I imagine a courtroom escalation with the surly mouthy mid teen middle child backchatting the judge, him calling for order, threatening with detention, contempt of court etc, neither willing to back down and therefore lose face in the middle of an argument.
They're lucky the death penalty wasn't an option.
At least in Pennsylvania, judges get paid for that.
mid teen middle child backchatting the judge, him calling for order, threatening with detention, contempt of court etc,
Except that the judge was a woman, sexist.
Hard to believe the kids havn't been pardoned by the governor and that impeachment proceedings haven't begun against this asshole judge.
(But then I also find it hard to believe that the women who took down the confederate flag in SC wasn't immediately pardoned by the governor following her arrest, so maybe I'm out of touch.)
But still: it's difficult for me to imagine any cicrcumstancss in which this judge isn't just a raging asshe on a power trip--not the sort of person you want in power.
The youngest is only 9?? Jesus.
Once my 9 yo sister got in a down and out screaming match with the family therapist. Bratty children aiming to push buttons can get under the skin even of trained professionals. Clearly the judge snapped, but I can see if these are three insufferable kids with an insufferable mother how something like this could happen.
I'm not sure if consider s family court judge a trained professional in the way a therapist is. I mean, ideally maybe, but just no.
My dad had family court on his docket. I don't think anybody trained him.
I'm pretty sure a 9-year old has no real control over whether s/he sees Dad. Even if the 9-year old "refuses," there's not much the kids can do if Mom says, " Look, there's a visitation order I have to obey," and drops the kid off. I can't imagine this judge accomplished anything other than making these kids hate their dad even more.
I think I see what you're saying. The judge should have told the kids she would have their mom shot or jailed if they didn't visit their dad.
Well people, assuming the dad's account is accurate for a moment, what do you all suggest as a recourse for the judge for that type of ongoing non compliance? At some point things are going to get done by force. Just sending the kids off with mom is exactly what is not supposed to happen. If you don't want the kids taken or the mom jailed, what else is there?
If Mom is truly guilty of alienation, and Dad is truly a loving father, wouldn't giving him custody instead of Mom seem to be better for the kids than throwing them in jail?
Couldn't you just jail the mom for concept or interference with custody or whatever.
10: I would think jailing the mom for contempt and turning the kids over to dad would be way higher on the list than locking up the kids in that situation.
The interview in the second link is kind of unsettling. Arranged by dad's PR firm? Not a word to suggest that maybe he's a little upset that his kids have been locked up for two weeks and counting? Let!s stay focused on the real issue here, which is that the public has unfairly supported the mother.
11-13: Sure, assuming the kids haven't tried to run away before or something. And if the kids are totally non compliant they're old enough for this to be a real possibility.
I dunno, if they had tried to run away before it seems like the judge might have mentioned it. Surely jailing the mother for contempt is the more traditional response to these situations.
Well the judge was clearly insane and the dad might be a total jerk, but it doesn't mean the mom and kids aren't also jerks. Also, yes, kids don't know any better, but bratty 9-15 year olds can be really really bratty in ways that really get under one's skin, especially they've been parented by jerks.
Also, since when do you have to go to Israel if you want a bar mitzvah?
Regardless of which parent is more in the right in this case, it seems very likely that they're both jerks. I'm also not at all surprised to learn that they're both Israeli.
It's interesting to me that in Dad's p.r. piece, he mentions having supervised visitation. Maybe Michigan is weird, but my impression is that supervised visitation generally means something is off.
Um, and "bratty kids" getting under your skin hardly seems to justify imprisonment. A judge who can't deal with bratty kids pushing her buttons probably isn't suited to being a family court judge.
(But then I also find it hard to believe that the women who took down the confederate flag in SC wasn't immediately pardoned by the governor following her arrest, so maybe I'm out of touch.)
The assholishness of judges can be impressive:
After Mr. Anderson pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree, the judge declined to grant him a special status intended for young offenders. The status, under the state's Holmes Youthful Trainee Act, would have spared him inclusion on the sex offender registry and erased the conviction from his record if he did not violate probation.
During a sentencing hearing in April, Judge Wiley criticized online dating in general and berated Mr. Anderson for using the Internet to meet women.
"You went online, to use a fisherman's expression, trolling for women, to meet and have sex with," he said. "That seems to be part of our culture now. Meet, hook up, have sex, sayonara. Totally inappropriate behavior. There is no excuse for this whatsoever."
supervised visitation generally means something is off
Or automatically kicked in because mom decided to chuck god knows what accusation out there. And who knows, maybe dad is totally at fault here but I'm wary of immediately assuming the judge is a nut because people do some depraved shit during custody battles.
Of all the ridiculous American practices that foreigners are justly appalled by, the ways we select judges must be among the most serious.
19
I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that dealing with really bratty kids defying court orders on a prolonged basis can explain why someone could snap.* It seems like the legal equivalent of that flight attendant who told off a passenger and took the inflatable air slide on the way out.
*People are writing about kids like they are merely blameless pawns (which they are), but that doesn't mean they couldn't drive the judge up the wall during hearings.
I'm also not at all surprised to learn that they're both Israeli.
I don't even need to say it, do I?
24: No, it's easily inferred. And I'm not saying all Israelis are jerks, but there's definitely a particular type of self-righteous obnoxiousness that seems to be disproportionately common in the Israeli population.
Maybe the judge was trying to put a modern update on the wisdom of Solomon and the parents were both way more spiteful than Iron Age single mothers in Israel?
23: That guy also took two beers, which automatically makes it more sensible.
25: Yeah, it definitely moves the needle from "holy shit the judge" to "hey look, some unmovable assholes met an unstoppable jerk."
Maybe judges should drink before family court hearings.
Hmm, this (also from dad's PR folks) suggests that the kids are basically in therapy camp (not locked up with the bad kids), and the reason the judge can't just turn the kids over to dad is that dad is currently in Israel.
I'm withholding judgment until we hear from mom's PR firm as well.
They are deprived of their freedom for refusing to visit dad, whom they can't visit because he's out of the country. Sounds fair.
29: I was thinking flight attendants before taking off also.
3: Fair, though in my defense I was under the impression the judge was the teacher from The Breakfast Club.
I'm very willing to believe this is an "everyone is insane in a custody fight" type case, but wow is that guy's story sketchy. I mean:We were in a park and Maya was circling around the park the whole time, trying to sabotage the visit. Two hours into the visit, the children ended up in her car and she was trying to leave.
