CONFIRMED BY ILL. SUPREME COURT– YOU ARE VIEWING THE MOST DANGEROUS BLOG IN ILLINOIS. This blog warranted a 3 year suspension by the ARDC/Jerome Larkin! Mottos: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant". Justice Louis Brandeis ; "If the truth can destroy something, then it deserves to be destroyed" Carl Sagan; "Justice is Truth in Action" Benjamin Disraeli. Illinois uses the ARDC to quash dissenting attorney activist blogs ; "The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic Governments" — (1776-First Amendment preamble adopted by 8 US colonies)
Former Patent and Trademark Attorney practicing in Chicago, Illinois accepting clients nationwide. We also did trademarks, general intellectual property and business litigation. See our website at www.DenisonLaw.com. Now suspended for 3 years by the Illinois Atty Regn and Disciplinary Commission for blogging about corruption and telling truths that the ARDC wants to cover up. And while I am doing that, I will continue on my blogging work. Now I work full time on court corruption and corruption at the ARDC and JIB (Illinois attorney and judge discipline boards)
In a stinging slap at the Justice Department, a federal judge last week ordered practically all the lawyers in its main DC office to take ethics training for five years.
At that, they got off lightly: Judge Andrew Hanen said he would have disbarred the lawyers, who had deceived him, if he had the power.
Hanen was the judge who heard the request by 26 states to toss out President Obama’s 2014 executive order granting temporarily legal status to millions of immigrants who aren’t actually legal.
The case is now before the Supreme Court — which is the only reason Hanen didn’t issue a summary judgment against Obama and the lawyers who lied.
Federal rules of civil procedure require attorneys to neither mislead the courts, nor allow the courts to be misled. Hanen found that the Justice lawyers had done just that — in his court.
How so? The states were considering filing for an immediate injunction to stop Justice from implementing the Obama order. The lawyers assured Hanen in court that nothing would go ahead before February 2015, so there was no need.
Then the department went ahead and “legalized” 100,000 illegals — without ever telling the judge.
Hence his fury once he learned the truth.
Hanen not only barred the offending attorneys from ever appearing in his court again, he ordered ethics training for all lawyers from “Main Justice,” the DC central office, who might appear in courts in any of the 26 states.
He has also ordered Attorney General Loretta Lynch to present within 60 days her plan for making sure Justice lawyers never play such games again.
We don’t blame Lynch: This all went on under her predecessor, Eric Holder. But we hope she embraces Hanen’s order rather than trying to appeal.
All lawyers have an obligation “to act honestly in all of their dealings with a court,” as Hanen put it. And attorneys at the Justice Department have a clear duty to be candid with the courts.
Lynch might want to see if she can get her guilty subordinates disbarred.
“Clearly, there seems to be a lack of knowledge about or adherence to the duties of professional responsibility in the halls of the Justice Department,” Hanen wrote in a 28-page order in which he sought to emphasize his demand for “honesty” by quoting dialogue from the movie “Miracle on 34th Street.”
“The need to tell the truth, especially in court, was obvious to a fictional young Tommy Mara Jr., in 1947, yet there are certain attorneys in the Justice Department who apparently have not received that message or more likely have just decided they are above such trivial concepts,” the judge stated.
Ginger Franklin of Nashville speaks before the Tennessee Bar Association.
(Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of a three-part series on guardianship abuses appearing this week on Next Avenue.)
Note: JMD comments in blue
Ginger Franklin was just shy of her 50th birthday when she fell down the stairs of her Nashville-area townhouse in 2008. A marketing representative for Sam’s Club, she was taken to the hospital with a severe brain injury. Doctors weren’t sure if she would survive.
Since Franklin had not designated anyone to make decisions for her if she became incapacitated, and with no immediate family, her aunt was advised to petition the court for a guardian. The guardian, a lawyer appointed by the county, placed her in a group home for seriously mentally ill adults.
But Franklin was not mentally ill. And she did what no one expected her to do: she recovered.
When she returned home from a rehabilitation center seven weeks later, however, the guardian “told me that I didn’t have a home anymore and that my townhouse was empty,” Franklin said.
Some of these cases are the ugliest family cases you can imagine…. somebody who did not get access to Mom and Dad’s money [against] someone who did.
— Brenda Uekert, National Center for State Courts
(Note, in many other cases you can be targeted by the OPG–Office of Public Guardian, the hospitals you stay in, financial planners–anyone that might sell your elderly loved one to a for-profit guardian, attorney, CPA, nursing home or other professional at hundreds of dollars per hour)
As is common in guardianship cases, the court granted permission for the guardian to sell Franklin’s home and its contents. The owners of the group home where she was placed then put Franklin to work: She was forced to do the grocery shopping, cook, dispense medication, watch over the other residents of the house and clean the owners’ personal home — for no pay, Franklin said. Meanwhile, she was paying $850 monthly rent to the owners, plus $200-per-hour attorney fees to the guardian for such tasks as writing checks for Franklin’s expenses and leaving phone messages, according to a court document.
With the help of an advocate, and media attention, Franklin fought the guardianship in court, winning her freedom in 2010 after two long years of having no legal rights. She now lives independently in the Nashville area and has sued the guardian.
“It’s quite an understatement to say I was devastated,” she told Next Avenue. “I don’t trust people anymore. I lost everything — because I fell down the stairs.”
Note: the mantra is “target, isolate, medicate, drain the estate, narcotize to death, quietly cremate.”
More Will Enter ‘The Danger Age’
The article then goes on to quote one of the four GAO reports from the Senate Subcommitte on Aging that are published elsewhere on this blog.
Jennifer Wright
As the boomer population moves into old age, the numbers of people affected by guardianship and conservatorship will rise “tremendously,” said Jennifer Wright, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis who directs the school’s Elder Law Practice Group.
“There are more of us who are going to enter the danger age,” she said.
Primary, there will be more entering the danger age AND being endangered because law enforcement currently will not touch any of these cases, nor will the bar association, so the strings of felonies committed against seniors under color of law, will sky rocket.
With as little as a single document — and in some cases, not even a court hearing — older adults can see their most basic rights stripped away. They cannot vote, get married or get divorced. A family member or a stranger appointed by the court will decide where they will live, how their money will be spent, what health care they will get or not get, when they will go out, when and where they may travel and whom they are allowed to see.
Guardianships: Difficult to Challenge
Rarely is an “incapacitated person” or ward able to get a guardianship or conservatorship terminated — until death, that is. Franklin was, in that sense, very lucky.
“Go ahead and see what you can do, because you have been deemed incapacitated, so everything you say or do is meaningless,” said Brenda Uekert, principal court research consultant with the National Center for State Courts. “You can’t even get an attorney, because a judge has already determined that you don’t have the ability to make decisions for yourself.”
You can note right here that any attorney that you get will come from a “secret list” the judge has and they will generally do nothing but drain your estate. They will not advocate with a flurry of motions, writs of habeus corpus, nada, nothing. You will not get a budget, you will not get ratings of former “clients” that were served by the attorneys. Check out Judge Gorcya’s testimony where she “appoints” three attorneys for the children that file nothing, no motions to vacate, no motions to reconsider, no appeals, no writ of habeus corpus.
Those who do try to fight often end up paying exorbitant amounts of money.
“Many families go bankrupt because they believe if they hang in there long enough the system will work for them, and it doesn’t,” said Elaine Renoire, a director of the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse in Loocootee, Ind., a victims’ rights group. The No. 1 complaint she hears: guardians who try to isolate older adults from their loved ones.
In her 2014 book, The Con Game: A Failure of Trust, business professor T.S. Laham of Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area wrote that America’s guardianship system is “an open invitation to potential abuse.” (Next Avenuewrote about the book last year.)
Definitions Inconsistent, Numbers Elusive
What is meant by the terms “guardian” and “conservator” varies depending on the state. National groups working on reform efforts use “guardian” to refer to a person appointed by the court to make decisions over an individual and “conservator” to refer to a person appointed to handle the estate. Some use the terms interchangeably or use one to cover both situations.
Note: In Illinois: (755 ILCS 5/11a-3) (from Ch. 110 1/2, par. 11a-3) Sec. 11a-3. Adjudication of disability; Power to appoint guardian. (a) Upon the filing of a petition by a reputable person or by the alleged disabled person himself or on its own motion, the court may adjudge a person to be a disabled person, but only if it has been demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that the person is a disabled person as defined in Section 11a-2. If the court adjudges a person to be a disabled person, the court may appoint (1) a guardian of his person, if it has been demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that because of his disability he lacks sufficient understanding or capacity to make or communicate responsible decisions concerning the care of his person, or (2) a guardian of his estate, if it has been demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that because of his disability he is unable to manage his estate or financial affairs, or (3) a guardian of his person and of his estate. (b) Guardianship shall be utilized only as is necessary to promote the well-being of the disabled person, to protect him from neglect, exploitation, or abuse, and to encourage development of his maximum self-reliance and independence. Guardianship shall be ordered only to the extent necessitated by the individual’s actual mental, physical and adaptive limitations.
But what happens in an Illinois courtroom, there is no trial, there is just an “agreement” between all the court appointed attorneys to guardianize and it’s nearly always a full guardianship, no matter what the more reputable MD says, they have courtroom troll docs who make sure it’s 100% incapacity of the elder and 24-7 care to drain the estate as fast and furious as possible.
It is difficult to impossible to know how many people are under guardianship or conservatorship in the United States, experts said. Many states do not do comprehensive record-keeping. A 2013 AARP report gave a “best guess” estimate of the number of adults under guardianship nationally at 1.5 million, but added the data “are scant and vary in quality.”
