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.
Judge Daniel King’s hangout near his family court in Lowville, New York where he commits “alcohol related gestures.”
On November 25, 2013, Lewis County Family Judge Daniel King was prepared to throw a judicial temper tantrum. He was eager to avenge public exposure of his gross incompetence by Leon Koziol two months earlier before the state’s Moreland Commission on Public Corruption. Among other things, King had used two college degrees that this attorney-father never earned to raise his support obligations in a family court case then pending.
Some background is in order. Judge King was newly elected, demonstrably inexperienced and assigned to an outside case. That assignment was exploited to concoct degrees as a means for punishing a qualified whistleblower of court corruption. This would please other judges similarly exposed, and Dan was anxious to be a part of their club. He would issue the highest of obligations to justify a jail term for support violations while income was being deprived through similarly orchestrated license suspensions.
Now, on this day, November 25, 2013, King was hearing a custody matter involving the same targeted father of two girls. Based on the slightest allegations of a scorned ex-spouse bent on replacing this father with a substitute boyfriend, he issued an order directing both parents to refrain from any alcohol use in the presence of the children. He also directed that these same children be lodged in separate rooms at any hotel near the location of a wedding reception involving the dad’s niece one week earlier.
The nefarious agenda of this judge came into focus again when the attorney-whistleblower-dad was accused of alcohol consumption at that reception. A so-called “mini-hearing” was therefore held on a first appearance that day to decide whether King’s conditions for attending this reception were violated. Because the proceeding was not duly noticed consistent with due process requirements, no witnesses or evidence could be provided.
Nevertheless, Judge King concluded that a champaign toast, even if never consumed, constituted a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” sufficient to justify a suspension of parenting time, one that would extend over an ensuing eight-year period to the present day. To further support that barbaric outcome, he found that the girls, aged ten and eleven at the time, although lodged in separate bedrooms of a hotel suite, were not technically in a separate location from the dad’s then fiancee.
An appeals court temporarily blocked that bizarre decision unsupported by any unfit parenting. Indeed, there had never even been a complaint to any protection agency, no alcohol related event, and no criminal record while prison inmates were being favored. However, for reasons never disclosed, the same appeals court allowed a second fully noticed hearing to go forward one month later. In that proceeding, Judge King simply set aside basic trial protocols to orchestrate a record that could support his earlier bizarre rulings. It forced the victim to walk out of that hearing after undue threats were made from the bench.
It was all simply a foregone conclusion that this so-called family judge would abuse public office for illicit reasons. Accordingly, the victimized father commenced his own inquiry into the hypocrisy of this judge based on his rumored alcohol use in the presence of his own children at a bar near the family courthouse in Lowville, New York. Together with other court victims, he was able to find that Judge King was a regular at Jeb’s Restaurant.
The interviewed bar staff even had King’s standard cocktail committed to memory with his own children seated at a nearby table. It was much more than a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” because his subjects in the courtroom could not possibly know what such a gesture might be for violation purposes. Beyond the obvious, Daniel King was a judge held to the highest standards of public office exhibiting a hypocrisy of monumental proportion.
There is so much more to the abuses of judicial office not only by King, but by many of the forty trial level jurists removed or disqualified from Leon Koziol’s 15-year proceedings. The human rights violations and whistleblower punishments over this needlessly protracted period are more than sufficient to justify an investigation by the Justice Department and Civil Rights Bureau of the New York Attorney General. Complaints before both have been filed. The ordeal is detailed in a newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris, available at any Barnes and Noble store, Amazon, publisher Author House or major bookseller on-line.
If you are a resident, litigant or voter at Judge King’s upcoming re-election in 2022, you should make your own inquiry into this judge and his protected misconduct. Many readers have expressed doubt that such bizarre orders and outcomes could be real. But a copy of the December 2, 2013 decision containing them is available for inspection. If you have anything more to offer, feel free to contact Leon directly at (315) 796-4000 for the sake of victims, parents and children everywhere.
$5 million was spent in divorce fees by Dr. Eric Braverman, now in bankruptcy, $2 million by Professor Anthony Pappas without child custody issue, both in NYC, and another $2 million from small business owner, Mike Seale, to become a record for upstate Warren County. That’s nearly $10 million for three clients alone. Unlike other professions, there’s no insurance for this.
As I continue to warn such victims, if you have the resources, they’ll take every last dollar for every needless service they can concoct. They will remind you that “it’s the law” (which they created) that requires filings, petitions, motions and appeals. They dupe you into believing they are acting in the “best interests” of your children even though they know nothing about them, never conceived or birthed them, and had nothing to do with the demands of upbringing.
Indeed, many of these court predators never had children after exiting law school during a lawyer glut hungry to find anything for a fee. And yet, time and again you fall prey to their slick sound bites, only $5,000 up front before they bill you to death. You have fallen into the web of a black-widow spider, and you can’t do anything to escape, scrambling from one law office to another after regular disappointments or malpractice in search of elusive justice.
