(Judge Carma Dennis McGee, sworn in, from Tennessee Judiciary website)
A tyrannical ruling by a Tennessee judge triggered events leading to a mother not seeing her son for over a year, but that's only the beginning of the story.
Myra Horan spoke exclusively with me about her story. She hasn't seen her son since police took him out of her arms in August 2019.
The police came because she violated the order below.
As she explained to me, there is a lot more to this story, and it includes a reckless ruling by a judge who did not give reasoning for that decision.
Myra and her ex began their divorce proceedings the summer 2016, when their son was five.
She and her ex-husband mutually agreed to a plan in 2016 without a judge which split custody equally. That plan worked relatively well until her ex met what would be his new wife and wanted to move to Idaho.
He asked the judge for permission to modify their custody arrangement and move to Idaho.
The case came in front of Judge Carma Dennis McGee. At the time Judge McGee was the chancellor for the Twenty-Fourth District Chancery Court in Tennessee, according to the website BallotPedia.
She is now a judge on the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
A trial on his request was held on December 10, 2018, and her opinion was issued later that month. That opinion is below.
Not only did Judge McGee grant Myra's ex his request to move, she made him the primary residence and even assigned some of Myra's custody time to be spent in Idaho.
"Mother will have parenting time with the
parties' minor child one weekend per month from Friday at 6:00 p.m. until Sunday at 6:00
p.m. to be exercised in the State of Idaho," Judge McGee stated in her order.
Furthermore, while Myra was a stay at home mom at the time, she was still order to pay more than $250 per month in child support.
This occurred through a process called imputing income in which courts are allowed to assign income to people which they don't actually make in order to calculate income.
Worst of all, Judge McGee did not provide any reason for her decision. While both parents were deemed loving and not engaging in abuse or neglect, she simply granted his request without explanation.
"It is undisputed that both parties love their son, and the child loves both
parents," Judge McGee's ruling stated, while continuing, "Both parties have provided for the children's daily necessities while in his
or her respective care."
The judge also noted, "The parties have cared for the child equally for a period of fourteen months
since their divorce (April through December, 2018 and April through
August, 2017). Father was the child's primary caregiver for seven months
(September, 2017, through March, 2018). Mother was the child's primary
caregiver for three months (from January through March, 2017). Based
upon these time periods, Father has been the primary caregiver for a greater
time period since the parties' divorce. Therefore, this factor weighs in favor
of relocation with Father."
Indeed, the judge went through eighteen factors; these are the factors which the Tennessee code, according to Judge McGee's ruling, requires examining.
The majority of the factors weighed in neither's favor; the father had more factors weigh in his favor, but a couple more.
A move thousands of miles away is supposed to be only done with clear and convincing evidence. As Judge McGee said in her ruling, "With the parents living such a great distance from each other, the child will
have to visit with the alternate residential parent in large blocks of time, and
probably have to travel by airplane."
Myra also told me that the Judge McGee was buoyed by the faulty recommendations of Sherry Pritchett, who was their son's counselor and testified.
In Judge McGee's ruling she noted, "During the counseling period, the child has expressed on some occasions that he wants to
relocate to Idaho and sometimes that he wishes to stay in Tennessee."
A recording tells something quite different.
In the recording, her son says he wants to live with his mom. As such, conclusions from Pritchett like this, "Ms. Pritchett stated that the child appears niore comfortable with Fathar than with the
Mother," are also suspect.
I reached out to Ms. Pritchett but received no response.
Also, in Judge McGee's ruling, Myra's ex was painted as needing to move to Idaho for better job prospects.
" Father had no income between August, 2017 and December, 2017. He stated that he could
not work during that time because he had lo care for both of his children and could not
travel for his job. In Idaho, he believes that he will be able to drive to and from work rather
than have to stay away from home."
In his testimony, the father states his current job situation is good. See screenshot below.
Taken together, Judge McGee twisted enough facts to make what would normally seem like an obscene ruling seem reasonable.
Myra said she struggled adjusting to the new ruling and it was this desperation which led her to withhold her son in August 2019.
Once that happened, her ex went to a different Tennessee court which granted him an order for protection and that order has kept her son away from her since.
Myra has also been active on Facebook. Find her Facebook page here.
Recently, when she shared a Facebook memorywith her son she stated, "And now he sleeps 2,000 miles away and I’m not even allowed to communicate with him cause’ his dad commits felonies. Like perjury, fraud, kidnapping."
