The State of New Jersey Should Get Their Priorities Straight and Start Protecting Its Children

It’s pretty bad when a teen who has been begging for help from school officials, police, DYFS, the NJ Family Court, and mental health care professionals gets man-handled, shouted-down, ignored and medicated with agents contra-indicated for use in minors (Cymbalta and Abilify) for over three years gets continuously returned to her abusive home by Middlesex County NJ Family Court judge Fred Kieser, Jr quoted in transcripts as saying, “This may be a textbook case of sexual abuse but I don’t want to get involved.” The then 13 1/2 year old girl alleged that she and her sisters were being physically, emotionally, and verbally abused by their father for years. No one did anything to intervene regardless of how hard she fought to be heard. Investigations by DYFS and school officials seemed more like interrogations. Her words were twisted or flat out ignored as she was told to, “Sit down and shut up, that she was not worth the effort to fill out the paperwork that would save her from her abusive home and put her into foster care (as she begged the family court to do in an act of desperation in 2007), that she should stop making up all of these lies as a judge would never keep her with a parent that was unfit, that her father truly loved her but she just didn’t like the rules of the house, that she should just be quiet and be a good girl for her daddy.”

Despite her custodial parent’s constant attempts to silence her by trying to have her admitted to UMDNJ Acute Care Facility in Piscataway, NJ she refused to stop begging for help. In May 2007 when asked what prompted her to finally run away from home she volunteered to police officers, an officer of the court and a social worker from the Division of Youth and Family Services, “I couldn’t take it anymore when daddy tried to crawl into bed with me too.” DYFS returned this girl to her alleged abuser less than 18 hours after she ran away. Both DYFS and Judge Fred Kieser, Jr acknowledged that the father put this girl’s older sister on birth control personally when she was barely 13 even though there was no previous history that would indicate the child was sexually active. The father did so immediately after he gained temporary custody through more baseless allegations he made in 2006 which the court ordered DYFS to investigate. DYFS categorically refused to conduct any such investigation as “they were not parties to the litigation.” In other words, they didn’t take the children from their home so they felt no obligation to investigate anyone. Once DYFS’ director was challenged about the illegal nature of such behavior by the pro-se defendant his answer was, “If the court ordered the investigation then surely it was done. I just haven’t seen the resulting report.” …and neither has anyone else though it is now 2010. Who knew a “temporary order” would last 4 years?

It is important to note that the judge who made the May 2007 “text book case of sexual abuse” comment and the May 2006 ruling that would trap these children in their alleged abuser’s home was Fred Kieser, Jr. He is the only family court judge in NJ’s history to have been removed from the bench for judicial misconduct by governor Corzine himself in 2008.

The only child of the four minor female siblings involved in this case who refused to back down and kept trying to seek help from all of the adult authority figures she had been raised to believe would protect her subsequently turned to abusing drugs and alcohol even though she knew this would most certainly kill her while she was being forced to take a cocktail of psychotropics because, “She didn’t care anymore. She hated herself. She wanted to escape. She’d wished that she was dead.”

After the Middlesex County Probation Department conducted an investigation in 2008 that: ignored 3 years of consistently failing grades, dismal attendance, courtroom transcripts where an officer of the court testified on the child’s behalf with mention made from Judge Fred Kieser, Jr of hand-written notes from the two youngest children (then 10 and 11 years old) asking to come and see him so “they could tell him the truth” (which the judge made fun of as is evidenced in the transcripts), letter from the children’s school, letters and certifications from the children’s pediatricians, principals and counselors that would have exonerated the mother of any false charge of abuse, a CD of a hearing where Judge Kieser screamed at the mother numerous times, “YOU ARE A LIAR” as she stuttered and sobbed begging the court to look at her evidence and asked, “Your honor the children were obviously not in my custody when these abuses occurred. Who then is abusing my children?”, numerous IM chats where one child routinely volunteers the true state of their home with their alleged abuser and another hand-written note by a younger sibling telling of abuse they are suffering. The Middlesex Country Probation Department also did no investigation with any mental health care professionals nor did they request medical records from UMDNJ Acute Care Facility. Their report echoed DYF’s “everything is just fine in children’s home.” But the probation department’s report did note that they were also unable to find the report that was to be the result of the May 2006 court ordered investigation by DYFS. In April 2009 the NJ Family Court ruled that the previously court-ordered DYFS investigation that would have brought an end to this family’s 3 year long nightmare was “no longer necessary or relevant”. Just 2 months later in June of 2009 the only child who kept begging for help, now a nearly 16 year old teen had to be committed to a facility for addiction to alcohol and drugs, attempted suicide and other self-deprecating behavior when her custodial parent told her, “You will never be able to see or live with your mother again. She can’t go back to court to fight for you anymore.”