The "ended up in her car" is amazing. How did it happen? Who can say with the kids these days. It was probably heavy metal music or something.
I'm sure ogged is so wily that he could resolve the whole dispute.
A Detroit foster parent friend says the kids are in a group home for siblings that's contiguous to a detention center but not actually part of the detention center, for what little that's worth.
"Shelter care" is where (in some jurisdictions) kids stay while the courts decide who will take them home or what an appropriate foster home would be.
If the kids are being held while the judge decides if they need to go into foster care because the parents are obviously both crazy, then ok. If that is the case then some of the reporting/commentary I saw on social media about this case was inaccurate.
If that is the case then some of the reporting/commentary I saw on social media about this case was inaccurate.
That would be a surprise...
Social media was way off based on how rare it is for a month to have five Fridays, five Saturdays, and five Sundays.
I also think it may be putting too much weight on the concept of "love".
Also, I don't understand how either cats or dogs can support such emotional weight.
What I'm saying is I don't see why it should be illegal for me to eat a cat or a dog.
Or for a restaurant to serve it, even if they label it "pork".
I didn't realize it was illegal. It's not illegal everywhere, obviously.
In most places in the U.S., it's only illegal to sell or buy the meat. That's really inconvenient.
You are, however, allowed to buy and sell both the live animals and sharp knives.
If I went to a restaurant and ordered some pug, I'd probably be fine. If I butchered one in the basement, my wife would probably leave me.
Which brings us back to the topic of child custody. Hooray.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read a custody agreement.
And that would be an awkward set of facts for family court lawyer to argue.
I suppose it's something they cover in law school.
Wouldn't a yard or garage be a better artisanal micro-abattoir?
I don't really have much of a yard and I'm not going to go through all the trouble of moving the car when I've got the basement right there.
There's a transcript but I don't really have time to read it right now.
The judge says, "I ordered you to have a healthy relationship with your father." Which seems like a strange thing to say. If that worked, counseling would be due for a revolution.
The judge told the mom to "do a research program on Charlie Manson and the cult that he has."
Apparently both parents objected to this.
So, the judge seemed kind of reasonable when dealing with the older kid, but by the end it seems like she wants to confine the younger kids. The youngest two get absolutely nothing from the judge but threats. They and their lawyers (who just met them) barely get a word in.
That whole thing is fucking nuts. "You, young man, are the worst one" of the 46,000 horrible kids I've had to deal with. "Dad, if you ever think that he has changed and therapy has helped him and he's no longer like Charlie Manson's cult, then you let us know and we can" reconsider this plan to lock a 15-year-old up until he turns 18. And her taunting of the younger two kids is stomach-churning. "You want to have your birthdays in Children's Village? Do you like going to the bathroom in front of people?" "You are living in Children's Village til you graduate from high school" unless your dad thinks you're ready "to be normal human beings." And you won't see each other, or your mom, or anyone from her "side".
This sounds like a very seriously fucked up family, and I'm sure the kids need real help, but christ is this judge a sadistic asshole. Nice that she appointed a lawyer for the 9-y-o like 2 minutes before locking her up, though.
Reading the transcript definitely makes it seem like the judge is just off her rocker.
Judges are really unaccustomed to losing confrontations in the courtroom, which means that if they come up against someone who's willing to escalate indefinitely, things get very insane. The judge is certainly screwing up, but not in a way that I find particularly surprising as judges go.
Maybe, but I still can't believe confining a nine-year-old that quickly is very common.
69: So, is the portrayal of judges in The Good Wife realistic? I've often wondered.
71 -- They're all closer to the tails than the middle of the distribution, but not shockingly so.
I don't find this judge that shocking, given that there's a history and this isn't the first run. Maybe it gets overturned on appeal, maybe not. The specific demand that the judge made, with regard to the younger children, is that they have lunch with their dad, to demonstrate that the apologies they'd made, and show the validity of their assurances of future compliance with court orders given. They immediately said no, and that they'd rather go to jail than have lunch, under supervision, with their dad.
I don't see the fact that their counsel was newly appointed as giving them much of a hook the get a reversal. The lawyers seem to have advised the kids about how to behave, and what to do to avoid contempt (and this isn't out of the blue, it's a show cause why they shouldn't be held in contempt). And despite that, the kids were openly and, with full knowledge of the consequences, contemptuous.
I don't know what you would have the judge do. She can't fine the kids.
Yeah, I guess I'm having trouble truly properly imaginatively recreating the run-up that puts the events in the transcript into context.
I don't know what happened before this hearing, but with the girl, she starts out saying she's willing to work with her father, then the judge gives her a whole two pages of threats, and then she says she won't go to lunch. It reads like the judge was goading her so she could confine her.
I think you have to assume that the judge believes, for good reasons or bad, on the basis of the prior history of the case, that the children have been coached by the mother to resist interacting with the father in the absence of any legitimate reason for that resistance -- the father isn't actually abusive, but the kids have been trained to hate him. And that the kids have been worked on behind the scenes so that they'll resist interacting with the father even if the mother is consenting to it in front of the judge. And so the judge is trying to force the kids to interact, believing that it's the only way to repair that relationship.
Sending the kids to Children's Village is a game of chicken that went bad -- the judge's final bid, to just have lunch with the father under totally safe, supervised circumstances, is really quite reasonable, and the judge probably wasn't expecting the kids to hold out.
From here, there's no way to tell how close the judge is to being right about what is going on, but I think that's got to be some version of what she was thinking.
The judge may be trying to communicate that the circumstances are safe and supervised, but what the judge says is "everything is recorded and I'm going to watch." It comes across like a threat in that context. The part with the younger children still reads to me like the judge was basically goading them into telling to say no so she could confine them.
If you actually want kids to do something, telling them that you'll watch everything they do and punish them if they show any sign of failure (e.g. "If you have any hesitation at all..."), is not a very good way of going about it.
Mmmaybe. It really is hard to tell that sort of thing from a transcript, which doesn't get tone of voice, non-verbal gesture, and so on, and which usually doesn't start with the beginning of the interaction.
I still think the judge screwed up -- she shouldn't have been playing chicken unless she was really confident the kids were going to fold. And if she was going to put that kind of pressure on them, she had better have been really confident that their reasons for wanting to avoid their father were bad ones. But I could see getting to what she did as not terribly implausible.
Anyway, the whole thing reminded me of the scene in "The Breakfast Club" where the principal just goading Bender so he can give him for detentions.
80 to 78. To 79, you don't know how much cajoling had been happening beforehand. Not enough, sounds like, but this process had been going on for a while.
