Author’s Note:The following column is based on two decades as a trial lawyer, twenty years as a parent and twelve years as a court reform advocate
When one thinks of child support, it’s generally a duty that parents have to pay a fair share of child rearing expenses. And despite tremendous strides in achieving equal rights over the years, child support continues to be predominantly a male obligation. Census Bureau reports still show that fathers are as much as 85% of all parents subject to a child support order.
Regardless of the gender disparities, the support of children should rank high among society’s priorities. But unfortunately, that priority has been abused well beyond its logical scope to line the pockets of lawyers, service providers and the support bureaucracy to result in bankruptcies, the raiding of college funds and a recent phenomenon known as parental alienation.
The realities demonstrate that our antiquated child custody framework is no longer committed to the so-called “best interests of the child” but a means for growing a trillion-dollar industry. And women are no longer immune from the consequences as we find countless moms today feeling the abuse which dads have long endured. Severe parental alienation has yielded a loss of contact with the children they are supporting over the holidays.
During the 1980s, Dr. Richard Gardner popularized that condition as a psychological disorder but his conclusions were rejected by his profession and never included among the 300 disorders recognized in the DSM-5 manual for insurance purposes. In my own reports since then, I have similarly rejected such a condition and preferred to treat it more accurately as a human rights violation.
A federal funding law is the “elephant in the courtroom” in that regard. As originally drafted, Title IV-D of the Social Security Act targeted absentee fathers through incentive funding to the states (and by extension their domestic relations judges). Such revenues were based on the number and size of support collections that could be documented. This, in turn, created a systemic bias among support judges.
But over time, a little-known adjustment to this funding law from absentee to “noncustodial parent” aggravated that bias through a revenue stream that grew many times over. The mere condition of career mom or gender status was now sufficient to place an adequate provider into a classification that destroyed the overriding assumption of parenthood and an existing willingness to support offspring without a state mandate.
From there, without any investigative reporting or public accountability, it was off to the races on the tactics employed to elevate obligations beyond a parent’s income and self-support capacities. It resulted in debtor prisons, child abandonment and unprecedented violence contrary to stated objectives. A new form of evil was born from the fires of hell.
The examples of carnage erupting from this corruption are countless: a mother who killed her two-year old daughter rather than give her up to a custody change (2018 Gabriella Boyd), a father who killed his girl only to burn himself along with her in his home (2016 Kyra Franchetti), a mother who obtained a gun overnight following a child support dispute to kill the father and children (2019 Damyrra Jones).
They include veterans and law enforcement: a father who left his eight-year old boy in a freezing garage resulting in homicide charges (ex-NYPD officer Michael Valva – 2020), a war veteran, Thomas Ball, who burned himself alive in front of a New Hampshire courthouse to protest child protection abuses, and a police investigator who killed his ex-spouse with a common kitchen knife after exiting support court to leave four children without parents, see Pearce v Longo, 766 F. Supp. 2d 367 (NDNY 2011).
This is only a sampling of real life horrors that attorneys, media and oversight entities are purposely ignoring due the immense influence of special interest groups. In our peaceful protests over the years, most recently the 2019 Parent March on Washington, we have demanded a federal investigation and congressional oversight hearings to address the human rights violations and rampant abuse of federal funds in this silent epidemic.
In Chapter 12 of my newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris, I outline some highly suppressed techniques concocted over the years in support proceedings to maximize profits and court revenues. You should obtain this valuable read at any Barnes and Noble store, Amazon, publisher Author House or major bookseller on-line. You can also join our live talk program, Leon’s Library, daily, Monday thru Friday at 7:30 pm EST on YouTube.
Here is my relevant book excerpt:
Chapter 12- No Place Like Home at pg. 193-195
To advance funding goals, state legislatures have enacted laws that require courts to name a “custodial parent” as a condition for a valid divorce or support agreement. Typically, an opt-out clause allows parents to by-pass the mandatory support formula, but to do so requires them to engage in a comparative analysis which often dilutes the reality of this option.