One has to wonder about this comment. A guardian has a legal duty to report every year on the condition of the ward and spread on the record any death in a prompt manner. Someone could do the accounting, but apparently no one cares about grandma or grandpa I suppose it is just as well, CPS or Child Protectioin or Family Protection Service loses tens of thousand of children every year in the system making one wonder if the system can just be dismantled and done on an ad hoc basis.
Despite the lack of statistics, those familiar with the system say the vast majority of guardians and conservators, perhaps 80 percent or more, are relatives of the incapacitated person.
Idaho and Minnesota are the only states that track the amount of money being controlled by guardians or conservators; the combined total for just those two states is over $1 billion, according to Uekert.
A Parade of Atrocities
Abuses that have been reported in recent years include the following:
A Phoenix woman, Marie Long, had managed through careful saving and investing to amass $1.3 million by the time she had a stroke in 2005. Four years later, she was nearly broke, her estate having been bilked by an unscrupulous guardian agency that, among other things, charged $50 per hour for someone to open her mail, according to the Arizona Republic. The agency later closed shop; Long died in 2014.
Daniel Gross of Long Island was hospitalized with cellulitis while visiting a daughter in Connecticut in 2005. When his children began arguing over his care and who should control his money, he was placed under conservatorship in that state without being told of a hearing; his court-appointed lawyer didn’t object. Gross then landed in a locked nursing home ward with a violent roommate, the Hartford Courant wrote. He was later freed by a judge who called what happened under a different jurist “a terrible miscarriage of justice.“
Sixty-seven-year-old William Kehl suffered a major stroke that landed him in a Punta Gorda, Fla., hospital in 2008. When the facility wanted to discharge him to a distant rehab center, his ex-wife and medical power-of-attorney resisted. The hospital petitioned the court to appoint a guardian, who sold off Kehl’s assets and paid herself $1,827 a month until Kehl’s ex-wife managed to take over as guardian and bring him to her home, according to a 2014 article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Palm Beach County, Fla., Circuit Judge Martin Colin was transferred from the court’s guardianship division earlier this year after an investigation by the Palm Beach Post raised questions of a conflict of interest based on the fact that his wife was a paid professional guardian in the same court.
A Las Vegas woman, Patience Bristol, is now in prison after pleading guilty in 2013 to exploitation of a vulnerable person. She “tapped the accounts of her [four] wards to cover her sizable gambling debts and personal expenses” totaling $495,000 in just one case, according to a lawsuit reported in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
For more cases, see my current list of 30 cases I intend to take to the Senate Committee on Aging and I ask that people email me for a survey form joanne@denisonlaw.com
Reasons for the Abuse
The principle behind guardianship and conservatorship is noble: Make sure that someone who cannot take care of himself or herself has another person or institution watching out for their interests.
And in most instances, it works the way it should, say professionals who have pursued reform efforts.
But dig into the details and a more complicated picture emerges.
Bernard A. Krooks
“The system is underfunded. There’s not enough judges who understand what to do and how to do it. There’s not enough volunteers to do the work. And there’s not enough money to pay people to do it on a compensatory basis,” said Bernard A. Krooks, founding partner of the New York law firm Littman Krooks.
Courts need — but often lack — the money for staff to oversee guardians and conservators and to review the periodic reports they are required to submit. There may be a shortage of judges to handle cases of all kinds, including guardianships. Counties often lack the funds to appoint public or professional guardians when the ward is indigent.
“And you’re dealing with the most vulnerable segment of the population,” including the elderly and disabled who cannot stand up for themselves, Krooks said. “So you’ve just got a recipe for disaster, and that’s what’s happening in a lot of states.”
The main problem is that this has been a system of greed and corruption for decades. There should be a FBI agent on every probate floor right outside the door everytime probate is in session. And if there is ONE complaint the dude is useless, he should be kicked to the curb. Most corruption clients of mine file dozens of complaints with the authorities–all valid and reasonable and 99% are dismissed without any investigation being done. Reports of abuse presented in court are frequently handed right back to the abusers–the court tied in troll doctors, lawyers and anti social workers.
Angling for the Money
But much of it starts, he said, with greed.
“We’re seeing [relatives] initiate ‘will contests’ while the person is still alive — I think that’s what a lot of these contested guardianships come down to,” Krooks said. In those cases, what may be argued is not whether there should be a guardian but who it should be.
Uekert agreed. “Some of these cases are the ugliest family cases you can imagine. Some of them make child custody cases seem like a cake walk… somebody who did not get access to Mom and Dad’s money (against) someone who did,” she said.
Note: the real question here is, why are there no hearings on this, no due process, no petition, no briefing schedule, no hearing, no trial on the issue of visitation? Better yet, the Elder Federal Protection Act of 2009 says if an elder or disabled wants to see a person, and that person wants to see the Elder, why isn’t that being done?
The petitioner — the person or institution asking a court for the guardianship — can be a relative or a nursing home or a hospital. The judge may appoint any of those — or name a professional guardian (if the ward has assets) or a public guardian (if a ward has no money).
Note, that while appointing a nursing home is an obvious conflict of interest, this happens all the time. People file petitions who will benefit from it tremendously. And if they don’t do it, they pass it along to someone who will act as a strawman in the case. No one is tracking any of the money that flows all over the place–kickbacks and payoffs and finder’s fees are very common. Elders for cash.
Catherine Seal
Catherine Seal, a Colorado attorney who has worked in elder law for 20 years and been involved in guardianship reform, said state laws on the issue vary greatly. However, Seal noted, “Even in the states with the most sophisticated statutes, you still have court hearings that happen ex parte, which means that nobody gets to be there other than the petitioner.” She said she had a recent case in which a judge signed an initial order appointing an emergency guardian without any hearing and without the required affidavits swearing to the allegations in the petition.
“I represented the respondent, and I went into court as soon as I could, and we got the thing dismissed — because the court didn’t have the necessary information,” Seal said. Her client had the means to pay for an attorney, she said. Most don’t.
In John Wyman’s mother’s case, the Order for Guardianship was “walked thru” days before the date set by statutory notice for hearing, leaving the case without jurisdiction. When I came into the case to do a Motion to Dismiss based upon lack of jurisdiction, Judge Fabiano was furious, turned red, and repeated like a parrot, I was being disrespectful to her. I apologized, said I was not trying to be disrespectful, but had to state the facts and law for the record so we could all get out of there. She calmed down after that.
Limited Background Checks of Non-Professional Guardians
In December 2014, a survey on state guardianship laws and court practices found that almost 40 percent of the 1,000 respondents said that criminal background checks were not required of non-professional guardians of an estate. Respondents to the survey, commissioned by the Administrative Conference of the United States, included judges, court staff and guardians from around the country.
Sixty percent of the court respondents said they did not require a credit or financial background check on a prospective guardian.
But a background check could alert a judge to the potential for abuse once the guardian or conservator has control of someone’s assets. Seal said judges should require guardians to get a bond so the protected person can be “made whole” in the event of misuse or fraud.
If a financial institution refuses to issue the bond, that’s a red flag. “If you’re not a good financial risk, you shouldn’t be in charge of the money,” she said.
What’s with the credit check obsession? Why not just come out and make them file Ethics Reports detailing all the money they have received in the health care industry, if they get bribes or kickbacks and identify the source. Also, let family members get their bank account records showing all deposits into any account they own, or their spouse. Why be so shy? And they should also be tested for psychopathy and the results published. Turns out that psychopaths and narcissists are proud of the fact they feel no tender emotions such as love, kindness, caring, sympathy, empathy or remorse because it “helps them have superior thinking.” Right.
Where the Courts Fall Short
Seal and other experts said that once guardianships or conservatorships are established, monitoring of those ongoing relationships often falls short.
“Courts are not set up well to monitor guardians,” but rather to initiate a process, get it finished and deliver a decision, Seal said.
Uekert agreed with others that an enormous part of the problem is funding.
The problem is not funding. It’s stealing.
“Everything is contingent on the courts trying to do this out of budgets that the state legislatures don’t want to support,” she said. “If the court is responsible for monitoring and doesn’t have anybody who can effectively act as a court visitor, audit cases or review accounting, to what extent can a court monitor?”
Duh, require a guardian to do it themselves or be subject to a subpoena if someone suspects there is lying. Also they should be required to be subject to 1) a budget for a case; 2) publish their criminal record or lack thereof; 3) publish an Ethics Report yearly detailing all their sources of income and amounts and their spouse’s too.
Judges and attorneys — especially those in rural counties who deal only rarely with guardianships — may be uninformed or impervious to changes in the law.
Not true, the blogs are out there and they are chock full of detailed stories such as this one. Anyone sitting as a probate judge should be required to read the probate blogs–not the news, the probate blogs. Not the cases they are on, but other cases in other states.
Wright said that in her early years of practicing elder law in Oregon, when she was representing someone in a contested guardianship and objected to part of the proceeding, “The judge said on the record, ‘Well, I don’t pay much attention to the rules of evidence or civil procedure in cases like this.’ So the judge has just told me outright that he doesn’t obey the law — what am I going to do now?”
No, read between the lines. What he told you is, the case is fixed, sweetie. There is even a CLE video on this blog showing a judge AND an attorney informing the audience on how to fix a case. This is one way. Kick procedure and the Bill of Rights to the curb. This attorney should have reported the judge for case fixing and he should have been removed.
