The above news article published by a mainstream newspaper in 2009 reflects the lack of progress in attaining fair treatment in our divorce and family courts. Despite surveys showing overwhelming support for shared parenting laws, relevant bills in Congress and our state legislatures have failed to achieve any meaningful progress. This dilemma exists despite vast increases in suicide, child murders and crime statistics traceable to the current antiquated child custody system. That system was constructed around a child rearing framework featuring stay-at-home moms and working dads.
I established the National League of Fathers, Inc. in 2008 to promote fair treatment consistent with my decades of practice as a civil rights attorney. However, that organization collapsed early due to misplaced priorities and a lack of financial support while the retributions suffered as a consequence violated all manner of human rights. Sadly, one of its board members hung himself from a tree in response to the horrific treatment he endured. Our goal was to reverse an alarming trend of fatherless families and the targeting of male parents to fund a court system which still discriminates on account of gender.
The Census Bureau steadfastly reports that over 80% of persons paying child support are men. Had that statistic reflected discriminatory employment against women in this day and age, riots would have erupted. To be sure, countless dads continue to be forced out of their children’s lives due to the hostage treatment exhibited in these courts and the draconian, one-sided manner of support enforcement.
I have explained all this in a recent post entitled, The Torturing of Child Support and its escalation of Parental Alienation. Specifically, our federal government, already reeling from a spending crisis, continues to supply these courts with incentive grants to the tune of billions of dollars annually under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act. This funding law is based on the number and size of support orders manufactured in the states. It therefore incentivizes lucrative conflict between parents forced needlessly to fight over their own offspring.
In my newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris, I have likened this parent alienation process to the Roman Coliseum. That book provides a valuable crash course for unsuspecting litigants and parents on the realities of our domestic relations courts and could prevent thousands in lawyer fees. It is important, therefore, that you do your part in exposing this silent epidemic virally and donating to our cause at http://www.citizencommissionagainstcorruption.org.
The storm is upon us as time runs out to unmask an alluring image of our divorce and family courts
Tonight’s college basketball game between Syracuse and Villanova harkens back to an incident twelve years ago when a member of the National League of Fathers, Inc. called in requesting a postponement of a meeting so that he could experience the same rivalry at the Carrier Dome.
Tonight’s game at 9 pm EST will be played at Madison Square Garden as part of the Jimmy V (Valvano) Classic, so it is unlikely that a similar request will be made. However, the phone conversation, as recalled today, helps explain why fathers continue to be discriminated in our nation’s divorce and family courts.
Unlike the hard-hitting advocates for special interests and women’s rights, many fathers or men’s rights groups continue to be misguided in their priorities. Some assume that fathers are inherently incapable of being parents and require education of some kind. Others feed the stereotype by recommending therapy and inspirational guidance (reimagination).
Still others cannot see the forest for the trees, providing no lobbying effort to secure meaningful reform. They view public protests as a gesture in futility, something beneath their high status, when laziness or depression is the true explanation. Finally, there are the self-appointed, voodoo lawyers giving useless advice while contributing nothing to the cause (keyboard warriors in the comfort of their homes).
The long-ago conversation mirrors what continues today, and it went something like this:
“Hey, this is Adam, and I’m wondering if you could postpone tonight’s meeting because Syracuse is playing Villanova at the Dome, and a lot of guys are going.”
“Well it’s too late for that, maybe you should’ve called sooner because too many dads are already attending our meeting. We can’t just cancel for a basketball game.”
“Too bad, ’cause more of us would be at your meeting if it could be changed. That’s just common sense.”
“Alright, let’s look at common sense. You’re asking us to postpone a long-scheduled meeting of concerned citizens so that you could attend a game which goes something like this: a group of five guys runs down a shiny wooden floor to throw an orange ball into the air with the hope it falls through a white net. When that happens, the scoreboard lights up and a bunch of people jump up and down with applause. That routine goes on until the group with the highest points finishes in time. Have I got this right?”
“No need to break my balls, I was just making a suggestion.”
“Break your balls? Seriously? Because while you’re playing with your balls, orange, white or brown, your opponents in the real world are getting bills passed and lobbying to preserve a gold mine with this antiquated, lucrative and incendiary child custody system. You were insulting all the hard work we do with that lame request, sacrifices that you take for granted. This is why you keep getting your butts kicked in divorce and family courts.”
“So how’s your meeting going to help me?”
“This is not all about you, and we can’t do much for you anyway while you’re at some ball game. Beyond that, without donations to rival the millions used to protect a gold mine, we can only do what we can. Our meeting seeks to turn the tide of a fatherless society that is causing suicides among veterans, escalating violence in our schools, crime in the neighborhoods and a total breakdown of moral fiber. You do understand this, don’t you?”
