Dalton Facing Jail for 4 Emails

The persecution of Natalia Dalton continues.

As I recently documented on American Legal News, Dalton had a son born with her ex-boyfriend, Julio LoCayo in 2008.

For the first six years, Natalia Dalton had physical custody of their son and the ex-couple only appeared in court once to argue.

Custody was switched in April 2014- in what was supposed to be a routine status conference- after LoCayo’s lawyers filed an emergency motion claiming Dalton had come to school barefoot and custody needed to be switched as a result.

Since 2014, when custody was switched, they have appeared a hundred times and more, almost always initiated by LoCayo, with LoCayo and his attorney going into court repeatedly to reduce and ultimately eliminate any time Dalton still has with her son.

It’s gotten so bad that the court is now entertaining a motion by LoCayo which would limit Dalton to four hours per month with her son which would be supervised, and she would pay for it. Dalton is ordered to pay $150 for each two hour session. 

Worse than that, Dalton faces up more than $40,000 in fees and penalties and 37 days in jail.

Approximately six months ago, after losing a series of so-called show cause motions- the court restricted Dalton’s access to her children by forbidding her from having any contact with any doctor about her son.

The court justified this stance by claiming that Dalton has brought forward a series of frivolous allegations against LoCayo.

After noticing a change in her son’s prescription, Dalton did contact her son’s doctor, who indeed noticed the prescription was being administered inaccurately, but since this still violated a court order, Dalton faces a new sanction and Alexandria (Virginia) Circuit Court Judge Lisa Kemler will consider a motion made by LoCayo’s attorney, Donnie Colton, to have Dalton sent to jail for as much as 37 days on June 15, 2018.

Colton and Kemler did not respond to emails for comment.

Enter Debra Bray

Debra Bray is an attorney in Virginia and on March 15, 2018, she was appointed as the new Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) on the custody matter.

Her findings since have helped the court continue to persecute Dalton.

For instance, in an affidavit submitted on May, 17, 2018, “This last year witnessed a reversal in the minor child’s behavior concurrent with mother unable to accept father as sole custodian.” Bray continued, “Mother has already involved the courts, CPS, and the police in allegations of physical abuse of the child and they were dismissed every time.”

Bray notes that the child first started exhibiting behavioral issues in late 2013, at almost the exact moment when Dalton said she noticed her son becoming more aggressive with visits to his father.

But Bray made an even more egregious statement in the affidavit: “The previous GAL has done a thorough investigation and found it (the allegations of abuse) to be without merit. The undersigned GAL (Bray) has met with the minor child privately while neither parent was present in the building and the child made no disclosures. I provided him every opportunity and even when discussing discipline and the home environment, the child did not convey concerns.”

Dalton said that Bray told her that was not Bray’s place to ask the child about abuse but rather the child would disclose if he wanted to.

Indeed, it is unclear how either Bray or the previous GAL to whom she gives so much credence, Isabel Kaldenbach, are in any way qualified to determine if abuse is real.

Kaldenbach, Dalton told me, downplayed the abuse in a previous hearing by saying it was in the past

Both are lawyers. Kaldenbach told me she was not trained in child abuse but in advocating for a child.

She was trained, she told me, by the Virginia Supreme Court, which would have no special training in spotting abuse either.

Bray did not respond to an email for comment.

LoCayo has been arrested several times, convicted of crimes more than once; Dalton provided photos, police reports, medical reports, her own testimony, and testimony of friends who witnessed his abusive nature to back up her allegations of abuse.

In one police report from 2013, LoCayo allegedly pushed her into an open-door frame before slamming the door in her face during an argument. She had bruises on her back and filed a police report immediately after the incident.

UPDATE: 

So-called Judge Lisa Kemler sentenced Natalia to five days in jail and did not fine her.