How The Situation Is Improving
Experts who have been involved in the guardianship arena for decades said that, even with all the problems, the situation has improved.
In those early days of her practice, Wright said it was a different world.
“There was almost no due process at all. And not only that, there was almost no perception that due process was important,” she said. A large proportion of guardianships were done by default — meaning that as long as the petitioner showed the proposed ward had been notified, that was all that needed to happen.
“No hearing, no inquiries as to why they didn’t respond or whether they were trying to figure out how to,” Wright said. “And that was considered perfectly fine.”
The attitude was, we’re doing something nice for these people, she said.
Everyone has good intentions. But even when they do, Wright said, the ward can be harmed.
That continues to happen far too often, said Alison Hirschel, director of the Michigan Elder Justice Initiative and the elder law specialist at the Michigan Poverty Law Program. Laws may be enacted and refined, but changes fail to materialize in the courtrooms where guardianships are decided.
In Michigan, Hirschel said, the law as written is very good. “The problem is what happens in probate law practice. If a petition is filed against someone, it’s extraordinarily likely that that petition will be granted. Individuals are very frequently not represented in these hearings — they’re very frequently not even present at these hearings, so the judge doesn’t even see them,” said Hirschel, who also teaches elder law at the University of Michigan Law School.
I agree, the basic law is good, but it could use tweaking. See elsewhere on this blog, “wishlist for probate new laws”.
And even when there are caring relatives, or services in the community to help older adults remain in their homes, “guardianship is like a pipeline to the nursing home,” she said. “And they never get out.”
And NO ONE ever takes a survey to see how many residents want to go home, or whether in fact they still have assets to go home. If the house was sold, but there are funds or if a relative wants to donate funds, why not a granny pod?
A Way Out?
For the vast majority (98%++) of probate corruption victims, the only way out is death. Few escape. One woman had $5 million and wanted to give each child $1 million while she was still alive to see them enjoy it. But she knew right away they would guardianize her and they had be “watching her”. So she sold her house to a friend. The friend received a generous payment every month as a “reverse mortgage” for her expenses so her money was protected. The woman transferred all her money to offshore accounts not amenable to court order. She bought a $225,000 RV and got the heck out of California and traveled where she wanted, in every town, picking up a statement from a local M.D. that she was highly intelligent and competent. After about a year, the court dismissed the OPG Petition for Guardianship. But she was left with a $40,000 judgment in legal fees, which she ignored.
One way you can protect yourself against becoming a victim of guardianship abuse: Get a durable power of attorney and a health care advance directive. These documents can help keep the determination of your future out of a courtroom.
Attorneys and advocates for older adults urge them to fill out such paperwork before they suddenly need it. Because after the fact, it’s probably too late.
Those documents don’t guarantee that you won’t be exploited; the key is to give the responsibility for your welfare to the right person. But if done wisely, a great deal of heartache and expense may be avoided.
Why don’t more people take proper steps to be prepared?
“Everybody is in complete denial,” said Seal. “Just like nobody’s going to go in a nursing home. We’re all going to live forever, very healthy — like on the commercials — or we’re going to die in our sleep after a game of tennis.
“If any one of us were to consider the fact that we might be the subject of a guardianship case, we would all be very unhappy with the system as it actually exists now,” Seal continued. “No one would want to be a party to this.”
This article was written with support from the Journalists in Aging Fellowships, a program of New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America, sponsored by the Retirement Research Foundation.
For those of you out there that know probate, get ready, this article will make you want to vomit:
Steve Wixson isn’t a well known figure at the Midland County Services Building, but for those he represents, he plays a vital role in their lives.
As director of the Office of Public Guardian, Wixson aids a portion of the mentally ill population that need assistant with life.
“Steve is the advocate for these folks because they can’t advocate for themselves,” County Administrator/Controller Bridgette Gransden said. “He is very good at assisting people and situations and looking out for the ward, but also the county as an organization and the office of public guardian.”
The office of public guardian provides adult guardianship and conservatorship services for the mentally ill population in Midland County.
“We make all decisions for those people including medical and housing. We also manage their Social Security benefits and disability,” Wixson said recently.
A guardian has been granted authority by the probate court to be responsible for the personal and physical wellbeing of an adult who is called a Legally Incapacitated Individual. A conservator also has probate court authority, but is responsible for the estate of an adult who is a Protected Individual.
“Conservatorship usually takes place if they have assets over and beyond Social Security and disability,” Wixson said. “If they have a house or vehicle that needs to be sold to maintain their quality of care, we would sell that. That’s pretty common for us.”
Currently, the Public Guardian assists a maximum of 105 people, ages 30 to 96.
“Any more than that we do a disservice to the people we serve. A lot of people would be homeless if we didn’t step in and manage these funds for them,” said Wixson.
The public guardian works closely with county law enforcement agencies and community mental health, but is limited in its scope of advice.
“When people call they want a specific answer. But I am not an attorney so I can’t give legal advice. I’ll always point them to adult protective services,” said Wixson, who has a background in criminal justice and social work.
Last year the public guardian raised nearly $121,000 through fees for various services, said Wixson. Those funds included a 6.85 percent fee on the sale or liquidation of an asset. This year, the county has budgeted $100,000 in revenue.
“All of the public guardian’s books and the ward’s books are subject to an audit and there is a check and balance in place between the (county) finance and treasurer’s offices and public guardian office,” Gransden said.
Subject: A need to see – Re: CNBC – HOAs – “Next Foreclosure Fight” video link. Bill Davis, Texas HOA homeowner attorney and Tom Skiba, CAI, youtube.com
I believe it is beneficial that you see this! All our elected officials, investigators, prosecutors need to wake up and acknowledge what has been on going in the HOA criminality, HOA property thefts and HOA legal and judicial abuses across America!
In this interview,
I believe Tom Skiba, CEO, CAI delivers industry propaganda and bad stats. Bill Davis, Texas HOA homeowner atty did excellent job, but they needed to hear more from him. Tom Skiba clearly got more time and I think the news correspondents were a bit biased with the way they said many things. If you are going to do a news account on the HOA property thefts, it should at least be truthful. There are many who owe absolutely nothing. All created conflict and created debt by some who have no authority to do so, and/or who are abusing their usurped power and violating the laws and as well as their fiduciary duties and more and misusing courts and legal process for their frauds and criminality!
These crimes and injustices are intentionally inflicted upon innocent and unsuspecting HOA homeowners to generate legal fees, fabricated fines, and collection costs and the most unthinkable legal and judicial abuses to innocent HOA homeowners imaginable. The agenda is to steal their victims homes, equity, belongings and sometimes the people too! Some attorneys will even file in a court “a foreclosure for the cost of the foreclosure.” The HOA homeowner owes nothing. I Monroe County, Pennsylvania apparently, at least one attorney is forging at least one judges, or former judges signature to accomplish this and then file these false and fraudulent documents in the courts, I am told. This legal and judicial abuse, criminality, HOA homeowner abuse and property thefts are deplorable, and especially, in Monroe County, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Skiba said nothing about these created conflict, selective discrimination, etc., HOA homeowner abuses, HOA legal and judicial abuses and HOA property thefts which make up most of the HOA fraud closures I believe one would find, if they did the research and Mr. Skiba is well aware of these fraud closures, and dix not speak about them at all!
The truths on HOAs, all of them, and who is behind all of it locale, by locale across America. The predators and perpetrators, these criminals and despots need to be held accountable, no matter who the are, or who they know. This is long, long, long overdue!
Family members often feel powerless and hopeless when they realize that a loved one in hospice care has been put on the pathway to a speedy death. This is a story of one family’s vigilance and timely action, which saved Mrs. Jackie McGiboney’s life.
“My grandmother has been alive for almost a year since our horrible overdose experience with the hospice,” Carly Walden wrote to the Pro-life Healthcare Alliance (PHA) on February 8, 2016. Carly aims to do everything possible to warn others about the invisible murders happening in many hospices and encourage others to save the lives of their loved ones when faced with similar circumstances.
Events leading to hospice admission
On December 12, 2014, Jackie fell at home. She was taken to an emergency room and, after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure and stage-4 chronic kidney disease, Jackie was admitted to a hospital in Covington, Georgia. Upon discharge from the hospital on December 16, she was moved to a nursing home rehabilitation center, where she remained until February 14, 2015. Her family visited her three times a day at the rehab center and noted that the only time a doctor saw Jackie was upon admission. Carly believes “the reason she was sick when she came home is because the medical director never came to see her in the two months she was there.”
On February 23, nine days after Jackie returned home, Carly again called 911 because Jackie was experiencing shortness of breath and very congested coughing spells. After admission to the hospital, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure exacerbation and possibly some form of dementia.
When Jackie was due to be discharged, she was still sick and more than normally congested, so the family requested another X-ray. Subsequently, they were told she had bilateral pneumonia, for which she was treated until discharge on February 27. She was sent home to complete treatment with antibiotics, and a short-term rehabilitation program was suggested.
Jackie’s primary care physician (PCP) spoke with Carly on March 4, stating that her grandmother was never a candidate for a short-term rehabilitation program because the patient has to have an “achievable” or “attainable” goal, which she did not. According to Carly, the PCP also told her that, if her grandmother were hospitalized again, she would likely die. Thus he suggested that she be placed in hospice care.
The family discussed the seriousness of the doctor’s prediction and took Jackie to visit him on March 5. Carly writes, “We do not know if he reviewed personally any of her medical records from [the hospital]; however, we do know that he did not do any further testing and only examined her with a stethoscope that day. There was no blood work, X-rays, or any testing done. At the conclusion of this visit, Mrs. Jackie M. McGiboney received a prescription that stated, ‘Please initiate Inpatient Hospice Placement,’ with the diagnosis of ‘End Stage Cardiomyopathy, Renal Failure, and Pneumonia.’”