“Oh go screw yourself, you guys don’t know what you’re doing anyway. I may only have a GED, but I can do better.”
“Where, at tonight’s bleachers, jumping and yelling to no one who cares?”
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.
Our next talk show, Leon’s Library, on You-Tube is Monday, November 15, 2021 at 7:30 pm EST when we will feature input from the general public on any contemporary subject. We will open the lines after a critique of the 15-minute video produced by Philadelphia Attorney Lawrence DeMarco regarding our 2019 event in Washington D.C. That critique by the host here, Dr. Leon Koziol, will provide inspiration for an exciting event next year. The Citizen Commission Against Corruption, CCAC, which sponsors this talk show is an action organization focused on holding our public servants accountable and securing overdue reforms.
We are anxious to hear your ordeals or suggestions!
At present we are taking recommendations and donations to facilitate this event in our nation’s capital. On Friday we experienced unexplained interferences in our live entry to the Leon’s Library YouTube channel. It mirrors the video exclusion of our host (voice only) on his September 23, 2021 testimony at a virtual hearing sponsored by New York Governor Kathy Hochul and her Blue-Ribbon Commission on Forensic Custody Evaluations. You will find our complaint and written version of that testimony on this channel (“Post Testimony” video).
That hearing was conducted by staff of the state’s Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. We have questioned the glaring mistreatment of that testimony (and its vital message) along with the propriety of a gender-slanted state agency involving itself with the internal public hearings of a blue-ribbon commission. At first we could obtain no answers. Then we were forced to dispense with the excuses which followed with direct submissions to the governor and appointed commission chairpersons. As this commission wraps up, we have yet to obtain a logical response or remedy.
This fateful event justifies the newly created CCAC to act as a citizens commission doing the job which official oversight agencies are not. In all material respects this so-called Blue-Ribbon Commission is falling in line with other impotent, window-dressing oversight entities like the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption which its creator, ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo disbanded prematurely when citizen testimony began implicating top state leaders in the “Culture of Corruption” as it was called in 2013.
We will address such issues on our Monday show and chart a course of action for meaningful reform using our 15-minute video of the 2019 Parent March on Washington as precedent. You won’t want to miss this show. That video will be primarily voice-only so as to encourage you to see it first-hand in its vivid form on social media, Leon Koziol.com or this host’s Facebook page with its 5,000 followers.
On our next show, Tuesday, November 16, 2021, at 7:30 pm EST, we will feature Steven Boyd. He is head of the Gabriella Boyd Foundation dedicated to the memory of his two-year old daughter who was murdered by the mother rather than give up the child to a custody change order. She was even charged with attempted murder of the police officers arriving on the scene. That mom is now serving a life sentence, and the dad is actively involved in securing justice and reform. This horrific event was front page news in downstate New York since 2018. More on that during Monday’s show.
Spread the word, subscribe to Leon’s Library here, and join our discourse. The call-in number remains the same: (315) 796-4000.
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
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:
Dr. Leon Koziol will be making a presentation before a Blue Ribbon Panel of New York’s newly installed governor, Kathy Hochul, on the subject of abusive forensic evaluation orders used in family court to cause severe parental alienation. The post below, the last of a four part series beginning with the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie divorce, will be a part of that presentation. You can also get a free insight on Leon’s new book from its website at http://www.whistleblowerinparis.com. We will keep you updated on all of our reform efforts.
With all the crises facing society today, you would think that a custodial parent, Kelly (Hawse) Usherwood might finally relent with her parent alienation tactics carried out against a dedicated dad now for a period of more than 15 years. There are others like her abusing our courts to achieve illicit objectives having nothing to do with any child’s best interests. But this one remains off the charts and an ideal poster villain for family law reform.
As the unfortunate victim of this spiteful energizer bunny, never reported for child abuse or neglect, never been found to be an unfit parent, and the victim of numerous family offense petitions thrown out for lack of evidence, I have been forced into the undeserved role of crusader behind such reform. This role was made more pressing when I was targeted for my exposure of corruption within this lucrative system of child control.
You would think that lawyers in robes would have the requisite sophistication to detect parent alienation, a custody tactic often used to increase child support, punish an adversary or replace a targeted parent with a preferred substitute. My case had all these combined, but it was also laced with an agenda for suppressing my public criticisms. More than 40 trial level jurists were disqualified from my originally uncontested divorce, a national record by most accounts.