One other post is below.
“Not only for the present, but for the future”
This right here should have protected {her son} and I from my ex, his dad.
Digging through some things today.
The state of Tennessee violated the contract, aided in litigation abuse and committed crimes of human trafficking.
While I've seen many victimized parents post similar things, Myra's ex took exception and is now arguing it is a form of harassment. See below.
Now living in Idaho, Myra's ex got this heard in that state; the hearing was supposed to be by Zoom on October 20, 2020 at 4:30PM Mountain Time. The audio of the hearing is below.
The judge who heard it was Judge Robert Crowley, a magistrate or junior judge.
Because Judge Crowley started about twenty minutes late, the hearing was rescheduled.
It seems the hearing attracted some attention. More than ten people appeared ready to testify on Myra's behalf; her ex had no witnesses besides himself. The hearing also attracted my attention and so, if he thought this would silence Myra, the attempted order for protection may have created more attention toward the matter.
Furthermore, the hearing was sealed; I found this curious however staff say that it is policy at least in this particular courthouse to seal all protective order matters because they are sensitive.
Myra told me she sees this as her ex taking away her first amendment rights after taking her son away from her.
She is currently living with her boyfriend and they are raising their child; she said she can't afford an attorney and feels that spending money to fight this legal battle would take money and resources from the child she is raising.
I reached out to Judge McGee and the Tennessee courts but received no response.
Find an interview I did with Myra below.
Post Script
This is the second of four articles I'm doing in conjunction with a new organization entitled FIRST4. FIRST4 hopes to build software which would make activists aware whenever a child is taken by CPS anywhere in the US because the first four hours in the system are the most critical.
The public got a unique look at the sausage, so to speak, of corruption being made in the Minnesota legal system.
On September 16, 2020, the Minnesota Bar held a disciplinary hearing against Minnesota attorney Michelle MacDonald.
Michelle and I wrote the book "Sandra Grazzini-Rucki and the World's Last Custody Trial."
Michelle has been practicing as an attorney for nearly forty years and she never had any problems until she took up the Rucki case.
Since then, she was stopped by police for drunk driving despite later having no alcohol in her system, already suspended by the Bar once, detained for a full day without being charged, and even called a "person of interest" in a crime by certain people.
She is currently running for Minnesota Supreme Court in November 2020 and this hearing appeared timed so that it can be smeared against her during the campaign.
The first time Michelle was disciplined by the Board, it was for petty issues. Minneapolis Star Tribune describes it in more detail, "The Supreme Court’s suspension pointed to many instances of professional misconduct by MacDonald, including in 2013 when she interrupted a Dakota County judge in open court dozens of times, questioned the judge’s ability to be objective, failed to properly prepare for a court appearance, took photographs in court and other disruptive behavior that led to her arrest."
First the incident they are referring to occurred in 2013 but for unknown reasons the Minnesota Bar waited until 2018 to take action.
The Bar blamed Michelle for being handcuffed and wheeled in and forced to conduct part of a custody trial, that of the Rucki children, handcuffed to a wheelchair. In the video below, at 1:10:00 she is wheeled in and proceedings continue shortly after that.
Also, the judge who presided over the case, David Knutson, initially brought forward the complaint, something judges generally do not do.
This is important because this latest complaint in 2020 was also triggered by Judge David Knutson.
It turns out that Judge Knutson was listening to WCCO, a Minnesota radio station, when Michelle MacDonald, then also a candidate for Minnesota Supreme Court, came on a show called "Midday" with Blois Olsen.
Olson asked MacDonald about the Rucki case and she mentioned Judge Knutson, "Um, the children had run away. So that, that was a civil rights violation even before that happened," MacDonald said. "I have on behalf of Sandra sued the presiding judge. His name was David Knutson and I sued him in federal court. That suit was pending, um, when she was having her custody trial that event occurred."
Michelle is referring to herself being handcuffed to the wheelchair.
She continued, "Both of their rights were violated the court. What the public needs to be aware of is that I got involved- and I did the case pro bono- is that Sandra came to me and both she and her um= the father not her husband at the time- had no contact with their children whatsoever. Um the judge did that in September of 2012, without any hearing, without any process, and in two hours ordered her, she was already divorced, to leave her home, leave her children there, whom she had custody of, five of them, and ordered her not to return or she'd be arrested."