Family assured that the hospice does not “dope them up”
The following day, Jackie’s family contacted a hospice, which sent out a community liaison to educate them about the facility. The family told the liaison they wanted Jackie to “remain on her medications” and “not be overly medicated in any form or fashion.” The liaison responded, “If they need a little something for pain, we will give it to them.” Carly recalls, “At that time my father stated, ‘You all do not just dope them up, correct?’” The liaison assured him the hospice did not do that and that this would be a very short-term stay, with possible follow-up at home.
“During this consultation, my grandmother was alert and fully aware of the conversation and actually had to have a bowel movement,” Carly reports. “She was able to complete this task by herself with the help of her walker. [The liaison] commented that she does very well.
“My grandmother understood that this program would be for rest and comfort, and she would be able to continue all of her medications because they have an in-house pharmacy. Should she require a doctor’s visit, it could also be arranged. My grandmother agreed to the program. She was admitted that night and, as instructed, brought along all her medications.
“Upon arrival, we spoke with Mrs. T at the hospice, and she stated that my grandmother told her to talk to me and my father about all of her medications. Again, we specifically requested that she be retained on all present medications. Mrs. T agreed, but said, should she have pain, they may administer ‘a little morphine.’ That shocked us because my grandmother never takes any pain medication. We questioned this, and Mrs. T, in a very defensive manner, claimed it helps the elderly with breathing. She then said we would be surprised what a few nights [of] good rest could do for a person.”
The family’s questions and mounting concern
After getting Jackie checked in and settled, the family went home that night. The following day they noticed a catheter had been placed in her. They were baffled because she had been using the restroom by herself at home, with no problems. They expressed concern because her urine was a dark tea color. At home, her urine had been yellow. Carly observed, “A [certified nurse’s aide] went into the room with some sort of bottle, shut the door, came back out, and advised them that she did not have a urinary tract infection.”
The family also noticed a change in Jackie’s mental state and behavior. She was slow to speak. Carly states, “We were assured that she was okay, and were told to go home and get some rest and let them do their job.” On the following day, March 8, the family found her so groggy that she dropped her soup spoon into the bowl, and did not finish eating or drinking.
When a nurse came in with a syringe and squirted a clear liquid into Jackie’s mouth, Carly asked what it was for and was told it was for leg pain. At home, Jackie simply sat up when her legs hurt. Carly also noted, “We did not see any walkers or wheel chairs in the facility, and we did not see anyone on a walker or in a wheelchair. Everyone was bed-bound.”
Told that Jackie was being given a mixture of morphine and Ativan, Carly reports, “I asked how she could be given a dose of morphine and Ativan without a physician examining her. The physician would not be there until Monday, March 9. The nurse explained that all she had to do was e-mail their medical director for orders.” The nurse also told them to quit worrying; Jackie was not going to die today. Carly asked how could she tell and recounts that the nurse stated they can predict the time of death within hours. Again, the family was told to go home and let the hospice staff worry about Jackie.
Watchfulness and quick action save Jackie’s life
At home, Carly did some research and found that the mixture of morphine and Ativan can be “a lethal drug cocktail” when given to a patient who is not experiencing severe pain or agitation. The family immediately returned to the hospice, arriving around 10:30 p.m. onMarch 8.
“We found her in her bed, completely unresponsive to verbal attempts to rouse her and physical slapping of the hands and face,” Carly reports. “For several hours we attempted to wake her. We were not having any success and this was totally out of the ordinary for my grandmother, so we decided to call 911. We thought she had been severely overdosed. The dispatcher sent an ambulance and police officers. We discharged her and had her transported to a hospital in Monroe, Georgia. The paramedic’s summation was that she had been chemically sedated with an unknown amount of morphine.”
After admission to the hospital, the hospitalist stated the patient was lethargic and listless, most likely due to analgesics with opiates and benzodiazepine administered in the hospice. Another physician, Dr. M, discovered Jackie had a severe urinary tract infection. According to Carly, Dr. M also saw an order from the hospice for Ativan and forty milligrams of Roxanol (an unusually large dose of orally administered liquid morphine, particularly for a patient who is not experiencing severe pain) and felt this needed to be investigated, as the hospital has referred patients to this hospice.
Upon receiving further testing and proper medication, Jackie’s chronic kidney disease was upgraded to stage-1, meaning her kidney function had vastly improved. All of her blood tests came back perfectly normal for her age. The family was pleased with the care and diagnostics at the hospital in Monroe. Dr. M also told the family that Jackie was not at the end stage of cardiomyopathy or renal failure, and no longer had pneumonia.
“It is unfathomable to us how a person–with a two-day admission to hospice–can be given lethal doses of Roxanol and Ativan, when the person refuses to take Tylenol on a regular basis!” Carly states. “We feel that she was being euthanized by the hospice.” Carly has submitted a report to the Georgia Composite Medical Board and has asked for an investigation.
Jackie’s son, Mike Walden, a former police captain, adds this piece of advice: “Always get second or third opinions from doctors, preferably pro-life doctors, because misdiagnoses are a large part of this problem.”
Carly concludes, “The night we called 911 from the hospice, the paramedics told us to kiss her good-bye because they were not sure she would make it to the hospital. Off the record, they referred to this hospice as the ‘morphine hotel.’ There is so much that could be added to this story. But, most importantly, I questioned everything the hospice workers were doing.” She adds, “People need to make sure the patient’s healthcare power of attorney agent is always on hand, protecting and advocating for the patient, watching everything!”
The PHA advises interviewing a hospice agency before enrolling (see Informed: A guide for critical medical decisions, p.12). Also, even after admission to a hospice, follow the Walden family’s example: ask questions, remain vigilant, and be prepared to act quickly to save a life. Your loved one’s survival may depend on you.
How many stories will it take before the authorities do anything.
He wants to see her, she wants to see him. She does not want to stay in a nursing home, but the nursing home has her under house arrest. Doctors and nurses admit she is competent. Yet, she is imprisoned in a nursing home, the gulags, ghettos, and slums for the elderly from which death is the only escape. Human and civil rights quickly disappear as attorneys and the nursing homes “take it all” and accuse family members and friends who would charge nothing to little to care for the elderly, as being the culprits, when they are nothing but criminals charging 10,000 to 15,000 per month or whatever they can get, while refusing to let the elder go home and stay with a relative.
This man was finally released on his own recognicanze but probably faces serious charges. He loves his friend. She loves him. But their fate is sealed by a locked down nursing home where she cannot escape and will likely never see the light of day.
From: kenneth ditkowsky <kenditkowsky@yahoo.com>
To: illinoisgov <gov.goca@illinois.gov>, “ilhouse51@sbcglobal.net”Subject: Fw: ARDC v. JMD – Motion to vacate all orders as void abintio, Strike Trial Testimony and Reinstate License Instanter–court reporter NOT licensed
Date: May 21, 2016 9:07 AM
Attachments: ARDC v. JMD – 052116 -Motion2Vac.all.orders.exhs.pdf ARDC v JMD 051716- MTVacate.all.orders.doc
Pursuant to Rule 8.3 and 18 USCA 4 I am reporting once again the criminal activity in which Jerome Larkin has pursuant to his violation of 18 USCA 371 18 USCA 1341 18 USCA 241,242 actively promulgated a massive cover-up of corrupt judicial activity including but not limited to criminal activity by corrupt lawyers and judges against the elderly and the disabled.
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2016 6:56 AM
Subject: Re: ARDC v. JMD – Motion to vacate all orders as void abintio, Strike Trial Testimony and Reinstate License Instanter–court reporter NOT licensed
The efforts of Jerome Larkin and his 18 USCA 371 have no bounds. It is absolutely amazing that the entire band of “Lawyers” operating out of the IARDC office in Chicago are not in jail.
I practiced law for over fifty years and during my career until I got involved with the two guardians ad litem, the IARDC and the attorney for the guardian in the Sykes case 09 P 4585 I could not even contemplate such perfidy, ignorance, intellectual dishonesty and outright dishonesty. Yes, I had run into my share of lawyers who were dishonest, but, the overwhelming majority of lawyers were not only honest, but very nice and decent people. I knew going in that Judge Connors was ‘wired’ as Rule 137 was clearly not applicable and she was trying to intimidate me rather that adjudicate. The Evidence confirmed it.
What you motion will address before the Supreme Court of Illinois is not you conduct, but whether or not the judges of the Illinois Supreme Court have integrity or whether they are political hacks. Larkin has violated his oath and his position of trust. He has more than gone the extra mile to protect the two guardian ad litem, corrupt judge, corrupt lawyers, climate of breach of fiduciary relationship and outright fraud and tax evasion.
Larkin’s duty was to protect the public from dishonest attorneys. In particular it was to protect senior citizens from lawyers who would facilitate their isolation, their exploitation, abuse, loss of rights and theft by fiduciaries. Why should Larkin, Farenga, Schmiedel, Stern, Connors, Black or any of the attorneys employed by either the State of Illinois object to an HONEST INVESTIGATION of any claim of abuse?