There is also collaborative law, but such processes are similarly diluted by additional attorneys who cannot be used later if agreement fails. More lawyers are added to a two-tiered process to support the adage that any community which cannot support one lawyer can always support two.
Here is a partial listing of fictions, in addition to those provided earlier, that were orchestrated over the years to maximize funding at the expense of judicial impartiality and due process:
Service of a support violation petition can be achieved by simple mailing. These petitions typically contain boldface, capital letter warnings of arrest and incarceration. If this type of service is challenged on due process grounds, it can incur the cost of personal service unlike criminal counterparts which these proceedings resemble.
Expedited case management rules can provide a mere thirty days for defense preparation between a first appearance and trial. All too often, a jail term for contempt of a support order is the standard outcome conditioned on a purge or payment amount. Satisfaction is routinely coerced from relatives, employers or friends.
The case for a violation and jail term is easily made by a single non-party witness, typically a social services employee offering a delinquent support summary into the record. Intent is presumed from its mere production without any other proof.
The burden of proof is wrongfully shifted to the defending party to prove innocence. The standard for conviction is the lowest of all forms of litigation despite the stigma and incarceration which are at stake. There is no jury or indigent right to counsel.
Support judges have invented an evidentiary substitute known as imputed income which assures the highest support obligation possible, often well beyond the realistic income capacities of the targeted debtor. Defending parties are treated at higher levels of income based on past employment reports even when wrongfully terminated.
Support obligations continue to accrue at regular intervals during incarceration for violations or any other reason. They also accrue when a father is later found not to be a biological parent and despite frauds used to deny him child access. They also accrue until a petition for recourse is actually filed despite its futility in a biased process.
The state has expanded its tyrannical power beyond the original objective of recouping welfare costs for abandoned mothers on public assistance. It now acts as representative for self-sufficient support seekers to create a serious imbalance in the scales of justice. Attorney fees and other costs are made a part of the final judgment.
In my case, all but the actual incarceration was used against me. But the many processes employed were also fraught with serious error, gender prejudice and whistleblower retaliation. At what point, then, is a victim pushed to such an extreme that our Constitution confers upon him a legal right to fight back or take the so-called law into his own hands?
On our next daily talk show, Tuesday, November 16, 2021 at 7:30 pm EST, we will feature Steven Boyd, founder of the Gabriella Boyd Foundation. He is on the Board of Directors of the Citizen Commission Against Corruption which sponsors this show. Steve lost his two-year old daughter, Gabriella, to a murder by the custodial mom who refused to comply with a custody change order. That heinous crime was front-page news in downstate New York since 2018, and the mother is now serving a life sentence after being additionally charged with attempted murder of the police officers arriving on the scene.
Steve headed up the candlelight vigil component of our 2019 Parent March on Washington dedicated to the children, parents and veterans lost to a corrupted family court system. That march was our feature on Friday and Monday, and as fate would have it, both live shows were intercepted on YouTube through video and audio cancellation respectively. This mirrors the censorship of the host of this program, Dr. Leon Koziol, when his website was subjected to a family court gag order removed in 2016 after it was challenged in New York Supreme Court. A protest was set to occur in front of the courthouse only days prior to removal.
Similarly, his Facebook reactions numbering as many as 2,000 on a single post were inexplicably reduced to only a few since that year. Seven postings from his website were attached to a 2014 report opposing reinstatement even though nothing was prosecuted on any of them. More recently, the host’s video component of testimony before Governor Kathy Hochul’s Blue-Ribbon Commission on Forensic Custody Evaluations was blacked-out from the record. We learned of this from an informant after the virtual hearing concluded on September 23, 2021. Coincidence? Maybe some, but not all of this. In short there is a growing mound of circumstantial proof showing censorship and electronic interference much like conservative groups were selectively frustrated in their applications for tax exempt status during the Obama administration.
