By Janet Phelan
Book Review: The Worst Interests of the Child: The Trafficking of Children and Parents Through U.S. Family Courts
I’ve been writing about the abuses going on in adult guardianship proceedings now for over ten years. Details regarding the physical and financial abuse of seniors and disabled are nothing new to me. One might have thought I would have been prepared for The Worst Interests of the Child, by Keith Harmon Snow. But I was not.
“This book is about the organized crime of Family Courts in the United States,” writes Snow in the preface to this book. Keith Harmon Snow is an award- winning journalist, photographer and writer who has worked in 45 countries. He worked as a journalist accredited with the United Nations Observer Mission in Congo (MONUC), as a human rights investigator for Genocide Watch, and as genocide investigator for the United Nations in Ethiopia.
In this compelling and disturbing book, Snow has launched an expose of Family Court in Connecticut, although his research and findings are echoed in courts across America. The victims in his study, like the victims of guardianship court, are vulnerable and cannot protect themselves. However, unlike the elderly victims of guardianship court, these young victims are just beginning their lives. The scars from the abuses that Family Court refuses to address, refuses to protect them from, will be carried throughout the rest of their lives. Through no fault of their own, through the unfortunate happenstance of being born the child of a predator, these children have received, as Snow so aptly states, a life sentence.
Snow writes:
The problem with Family Courts is that financial interests outweigh the judicial issues, and the entire legal system has been geared to support the financial plunder of clients. This is most evident by examination of the behavior of lawyers who take cases for both perpetrators of abuse and protective parents (not only, but usually, the mothers).
His investigation reveals a seamy web of professionals—lawyers, judges, guardian ad litems, psychiatrists and supervised visitation companies—whose back room connections well serve their own financial interests at the expense of an abused child’s welfare. As Snow repeatedly demonstrates in multiple case histories, the protective parent’s resources are drained by these professionals, as she seeks to do whatever is financially necessary to protect her child.
This includes, but is not limited to, hiring expensive (and often complicit) attorneys, submitting to psychological examination and testing by evaluators cherry-picked by the court, paying for supervised visitation at exorbitant rates (often over $175 an hour), paying court ordered child support payments when the child has been remanded into the custody of the abusive parent, paying the abusive parent’s legal fees and more.
The Worst Interests of the Child focuses on the case involving the minor child Max Liberti; however, the book is peppered with examples from a multitude of similar cases, in Connecticut and elsewhere. One is introduced to a series of players—judges, lawyers, guardian ad litems and psychiatrists—whose actions in the Liberti case, as well as in other cases, reveal a playbook by which an ostensibly endangered child is put at further risk by those pledged to protect him.
The purpose, states Snow, is self enrichment for the players. “Behind the judicial abuse is a… bureaucracy of highly paid ‘professionals’ whose profits accrue in direct proportion to the level and duration of conflict they can create and maintain between the parents,” he writes.
And the money to be made is significant. Not only is the protective parent’s assets drained through attenuated court proceedings, through lawyers, evaluators and visitation agencies. The mammoth federal agency, Health and Human Services, maintains a $51 billion a year budget for children and families. This money is earmarked for such programs as “foster care and permanency,” “social services,” “child support enforcement and family support,” among others.
All in all, child abuse is a lucrative industry.
Interestingly, the same names pop up in a number of the cases discussed in this book. We will meet Dr. Kenneth Robson, pedophile expert, who worked at a large and apparently rather posh facility where the Catholic church sent its errant priests for unsuccessful “rehabilitation.” Robson, we will see, is an evaluator of choice in cases where there are allegations of sexual abuse, and errs repeatedly in favor of alleged abusers, turning the tables on the protective parent and facilitating the abuser to gain custody of a minor child.
We will meet Nick Sarno, aka Nicolas J. Siconolfi, aka Nicholas Sicinolfi, who owns a visitation supervision company called N.J. Sarno and Company, which holds supervised visitations in the parking lot of the police department, and who packs a weapon which may not be entirely legal. His visitation supervisors do not have social work degrees, in fact, may not have any training at all in domestic violence or sexual abuse. Snow reports that the Sarno company, which is not listed as a visitation company in a national directory for Supervised Visitation Providers for Connecticut, is charging some parents upwards of $10,000 a month for supervision services.