The "Do you like going to the bathroom in front of people" is what really got me. That's just a little too close to "Don't bend over in the shower" for someone to say to a 12 year old.
I have no idea whether to be even mildly inclined to excuse the judge, because its so hard to tell what's going on. At a minimum, it's a good example of why judges should at least make an attempt to make clear the facts and law on which they're relying before depriving someone of liberty.
If one of those kids does grow up and break into Roman Polanski's house, boy will I have egg on my face.
86: No, it will be because the judge gave them the idea.
86: It wasn't the break-in, it was the cover-up.
Reading a little into the transcript, yes, the sentence is to Mandy's Place, the shelter care arm of the organization, and I assume the older children at least would count as status offenders and maybe there's no lower limit to the age range for that.
The judge appointed lawyers who said they'd counseled the kids, and got the kids to make their apologies and promise to comply in the future. She's not playing chicken when she's first talking about them having lunch, she's trying to use the momentum of the apologies/promises. Which the kids immediately walk away from. Against their lawyers' advice.
What do you think the judge should have done? Shrugged, and said, 'oh well, I guess a joint custody order can be vetoed by a coached 9 year old'?
Weirdly, now that I think about it, the Tate murders were a cover-up of sorts. (I've been listening to the You Must Remember This series on the Manson Family and it's all even stranger than you expect.)
85 It's their lawyers' job to make a record for reversal.
I could see confining the kids to enforce an order. I can't see questioning them like that except as an effort to get then confined instead of complying with the order.
I think if the two options are (a) punish the mother or (b) punish the kids, then, considering the father is not currently in the country, no matter what you do the kids end up in some kind of institutional care. What's weird is that the judge decided to go with (b) and explicitly punish the kids instead of punishing the mother and incidentally putting the kids in a foster home. It's also weird that, after several weeks, the father hasn't shown up and asked to have the kids released into his custody.
I think the answer on the first thing is that the mother is explicitly cooperating in front of the judge, so can't be held in contempt.
On the second, yeah, the whole situation is weird. I'm sounding like I'm defending the judge, but I think there's a very good chance the judge is way offbase, and the father's interactions with the kids are problematic.
Yeah, typically someone who is held in civil contempt should hold the keys to his or her release. But in this case it's entirely up to the dad to decide when he wants to go back and say the kids should be let out. That's nuts. And the middle child was so sweet and cooperative until the judge made clear how much she has wanted all along to send them all away to "jail."
97: Couldn't the kids secure their own release by agreeing to go to lunch?
I just have a general policy that any family court judge who's willing to order a 15-year-old to be held until age 18 for any status offense (typically truancy or running away from home, but here not obeying custody statutes) is doing it wrong.
98: If they had done so in the courtroom, probably, but after the fact, no. It looks to me as though DK is right, that the father holds the keys: the judge seems to be saying that she'll consider releasing the children when the father says he's satisfied with their compliance with her order to pursue a relationship with him. Which is obviously totally dependent on his good faith and participation, and it's hard to see how that works if he's out of the country.
94 I really don't see it that way at all. The kids make the apologies as dictated by their lawyers, then immediately show that they didn't mean it at all, and won't comply with orders, in even the smallest way, even if the consequences of failing to comply are spelled out in somewhat graphic detail. That is contempt.
I think 98 is correct. They can purge the contempt even now by convincing the judge they'll meet with the dad when he's back in the country. (Or, at the least, make a good enough record to get immediate appellate relief.) But then they'd have to meet with the dad . . .
101.1: For the younger kids, especially the girl, it's not true they immediately go back on their apology. The girl gets a full tirade immediately after her apology svc before she can say anything else.
It really is hard to tell from the transcript what, procedurally, the kids have to do to get released. Charley could be right that it's not contingent on the father's availability and participation, but the judge seems to be assuming that he'll be involved in determining whether they're still in contempt.
They can purge the contempt even now by convincing the judge they'll meet with the dad when he's back in the country.
That's not what the judge said.
105 Yeah, but you could get them out.
I haven't read any of the links, but other comments I'd seen on this indicated that the kids didn't want to have lunch with their father because their father had been physically abusive to their mother. Which frankly changes the whole nature of their supposed "resistance" and "defiance". Since I haven't seen anyone mention that point anywhere in this thread, I guess that fact must have been a fabrication or misreading by someone somewhere? Because if it's true, then surely it's important.
I think for purposes of this conversation we're assuming the judge is right about the dad not being evil.
Because otherwise the judge is fucknuts in a way that isn't arguable.
Okay well now that I've bothered clicking, that is what the first link says:
One of the siblings told the judge earlier in the conversation that he did not want to apologize to his father because he alleged he became violent with his mother. "I do not apologize for -- for not talking to him because I have a reason for that and that's because he's violent and he -- I saw him hit my mom and I'm not going to talk to him"
The kids claim the father has been abusive, but no evidence of that has been put before the court. E.g., the mother has never asked to have custody restricted on those grounds and has never requested a restraining order. One (or the judge, at least, one presumes) has to proceed on the assumption that it's bullshit.
And why the hell is the judge saying things like: "You're not even going to be with your brother," she said to the 15 year old. "You won't be in the same cell. I'll put in there, 'stay away from your brother.'"
I'm sticking with my original reaction. Impeach.
The judge says some things that are pretty inconsistent with that, and the mom's lawyer doesn't interject. Just prior to the hearing, the mom had urged the kids to meet with the dad -- the judge witnessed this, and called in "impassioned" when they were on the record. (This is why the mom can't be held in contempt.)
As you know, in an adversary system, if you have a point to make, you have to make it. If you think an order is vague, you have to say so. If you think an order is unjust, you have to make a coherent objection.
I can't get past the kneejerk reaction of "when one side has a PR firm, assume everyone is an unreliable narrator." But it's gone viral! There must be outrage!
Because otherwise the judge is fucknuts in a way that isn't arguable.
But holding a nine-year-old in contempt of court is fucknuts in a way that isn't arguable regardless of circumstances, so we already know the judge is in a way that isn't arguable.
114: "Jailing" a 9yo for contempt of court isn't outrageous, regardless of the underlying facts?
The judge's mistake was getting into a legal showdown with children instead of focusing on the responsible adult. The remedy would be to change the game so that the mother can't get away with pretending to comply but being prevented by the children's objections.