This makes it an ideal case for a federal investigation because it has elements common to most others and features a support agency’s scheme to conceal $45,500 in support payments during a 2018 violation hearing. That resulted in a secret bulletin and a near death outcome. Because these agencies and family courts in general derive billions of dollars in federal incentive grants based on the number and size of support orders they satisfy, this concealment constituted a clear abuse of federal funds in addition to a violation of human rights.
A maliciously protracted ordeal notwithstanding warnings which the mother of my children ignored, it was originally benefitted by several years of uneventful co-parenting. That benefit was gradually transformed into a destructive process. In 2016, despite having all her prior offense petitions dismissed, this custodial parent and ex-wife, now Kelly Usherwood, filed yet another petition to preserve a substitute father relationship in favor of a childless lover. I never yielded to her evil agenda and was therefore compelled to defend.
I was fortunate to get a state supreme court judge (trial judge in New York) to sign an order against family judge, Daniel King, who was presiding over this petition. He had previously suspended my parenting time without legitimate grounds after I brought testimony against him at the state’s Moreland Commission on Public Corruption. He then imposed a gag order, disguised as a protection order on my website, http://www.leonkoziol.com, thereby triggering First Amendment issues.
Within weeks of serving that order upon him, Judge King cancelled his hearing on this petition, dismissed it without any appearances, removed his own gag order, and then disqualified himself altogether from ongoing proceedings. Even a biased observer could conclude that this was all orchestrated behind closed doors, further supported by dismissal of my own challenge to the gag order based on those sudden events. It had the effect of avoiding public clamor with a protest set to occur one week later at the state supreme court building.
My defense to the family court petition was not only based on First Amendment but also a fraudulent notice of my daughters’ relocation to the substitute father’s residence (her purported g-mail notice which lacked the required “l” character). The location of one’s children is central to any parent-child relationship, but Kelly Hawse-Koziol had become possessed by an evil that even I could not detect or comprehend. Indeed, even convicts are granted the rights of knowing the locations of their offspring.
This relocation fraud was one of many tactics employed without accountability to erase me from my daughters’ lives. And it occurred without any remedy or compensation in my precedent-seeking actions dismissed in federal and state courts. The painful loss of father-daughter experiences is too extensive to relate here. You would think that the alienator might have learned a vital lesson, but she is at it again with the concealment of a new residence believed to be that of her latest substitute, Lou Usherwood, her spouse since May, 2021.
What possible gain could this obsessed alienator have today for concealing my daughters’ residence given the fact that my youngest turned 18 years of age only days ago? Even the new spouse, a father too, should have sufficient logic to conclude that this residence is easily discoverable and that the ex-mother-in-law was employed for a substitute address simply to enrage the targeted parent. After all, there has never been an incident at the alienator’s home, as he can personally verify, to support the false narrative that dad is somehow dangerous.
This will only renew conflict that has long subsided, conflict that seems to excite the alienator no matter how demented or satanic it may be. It calls for precedent to include those who assist alienators as co-conspirators of civil rights violations. As a victim on many fronts, one would think that all this has to stop at some point especially after the hospitalization which the combined impacts caused me in December, 2020. But this alienator is utterly obsessed with her agenda, one that caused an unprecedented request for an exorcism by a third party in 2011.
My ordeal is likely familiar to countless victims of contrived parent-child alienations. The current, antiquated custody system pits moms against dads and parents against the state to such an extreme that it can make monsters of otherwise normal parents. In my recently published book, Whistleblower in Paris, at pg. 189, I cite only a few examples of the carnage:
It is a (custody) regime that can turn a parent into a brutal killer overnight. Recent examples include a mother who was convicted of murdering her two-year old daughter rather than comply with a custody change order that was not timely enforced. She was also convicted of attacking police with two knives when they arrived. [1] Another featured an NYPD officer charged with murdering his autistic eight-year old son in January, 2020 by leaving him overnight in a freezing garage. [2] In 2019, a mother purchased a gun overnight and killed her estranged husband and two children. [3] According to an investigative report, 725 such deaths were suppressed by a state agency. [4]
[1]‘You Are In A Special Category Of Evil’: Mamaroneck Mom Who Killed 2-Year-Old Daughter Sentenced to 25
Years To Life, newyork.cbslocal.com, October 31, 2019
[2] Mongelli & Musumeci, Michael Valva, NYPD cop charged in son’s murder, tears up in court as 911 call played,
New York Post, May 11, 2021
[3] Mother Charged with murders of husband, 2 children in Tacony, ABC 7 (Philadelphia), October 18, 2019
[4] Chris Bragg, State agency suppressed 725 child death reports over decade, Times Union, October 13, 2020
In Chapter 2 of my book, I elaborate a bit more on this carnage:
I thought about the dead and walking dead, victims of murder, suicide, premature death and those awaiting justice that would never come. I thought about Investigator Joe Longo, a father of four so traumatized after support court that he used a common kitchen knife to leave them with no parents for life.[1] The predators just kept pounding him with confiscated weapons, protection orders, support intercepts and career damage without considering any breaking points.
