Feds Target Third PA Judge Michael Toole in Corruption Probe

More on the Pennsylvannia Judicial Corruption Probe.

Previous posts:

Pennsylvania Judges Met With Felons

Psychologist & In-Law of Corrupt Pennsylvania Judge Conahan Paid 1.2 Million

Pennsylvania Judges Caught Taking Kickbacks

 

Feds Turn Their Sights on Third Pa. Judge as Part of Corruption Probe

Hank Grezlak And Leo Strupczewski
The Legal Intelligencer
March 13, 2009 

Federal authorities are looking at Luzerne County Common Pleas Judge Michael Toole as part of their investigation into alleged corruption at the Luzerne County Courthouse, sources have confirmed to The Legal Intelligencer.

The focus of the investigation appears to stem from an allegation that Toole may have received a payment from attorney Robert Powell.

Federal authorities have previously charged that former President Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and former Senior Judge Michael T. Conahan accepted more than $2.6 million in kickbacks from Powell and another source while Powell was one of the owners of PA Child Care, a private juvenile detention facility. Both Ciavarella and Conahan pleaded guilty in February to both counts — honest services wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States — in the criminal information filed against them.

The amount allegedly paid to Toole is believed to be substantially less than what Conahan and Ciavarella received, sources said. Those sources either would not, or could not, identify the reason for the alleged payment or the amount.

When asked if Toole had taken a payoff from Powell, one of Powell’s attorneys, Mark B. Sheppard, formerly of Sprague & Sprague and now a partner at Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads, said he could not comment.

“It would be inappropriate for our client or I to comment at this time, except to say that Mr. Powell continues to cooperate fully with any investigation,” Sheppard said.

Sheppard, along with other attorneys from Sprague & Sprague, had previously authored a letter released to the media in February disputing the notion that the money Powell paid to Conahan and Ciavarella amounted to kickbacks, and instead said that Powell was the victim of a judicial shakedown.

“First, it is grossly inaccurate to suggest that our client ever sought or had any influence in the sentencing of any juvenile offender. In fact, Bob Powell never offered to pay a single penny to these former judges. Instead, Bob Powell was a victim of their demands for payment,” the letter said.

The letter goes on to say that, although Powell recognizes he made a mistake by not going to authorities, he remained silent about Conahan and Ciavarella’s demands because they exerted pressure on Powell and his clients.

“The record will show that despite this, Powell not only refused the judges’ continued demands for additional payments, but ultimately reported the conduct to authorities,” the letter said.

The letter, also signed by Richard A. Sprague and Geoffrey R. Johnson, said Powell is continuing to cooperate with authorities and is integral to the U.S. attorney’s prosecution of Ciavarella and Conahan.

Toole did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday. A call to an attorney rumored to be representing Toole was not returned. A call to Martin C. Carlson, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, was not returned.

Luzerne County Common Pleas Court President Judge Chester B. Muroski said he was not aware of any investigation involving Toole.

“I have not been notified by any law enforcement authorities that any such investigation is ongoing,” Muroski said.

Muroski, who said last week that he was interviewed by federal investigators concerning court administration issues, would not say if Toole’s name had surfaced during questioning.

“I’m not going to discuss any portion of any discussions I’ve had with law enforcement authorities,” he said.

Asked if he ever heard rumors that Toole allegedly accepted payoffs, Muroski responded immediately.

“Never,” he said.

The only reported connection between Toole and Powell is a case from 2004 in which the newly elected judge allowed the former co-owner of PA Child Care to continue docking his yacht, “Reel Justice,” at a Florida yacht club linked to Conahan and Ciavarella.

In the case, first reported by the Times-Leader newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, Jupiter Yacht Club Marina notified Powell in August 2004 that his lease would not be renewed because he had violated marina rules and regulations.

According to the Times-Leader , a member of Powell’s law firm, Stephen Seach, filed a complaint against the club in Luzerne County Common Pleas Court. Toole, the motions court judge, set a date for a hearing and held one on Oct. 21, 2004.

An attorney for the yacht club sent a letter to Toole, dated Oct. 20, 2004, questioning why the case was being heard in Pennsylvania and asking for a continuance, according to the Times-Leader. The attorney called the issues in the case “Florida matters.”

According to the Times-Leader, the attorney for the yacht club had only been given one day’s notice for the hearing.

Toole’s order directed the marina to stop interfering with the renewal of Powell’s lease. He called for a full hearing on the issue, but the issue became moot. According to the Times-Leader, Powell withdrew his court action about two months later.

Toole had been on the bench for less than a year at the time.

According to a Feb. 10, 2009, article in the Times-Leader, Toole defended his decision and asserted that he had jurisdiction over the case because the plaintiff was from Pennsylvania.

“Our citizens, if they enter a contract here, shouldn’t have to fight a corporation in their hometown,” Toole said, according to the Times-Leader.

While the initial charges in the federal probe centered around the allegations that Conahan and Ciavarella accepted kickbacks in exchange for sending kids to PA Child Care, sources have confirmed that the investigation has since grown to include allegations of case fixing in motor vehicle arbitration cases, alleged case fixing between Conahan and two admitted felons — including reputed mob boss William D’Elia — as well as scrutiny of other Luzerne County judges.

Sources have previously confirmed that D’Elia and his friend, admitted felon Robert Kulick — also a friend of Conahan’s, sources have confirmed — have been cooperating with law enforcement authorities in their investigation into alleged corruption in Luzerne County.

D’Elia has issued a statement through his attorney distancing himself from Kulick and Conahan.

“I in no way was involved with the judges and juvenile detention center and the Thomas Joseph lawsuit,” D’Elia has said, according to his attorney James Swetz.

And late last week sources confirmed to The Legal Intelligencer that federal investigators are looking into a zoning case in which the owners of a hotel frequented by D’Elia challenged a zoning variance that would have allowed the county to build a new county-owned juvenile detention facility.