We are not conspiracy theorists but unless one is utterly prehistoric, he or she would have to know that anything viral, anything operating off of satellites, and anything with a tracking device, is capable of wreaking havoc especially upon a longstanding public message that warns potential litigants to avoid retaining any lawyers. Family courts have become gold mines for service providers, and the conflict they incite for profit leads to crimes of unprecedented levels. Despite the glitches on the last two of our six live programs we will do it again with the request that our followers exercise empathy and patience. This interference adds to our demands for an investigation by the Justice Department into the human rights violations and federal funding abuses that are escalating in these courts. Monday’s program was necessarily concluded early due to the audio voids but when reproduced from scratch only minutes later, using all the same equipment and settings, the test program engaged live without incident.
You maybe asking yourself what the motive here might be, and the answer is simple. This show threatens lawyer greed and overbilling practices. It is hosted by a litigator who practiced unblemished for more than 23 years in these courts. his credibility and determination could lead to a very compelling show down the road which needs to be squashed at its outset. The host’s newly published book was recently suppressed from a quarter page book advertisement in a major local newspaper. That book, Whistleblower in Paris, exposes the silent epidemic in these courts. The bottom line is this: does government still fear the people or do we now fear it? if the latter, we have accepted tyranny without our knowledge or even a fight of any kind, and that is anathema to all of our principles under the Constitution. Stick with us, we’re not going anywhere despite all the persecution because somebody has to do this for the sake of an America we all love. The call-in number on Tuesday at 7:30 pm EST is the same: (315) 796-4000.
Join us, spread the word, and add your name to our subscriber list for valuable updates.
We first publicized the above video in 2011. In the same year we highlighted veteran Thomas Ball who burned himself alive on the steps of a New Hampshire family court to protest the injustices that deprived him of a father-daughter relationship. Today the carnage among veterans in our nation’s divorce and family courts remains unchanged. If anything it has only gotten worse despite all these years fighting the many battles on our home front to reform a dysfunctional system. Shared parenting legislation continues to be opposed by powerful special interests because the so-called “best interest of the child” has become a lucrative trillion dollar industry.
On the home front, we filed precedent-seeking lawsuits, i.e. Parent v State, 786 F. Supp. 2d 516 (NDNY 2011) which we prosecuted all the way to the Supreme Court. We conducted rallies before a federal appeals court in Manhattan and other courts in 2012, testified before the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption in 2013, sought international recognition in Paris in 2014, submitted reports to the Justice Department in 2015, successfully challenged a gag order on this website in New York Supreme Court in 2016, participated in a family law conference at the United Nations and a whistleblower summit in Washington in 2017, lobbied for reform in congress in 2018, sponsored the three-day Parent March on Washington in 2019, networked with fellow victims in 2020, and testified before Governor Kathy Hochul’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Custody Forensic Evaluations in 2021.
In the same year we published a book entitled, Whistleblower in Paris, which provided a documentary of family court corruption, and we introduced a daily talk show, Leon’s Library, this past week on YouTube. This is only a short list of our travels, sacrifices and reform activities detailed throughout this website. It was and remains a true John Grisham ordeal which the media and public servants are ignoring and even suppressing. As a result, despite the parades and fanfare today, the “Elephant in the Courtroom” continues to be side-stepped in the speeches. Veterans continue to fall victim to this archaic and abusive family court system. During our crusade for justice, we have literally saved veteran lives.
Most people do not realize that the parenting right has been repeatedly recognized by the Supreme Court as the “oldest liberty interest protected by the Constitution,” Troxel v Granville, 530 US 57 (2000). To help our cause in a meaningful way, or simply to learn more about the corruption that is eradicating this right, join our live talk show, Leon’s Library, every evening at 7:30 pm EST. Tonight we will feature a Florida attorney as a guest contributor. The call-in number is (315) 796-4000. Spread the word, become a subscriber, and many thanks for your support.
