November 23, 2015 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization
The Tsimhoni divorce and custody case in Oakland County, MI has taken another step forward, and this article makes clear just how wrongheaded Mike Volpe’s article on it is.
As you’ll recall from yesterday’s post, Volpe abandoned facts and logic to attack what Judge Lisa Gorcyca has done. His only real hope of convincing anyone of his point of view came in his effort to discredit Parental Alienation Syndrome. He made a mess of it. As I mentioned yesterday, attacking Dr. Richard Gardner isn’t the same as attacking PAS, although PAS deniers love to pretend it is. And the fact that a judge in a case, somewhere, sometime gave custody of children to an abusive father means frankly nothing about parental alienation generally and even less about the Tsimhoni case. To top it all off, Volpe chose to attack PAS despite the fact that no one has accused the plaintiff mother in the case of PAS, only parental alienation.
Such are the tactics of the desperate. Face it, it you have real arguments to make, you don’t stoop to doing what Volpe did.
The latest step in the process of this almost six year old case was the mother’s attempt to force Judge Gorcyca to recuse herself. That prompted a flurry of filings by all and sundry and now an appellate judge has ruled on Maya Tsimhoni’s motion. Judge Daniel Kelley denied it as being “without merit.”
That’s no surprise, but in the process, he gives us a little more information about Maya’s tactics in the case. Parental alienation by the mother fairly shouts from the page.
“It is understandable that the judge has become frustrated with the Plaintiff,” Kelley wrote.
“The Defendant and the Guardian ad Litem have filed at least 13 motions to show cause against the Plaintiff, with all but one addressing Plaintiff’s failure to comply with the court’s parenting time orders and directives. The continued defiance by the Plaintiff may to some extent explain her difficulty in retaining counsel. Over the years the Plaintiff has been represented by more than a dozen lawyers with at least seven different law firms filing appearances on her behalf since August 2014. Despite these continued confrontations with the court and the multitude of lawyers representing Plaintiff, there has never been an assertion that Judge Gorcyca was biased or that she should be removed from the case until this past September.”
In short, Gorcyca has been the very soul of patience with a mother whose behavior would surely have made her want to eat nails. But twelve separate motions to enforce the judge’s parenting order that Maya violated strongly suggests an intention on her part to deprive the children of their father. Burning through a dozen lawyers likewise suggests a plaintiff who is unwilling to play by the rules.
All of this information of course was readily available to Volpe, but he ignored it. But he didn’t just ignore readily available facts, he made up some of his own. For example, Volpe described the therapy ordered by Gorcyca and intended to undo the pernicious effects of Maya’s alienation of the children as “dubious,” but neglected to mention what Kelley thought germane – that it’s been successful, albeit not yet complete.
Kelley believes Gorcyca’s handling of the case has been proper.
“While some of the actions taken by (Gorcyca) may seem extreme to those not familiar with the full history of this case, the report from the Guardian ad Litem appointed to represent the children suggests that they were warranted and productive,” Kelley wrote.
He cited a parental alienation program that the children were ordered to participate in. Within five days, the children began to speak with their father and make eye contact, and they shared meals and visited his home to choose beds, according to the guardian ad litem report, and progress has been steady.
This has been known since August when the therapy occurred, but needless to say, Volpe didn’t want his readers to know about it.
But Volpe’s desperation didn’t stop there. He even attempted to recruit the Guardian ad Litem to his (and the mother’s) side. He acknowledged that the GAL (William Lansat) had identified Maya as a parental alienator, but claimed that now he “has changed his view.” Hmm, too bad Lansat didn’t let the judge in on the change, because Kelley was obviously unaware of it.
“The only drawback to reunification with the Plaintiff is her failure to secure the services of a therapist for herself,” Kelley wrote, again citing the guardian ad litem.
“(The guardian ad litem) states that ‘There is no question that if mother would get on board here there would be no need for a custody hearing in October.”
Here’s a GAL who’s identified Mom as an alienator and demanded that she receive therapy before her reunification with the children can be accomplished, but somehow Volpe spins those positions as pro-Mom. Again, if he had any real arguments to make, don’t you think he’d make them?
I can’t guess where this case is headed, but at last a judge has seen what appears to be the reality of the situation – that Maya Tsimhoni has alienated her children from their father. As is usual in this type of case, that realization by the judge came long after it should have. Parental alienation is a form of child abuse, as knowledgeable mental health professionals have long acknowledged. By taking almost six years to rule on her alienation and transfer custody (temporarily) to Omer, the courts only prolonged that abuse. They’re now reaping the rewards of that inaction.
Still, the right thing has been done for now. But bet on it; this is not the last we’ve heard of Tsimhoni vs. Tsimhoni.
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#parentalalienation, #childabuse, Tsimhoni