Before his election to the bench in 2003, Toole was a partner with Ciavarella at Lowery Ciavarella Rogers and Toole. Court records show that, on at least one occasion, Toole represented The Woodlands Inn & Resort — a hotel on the outskirts of Wilkes-Barre that has ties to D’Elia and that also received a pair of favorable rulings from Conahan in 2000 and 2003. There is no evidence to suggest that the plaintiffs improperly influenced either case.

The resort received another favorable ruling in 2003 from Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. that blocked the construction of a county-owned juvenile detention facility near its property, because it might have scared away prospective guests. The decision essentially paved the way for the construction of PA Child Care.

That is a case federal investigators are looking into, sources have told The Legal Intelligencer. There is no evidence to suggest that the plaintiffs improperly influenced the outcome of the case.

During his time at the firm, Ciavarella represented Robert K. Mericle — the builder of PA Child Care.

Though he was not named in the criminal information filed by federal officials against Ciavarella and Conahan, Mericle’s construction company allegedly wired $1 million of the $2.6 million in kickbacks to a company over which the judges had control, according to the criminal information filed against the judges.

A review of Toole’s 2003 campaign contributions shows Mericle donated $600.

—end of article—

TimesLeader.com

January 31
Dealer a guest at judges’ condo

Ronald Belletiere had been a supplier to the Empire drug ring, prosecutors say.

TERRIE MORGAN-BESECKER and JERRY LYNOTT tmorgan@timesleader.com

JUPITER, Fla. – A convicted drug dealer and attorney Robert Powell were among the people who were listed as “permanent guests” permitted to use an exclusive condominium owned by Luzerne County judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella, according to documents obtained Friday by The Times Leader.

Ronald Belletiere, who was convicted of participating in the Empire Drug ring that operated in Hazleton in the mid-1980s, was listed as a permanent guest along with Powell and Ciavarella’s three children on a resident registration form maintained by The Mariner at the Jupiter (Fla.) Yacht Club. The designation allows persons listed to have access to the property without having to get authorization from the owners.

The form, obtained by the newspaper, is the latest document to surface that shows the close personal as well as financial ties that Powell, a wealthy Butler Township attorney, had with Ciavarella and Conahan during their tenure on the bench.

It also raises further questions regarding Conahan’s ties to Belletiere, a man federal prosecutors said was a supplier to the Empire drug ring and who, according to corporate documents, later opened a used car lot with Conahan’s wife.

The U.S. Attorney’s office on Monday filed charges against Conahan and Ciavarella, alleging the men accepted more than $2.6 million in kickbacks in exchange for rulings they made that benefited the PA Child Care detention center in Pittston Township and its sister facility near Pittsburgh. The centers were owned by Powell until last June, when he sold out to his partner, Gregory Zappala.

The federal complaint alleges that Vision Holdings, a company owned by Powell, and Mericle Construction, owned by Robert Mericle, wrote numerous checks to businesses controlled by Conahan and Ciavarella in an attempt to make the money look as though it was legitimately earned.

Prosecutors further allege the judges have a controlling interest in the Pinnacle Group of Jupiter LLC, which is listed on mortgage documents as owning unit 303 at the Mariner at Jupiter Yacht Club.

The registration form obtained by the newspaper lists Conahan and his wife Barbara and Ciavarella and his wife Cindy as co-owners of unit 303.

Powell’s financial ties to Conahan and Ciavarella were first revealed last May through statements of financial interest the judges are required to file. Those statements showed that all three men at one time had a financial interest in W-Cat Inc., a real estate development firm that was building a townhouse project in Wright Township.

Conahan’s ties to Belletiere date back to the late 1980s, according to testimony that was presented at Belletiere’s 1991 trial on drug charges.

According to a transcript of that trial obtained by The Times Leader in 1994, Neal DeAngelo, a Hazleton businessman, testified that in 1986 Conahan, then a district judge in Hazleton, had warned him about purchasing drugs from another man whom Conahan said was under investigation.

Neal DeAngelo, who was never charged, testified Conahan then introduced him to Belletiere, a former Hazleton man who was living in Miami. DeAngelo said he, his brother Paul and Neal Forte then traveled to Florida in early 1987 and purchased $26,500 worth of cocaine from Belletiere.

The trial transcript shows the prosecutor in the case described Conahan as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a sidebar conversation with U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik.

Kosik has been assigned to the criminal case against Ciavarella and Conahan. The two are scheduled to appear in federal court, Scranton, at 1 p.m. Feb. 12 to enter guilty pleas to charges of tax evasions and honest services fraud.

Conahan was never charged in connection with that investigation. Confronted with the testimony in 1994, Conahan, who had taken his seat on the county bench eight months earlier, vehemently denied any involvement in the drug case.

Belletiere was convicted and served nearly four years in prison before being released in May 1995. His name resurfaced in connection with Conahan last July, when it was revealed that Belletiere had opened a used car lot with Barbara Conahan.

Charles Rebhan, a former employee of RAB Auto Sales in Pompano Beach, told The Times Leader he was present at a meeting with Belletiere and Michael and Barbara Conahan at which time they discussed opening the car lot.

Barbara Conahan is listed as the president of RAB Auto Sales Inc., trading as Ocean Auto Sales, formed in 2004. Documents filed with the Florida Corporation Bureau list Belletiere as the “contact person” for Ocean Auto Sales.

Other documents obtained by The Times Leader this week show Powell docked his 56-foot, $1.5 million yacht, “Reel Justice,” at the Jupiter Yacht Club’s marina.

Powell had signed a rental agreement that allowed him to dock the vessel at the marina from Oct. 21, 2003, to Oct. 21, 2004. The agreement was attached to a lawsuit Powell filed in Luzerne County Court in September 2004, that sought to prevent the yacht club’s condominium association from evicting the vessel for violating the association’s rules.

Luzerne County Judge Michael Toole issued an injunction, despite questions raised by the association’s attorneys over whether Pennsylvania courts had jurisdiction over the matter, given that the vessel was located in Florida. The dispute was resolved two months later when Powell voluntarily dissolved the injunction.

Pennsylvania Judges Met With Felons

More information on the activities of corrupt Pennsylvania Judges.