If you are successful in any of this, you might boast of your exploits against your “adversary” (the mom or dad of your own children). But the truth is, in the end, it’s the lawyers on both sides of this barbaric process who are celebrating in chambers or local country club. Come on man, as Joe Biden would say, why do you think they scrutinize your financials? It’s not so much to get you that so-called “award.” It’s to gauge how much they can bill you.
When you are tapped out, it’s suddenly time to settle. Phone calls are not returned so regularly. And your children have been deprived of their college funds, the other parent with an extended family and/or their faith in your example. So why should anyone wonder why a whistleblower like me was so viciously targeted? I’ve been exposing this corruption for more than ten years only to confirm that this is a gold mine beyond reach of accountability.
To be sure, what can a “lone wolf,” victimized dad, and conscientious attorney accomplish without financial or organizational support against bar associations and special interests?
So the best thing we can do in our foxholes is to educate one another on the realities of this epidemic. We must choose private resolution over greed, ego and vendettas. The latter is what these predators crave. Putting them out of business turns out to be your best weapon based on their refusal to restrain and reform their gluttonous practices.
To that end, subscribe to our YouTube channel, Leon’s Library, our highly censored website at http://www.leonkoziol.com, and get vital assistance at www.parentingrightsinstitute.com. If your ordeal is sufficiently outrageous, contact the Citizen Commission Against Corruption, Inc., a nonprofit devoted to keeping our public institutions accountable at (315) 864-8176.
Help us where you can. At the very least we all deserve a thankful greeting card from these unscrupulous lawyers and service providers during the holidays.
A great holiday gift for your lawyer, judge, the unwary litigant and those who properly seek to educate themselves: newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris, available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, publisher Author House, or any major bookseller on-line,
No, this is not an apprentice. His name is Daniel King, harming parents, children and families as a judge for nearly a decade. Now comes the opportunity to replace him with a qualified candidate in 2022.
Leon R. Koziol, J.D.
Parenting Rights Institute
Administrator’s Note: This is a column worth reading due to its exposure of court corruption that could harm any potential family court litigant. You will learn of inside practices not revealed elsewhere. Share this with others so that they can avoid similar judge abuses.
Author’s Note: As a practicing civil rights attorney until 2010, I became privy to much concealed misconduct in our courts which I exposed only to incur immense retributions. The following column is a part of my ordeal.
Daniel King had a stint as a lawyer in rural Lewis County, New York before managing to have himself elected to the position of family judge in 2012. Upon taking office, he was assigned to cases in much larger counties of New York’s Fifth Judicial District (Syracuse, Utica-Rome and Watertown). These included criminal court matters beyond the limited jurisdiction of family court under the state constitution. But because of a highly abused assignment provision in that same document, he was able to become assigned to cases normally handled by other specialized judges.
This bizarre assignment process took Judge King away from duties properly committed to his Lewis County constituents but he must have enjoyed all the prestige it was giving to him. It is a court process largely off-record and beyond challenge by impacted parties. It represents only one of many reasons cited by the New York bar for a constitutional convention in 2017 to rectify the state’s complex 11-trial court system. That system was compared to our most populous state of California which has a single trial level court. For the same reason, this judge in a county barely having more than 25,000 residents was able to preside in counties having over 460,000 residents. These were places where he never would have been elected, where the voters now had no say in his assignments.
As corruption or bad luck would have it, Daniel King was assigned to my custody and support matters in Oneida County (Utica-Rome) only six months into his term. It was ordered by District Administrative Judge James (Bond) Tormey. Jim acquired the spy designation because he was named in a successful civil rights lawsuit brought by a chief court clerk who refused to engage in “political espionage” (according to a federal judge). This chief clerk was ordered to spy against judge candidates of an opposite political party and was subjected to retaliation by assignments to remote locations.
This retaliation patterned my family court assignments to many of the same remote locations in retaliation for my whistleblowing activity. The clerk recovered $600,000 because, unlike litigants harmed by comparable wrongs, court employees are not subject to judicial immunity. I know the corruption exposed here at Leon Koziol.com is often hard to believe, but this one can be verified at Morin v Tormey, 626 F.3d 40 (2nd Cir, 2010)(a federal appeals court ruling in Manhattan). Somehow the learned judges who reviewed the retaliation against me could not see a problem with any of this. It was not even mentioned in their subsequent decisions on my state appeals and federal civil rights cases.
Emboldened by those unjust decisions, Judge King began a process of systematically alienating me from my precious daughters. The tactics used are beyond conscience, but you will have to simply brace yourself for the revelations made now, years later, so that one can see how truly corrupt, hypocritical and political these family court processes can be. Daniel King was eventually forced to step down from my support and custody cases but not before irreparable harm was inflicted, the kind that warrants not only millions of dollars in state compensation, but a profound investigation by both the U.S. Justice Department and Civil Rights Bureau of the New York Attorney General.
