By Dr. Leon Koziol

Parenting Rights Institute

Amber Appeal: It’s a new concept I have devised to help parents locate their alienated children. As a victim of severe parental alienation (PAS), it was easy for me to identify with fellow victims across the country. After New York’s family court system unloaded on me as an attorney whistleblower, I was forced to navigate through the jungle of non-custodial parenting. This subjected me to one of the worst cases of legalized child abduction.

Like most, my ordeal is a torturous one summarized on my website, www.leonkoziol.com and my newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris. I am offering this parent assistance program with the hope that readers will help me find my daughters, Kristen and Cassandra Koziol. Last I knew, they were attending college, one rumored to be at Virginia Tech in her freshman year and the other, a sophomore in Albany, New York or Stony Brook, Long Island.

The peculiar circumstances of their missing nature led me to conclude that I would never learn of their condition if something bad were to happen to them. It’s a horrible thought but true. The recently re-married “custodial parent” (I refuse to call her a mother anymore) made a hurried exit from our region only days after my youngest turned 18. That parent is Kelly (Hawse-Koziol) Usherwood, formerly residing at 16 Terrace Hill Drive; New Hartford, New York.

After delivering a birthday present to that location in late, August, 2021, I discovered a “For Sale” sign on the front lawn. An electronic message thereafter stated simply that the custodial parent was moving to points unknown with a contact address at the ex-mother-in-law’s home. Such an option was designed to “push my buttons” as those familiar with this woman would say because I had a hideous rapport with that ex in-law and she could not be trusted anyway.

My suspicion of deviate behavior grew when circumstances demonstrated that Kelly Usherwood was using nefarious e-mails to communicate with me. She was playing daughter until her escape could be completed. By all indications, the newlywed husband was unaware of this when he greeted me at the former home to receive the birthday present. A decent man with adult children, he would be oblivious to the antics of the real woman he had just married.

As I re-examined our e-mail exchanges, I noted all capital letters in the first name of my eldest daughter and an extra middle initial and abbreviated last name of the youngest. This deception would pattern the absence of an “l” character from my own e-mail address which was used five years earlier to fake a re-location notice to the home of her last partner Joseph Flihan. That scam came to a head when I was forced to seek (in vain) a custody change before Judge Daniel King.

Unfortunately, this was the same judge who had just placed a gag order on my website. That order was removed when I challenged it in New York Supreme Court. Judge King stepped down days later after putting the parental alienation in motion. He did this in retaliation for my damning testimony regarding his incompetence before the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption. He recklessly used two college degrees I had never earned to elevate my support obligations. It’s in the record, I’m not making this up.

Joe Flihan quickly ended his partnership with Kelly, no doubt as a result of these revelations and needless proceedings. The scam artist then became a victim of her own folly as she was forced to return to her humble home. And like most alienators, she placed the entire blame on me. I could do nothing to offset the poisoned minds of my daughters who were already alienated and had refused to converse or visit with me since the move to that home in 2014.

You would think that this scam artist would have learned a lesson from it all, but in the course of pretending to be my daughters in the last (September, 2021) e-mail, she emphasized that she (my daughters) still “loved Joe.” One could assume that she would again suffer from her latest folly if her new husband, Lou Usherwood, learned of this. But with bizarre relationships, swing partners, and other moral depravity these days, who knows what anyone thinks anymore.

Critical to this appeal, if it succeeds, the process could be repeated to benefit other victims. It could become a highly beneficial program, an offset to severe parental alienation, and a reform weapon against a lucrative, antiquated and dysfunctional custody system. We cannot all become sleuths, but could certainly assist one another to achieve the justice we were denied. In one anonymous letter, I was informed that Lou Usherwood resided in Oswego County, New York.

As an FYI, there has never been a complaint to any child protection agency, no criminal record or finding of unfit parenting to justify the retaliation and alienation inflicted on me. Indeed prison inmates get better treatment from our courts. In coming posts, I will reveal more details with the hope that good folks out there will help. At the very least, every parent has a right to know where his or her children reside.

If you or someone you know has helpful information, call me at (315) 796-4000 or mail it to 1336 Graffenburg Road; New Hartford, New York 13413.