120: What is the problem I'm trying to solve? The kids don't want to have lunch with their father? I guess my remedy would be to tell the father to get the fuck over it. It sure as hell wouldn't be a judicial order that the kids must have lunch with the father. And if I did order that because for some reason I thought it was a good idea, if the kids were resistant enough to the idea to defy my order, that would be the end of it. Holding them in contempt is absurd.
More seriously, if there is good evidence that the mother is really brainwashing the kids in some damaging way, then the hearings should be about that, and about whether she should have her custody rights removed. If there's not good evidence of that, then I don't understand why this is even in front of the court. (Again I haven't actually read much of the background docs, so this is all fairly uninformed.)
I honestly have no idea how one would have enough information from this transcript to exonerate the judge. There's certainly enough information based on tone alone to reasonably condemn. While Charley is right that it's ultimately the lawyers job to set the record, at a minimum before actually issuing a confinement order for contempt a judge should have a duty to set out the basic facts and law supporting the confinement order. Here there is nothing in the linked transcript, really. There may be other facts in other transcripts that would make the decision more reasonable, but they're not in there. Also, generally speaking the parents are parties to the divorce and the custody agreement, not the children, and it is the parents, not the children, who have obligations to comply with the custody orders. I'm not entirely certain of the authority under which this judge is holding the children (not saying she doesn't have any, just that what the authority is is not abundantly clear). If the problem is that the Mom is crazy, the kids should be awarded to Dad (or there should be some other kind of dependency proceeding to protect the kids). If the kids won't see Dad and are being surreptitiously led to Mom, then Mom should be sanctioned. If Mom's doing everything right and the kids aren't visiting Dad, then that's a parenting issue but I'm not clear on why the Court is getting involved at all, much less detaining the kids.
The remedy would be to change the game so that the mother can't get away with pretending to comply but being prevented by the children's objections.
Yeah, but what were you thinking of?
I actually don't quite understand why the remedy isn't "You're leaving the courthouse with your father. He'll bring you to your mother's house on Wednesday." Or something along those lines.
Yeah, but what were you thinking of?
"The children will appear at place X at time Y or [the mother] will be held in contempt and lose custody. 'They didn't feel like it,' will not be an acceptable excuse." The children would go to some temporary custody arrangement, not crypto-jail.
There are different degrees of fucknets.
But El Tigre is right that this transcript certainly can't clear the judge of being kind of out of control -- to get to a defense of the judge, you have to presume a lot about the prior proceedings.
You need to use a safety fucknet until you really get the hang of the fucksaw. Safety first, people.
119: Order them all to family counseling. Not "go eat lunch now with cameras watching every move and I'm sending you away if you show any hesitation." "The children and dad will attend family counseling Thursday at 3 with a trained professional who can handle this kind of situation."
The children would go to some temporary custody arrangement, not crypto-jail.
The crypto-jail is a temporary custody arrangement as far as I can tell from what Thorn's linked; it's, e.g., where a kid would go awaiting a foster care placement.
The judge made a point of calling it "jail" repeatedly in threatening the kids.
I would not want my 9-year-old there, certainly! I was just using the clarification to point out that the mother's had her own PR spin on the way things were initial news releases and that, I dunno, shit is complicated.
Oh, sure, the judge is definitely using it as a threat. I just meant that it seems to be in theory a place used for non-punitive care for kids who aren't with their parents or in foster care: not a setting intended as in itself a form of punishment.
"The place you go because your Mom lost custody" is more congenial than "the place you go because you're a bad person who pissed off a judge." Even if they're the same place.
It's a show cause. There's obviously a lot of record, and it really is the lawyer's job to be offering alternative remedies. I suppose one could presume that the lawyers know the judge is nuts, and will jail them too if they're objecting. But if they think the judge is nuts, they have ways to make an appellate worthy record, and they are really not doing it.
Charley: Could you explain what a "show cause" is for us dummies?
How are the childrens' lawyers supposed to be offering alternative remedies when they just started? The one attorney's only complete sentences are trying to figure out how long she's supposed to represent the kid for.
137 -- the court ordered the kids to show up and "show cause" why they shouldn't be sanctioned.
I agree that the lawyers are not doing a wonderful job of pointing out the court's errors, but on the other hand the lawyers for the kids are freshly appointed attorneys appointed by the court, not retained by the parties, and it's not totally clear where the lawyers are in the picture (because nothing is clear on this record).
And in any event bad lawyering can't excuse ridiculous judging, and I'm still having a hard time figuring out why the kids, and not the parents, get to be charged with contempt of court and confined for a violation of the parent's custody order. If the issue is that custody needs to be taken from Mom and they need to go into some kind of juvenile dependency for their own best interests, that's something very different, but it's also something that should probably require something very different than this record.
I'm completely making up stories here, and I have no basis for this. But for the children being in contempt to make sense, I think there has to be a situation where there's some kind of custody/visitation schedule where the children are not seeing their father, and the mother's story is that "I'm doing everything I can be expected to in order to comply with the schedule, but I can't successfully make the children go along with it."
At which point the visible obstacle to compliance with the court's orders is the children, rather than the mother.
It's clear that everyone in the courtroom already knew that the items on the menu were purge contempt or get sent to this facility. How'd they know -- it would have been in the order setting the hearing, which would have been entered on response to a motion from the dad to enforce visitation. Although the were just appointed, the lawyers know the age of the kids, something about the record, and what the remedies are. They know, generally, what's been tried and failed. I'm not saying one should always assume that every lawyer does the best job possible all the time, but here we have three lawyers independently behaving as you would expect if the lesser remedied had been tried and not at all as you'd expect if this was more or less out of the blue.
At which point the visible obstacle to compliance with the court's orders is the children, rather than the mother... if you're swallowing her bullshit.
I could buy 140.2 for the oldest kid, even with all the Charles Manson stuff, if I didn't see how it went for the younger two.
140. The judge witnessed the mom pleading with the kids to meet with the dad assuring them that he would not hurt them or him. The exact point of the exercise was to purge her contempt.
Its my guess that the judge considers this a punishment of the mom --and it is-- and that the situation would resolve quickly. Too bad, judge, the dad is a jet too.
I assume that something like 140 is right, but I still am not sure what basis that gives for a court to issue direct and mandatory orders to the kids and to hold the kids, as opposed to one of the parents, in contempt. Say Mom is doing everything right and the kids are sneaking out of Dad's house at night on nights when they're supposed to be with Dad to re-join Mom, thus frustrating the custody schedule. So what? Why does that give the Court the right to affirmatively punish the kids (as opposed to, say, modifying the visitation schedule, or doing something else).