In fact, Judge Knutson's order said exactly that. It's below.
That is actually the only references to Judge Knutson but he still saw fit to file a complaint. The whole interview is below.
Judge Knutson previously had the Dakota County Sheriff's investigate a Twitter account which was critical of him. He was recently in the news on another matter as well; he just gave an unusually light sentence to a woman who nearly killed a toddler; she is to serve less than one year in jail, based on Knutson's light sentence.
In this case, after Judge Knutson filed a complaint, the board appears to have taken its time again. Though the interview- along with two other complaints- all were of things which occurred in 2018 or earlier, discipline was not brought until 2020.
Normally, such a disciplinary hearing would be held behind closed doors, but in this case, it was streamed live and the marathon session, two parts, is below.
The hearing centered on three things. First it was the interview which the Bar argued impugned Judge Knutson's integrity.
Second, Michelle had a dispute with a client where he may have paid $50 more than he should have.
Finally, she filed a lawsuit against Michael Brodkorb for defamation which the board considers frivolous and since she was required to do due diligence during her probation this would violate her probation.
If this seems petty, it's because it is.
In the case of the client, he was a walk-in, a slip and fall, who asked her to look at his case. Michelle agreed to open the file for $50 and then charged him $500 to review it.
That's what the review agreement states and her client even agreed this is what it states.
The bar, through their attorney Keshini Ratnayake, argued that the $500 was a "flat fee" which it was characterized as, and that in Minnesota a flat fee means the only fee.
Michelle noted that the $50 fee was also noted on the agreement and that she charged it first.
There was a question over what her client understood and when he actually got the agreement, but this dispute goes no further.
Ms. Ratnayake, in her opening remarks, said that Michelle's transgression against Judge Knutson was most significant because she'd already been found guilty by the Board of a similar transgression.
"The most serious misconduct Your Honor will learn about today is that in October of 2018, as a candidate for the Minnesota Supreme Court, Ms. MacDonald spoke on a radio program and repeated her false statements about the integrity of a judge, the same judge who was involved in her previous case."
During the hearing Ms. Ratnayake argued that in the September 5, 2012, hearing, Ms. Grazzini-Rucki was represented by counsel, thereby giving it process presumably.
Many people outside the law profession would be surprised to learn that lawyers are very limited in the things they can say about judges.
In fact, here is the rule from the American Bar Association (ABA).
A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge, adjudicatory officer or public legal officer, or of a candidate for election or appointment to judicial or legal office.
Ms. Ratnayake's argument, thereby, is that by saying Judge David Knutson provided her client no due process, she was recklessly disregarding the truth and impugning his reputation."
As Michelle testified, on September 5, 2012, Judge David Knutson held a telephonic conference without either parent present. No testimony was taken, as no witnesses were called, but at this conference, it was decided that SGR would be forcefully removed from her home and the five Rucki children's paternal aunt would move in. SGR was notified on September 7, in the order above, and given three hours to vacate the house or be arrested.
Judge Knutson's order was temporary, making it nearly impossible to appeal.
This, presumably, is what Ms. Ratnayake refers to as due process; I asked but she did not respond to an email.
Finally, Ms. Ratnayake accused Michelle of filing a frivolous lawsuit against Michael Brodkorb, who owns the website Missing in Minnesota."
Michelle lost her lawsuit when it was dismissed as a summary judgment, and an appeal's court upheld this decision.
One dispute revolves around Brodkorb's repeatedly referring to Michelle as a "person of interest" in the 2013 disappearance of the two Rucki girls; the girls were found in 2015 and four people were found guilty; Michelle was never suspected or charged.
I say she was never suspected because she previously played a recording of a phone conversation between her and a Lakeville Police Officer, Jason Polinski. Here is part of our book, Sandra Grazzini-Rucki and the World's Last Custody Trial.
I contacted Stahl immediately and read him the riot act. I
told him that I was cooperating and he had no right to call me a “person of
interest” just because I was Sandra’s lawyer. He has not done so since.
I didn’t know it at the time but Dronen had been in charge
of the case since 2014. Not once had he contacted me or Sandra in all that
time. Yet Dronen suggested “it was virtually the only one he worked on,”
according to a blog post on the case.
