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P R E A M B L E } “The conference identified mental health professionals, lawyers and judges as those having the greatest power to influence the conduct of high-conflict custody cases and concluded that they should bear the primary responsibility for preventing or reducing conflict in high-conflict cases. High-conflict custody cases need a specialized approach. Judges, lawyers and mental health professionals should have special training in handling high-conflict cases. They must develop ways to work together under new collaborative models to more effectively identify and resolve high-conflict custody cases … These new models should hold all the participants in custody cases accountable for their contribution to increasing or decreasing levels of conflict, be sensitive to the rights and privacy of individuals and be prepared to intervene to the extent necessary to protect children.”
[ SOURCE: ‘High-Conflict Custody Cases: Reforming the System for Children,’ a report of the American Bar Association 2000 Wingspread Conference on Child Custody Proceedings Reform, http://www.abanet.org/child/custody-proceeding-reform.pdf ]
The United States Supreme Court last month was requested to intervene by a Petition for Writ of Certiorari in the matter of Ariana-Leilani, a little girl separated from a protective parent and forced to live with an abusive one, in an appeal from the Supreme Court of Virginia.*
Since June 2008, pro-se litigant Dr. Ariel King’s parental rights, including her right of contact with her now six-year-old daughter, were effectively terminated by a “final” “custody order” by the Juvenile and Domestic Relations (JDR) Court in Arlington, Virginia -- a court “not of record.” The JDR Court entered a series of orders making an appellate review, including a statutorily provided de novo review by the Circuit Court, inaccessible.**
[ SOURCE: ‘Writ of Certiorari,’ a petition in the United States Supreme Court in the case of Ariel King v. Michael Pfeiffer, http://www.box.net/shared/d0oxfvlk6v ]
Questions presented to the U.S. Supreme Court justices are these:
1) Is it a denial of pro-se litigant parent’s due process and equal protection rights to be denied substantive review, including her challenge to the state’s subject matter jurisdiction, where that state’s not of record court effectively terminated that parent’s parental rights and made de novo appeal of right effectively unavailable to her?
2) Is it a denial of a six-year-old German-American child’s rights, including the right to due process, equal protection and free speech, for a state to terminate all contact with her mother, without any evidentiary record or substantive de novo appellate review of right?
3) Is it a denial of the child’s basic human rights, as set forth under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, where the child is a German citizen, and the child is barred from any contact with her mother, without record or substantive de novo appellate review of right?
More on King v. Pfeiffer by going to, http://misconductinvirginiafamilycourts.blogspot.com/2009/11/dr-ariel-king-and-ariana-leilanis.html,
Or by sending mail to the little girl's mother,
DrArielKing@yahoo.com.
-Posted by VW on behalf of Ms. Ariel King
UPDATE 1.15.10
The Reply Brief and an Amicus Curiae have been filed. Click http://www.box.net/shared/og16jemoyc for brief, http://www.box.net/shared/cs68e6ihiq for amicus curiae ("friend of the court") in support of brief.
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*From Mr. Lundy Bancroft, in a Special Message for Protective Mothers:
There is no love deeper, more complete, and more vulnerable than the love that caring parents feel for their children. There is a bond so strong that it can be hard to tell exactly where the parent ends and the child begins, and the line is even harder to draw when our children are very young. Mothers have an additional bond from having carried their children inside of their bodies and having given birth to them, and more than half of mothers have experienced a deepened attachment through breast-feeding their babies. And mothers are, in the great majority of cases, their children’s primary caretakers, especially during their early years. All connections between caring, non-abusive parents and their children are so important as to be almost sacred, but there is usually a particular quality to the mother-child bond. That life-giving and sustaining connection deserves the full support and admiration of communities and nations.
And just as there is a special beauty and importance to relationships between mothers and their children, there is a special and extraordinary cruelty in the abusive man who attempts to break or weaken the mother-child bond, whether by turning children against their mother, by harming the children physically, sexually or psychologically, or by attempting to take custody of the children away from her.
Children need protection from their abusive parents. In the realm of custody litigation which involves abuse, the abusive parent tends to be the father while the protective parent is usually the mother, because most perpetrators of domestic violence and of child sexual abuse are male. We don’t know that much about what happens to protective fathers, since their cases are much less common, but we know that protective mothers frequently encounter a system that is insensitive, ignorant about the dynamics of abuse, and biased against women. In this context, mothers sometimes find themselves being forbidden by the court from protecting their children from a violent, cruel, or sexually abusive father. And this outcome is a tragic one, for children and for their mothers.
On behalf of the hundreds of people across the continent who are currently working for family court justice, I want to communicate to you our caring and solidarity with the challenging road you have ahead of you, as you fight to keep your children safe in body and soul. I want to let you know how critically important we believe that project to be, and how much your children need you to stand up for their rights and their well-being. You deserve admiration, not criticism, for the courageous risks you are taking on their behalf, and for your determination that all of you should have the opportunity to live in freedom and kindness…
[ SOURCE: ‘Child Custody Justice,’ a 10-part essay by L. Bancroft, http://www.lundybancroft.com/child.html ]
**Judges on the Virginia Courts in District & Circuit 17: Judge Esther Wiggins Lyles (!her term expires in 2011) and Judge George D. Varoutsos (!his term expires in 2010) for the Arlington Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court; Judge Dorothy H. Clarke, Judge Karen A. Henenberg, Judge Thomas J. Kelley and Judge Richard J. McCue for the Arlington General District Court; Judge William T. Newman, Judge James F. Almand, Judge Joanne F. Alper and Judge Benjamin N. A. Kendrick for the Arlington Circuit Court.
[This post was first published on 8 December 2009]