My custody schedule says that I have certain holidays with my kid. If, hypothetically, my kid (with no influence from my ex) snuck out of my house on Thanksgiving to spend it with her Mom, I certainly wouldn't expect the court to punish my kid, nor would I think it had a right to ask for that relief or that this kind of relief would be remotely appropriate. If my ex was encouraging the kids to leave the house, then the ex would be at fault and she could be sanctioned, but that's a different issue. If my kid was abandoned or a runaway or otherwise needed the care of the state, that's also a different issue. But just frustrating the parents' custody arrangement shouldn't be enough to impose punitive sanctions on a kid, I wouldn't think.
But for the children being in contempt to make sense, I think there has to be a situation where there's some kind of custody/visitation schedule where the children are not seeing their father, and the mother's story is that "I'm doing everything I can be expected to in order to comply with the schedule, but I can't successfully make the children go along with it."
Except no that does not make even a tiny amount of sense. This gets back to my 121. Admittedly I'm in total ignorance of family law here, but if this is the case, then at that point, assuming a court has any role to play in this at all (which isn't clear to me), shouldn't the court's role be to figure out why the children are so resistant to spending time with their father, instead of sanctioning the kids for not wanting to spend time with their father? What is their reason? Do they have some reason for hating him? Then tough shit for him. Is their mother brainwashing them? Ok, then now we have something to talk about--and we should be talking about sanctioning her, or potentially taking away her custody rights, not sanctioning the kids.
Too bad, judge, the dad is a jet too.
Even if "jet" was supposed to be "jerk", it raises a pointed I'd been wondering about. Why is the dad allowed to leave the country in the midst of this?
Urple, that would've been good material in the proceeding when the kids were ordered to spend time with the dad. Or, I suppose, worth arguing in the contempt preceeding if they weren't separately represented at that hearing. Contempt, though,you either show that you are in compliance or that the order is invalid. Or you apologize, and fight on the underlying issue another day.
151 -- I don't think anyone is quarreling with the general proposition that a judge can hold someone in contempt for a violation of an order. They're arguing that both the underlying order seems bizarre and that the decision to use this particular form of contempt sanction on children also seems bizarre.
150: you're right Charley, I guess the judge was powerless in this situation. It was a contempt proceeding after all; she really had no choice.
Right, and I'm saying that it's a 5+ year old case, and acting like this transcript shows that the judge is nuts is overreacting to it. The kids have lawyers, and they are acting as if this is rational -- they knew what the remedy was going to be before they came in, and advised the kids on it. They make no objections at all -- either all three are staggeringly incompetent, or all three know that there's a long record of non-compliance, and so lesser sanctions aren't even worth raising for the sake of the record. The transcript is pretty much exactly what you'd expect to see as the culmination of years of trying to get this done sensibly. It is not what you'd expect to see if a nut was going rogue.
Now maybe they preserved all sorts of objections in writing before hand, and so there's a handle for an appellate court to undo this. One would expect a little more pushback, though, in that case.
The one attorney's only complete sentences are trying to figure out how long she's supposed to represent the kid for.
Making a record is a very important part of the job.
153: but the issue is there is NO set of background circumstances in which this is a reasonable outcome.
How did the kids lawyers know what the remedy was before they came in? Reading what Ms. Cook says, she's just been appointed, clearly had contact no contact with the mother's lawyer. Excepting the judge (who appointed her, right?) she's talked to no one but her client, who is a pre-teen and who wouldn't cooperate with her. She says that she does not know the full narrative. Taking that all together, I think it's pretty clear that she can't know what the record of non-compliance is or isn't.
The transcript is pretty much exactly what you'd expect to see as the culmination of years of trying to get this done sensibly.
I guess if you've tried and failed with the sensible approach, then it's time for the nonsense.
I disagree with 156. I could see this as being a reasonable outcome for a certain set of circumstances with a 15 year old.
This 15-year-old is missing a whole world of opportunities to passive-aggressively fuck with his father while eating (or not eating) lunch.
157 Cook told the girl before the hearing what Childrens Village was like. Tr. at 13.
Carp, do you really think a family court proceeding involving child custody is just likr any regular old adversarial civil proceeding? Maybe it is, I don't know the first thing about family law, but I would have thought the judge had an independent duty not to fuck over kids even if the lawyers and parties fail to aggressively prevemt them from being fucked over. And to the conjecture that this was all queued up neatly beforehand, I think the fact that two of the kids had lawyers appointed for them during a break in these proceedings makes that pretty unlikely.
161: Right. The first sentence of 157 was wrong. But the lawyer still doesn't know what was tried before.
161 is no answer to 157. How is Cook supposed to know how reasonable all this is, what else to propose, etc., if she doesn't know anything about the case? She was appointed to convince the kid to cave, not to independently pursue her best interests.
164.last is what I'm trying to dance around not saying, because it's a much more serious charge against the judge than fucknuttery.
I disagree with 156. I could see this as being a reasonable outcome for a certain set of circumstances with a 15 year old.
But this did not just involve a 15 year old.
I'm trying to be a conciliator here.
I mean, I may be wrong about this, but to me the transcript reads like they took a break and literally went out in the hall to see if there were any lawyers around they could appoint for 15 minutes to give some cover to what the judge was contemplating, because she realized late in the game that locking up a kid without nominally independent representation might not be the most kosher thing.
157, 164, 165: I don't really get what's going on, or how briefed the lawyers are. But what Charley said about staggeringly incompetent still kind of holds -- the lawyer either has some basis for thinking that what's happening is reasonable, or they should be throwing a tantrum on the record making it clear that they do not have the knowledge to adequately represent their client, and nothing should be happening until they are properly briefed. ("Throwing a tantrum" s/b "making objections".)
Without that, you kind of have to presume that the lawyer has been familiarized somehow with what's been happening before in the case.
170 crossed with 168, but if that's exactly what happened, the 'lawyers out in the hall' should not have gone along with it.
I read Cook as signaling that as politely as she can. Presumably she's a repeat player in front of this judge so can't be an asshole about it, so makes sure the record reflects she doesn't know the first fucking thing about the case.
that locking up a kid without nominally independent representation might not be the most kosher thing.
So, she recited the blessing, before eating the ham sandwich.
162 -- No objections, no 'isn't there an alternative remedy here, your honor,' no requests for continuance, no 'let me take a break and talk to my client again.'
Yeah, it doesn't have to be very neatly set up for them to know that it's a show cause for contempt, the judge is very pissed, the non-compliance has not been trivial.
