Administrator’s note: Leon is still in New York City working with Dr. Eric Braverman for parental equal rights. By now you must be aware of the gay equality decision from the Supreme Court. The New York Times on Saturday featured numerous photos of gay couples on its front page. Yet equal rights for fathers remains dormant in the aftermath. Hopefully connections and donations will materialize with reform efforts as they progress in Manhattan.
There will be no update from Leon today because he has become unexpectedly diverted to a crisis in his own parent-child relations. A startling story will emerge this week which will explain it all. It will disclose what has been happening without his knowledge since October, 2014 while seeking information, confidential or otherwise, from all our followers. He is concerned about the dangers to his daughters implicated by all this.
This next post will prove how innocent children can be purchased due to the schemes of gold digging adversaries in custody matters. You will finally understand why Leon took the stand he did in 2006 and refused to pay support to a scheming evil person. We hope to generate rallies and reports to proper authorities. The stand needed here will hopefully get national exposure.
In the meantime, Leon has been invited to stay on at the Braverman home in Tribecca. He has received support from moms who remain concerned that a fatherless America is destroying society (the real fathers not their substitutes). After a busy Saturday garnering input from mothers abused by the same system, he took time aside to know them better. We encourage our followers to continue their support of Dr. Braverman in the Manhattan courthouse at 60 Centre Street tomorrow at 10 am. And as always we ask you for your donations here at Leon Koziol.com.
Seeking Human Rights Protections for Aggrieved Fathers in Paris
By Dr. Leon R. Koziol
Ever wonder why crimes and civil debts bear reverse punishments in our nation’s divorce and family courts? Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas once described these forums as “Kangaroo Courts.” Poor Abe, he would roll over in his grave today if he knew what was happening to our families and children here.
But it’s true, support debtors, nearly 100% of them fathers, are being tossed in a cage every day by self righteous family judges while crimes committed by their accusers are going unpunished. Welcome to Kendra’s Chronicles IV, where we bring you a personal side to the corruption which is occurring in these courts across our country.
Parents are advised time and again by unscrupulous lawyers to fabricate or embellish upon facts in their petitions and testimony for tactical gains in needless court cases. It is lucrative for everyone but our families. A product of an archaic custody framework, such crimes are preferred over shared parenting laws to keep us fighting over our offspring. Who can blame some when the courts shove moms and dads into an arena reminiscent of a Roman Coliseum with a winner-take-all mentality?
At most, however, a perjuring mother will face a change in custody, and because this may harm the child more than anyone else, such crimes are highly ignored. To be sure, no judge or prosecutor wants to be known as the one who incarcerated a mom even though she caused an innocent dad to be denied access to his children or wrongfully convicted of contempt or abuse.
For fathers, it’s quite another matter. Judges are programmed to believe that a man is stronger, physically and emotionally, to sustain the pain and suffering caused by the loss of a child’s affection or human liberty while incarcerated for a money debt. When an aggrieved dad reacts to the prejudice, he is ordered into anger management. Put another way, our courts are forcing dads under penalty of losing their children to accept their unequal status in violation of rights protected by our Constitution.
Hence it is the male parent who must bear the brunt of injustices needed to keep this archaic, lucrative and unequal custody scheme in place. It also explains why discrimination is still tolerated, why fathers remain 85% of support obligors and why nearly 100% of jailed debtors are men, including those who learn too late that the subject children were not theirs. Indeed the phrase “dead beat dad” has yet to be condemned for what it is, a sexist slur.
If a dad rightfully demands fair treatment and accountability, it may beget discreet or even overt retaliation of the kind I sustained when shedding light on the corruption which occurs here. I lost ten months access to my little girls until false petitions were finally dismissed for lack of evidence in 2010. I never even had to put in a defense. But as far as the court was concerned, it was over, no damage done. Dad got his girls back.
Seriously? That’s it? I lost four major holidays, two birthdays and my eldest daughter’s First Holy Communion because of the crimes committed by a scorned ex- spouse, not to mention the precious interactions between a loving dad and two innocent girls. But fathers no longer matter in these courts especially after money became their priority.