Previous posts:

Pennsylvania Judges Caught Taking Kickbacks

Psychologist & In-Law of Corrupt Pennsylvania Judge Conahan Paid 1.2 Million

Court Filing Says Former Judge Met With Felons Twice a Month

A former Luzerne County, Pa., president judge used to hold meetings about twice a month with a reputed mob boss and a common friend — also an admitted felon — to discuss pending court cases, according to a supplement to a King’s Bench petition filed with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Friday.

The owners of Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-based newspaper the Citizens’ Voice wrote to the court that a friend of William “Billy” D’Elia, Robert Kulick, has detailed his relationship with former Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Conahan and D’Elia.

According to the supplement, the three men once met in Conahan’s chambers when they were located in the main courthouse to discuss a case in which D’Elia and Kulick “were both interested.” That meeting happened prior to a hearing in that case, Kulick alleged.

Kulick went on to say that the meetings usually occurred at a restaurant, which was not named, and began with a “general conversation,” the supplement claims. They generally happened around breakfast. When talk would steer toward pending cases, D’Elia would leave the table so Kulick and Conahan could talk in private, the supplement claims. Kulick would leave the table when D’Elia and Conahan would talk in private.

“If I or someone I knew had an interest in a particular case pending before that court, I would ask Judge Conahan to consider that the party I supported got a ‘fair shake,’ or a ’second look,’” Kulick claims in a declaration attached to the supplement. “It was my understanding that if the case was not being handled by Judge Conahan himself, he would, on occasion, speak to other judges who were handling the matter in response to my request. At various times, Judge Conahan would confirm that he had either acted on my requests or had arranged for them to be acted on.”

According to the supplement, Kulick was interviewed by the newspaper’s attorneys Tuesday.

Through his attorney, D’Elia issued a statement denying Kulick’s declaration.

“I in no way was involved with the judges and juvenile detention center and the Thomas Joseph law suit,” D’Elia said, according to attorney James Swetz.

Asked what his client’s statement meant, Swetz said that would require interpretation. He said he was not prepared to do that.

“It’s his statement and he wanted me to answer any inquiry by releasing that sentence,” Swetz said. “To put it mildly, he disagrees with Kulick’s declaration.”

Kulick’s attorney, Michael A. Schwartz of Pepper Hamilton, was reluctant to comment on the matter other than to issue a single sentence — similar to others he has issued in relation to the Luzerne corruption probe. For instance, when asked if his client had approval from the U.S. Attorney’s Office to cooperate with the newspaper’s lawyers, Schwartz said: “Bob Kulick has fully accepted responsibility for the crime for which he has been charged and he continues to answer questions and cooperate with all law enforcement authorities.”

Asked whether he or his client approached the newspaper or whether or how the newspaper approached him or his client, Schwartz said he could not comment.

Conahan’s attorney, Philip Gelso, could not be reached for comment.

The filing, first reported by the Citizens’ Voice, confirms what The Legal Intelligencer first reported online Feb. 20 and in print last Monday — that Kulick was the company’s witness.

It also supports a claim made by another source to The Legal Intelligencer weeks ago: that another person had told the source he had seen Conahan, Kulick and D’Elia meet at the courthouse to discuss business. The source portrayed the relator of that information as someone other than Kulick. The source who related the story had no knowledge of what the alleged meeting covered.

A former Luzerne County judge has also told The Legal Intelligencer that Conahan and Kulick were “friendly” and could be seen chatting in area restaurants and bars. The judge described Kulick’s relationship with D’Elia in the same manner.

Other sources said Kulick and D’Elia were cooperating with federal authorities in their ongoing corruption probe at the county courthouse. Both men have pleaded guilty in the last year to criminal charges — Kulick to possession of a firearm by an admitted felon, D’Elia to money-laundering conspiracy and witness tampering charges in March 2008.

President Judge Chester B. Muroski confirmed to The Legal Intelligencer last week that he had been interviewed by the FBI about court administration issues. He allowed the investigators to photocopy documents concerning civil court matters without a subpoena, he said.

Sources said other judges were interviewed, but none returned repeated calls for comment.

Multiple sources have also relayed rumors to The Legal Intelligencer that other judges are being looked at by federal authorities. Those sources have not said whether the rumors include what the possible focus of the inquiry might be or the number of judges.

The newspaper’s supplement is the second filing to the state Supreme Court in which it asks the justices to vacate a $3.5 million defamation award issued against the newspaper and reopen discovery in the case.

In Joseph v. Scranton Times, Thomas Joseph, a Luzerne County businessman, argued that articles published by the Citizens’ Voice during its coverage of a 2001 federal investigation that targeted D’Elia and his alleged business partners damaged his reputation and business.

A source told the paper that federal officials were investigating Joseph to see whether he used his direct mail and advertising business to launder money for D’Elia and that his taxi and limousine service was used to traffic guns, drugs and prostitutes between the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and Lehigh Valley international airports and Atlantic City, N.J., New York City and Philadelphia. Joseph was never charged with any wrongdoing.

Conahan handled the pretrial matters and, despite voiced concerns from the newspaper company, worked with William T. Sharkey, the former court administrator who has pleaded guilty to embezzling funds, to steer the case to former President Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. for a 10-day nonjury trial, according to the petition.

In the petition, the newspaper claims that Ciavarella disregarded “substantial evidence connecting Joseph and D’Elia, including search warrants, the affidavits of probable cause and the Pen Register results showing hundreds of calls between them.” Instead, the petition continues, the judge accepted Joseph’s testimony that he and D’Elia were “mere acquaintances.”

He also discounted the newspaper’s reporting because Joseph was never mentioned in a May 2006 indictment of D’Elia and found one of the newspaper’s witnesses, Joseph’s former wife, to be not credible because she had prior convictions and was granted immunity by a grand jury for her testimony.

Ciavarella awarded Joseph and his businesses $3.5 million in damages.

Joseph’s attorneys, George W. Croner and Christina Donato Saler of Kohn Swift & Graf in Philadelphia, filed a strongly worded response to the newspaper’s petition on Wednesday, calling the request a “free-for-all fishing expedition.”

