollars - which I of course did not have. Because I didn't have the money, by default the other side got what they wanted - to for all intents and purposes legally eliminate me from being the father my son needs.
I raised J*** from the day he was born. The first 48 hours in the hospital were with daddy. I did every feeding, every diaper change,...when he slept, he slept on daddy, when he cried daddy walked him up and down the corridors and soothed him with the silly songs he'd sung to him when he was still in the womb. Daddy was there holding his hand for every shot. Daddy was there holding his hand during the circumcision. When he needed extra testing on his hearing, Daddy took him and stayed with him. Daddy was the first voice he heard in the delivery room. Daddy was the first person he opened his eyes to see.
Throughout infancy Daddy did the feedings. Daddy did the diaper changes. Daddy was the one who got up in the nights. Daddy made custom tapes to play when he slept to teach him about different composers. Daddy would read him books every day and even when he slept - fun books, educational books, the Bible, poetry. Daddy and J*** played every day because Daddy never minded getting down on the ground and being silly. Daddy cooked all the meals in the house and introduced J*** to solid foods - expanding his palette with tastes from conventional peas to exotic mango and guava. J*** learned to compromise because Daddy would watch J***'s television favorites from start to finish with him having fun and getting involved, so J*** would give just as much effort having fun and watching Daddy's basketball games. It's no surprise, I guess, that J***'s first word was Dada.
When J***'s mother first sprung her surprise divorce tactics, part of that plan was doing something that is sometimes known as Legal Kidnapping. She disappeared J*** - not only not allowing me to see him, but refusing to reveal his whereabouts or even to at least respond to pleas to merely confirm his health or well-being.
Of course that's illegal, but the police simply refuse to take action - at least that's the position of the X***, Illinois police department. When I went to file a report and request their assistance, I took with me source copies of all the laws that were being broken - local, county, state, and federal. The officer refused to take the report saying that he knew the law was being broken but it wasn't his problem to enforce it.
That probably shouldn't be too surprising of a position by the X***, Illinois police though. That's the same police department that employs the man who cracked two of my ribs as a part of J***'s mother's divorce plan that she'd apparently had planned out for some time in advance. I actually don't think J***'s mother specifically arranged that my ribs would be cracked as a part of what she did specifically plan, but I think she just got the lucky added bonus that the guy was such a knucklehead that he was easily able to be tricked into using his likely steroid fueled rage to bust me up a little. Some people get all the luck.
While the police weren't willing to act to enforce the laws against legal kidnapping, some courts are. Unfortunately getting the matter heard in court isn't a quick process. J*** had been disappeared for over 30 days by the time the court heard the case.
Thankfully the court did immediately intervene with a court order. By that time I feared that maybe J*** wouldn't remember me. But he did. Our bond of love transcended whatever evils he might have been told. It was a moment of golden realization. I would forever focus every effort on filling J*** with enough love to last him through any attempts by anyone else to ever try to use him as a weapon again.
It turned out to be good thinking because while the court could intervene with a court order prohibiting the mother from legally kidnapping the child again, it is up to the police to enforce it...and we already know how helpful they'd been so far.
True to expectations, J***'s mother continued her practice of disappearing him for such reasons as ... and I'm not making this up...that she didn't like his hair cut. And also true to expectations, the X***, Illinois police department refused to enforce the court order to prevent J***'s mother from inflicting emotional and psychological harm on him this way.
While in no way to excuse the behavior (and lack there of) of the police, it is easy to see where they could become so jaded that those of not the most true character could become so guilty of stereotyping and playing pretrial prosecutor, judge, and executioner.
You have to imagine that police can be exposed to some fairly horrific displays of bad parenting by abusive, alcoholic, drug addicted, criminal, sick and deranged fathers. That's a fact of life. There are bad fathers out there. There are abusive fathers. There are alcoholic fathers. There are sick twisted fathers who should give everyone nightmares.
There are also the other kind of abuser fathers that cops see, because we all see them. There are the neglectful fathers who are there but not really, in body but not spirit, in the house with the child but not in their life. There are the sporadic but unreliable fathers who repeatedly give hope and then shatter it. And there are the voluntarily absent fathers - the fathers who would be allowed every opportunity to be a part of their child's life but chose to be as meaningless of an unknown as any random passerby.
That's a lot of negative preconceptions to overcome to realize that there are good fathers out there too. There are fathers who are the nurturing parent when there aren't two, or the equally nurturing when there are two. There are fathers who walk away from more lucrative work because it would mean more travel time away from their child and money can't replace the moments shared together. There are fathers who go without so that the child never does. There are fathers whose idea of a perfect evening is not at the trendiest club or the hottest sporting event but with his child at home. There are fathers who can tell you all the names of all the characters of Bob the Builder, Thomas and Friends, and Handy Manny. There are fathers who read to their son so much that the child is known by name at three public libraries. There are fathers who teach their son to pray every night to be thankful for the blessings in life.