Perjury had been rampant in the often deranged testimony of a mother named Kelly Hawse-Koziol. The judge could conclude that much on the contradictions and ill-preparation alone. These were extremely damaging accusations employed purely as custody tactics, yet not even a scolding or slap on the wrist came of it.
The logical consequence of this kind of break-down in the administration of justice is more of the same. It encouraged this woman to repeat her crimes again and again if for example my girls reported a fun outing with a girlfriend or some rumor which could get her more “child support” in retaliation. It was also a product of entitlement mentality prompted by liberals across the country.
Kelly Hawse-Koziol remains a tenured high school teacher at Frankfort-Schuyler School District in upstate New York. On numerous occasions while still married, I was called upon to proof-read her resumes in a desperate attempt to leave that district notwithstanding my routine defense of the community and school board. Our efforts got her interviews (and arguments) but no success.
Ten years later, this Masters degree teacher was filing court petitions so impaired with grammar defects that a judge was forced to insert five “sic” notations in a single paragraph to make it a part of his decision. Never mind what this teacher might be doing to the students or taxpayers of her school district, it was my job as a co-parent to make sure that no harm was done to my girls’ home studies
On one occasion, Ms. Hawse-Koziol asserted the startling fact that the Nile River flowed south, evidently because it looked that way on a map. For many of you this may seem inconsequential but when it came up during one of our many father-child trivia exchanges, I could have gotten myself in contempt of a court order especially the way I was being scrutinized as a free speaking American.
My girls are one grade apart in a nearby school district and very smart. You know I’ve got to tell you that, I’m a proud father. They loved to absorb knowledge from whatever source and would never let me stop with the many true-false or multiple choice exercises we practiced during road trips. In none of the family court proceedings over the past six years did such quality activity receive any mention.
It was one of many learning advantages which was ripped out from under them by a family judge more intent on suppressing the exercise of free speech than dignifying the role of a genuine father. He damaged these girls in more ways than one. But the inequities of family court generally and the misconduct of this judge in particular had other impacts.
During one of our trivia exchanges, I was subject, as most parents are in family court, to a restriction upon parent-child discourse involving litigation. It’s hard to know how to draw the line where a parent’s authority ends and the state takes over. It was harder still even as a veteran lawyer-parent when my judge, Dan King, found me to possess college degrees I never earned for purposes of imputing child support income.
Well the conflict found its way into our trivia games and limited weekend fathering activity. To make a long story short, I could not correct answers which my girls attributed to their mother. When they defended her on the degrees she possessed, I was hard pressed not to explain how a judge had misrepresented the facts on this subject. My preferred approach was simply to be a father even if it meant violating orders that made cackling hens more sensible .
ImaginOn Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. site of today’s town hall meeting with President Barack Obama
Administrator’s note: Leon has concluded his Charleston trip and spent the day in nearby Charlotte, North Carolina where President Barack Obama was engaged in a question-answer session with women’s rights activists. Here is Leon’s report:
I came to Charlotte this afternoon to exploit another gathering of national media at the ImaginOn Center on East 7th Street. The president was here to answer questions on the subject of women’s issues including equal pay and child care. He arrived at 2:30 and was gone a little more than an hour later.
President Obama’s trip was highly controlled and scripted. Barricades were set to keep the general public as far away as possible from the building with police cars and large utility trucks blocking off street access two blocks away. If there were any protesters, he would not have noticed them.
This media event was nothing like the ones in Charleston that evolved by the minute. The session itself was not open to the public, and it was not clear that anything was accomplished by such a costly trip. A visit to nearby Charleston could have been added to this itinerary given the growing crises developing over a black father shot to death by a traffic cop to enforce a child support warrant.
For what it’s worth I was there to make a stand for abused, discriminated and killed fathers by sharing my report “We Are Fathers” with national media. Had our efforts been financed a fraction of the amounts given to the hosts of this “town hall meeting” as it was called, a similar event could have been staged to gain meaningful reforms in our nation’s family courts.
For this very reason, financing remains the principal theme of my report. While the people inside were lamenting the figure of 83 cents earned by women for every dollar earned by men, no one anywhere was lamenting Census Bureau reports that continue to show that 83% of people paying child support are men.