Rest in Peace, Vietnam Veteran Thomas Ball who gave his life in the cause of parental liberty rights on the domestic front in 2011
Leon Koziol lobbying Congress in 2017 for a repeal of Title IV-D funding as it incentivizes conflict in our nation’s divorce and family courts.
Administrator’s Note:
On Thursday, September 23, 2021, New York Governor Kathy Hochul obtained a mound of testimony from aggrieved parents regarding the abuse of forensic evaluation orders in the state’s domestic relations courts. It was the second of two public hearings conducted virtually on Webex, and it featured psychiatrists, therapists. lawyers, experts, parents and public officials. The testimony was widely divergent with some calling for abolishment of forensic evaluations altogether (a position joined by Leon Koziol) and others calling for overhauls.
One attorney-parent, a former U.S. Attorney, broke down emotionally for much of her testimony while outlining her ordeal as an alienated mother fighting a powerful system. Another, Francesca Amato-Banfield, jumped right into the fray from her vehicle phone condemning the hearing itself, its sponsors, “everyone,” even the speakers, before lamenting 15 years of accountability efforts that yielded no progress whatsoever. It was highly offensive but also very useful in reflecting the sheer anger and frustration of court victims.
Many speakers focused on their personal ordeals citing corrupt judges, narcissistic adversaries and evaluators masquerading as concerned experts. A number of presenters appeared in rough condition which is becoming increasingly common today (like they just got out of bed). It reflected a societal decline which accords little respect for other participants and oneself. After all, this is a formal proceeding financed with public money, and such sloppy appearances only draw adversely upon the quality of such testimony. For our part, formal attire and preparedness ruled the presentation, and Leon Koziol’s testimony is reproduced below,
Leon R. Koziol, Director
Parenting Rights Institute 1336 Graffenburg Road New Hartford, New York 13413 leonkoziol@gmail.com
(315) 796-4000
Governor’s Blue-Ribbon Commission
on Forensic Custody Evaluations
Executive Chambers
Albany, New York 12224
Hearing Testimony on September 23, 2021
Good Morning Members of this Blue-Ribbon Panel.
Before I begin, I would like to preface my remarks by emphasizing my position here as a judicial whistleblower. This Commission is focused on accountability and that cannot occur without whistleblowers. In fact many of the presenters today could be considered whistleblowers in various contexts. I would also take issue with the speaker from Pennsylvania who raised some kind of complaint regarding fathers rights groups. This is not a fathers rights issue, a mothers rights issue or any other select group but a human rights issue, and we need to work together to solve these problems. Finally I would like to join those who have called for an abolishment of forensic evaluations.
My name is Leon Koziol, Director of the Parenting Rights Institute. I am also a civil rights advocate who practiced law in the courts of this state for more than 23 years. As a victimized father of two daughters now in college, I bring a comprehensive background to the work of your panel and the refreshing objectives of our new governor, Kathy Hochul.
There are countless parents, children and families victimized by forensic evaluations in our divorce and family courts. They are part of a lucrative process and silent epidemic that is causing needless murders, suicides, domestic violence, parental alienation, criminal activity, and an overall decline in the health and productivity of the people of this state.
At another time and place I might be citing cases such as Utica police investigator, Joe Longo, who committed a murder-suicide that left four children without parents, Thomas Ball who burned himself alive on the steps of a family court, or the mother who murdered her two-year old child, Gabriella Boyd, rather than submit to a custody change.
But I need not expound because I too am a victim. Set to testify here on September 9th, I was instead recuperating at a hospital from a heart condition caused by the stresses I endured as an attorney whistleblower. Fortunately it proved to be a minor condition fully corrected. The 40 trial jurists removed from my originally uncontested divorce included a pedophile, Bryan Hedges, and Gerald Popeo who was censured for racist remarks and physical threats from the bench. I also testified before the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption.