“Turning to a historical metaphor, it is vitally important that the search to root out genuine wrongdoing does not lead courts or litigants to the practices of the Salem Witch Trials, where rumor, gossip and innuendo were substituted for rationality, reflection and deliberation,” the attorneys wrote in the reply.

Joseph’s attorneys also noted the verdict was the subject of a trial at which the defendant newspaper and journalists presented “virtually no evidence supporting the reporting and publication process used with their journalism.”

The supplement also includes a declaration by attorney J. Timothy Hinton, who searched about 4,600 of the county’s disposed cases. Only Joseph v. Scranton Times had a note indicating Conahan and Sharkey were involved in assigning the case, according to the supplement.

“Kulick’s Declaration and the Database Records are additional evidence that the corruption in the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas infected Joseph v. Scranton Times and likely predetermined its outcome in favor of Thomas A Joseph,” the supplement claims. “This additional evidence along with the evidence previously submitted by Petitioners provide ample basis for this Court to vacate the $3.5 million in Joseph’s favor or, at a minimum, authorize a period of discovery to be followed by a hearing, if necessary, and briefing on Petitioner’s motion to vacate.”

Conahan and Ciavarella have pleaded guilty to charges they accepted $2.6 million in kickbacks from the owner and builder of a juvenile detention center. The government alleges the judges steered juveniles to the facility.

In his declaration, Kulick claimed he met the judges after opening a restaurant — Olives Mediterranean Restaurant — in 1999.

He had a “social” relationship with Ciavarella, saw him at various events and invited him to his home “from time to time.”

Kulick claimed he would see Conahan at the same events, but the contact between the two “was considerably more extensive.”

Kulick arranged the breakfast meetings with Conahan about twice a month until 2007. They stopped after Kulick’s wife, Michelle Mattioli-Kulick, received a grand jury subpoena regarding a letter of recommendation Conahan had written for her, Kulick claimed.

Mattioli-Kulick was apparently attempting to obtain an offshore, online casino license at the time.

 

Leo Strupczewski and Hank Grezlak
03-02-2009

China: Human Rights Record of United States in 2008

China hits back with report on U.S. human rights record:

 

V. On the Rights of Women and Children

    The conditions of women and children in the United States are worrisome.

    Women account for 51 percent of the U.S. population, but only 88 women serve in the 110th U.S. Congress. Sixteen women serve in the Senate, or 16 percent of the seats, and 72 women serve in the House, or 16.6 percent of the seats. As of December 2007, 73 women held statewide elective executive offices across the country, or 23.2 percent of the available positions. The proportion of women in state legislature is at 23.7 percent. As of July 2008, among the 100 largest cities in the U.S., only 11 had women mayors (Women serving in the 110th Congress 2007-09. Center for American Women and Politics, http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu).

    Gender-based discrimination in employment is quite serious. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it received 24,826 charges on discrimination on the basis of sex in 2007, accounting for 30.1 percent of the total discrimination charges (Charge statistics FY 1997 Through FY 2007, http://eeoc.gov/stats/charges.html). A growing number of women are being treated unfairly by employers because they are pregnant or hope to be (Mom-to-be claim work bias, http://www.nydailynews.com,May 19, 2008). According to statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau in August 2008, the real median earnings of women who worked full time in 2007 were 35,102 U.S. dollars, 78 percent of those of corresponding men whose median earnings were 45,113 U.S. dollars (Current population survey, http://www.census.gov/press-release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html). The unemployment rate for adult women continued to trend up. It reached 5.5 percent as of November 2008 (The employment situation: November 2008, issued by the U.S. Department of Labor on December 5, 2008, http://www.bls.gov).

I. On Life and Personal Security

II. On Civil and Political Rights

III. On Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

IV. On Racial Discrimination

V. On the Rights of Women and Children

VI. On the violation of Human Rights in other nations

    American women are victims of domestic violence and sexual violence. Statistics showed that among women receiving emergency treatment, one third of them are victims of domestic violence. Sexual violence poses a serious threat to American women. It is reported that the United States has the highest rape rate among countries which report such statistics. It is 13 times higher than that of England and 20 times higher than that of Japan (Occurrence of rape, http://www.sa.rochester.edu/masa/stats.php). Sexual assault against Indigenous women in the United States is widespread. Some women interviewed by Amnesty International said they didn’t know anyone in their community who had not experienced sexual violence (Maze of injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA, http://www.amnestyusa.org). Statistics showed that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 12,510 charges of sexual harassment in 2007, 84 percent of which were filed by females (Sexual Harassment Charges EEOC & FEPAs Combined: FY 1997-FY 2007, http//www.eeoc.gov). A USA Today report on October 28, 2008, citing a study, said about one out of seven female veterans of Afghanistan or Iraq who visit a Veterans Affairs center for medical care reported being a victim of sexual assault or harassment during military duty. More than half these women have post-traumatic stress disorder (15% of female veterans tell of sexual trauma, more than half of them experience stress disorder, http://global.factiva.com).

    An increasing number of children are living in poverty. Children under 18 account for one third of the people in poverty in the United States. Statistics show that as at the end of 2007, the poverty rate of children younger than 18 was 18 percent, up from 17.4 percent in 2006. The poverty rate of children in single female-headed families reached as high as 43 percent (Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2007,issued by the U.S. Census Bureau in August 2008, www.census.gov.).According to a report released on October 14, 2008 by the Working Poof Families Project, one third of children live in low-income working families in 2006. In New York City, 41.6 percent of children in single-parent families live under the poverty line. At the end of 2007, 8.1 million children under 18, or 11 percent of the total, were uninsured, (Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the united states: 2007, issued by the U.S. Census Bureau in August 2008, www.census.gov).