The last and only time I spoke with the Lakeville Police
Department, shortly before this book was published, they were wishy washy as to
whether or not I was a suspect.
I asked Lieutenant Jason Polinski if I was a “person of
interest” because a local blogger Michael Brodkorb had repeatedly used that
term. When I called Brodkorb out on it as defamatory, he said the Lakeville
police labeled me as a “person of interest”, it was reported by “numerous
outlets” since April 2015 and he could not remove a label he didn’t assign,
saying that “even if the label is removed, it is still accurate to report that
you were labeled a ‘person of interest’ in this case.” Brodkorb refused to take
down his posts or reveal his source.
The Stahl refers to Brandon Stahl of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, who stated that Michelle was a "person of interest" in one article in 2015. In fact, it was only reported that one time by Stahl and then repeatedly reported by Brodkorb.
As we explain, once contacted, Stahl stopped. Brodkorb is the only one, especially in 2020, still referring to her as a "person of interest" which is not an official police term.
In fact, Dr. Steven Hatfill, who was referred to the FBI as a "person of interest" in the anthrax attacks and later won millions for the false label.
Second, Michelle objected to an unflattering photo which Brodkorb often posted, which he claimed was a booking photo. A still of Michelle holding the photo during the hearing is below.
This is of course unlike any other booking photo or mugshot. A mugshot is below.
Once again, Brodkorb argued that law enforcement provided him this mugshot and it was law enforcement who referred to it as a mugshot.
Michelle said there could not have been a mugshot since when she was detained on September 13, 2013, while she was held for approximately a day, she was never booked and allowed to leave without being booked.
This led to a bizarre exchange where Ms. Ratnayake said, "I know it is your opinion you were never booked..." but then arguing since Brodkorb asked for a booking photo and said this is what was provided, this meant she was booked and had a booking photo.
Finally, Michelle argued that Brodkorb would put the photo above in blog posts next to the photos of everyone who was convicted in the case- Dede Evavold, :Doug Dahlen, Gina Dahlen, and Sandra Grazzini-Rucki- and this she argued was defamation by implication. More on this legal term here.
Finally, Michelle said that Brodkorb falsely accused her of a DUI. She was never convicted of a DUI; she was convicted of obstruction, even though she was stopped for being suspected of a DUI, and later found to have had no alcohol. Somehow, the court found she obstructed the fruitless investigation into her non-existent DUI.
Everyone agreed that she was not convicted of a DUI; Michelle argued that Brodkorb falsely accused her of it in a tweet; Brodkorb testified and provided an affidavit saying he never did any such thing.
For Michelle's strongest evidence, she provided a screenshot from her phone of this tweet. It's below.
(screenshot presented from Michelle's phone of what appears to be a tweet)
Brodkorb acknowledged that @mbrodkorb is his twitter account. RT generally means retweet, so it does appear as though he is retweeting the false tweet from a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter named David Chanen whose twitter handle is @chanenstrib.
Brodkorb testifies to this in the last seventeen minutes of the second part of the hearing.
Brodkorb said he did not know where Michelle got this but that he did not find any such tweet and said he was sticking with his testimony that he never tweeted this out.
From this it appears Ms. Ratnayake claims that the lawsuit was frivolous.
Here's an opinion based on fact. Judge David Knutson was bribed in this case. That means you are defending someone as honorable who took a bribe.
Now, if he didn't take a bribe, why do you think David Rucki got 100%, plus child support and alimony, plus sole custody? Why do you think a lawyer was forced to conduct part of this trial handcuffed to a wheelchair?
Knutson has people like you do his dirty work. I'm attaching a police report. This is him asking Dakota County Sheriff's to investigate a tweet. Anyone says something he doesn't like and Knutson can have them investigated. https://www.scribd.com/document/441542723/By-the-Respondent#from_embed
Who do you think you are in this scenario? You're either a fool or budding to be as corrupt as him. I don't know which. Which is it
Post Script
This is the start of a four article series which is being done in conjunction with a new organization entitled FIRST4. FIRST4 hopes to build software which would make activists aware whenever a child is taken by CPS anywhere in the US because the first four hours in the system are the most critical.
4) https://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2020/09/joannas-incredible-international.html that's Joanna. Her birth mom was an unwed teenager living in a group home in England; Joanna was conceived through rape, when authorities pressured her mom to abort she refused, so social services took the kid and had an American couple adopt her, move her to Florida, and abuser her, until she got lost in Florida's foster care system.