We will meet Judge Lynda Munro, Chief Administrative Judge of Family Matters for the state of Connecticut. Munro, whose name appears as judicial officer in a number of the cases cited in this book, regularly seals records which would raise questions as to her proper administration of justice. In addition, Munro, as a member of the Connecticut Practice Book Rules Committee, “has been a key figure in a clear conspiracy to rewrite and reformulate changes that enable Family Courts, judges, lawyers and custody evaluators to make their own rules and violate laws with impunity,” writes Snow.
The Practice Book governs jurisprudence in Connecticut and Munro meets in secret with her committee members. Snow writes that “…the public record that has being (sic) presented afterwards has been adjusted to obscure the Actual discussions and decisions. Any changes to Practice Book Rules should be subject to public hearings. ” Snow brings to the fore questions as to the legality of this Committee, stating “the state’s Executive Branch—rulemaking and lawmaking—should be separated from the Judicial Branch.”
We will read, in some detail, Judge Munro’s peculiar brand of in -court shenanigans when she adjudicated the Liberti case and “delivered Max Liberti to his father on a silver platter.”
We will read, with dismay and growing comprehension, how newspapers like the Connecticut Mirror cover for these judges. Snow traces the connections between the newspaper and the court system and reveals the names of Family Court lawyers and spouses of Family Court judges and other connected parties who are sitting on the newspaper’s board of directors. “It is clear,” writes Snow, “why any coverage of family court issues by the Connecticut Mirror would seek not to offend the “good name” and vested interests (of these individuals.)”
We are also introduced to brave and relentless parents who have lost everything in their battle to protect their children. Bankrupted, and having lost their children to the abusers, they still do not give up hope. Most of these are ordinary, middle class women who had the misfortune of marrying men who turned out to be pedophiles. Their spouses’ predilections end up costing these women everything, against all conceptions of justice.
Snow, however, does not plumb the depths of the federal involvement in the trafficking of children through Family Courts. He appears to be aware that the problem may extend up to the national level when he writes:
We do not want and we do not need any more secretive investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, or the Attorney General of the United States, because it seems they cannot be trusted….
The Worst Interests of the Child provides long overdue revelations as to the malfunction of the justice system in Family Court. Snow has produced a horrific and exquisitely well-documented account of justice, American style. It is high time that the Family Court system received such diligent and honest scrutiny. One can only hope that the abuses going on in guardianship court and the malfunction of criminal proceedings ravaging whistleblowers and human rights defenders will also someday receive similar attention.
Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, (also available as an ebook)exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Thank you Janet Phelan for this excellent review…and for tying the seizures of the elderly and young… connecting the dots… again thank you!
the WHOLE COURT SYSTEM stinks FROM THE LIBERAL SLIME BALL JUDGES now setting on the bench . /////////////////////////////////////
In my custody case of our son, there was many red flags I should have seen and paid three lawyers retainers just to have them back out “not go up against” my husbands attorney.The Guardian Ad Litem was very evident in her collusion with my ex husbands attorney and when our case was moved from Utica, NY court to Rome, NY I did not know why. I found out after that the judge in Rome NY was in a relationship with my exs attorney who was married to a prominent Doctor.I was ill advised by all attorneys I spoke with and was not able to find adequate counsel to go against her. I was not out to hurt my ex, I am a Mom who dreamt of the day I would have a child and my ex knew our son was my life. I went into the case with no leverage, not asking for any of the two homes we had-only our son.
The “courts” in their current state should be abolished.
A judge is not necessary and has as many biases as anyone else and can easily be paid off.
The rainbow people have a model that(might?) be worth at least mentioning. If someone wrongs another they start a tribal council out of volunteers to listen and implement a verdict.
Janet, thank you so much for this spot-on, important review. I’m the publisher, Burning Sage Atlanta, and indie books like this desperately need the exposure astute reporters like you can offer.
Thank you for this review, Janet Phelan. I hope his book is read and reviewed many more times. It’s based on facts and tragedies still going on in outrageous numbers to children and their protective mothers across the US. I am so grateful for his book and from a true activist, investigative journalist who was as surprised as many of us were what we were up against.
Exposure is all we have been asking for some time. Thank you again.