Interestingly the sponsors of this town hall meeting were a digital media corporation and women’s blogger network. According to its website BlogHer Inc. doled out $36 million to women bloggers for the purpose of influencing social media. Is this what it takes to get the president’s attention? If so, we need to do the same. That’s why I released my report and I’m asking all our followers to help us out.
Attorney Malik Shabazz, national president of Black Lawyers for Justice demands justice in Charleston
Administrator’s summary; if you’ve been following recent posts on this site, then you know that Leon has been in Charleston, South Carolina this past week advocating for fathers’ rights in connection with the Walter Scott murder. He has been working diligently to shift government and media focus from the race aspects of this horrendous incident to the family court abuses which triggered it.
To that end he has been distributing his report made public last month in Nashville entitled “We Are Fathers” to civil rights leaders and government representatives. His progress reports can be found here at Leon Koziol.com, a site devoted to family law reform. After vocalizing his concerns before national media, Leon was featured on Charleston television yesterday.
As we become educated to these draconian support collection practices, it is increasingly clear that Leon’s efforts are vital because good fathers are now being killed by law enforcement for delinquent family court debts. Here no crime was committed. Instead a black father was shot in the back by a North Charleston police officer who is now in jail without bail on murder charges.
This father had long experienced the discrimination and abuses which convinced him that Justice was better served on the streets than in these courts. He just never expected he could be murdered by a cop for failing to pay his bills. It’s a scary incident which could occur to any father in America today given the false criminal stigmas and sexist slurs being advanced by our own federal government as recently as 2012 in Justice Department news releases.
The Walter Scott incident, preserved on a video seen around the world, shows an unarmed father fleeing arrest on a support warrant at a traffic stop for a broken tail light. The cop fired eight shots from a distance at the fleeing debtor with five bullets entering his back, one in the heart.
The white officer is then shown casually walking over to his victim and cuffing him face down as he took his final breath. Again there was no crime committed but the family court warrant was now executed with no money or daddy for the children. Here is how Leon finally managed to shift focus in Charleston:
It wasn’t easy, in fact I was beginning to think it was a lost cause. Despite all my appearances, participation in media events and interactions with civil rights protesters and government officials all across Charleston, South Carolina this past week, once again no one was listening. I reiterated my statements concerning the killer in the Walter Scott case, emphasizing not the cop named Michael Slager but the silent and insidious accomplice known as family court.
In yet another news conference today at North Charleston City Hall, everyone was focused on race as a lawyer for protesters in Ferguson, Missouri announced a new wave of protests here. I had delivered my report to the local organizer of the event but the father issues remained without mention by anyone. So once again I asserted myself on the media side of the presentations before the keynote speaker.
In his riveting keynote address, Attorney Malik Shabazz, national president of Black Lawyers for Justice, described black men as the hunted ones, killed “like deer and dogs.” During subsequent media interviews, I raised the father discrimination aspects surrounding the Walter Scott murder which set this case apart from all other racially charged incidents across the country. I cited three status based factors which worked against this particular victim: he was black, a man and a father. I urged all in attendance to support my public appeal for a Justice Department investigation to prevent more of these incidents.
At the request of the event organizer, I was asked to hand deliver my report “We Are Fathers” to Attorney Shabazz at the podium. A resounding applause ensued when I did. The keynote speaker joined in the issues raised and went further. He agreed that the support warrant was a major concern and that he would study my report for answers and reform efforts.
Following this national media event, I was approached by African-American victims of court injustices. Of course I could not provide assistance due to the retributions experienced back in New York for my public predictions that materialized here. I was then asked to give a separate live interview on Charleston television. I will provide further details in a later post.
We’re making progress fellow parents, fathers and victims. Regrettably I feel like I’m doing it alone in Charleston but a profound statement had to be made here for all family court victims across America. We’ll continue to keep you informed.
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This is not just another racially charged incident, it is a fathers’ rights travesty. I warned of it, no one listened. Maybe they’ll listen now.”
By Dr. Leon R. Koziol
What crime did Walter Scott commit to warrant his execution in Charleston, South Carolina? We’ve seen the video; the cruel, cold and callous manner in which he was shot multiple times in the back. There was not even a rush to check on the victim’s condition by the police officer who casually walked over and planted a device upon the body.
