Congenitally Corrupt: Mass Probate & Judge Menno

Posted: September 23, 2016 | Author: Father | Filed under: Doctor Gabrielle Sousa, Doctor John L. Stanley, Judge Menno, Margaret Kenney, Margaret Vannata | Leave a comment

Congenitally Corrupt: Mass Probate & Judge Menno

 

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS

 

PLYMOUTH, ss                              PROBATE AND FAMILY COURT

                                                      DOCKET NO. PL02D1047FM1

 

XXXXX XXXX             )

                  PLAINTIFF                  )       

and                                        )        PLAINTIFF’s PRE-TRIAL

                                             )        MEMORANDUM

MARGARET KENNEY,          )       

                  DEFENDANT – Marshfield, Mass

        

 

NOW COMES CCCCC XXXX, the Plaintiff in the above-entitled Complaint for Modification, and sets forth the following in accordance with the Notice of Pre-Trial Conference as follows:

 

1. Date, time, and place of in-person meeting, and who was present.

As of this writing (9-10-2016), Attorney Ward has agreed that the defendant and the plaintiff, along with Attorney Ward, will meet at Brockton Probate at 3:00 PM on 9-16-2016. The purpose of this meeting is the 4-Way.

1. Uncontested Facts:

The plaintiff will prepare within the next week or two, or as required by the court in advance of the trial.

III.    Contested Issues of Fact and Law:

1. The parenting plan for the parties’ son, Chris, is in dispute.  The father enjoyed joint physical custody of the child, along with unsupervised visitation and overnight stays, up until Judge Menno’s December 28, 2011 ruling. On the December 28, 2011 ruling, Judge Menno awarded the mother, the Defendant, sole physical custody, and ordered supervised visitation for the father, the Plaintiff. Supervised visitation was effectively ended on Judge Menno’s October 23, 2012 ruling. The father, the Plaintiff, is putting forth three key arguments in support of his request for modification, and the restoration of unsupervised visitation and phone calls.

2. First Argument: As the Plaintiff verbally argued before Judge YYYYYYYs on April 11, 2016, at an emergency hearing, the father states that he is a good father. Specifically, the father has never missed a child support payment; the father has never allowed the health insurance to lapse; the father has no criminal record; the father has never been to rehab or tested positive for illicit substances (nor did Judge Menno during the three year long trial, or his surrogate – Attorney Dorsey – Parenting Coordinator – ever order a drug test); in the eleven years that the father enjoyed scheduled unsupervised visitation with his son, Chris, he never once missed a visit; the father has maintained – and actually overpaid- into his son’s college fund, as stipulated and agreed to within the Divorce Agreement/Decree (interestingly, the Defendant and her attorney, in 2016, never requested of the Plaintiff a copy of Chris’s college fund statement, neither in their interrogatories or request for documents); the psychologist, Dr. Laura Okin, who saw the Plaintiff, post-Menno ruling of December 2011, has stated in writing that the father is mentally fit to see his son, Chris, in an unsupervised capacity. Moreover, the father enjoyed a rich and rewarding relationship with his son. This strong relationship extended to a point that Chris asked the guardian ad litem, appointed by the Menno court (Dr. Richard Wolman), to live with his father five times. Mr. Wolman testified to this on the first day of trial in July 2011. Mr. Wolman testified that same day that he threatened Chris – that he’d tell his mother on him – if he ever made the request to live with his father again. (As Plymouth probate clerks have stated that much of the evidence and information from that 2011 trial has been deleted or purged, the father, fortunately, has on digital disk the testimony from the 2011 trial, and will present into evidence Dr. Wolman’s first day of testimony.) In October 2011, the mother also testified that Chris loved his father, and missed him as a result of change in visitation enforced by Judge Menno’s surrogate, Attorney Dorsey.

The father wishes to express his gratitude to Judge YYYYYYYs for reopening this matter. This is especially meaningful, since Judge Menno in his December 28, 2011 ruling expressly forbid the plaintiff from seeking modification, or filing litigation in regards this matter, unless it was through Judge Menno’s court and with his permission. Not only was this the Plaintiff’s understanding, but clearly the Defendant, and Attorney Ward, have stated the same belief on several occasions in 2016. Which brings us to my second argument.

