Gangsters in Judicial Robes January 22, 2000
by
Stephen Baskerville
Last week a Virginia father named Ken Gallahan was jailed indefinitely by Fairfax County Judge Leslie Alden. Was Mr. Gallahan a deadbeat dad who failed to pay child support? Was he a stereotypical battterer we've become so
familiar from feminist polemic? Did he snatch his children and disappear underground? No. His crime, it turns out, was not paying the fees of a psychotherapist. He is also charged with not paying lawyers.
Imprisonment for debt was outlawed long ago. But this does not stop family courts from regularly incarcerating fathers who will not or cannot pay extortionate fees charged by the courts professional hangers-on who force their services on innocent citizens who want no part of them. Ken did not
hire the therapist and the lawyers he is being ordered to pay and did not seek or use their services. They were hired against him, even though he was never charged with anything. The therapist testified for almost two hours
about details of Ken's private life of which she had no knowledge other than what she obtained from others (in legal terms, hersay. Ken was then allowed ten minutes to cross-examine the counselor whose fees he was paying.
None of the testimony involved any wrongdoing. In fact Ken has never been charged with any legal infraction, either criminal or civil. Yet he has been turned into a criminal by a judge and her cronies because of what amounts to a protection racket.
Ken's mother paid the $2,200 to the therapist to secure Ken's release for now, but he must still come up with $15,000 to pay lawyers he never hired and who will be used to prosecute him not even for something he did not do , but for nothing at all. Ken earns about $35,000 a year and does not have his own lawyer. The judge also used the opportunity to suspend Ken's right to see his son,
though no reason was given.
Judge Alden is using her public office to raid the bank accounts of Ken Gallahan, his mother, and God knows how many other innocent citizens and funnel everything they have into the pockets of her cronies. The bar and other professional associations will then ensure that Judge Alden is re-appointed and promoted at regular intervals. If Judge Alden fails to divert enough money to these professionals she will fail to advance and could lose her position. We hear appropriate indignation about the
looting of tobacco companies and gun manufacturers but nothing about this shakedown of ordinary citizens that is now routine in family courts throughout America. It all
begins when judges order the removal of children from fathers who are acknowledged to have done nothing wrong. It does not matter if the father is married or unmarried.
It does not matter if he has done nothing legally wrong. It does not matter if he has not agreed to a divorce or separation or given grounds for one. Once the court seizes control of his children, a feeding frenzy commences in which everything he and his family have is passed out as rewards to clients who operate within the patronage of the judge.
This is just one tiny glimpse of a multi-billion dollar machine that thrives and grows by ripping as many children from their fathers as it can and using those children as tools and weapons to extort money from their parents.
This machine is so riddled with conflicts-of-interest of this kind that it is nothing less than a system of organized crime. Enormous scorn is poured on fathers who fail to pay child support. Much of this is generated by the very people who are forcibly tearing apart the homes of children by the thousands and plundering their patrimony.
If Ken Gallahan loses his home and his job as a result of this bullying, he will be treated as one more deadbeat dad who stopped paying child support. This will justify more courts, more judges, more lawyers, more psychotherapists,
more bureaucratic police, who will take more children away from their fathers.
|