I thought about Thomas Ball, product of an overzealous child protection agency who sat down one day on the steps of a New Hampshire courthouse to protest family court abuse. [2] But this was no sit-in, no occupy court mission. He poured gas over his head and burned himself alive. I cringed at the extreme pain he must have suffered before and during this holocaust. In the end, there was no national coverage, no court reforms, they merely washed his ashes into the sewer.
I thought about Alec Baldwin, one of the few victims who did attract national coverage. During his high profile divorce with Kim Bassinger, he dutifully complied with forensic evaluation orders, hoping to quickly exit this matrix as he described it. However, protracted deliberations in California’s court system forced him to expose dysfunction among judges, lawyers, evaluators and others. His goal ultimately was to prevent unsuspecting parents from becoming victims. But in the end, he nearly became the ultimate victim. His own words have long been forgotten:
My family and closest friends were still there for me, but even some of them had grown perplexed by and weary of the assault on my parental rights that seemed to have no end. On the deepest level, my situation now seemed hopeless to me as well. I had gone to sleep many nights doubting that I had the desire to face these problems another day… Driving up the Taconic Parkway, heading to an inn in the Berkshire Mountains, I began to think about what little known town I would repair to in order to commit suicide. What semi-remote Massachusetts state park could I hike deep into and shoot myself? What bed-and-breakfast could I check into and overdose there? On Long Island, I thought about the old Jeep I owned and the emissions it gave off. When I returned to New York, the thought of jumping out of the window of my apartment was with me every night for weeks.[3]
I thought about so many victims I encountered during my crusade against this killing machine, a mom who drove her children into the Hudson River, the Iraq war veteran who attempted suicide only to be saved through my intervention, a member of our parenting rights organization who hung himself from a tree in his back yard, the mom who called me daily for help until vanishing altogether, and the dad I dissuaded from a kidnapping of his own children now hiding in Israel. As I revisited the interview with that Florida talk show host, an aggrieved dad who took his life a few years later, the roar of a jet engine shook me from my daze.
[1] Pearce v Longo, 766 F. Supp.2d 367 (NDNY 2011)
[2] Mark Arsenault, Dad leaves clues to his desperation, boston.com, July 10, 2011
[3] Alec Baldwin, A Promise to Ourselves, St. Martin’s Press, at pg. 183 (2008)
A nonprofit commission is asking New York Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul to reopen hearings of the 2013 Moreland Commission on Public Corruption so that a broader level of whistleblower complaints can be obtained regarding the operation of state government. This comes on the heels of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s announced resignation today.
The Citizen Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) explained that this request is timely, even “long overdue,” given the governor’s decision to postpone his exit from public office by two weeks and the corruption which has gained momentum since 2013. The Commission also quoted from its mission statement to directors on July 4, 2021 to justify its request:
This (Moreland) commission was created by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to address a “culture of corruption in Albany.” However, when testimony began to implicate the governor himself, his commission was prematurely dissolved with no prosecutions by a publicly financed and politically appointed panel of experts and law enforcement.
Some of the Moreland panelists are still in office and engaged in current investigations. The 2013 closure incited one of the hearing speakers, federal prosecutor Preet Bharara, to seize commission files resulting in the convictions of the leaders of both houses of the legislature and a top Cuomo aide. The governor managed to evade similar liability but as fate would have it, he would later be subjected to multiple investigations for sexual harassment, family favoritism, abuse of state resources for book profits and falsified nursing home reports.
Leon Koziol, was one of those selected to testify at the first Moreland hearing at Pace University while countless others were left on the streets to protest their exclusion. A model parent and former civil rights attorney, Mr. Koziol suffered horrific retributions after helping to expose judicial misconduct. It included his pedophile custody judge, Bryan Hedges, and his replacement custody judge, Michael Hanuszczak, for sexual harassment of his court clerks. Both were forced to resign.
After 23 years of unblemished practice, Mr. Koziol’s near death experience in 2020, and his unyielding search for justice, have proven that there is no legal protection for lawyers who expose corruption in our third branch of government. His ordeal was published this month in bookseller sites across the country. Titled Whistleblower in Paris, this timely literary work has already earned a French promotional translation by Amazon.
Welcome to Leon Koziol.Com 