Indeed, it is very clear that after promulgating for you at your disciplinary hearing a kangaroo trial with a predetermined result (fix/wired) so you would be properly induced to ‘shut up!’ having cut off you source of income, Larkin promulgated over=charges on court reporter fees and fees from unlicensed individuals claiming to be court reporters as a vehicle of FRAUD on the Supreme Court of Illinois. The spoliation of evidence, perjury, subordination of perjury appears to be SOP at the agency. (IARDC). It is consistent with the racism. (Amu case, and the refusal to allow Diane Nash access to the hearing room when at the same time admitting Gloria Sykes – who happens to have a lighter skin color and not known as an Icon of the Civil Rights movement (Selma March).
A key point that should be in your filings is the fact that the BURDEN OF PROOF is on the IARDC to prove by CLEAR AND CONVINCING EVIDENCE their allegations. The affidavits of Gloria Sykes and Scott Evans, as well as the Evidence Deposition of Judge Connors (page 91) all are clear and convincing evidence that Jerome Larkin and the IARDC attorneys covered up the horribly wrongful proceedings in the Sykes case and he and each attorney involved has had an overt role. The Court file which was excluded from the evidence clearly demonstrates the absolute perjury by Larkin.
Larkin cannot find in the file a summons that complies with 755 ILCS 5/11a -10.
Larkin cannot find a return of service in the file that specifically says that on such and such date that a particular sheriff’s Deputy served Mary Sykes. The Sheriff has written a letter pointing out that his office did not serve Mary Sykes. (However, Peter Schmiedel will claim that there was ‘bench’ service of something.)
Larkin cannot demonstrate that any NOTICE (oral or written) was given to the next of kin (near/close relatives) 14 days prior to a hearing to determine if a guardian should be appointed and the extent and nature of Mary’s alleged disability.
Larkin cannot find in the record any actual hearing to determine if Mary was disabled and the extent and nature of the hearing. ALL OF THE FOREGOING ARE JURISDICTIONAL
Try as he may, Larkin cannot undo the admission of Judge Connors on page 91 of her Evidence Deposition or the August transcripts of proceedings in her Courtroom.
All of the foregoing I said before, and everyone is aware of it; however, this is only the tip of the iceberg as there has developed a cottage industry targeting the elderly and the disabled and using the Courthouse to coverup the criminal activities.
The line in the sand has been crossed!
Either action occurs now, or Americans are no longer safe to grow old! A few gray hairs is a red flag and an opportunity for corrupt lawyers, public officials and health care professionals such as nursing home operators to exploit us old farts!
Ken Ditkowsky http://www.ditkowskylawoffice.com
The first step is to determine what is missing that allows the fiduciaries to escape and continue to use their fiduciary positions to exploit homeowners.
Let’s start a check list:
1) election of board members.
2) criterion for eligibility to vote and also to serve
3) board rules
4) Insurance and bonding
5) recall
6) meetings
7) custody of books and records
8) accountings
9) limitation on board action.
The declaration governs the election of board members and also their powers. It is my suggestion that after 1 year the developer loses the right to vote as to any property that he retains directly or indirectly. In addition unit owners are limited to one vote regardless of how many units they own. Mass ownership should be discouraged.
board members once elected must adhere to Roberts Rules, and must fully disclose any personal interest in the subject matter prior to any presentation of a motion, proposition etc. The board member who has a pecuniary interest may not vote for or against the proposition.
all board members must be bonded and be able to obtain errors and omissions insurance. Board members must attend in person all board members, unless excused by a majority of the board members. A quorum consists of x% of all board members. (There are no proxies and no exparte board meetings)
Books and records are kept at the office of the association and are available for copying and inspection by unit owners or their agents at all times (without exception) during business hours of the association. An independent audit shall occur at least annually and the results of that audit furnished to every unit owner immediately upon completion.
Board action is limited to regular business decisions that are no in excess of x dollars. Irregular or capital decisions are limited to y dollars. All other business decisions must be brought before a membership meeting. Business decisions such as engaging a manager, attorneys, accountants or similar professionals require a 67% vote and a quorum of all board members being present.
The HOA is a self governing enterprise. By amending the declaration, recording it, and following it no association need be victimized. Legislation is ify as the developers and the real estate professionals have a vested interest that they will not give up very readily. Also, if you look at the history of many (if not most) of the real estate professionals engaged in this business you need a strong stomach.
And remember, all of these people are supposed to be adults and graduated high school.
Too sad:
My HOA has just passed new “Rules & Regulations” that prohibit: 1. Knocking on a neighbors door. 2. Swearing 3. Emails between neighbors 4. Any communications between neighbors deemed “not nice” by the board. 5. Being discourteous 6. Being disrespectful 7. Written communication among members that doesn’t involve association business 8. Discussing complaints about the board with anyone. 9. Complaining about the board outside of an official meeting. 10. Communicating with neighbors via email or US mail. 11. Communicating with the board via email or US Mail about anything other than association business. 12. Making more than one contact to the board about any complaint or issue. 13. Any behavior the board deems inappropriate. Anyone who violates any of the above policies will be fined, and have…
And remember, all of these people are supposed to be adults and graduated high school.
Too sad:
My HOA has just passed new “Rules & Regulations” that prohibit: 1. Knocking on a neighbors door. 2. Swearing 3. Emails between neighbors 4. Any communications between neighbors deemed “not nice” by the board. 5. Being discourteous 6. Being disrespectful 7. Written communication among members that doesn’t involve association business 8. Discussing complaints about the board with anyone. 9. Complaining about the board outside of an official meeting. 10. Communicating with neighbors via email or US mail. 11. Communicating with the board via email or US Mail about anything other than association business. 12. Making more than one contact to the board about any complaint or issue. 13. Any behavior the board deems inappropriate. Anyone who violates any of the above policies will be fined, and have foreclosure action taken upon them if they don’t pay the fine. Also, other legal action may be taken against them at the violator’s expense. HELP!
Dear Rocky Champion;
You don’t need the help, it’s the Board that needs to grow up about 6 grade levels.
I don’t know what to do with HOA morons like that, but maybe my readers will have a few choice words.
In an unprecedented move, city attorneys on Friday offered to admit to a federal jury that a code of silence exists in the Chicago Police Department if it meant Mayor Rahm Emanuel would not have to testify about it at the upcoming trial involving two whistleblower cops.
But U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman rebuffed the idea, saying he was standing by his ruling earlier this week that Emanuel must take the witness stand to answer questions about the code of silence.
Feinerman said that even though he was “reluctant” to take up the mayor’s valuable time and cause a media circus by having him testify, he believed Emanuel could offer “much more texture” to the existence of the code of silence if he testified about it rather than have the city’s lawyers offer a written stipulation.
Feinerman said he agreed with attorneys for the whistleblower cops that the mayor’s testimony “would provide further evidence of an unwritten policy and practice.” Emanuel could “speak to the pervasiveness of the problem,” the judge said.
The ruling was a blow to the city, which has fought tooth-and-nail to keep Emanuel from having to take the witness stand. In a speech to the City Council, the mayor acknowledged the police code of silence amid the deepening scandal over the fatal shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer.
A spokesman for the city’s Law Department had no immediate comment Friday.
The trial, set to begin May 30, involves a civil rights lawsuit brought by Chicago police Officers Shannon Spalding and Daniel Echeverria over allegations they were blackballed by the department for cooperating with the FBI in an investigation into a corrupt tactical team led by Sgt. Ronald Watts.
The two alleged that when supervisors learned of their role in the undercover investigation, they called them “rats” and passed along that sensitive information to others in the Police Department. They were removed from their unit assignment and shuttled around the department to lesser jobs far from their homes and at bad hours, according to the lawsuit, which names the city and a dozen high-ranking officers as defendants.
When they complained to supervisors about the alleged retaliation, one told them, “Look, everyone is against you, so you don’t want to piss me off,” they alleged.
The trial will center on whether the department has a de facto policy that uses the code of silence to allow bad officers to act with impunity. During his December speech to the City Council, Emanuel condemned “the tendency to ignore, deny or in some cases cover up the bad actions of a colleague or colleagues.”
Referring to frequent police complaints that witnesses too often refuse to come forward, Emanuel said, “We cannot ask citizens in crime-ravaged neighborhoods to break the code of silence if we continue to allow a code of silence to exist within our own Police Department.”
jmeisner@tribpub.com
Lawyer seeks to question Emanuel on ‘code of silence’ for lawsuit
Distrust of Chicago cops helps drive Emanuel’s low approval on crime
Excellent story. But why isn’t the Trib asking about how Jerome Larkin of the ARDC covers up the code of silence for lawyers and how the City uses lawyers to get Plaintiff’s counsel to back off on lawsuits, delay the turn over of crucial information for trial and obstruct justice with impunity.
It is obviously the “code of silence for lawyers” that supports the “code of silence for city attorneys” that supports the “code of silence for chicago police”
I can’t tell you how much I am disappointed by the investigation of the New York bar’s 13 attorneys where only one threw a corrupt foreign official out of his office on a 60 minutes report. Sixty minutes should be having a field day with corrupt lawyers and the bar associations and their programs. I am proposing herewith an entire series–“Law and Order– corruption in the courts”. Where is that series at? Ken and I and others could write volumes of screen plays. Hollywood, please contact us.
In the meantime, we have 3 activist lawyers in Chicago who dared to make a difference, and who the ARDC suspended for 3 to 4 years–Ken Ditkowsky, myself and Lanre Amu only for whistleblowing and reporting on all the corruption.
Where is Hollywood? You could not even make this highly dramatic and emotionally charged stories up. Murder she Wrote and the Wurnos story has nothing on the day to day dealings of Probate Courts, especially in Cook County Illinois. I mean, come on. In Arsenic and Old Lace all the old ladies did was kill sickly old men. In the Probate Courts, they fabricate evidence, kill them off with nursing home administrators and the crony RNs and doctors without narcotics licenses that still prescribe drugs to narcotize to death.