I had two ex husbands and a major airlines come against me. My case was long ago, when no one knew about the AFCC and all the federal funding. Deborah Lynne Connor
My Name is Ms. Ursula godeker, I was married to my husband for 13 years and we were both bless with three children, living together as one love, until 20015 when things was no longer the way the was [when he lost his job]. But when he later gets a new job 6 months after, he stated sleeping outside our matrimonial home. Only for me to find out that he was having an affair with the lady that gave he the job. since that day, when i called him, he don’t longer pick up my calls and he nothing since to come out good. Yet my husbands just still keep on seeing the lady. Until I met a very good friend of my who was also having a similar problem, who introduced me to a very good love spell caster. But i told her that if it has to do with things that i am not interested, but she said that it has nothing to do with pay first. but the only thing he was ask to do was just to have trust and believe to cast the spell, and that was what she did. And she gave me the spell caster e-mail address and phone number. When i contacted him, i was so surprise when he said that if i have the faith that i will get my husband back in the nest three [3] day, and off which it was really so. but i was so shock that i did not pay any thing to Dr. HELP, but my husband was on his knells begging me and the children for forgiveness. This testimony is just the price i have to pay. This man HELP is good and he is the author of my happiness. His e-mail address [email protected] i cant give out his number because he told me he don’t want to be disturbed by many people across the world..he said his email is okay and he’ will replied to any emails asap..hope he helped you out too..good luck
When people hear that I have the kids most of the time and yet pay my ex-wife child support, they like to tell me I didn’t have a good enough lawyer. In fact I had a very good one. One who showed me that I could get what was important and protect our kids and my relationship with them by handling the whole thing in mediation. It’s sad that I had to bribe my ex-wife to do the right thing, but in the end, the bribe was less expensive than the fight would be and had a sure outcome.
Deborah Connor said…
Jean Hudson Affluenza Boyd was also child trafficking for federal funding dollars. She sat on the bench terminating parental rights. She failed to implement kinship care, because there is no money in it. Then she still sits on all the adoption boards collecting the prodigious Title XIX federal funding. She is involved in racketeering for federal funding money. I am a grandmother still fighting for her grandchildren. Boyd allowed my I.C.P.C. background check from Utah and five favorable evaluations to be falsely reported. Then she adopted my grandchildren out to Ron and Carole Blackmon, who were involved with C.A.S.A. We need to have grand jury investigations to put her in jail. Deborah Lynne Connor 801-654-3140
Deborah Fairfax County Virginia Circuit Courts are using same agencies as CPS, DFS, and CASA. Even after I won against false CPS/DFS claims, and my case was dismissed, son returned, the ex worked with the county agencies to plot to take my son away via courts and “Parental Alienation” father claims despite he missed/canceled many visits including his own birthday. The same people were brought in to testify and lie under oath again despite that they were proven to have lied on the stand prior. This along with court appointed psychological bought off therapist from court, a Dr. Ling. Judge Robert Smith from Fairfax County is taking children away from mothers and giving to abusive fathers, this happened to me. My son is with my ex and the woman who my son told me sexually fondled him in bed when he was trying to sleep. I am posting this so that FAIRFAX COUNTY mothers can know what they are dealing with when entering custody courts. Anyone who wants to reach out please reply here.
Pay a visit to the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County, Annapolis Maryland. Enter the civil case records division and research pending cases. From your investigative efforts, you will quickly surmise the depths of behavioral corruption and collusion riddled with unlawful activity.
Friends, I just joined CAPRA as one of the lead plaintiffs in an upcoming landmark federal class action lawsuit against all 50 States and the Federal Government, because I qualify as: (1) a biological parent whose child custody was unconstitutionally removed without due process; and, (2) I have been directly impacted by that during the last four years, i.e., within the statute of limitations. This class action is on behalf of *both* types of “family court” — for wrongful victims of divorce-and-similar-with-kids *and* for wrongful victims of child protection services — and includes suing on behalf of ANY parent affected by either “family court” type.
It’s totally free to join, and the federal court relief being demanded includes the full restoral of my child custody rights under law, plus a nice share of the large amount in civil damages expected. Although no amount of money could ever replace the lost time, WE MUST FIGHT BACK!
It just requires entering someone’s referral Code to join, so PLEASE use mine – 80233BM406 – in the CAPRA registration form, located on the bottom of the homepage at http://parentalrightsclassaction.com
Plus, check out their power-packed Legal Tips page for all parents fighting family court.
REFERRAL CODE 80233BM406
Parental Rights Class Action – Home (Join Now!)
Family Court Victim? Join our class action association, be in the communications army, and earn big rewards – SEE OUR WEBSITE
PARENTALRIGHTSCLASSACTION.COM
@B Miller, thank you for providing this. I am a mom who sadly qualifies for BOTH of the CAPRA class action lawsuit requirements. I haven’t seen my son in 6 months. I am heartbroken and devastated, but I want to fight to expose this. I have decided to make this my mission until my last breath.