(Judge Judith Wells of Tarrant County, from her Twitter)
Tarrant County has had a longstanding reputation for bias and corruption in its court.
In one notorious incident, Texas District Judge George Gallagher of Tarrant County used electroshocks on a defendant, Terry Lee Morris, when Morris was tried and convicted of solicitation in 2016.
The story received widespread coverage after an appeal's court reversed the conviction, citing the judge's behavior. Here's part of a story from the Dallas News.
Tarrant County Judge George Gallagher told a bailiff to shock Morris three times when he didn't answer the judge as directed, according to court transcripts cited in the appeals court's opinion. The shocks scared Morris so much that he was afraid to return to the courtroom, missing part of his trial.
Stun belts, which deliver an eight-second, 50,000-volt shock by remote control, are typically used on defendants accused of violent crimes who pose security threats in court. But the appeals court said the stun belt was not used that way on Morris.
"While the trial court's frustration with an obstreperous defendant is understandable, the judge's disproportionate response is not," Justice Yvonne T. Rodriguez said in the court's opinion. "We do not believe that trial judges can use stun belts to enforce decorum.
In 2016, then District Judge Mike Sinha, also from Tarrant County, said on tape, "I have a lot lot of liberty and a lot of discretion as a district court judge when it comes to families. The Family Code is fair. And the District Court has the opportunity to do things that are Constitutional and unconstitutional."
If the video has been disabled, check it out here.
I was first introduced to Tarrant County when I did a 2015 article for Capital Research Center entitled "Making Divorce Pay". In the article, I interviewed Jennifer Olson, an activist from Tarrant County. The article was about a group called the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC), but Olson described how AFCC teamed up locally with Tarrant County judges to take advantage of access and visitation grants.
Fatherhood grants and Access Visitation grants are creations borne out of the landmark welfare reform bill of 1996. Jennifer Olson is executive director of the Protective Parents Coalition, a Texas-based family court reform group, and she says all AV Grants in her state are run through the office of Anita Stuckey, an AFCC member who is also the state’s AV Grant Contract Manager and State Access Program Coordinator for the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
Olson found that in her home Tarrant County alone, state AV grant funds dwarf federal funds with three grantees (New Day Services, Legal Aid Northwest and Tarrant County Domestic Relations Office). Stuckey has been known to offer contracts exclusively to AFCC members. “I want to ensure wide distribution of this opportunity for Access and Visitation services,” Stuckey wrote to an internal AFCC email list in 2006.
Olson said her research has been thwarted by the State of Texas, which claims some individual case files and numbers are private while saying it doesn’t collect data on individual providers and their case load. For instance, anecdotally Olson found that AFCC Texas member James Jensen received a lot of cases involved in AV Grants, but neither he nor Tarrant County could provide an exact number. Jenson didn’t respond to my email for comment.
More recently, Olson popped up again, as a defendant, when a couple influential lawyers from Tarrant County sued her and another activist over Facebook posts and things she and another activist put on PPC's website in 2016. Here's from the Star Telegram.
Two attorneys are suing a watchdog group dedicated to reforming the Tarrant County family court system and alleging libel and slander, saying it used social media posts to falsely accuse them of unethical and illegal activities.
Attorneys Lori DeAngelis and Laurie Robinson accuse the Southlake-based Protective Parents Coalition, its co-founder Jennifer Olson, and Donna Tribunella, one of the group’s followers, of defaming them by publishing malicious comments without any evidence, court records state.
Among the allegations is that DeAngelis and Robinson unethically colluded with Tarrant County judges to receive higher attorneys fees and more business while also conspiring with caseworkers to destroy critical social study reports that are part of the court’s records, the lawsuit states.
Olson and PPC filed to dismiss under SLAPP, the Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, arguing that the initial lawsuit was filed solely to try and silence her speech. That lawsuit was dismissed later on those grounds.
Judge Judith Wells
More recently, several high-profile cases have involved one Tarrant County Judge, Judith Wells. Judge Wells is a Republican, who last won an election in 2018, according to the website Ballotpedia.
Judge Wells has a 2.6 rating out of 10 at The Robing Room, in five ratings; all the ratings were bad.
"(s)he ruined my daughters life by placing her with an abusive father. probably because his lawyer contributed mega cash to her election campaign. Karma will come around," one rating stated.