172: You can't tell from the transcript, though. Either she's committing malpractice because she's afraid of the judge, or she was appointed pretty recently but does know what's been going on in the case.
I disagree with 156. I could see this as being a reasonable outcome for a certain set of circumstances with a 15 year old.
But this did not just involve a 15 year old.
I disagree with 156. I could see this as being a reasonable outcome for a certain set of circumstances with a 15 year old.
But this did not just involve a 15 year old.
Unless the transcript is missing the little girl pointing a gun at her dad, I don't understand what happened in between page 17 and page 18.
176 And didn't make any kind of record for that, really.
the dad is a jet too
When you're a Jet,
You're a Jet all the way.
So you fight with your spouse
With your kids in the fray.
175: so since the lawyers failed to do that, whatever the judge does is fine, because this is just a regular old adversarial proceeding?
176: of course I can't tell, I'm guessing just like everyone else. But in my experience you don't often see lawyers saying they don't know anything about the case they were pulled into a few minutes ago, so I took that as threading the needle between malpractice and dealing with the career fallout of telling the judge to get stuffed.
I see that Cook has nearly 40 years of practice, and specializes in family law.
The procedural argument seems like a giant distraction. I would really like for the judge's defenders to explain a case history/set of prior circumstances that would make the judge's behavior even close to reasonable. I could almost imagine circumstances in which this would be a reasonable outcome (almost!), but in those circumstances the outcome would be combined with a very different set of statements from the judge. The outcome here, combined with the statements the judge actually make to the children? I really see no possible defense.
It could be what happened, lawyers do commit malpractice, but if the lawyers representing the kids didn't have any knowledge of the prior proceedings, it's not threading the needle, it's completely failing to represent their clients.
A family court judge in a proceeding exercising jurisdiction over children of this kind has a duty to do more than respond to lawyer's objections. That's the entire theory behind allowing courts to act independently in the best interests of the child. And lawyer actions can't possibly excuse either the tone and temperment exhibited in that transcript. And I don't think they likely can excuse issuing this kind of ruling at all, absent some set of truly bizarre circumstances. The fundamental ruling is that the kids are sent by force for a multi-year period to some kind of institutional facility as a sanction -- directed against the children -- for failing to have lunch with their Dad.
183: She keeps trying to get out, but they pull her back in.
185: she expressly says she doesn't know the "narrative", and carefully explains that she understands the scope of her representation to be explaining to the kid what the consequences of contempt are. I think that's a pretty good approach for her under the circumstances.
182.1 -- What I'm saying is that the lawyers have acted like they thought this was unexceptional because they understood enough of the context to see that it was an arguably reasonable reaction. There are very specific way to make a record that you haven't had adequate time to prepare, which you're going to need to do if you might want to ask for reconsideration based on something a prepared lawyer would have known, or go get emergency appellate relief.
a very different set of statements from the judge
If we assume (not a safe assumption, but just for the purposes of argument) that the judge is right about the underlying circumstances to the point that the outcome is as reasonable as possible, the judge's tone seems like probably poor judgment, but not all that bizarre. The judge is trying to bully the kids into compliance -- if compliance would have been a good outcome, a little verbal bullying isn't the worst thing in the world. It looks terrible mostly because it was unskillful bullying that failed.
And by "pretty good" in 188 I mean from her perspective of course. I think it's woefully inadequate but understandable.
The fundamental ruling is that the kids are sent by force for a multi-year period to some kind of institutional facility as a sanction -- directed against the children -- for failing to have lunch with their Dad.
This isn't right, it's not a sentence for a period of years, it's contempt that can be purged by coming into compliance.
I'm not saying that the judge's conduct is excused (in whole or part) by the lawyers' conduct, I'm saying it's explained (at least in part) by the lawyers' conduct.
By coming into compliance by meeting with a man who is on another continent.
194 That wasn't brought before the judge, and certainly could be in a motion to amend.
I should have said a period possibly extending to years, absent meeting the Dad, a point the judge goes to great lengths to explain to the children, while also making a bunch of other crazy-sounding extra-legal arguments. I'm not sure how lawyer behavior helps explain that.
That's really not clear, to what extent the father's unavailability bars the kids from clearing their contempt. If the kids returned to court saying that they were willing to comply with visitation but their father was unavailable, I would certainly call the court unreasonable for thinking that was insufficient.
Is there any record of them having tried? Because if not, I think it lends support to 164.
198: Again, this is the kind of question that we really can't even make sensible guesses about with the information we have. We don't know how actually unavailable the father is (that is, he could be back from Israel in a day), we don't know what the kids are willing to agree to.
Wow. I have a really hard time reacting to that transcript as a lawyer. At 20: From a 10-year-old, "I'll go with my brother," and in response, "You're even not going to be with your brother. . . . That's cool. You won't be in the same cell. I'll put in there 'Stay away from your brother.'"
This person should not have contempt power.
In answer to 197, but not 200, the judge explicitly says she won't review the order until the dad says the kids are ready.
198 The dad was in the courtroom, apparently. So was the mom's lawyer, who certainly could have told Cook about impending travel, if she'd known of it. The silence on the dad's part shows him to be a jerk.
Cook can go in now, but only if the kid actually wants to purge the contempt.
Maybe she's already filed an emergency appeal though, and so it's going in that direction.
I agree with Tigford and Potchk that a family law judge is supposed to be looking at best interests. She's also bound to the evidence, though.
I mean, at the end of the day no one has come up with even a plausible story about why this sanction would be reasonable. Maybe there is one, but it's certainly nowhere in the transcript. Nothing in the transcript comes close to indicating that the judge has done a reasonable and thoughtful job of issuing this (unreasonable on its face) sanction after carefully weighing alternatives. Saying that it was probably OK for reasons that we can't possibly understand based on facts we don't know just because recently-court-appointed-lawyers in front of a clearly intemperate judge who appointed them weren't voiciferously objecting ... well, it's not impossible, but it's not what I'd call likely or persuasive.
202 -- Yeah, but that doesn't mean she can avoid a motion to amend with new evidence.
Sure, but the transcript of one court appearance is inherently not going to be anything like a full record of all the relevant proceedings. What we're doing is guessing about what's in the rest of the record, but uncertain as the specifics are, it's pretty certain that there's a lot more to know about the case than what's in this transcript. Saying that a full explanation of what's going on is not in this transcript is true, but also really unsurprising.
So is 206 disagreeing with 156? If so, can you say what hypothetical circumstances might have been in the full record that would have made this reasonable?