Not many police officers think of these good fathers that exist. Not many in the court system either.
So Legal Kidnapping gets to occur..and with the help of Fiscal Starvation, eventually becomes Legal Stealing - Legal Stealing of Custody.
It doesn't just happen to men. In fact, it probably more often happens to women. It all depends on who has the money.
I spent over $80 thousand dollars defending myself from made up charges. Not misunderstandings - but purely fictional attacks the other side knew were fictional. All were thrown out of court - but achieved the purpose of draining me of all money. I spent a fortune trying to come to a hospitable agreement only to discover it was all a diversion to drain me of all money.
If I had the money I could have had the child's representative removed from the case.
If I had the money I could have forced a psychological evaluation of the woman the DCFS already labeled completely unreliable and who J***'s primary care doctor now refuses to see because they don't want to be in the legal position of treating a child they know is being abused by the mother.
But that's the point of fiscal starvation - it's not about proving ones self a capable parent much less the better parent, it's about buying custody. Plain and simple - our court system is set up for the purchase of custody.
So what's in store for J*** now?
Now he lives within a house that he breaks into uncontrollable crying over when he has to go there.
Now he lives in the sole care of a woman who has a history of drinking Vodka for lunch.
Now he lives in the sole custody of a woman who has been repeatedly witnessed verbally and physically abusing her daughter.
Now he lives in a home where incest is active endorsed - where his uncle was witnessed trying to arrange a marriage between J*** and his blood-related first cousin when J*** was just one year old; where it was discovered that his mother was previously incestuously married to a close blood relative herself.
Now he lives in the care of a woman who psychological professionals have labeled as having extreme anger issues.
And what of J***'s relationship with his loving father?
I am legally restricted from ever talking directly to J***'s doctor, because J***'s mother doesn't want the doctors to know the truth about what happens to him at home.
I have to seek written permission from J***'s mother to let his own Aunt or Grandmother stay with him - permission his mother has sworn to never allow. (But she, by contrast, can leave him in the care of either of the two uncles with criminal records, with an illegal immigrant she leaves him with regularly who can not speak, read, or write English and could not take care of him in the case of an emergency.
J*** will never be allowed to go trick or treating with his father or his brothers or sisters.
I did my graduate work in Education, J***'s maternal grandmother is a highly respected education professional, and yet neither I nor his grandmother will never be allowed to contribute to J***'s educational guidance - we are legally forbidden from it and can be brought up on charges if we attempt to.
J*** is forced to live in a house where he says "Mommy says I'm not allowed to love Daddy" and "Mommy says Daddy is going to burn in someplace bad."
In the end, all that matters is the one who suffers if J***.
The court, it seems, doesn't care about justice or the best interest of children. It cares about the highest bidder and who will stoop to the lowest level and disregard how their actions will hurt the child.
In leaving court, my attorney said that this was one of the biggest crimes of "legal justice" she'd ever witnessed. I'm the best father she has ever seen, she said - and made sure to point out that isn't something she says to any client - I truly am the only person she's ever said that too. She said there was no doubt that if the court cared about the best interest of J***, he would live with his father.
She also pointed out that there are many parents of both genders who perhaps aren't as good of parents as I am, but that are surely not bad parents who have gotten even more of their parental rights unfairly ripped from them because of these money games - this fiscal starvation, this legal stealing of custody.
So what now? I have begun the preliminary stages of aligning myself with an organization that fights for the rights of parents victimized by the legal stealing of custody that the Illinois court system enables. My hope is that maybe my celebrity can help shine a light on this plague. Maybe, just maybe, by making this absurdity public knowledge we can save other children from the fate of kids like J***
I'm thinking maybe this will become the basis for a book I'll write...thoughts put out into the universe that might touch some, might be ignored by some, and might - just possibly - inspire some to act.
Maybe people who see abuse or hear of it won't turn the other way and let it be someone else's problem. Maybe people will pick up the phone or write a letter to the Department of Child and Family Services and speak up that there is abuse going on and that its their job to step in and investigate it. Maybe people will write their local papers and express their disdain for a system that fails to protect the best interests of children and places them in unsafe environments if the price is right.
I am sad to have had to share this news today. I thank you for listening. For those who believe in a higher power, I humbly ask that you include J*** in your prayers
Best,
A Father
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