Link to most recent pleading to Illinois Supreme Court
Excellent presentation. This travesty has to stop. Very clearly the misrepresentations of Mr. Larkin as to the Alvarez case and the Sawyer case are about as unethical as can be imagined. On a level playing field Larkin would summarily removed from his position based upon his ethically challenged misrepresentations as to the Rule of Law, his repudiation of the Rule of Law, his obstruction of Justice pursuant to 18 USCA 4, and his acting in concert with the criminals who have literally kidnapped and isolated Mary Sykes so that she could be brutalized, abused, exploited and be stripped of her liberty and human rights.
However, we know that this is not a level playing field her in Illinois – otherwise these disciplinary prosecutions could never have started. The standard and burden of proof was clear and convincing. A look at the case file 09 P 4585 makes it very clear – there was no hearing held prior to Mary Sykes being adjudicated as incompetent. There was no testimony by anyone as to the degree, if any, of Mary’s incompetency. It was not needed as on page 91 of her evidence deposition Larkin’s underling got Judge Connors to admit that she was wired! It did not matter – the result was pre-determined! So was the disciplinary proceedings.
Pursuant to 18 USCA 371 (and 18 USCA 241, 242) Larkin’s conduct of creating a sham proceeding which he uses as a vehicle of obstruction of justice ( 18 USCA 4) (18 UsCA 1341) and tax evasion renders his personally culpable. The approximately 3 million dollars missing from the Sykes estate due to the guardians breach of fiduciary relationship is taxable income to all. Thus, the interest, taxes, and penalties are jointly and severally owed. With Illinois on the verge of Bankruptcy and the legislature calling for more taxes – WHY IS THE ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE GIVING LARKIN AND THE ELDER CLEANSERS AS PASS? Why should new taxes be assessed when there is a cadre of corrupt lawyers, judges, and judicial officials who are laughing all the way to the Bank and enjoying their expropriation of guardian estates tax free. (NB. In the Gore Estate 1.5 million and the gold extracted from Mrs. Gore’s mouth is still unaccounted for!)
I know it is not relevant to this petition, but it still galls me that Civil Rights advocate and Icon Diane Nash was barred from your hearing, while Gloria Sykes – who just happens to have a lighter hue to her skin was admitted. As there was a seat vacant next to me, any excuse that the room was too crowded does not hold water. If asked I would have given up my seat for Ms. Nash. (I wrote and e-mail to Mr. Larkin asking for an apology to be forwarded to Ms. Nash – of course, as the racial discrimination was intentional no apology was forthcoming.)
I’ve forwarded your document to the Illinois ARDC pursuant to Rule 8.3 and to the Justice Department pursuant to 18 USCA 4. (As Mary Sykes and Alice Gore died the crimes connoted by 18 USCA 241, 242 are felonies!) On a level playing field we would not have to be dealing with this situation – the felonies committed against the elderly and the disabled would be promptly investigated and where warranted there would be criminal prosecutions. Instead America’s core values are being trashed and criminality is being rewarded.
Mary Bush has graciously consented to the publication of her horror story.
This is her corrected version
Case Summary for: (your name and address, email and phone)
Mary Bush
flyfreeandstrong@gmail.com
PLEASE SHOW YOUR ANSWERS IN BOLD
Case number: 1509-1720 Judge Platt; 50 A 2015 Judge Tunnell & Judge Hall 2115-cv-5008 Judge Legrome Davis, Habeas Corpus
Appeals: 2726 EDA 2011, 2746 EDA 2011, 5 E.D.M 2016, 1694 E.D.A 2013; 1861 E.D.A. 2013, 1863 E.D.A. 2013, 1779 EDA 2014 Case Name: Genevieve Bush Case Jurisdiction: Orphans Court Chester County, PA
PA Superior Court of Pa Eastern District U.S. Dist. Court No. 2:15-cv-05008 Writ of Habeas Corpus Judge(s): Katherine B L Platt, Mark Tunnell, John Davis, LeGrome D. Davis Relationship to you: Mother
Opposing counsel: Alexander J. Chotkowski, John Francis McKenna – sons of Genevieve’s attorneys entering appearances in 2007 long before suing for guardianship when they opposed Genevieve in court for return of her funds they never challenged her capacity at all then they sue her in October 2009 saying she cannot manage her finances after being out of her life since 2007 court hearing. The judge in the 2007 case was Robert Shenkin who was from the same law firm that Alexander Chotkowski and John McKenna worked. Prior to becoming a judge, he was in private practice for 20 years with the firm of MacElree, Harvey, Gallagher & Featherman, Ltd. where he engaged in the general practice of law.
1. Service: Was there proper service in the case? No Was the disabled person served properly 14 days or more in advance of the hearing? NO
Was the disabled person given a copy of a Summons and Complaint and Notice of Hearing by the Sheriff or Process Server? Yes and his affidavit said she understood the process this was in November 2009 and the court later states she lacked capacity when she signed her own directives in 2006.
Was the disabled read her/his rights under the law? No, Constable George Morrissey called an attorney friend for mom right after he served her and she never being sued before hired them.
Were all next of kin notified of when the hearing for guardianship take place? Yes
– how were they notified (phone/email/mail/in person)? By Mail
If the disabled was not served, please print out the docket from when the case first began to the guardianship hearing appointing a guardian showing no service or “person not served”
2. Isolation Isolation has been severe–Genevieve was socially active with her friends and family, church travel, women’s groups, then incarcerated into a county facility against her will on 5/18/2015 into a locked ward. She has lost complete contact with more than 50 people who were in her life
Is there an order limiting visits? (Please attach, if possible) (ask them for a copy of all orders limiting visitation, if they refuse, report this too) No – guardian made up her own orders
How are the visits limited? Guardian and nursing home conspired to say I was not a daughter, but now I am only a trespasser
Are there medical records indicating visitation limits? No Is there a list of “permitted visitors”? Yes Who made up the list? Guardian and nursing home
Who is your loved one not seeing right now (list name and relationship) where the visits are limited and how are they limited? Mary, daughter, Leo, brother and her friends & family– cannot see her because travel to her facility is hard to get to. I am the only one guardian Carol J Hershey made mom pay to see and now has no visitation. When mom was home with me she had a very active social life.
3. Chemical Restraints
Is your loved one taking any forms of chemical restraints or psychotropic drugs?
Suspected, but not known, Moms behavior is so changed and she is knocked out a lot
Are you allowed to check to see if they are taking such medications?
No–not allowed to see any “medical” information
Do you have the disabled person’s medical records? Why or why not?
Only up until the period of my POA–after 2011 nothing
Is the person drooling or do they have slurred speech?
Yes-I have photos and video of mom’s altered state
Does the Guardian have a court order permitting the administration of psychotropic drugs?
No
Has the disabled person ever been held down and shot up with drugs against their will?I believe yes –Mom is not acting her normal self since being incarcerated
4. Abuse of Disabled Since the guardianship proceeding, has your loved one been abused? Yes–physically, mentally, sexually, emotionally and financially. The life she planned for herself has been obliterated.
Please state all ways in which they have been abused injuries – skin tears, bruising, broken leg, injured foot, lack of exercise, restricted from moving her body, months in a reclined geri chair Mentally – abusive aids/staff, loss of pets by a court order, loss of freedom, loss of her rights, loss of established relationships, loss of her husband in 2004 and no time to grieve, loss of her belongings, verbal abuse by staff, son as a guardian forced her to be diaper changed in bed and not allowed her to go to the bathroom, son would wear fathers hat, son put a drool bib on her when she was upset, son chained her possessions all around her home, she was not allowed to attend church, she suffered the loss of seeing and going out with friends and daughter, she was isolated, now more isolated in a nursing home all alone doing nothing for hours. Sexually she was restrained by aids in her own home while son digitally penetrated after her bath saying she need medication up there, he put bandages on her areas for no reason Emotionally- withdrawn from all the abuse
Financially – Trustees were not given due process, trust was handed to oldest son who mother had sued in 2006 and removed his POA in 2005. He is liquidating the trust by warring against it and paying out hundreds of thousands to people attached to this case by the court. The money has not gone for her true care. Genevieve is being liquidated with no say in anything.
List any hospitalizations and approx. dates where abuse was a problem.
1/20/2016 fractured leg and high blood pressure nursing home Park Lane at Bellingham lack of standard of care, cited by the Pa health department on 02/25/2016
Was the disabled returned to the same abusive situation?
Yes – Park Lane at Bellingham West Chester, PA 19380 Did the court direct that the abusers (attorneys, GAL’s, case managers) investigate allegations of abuse? No–never
Abuse can consist of bruises, cuts, broken bones, broken skin, bed sores (very serious), aspiration of food into lungs (because patient was not sitting while eating, very serious), malnutrition, dehydration, etc.