Anyone who wants my referral code here it is: 22302MW527
I signed up and if this happened to you, please help join and let us do something together to stop the child trafficking and theft! God Bless!
I’m a father that also got coat in the corrupt judiciary money usurping rackets and after seven years lost a life time savings trying to defend my civil and human rights in a family law courtroom. Nothing in what the judicial system advertise through Statutes, doctrine, Laws it is true but just a endless scheme designed to attire and hold their victims till ruin will do you apart.
…….
Anyone know how us mothers can reach author Keith Harmon Snow? I would like to get in contact to add my case and information in hopes it helps unravel all of this more. This is ALL tied in with DC pizza gate and Franklin Coverup as the children are being funneled by these people.
Judges are being paid off. They have written agreements with HHS which is a violation of separation of powers. The judges are working as contractors for HHS. Child Support is run by the executive branch of government HHS and they enter into agreements (contracts) with the judicial branch (courts) which gets paid by the Corporation HHS.
§ 302.34 – Cooperative arrangements.
The State plan shall provide that the State will enter into written agreements for cooperative arrangements under § 303.107 with appropriate courts, law enforcement officials, Indian tribes or tribal organizations. Such arrangements may be entered into with a single official covering more than one court, official, or agency, if the single official has the legal authority to enter into arrangements on behalf of the courts, officials, or agencies. Such arrangements shall contain provisions for providing courts and law enforcement officials with pertinent information needed in locating noncustodial parents, establishing paternity and securing support, to the extent that such information is relevant to the duties to be performed pursuant to the arrangement. They shall also provide for assistance to the IV-D agency in carrying out the program, and may relate to any other matters of common concern. Under matters of common concern, such arrangements may include provisions for the investigation and prosecution of fraud directly related to paternity and child and spousal support, and provisions to reimburse courts and law enforcement officials for their assistance
Tyler Jason Hughes, Rebecca Rene Hughes, Bryce Connor Satterlee, I am your real grandmother. Ron And Carole Blackmon are nothing but kidnappers for federal funding dollars. We love you. I am still fighting for you. Tyler Blackmon, Rebecca Blackmon, and Caleb Blackmon, you name is not Blackmon. We will fix it all call me. 801-654-3140
Family Court is the worst court system in the country and possibly in the world. There IS NO OVERSIGHT, NO JURY and NO CONSEQUENCES for DECISIONS that are too often based on the sole discretion of a magistrate and NOT the LAW.. THE LAW in family court is too often based on personal interpretation and not the facts, as it should be. FAMILY COURT should be reformed because of this UNBALANCED approach which has an enormous BURDEN on society, especially low income families and men who cannot defend themselves.
In all objectivity, it is an organized corporation shaped to do more harm than good. From over extended reserved decisions at the expense of the families to bias decisions that are tolerated by the supervising judge out of courtesy for their colleagues ect….
FATHERS in general are at a deficit of credibility without any evidence from the court to support this position. A CLEVER approach to help form preconceived notions by the presiding magistrate. In many cases, the system allows most MOTHERS to abuse it and get away with murder because the burden is OFTEN ON THE FATHER.
Since Magistrate and Judges are appointed by the PEOPLE, WE the PEOPLE should also have the power to INFLUENCE the law based or block unconstitutional rulings. If we can get involved to vote a President by proxy, the same should apply for the courts or a suspected case of corruption or misinterpretation of the LAW. It’s obvious in the courtroom, the notion of taking the OATH or mention of WE the PEOPLE is totally HYPOCRITICAL.
The OATH is RARELY taken seriously and means nothing as MOST decisions are at the sole discretion of the Magistrate. We the PEOPLE means nothing without an impartial jury present or by proxy. There are ways to get the PEOPLE involved within 30-60 days with a TRANSCRIPT. JURY DUTY should also apply to CIVIL CASES as their outcome is as significant to our society. This would minimize unfair treatments by MAGISTRATES OR JUDGES based on personal agendas or beliefs.
SENSITIVE PERSONAL data associated with e case should not be exposed online by a court, without the authorization of the party involved. Especially if the outcome did not involve a jury. The COURT of public opinion can easily be very damaging in a simple CIVIL CASE for anyone looking for employment, .
How can I get in touch with author ? I have proof that they would be very interested in .
Please read about the current abuse of Vail McCann at #AVoiceforVail on Facebook. She and her mother desperately need help and support to protect them from their abusive father and his financially powerful and politically connected family in Washington.