The shooter was not seeking to defend himself, he was not in danger, there was no crime behind the detention of Walter Scott. Instead an American father was shot dead because of a money debt called “child support.” And the killer had a badge under an oath to protect the public. But who or what was he protecting here?
There will be those, publicly or privately, trying to downgrade the incident by noting that the victim was defying a police directive, he was fleeing the scene and could have sought recourse in a court of law. But this particular victim had three strikes against him: his race, gender and parental status as a father. Had the detainee been a white mother in debt, she would not have been shot dead.
As for recourse, Walter Scott had none. For starters, he would have been sentenced to a debtors’ prison even though such draconian practices have long been discontinued. We all know of fathers who have fallen behind in support obligations because of a job loss or inability to secure the kind of income a well paid judge thinks he can get. Fleeing the scene may have been this father’s best chance at justice or freedom.
It’s all part of a growing crisis being fomented by an antiquated divorce and family court system which has placed money over the genuine interests of families. The victim’s children here lost much more than “child support,” they forever lost their dad. Homeless fathers remain an overlooked by-product of this dysfunctional family court system.
As an accomplished civil rights attorney for more than 23 years, I predicted events that are now occurring. In 2010, I sponsored a forum to receive testimony from family court victims for a report to the Justice Department. It was triggered by a white police officer who committed a murder-suicide after leaving support court, leaving three children without parents. One month later, a black war veteran was mistakenly gang tackled by the same police department despite being a shooting victim at a domestic incident.
Federal child support laws were a focus of this forum because lawyers, bureaucrats and third parties are being rewarded through incentive grants to the states based on the number and magnitude of support orders manufactured in their family courts. All sorts of schemes have been concocted to maximize revenues and fees at the expense of struggling fathers who continue to comprise 85% of support debtors.
Despite hand-delivery of my report in Washington, the Justice Department refused to conduct an investigation. Meanwhile local operatives retaliated by targeting my law license and children. Ethics lawyers conducted a witch hunt but were fired in 2013 for falsifying their time sheets. No public charges were brought against them.
A family judge assigned to my custody case was removed from the bench for admitting to sexual misconduct upon his handicapped five year old niece. In response to my public criticisms, his replacement then imposed conflicting conditions on my parenting liberties to make it impossible for me to father my children, let alone see them on risk of contempt.
The combined retributions upon my First Amendment rights forced me to seek protection in Paris. In November, 2014, I filed an application for extraordinary relief before a federal appeals court in Manhattan, a case destined to reach the Supreme Court this year. I returned to New York after a threatened support warrant was never issued.
One month later, I informed family court that I would continue to resist these draconian practices in the civil rights tradition of Martin Luther King. Extensive justification was provided last month in a 25-page report entitled “We Are Fathers.” It was designed to incite reform nationwide with warnings that violence would escalate.
Emphasis was placed on veterans and minorities as the likely victims of arrest from these family court abuses. Again no one listened. The band played on, and today we see the horrendous consequence in Charleston. It begs the question: was the police officer acting alone when he killed Walter Scott or could we say he had an accomplice known as family court. Closer to home, I ponder how easily it could have been me resisting that support warrant.
Dr. Leon R. Koziol
Civil Rights Advocate
(315) 796-4000
Administrator’s Request: Please help Dr. Koziol cover any travel expenses that he may incur on his way to Charleston, South Carolina where he plans to meet with civil rights advocates and media representatives in order to bring attention to the underlying issues that contributed to the killing of Walter Scott. Donations of $25 or more would be kindly appreciated. (Click Here)
If you knew that your adult neighbor had committed sexual misconduct upon his five year old handicapped niece, would you allow your children near his home? If it turned out they became victims, might you be worried about your parental rights for a failure to look into his background?
Well for years in a Syracuse, New York courthouse, children were being ordered to appear in chambers without parental supervision to interact with a family judge who committed this very misconduct. There is no way of knowing how his proclivities may have impaired his judgments and custody orders, but unlike the “kids for cash” scandal in Pennsylvania, resulting in 4,000 reversed juvenile convictions, there was no similar review or remedy here.