    The conditions of American students are worrisome. According to the U.S. Department of Education, more than 223,000 students were corporally punished in 2007. More than 200,000 public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year. In 13 states, more than 1,000 students were corporally punished per year (US: end beating of children in public schools, http://www.hrw.org/en/new/2008/08/19). Corporal punishment is legal in 21 states, according to a report released by American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch on August 19, 2008. Alcohol abuse, gambling and drug use are pervasive on campus. Between 1999 and 2005, 157 college students died of alcoholism and750,000 youths were addicted to drugs. A report on teen drug use issued by University of Michigan researchers on December 11, 2008 shows that 11 percent of eighth graders, 24 percent of tenth graders and 32 percent of 12th graders reported using marijuana in the prior year. Use of any illicit drug in the prior year was reported by 37 percent of 12th graders, 27 percent of 10th graders and 14 percent of eighth graders (The China Press, December 12, 2008).

    There is no guarantee of children’s security. The Children’s Defense Fund said in its 2008 annual report that 3,006 children and teens died in 2005 from firearms. According to a survey by the Center for Children, Law and Policy, University of Houston, guns kill eight children and teens every day in America, which means the Virginia Tech shooting occurring every four days, or a child or teen being killed by guns every three hours (Children and teens firearm deaths increase for first time since 1994, http://www.childrenandthelawblog.come/2008/06/19). Each year about1.8 million children are reported lost. More than 3 million children are reported as victims of physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, and death (Facts you should know about violence against children, http://www.loveourchildrenusa.org). There are about 1,500 child-abuse fatalities every year (Abuse more a risk in non-traditional families, http://usatoday.com). Sexual abuse against children is serious. One in five children were reportedly sexually abused by the age of 18 (Facts you should know about violence against children, http://www.loveourchildrenusa.org). In a Texas polygamist sect, some girls as young as 12 were forced into marriage with middle-aged men (The China Press, September 23,2008). A research by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one fourth of teenage American girls, or 3 million, had a sexually transmitted disease (STD). African-American teenage girls were mostly severely affected. Nearly half of the young African-American women were infected with an STD, compared with 20 percent of young white women (Sing Tao Daily, March 12, 2008).

    The United States is one of the few countries in the world where minors receive the same criminal punishments as adults do. It is the only country in the world that sentences children to life in prison without possibility of parole or release. There are2,381 such inmates in U.S. prisons currently (The United States was not forthcoming and accurate in its presentation to CERD, http://www.hrw.org). Seventy-three of them are serving death-in-prison sentence for offenses at the age of 13 or 14. Among them, 49 percent are African-Americans, and most of them come from needy families, without enough legal aids. These children will die in prison without parole no matter how they are corrected (Equal Justice Initiative, http://eji.org). According to the general comments made by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in April 2007, sentencing minors to death or life in prison without possibility of release violates Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. When reviewing the human rights records of the United States in 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Council said sentencing minors to life in prison without possibility of release violates Article 7 and Article 24 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

    Thousands of innocent children have been put into prison by corrupt judges. According to a report of the Spanish newspaper Rebelion on February 20, 2009, among the 5,000 juvenile prisoners in Pennsylvania, an estimated 2,000 were wrongly put into prison by two bribe-taking judges. According to the report, Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan in the Luzerne County took more than 2.6 million U.S. dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two private youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a Sister company, Western PA Child Care. Most of the teenagers did not have a lawyer to turn to. Jamie Quinn, 18, stayed in prison for one year when she was 14 after she and a friend quarreled and slapped each other’s face. Jamie was taken to a juvenile detention center and later transferred to several other jails. In her captivity, Jamie was forced to take some medicines so she could be “obedient”. The girl is just one of the thousands of innocent children.

    The use of child labors is serious in the United States. The Associated Press reported that the owner and managers of a meatpacking plant in Iowa was in September 2008 charged with more than 9,000 misdemeanors alleging they hired minors and in some cases had children younger than 16 handle dangerous equipment. The Iowa attorney general’s office said the violations involved 32 illegal immigrant children under age 18, including seven who were younger than 16 (Iowa files child labor charges against meat plant, the Associated Press, September 10).

 

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China hits back with report on U.S. human rights record http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/26/content_10904794.htm

For more on Human Rights Violations against women and children in the US:

Mothers Petition to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Maternal Deprivation Research

Ethical Scientific Experts Denounce “PAS” Reprogramming

Maternally Deprived Chimps Getting More Sympathy Than Children

Maternal Deprivation Research

There have been numerous studies regarding Maternal Deprivation, with a large source of information coming from Bowlby, based on Spitz and Goldfarb, and also from unethical animal experimentation. Overwhelmingly, research shows that severing this natural bond between a mother and child causes severe emotional and behavioral problems, such as depression and psychosis. The phrase maternal deprivation is the terminology used in the early work of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, John Bowlby on the effects of separating infants and young children from their mother. Some of the research was previously used to discourage mothers from working or using childcare, but it seems important to revive these studies as children are being deprived of their mothers intentionally by abusive men who claim to be “parentally alienated” in an ongoing scandal that rivals that of the Catholic Priest sexual abuse cover up.  

Maternal Deprivation Abuse (MDA), has been identified as occurring with great frequency in legal proceedings, with specific unethical lawyers, psychologists, and judges perpetrating the the same scam on mother after mother with similar horrific results for the children. There has been death by suicide, suicide attempts, depression, academic distress, retaliation by a child against a PAS claiming father, and untold misery for the victimized children and mothers.

Based on Bolwby’s theories, Maternally Deprivation affects children as follows:

• Complete or almost complete deprivation could “entirely cripple the capacity to make relationships.”
• Partial deprivation could result in acute anxiety, depression, neediness and powerful emotions which the child could not regulate.
• The end product of such psychic disturbance could be neurosis and instability of character.(Bowlby J. (1951) pps. 11–12)

 

“Mother love in infancy and childhood is as important for mental health as are vitamins and proteins for physical health.” (Bowlby, 1953.)  Child psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1907–1990). 

 

Maternal Deprivation Abuse

Maternal Deprivation, or Motherlessness, is occurring with alarming frequency due to the unethical treatment of women and children in family court. Maternal Deprivation is inflicting abuse by severing the mother-child bond. It is a form of abuse that men inflict on both the mother and children, especially men who claim they are “parentally alienated” from their children when there are complaints of abusive treatment by the father.

