By Dr. Leon Koziol

Parenting Rights Institute

(315) 796-4000

On this most important Christian Celebration of Easter Sunday, I would like to wish all parents the best in their hopes and dreams for their children and families. I was born on Easter morning and maybe that has something to do with the crusade I have been forced to undertake for justice in our nation’s divorce and family courts.

To that end, here at the Parenting Rights Institute, we are taking crucial action to protect our parental rights which have come under rapid fire in recent decades. For too long, like the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, we have taken these rights for granted.

On this very morning, I received a voice message from a mom highly distraught over the abuse she was needlessly exposed to in a local family court. It featured two of the usual lawyers who make their living separating parents from their children. She had not seen one of them in more than a year.

I am more than familiar with her plight because I have been deprived access to my daughters for more than five years without accusation of any crime, no report of child abuse or neglect, all in retaliation for my reform efforts and whistleblowing reports since 2008.

My daughters have effectively lost both parents in the process because a genuine mother would not conduct herself in such a demonic way. But that is what the current antiquated custody system does to people. The replacement mother, created by the state to be a “custodial parent,” is programmed to act as its agent.

Despite my requests for phone contact, I will not get a call from either daughter today. I could remember fondly the years as a single divorced father when we had Easter egg hunts in my home, dinner with family and games outside in the yard. None of this mattered to the sick lawyers on the bench who caused this barbaric separation.

Without any rational grounds behind this parental alienation, what else could possibly have influenced Kelly Hawse-Koziol to fixate herself with replacing me? How could she not see the agenda of her many fired lawyers? Was it a lavish lifestyle that was consuming her? Campaign donations to my adversaries from my child support payments? Political party allegiances of presiding judges? Something much worse?

Cases like mine and this mom on Easter morning require a federal investigation. Those with proper staff and resources must examine criminal violations of federal laws that protect civil, parental and human rights. Questions we all have require answers.

For my part, why wasn’t my custody judge, Bryan Hedges, not prosecuted after admitting to sexual abuse of his handicapped, five year old niece? Are such prosecutions reserved only for Catholic priests simply because they wear a different colored robe?

Why was the chief administrative judge who appointed 41 trial judges to my originally uncontested divorce not prosecuted for directing his chief family court clerk to spy on a handicapped judge? This clerk recovered $600,000 in her federal civil rights lawsuit because, unlike litigants, court employees are not foreclosed by judicial immunity, look it up on-line: Morin v Tormey,  626 F.3d 40 (2nd Cir. 2010).

And just when you thought it was safe to return to court, along comes Utica, New York city judge, Gerald Popeo, publicly censured by the state Judicial Conduct Commission for misconduct ranging from violent threats to unlawful contempt incarcerations. He acted in this adolescent manner because his ego was bruised.

Shockingly, a hearing judge found that Popeo had made a racist joke to an African-American attorney to the effect that downstate blacks call upstate blacks “country niggers.” Where were the protests when that Commission failed to remove him as it should have?

Because he was not removed, the same administrative judge, James Tormey, assigned Gerry Popeo as Judge #41 to my custody and support cases in 2018 after 39 prior ones were removed, retired or disqualified since 2004. This is the same Gerry Popeo who was publicly censored on February 12, 2015 for threatening to come off the bench to “wipe a smirk off” a litigant’s face.

What sort of example is that for a family judge who is called upon to decide domestic violence cases? The list of questions for federal investigators goes on. Why was Judge Popeo not prosecuted sooner when he compared a prosecutor to a “cigar store Indian.”

I’m not making any of this up. It’s all in the record. How much more misconduct does it take to remove a judge? And not just Judge Gerry, but lawyer Gerry in the way of disbarment for the same serial abuses of a magnitude that defies the 21st Century!

Gerald Popeo was assigned to finish me off as a judicial whistleblower exposing such misconduct. Six months prior to this, Gerry approached me at a bar complaining of my involvement in his public censure complaints as a civil rights attorney.

For example, on one occasion in 2010, I was defending a former African-American city commissioner on a series of nuisance and ordinance violations at his night club. We had earlier won a $333,000 jury verdict in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city that was now harassing him. Popeo put him in the city-lock-up where this man had never been, where he then attempted suicide using a belt placed in his cell. A jury later dismissed all charges.

The Popeo assignment resulted in a near fatal incident at a highway stop on August 30, 2018 which I have compared to the Walter Scott murder in South Carolina. He was the unarmed father fleeing a child support warrant who was shot dead in the back five times by a traffic cop.

So what did that same Judicial Conduct Commission, have to say about all this? It’s a-okay. Wow! If they can do all that to a loving parent, unblemished attorney and model citizen, imagine what they could do to you. What recourse do you have before a judicial commission dominated by self-regulating lawyers?

On May 3, 2019, we are sponsoring the Parent March on Washington to send the overdue message of reform in our nation’s divorce and family courts. We are demanding a federal investigation of human rights violations here caused by federal incentive funding.

We are demanding that our government shift focus from parent-child separations on the border to separations of our own parents legally residing here. Our March begins at 1 pm in front of the White House and ends across from the Supreme Court.

For the sake of your children and parents everywhere, make the pilgrimage to your nation’s capital. We are also sponsoring a Lobby Day on May 2, 2019 for those who would prefer to address members of Congress directly.

A speakers event at 7 pm on that day will occur at the Congressional Ballroom, Holiday Inn Capitol Hotel and Conference Center, 550 C Street SW, just below the Capitol Building itself. Experts in law, politics, education and psychology will give you valuable information on how to best serve your parenting interests. There is no charge for attendance.

Join our nationwide conference calls to learn more and help make this March a resounding success. We are a grass roots effort with little financial support, no political backing and no special influence. On Monday (tomorrow), call (605) 313-4165. Enter access code 763491 when prompted. As long as your protest sign is not vulgar or threatening, we cannot tell you how to fashion your message. But, rest assured, one will state:

“REMOVE RACIST JUDGE GERALD POPEO FROM THE BENCH!”