You really have to stop and grasp this reality because our third branch of government has generally received the highest public trust, even presiding over disputes and crimes of our other two branches. If this “family” judge, Bryan Hedges, had not been caught admitting to his disgusting behavior, he would still be on the bench meeting with little boys and girls at these so-called Lincoln hearings designed essentially to get our littles ones spying on their parents.
You can only imagine what was going through Bryan’s demented mind as he questioned unsuspecting toddlers about the fitness and behavior of their mommies and daddies. For those of you curious about my motivations for court reform here at Leon Koziol.com, it should be disclosed now that this same judge was assigned at one time to my custody case.
Judge Hedges would have met with my little girls had I not successfully moved for his disqualification. The children’s mother, lawyer and judge-appointed attorney all opposed my motion with depictions of Hedges as an impeccable jurist beyond reproach. Judge Hedges nevertheless disqualified himself on an “appearance of impropriety” without public elaboration.
This may be explained by my grounds for removal which included his status in a civil rights case brought by a court clerk accusing him of using paid staff to conduct “political espionage,” see Morin v Tormey, 620 F.Supp.2d 363 ($600,000 ultimate recovery). Being a public figure with an opposite political affiliation, I could not accept this judge’s presumption of impartiality when I had been recommended by a retired state Supreme Court justice to run for judgeship in the same district.
The story doesn’t end there. Judge Hedges’ co-defendant in the civil case, Chief Administrative Judge James Tormey, assigned more than 35 trial level judges to my originally uncontested divorce case. Any competent lawyer will tell you that this undisputed fact alone makes my case an extraordinary one. But other factors showed that the appointment process itself could be manipulated for purposes of censorship.
Most judges were disqualified, thereby justifying my prior (denied) motion for transfer to a downstate judicial district. But certain opposite party judges hung around long enough to exact retributions for my reform efforts before passing their damage on to the next one. Another Syracuse judge, Martha Walsh-Hood, was forced to throw out fraudulent petitions for lack of evidence. I then cited her many violations of judicial code as a cause for the combined harm to my children, but the Judicial Conduct Commission refused to even look into the matter.
This was undoubtedly due to misconduct so extensive that any public inquiry would bring unacceptable reputation damage to the state’s judiciary. Hence, the expedient solution was to kill the messenger despite my 23 years of unblemished law practice, model citizenship and fit parenting. I held elective office, served as city corporation counsel, school board attorney and was featured on the CBS program 60 Minutes, CNN and other reputable news organizations.
Most recently, a junior judge in Lowville, New York, Daniel King, ventured the claim that he was “protecting” my children with new restrictions upon my parenting rights. They were based again on more fraudulent petitions prior to any hearing. I replied that I had been the one properly “protecting” my girls since their birth including any contact with Judge Bryan Hedges.
This 33rd assigned judge then went so far as to fabricate a college degree among my credentials in a scheme to impute fictional income for support incarceration purposes. He also made it highly risky for me to see my children with conflicting directives including one that violated a higher court restraint. With each public criticism there arose a matching retribution through an abuse of judicial office.
Daniel King’s misconduct was featured in my testimony at the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption. But when that Commission was disbanded to protect top state officials (the Assembly Leader was later arrested by federal agents on bribery charges implicating prominent lawyers, judges and millions of dollars in public money), state ethics lawyers turned their guns again upon my public criticisms and complaints.
The chief ethics counsel and his two attorney subordinates involved in this witch hunt were fired for falsifying time sheets only weeks after admitting in a closed hearing that they had been targeting my website. No public charges were brought against them for any crimes or civil rights violations. Threats of contempt in both family and attorney hearings then prompted me to seek protection in Paris.
As I’ve stated time and again, my ordeal reads like a John Grisham plot. So the next time you entrust your children and hard earned money to this antiquated and lucrative custody system, think again. Ask yourself the all-important question: do you trust this person on the bench simply because he or she wears a robe? Here at the Parenting Rights Institute, we offer a program to avoid court or manage your family disputes. It’s based on reality not lawyer profits.
Dr. Leon R. Koziol
Civil Rights Advocate
(315) 796-4000
Follow Leon Koziol, J.D., on Twitter: (Click Here)
Meanwhile Fathers in Debtor Prisons Give us Distinction as Most Imprisoned Nation in the World!