Maternal Deprivation occurs when men seek to keep their children from being raised by their mothers who are the children’s natural caretakers. Some men murder the mothers of their own children. Others seek to sever the maternal bonds by making false allegations of fictitious psychological syndromes in a deliberate effort to change custody and/or keep the child from having contact with their mother when there are legal proceedings. A twisted form of Maternal Deprivation is to kill the children, so that the mother will be left to suffer. Sometimes there are family annihilation murders where the father kills the children and himself (or dies by cop), but the mother is not killed because she has received protective orders and her children have not as in the case of Jessica Gonzales.  

In seeking to define this form of abuse certain common elements are found in the Maternal Deprivation scenario as follows:

• History of domestic abuse that could be physical, psychological, sexual, and/or social abuse occurring on or off again, occasionally, or chronically which could be mild, moderate, or severe, including homicidal and/or suicidal threats. 
• Legal proceedings relating to abuse
• Hiring of “Fathers Rights” attorney
• Use of “Hired Gun” mental health professionals to make accusations of psychological disorder against the mother and children in deliberate effort to excuse abuse and change custody or grant visitation that is contrary to safety concerns. Another name for these unethical professionals are “Whores of the Courts“
• Raising claims of “psychological disorders” against the mother such as “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS), Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, Malicious Mother Syndrome, Lying Litigant Syndrome, Hostile Aggressive Parenting or any other mother-blaming psychological disorder that can be used by the unethical professional to re-victimize the victims.
• Infliction of “Legal Abuse” by continually and excessively filing motions so that the mother continually has to defend herself and her child(ren) causing financial and emotional devastation.
• Can occur in response to child support legal proceedings as retaliation.

The intent of “Maternal Deprivation” is to punish the mother and the child for revealing the abuse and to falsely claim that they are not abusive. This very commonly occurs as there are more and more “abuse-excuse” parental alienation accusing professionals who use this scientifically invalid theory over and over to achieve specific goals of the person paying them. Maternal Deprivation can also occur in response to child support legal proceedings. When occurring in this manner, Maternal Deprivation is a response to the financial demands as retaliation. Suddenly the father who had little prior involvement wants to take the kids half the time to avoid child support obligations, etc. When the men are really abusive, they ask for sole custody and demand the mother of the child pay them.

Although some people call this “Maternal Alienation”, a distinction needs to be made as the pro-pedophilia “Parental Alienation Syndrome” and the use of the word “Alienation” are most often used AGAINST battered women and abused children. There needs to be a distinction between the phony psychological syndrome and the intentional infliction of abuse on a mother and child by intentionally severing their natural bond. This distinction can best be made by NOT using the label of “Alienation” which will always be associated with the pro-pedophilia monster Doctor Richard Gardner.

Some of the characteristics of the especially heinous abusers who inflict Maternal Deprivation include but are not limited to the following:

• Angry
• Abusive
• Violent
• Coercive
• Controlling
• Threatening
• Intimidating
• Demanding
• Domineering
• Harassing
• Stalking
• Tyrannical
• Oppressive
• Forceful
• Manipulative
• Deceptive
• Unethical
• Un-empathetic (Lacks Empathy)
• Entitled
• Immature
• Self-centered
• Neglectful
• Guilt inducing
• Pushy
• Intentionally tries to humiliate mother and/or child
• Harsh, rigid and punitive parenting style
• Outrage at child’s challenge of authority
• May use force to reassert parental position
• Dismissive of child’s feelings and negative attitudes
• Vents rage, blames mother for “brainwashing” child and takes no responsibility
• Challenges child’s beliefs and/or attitudes and tries to convince them otherwise
• Inept and unempathic pursuit of child, pushes calls and letters, unannounced or embarrassing visits 

There is a distinct overlap of the intimate terrorist type domestic violence abuser with the Maternal Deprivation abusers as follows:

 

• Coercion and threats
• Intimidation
• Emotional abuse
• Isolation
• Minimizing, denying and blaming (Hallmarks of PAS)
• Using children
• Economic abuse
• Male privilege

The people who most often engage in Maternal Deprivation Abuse are most often: 

• Abusive men
• Vindictive second wives who don’t want to deal with the real mother of the children
• Paternal grandparents who raised dysfunctional children (abusers)

The effects of Maternal Deprivation often cause the children to become psychotic, depressed, and sometimes suicidal or to have suicidal ideations. Another terrible reaction is when the child retaliates against the parent who accuses Parental Alienation Syndrome as in a Texas case where the child killed his father. Other times when the Maternal Deprivation abuser completely takes over the will of the child by using brainwashing techniques similar to those used in prison camps where deprivation and isolation are used to force ideological changes in captives, these children often have a sort of trauma-bonding with the abuser and model their behavior. Sometimes these children will also abuse the mother in the same manner as the father. Another generation is created to carry on the abuse, and will likely do the same to their own spouse and children.

 

 

 

For more articles involving Maternal Deprivation:

Failure of Family Court System Leads To Death and Devastation

Doctor Who Intentionally Severs Bonds With Mothers Is a Monster

Child in imminent fear shoots father – vindicated in appeal – PAS fraud nightmare

Cincinatti PAS

VAWnet Joan Meier on PAS-Parental Alienation Syndrome & Parental Alienation: Research Reviews

And many more articles throughout Battered Mothers Lose Children to Abusers and all the links on the sidebar.

Maternal Deprivation Abuse will be featured on BMLCTA Blog in an effort to wipe out this heinous crime against mothers and children.

 

Psychologist & In-Law of Corrupt Pennsylvania Judge Conahan Paid 1.2 Million

As some people churn fees for putting kids in detention, other people churn fees for getting kids into therapy.

Somehow there just seems to be an awful lot of profit being made from the court system.

From the article below, it is difficult to tell whether or not these were good or bad recommendations made by the psychologist. Since the children he was evaluating were already in detention, by this psychologists own admission, his job was to get them out of detention – for profit. His success rate for getting the kids out of detention according to this report was about 84% based on the number of cases listed. Well this is great for the incarcerated, but what about the victims? Based on this article, we can’t tell whether or not this was good or bad. What we can tell is that cronyism is very profitable.

