This author recently reported a story on a divorce custody and visitation hearing held in Michigan in which three children were sent to a juvenile detention center for contempt of court after refusing to have a relationship with their father because the children say they saw him hit their mother. I made a point that the children were reporting having witnessed domestic violence and their stories were discounted by a judge, their claims quickly dismissed.
I went further, citing issues that domestic violence survivors often face in having their claims not heard. Children, in particular, are often used as a means of control of the victim, and children’s voices are often not taken seriously.
I received some pretty harsh backlash from a few readers, who insisted that they have followed the story and that the mother had lied about being abused, using those stories of abuse to alienate her children from their father.
The judge was absolutely justified, those readers insisted, and was working in the best interests of the children. She didn’t lock them up until they were 18 and simply sent the children for counseling away from their mother. There was more to the story, they said, than I was saying. Those readers were correct.
This story is much, much worse than it appeared to be from the information I had at the time.
Reading directly from transcripts of the court hearing, one finds a judge verbally harassing and threatening three children, ages 15, 10, and 9. This is the judge who gets to decide which parent is better for the children.
First to speak before the judge was Liam Tsimhoni, aged 15.
Liam did apologize to the judge, but did not wish to apologize to his father, because Liam insists that he witnessed his father being physically violent against his mother.
Liam again refuses, stating that he did nothing wrong, and that it is his father who broke the rules by hitting his mother.
So first she discounts his own testimony, then calls his IQ into question. Then she insists that if his father were abusive, he would’ve been charged for it. You know, because domestic violence perpetrators are always reported, always arrested, always charged and convicted.
Judge Gorcyca believes that a domestic violence perpetrator would be known as abusive by the entire community if he really were an abuser, because that’s how it works. Awful people are never charming enough to fool a lot of people in public while being abusive in private.
The judge goes on, threatening Liam with years of incarceration.
She then compares the 15-year-old and his mother to an insidious cult leader, currently imprisoned for life, and tells Liam that he will be closed away from everyone except the one person he wishes not to be around.
The scene gets much worse when 10-year-old Rowie and 9-year-old Natalie are brought before the court.
Rowie is ordered to communicate with his father, not be a “stick in the mud.”
Natalie says that she does not wish to have a relationship with her father.
The judge is now insulting a 9-year-old’s intelligence and threatening her with jail. No matter how much the judge and those following the case insist that it wasn’t intended to be a punishment, it’s certainly sounding like punishment to me. I can’t imagine how horrible it sounded to a 9-year-old child.
This becomes more sickening as it goes. After being threatened with public urination and separation, the children are blamed for hurting their parents.
She then proceeds to tell the children they are abnormal.
Although Ms. Tsimhoni begged for a chance to convince the oldest son to speak to their father, she was denied that request.
But wait, I thought the mother was so influential that she convinced her children that they saw something they didn’t see? Mr. Tsimhoni, in his own interview, recounted what happened during the incident in which the children says their father hit their mother.
“I tried to prevent her from leaving because it was my time with the children. I was very careful not to do anything but she claimed that I pushed her. She screamed at the children, Call 911! Call 911! The police showed up and Maya was screaming and the police confirmed that nothing happened. But in the children’s mind, that’s what happened.”
If Mrs. Tsimhoni is so influential that she can convince her children that they saw something they didn’t really see, how is she unable to convince them to do things now?
The judge continues to insist that she never intended for the placement in Children’s Village to be a punishment, but to remove them from their mother’s influence so that they can receive counseling. Threats of being forced to urinate and defecate in public, be locked away in a separate “cell” from your siblings and not allowed to see your mother, especially to a 9 and 10-year-old, sounds like a threat of punishment to me.
I can just imagine how healthy the children were emotionally upon entering this counseling that they believed would be exactly as the judge promised.
The children have since been released from Children’s Village and placed in a summer camp at the request of their father.
I feel an incredible amount of sympathy for all children placed in front of this judge, who feels it necessary to harass and threaten small children. I maintain that this judge is not suited to sit any bench and that the voices and wishes of these children continue to be ignored. I stand by my original article.