"Judge to release 'jailed' kids, send them to summer camp"
Of course we can't know for absolute certainty but come on, this judge is batshit. What possible set of circumstances could make taunting a 9-y-o kid with the prospect of 9 years locked away from her siblings and mother and having to shit in front of other people a sensible course?
Don't shit where you eat are sent for non-punitive care.
207, 209: Sensible, I don't know that I can make the transcript sound sensible, the judge is pretty over the top. But if the prior proceedings have convinced the judge that it is importantly in the best interests of the children to repair their relationship with their father, but that they have been pressured to resist any movement in that direction, putting a lot of pressure on them to comply doesn't seem obviously insane to me. The specific wording of the judge's threats, I'm not going to defend, but the general principle doesn't seem wildly out of line if the judge's assessment of the underlying facts and the children's interests is reasonable.
Based on 208, the judge is kind of hot. I withdraw my objection.
(I do want to say that while I'm kind of defending the judge here, what she's doing only possibly makes any sense if the father is really being available and trying to repair the relationship, and his being out of the country is hard to reconcile with that. If that's not the case, then the judge really is being very weird.)
I'm inclined to say that even if you assume all the background in 211, and even if you leave aside the things this judge actually said (which continue to suggest to me unfitness for her role), there are some things you just can't coerce. If it isn't in the kids' best interests to be in the mother's custody because she's saying bad things about their father, that's one thing. But no matter whose custody they're in, contempt for not wanting to talk to their father does not seem like a reasonable way to go.
Yeah, the best I can say for the judge is that it looks to me like she was making threats and then had her bluff called by the kids, leaving her acting unreasonably. But (given all the assumptions I've been making, which I do explicitly recognize as unfounded), I could see how a well-intentioned judge could get there.
Just saw on AP that the judge is releasing the kids to a 2-week summer camp on request of the father.
I keep reading the part where she's talking to the two younger kids. It reads like they were doing what she asked, only not obsequious enough or something. The shift from page 17 to 18 does not make sense to be as having a bluff called. She just seems to really want to threaten them more than she wants them to follow her order.
Just saw on AP that the judge is releasing the kids to a 2-week summer camp on request of the fatherthe father's PR firm.
That sounds like the right result.
Looking at the docket, there are some 80 entries in 2015 -- a bunch are just scheduling stuff, but there are a number of motions and some orders. 4 or 5 different hearing transcripts from 2014. There's a lot of context here.
I haven't looked in any depth, but think where this ended up was what LB says in 215.
217 -- I understand your view on this, but really don't read it that way. The judge is looking at body language and we're not.
I still don't understand what kind of context or body language you can get from a nine and ten year old that would fill in the gap between what those two younger kids say and how the judge responds to it. Kids can certainly aggravate adults, but the whole point of having separate legal processes for them is because you can't hold what they did a year ago or more against them the way you can for an adult. And kids can't be expected to control their body language the way an adult can. It takes a great deal of practice to control that, way more than just saying "sorry".
I don't think anyone is quarreling with the general proposition that a judge can hold someone in contempt for a violation of an order.
Assuming there is an order compelling the kids to do something. Typically, kids are not parties to a divorce proceeding and custody orders bind the parents who are. Perhaps there is a court order directing the kids to do something. If so whether the kids violated the order and whether the judge had authority to enter it would be separate questions.
The fact that the judge openly tells the kids "I wanted to do this to you all many times" and that she was going to anyway if the lunch two of them agreed to wasn't "nice" is incredibly problematic to me and suggests a desire to punish rather than to coerce compliance with her order.
Or, exactly the point I made above. I am tired of this mansplaining!
The judge is looking at body language and we're not.
Exactly, and look at that "apology" from the oldest to the judge for ""whatever I did to you." Are you shitting me? That's the apology? The kids have a court appointed guardian who appears to be in full agreement with the judge and also thinks the kids going back to the mom wasn't a viable option.
Right, but holding a 9 year old and a 10 year old responsible for something their 15 year old brother did is fucknuts.
The fact that the judge openly tells the kids "I wanted to do this to you all many times" and that she was going to anyway if the lunch two of them agreed to wasn't "nice" is incredibly problematic to me
Or, it suggests they've been little shits for quite some time and her patience has gotten her nowhere and this is long overdue.
Ugh, can't they all be put into foster care?
Yes, I do mean including the parents and the judge.
226: But if the issue is the mom is coaching them and everyone is in agreement they can't go back to her and the dad is overseas at the moment then what else is she supposed to do? She put them temporarily in a facility that really doesn't sound too bad and now she's granted the request from their guardian that they be sent to camp.
The dad wasn't overseas at the hearing. I still don't see why she doesn't just order the visit with the dad and let them sit there in silence if they want.
224: I know! I was trying to express agreement! I swear, I would have even looked you in the eye and had a nice lunch if I could.
Looking above, I see my later reference to "The Breakfast Club" was pwned in 36. I just noticed. In my defense, I fell asleep in 34.
And FFS, this has been coming for a while. That facility she put the kids in? The judge had the mom and the kids tour it back in March and warned them it was going to be the result if they didn't start complying with the court.
230: Exactly. You can make people spend time together. You can't compel them to feel any particular way. And I hardly see her approach engender in warm, fuzzy feelings.
If dad is the amazing guy this judge says he is, why is that facility a better solution than giving him custody?
Because the judge is afraid he'll take the kids to Israel and none of her orders can do anything then?
From the article linked in 208, it sounds like what is really going on is that the Judge and a guardian ad litem agree that the Mom is crazy, and that the kids shouldn't be there, but that the Dad is in Israel and for some reason doesn't think that the kids are ready to go into his care because they've been brainwashed by the Mom to hate him and think he's violent. So the Court doesn't want the kids to stay with Mom and the Dad doesn't want them back and so they're getting ordered into some kind of intermediate care in no one's custody. Which in and of itself is maybe not that nuts. But the way this particular thing went down, with the separation from the Mom ordered as a contempt sanction directed at the kids, for violating the judge's dictate that the *kids* get along with the Dad, seems to me still extraordinarily nuts. If the issue is removing custody from Mom, have a hearing on that and put that into the record. If for some reason they can't just go to Dad even though custody's been taken from Mom, put that on the record (though, frankly, that seems like a pretty bad solution to me -- if that's the solution, just transfer custody and order counseling once the kids are in Dad's sole custody). In any event, the proceeding needs to be directed at the parents, not the kids. The way not to do it is to do what this judge did.