3. Second Argument: Judge Menno’s ruling(s) were a judicial overreach. Judge Menno’s rulings were an assault upon the father’s 1st, and possibly 6^th and 7^th Amendment rights. And finally, Judge Menno’s ruling(s) have caused, possibly, irreparable harm to the father’s and son’s relations, and may have lead to child alienation from his father. As a preamble to these arguments, please know Judge YYYYYYYs that it is not the Plaintiff’s goal to retry the case, from the period January 2010 through November 2013. Having said that, and in order to demonstrate both my arguments and the time line of events (and since the evidence from the aforementioned trial dates has been deleted, as relayed to me by Plymouth County Probate clerks), unfortunately, I must cover some of the key events during that period. And it is also important to cover Judge Menno’s and his surrogate’s, the Parent Coordinator’s, reaction and rulings to the events of that period. In regards, Judicial overreach, the father requests that Judge YYYYYYY’s reads Judge Menno’s December 28, 2011 ruling, where under item #9, Judge Menno prohibited the father from filing any further modifications, or “complaints for contempt,” except by Mr. Menno’s written permission. My attorney, Ms. DiGregorio, informed me that this provision meant that I could not appeal Judge Menno’s decision(s), nor sue any of the professionals involved in this case, unless granted express permission by Judge Menno’s court. To the best of the Plaintiff’s knowledge, Judge Menno has no such power. This is why the Plaintiff filed for an emergency hearing on this matter, late Winter 2016, because Judge Menno had finally left Plymouth County, and his cases were assigned to a new judge. Moreover, the Plaintiff in early 2016 requested that Judge Menno review his prior decisions, and Judge Menno passed on my request, citing that his caseload had been transferred to Judge Stanton. Judge Menno’s December 28, 2011 ruling arguably violated the Plaintiff’s right(s) to appeal the Judge’s decision, and pursue civil litigation against the professional(s) in this matter, whom the father argues failed to adequately protect the child, Chris, and some of whom gave false testimony during the course of the trial. Particularly threatening to the father’s constitutional rights, however, was Judge Menno’s (and his surrogate’s) use of child visitation, and restrictions of same, as means to shut down, or certainly punish, the father for exercising his first amendment right of freedom of speech, and freedom of political speech. A quick synopsis of events leading up to the removal of the father’s visitation privileges, which first occurred in August 2011, and again, in October 2012, shows that the father had published, as his First Amendment right, court documents and evidence submitted into the aforementioned trial. During this first event, the father published a blog, entitled FreeChris.com, in August 2011. The father had published the blog out of desperation, as the trial had already dragged out 20 months – since he had originally hired his attorney – with no foreseeable end in sight, and the father had heard the proceeding week, during a parenting coordinator meeting, that Chris was now suicidal under his mother’s care (The father had heard from the mother that Chris had been acting out all Summer long while under his mother’s care, this is in addition to medically documented evidence that Chris had lost 15lbs under his mother’s care, plus a whole host of other issues & concerns regarding the mother’s parenting; the weight loss episodes, and circumstances surrounding my son’s weight loss, were also confirmed by Sandy Durland III, Esq., brother-in-law to State Rep., James Cantwell, the Defendant’s former attorney). The father will provide evidence of Chris’s suicidal behavior, while under his mother’s care, from Attorney Dorsey’s parenting coordinator meeting notes of June & August 2011 (as well as, written documentation from Doctor Sousa of Pembroke MA, who discovered Chris’s 15 pounds of weight loss, which occurred under the Defendant’s care). As a result of the father publishing the blog in August 2011, Attorney Dorsey stripped the father of all visitation privileges and immediately demanded that the web site, FreeChris.com, be shut down. Despite the father shutting down the web site, due to coercion from Attorney Dorsey and the resulting loss of contact with his son, visitation was not reinstated until Spring 2012, and then, only in a supervised capacity. Judge Menno again used visitation as a tool in an attempt to censor the Plaintiff in his October 2012 ruling, shortly after the father published the book, Mrs. Marshfield. Marshfield consists almost entirely of courtroom documents, filings, and evidence presented during the three-year trial period. Judge Menno states in his October 23, 2012 ruling that: “Mr. XXXX has a First Amendment right to publish his book, but he does not have a constitutional right to injure the mental and emotional wellbeing of his minor child.” As of this date, neither the mother, the Defendant, nor her attorney, Mr. Ward, has ever presented evidence that Chris was harmed, neither emotionally or mentally, by any of the father’s publications, nor did Judge Menno ever ask for such evidence. In addition to the pattern of the father publishing information that ran counter to the narrative Judge Menno, and the Defendant’s attorney(ies), were attempting to build around the case (an “official” narrative that completely ignored the evidence submitted by the Plaintiff and his attorney, Ms. DiGregorio), correlated or followed by the removal of the Plaintiff’s visitation time, the father had also ably convinced – via evidence – then State Senator Hedlund to file a formal complaint against Judge Menno with the Commission of Judicial Conduct (on November 19, 2012). In short, Judge Menno, and his surrogate, showed a pattern of punishing the father, w/ the removal of child visitation, as retribution for the father publishing the facts of this case, both on line and through a book published on Amazon.com. In publishing these materials, the father’s stated aim has always been to educate the public, and to seek Massachusetts Probate Court reform. That said, the father removed the web site and the book from publication in advance of a hearing in Fall 2013, but by then, Judge Menno was furious, both at the prior publications and for being brought up before the Commission of Judicial Conduct; and the father’s visitation rights were not reinstated. What to make of a Judge who would use child visitation as a means to attempt to censor, and silence, written criticism, both factual and political, of the Massachusetts’ Probate system?   Clearly, Judge Menno’s actions, probably, alienated son from father. Is child alienation permitted under Massachusetts’ law or code, as a means of retribution or punishment? It is the Plaintiff’s fervent nightly prayer, that Judge YYYYYYYs will right this egregious wrong and gross miscarriage of justice.

