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By Dr. Leon Koziol

Parenting Rights Institute

In a flurry of recent posts, I document the judicial corruption and parental alienation which have remained unchecked in our nation’s divorce and family courts. The coronavirus pandemic has now combined with those dysfunctions to create a perfect storm in today’s society.

With closures, social distancing and home confinements, it has aggravated the alienation of parents from their children particularly in the divorce and separation context. There has not been, and perhaps there never can be, a study which reports on the number of suicides, drug addictions, domestic violence and health impairments caused by this perfect storm. However, a comprehensive review is clearly warranted.

As a civil rights attorney, victimized parent and judicial whistleblower, I have repeatedly called upon our federal government to commence this review through congressional hearings and a Justice Department investigation. It is based on thirty years of experience in these courts. Had this occurred, today’s dire consequences may have been less impactful. Instead I was subjected to severe retaliation with overdue reforms that remain elusive.

Outside observers are easily duped into believing that conflict in these courts are financially and emotionally driven by disgruntled parents. But a closer look leads to a more accurate conclusion that such conflict is typically orchestrated by unscrupulous lawyers, biased judges and a money-driven court system. Service fees and federal Title IV-D funding are key examples.

This website, http://www.leonkoziol.com chronicles more than ten years of persecution endured by me as a result of my stand against this corrupted system. I have witnessed it first hand in a number of relevant capacities and will expose certain trial level jurists who abused public office in my case to retaliate for this public stance. The abuse was pathetically obvious and supportive of my demands for accountability.

In 2009, Syracuse family judge, Martha Walsh-Hood, conducted a four day custody trial that she was unprepared for. The sheer volume of cases may have been one explanation but a predetermined outcome was more likely. For example, she directed me to cease the spontaneous presence of a pen between my fingers during objections because it was intimidating my ex-spouse. There was no complaint from her, nor a similar directive of my opposing female attorney. Coupled with other abuses, it led to a conclusion that this judge was prejudiced against men. The resulting exercise in futility caused me to exit early.

In 2011, after Judge Walsh-Hood stepped down from my ongoing family matters, Judge Michele Pirro-Bailey issued an order granting the ex-spouse my weekend parenting time to accommodate a family event. This was done despite the judge’s admission that she had not reviewed my opposition papers and without even hearing my opposing argument in court. It caused me to exit this hearing early inasmuch as my side of the case was being ignored in violation of due process. After issuing abusive forensic orders in my absence, this judge also stepped down weeks later. The orders were removed by her successor on the same record to show how arbitrary and needless they were.

On January 14, 2014, a judge who replaced the latter (without reason given) conducted yet another custody hearing during which he was caught orchestrating a record to support a second set of punitive forensic orders. Judge Daniel King resurrected them in retaliation for my testimony before the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption four months earlier. There I exposed his fabrication of college degrees to elevate my child support obligations. Specifically he directed me to cease making objections (two of five were already granted) regarding my ex-spouse’s irrelevant, defamatory and hearsay testimony under penalty of being removed from the courthouse. A transcript supports his misconduct. To avoid a “contempt by ambush” I was forced to again exit early.

In 2018, a child support violation hearing was held before more assigned jurists, Natalie Carraway and Gerald Popeo. There I exposed a scheme to double my obligation for contempt incarceration purposes. A social services attorney, free for my ex-spouse, committed malpractice by failing to offer a support summary into evidence at the conclusion of her lone witness testimony. It was admitted anyway over my objections and then reversed when I discovered a $45,500 support amount paid in 2015 which had been omitted from that summary. In this way, an attempted fraud was concealed from the record.

Both Carraway and Popeo later denied me a transcript of that hearing to show not only serious error but also a fraud in the Title IV-D funding program. It caused me to avoid a clear set-up at a confirmation (contempt) hearing conducted by Popeo. This led to an unlawful support warrant, secret bulletin and “shoot on sight” threat from a traffic cop to mirror the 2015 Walter Scott shooting in South Carolina. That transcript has yet to materialize despite recourse sought in both federal and state appellate courts.

In these and other proceedings over the years I was forced to take extreme measures to protect myself. This included an absence from my daughters’ school events with an ex-spouse threatening a contempt petition each time I attempted contact. I had never been found to be an unfit parent or even accused of any abuse, but a jail term without a jury, pretrial discovery or heightened standard of proof, was not an option. With each early exit, these and other assigned jurists were able to use the ex-spouse’s unchecked testimony to issue one-sided orders that made me to appear incompetent as a parent.

Such orchestrations were rampant over my fourteen year ordeal that led to the destruction of my wonderful father-daughter relationships and ultimate harm to my health and professional career. The joint misconduct was well hidden in a voluminous record and presumptively credited due to the high regard typically associated with any person bearing the title of “judge.” In truth, it was a pretext for punishing my First Amendment rights as a whistleblower outside the courtroom.

My daughters cannot be expected to understand the complexities of this misconduct which forced me out of their lives. We had such a wonderful relationship for more than ten years, but all that was erased by a “custodial” mother and court system hell bent on money interests over parental rights. I lost so many opportunities to experience various phases and crucial events in my girls’ lives that can never be recovered. And I was forced to pay for the kidnapping with over a quarter million dollars in tax free child support paid to date despite an income capacity destroyed by draconian support practices.

This is the price paid by an attorney with the qualifications to challenge a corrupt court system. It is a price which allows the system to live on even during a pandemic, thereby harming countless parents, children and families. It is an epidemic protected by powerful interests, one that wreaking havoc upon our society as a whole. Although my sacrifices were many, they were properly directed against this system. Hopefully others will join my crusade so that those sacrifices were not in vain.

For more information, I may be contacted at leonkoziol@gmail.com or (315) 796-4000. Kindly share this post to overcome the censorship we are experiencing.