Such whistleblowing elicited a systemic bias as I have never been found to be an unfit parent, no convictions or agency complaints, and all offense petitions of a child alienating adversary were thrown out. Yet none of that mattered as I was denied contact with my precious girls for seven years on such bizarre grounds as an “alcohol related gesture.”
Yes, you heard that correctly, a champagne toast at my niece’s wedding, and you will find it in a December 2, 2013 decision of Lewis County Family Judge Daniel King. That decision was halted on appeal, but reborn the next month with concocted forensic orders. This illustrates the extreme to which reform efforts are persecuted. I have asked the Justice Department to investigate the human rights violations here.
This whimsical manner in which forensic orders are issued, vacated and then re-issued infringes upon a fundamental right of parenting which the Supreme Court has declared to be the “oldest liberty interest protected by our Constitution.” Such violations are fueled by an adversarial framework that yields undue profits for service providers and federal revenues under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act.
In my litigation experience, parents have been subjected to evaluations strictly for tactical reasons. In the end, moms and dads rightfully stressed over the threat of losing their children in a custody battle or debtor imprisonment for child support, could be found defective on some 300 disorders approved by the psychiatric profession in its DSM-5 manual.
If the parent was a father, his condition might be nothing more than resistance to a justice system sworn to equality which still discriminates on account of gender. I have compared this to the anger issues of slaves. Reports are laced with human defects without tracing them to their structural cause, rapid fire torture which can incite a violent reaction.
High conflict divorce with its immense carnage was criticized in the 2006 Matrimonial Report to our state’s chief justice and in countless cases such as Webster v Ryan, where veteran family judge, Dennis Duggan, made a stand for overdue reform with the following edict:
At the outset, the Court notes that the terms ‘custody’ and ‘visitation’ have outlived their usefulness. Indeed their use tends to place any discussion and allocation of family rights into an oppositional framework. ‘Fighting for custody’ directs the process towards determining winners and losers. The children, always in the middle, usually turn out to be the losers…
This Court has abandoned the use of the word ‘visitation’ in its Orders, using the phrase ‘parenting time’ instead. If the word ‘custody’ did not so permeate our statutes and was not so ingrained into our psyches, that word would be the next to go… This misplaced focus draws parents into contention and conflict, drawing the worst from them at a time when their children need their parents’ best.
Abusive forensic orders can be mitigated by a shared parenting model for adjudications. But my reform efforts in that regard read like a John Grisham story. And as fate or timing would have it, that saga is now found in my newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris. A copy is being provided to this Commission because this forensic crisis is too extensive for purposes of this hearing. I am therefore joining others today seeking genuine accountability.
Parenting Rights Institute Director, Dr. Leon Koziol, has been asked by family court victims to testify before a blue-ribbon commission appointed by Governor Kathy Hochul to report on the forensic evaluation process in New York’s divorce and family courts. That process has become part of a silent epidemic which has harmed countless families and led to escalating levels of murder, suicide, criminal activity, parental alienation and serious harm to society. Much of this is documented in various reports issued by this institute.
Dr. Koziol will focus on the abuses of forensic evaluation orders, the suppression of shared parenting efforts, and the retributions he experienced as an attorney/parent whistleblower. These retributions over a period of years led to forced seclusions and hospitalization for a stress-related heart condition on September 9, 2021. It necessitated a rescheduling of his commission testimony the same day. Koziol’s saga as corruption whistleblower is now the subject of his newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris. A PDF copy is available.
The censorship of reform efforts may render futile the testimony of speakers if this commission is treated the same as the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption. That oversight entity was created by former governor Andrew Cuomo in 2013 to address a “culture of corruption in Albany.” Dr. Koziol testified at a hearing there to no avail due to its premature dissolution that led to federal convictions of the leaders of both houses of the legislature and a top Cuomo aide by a Moreland speaker, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
You can listen in by using the following link and password:
This post, first published yesterday, September 14, 2021, was derailed from its normal track on this website and Facebook, thereby denying the public access to vital information that is central to our First Amendment value system. American military sacrifice daily for these rights but Big Tech, Big Pharma and now Big Family are trampling all over them to transform our society into a socialist one. You see the proof everywhere in the way of retail establishments closed due to a lack of staffing.