So you’d rather watch tournament games and go bowling than support a “We Are Fathers” campaign for justice and equality. Well that’s your choice, it’s a free country, in theory anyway. But you should know that countless lawyers, child experts and bureaucrats are cheering you on because they profit from all this apathy and a misguided sense of priorities.
Fathers rights and court reform have failed time and again because the victims are complaining about the symptoms, they’re only interested in their personal war stories, and they would rather pay the lawyers who grow their problems than contribute to reform entities like this one committed to everyone’s benefit. In short, today’s fathers are not shooting straight, if at all, even when the target is right in front of them.
That target is a federal support law which must be repealed or modified to comport with present day realities. It means we must focus our efforts at the nation’s capital. Instead victims have come to some bizarre conclusion that someone else will travel there, do all the work and pay for it. They think that five guys with signs in front of a local court might influence reform.
As our report, “We Are Fathers” explains, the support standards law under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act rewards the states based on the number and magnitude of support orders manufactured in their domestic relations courts. Put another way, all judges presiding over support cases benefit from higher awards, making them inherently biased under the same federal law. It’s all part of a trillion dollar child control industry.
To keep the federal money flowing, competing states must retain the antiquated custody scheme as opposed to shared parenting. This in turn benefits lawyers and third parties who thrive on the conflicts naturally inflamed by an unjust and unequal parenting system.
Let’s face it , when was the last time you heard of a scorned mother imprisoned for perjury or false reports? Such a precedent would lead to less conflict and less money for lawyers. Meanwhile fathers are being thrown into prison every day without the commission of any crime simply because of the unrealistic support orders made through biased judges.
They’ll tell you it’s all for uniformity sake, that the state knows best how to raise your children, but we know it’s all about the money. If you haven’t learned that by now, keep watching the balls go round and round while feminists next door at the government arenas are rallying for more laws you don’t know about.
Census Bureau reports continue to show that 85% of all parents paying support are fathers. Moreover, nearly 100% of all litigants committed to debtor prisons for back support are men, adding to our dubious distinction as the most imprisoned population in the free world. Minorities and veterans suffer a higher rate of abuse but hey, who’s counting. This gold mine is so lucrative that judges will set aside the Constitution to keep the unequal treatment in place.
So next time you’re watching a tournament game, don’t forget to have a buyer for your tickets when a sheriff serves you with a support petition or arrest warrant. In an upcoming post we’ll tell you about a neuro-surgeon in Manhattan who spent over $4.5 million fighting false allegations only to lose free contact with his children while facing potential incarceration. With this economy, you can easily become the next victim.
As we’ve said repeatedly, no amount of money is enough in these courts. They’ll be happy to take your children’s college funds to feed the greed. So please support this vital cause today. Make a donation at Leon Koziol.com and help recruit participants for our “Fatherless Day” rally at the Supreme Court on June 19th. Because they’re your children too.
Fatherless Friday, June 19th, Set for Rally at Supreme Court
It used to be that discrimination was legal only in states south of the Mason-Dixon border, but after completing our fathers rights meetings this week in Nashville, we have concluded that discrimination is now legal on both sides of that line.
On an increasing scale each year fathers are being remanded to the role of visitors or virtual parents in their children’s lives simply because of their male birth status. They are then subjected to indentured service to scorned adversaries known as custodial parents ultimately becoming legal sub-class citizens with the specter of debtor prisons hanging over their heads.
Indeed all manner of constitutional protection has been set aside under a judge made law dating back to feudal England known as equity power. Under this authority fathers can be targeted as criminals simply because they have relocated to other states in search of employment. The vast majority of fathers cannot possibly know that they are considered criminals due to a support debt treated as a tax by our government.
The situation today is completely out of control because fathers are allowing it. They would rather go bowling or watch tournament games than get personally involved in a long overdue reform effort. Not a single one to date has stepped up to the plate to recruit participants at a rally in Washington on fatherless day, June 19th.
For those of you unfamiliar with the fatherless day tradition, it is the annual Friday before Fathers’ Day which equal rights advocates have set aside to conduct nationwide rallies against Family Court abuses at courthouses and state capitals across the country. Most Americans are unaware of this tradition because the media has suppressed it and our government has exploited discrimination for profit. It simply does not fit into the civil rights categories defined by liberals and feminists.
