Women and children are dying, missing, and maimed based on NH family court rulings. NH is tied with Mississippi and Maine for last – in giving the public computerized access to court records.
Some states have put the actual pleadings online. The public can see an entire case or search by individual judge names and other parameters. Public access makes the courts accountable to the people.
The accountability of magistrates is enshrined in the NH Constitution. The courts have long defended lack of access, but history shows it is intentional. In the ’90s, NH courts used a management software called Sustain.
According to one author:
“a deposition in a lawsuit filed by Theo Kamasinski, a court reformer, is historic. Kamasinski called the company that made the software and was told no other state that purchased the software had public access problems. Donald Goodnow, then the director of the Administrative Office of the Courts, testified under oath in that case that NH purposely altered the software to mix confidential cases together with public cases, and then denied the public access on the basis that confidential cases were mixed with the ones the public has a right to see.”
Taxpayers paid for that software, as well as for the current court software called Odyssey. Odyssey designers advertise the public portal access to the software right on its website. NH has never enabled it.
We want to thank Paula Werme for this Op-Ed.
Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
In 2016, Justice Dalainis praised former Administrative Office of the Courts Director Christopher Keating when he was appointed by saying “We expect Chris to continue that tradition of strong leadership and foresight as the Court continues its commitment to technology and transparency – two powerful tools that enhance and improve the administration of justice in New Hampshire.” Transparency hasn’t happened.
From documents I have examined in a variety of Family Division cases, here is what I do know: Judges select their own witnesses in contested custody cases with favoritism.
Guardians ad Litem and other judges select to do ridiculously expensive “parental evaluations” under various names.
There are no rotating lists of GALS and only a handful of therapists out of a few thousand licensed therapists in NH who are making big money from these court appointments.
The so-called “selection” process is bias and favoritism. If a GAL or therapist is making a living from court appointments, His/her loyalty will be to the judge – not the child.
Some Guardians ad Litem’s lie. The GAL board won’t consider looking at a complaint involving ethics until a case is over, even when a GAL fails to report a disclosure of abuse to DCYF as a mandated reporter. Some cases go on until the child reaches 18, leaving GALs unaccountable for unethical conduct for years. Judges are also mandated reporters as well. Instead, they ask the inadequately trained GALs to “investigate.”
If parents can’t afford a GAL, (since the legislature de-funded the GAL fund), the judge orders a statutorily unauthorized “report” from DCYF – sometimes making custody decisions with the contents of that report without disclosing it to the parties. Think “Star Chamber.” It violates 14th Amendment rights. There are a lot of custody cases with DCYF involvement.
Judges, in violation of court rules, have thrown witnesses out of the courtroom without permitting them to testify, including children’s therapists.
They order private investigations into “parental alienation” but not child abuse, or DV, and order supervised visits at insecure locations. They order terrified children into “reunification therapy,” dubbed “threat therapy” by one researcher.
If the protective parent doesn’t cooperate with this gaslighting of the children, s/he loses custody to the abuser.
Research shows all over that even bringing up child abuse in a custody matter creates a substantially heightened risk that custody will be handed to the abuser.
Parental alienation is junk science. NH has no Supreme Court case on the admissibility of parental alienation; there is no statutory definition, and yet the Supreme Court says judges can throw out the best interest standard to award custody to the other parent if the judge finds it. The decision has caused immeasurable harm – the damage is irreparable and lifelong.
Judge King and the AOC refuse to disclose the syllabus of judicial training or the names of people that train the judges. I suspect some of these court-appointed therapists are actually training the judges, and that is the reason for the judicial stonewalling of my request for information. At least one regularly appointed psychologist has published in the NH Bar Journal.
By 2020, 28 states had adopted a rebuttable presumption against sole custody with an abuser.
NH needs to pass it and taxpayers should insist courts hold themselves accountable. First and finally, turn on the public access to the court dockets taxpayers long ago paid for.