4. Third Argument: The Plaintiff has no idea of what the ARC attorney will report back to the YYYYYYYs’ court. Both the Defendant and her attorney already claim that Chris does not wish to see his father (which begs a whole host of alternative questions). However, the father – despite assurances from his sister (Chris’s –Aunt) that the son loves his father and expressed a desire to see his father– must entertain the possibility that Chris, for any number of reasons (including relentless pressure from his mother), may have expressed a desire not to restore visitation with his father (particularly after being forcibly estranged from his father by the Menno court for these many years). Therefore, the father wishes to preemptively argue that parental alienation may have occurred, and that the full weight of this alienation be attributed to Judge Menno and his parenting coordinator appointee, Counsel Michele Dorsey. The separation between father and son was involuntary, and was made mandatory solely by Judge Menno’s – and surrogate’s – orders. When supervised visitation was restored, it was cumbersome, awkward, unnecessarily supervised (per the father’s therapist), and expensive (which the father believes was the point of the entire exercise, Judge Menno meant to drive the father away or visitation to be both punitive and embarrassing).

The father waited three long years for Judge Menno to vacate Plymouth County, and once that occurred, the father took this matter before a new Judge to hear this matter, as quickly as possible, and on an emergency basis.

 

The father, therefore, asks the YYYYYYY’s court to restore visitation to one weekend per month (fitted around Chris’s activities and schedule), and phone calls up to three times weekly, where the father is permitted to speak to his son, immediately. The father is not asking for a change in custody. The father very much wants to aid and assist Chris in his review and selection of colleges, and wants to play an active role in his son’s life. The father wants Judge YYYYYYYs to know that – despite the alienation created by the Menno court and the Defendant – that his love for his son is unconditional. In the State of Maryland, rapists have greater parental rights than the Plaintiff. The father has witnessed, through sitting in Plymouth probate for countless hours, that Massachusetts’ parents – with significant addiction and mental health issues – have substantive parental rights and visitation privileges. The Plaintiff is merely asking that these same visitation privileges be afforded to him and his son, Chris.

1. Status of Discovery:

Discovery is largely complete, albeit the Defendant and counsel refused to provide Chris’s medical and mental health records. These records, particularly the latter, may provide additional support to the Plaintiff’s assertion that Chris wishes to visit his father, misses him, and loves him. Here, the Plaintiff is request that Judge YYYYYYYs order the Defendant to release Chris’s medical and mental health records to the Plaintiff, from the period of January 2010 to the present.

1. Child Custody

Child Custody is not an issue, the father is not seeking a change in custody.

1. Possible Witnesses:

2. The Mother;

3. Plaintiff’s Sister;

4. Dr. John Stanley of _Pembroke_, Chris’s pediatrician;

5. Dr. Gabrielle_ Sousa of _Pembroke___, another pediatrician;

6. Keepers of Records for all documents set forth above; and

7. Any and all other documents or materials necessary to enable the Father to present his position accurate and fully.

The Father reserves the right to supplement this list should this matter go to trial.

 

 

VII.   Evidence:

 

1. Judge Menno’s aforementioned rulings;

2. Parenting Coordinator, Attorney Dorsey’s, October meeting notes;

3. Parenting Coordinator, Attorney Dosrey’s, order – ending visitation;

4. GAL, Dr. Richard Wolman’s, digitized testimony;

5. Sousa’s written responses to the Mass Board of Medicine;

6. Stanley’s letter, and response to the Mass Board of Medicine;

7. Okin’s letter clearing father to see Chris;

8. Pictures of Chris and Father together, illustrating Chris’s happiness.

The Father reserves the right to supplement this list should this matter go to trial.

VIII: Depositions
The Plaintiff plans on conducting no depositions.

IX & X: Property Division & Alimony

These are not matters before the court.

1. Estimate of Trial Time:

The Father anticipates that the trial of this matter will take two (2) or more days depending upon the witnesses called and upon the ability of counsel to stipulate to facts along with exhibits in advance of trial.

XII: Financials Issues:

The Father has filed his current financial statement but contends that there are no financial issues involved in this matter.

As of this writing, the father has not received a formal filing on the part of the Defendant, nor Mr. Ward, to amend their response to the modification to include – revisiting college funding. If the Defendant desires to move this request forward, the father will have a formal response to this request. As college funding is specifically covered in the divorce agreement, along with specified funding, it is the father’s contention – based upon Massachusetts case law – that the Judge may not reopen this issue. See McCarthy V. McCarthy, 36 Mass. App.Ct. 490 (1994).

XIII: Child Support

Child support is no longer in contention and is agreed upon.

Respectfully submitted,

XXXXX XXXX

Dated: September 16, 2016

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