But the reality is that father discrimination is at the root of social ills in this nation. Here in Nashville we have decided to do something about it. A series of posts at Leon Koziol. com describes a We Are Fathers campaign to end the last bastion of legal discrimination remaining unchecked in America today.
But for this campaign to succeed, all concerned people must get involved. Reform is not free and it won’t be done by your neighbor or some stranger. These are your children too and they rely on your donations and personal recruitment efforts. Otherwise, like all prior reform efforts, it will suffer a quick death.
Dr. Leon Koziol
Parental Rights Advocate
(315) 796-4000
Be Sure to Follow Leon Koziol, JD on Twitter (Click Here)
It’s the boldest proposal coming from my first day in Nashville. A sponsor of our campaign originally suggested the idea at the Divorce Corp Family Law Conference at our nation’s capital this past November. Now it is gaining momentum.
After years of frustration seeking justice and equal rights in a Tennessee family court, the father who advanced it is adamant that conventional channels will remain corrupt and dysfunctional for many years to come. Something more profound was needed to secure meaningful reform. Debate on the subject was lively to say the least.
Of course, opponents of the plan argued that a united consensus among fathers to stop paying support would mean breaking the law. Guys could go to jail for this. Women’s rights groups would go wild and our cause would be harmed. Finally the question was put: what about the children?
To this I emphasized that Susan B. Anthony was a convicted criminal who refused to pay her fine in protest of discrimination against women. Her crime: voting in the 1872 elections. The U.S. Supreme Court justice who presided over her criminal trial never did commit Susan to jail as was the prescribed remedy for such a willful violation of the so-called law.
As for the children, the real question is this: is it more important for them to have money or a real father? What incentive is there for a father to earn money when he is not accorded equal rights in parenting or alienated altogether in order to enrich family court lawyers or a scorned adversary?
Two ironies emerge from the Nashville proposal and the crimes committed by our greatest women’s rights advocate. First, had Susan B. Anthony continued to comply with “the law” women would still be considered too ignorant to vote. And with such precedent, can it be said that today’s fathers are being ignorant when they comply with the current system of discriminatory laws which makes them visitors and indentured servants in their children’s lives simply because of their parental birth status? The Census Bureau continues to report that 85% of all parents paying support are fathers.
This leads to our second irony. The courtroom in Rochester, New York where my law license was suspended for a refusal to pay support is dedicated to none other than Susan B. Anthony. If a conscientious father, model citizen and successful civil rights attorney, unblemished for over 23 years can make such a sacrifice, why not others? Our military makes a greater sacrifice before returning home to the same unjust laws.
As for women’s rights groups, one of the first supporters to be sought behind such a proposal should be the National Organization for Women. After all, if equal rights is their true mantra, they should be out front seeking it for children and future generations. Otherwise their whole movement is nothing more than a giant hypocrisy.
It leads to one final irony. During my civil rights career, I became the attorney and trusted advocate for Karen DeCrow. For those of you who do not recognize the name, she was an attorney and president of the National Organization for Women. A referendum on this bold proposal is expected before Father’s Day 2015. Will NOW be its strongest supporter.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Edmund Burke
From the Film
Tears of the Sun
featuring Bruce Willis
In America today, our government is engaged in the lucrative expansion of a child control bureaucracy that is harming our families, productivity and moral fiber as a nation. This vast public enterprise has invaded every aspect of private life, often wielding power beyond that exercised by the NSA, CIA or IRS. It is a silent and insidious trend eroding parental rights repeatedly declared by our Supreme Court to be the “oldest liberty interest” protected by the United States Constitution.
This interest is shared equally by fathers and mothers. But in practice, the male half has not been accorded its rightful place among our human rights due to a profit motive in family court driven by needless custody, support and divorce contests. Census Bureau reports continue to show the gender disparities on all domestic fronts. After promoting a parental rights cause in Paris recently, I was amazed to note how a million people together with world leaders could rally in that city within days to support free speech. Meanwhile, here in the states, more than 70 million fathers have yet to mobilize after a century of widespread discrimination.