Was a feeding tube inserted against the disabled’s will? No
What is the hygiene of each place the disabled has been placed into? Please list any incidents where the disabled was living in filthy conditions and the approx. dates.Pocopson Home was cited by the Pa Department of Health
Park Lane at Bellingham was cited
Have you made any complaints? If so list dates and brief summary of complaint and its outcome
Too many complaints to list from about 06.14.2015 to 01.27.2016 Park Lane stopped me from reporting by calling me a trespasser in retaliation for calling the health department
Park Lane Facility was cited numerous times. 02/25/16 Department of Health Determined Neglect
Were you told you could visit, but then you were blocked by the guardian? Yes, Guardian Exlizabeth Srinivasan would threaten me she would cut my time back if I did not obey her, Carol J. Hershey started 08-07-15 and restricted my time from the start after having phone conversations with Judge Katherine Platt. All the guardians chose to use my mother as their weapon to stop me from advocating for moms rights. Did the court issue orders you could visit, but then the visits never happened? yes during the time son sexually assaulted my mom, Then with Carol J Hershey saying she needed to “supervise” me I saw my mother less than an order that was in place. Now Park Lane called me a trespasser and I have not seen mom since 01/26/2016
Did the disabled want to live at home or with a relative but the court ordered them into a nursing home? Yes, mom was happily living with me, Judge made us both leave our home. Mom titled the home to me with her attorney in 2008, and then the judge ordered it back so the sons could take over and I was evicted in 2013 without a hearing and mom was taken out in 2015 without a court hearing. Sons now stay and use our home for themselves. They throw away her mail.
Was your loved one placed in a nursing home, group home or institution without a court order naming the institution? NO Adult Protective Services forced my mom into a Chester County Nursing Home ‘Pocopson’ with a court order signed by moms former attorney now Judge Tunnell, to this day there has never been a hearing and mom has not been allowed to return home.
Did the court find it was all right to pay a nursing home for care but not pay a family member to care for the disabled at home or in the relative’s home?
Yes, Court even ordered Daughter to pay for Mom’s attorney George Zumbano when I hired him as moms legal guardian.
If there was isolation, how many times did you see your loved one per week, month or year? At first, twice per month, now not at all.
5. Abuse of Family
Have you or any family members been falsely arrested because of the guardianship? Please provide details, if so. Please attach a copy of all court orders and warrants for your arrest. How many times were you arrested? Provide transcripts if possible.
Yes. On 1/27/16 Park Lane Nursing called me a trespasser and had me arrested. I promptly left even though there was no advanced notification
Have you been defamed, false lighted, slandered or libeled by the court or any attorneys? If so, please list approximate dates and what was falsely said about you.
Since Oct. 2009 to present guardians spreading false documents to health care people, police, hospitals, banks, grocery stores etc, Judge Platt writing biased meant to smear “opinion” that have created civil chaos in and around mom and my life. False staged contempt charges where guardians spread these documents around to our community.
Have false civil charges been brought against you or a family member? False accusations of theft, missing assets blamed on the wrong person, etc? Yes false accusations of theft when the son moved into our home he would take or hide things then call the police, I still have belongings never recovered from our home. Sons falsely claim with no documentation at all of thefts by me in the realm of two million dollars. They have only done this through their testimony when documents show all monies were in the trust by my mother.
Were you the subject of a gag order not to talk about or post information on social media, blogs and the internet (please attach order).no
Were you or your loved one threatened in any manner? yes for years now
Did they move your loved one far away from you? no
6. Constitutional Rights
Has the court issued any gag orders or “location” orders where the disabled person cannot travel as desired. Guardians stopped mom from visiting dads relatives that she would see regularly Mom is not allowed to go anywhere, Since May 18,2015 all contact with the outside world has stopped, she has not been able to socialize to friends, family, pets, me, church, womens groups. In a year’s time she has only been allowed out doors for a total of maybe 5 hours . She is kept locked in the facility.List dates of all gag or location orders, a brief summary of the content.
Guardian Carol J Hershey is making up “orders” as she goes along
Did the disabled ask for an attorney and receive one prior to the hearing for guardianship? Mom hired the attorney the constable called. Then in 2011 asked me to hire George Zumbano who I had to pay because the court would not allow for fees paid . Judge Platt then told Mr. Zumbano to withdraw his appearance on November 20, 2015 and now mom has no legal representation at all.
Was the attorney clearly independent, or did s/he not fight for the disabled’s rights? No. Three attorneys billed Mom and ignored all her rights, In my opinion no attorney will go up against the judge they have other cases in front of. Mr Zumbano went against my mothers legally scribed wishes for me to be her guardian/POA towards the end of 2013
Were you told that the attorney must come from a secret list the court keeps? No
Was the disabled given a choice of attorneys? If the disabled could not choose, did the family choose freely?
Mom trusted the serving sheriff and hired the law firm he called for her. Mom did participate in hiring Mr. Zumbano
Did the disabled come to all court hearings?
No. Mom never had a single day in court ever over 8 years now. No ADA accommodations, and court appointed capacity Dr of psychology stated clearly in his report she would not be harmed by being in court, she was denied the right to due process.
Was anyone told not to talk about the case on social media or on the internet? Explain.
Not yet
Were they prevented from coming to any hearings? If not, why not? Was transportation provided for the disabled person? Court said they would meet with mom in camera but they never did. Mom wrote her brother in 2010 “I will see you in court” this was entered in as an exhibit.
Was the disabled ever told not to speak in court when they wanted to make a point?
Mom never went to any of the court hearings her attorneys did not fight for this right Reger Rizzo and Darnell her attorney was Thomas Shindler.
Were any of the family members told not to speak in court when a family member wanted to make a point? YES multiple times I went Pro Se in June of 2015 attorneys were given time for a closing statement Judge Platt did not allow me to finish my case .I filed a motion to file a brief the next day and it was denied, the judge ruled without me closing my case.
Witnesses were also stopped from testifying and evidence was rejected. Judge claimed writings and work my mom did that I did it so she will not allow it.
Did the disabled person want to waive any rights (right to a hearing, right to an attorney, right to be present at their hearing, who would be the Guardian?) Was the waiver of rights recorded? Mom wanted to go to court but couldn’t. She wrote a letter to the Brother saying “see you in court” but her attorney said do not come in.
Were you told you could not record proceedings?
Yes
Were you blocked or delayed in receiving transcripts? Many times the transcripts cost too much. Some transcripts from 2015 took over a year to get.
Did anyone tell you if you fought for your rights, they would terminate visits or take other adverse actions? No the Court and opposing attorney just file and charge false contempt charges and fines.
Did they move your loved one far from you? No
Do you know if anyone got kickbacks for putting your loved one in an institution, group home or nursing home? Did you subpoena all the institutions, lawyers and court vendors for this information? In my opinion I suspect Guardian Carol J Hershey does with Park Lane at Bellingham in West Chester PA
7. Mental Exam
Did the disabled get a full and fair mental exam by an independent doctor of the disabled’s choice? No, she only got a court troll doctor of psychology
Why or why not? Court always orders same doctor that trolls the courts for custody cases..
Did the court appoint any evaluators?
Dr. Bruce Mapes. Then Petitioners allegedly paid him for an ‘expert’ report
Did these evaluators come from a secret list the judge had? Yes or attorneys , seems so
Was a full physical exam conducted before the mental exam to determine if there were any treatable conditions?
No physical exam, 1 hour with court psychologist, court psychologist spent more time with Petitioner Brother/Son and opposing counsel than with Mother
Was the disabled informed in advance of the exam to prepare for the exam?
She was too scared to participate fully, friend reported doctor was “gruff” Was the disabled told in advance the results would be used in court to guardianize him or her? No. Did the disabled sign a waiver they knew the results would be used in court against them to guardianize them? No During the exam did the disabled have their glasses and hearing aids and did they function properly? No hearing aids and mother suffers from a rare disorder – Avoidant Personality Disorder, mother had her own MD in psychiatry who was banned from testifying in her behalf.
Was your loved one taken on a Pscyh Hold? Was it with a court order? Who signed the papers your loved one was a danger to themselves or others? How long were they held and were they forced to take psychotropic drugs against their will?
8. Final Days on earth
Did the disabled receive appropriate medical treatment and medicines at all times?
No. As a result she was hospitalized for 3 days, cellulites, fractured leg, high blood pressure.
Was the disabled put in hospice against his or her will or instructions? Don’t know.
Did the disabled leave a Medical Power of Attorney or living will that said “no hospice”?
No
Does the disabled’s religion prohibit hospice (Roman Catholic, Jehovah’s Witness, etc.)
No, but mom is not allowed to practice her religion, the last time she was allowed to go to church was Palm Sunday in 2014 after major arguments with Guardian
Was the disabled narcotized to death with psychotropic drugs while food and water were withheld? No, but may be happening now
Was the disabled cremated to destroy evidence of the murder? N/A
9. Assets
Were any assets missing from the inventory or accounting that you were aware? Please list any valuable asset that was missing and if an insurance or Bonding claim was filed and the result of the claim. Yes, assets are missing. $100k of tools, Platt just gave to one son, inventory was undervalued and not listed by son who was appointed guardian of the estate against the trust protective clauses.
Did a nursing home get paid any kickbacks for placing the disabled there? Were you allowed to serve discovery on this issue? I don’t know how to do this.
Did the disabled get the funeral and burial of his or her choice? NA
Did the court or estate take any funds or property into the estate which were held in joint tenancy with any other person without notice, hearing, discovery and jury trial? Yes, court took house and 2 trucks (you need to report this theft to the FBI and to the police and file your objections in court and then file a civil suit against the judge and all the attorneys doing this or joining in on it 42 USC 371 conspiracy too.) Report the stolen vehicles to the car insurance carrier
Did the court evict anyone in the disabled’s home without eviction notice, hearing discovery and jury trial? Yes, I was living with my mom in our house and had only 30 days to move out 4 pets and myself, ended up having to move out in only one rainy day in 2013.