For this reason we are re-publishing this post with the hope that you will help defend our rights on the domestic front by making it viral. Our site, http://www.leonkoziol.com, has been the target of various government entities offended by publications that accurately expose public corruption. Such censorship includes a family court gag order disguised as a protection order which was removed after a challenge in New York Supreme Court in 2016. At one time, we received thousands of shares or likes on various posts. Today we are lucky to get a few.
Censorship? Fear of identification, association or retaliation? Whatever the explanation, it is entirely un-American and typical of the regimes we confront overseas. We do not expect agreement with all our reports or opinions but excluding certain ones is nothing more than an attempt to conform us all to a single thought or way of life. The number who seriously misunderstand free speech and press is staggering. But rest assured, our postings do not coddle hypocrites who exploit their fame to influence public discourse with wild, reckless and highly disparaging analogies. This is one such example:
Hollywood headlines today in Breitbart and other news outlets featured Alec Baldwin comparing Florida governor Ron DeSantis to cult leader Jim Jones who caused over 900 suicides among his followers in a South America commune 40 years ago. The radical liberal actor was making the radical comparison of face mask freedoms to suicide by those who fail to comply with federal Covid-19 mandates.
This bizarre comparison was obviously designed for shock effect and not genuine public safety given the actor’s periodic aspirations for public office. But it is seriously infected with grave hypocrisy after the actor’s suicide revelations in his 2008 book, A Promise to Ourselves. At page 183, he itemizes such things as a hike deep into the woods to shoot himself, overdosing at a bed and breakfast, and daily thoughts of jumping out his apartment window in Manhattan.
It was all headline news back then after a vulgar answering machine message was made public during a contentious divorce with Kim Basinger. Baldwin’s book was intended to influence a reform of our divorce courts which caused parental alienation and phone messages such as this one. But the actor’s suicide disclosures stole the media hype, taking the focus away from the book’s main objective.
I attended Alec’s book-signing in New York and was pleased to add our group to his cause, but he exited the movement as quickly as he entered the fray, no doubt to avoid further damage to his acting career caused by his status as a controversial whistleblower. Unfortunately in doing so, he crushed the hopes he created among countless other victims.
Suicide choices may have been Baldwin’s right in reaction to a contentious divorce. But that right has no place in a discussion over vaccination choices. And it cannot be excused simply because a famous actor chooses a different one from fellow citizens. How many other divorce victims have been moved to consider suicide based on this actor’s book disclosures? And can we then make the comparison of Alec Baldwin’s influences to that of Jim Jones?
Needless parental alienations and the suicides they cause formed an impetus for my own (newly released) book on divorce court corruption titled, Whistleblower in Paris. Alec Baldwin’s time would be better spent promoting this book especially after he orphaned fellow divorce reformists years ago. Get a free insight on that reform at http://www.whistleblowerinparis.com. And here is the relevant excerpt from Alec Baldwin’s book, reprinted at page 21 of my book:
Unless the California Supreme Court thinks otherwise, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will have to start their five year divorce all over again after a middle level appeals court disqualified their trial judge in July, 2021. That judge had awarded the couple joint custody and 50/50 parenting time, a proper outcome if one abides by the laws of nature, common sense and gender equality. After all, there was no finding of unfit parenting on either side here.
But unfortunately, divorce and family courts throughout the country do not operate under that logical framework. They continue to deliberate under the antiquated foundation of custody awards, lawyer profits and court revenues supplied by federal entitlement laws known as Title IV-D of the Social Security Act. 42 USC 651 et. seq. It is a funding law which incentivizes court conflict while causing an inherent bias among decision makers who benefit financially over the number and size of support orders they issue.