And then in August of 2009 dozens of images hosted online came to into evidence; a pictorial history of two of these children drinking alcohol, smoking weed, holding up ounces of cocaine, and though clothed, drunk with the rumpled sheets of a motel room bed in the background, sex toys on the floor. One would think that this would have finally sounded off some sort of an alarm somewhere that these children were at the very least being neglected and that with all of this mounting evidence perhaps the custodial parent should be charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors? The township police merely commented that “though the images were an online pictorial of the history of these children’s behavior since they were as young as 12 and 13 there was no way for them to substantiate it was happening in their custodial parent’s home so they are going to do nothing.” DYFS also didn’t feel that any of this evidence warranted action on their part, nor did the NJ Office of the Child Advocate.

None of this evidence was enough for DYFS or The NJ Office of the Child Advocate to intervene on behalf of these children. In a letter dated November 6, 2009 DYFS claimed that “they received positive collaterals from the child’s school”. In a letter dated March 11, 2010 the NJ Office of the Child Advocate stating in writing that “they were unable to corroborate any concerns and were closing the case accordingly” even though they were shown report card demonstrating that child in question had missed 28 days of school from September through December 2009 and was continuing to fail every single one of her academic classes and shown receipts that indicated she was still being forced to take several psychotropics, at least one of which was contra-indicated for use in minors as has been the case since she has been forced to live in her alleged abuser’s home for nearly 4 years.

But one passionate email in response stated: “Eventually DYFS’s dirty laundry will be exposed. I’m just not willing to allow my daughter to become a statistic before that happens. I promise you, I will make it my business to be your biggest nightmare if your agency does not do its job”, was enough to prompt action from the NJ police?!?! They immediately called the author of that email and gave her staunch warning that she can’t just make ambiguous statements to cajole a social worker into doing her job, that this email made the worker “in fear for her life”.

I don’t know about the rest of you but it seems to me that the State of NJ is more interested in covering up corruption and incompetence than it is in protecting the safety, well being and rights of children who are brave enough to come forward and expose their abusers. Isn’t this the antithesis of what our society teaches our children? Is it any wonder that so many children slip through the cracks?

Article Update April 2010:

On 19 April 2010, a supervisor at the Middlesex County Family Court Probation Department admitted that the worker who was ordered by Judge Andrea Carter-Latimer to evaluate this family “had neither the resources nor the ability to make a proper assessment.”

It is noteworthy that in October 2008 Judge Andrea Carter-Latimer chose to ignore the recommendations of an August 2008 court ordered independent psychological evaluation of the mother to “produce the May 2006 court-ordered DYFS report”, “have the custodial parent (father) and children submit for updated psychological evaluations” and “allow unsupervised visitation with the mother” remanding the case instead back down to the Probation Department. This defies logic, sound judgment and the couple’s divorce decree.

Judge Carter-Latimer also ruled in April 2009 that “the 2006 court-ordered DYFS investigation and subsequent report” were no longer relevant as “only the youngest child expressed the desire to see their mother anyway.”

The question now is what exactly will the Middlesex County Family Court, Probation Department, DYFS and the NJ Office of the Child Advocate going to do to address their negligence and subsequent cover-up that has caused irreparable harm to this family?

Article Update MAY 2011:

All four children are still trapped in their abuser’s home despite repeated attempts by their mother to save them. She has filed numerous motions and appeals from the Middlesex County Family Court all the way up to filing grievances with Gov Chris Christie’s office begging for help. The governor’s office’s only response was, “Hire an attorney” once their office was made aware of the failings of DYFS (they ignored the original order dated 1MAY2006 and never conducted any investigation making the originally “temporary transfer of custody permanent”), the failings of the family court system to intervene on the children’s behalf, the failings of the South Brunswick Township School System regarding the children’s constant excused absences and 5 years worth of failures, the failings of several mental health care professionals to intervene and make recommendations on the behalf the children to get them out of their abusive and neglectful home and the failings of the South Brunswick Township Police to get the children out of their abusive and neglectful home to a home with their fit, loving parent and her family. Meanwhile the mother faces jail if she does not continue to pay her children’s abuser ransom indefinitely. Judge Andrea Carter-Latimer ruling with no basis in law ignored a motion filed by the mother asking the court to enforce the couple’s divorce decree. While the children are constantly berated by their abuser and his family, told that their “dirty crazy whore of a mother abandoned them and refuses to support them.”

Article previously published on www.dad-blogs.com March 2010


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