Brad Lamb
Most recently, Judge Wells has gotten mixed up in Brad Lamb's custody and CPS/police case.
Lamb has been featured in numerous places, but in particular, he did a detailed first person narrative and timeline on the website Fighter Cries which you can find here. He appeared on Dad Talk Today.
He also appeared on CPS the Reality Series.
Both his children have made several- what he refers to as "outcries"- or disclosures to Child Protective Services (CPS), police, courts, parents, teachers, and others of abuse. Here is part of Lamb's narrative and timeline from Fighter Cries.
Friday, June 28, 2019 – Pick up the kids from their mother’s after one week. My wife, accompanies me on all exchanges.
* Upon arrival at home, Son unleashes an earful of being hit, being sucked, being sodomized, & his sister being raped in graphic detail to me & my wife.
But as Lamb described, Judge Wells, teaming up with court professionals and others, has engaged in a long term cover-up.
(Photo provided by Lamb of bruises on his son)
Not only does his children's abusers- a step-sibling- continue to live with Lamb's children, but Lamb has been slowly but systematically removed from his children's lives by Judge Wells.
He even described going to jail in 2019.
Son made a horrific outcry against his mother in July. The court forced me to allow the children to go back to their mother’s. Upon return from their mother’s my son makes his second outcry. This time I would not allow the children to go back and be subjected to that again.
I got thrown in jail for doing this. I was told that I was the first person in 22 years to be put in jail for interference with child custody. I was picked up by the Fugitive Task Force, dressed in full riot gear and parked in my entire neighborhood like I was El Chapo. I was met with an officer in full riot gear with a riot shield and his gun drawn, standing beside him was an officer in riot gear with the battering ram for our front door, Police and task force cars were parked in our grass, driveway, and all over our street. Standing behind the first 2 officers were another 5 to 7 law enforcement that were in green army gear. The officer with the riot shield even threatened to shoot our family pet, a chiweenie. The officers dressed in the army gear however took over and defused the situation with the arrest and treated me very civil. I then had a 48 hour hold placed on me where no one on the outside could get any info on me or find out what was going on.
In my holding cell, which is a 10X10 concrete room with a toilet, I watched the group in my cell get escorted out every 4 hours to see the judge…. Except for me. The officers would tell me nothing, and most seemed even more confused than I was as to why I was there and why I’m not moving in the system like everyone else. This continued to go on every 4 hours until around 5 am, where I did not see a judge, but they moved me instead to security level 3 general population jail.
Charity Long
Lamb said he was the first person in twenty-two years to be arrested for custodial interference in Tarrant County, but recently, Judge Wells had another person arrested for custodial interference, Charity Long.
I recently spoke with an activist who described her case. That conversation is below.
As the activist explained, Charity is not even the biological mother in this case, but a forced foster mother. Both the birth parents have had their parental rights terminated, something which is very unusual.
The biological father went to jail while the biological mother was struggling with a drug addiction.
Charity, a distant relative to the child, was asked to be a foster parent so the child did not go into the system.
Charity agreed but the problems began when the paternal grandparents began demanding visitation time.
"They've had concerns about the grandparents...because they had a CPS history. That's why the child wasn't placed with them in the first place," The activist told me. "The grandparents are neglectful and also the grandmother has drug issues."
But Judge Wells issued orders granting the grandparents unsupervised, overnight visits.
When Charity refused to turn the child over, she was arrested and given ten days in jail by Judge Wells.
That happened in the last two weeks of September 2020. Find an appeal in the case here. I reached out to Judge Wells but received no response.
Judge Patricia Baca Bennett
Judge Patricia Baca Bennett has also been implicated by several people in shenanigans. Judge Bennett is thejudge of the 360th Family District Court in Tarrant County. She was first elected in 2016 and is up for reelection in November 2020.
Her opponent in November is Michael Munoz. Bennett is a Republican while Munoz is a Democrat.
In 2018, she got in some hot water when a fellow judge accused her in a lawsuit of intimidation. Here is part of a story from The Texas Monitor.
Diane Scott Haddock, associate judge for the 233rd State District Court, is also suing the county, saying it failed to control the defendant, 360th State District Judge Patricia Baca-Bennett.