Psychologist denies involvement in alleged juvenile justice scheme

BY MICHAEL R. SISAK AND DAVE JANOSKI
STAFF WRITERS

Published: Thursday, February 19, 2009 4:06 AM EST

Dr. Frank Vita evaluated hundreds of juvenile offenders during the seven years he contracted to provide psychological services for the Luzerne County courts.

The agency questioned the eligibility of those reimbursements because it said Vita operated under a series of invalid contracts — one-page documents that were approved by Paul McGarry, the high-ranking court official who formerly ran the probation services department. The contracts were not approved by the county commissioners.County Commissioner Stephen A. Urban, who this week said McGarry should pay any requested funds out of his own pocket, said Wednesday the 10-year county courts employee should be fired.

McGarry, 61, currently earns $78,159 as the court system’s administrative services director. He survived the first wave of court layoffs that eliminated 27 employees last week, including his successor in probation services, Larry Saba, and the department’s fiscal director, Pete Namowicz.

“By him signing this contract, when he knew the commissioners were the contracting authority, is a blatant violation of the law and I don’t believe he should continue in his current capacity with the courts,” Urban said. “There have got to be penalties for his actions.”

Urban, who has been a county commissioner since 2000, said McGarry brought other contracts to the commissioners for approval, but ignored protocol with the Vita contracts, which were typed on probation services letterhead and labeled as purchase of service agreements.

Under Department of Public Welfare regulations, the chairman of the county commissioners would have been required to approve all of the county’s contracts for psychological services and establish a maximum rate or range of rates for the services in an open, public manner each year.

A procurement manual adopted by the county commissioners in 2004 requires written bid proposals for all professional services costing more than $7,500.

“With that knowledge, why would he approve a contract without bringing it to the commissioners?” Urban said. “Was he doing it to please his boss rather than following the law? That’s a question he has to answer.”

McGarry, who declined comment when reached by telephone Tuesday, answered several questions Wednesday.

from previous page

In an interview with The Citizens’ Voice, McGarry contended that the contracts with Vita were legal and validated by other county officials and denied involvement or implication in the ongoing federal investigation that resulted in corruption charges or related civil class-action lawsuits against Conahan and Ciavarella.

“Every bill that was paid to Frank Vita was approved by the county controller’s office, including the two years that Maryanne Petrilla was controller,” McGarry said. “They were approved and reimbursed. All I did was sign the rate card.”

Petrilla, who has served since last January as the chairwoman of the county’s board of commissioners, did not return telephone messages late Wednesday.

“I never broke the law, I never did anything improper,” McGarry said. “I haven’t been interviewed by the FBI. I haven’t been involved in any of these lawsuits. I haven’t been interviewed by the IRS or the Secret Service or anybody. I had a job to do and I did it. Nothing less. I don’t condone what these guys did.”

Judge Joseph M. Augello, who served as president judge from 1997 to 2002, hired McGarry and approved of the use of Vita for the psychological evaluations, following a recommendation from the chief juvenile probation officer, Sandra Brulo. Brulo currently serves as the deputy director of forensic programs.

“She was the one who was really interested in hiring me,” Vita said, denying allegations his familial connection to Conahan — Vita is married to Conahan’s sister, Ann Marie — precipitated his contract with the county.

Conahan served as president judge from 2002 to 2007. Ciavarella held the position from 2007 until Jan. 23, the day he and Conahan signed agreements with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit tax fraud.

Vita continued to perform psychological evaluations for the county through last June, when questions arose about the validity of his contract with McGarry. The county commissioners declined to vote on a contract with Vita because the Department of Public Welfare had already begun auditing the psychologist.

“To me a contract was a contact,” Vita said. “I wasn’t sure who was supposed to approve it or not. If I thought there was something wrong I would have said let’s get this fixed, this is not something I want to do.”

Vita earned $76,680 from the county for the six months he worked last year. Vita was paid an hourly rate of $90 per hour, as established in a 2002 contract with McGarry, and averaged 10 evaluations per month last year, according to records obtained from the Luzerne County Controller’s office.

Vita billed for between 12 hours and 18 hours of work on each evaluation performed last year, including between three hours and four and a half hours to complete his written report, which ran between 35 and 50 pages.

Vita said he primarily evaluated juveniles who had histories of mental illness or those who were accused of setting fires or sexual offenses. Most of the evaluations, Vita said, took place after a juvenile court judge deemed the juvenile delinquent and placed him or her in a detention facility.

Ciavarella served as the full-time juvenile court judge from 2002 until last May, when he stepped aside amid allegations he violated the rights of young defendants by not properly apprising them of their right to an attorney.

In its audit, the Department of Public Welfare evaluated 31 of the cases in which Vita performed psychological evaluations. In five of the cases, Vita’s recommendation was not followed, the audit said.

“I can make recommendations, I’m not in the court system,” Vita said. “What I say doesn’t have to be followed.”

Michael P. Buffer, staff writer, contributed to this report.

msisak@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2061

djanoski@citizensvoice.com, 570-301-2178

—end of article—

 

The agency could ultimately demand the county return the reimbursements — totalling $836,636. That decision is still pending, Department of Public Welfare spokeswoman Stacey Witalec said.

None of those evaluations aided his brother-in-law, Senior Judge Michael T. Conahan, or suspended Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. in their alleged scheme to send young defendants to privately owned detention centers in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks, Vita told The Citizens’ Voice on Wednesday.

“My job was to get the kids out of detention because they needed treatment,” Vita said. “I didn’t want them in detention.”

The county paid Vita $1.12 million to perform psychological evaluations between July 2001 and June 2008 and received more than $800,000 in reimbursements from the state Department of Welfare, according to an audit prepared by the agency.

For more info on the Profiteering Pennsylvania Judges:

Pennsylvania Judges Caught Taking Kickbacks

Doctor Who Intentionally Severs Bonds With Mothers Is a Monster

This Dr. Harry Harlow was not just unsympathetic, but a monster just like the unethical doctors who forcefully remove children from loving mothers by claiming parental alienation to give them to their abusers. Why do they do this? Because they get paid by the abuser to do this! It’s a fraud on the courts that needs to end!