Such discrimination is having harmful impacts on all aspects of society and quite likely the female population more so than its counterpart. Veterans, minorities and high profile figures are particularly vulnerable to a court system that has placed money and politics over genuine parent-child relationships. Fathers are a vital component of any social or family structure as they have been since the beginning of civilization. Unfortunately federal entitlement laws and incentive funding to the states have marginalized that role to a point of virtual extinction. This has led to educational costs, heinous crimes and moral deterioration on a vast scale corroborated by an exodus from all manner of religion. In practical terms, our taxpayers are funding the creation of social ills and then forced to pay for it on the back side with costly welfare programs.
Future generations will look back one day and be amazed at how truly barbaric our domestic relations courts once were. A scheme of laws and processes derived from feudal equity doctrines has been retained which features loving parents engaged in brutal contests over their offspring in a public arena. A winner-take-all battle for custody leads to overregulation of families by the state and marginalization, alienation or outright extinction of one fit parent from the children’s lives. Anal investigations of the combatants’ backgrounds by self serving advisors incite further controversy to last a lifetime. It is a spectacle reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum.
No person or entity has ever been able to achieve a comprehensive study of the vast detriment which this archaic custody and support system has had upon our society. Any such effort would assuredly be stymied because custody and unequal parenting are highly profitable. Yet common sense dictates that our nation could be well served with sweeping reforms here in our least scrutinized branch of government. We can put a man on the moon, split atoms, engage artificial intelligence and achieve vast breakthroughs in medicine but remain unable to extricate family courts from their nineteenth century practices.
On March 1, 2015, I released a Public Initiative Summary and Funding Request which aims to make family court family-friendly. Entitled “We Are Fathers,” it is a nationwide effort to promote shared parenting laws and accountability in our nation’s divorce and family courts. A six point action plan features a rally in our nation’s capital on the Friday of Father’s Day Weekend and a Political Action Committee comprised of parental advocates from our fifty states. It is an ambitious project but one which warrants our time and financial support. It will take literally millions of dollars to successfully oppose the bar associations and political insiders who profit from father discrimination. Yet since this initiative was released, followers of our site continue to pass over the “donate” and court program options.
One experience illustrates why fathers can expect more abuse in these courts for decades to come. One father in Florida contacted me for advice on how to find a good lawyer after his last one cost him $10,000 and did absolutely nothing. He wanted to visit lawyers in action to discover one who would truly fight for him. I offered our court program for a mere $299 which explains how lawyers’ hands are tied by the federal support and funding laws. It shows how custody is abused to fleece money from extended families with small chances of altering the status quo no matter how much is spent on lawyer fees. Nevertheless he was committed to throwing more money after bad with another $10,000 donation to the lawyers. Nothing was committed to his true allies here.
If you have a heating problem in your home, it might well be considered an emergency. You don’t just look at it and pontificate with your neighbors because you then risk greater problems when your pipes freeze. So you logically pay for a repair service, preferably one with the experience and commitment to do the job right, and your family’s well being is thereby preserved. In the father’s rights movement, the opposite is occurring. We are actually feeding the system which has resurrected debtor prisons, effectively criminalized fatherhood, and made us pay for the child alienation and marginalization of our roles as natural parents. We see the emergency and know the consequences, yet the victims keep multiplying with apathy and some misguided notion that reform is free and easy, that there is always someone else out there who will do the repair work for you.
Anyone who has followed this site, Leon Koziol.com, knows that I have sacrificed everything for this cause. It is a worthy initiative with impacts to last generations. However, it is also plain to see that my public message is being discredited by our adversaries with the goal of extinguishing any promising reform effort. There is a reason why this site and its sponsor are being so targeted. However my efforts can last no longer without meaningful support. So if you truly believe in your country, your free speech rights and most important, your children, do not pass over the donate button. In fact, you should go that extra step by soliciting other donors to the cause and sharing this post. Finally you should start a personal initiative to grow the numbers for a rally in June. If our government does not hear of a problem, it will not act upon it. That’s just how a self governing society works. Our military sacrifices for these rights every day. Let’s honor them properly. Will you finally make your voices heard, all 70 million of you?
Dr. Leon R. Koziol
National League of Fathers, Inc.
(315) 796-4000
Be sure to follow Leon Koziol on Twitter @leonkozioljd
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