The suit alleges that Baca-Bennett objected to social media commentary by Scott Haddock’s husband, Gerald Haddock, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Baca-Bennett also allegedly told Scott Haddock to stop her husband from posting social media comments in support of an opponent of James Munford, whom Baca-Bennett was backing in a judicial election.
Leyva has done several videos on her You Tube channel about this case. Find one below.
She has also been interviewed on CPS the Reality Series
As Sarah describes, she is not even a resident of Tarrant. She has lived largely in Virginia. Judge Wells used dubious logic to establish jurisdiction and then switched custody based on false allegations she was keeping her children away from their father.
She has gone from being the primary parent to barely seeing her children in a matter of months under the rulings of Judge Bennett.
She further told me she has recently discovered a second case which has been opened on her while recently receiving an order to appear for a deposition. Judge Bennett recently recused herself however Sarah's case is now being presided over by Judge Wells.
Judge Bennett's Tactics
I also spoke with two activists familiar with Tarrant County courts. That conversation is below.
"She'll take children away from parents just because she doesn't like them," the activist told me,
They said she does a habeas corpus scheme.
"The habeas corpus is basically just to say, who is supposed to have the kid right now and give the kid back. That's all the law is allowed to do...but what they'll do is they won't notify the other party the hearing." The activist stated. "Whoever is not employing one of Baca's friends, they won't notify them of the hearing. They'll have the process server falsify the citation, saying that they did serve these people with the documents, and there's no court reporter on a very serious issue such as taking somebody's child away, and the judge will modify the custody order, when that's not what the custody order is supposed to do."
The activist continued, "They're using temporary orders to essentially switch custody from one parent to the other, and they're using these temporary orders exactly the same way a lawyer would use a summary judgment. A summary judgment is basically like, 'judge we have all the pictures and evidence and there's not gonna be a hearing, but we just want you to make a decision."
The activist explained that temporary orders are a way to switch custody, or make other life altering decisions, without holding a hearing, but they have the further potency of not being something which can be appealed.
Lyndsay Newell
Lyndsay Newell is a powerful lawyer in Tarrant County, and she is a court appointed professional on both Lamb and Leyva's case.
Here is more from Lamb from Fighter Cries, "Wells appointed Lyndsay Newell (again) as amicus attorney, although the appointment of an amicus was not an issue in the days earlier court proceedings. My legal team explicitly requested that Newell NOT be appointed in this case as substantial evidence questioning the impartiality of Newell was available. Note: Newell was awarded a judgement on me in excess of $11,000 with payments being set up as child support payments at $350 per month when my child support is only $280."
Newell did not respond to a voicemail at her office for comment.
A Father Tells HIs Tale
A father also told me of how his ex-wife was the subject of sixty CPS reports but that he now only sees his children about thirty-two hours per month, not even a day and a half per month. How? He told me that his lawyer quit, a judge refused to give him time to get another lawyer, and he did not know how to properly submit evidence so a trial happened without all the evidence he wanted.
Tarrant County CPS
Finally, I spoke to Paul Propst. Propst works for a charity providing parenting classes, and he said based on the stories he has heard from parents some patterns in Tarrant County CPS emerge, along with the judges. More is below.
"They are automatically a non-violent issue, CPS going in and taking the child from the home," he said.
"You have a custodial parent and a non-custodial parent, and the custodial parent in the State of Texas has the majority of the time. So, the custodial parent will have CPS called on them. They will have CPS involved in their lives. Automatic by default, CPS automatically pulls the child and does not consider the non-custodial parent."
He continued, "These parents: they are providing adequate evidence that they are fit parents, that they are not causing the sexual abuse, physical abuse, but CPS is overlooking it and the family court is overlooking."
On the other hand, he also said, "CPS workers are not doing their job investigating some cases like they should, especially regarding sexual {abuse}."
As I pointed out, this means in some cases CPS refused to look at evidence to clear parents falsely accused of abuse, while in other cases, CPS refuses to look at evidence where there is a legitimate allegation.
One CPS Case
Finally, I spoke with another activist who told me about Breanna. In her case, a neighbor made several false allegations which were reported to police and CPS; even though they were determined false by CPS, CPS then later picked them up again relitigating those while creating new issues. Breanna was being gagged, or threatened with silence through court order, as well, I was told. Full conversation is below.
Please note. I welcome any and all comments from any political perspective. I will not stand or approve any swearing, and personal attacks will likely also not be approved.