The Pitt-Jolie trial judge was actually selected by agreement as a way of avoiding publicity and harm to the couple’s five children over which a custody battle had been underway. But like so many cases, that objective was lost as the legal teams on both sides found ways to inject strategies to increase their fees many times over. By the time this fiasco is concluded, most of the impacted children will be in college or capable of emancipation from these parent contestants.
How is any of this now in the so-called “best interests of the child,” that tired old justification used by these courts to seize jurisdiction over such matters? It is a seizure based on a judge-made doctrine dating back to feudal England, known as parens patriae, and carried over to the courts here despite its conflict with our Constitution. It is also the source of legal authority used to establish a child custody framework tailored to a period when moms stayed home as caregivers while dads went off to work for support purposes.
A shared parenting model remains elusive even well into the 21st century because it is a serious threat to a service provider’s gold mine. Under an ideal model, parents would not be required to name a “custodial parent” as a condition for legal separation or a valid divorce decree. Instead, the focus would be on two reasonably fit parents (in this day and age) who are treated as co-equal figures.
Under a shared model, the arbitrary remand of one parent to the inferior and stigmatizing role of “noncustodial parent” would not be in play unless serious abuse or neglect was found by an independent state agency. In most divorce cases, such agencies are not even involved. Nevertheless, unscrupulous lawyers are allowed to concoct all sorts of reasons to select one parent over the other in a “winner-take-all” contest reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum.
Indeed, here is what a veteran judge stated to justify his revolutionary departure from this antiquated custody framework in the case of Webster v Ryan, 729 NYS2d 315 (Albany Fam. Ct. 2001) at fn. 1:
At the outset, the Court notes that the terms ‘custody’ and ‘visitation’ have outlived their usefulness. Indeed their use tends to place any discussion and allocation of family rights into an oppositional framework. ‘Fighting for custody’ directs the process towards determining winners and losers. The children, always in the middle, usually turn out to be the losers…
This Court has abandoned the use of the word ‘visitation’ in its Orders, using the phrase ‘parenting time’ instead. If the word ‘custody’ did not so permeate our statutes and was not so ingrained into our psyches, that word would be the next to go… This misplaced focus draws parents into contention and conflict, drawing the worst from them at a time when their children need their parents’ best.
It is long past the time for a universal shared parenting law so that our government can truly state that it is promoting the “best interests” of our children and not its lawyers. This goal is well supported by other famous actors who tried in vain to influence such reforms. The late Robin Williams made a graphic case against parental alienation in the blockbuster movie, Mrs. Doubtfire. Released nearly thirty years ago, if anything, the alienation is much worse today.
In 2008, during his divorce with Kim Basinger, Alec Baldwin published his book, A Promise to Ourselves, as part of his effort to modernize the California court system. But as quickly as he entered the fray, he abandoned the movement altogether no doubt because it was impairing his acting career or even his very existence given the suicide considerations revealed in that book. Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Patric were similarly motivated to change this system but they too exited the movement upon achieving their personal goals.
As a consequence we see an unprecedented impact upon our society. The time and resources needlessly expended in these courts have harmed our families, children, productivity, health, law enforcement and moral fiber as a nation. In my own divorce, originally uncontested, a 15-year protracted court battle has caused irreparable harm to all concerned. The retributions I endured for a conscientious stand against this system remain off the charts.
This silent epidemic is far too complicated for a website posting. Instead it is detailed in my recently published book, Whistleblower in Paris, available on all the major bookseller sites. It is a literary work years in the making based on a true story that features a civil rights attorney and model parent targeted for suppression and extinction by powerful beneficiaries. It is a story that would make John Grisham ecstatic.
Get a free insight regarding this epidemic on the book’s website at http://www.whistleblowerinparis.com. And help us overcome the censorship of this message by sharing and promoting it everywhere.