From the Top Ten Unethical Psychological Experiments
The Well of Despair 1960

     Dr. Harry Harlow was an unsympathetic person, using terms like the rape rack and iron maiden in his experiments. He is most well-known for the experiments he conducted on rhesus monkeys concerning social isolation. Dr. Harlow took infant rhesus monkeys who had already bonded with their mothers and placed them in a stainless steel vertical chamber device alone with no contact in order to sever those bonds. They were kept in the chambers for up to one year. Many of these monkeys came out of the chamber psychotic, and many did not recover. Dr. Harlow concluded that even a happy, normal childhood was no defense against depression, while science writer Deborah Blum called these, common sense results.
     Gene Sackett of the University of Washington in Seattle, one of Harlows doctoral students, stated he believes the animal liberation movement in the U.S. was born as a result of Harlows experiments. William Mason, one of Harlows students, said that Harlow kept this going to the point where it was clear to many people that the work was really violating ordinary sensibilities, that anybody with respect for life or people would find this offensive. Its as if he sat down and said, Im only going to be around another ten years. What Id like to do, then, is leave a great big mess behind. If that was his aim, he did a perfect job.

Any doctor removing a child from their mother using the fraudulent theory of parental alienation or other phony psychobabble BS needs to be exposed for the monsters they are. They come up with phony rhetoric and say it in a convincing manner, much like they did back in Salem when they accused women of witchcraft.  

This Parental Alienation Custody Change Fraud is going to go down in history as one of the most unethical psychological social engineering experiments of all time. The scandal is on the same level as the cover up of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church. It’s time people start to wake up and recognize that these doctors are covering up for all types of domestic abuse against women and children for PROFIT.

If you click on the links regarding Dr. Harry Harlow, you will find out that he received awards from psychological associations. Maybe this will start to get people thinking that there are groups of people doing unethical experiments and they do support each other on their theories and cover up for each other. The APA also published the Rind Study which tried to justify child sexual abuse as being acceptable and not that harmful to children. There is a common thread between all of these sick studies that push quack theories to justify unacceptable behavior. Only with Parental Alienation Theory, the whole idea is to call the victims liars which re-victimizes them. All that is needed to do this is to pay an unethical doctor to testify who will ignore real evidence and substitute in their fraudulent rhetoric.

When people realized the horrible treatment of animals that Harlow inflicted, the result was an animal liberation movement. What needs to happen as a result of these unethical parental alienation scams is for children to have a liberation movement and demand to have rights to be heard and to make their own decisions.

And Intentionally Scaring Monkeys

Pennsylvania Judges Caught Taking Kickbacks

If you think that the courts are really fair and that people are just getting what they deserve, think again. These judges have been caught in another scheme where children suffer by being sent to institutions so that unethical people can profiteer off the court system. This example from juvenile court is but one form of the corruption, and you know there is so much more going on.

State may compensate juveniles sentenced by judges in Luzerne

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

By Tracie Mauriello, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG — State lawmakers are seeking ways to compensate children sent to detention centers by a pair of Luzerne County judgescharged with taking kickbacks for sending juvenile defendants to facilities in Luzerne and Butler counties.

Senate Judiciary Committee ChairmanStewart Greenleaf said yesterday he would hold a hearing to find ways to help the children and their families. One option is to provide money from the crime victims compensation fund, said Mr. Greenleaf, R-Montgomery.

The hearing, which has not yet been scheduled, is at the request of Republican Sens. Lisa Baker and John Gordner, whose districts include parts of Luzerne County.

They made the request yesterday, the same day a third Luzerne County court official was arrested in the ongoing corruption probe.

Court Administrator William T. Sharkey Sr., 57, of West Hazelton, yesterday agreed to plead guilty to embezzling more than $70,000 in illegal gambling money seized by authorities between June 1998 and June 2008.

Two other county court officials were charged last week with fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

Judge Mark A. Ciavarella and former Senior Judge Michael T. Conahanare accused of taking $2.6 million for sending children to two facilities owned by Pittsburgh businessman Greg Zappala.

Judges Ciavarella and Conahan each could face prison terms of up to seven and three months, according to the terms of plea agreements they signed last week.

No charges have been filed against Mr. Zappala, who is the brother of Allegheny County District AttorneyStephen A. Zappala Jr. and son of former state Supreme CourtJustice Stephen A. Zappala Sr.

Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court has agreed to review all juvenile cases adjudicated in Luzerne County during in the last five years.

That’s good news to parents such as Susan Mishanski, whose 17-year-old son was sentenced byJudge Ciavarella last year to 90 days in a juvenile facility in Carbon County.

She said the punishment was excessive and that it traumatized her son, a first-time offender who was expecting community service or a fine for punishing another boy last year. Instead, he was taken from the courtroom in shackles and brought to Camp Adams, where he was beaten by other teenagers, forced to wear ripped clothes four sizes too big and permitted visitors only twice a month for an hour, she said.

“He was humiliated and he was scared,” said Ms. Mishanski of Luzerne County. “I’m absolutely thrilled now that [these judges] got caught.”

Judges Ciavarella and Conahan are scheduled to enter pleas Feb. 12 in U.S. District Court in Scranton.

Mr. Ciavarella, who stepped down as president judge but remains on the court, is continuing to receive a salary of $161,850, although he has been stripped of his judicial powers. Under the terms of his plea agreement, be must resign within 10 days of pleading.

His salary had been $163,260 but was reduced by $1,410 when he stepped down as president judge.

The Supreme Courtlast week revoked Judge Conahan’s certification as senior judge, a designation given to retired judges who agree to temporary fill in at county courthouses as needed.

Judge Conahanretired in January 2008. He received $39,387 in per-diem pay for work between June 2008 and January 2009, according to records of the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. It was not clear if he received payments in the first half of last year.

Mr. Sharkey could face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 in fines. As part of the plea agreement, he also must pay $71,000 in restitution and resign within 10 days of entering a plea.

Tracie Mauriello can be reached tmauriello@post-gazette.com 717-787-2141.

First published on February 4, 2009 at 12:00 am