The voters of Lewis County must be made aware of King’s reign in their family court because any one of them could become victim to his juvenile behavior. This rural county is dominated by Republicans and Conservatives, hence a voting democracy here is best served by a primary candidate. If party leaders are mindlessly committed to an incumbent endorsement, a Republican challenger can easily overcome this by going directly to the people. That much is easy to do here. No media or special interests will prevent a door-to-door campaign. Even a third-party candidate will send the message that we are sick of do-nothing, politically-appointed, window-dressing, misconduct commissions.
To be sure, why not send a profound message that the rest of our nation can applaud and emulate in a state where our country was born, where Revolutionary War sites abound? Judge King exhibited exactly what his name suggests, a petty tyrant too immature to restrain his ego, impressing his judicial superiors so that an endorsement would be a given and his abuses forgotten years later. If anything, the value of our voting power lies in our ability to remember, to exert recourse when our oversight entities fail us. This is such a case, and we must find a judge candidate while time allows, and that time is now.
This judge tyrant acted on his first day of assignment issuing an order based on the one-sided assertions of an ex-spouse hell bent on replacing me with a childless millionaire having questionable motives. The accuser was not present at an event she was describing which warranted no intervention. She cited or produced no witness to back up her self-serving narratives. In short, anything that could be thrown at the lawyer-dad (judicial whistleblower) by a scorned party would be accepted as gospel with no moral compass or remorse of any kind. This King could care less about the grave consequences to wonderful, long-established, father-daughter relations at the time.
When asked in open court what basis was being used to issue his child access limitations, King managed to rationalize that he was somehow “protecting” my children, two girls he had never met, never raised, or made possible in the first place. This “best interests of the child” standard was abused beyond reason with power that had simply gone to King’s head. Only weeks later, he increased a child support obligation using college degrees (PhD and Masters) that I had never received. When called to task in later court filings, he refused to acknowledge his blunder, clear from the record, and dismissed it as “harmless error.”
Because there is no meaningful judicial oversight commission, I was forced to expose that blunder, among others, in testimony before ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Moreland Commission on Public Corruption at Pace University on September 17, 2013 (Constitution Day). Ironically that governor dissolved this commission prematurely when testimony began implicating top state officials in criminality. But fortunately one of the speakers was a federal prosecutor incensed by this maneuver. He seized commission files and ended up convicting the leaders of both houses of the legislature and a top Cuomo aide. Within three months of my highly public and damning exposure, Judge King ended the parenting time granted to me one year earlier by a veteran family judge in Syracuse.
Unlike that judge there was no trial here, and the one King concocted on another first appearance was labeled a “mini-hearing.” Because no advance notice was provided, no proof could be offered. No complaint had ever been filed with any child protection agency and I possessed no criminal record. Nevertheless, an infuriated Judge King suspended all child contact based on an admitted champaign toast at a niece’s wedding with my girls present. He called it a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” which was never prohibited anyway assuming one could figure out what such a gesture could be.
This is not something that can be made up. Despite prison inmates who were being treated with greater respect, this “prohibited gesture” can be found on page five of a December 2, 2013 decision. It was quickly stayed (stopped) on appeal, but when a panel of judges in Rochester got hold of it, my parenting time was again suspended without explanation one day before a properly noticed plenary (full) trial before Judge King. Shortly into that trial, conducted without jury, the sworn narratives of an unrepresented ex-spouse was allowed to proceed without any logical or legal constraint. This presiding judge directed me to cease making objections under penalty of removal so that he could orchestrate a desired record to back up his earlier bizarre rulings.
That plain scheme forced me to exit proceedings early not only due to its gesture in futility but to prevent a clearly biased judge from using me as part of any legitimate process. However, my exit also enabled King to treat the one-sided concoctions as true. Apart from a few holiday hours, I was then denied all parenting time to the present day, eight years later. Judge King was finally removed from my case after I successfully challenged his 2016 gag order on this website, Leon Koziol.com, thereby adding a First Amendment dimension to his combined assault on my parenting right. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that right to be “the oldest liberty interest protected by our Constitution,” Troxel v Granville, 530 US 57 (2000).
This is only a portion of my horrific ordeal which prompted me to seek international protection in Paris. It also prompted my September 23, 2021 testimony before Governor Kathy Hochul’s blue-ribbon Commission on Forensic Custody Evaluations. Such evaluations were abused here to carry out the retaliation agenda. This is no John Grisham story but a true human rights odyssey captured in my newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris. Available at any Barnes and Noble store, Amazon (which gave it a five-star rating) or major on-line book seller, this book should be obtained by anyone seeking a candidacy or poetic justice in Lewis County.
Spread the word, kindly contribute to our cause, and many thanks for your support.
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 following Guest Column appeared in a mainstream newspaper of upstate New York 12 years ago. Read the highly informative content. Has anything changed today?
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?
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)
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