Former civil rights attorney and upstate city councilman
Politics makes for strange bedfellows. That may be the best summation to depict Rudy Giuliani’s rash decision to defend Andrew Cuomo after a scathing report by New York’s Attorney General which found that the defiant governor had fostered a hostile work environment based on unwanted sexual advances. Even Cuomo himself urged the public in March to reserve judgment until that report (and investigation) was completed.
Had that report favored the governor, he would have been all over the news (that he craves) demanding apologies. As for Rudy, he could care less about Andy or due process. He is crossing party lines to troll for public support behind his own self-interests. In recent headline news, as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani had his law license suspended based on the public clamor he caused at the Capitol with false claims of election fraud. It was no small matter since Mr. Giuliani was repeating his false statements even after being warned or proven incorrect. He was using his fame, former public office as New York mayor and professional status as a licensed attorney to sway protesters in a dangerous direction.
This was more than sufficient for ethics monitors to take action that many might argue was too late. There was no laudable purpose, whistleblowing or lawsuit disclosure behind these repeat statements. It was pure politics. Action was authorized prior to any evidentiary hearing because of the imminent danger to the public. Now Rudy is using his ordeal to make a parallel cry for justice by exploiting Cuomo as is latest crutch despite the governor’s physical and emotional harm to state employees. Resignation or impeachment is proper under these extraordinary circumstances and not to be confused with any civil or criminal case which might follow.
So let’s keep this in perspective. The ultimate hypocrite, Andrew Cuomo, is defying everyone like he did the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption in 2014. From the president of the United States to his many sexual harassment victims, he continues to disregard the caliber and number of citizens calling for his resignation. The persecution exhibited against me as a corruption whistleblower, victimized parent and civil rights attorney far exceeds the injustices claimed by these politicians. But I have no political influence.
Should this be a surprise to anyone in today’s double-standard world that protects the rich and famous? Andy is not your average governor as he himself professes. He is way beyond average but not the way he would like to be known in his self-love books. At one point during all the hoopla surrounding the public comparisons of his brother Chris to Fredo, he threatened to punch out Donald Trump, falling back on his Italian heritage for justification. Now how can that violent reaction be squared with honorable service or due process? One could easily make the case that Andy is promoting violence as much as Rudy may be.
Now Andrew Cuomo is using that same heritage to justify sexual harassment of women and a hostile work environment which the newly released report condemned in resounding fashion. Since when does a politician use his or her family and heritage to explain kissing, caressing and hustling of women while collecting an exorbitant state salary in a state owned mansion? Worse yet, he is using the power and prestige of public office to achieve such misconduct. In the process, he is giving both his family and heritage a bad name.
None of this is registering in Cuomo’s constantly scheming head. And there is no insecticide, vaccine or remedy to eradicate this political cockroach. In the past, we at Leon Koziol.com saw through his sick rhetoric and an ego that makes Donald Trump appear tolerable. For example, at the onset of the pandemic, we ran a series known as Corona Chronicles to expose the real Cuomo during the height of his popularity. We were not so duped as the liberals were to hold their media darling to the same standards as those they routinely scrutinized in public office.
Maybe they finally discovered a sliver of moral fiber to do the right thing here.
Leon R. Koziol is a former civil rights attorney who took a stand against his profession for its abuse of parents in divorce and family courts. He was invited to testify before Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Moreland Commission on Public Corruption in 2013. However that commission was prematurely dissolved one year later when deliberations began implicating the governor himself. Not to be duped, one of the presenters, federal prosecutor Preet Bharara, seized commission files resulting in the convictions of the leaders of both houses of New York’slegislature and a top Cuomo aide. The governor managed to dodge similar liability. As a civil rights attorney, Mr. Koziol was among the pioneers in upstate New York to hold sexual harassment predators accountable in our workplaces, i.e. Currie v Kowalewski, 842 F. Supp. 57 (NDNY 1994).
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