237 is better and calmer and I can put it. "What do you want the judge to do?" is not moving me here. Something other than asking a nine-year-old child whether she wants to "live in jail" (17:11) or whether her "bed [is] soft and comfortable at home" (18:25 - 19:1); something other than tormenting the same nine-year-old by asking: "You know what that would do to your mother, going home, riding down the elevator without you?" (18:7-8) Asking that question, also, about the same mother from whom the Judge in fact intends to remove the nine-year old child regardless based on the most charitable reading of her motives that anyone has been able to develop.
Per PubMed Central:
Showing results for locknuts. Your search for fucknuts retrieved no results.
I now have a goal.
This is still all speculation, but I'm reading the bullying from the judge as an attempt to get the kids into a relationship with their father without removing them from their mother -- that if the sanction for poisoning the situation is directed at the mother, the thing to do would be to strip her of custody, and that's more than the judge wants to do.
It very well may be the case that the judge is trying to coerce an impossible result -- that the relationship between the adults is so bad that there can't be joint custody. But (guessing) it looks to me as if that's the goal.
And they have 24 million citations. You'd think it would have occurred at least once for some reason. Maybe a Dutch last name or something.
I've moved on to trying to help science.
I would agree that the judge clearly wants the kids to have a relationship with their father. I am just at a loss as to where on God's green earth she got the idea that you can bully, threaten, and punish people into having a relationship. Especially a teenager and two preteens for whom perhaps even more so than adults the typical response to being threatened is going to be to dig in even harder.
Based on what the kids's GAL says, it sounds like the mother should have been found in contempt years earlier.
What a clusterfuck of a case.
The youngsters are all over seven. They have to learn to comply with authority. Looks like their parents did a lousy job teaching them not to mess with the powers that be. Hey, the kids may be right, but that isn't the issue for the state. They are lucky they aren't mouthing off to a cop on the street. They'd get taught real quick.
Dk, people still do a lot of things if they are bullied, threatened, or coerced. And if they are ordered to eat shit with a smile, well enough coercion can do it.
I think I was 15 before I ever ran from the cops.
Can't tell whether 247/48 is a joke or not.
From that link: "Lansat [the GAL] noted that the mother spoke Hebrew to the children when in the presence of anyone monitoring the parents' behavior. He said therapy efforts involving five different professionals over the past five years failed when the children refused to leave their mother's car or in some cases, leave a waiting room to attend the session. They refused to speak or look at him, or eat food he had touched.
The children often wordlessly huddled together, signaling each other by tapping their feet "like Morse code," said Lansat, who described it as "cult-like" behavior.
On one outing with their father, they climbed a tree and refused to come down. When they finally did, they called 911 and accused their father of threatening them. Lansat ticked off a list of various efforts made to reconcile father and children -- all suggestions proposed by their mother -- including having a dog or neighbor present, or meeting in a neutral location. When Tsimhoni showed up to pick them up at their school to attend one session, they became hysterical."
The stereotypes about Jewish mothers aren't going to sustain themselves you know.
251 -- right, as noted above, the judge and the guardian ad litem appear to have quite decent reasons for thinking that the Mom is crazy and that the kids shouldn't be with her. But there are ways to deal with the "one parent is crazy and the kids shouldn't be there" situation, which isn't all that uncommon for a family law judge (though the extent of the kids' emotions on the issue may be), and the way this particular judge went about it appears to have been one of the worst possible ways.
Oh yeah, I'm not making any claims about the judge, just expressing my surprise at the behavior.
People younger than me in the bar are limping. I blame Obamacare.
The guardians and the judge appear to have ample reason to believe the mother's craziness is manifesting itself in extraordinarily insular, self isolating behavior by the kids. So she coerces and bullies them, then has them detained. Outside world out to persecute them - lesson learned.
However long the judge has been frustrated by this case, however long the wind up to this hearing, cannot excuse the exchanges in that transcript. Haltigre is correct six ways from Sunday.
I ran 40 dollar tab with only one drink bought for somebody else. The judge makes perfect sense now.
That would be easy to do here, but I assume drinks are cheaper in Pittsburgh. Hope you make it home okay.
I walked more than a mile, because I care about the earth and the drunk driving laws I ignored until I was past thirty.
Don't you have, like, buses and taxis there, though?
$40 will buy you 8 bottles of md 20/20 banana red flavor.
Maybe a Dutch last name or something.
It's spelled Faaknoots
So you can give one away and still be drunk enough to murder a vagrant on the way home.
Whereas here, $40 will buy you maybe one bottle of high-end bourbon or four bottles of R&R.
(R&R, for those unfamiliar with the folkways of Alaska.)
(And yes, I realize that the thread linked in 269 contains a lot of references to another thread in which I don't come across very well. I'm okay with that.)
Now that the thread appears to have moved on let me just wade in here and kill it by pointing out that the discussion of this case in this thread is miles and more above the one at another blog I've been reading (ahem, LGM, I'm looking at you). Thanks all.
You still read LGM? Why? I gave up years ago.
And I never even read the comments over there, just the posts.
I've been reading and commenting there since the year the blog started. It can be a good community but lately I don't know what's happened. Maybe the commenter registration plus the trolls. Anyway, much more substantive discussion here and with much deeper knowledge base and diversity of opinion. And comity!
I've never really been part of a commenter community anywhere but here, so I'm not sure how it compares. I have heard bad things about LGM, but I think they're mostly pretty recent. I suspect blogs that are mostly political in self-conception tend to develop unproductive comment sections, as opposed to blogs that only touch on politics incidentally, but I admit I don't have any evidence for this.
There are many worse comment sections than LGM, which is mainly just repetitious. Trolls will troll, even here.
It was an LGM commenter who penned the correct response to the King v. Burwell decision ("Moors, bitches").
LGM ran that Moops joke into the ground like some kids I went to middle school with quoting Monty Python.
So much so that I thought it was part of a broader cultural joke and used it as such in conversation, and then had to haltingly explain myself.
When my crazy uncle got divorced, his ex got custody of the kids; all of his brothers, sisters and his mother totally approved of that arrangement. Because their mother worked for USAID and she was all over the world. They only saw him in the summer for a few weeks or a month.
They were totally terrified of him, so much so, that even after the oldest turned 18 and didn't have to go, he did to protect his younger sisters.
In his old age, he mellowed some, and then got even extra crazy toward the every end. They tried to take care of him, unfortunately to little avail.
So do we think the crazy mom has intentionally made the kids frightened of everyone except her, or did she only intend to make them frightened of the dad?