Further Comments:
I was falsely accused of undue influence when mom worked with her attorney Jay Fischer for 4 years. The court allowed hearsay staged litigation and denied submittance of factual evidence. I was made to pay for mom’s attorney after adjudication of incompetency to about $47K and I have paid over $450k in legal fees and fines. There was no due process at just about every turn, 90% hearsay testimony that could not be backed up with documented evidence,
Please indicated if it is okay to publish information on this form (without any of your personal information), so that it may help others. Thank you. Yes–Okay to publish
Places to complain
1) Nursing home abuse may be reporter to the state agency licensing nursing homes Done with PA Health Dept cited facilies
2) Complaints about attorneys may be made to the state disciplinary board for attorneys
Done–none were disciplined (I would be glad to publish your letters and the dismissal of valid complaints against the attorneys. Go file the IRS form on breach of fiduciary duty against them and demand their fees be returned because their work was fraudulent)
3) State, County and local Attorney General’s Offices and the Inspector General in the case of nursing home fraud (placement against will, drugging with psychotropic drugs, etc.) The Inspector General is supposed to prevent waste of state funds. Done–nothing happened ever
4) State, County and local politicians Done–nothing ever happened
5) FBI. The FBI is generally interested in cases where more than $500,000 was stolen or there were changed transcripts, ex parte conversations between opposing counsel or parties and the judges. But don’t let that stop you from complaining. Get several email addresses for the FBI and send your complaint to several. If your local FBI does not have an email, get their fax number and put it in writing and complain by fax. Try to get a complaint no., this gives you victim’s rights. Complained to FBI, nothing happened.
Complain early and often until you get results.
Visit your local politicians and demand investigations of these corrupt cases.
Visit all the blogs, facebook pages and complain there.Everyday I am on the internet complaining. I get tons of sympathy because this unfortunately is not an isolated incident of corruption in Probate in the US I also went to Chester County Commissioners and they also did nothing.
As Ken reminds all of us, there is a special form for the IRS to collect a 50% tax rate on criminal gains. We should all be filling out the IRS form for breach of fiduciary duty/criminal gains to put pressure on the miscreants such as Stern, Farenga, Schmeidel, Waller to pay the taxes due on the fact that Mary was never served, the Sykes case had no jurisdiction, they blocked discovery at every turn by telling the court “they investigated” and searched for the valuable coin collection and found none when in fact they never did search for the coins at all. In fact, they all knew or should have known Carol emptied the safe deposit box with the coins and they should have reported that to the court, but they did not.
Let’s make this IRS form 3949’s today very popular
Subject: Re: ideas – how about legislatively rather than suing?
Date: May 19, 2016 12:40 PM
The problem as I see it is time.
The legislative process takes forever and usually when the clout is all sorted out the laws passed are impotent. Here in Illinois for the past half century plus I’ve watched the process from just about every angle. I’ve even participated in a DEMOCRATIC PARTY disciplinary proceeding. (This was the only time I ever tried a law case in the nude!)
If someone can make progress to thwart the epidemic of elder cleansing – they have my full support. The assault on the FIRST AMENDMENT continues unabated and Lawyer disciplinary commissions are not only rigged (wired/fixed) but are openly and notorious engaging in 18 USCA 371 cover-ups and 18 USCA 4 obstruction of justice. COUNT THE PROSECUTIONS/INQUIRIES/HONEST INVESTIGATIONS!
Look at the issues in your own problem. If you would fold you hands, place a gag in your mouth, and stop making waves the problem would disappear along with your integrity and honor.
N.b. It does amuse me that the Establishment has turned a cold shoulder to enforcing the TAX LAWS equally and without bias. Under our law, conspirators – such as Jerome Larkin administrator of the IARDC – has joint and several liability for the damages (and the taxes) due because of the overt breaches of Fiduciary relationship of his friends – i.e. the guardian, GALs, judge etal who railroaded so many elders into the Illinois Elder Cleansing system. In the Sykes case it was 3 million and in Gore 1.5 million plus the value of the uninventoried gold extracted from her teeth.
IT IS NOT amusing that the bad guys can limit the posting on the net! It is not amusing that the Senate Committee on Aging is not even giving lip service to the 4 GAO reports that are posted on the NASGA blog. These reports detail the elder cleansing epidemic but are ignored. Senator Warren as an example in one of the proceedings claimed there was not enough information out there! Senator Dubin responded with a copy of some silly speech he gave as to Social Security. The Supreme Court of Illinois quietly rubber stamped the unilateral abrogation by Jerome Larkin and the IARDC and their determination that JoAnne Denison’s exposure of judicial corruption in the Illinois Court was akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater.
LOL with the establishment! The fix is in! However – Illinois and many other States are on the verge of Bankruptcy. The great unwashed are drowning in taxes! Collecting the taxes due on the booty of elder cleansing, plus interest and penalties, from Jerome Larkin and his counterparts in Pa, Ind, Calif, Fla **** will bail out the States! Not one of these miscreants is essential to the political machines – all of the Jerome Larkin look alikes are expendable!
To: Bill Kristol <editor+wk@weeklystandard.com>, Eric Holder <askdoj@usdoj.gov>, “FBI- ( (” <civilrights.cv@ic.fbi.gov>, A Just Cause <contact@a-justcause.com>, “Y. ACLU” <aclu@aclu.org>, Probate Sharks <verenusl@gmail.com>, “JoAnne M. Denison” <joanne@justice4every1.com>, Florida E-group <nasgaflorida@yahoogroups.com>, Nasga Us <nasga.org@gmail.com>, Candice Schwager <candice@elderlawatty.com>, “Edward C. Carter” <ECarter@atg.state.il.us>, “stateattorney@cookcountyil.gov” <stateattorney@cookcountyil.gov>, Breitbart News <noreply@breitbart.com>, “Donald J. Trump” <Donald.J.Trump@donaldtrump.com>, “newseditors@wsj.com” <newseditors@wsj.com>, Clinton President Bill <news@action.clintonfoundation.org>, Fox11 News <news@fox11.com>, Glenn Beck <news@glennbeck.com>, Dailymail Co News <news@dailymail.co.uk>, Chicago FBI <chicago@ic.fbi.gov>, Chicago Tribune <support-b8kc09gbfbuggmauwx6x0bymhtb57m@e.chicagotribune.com>
Subject: The Elder Cleansing scandal continues
Date: May 19, 2016 12:12 PM
Today another 63 people were killed when some terrorist brought down an Egyptian airplane. The news media is viral! However, at the same time literally hundreds of senior citizens are being isolated from their families so that they can be systematically abused, exploited, deprived of their assets, property, civil rights, and/or human rights (elder cleansing). No effort is being brought to provide Alice Gore, Mary Sykes, Helen Stone, Carol Wyman **** Justice. Indeed, every effort is being made by public officials, lawyer disciplinary commissions (such as the IARDC administered by Jerome Larkin) and corrupt courts to cover-up the indignity, humiliation, and exploitation of the targeted seniors.
I’ve been preaching to the choir (i.e. people who have taken a stand against elder cleansing) for several years to stand up and make their voices heard. The War against the Elderly and the Disabled continues unabated. Our own ISIS (corrupt Judges, lawyers, public officials, judicial officials) continues to laugh at us all the way to the bank. Writing to the political class has predictable results – Our elected officials mock us! Senator Durbin sends us copies of his speeches as to how he is fighting for social security. He is well aware the social security payment is just booty for the elder cleansers and his efforts (if any) are actually benefiting the elder cleansing. Unfortunately he is not alone in demonstrating his contempt for us.
We are fighting back. Mostly we use words that fall on deaf ears, but persistence is our major weapon. Thank heaven for the internet! Without it, Jerome Larkin and his cronies would bury us and we would never would be heard from again. However, using the Mary Sykes case 09 P 4585 (Cook County, Illinois) as an example so far law enforcement has not seized upon the fact that the file demonstrates not only corruption in the Court, blatant fiduciary theft, blatant misconduct on the part of the two guardian ad litem, the guardian, the judge, **** to do its statutory duty. (This duty is to prosecute criminal conduct and especially conduct that is so obvious).
It may be beating an old horse, but I reiterate: 755 ILCS 5/11a – 1 et seq. Contains all the guardianship rules that are applicable. This statute is consistent with the Americans with Disabilities act and provides for the limited intrusion on individual liberties that occurs in rare circumstances wherein a person (usually and elderly person) is in need of governmental assistance so that he/she can enjoy the fruits of America. Every State has a similar statute, and every State recognizes in its statute that the intrusion of individual rights and liberties must be carefully administered so that the Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments are not violated. HOWEVER, as the four GAO (Government Accounting Office) reports outspokenly point out – In an inordinate number of cases there has grown a cottage industry that exploits the elderly and disabled (elder cleansing) that come in contact with GUARDIANSHIP.
With a wink and a nod hundred (if not thousands) of citizens are herded into Courts, have guardians appointed for them, and the Gulag swallows up them, redistributes their assets to corrupt judges, guardians, attorneys, and assorted criminals. As most of the corruption is committed by public figures the crimes go unpunished and in fact ignoring 18 USCA 371 and 18 USCA 241,242 lawyer disciplinary commissions openly and notoriously act in concert with the miscreants and create a WALL OF SILENCE. As Grandma is not exciting – the media is not interested, law enforcement impotent, *****.
Here in Illinois (and especially in Chicago) we have a culture of corruption. Our governors go the jail on a regular basis. We still have one in jail. Regular scuttle buses deliver our political types to jail. It is hard to pick up a newspaper and not read about some political type who is pleading guilty or not guilty to a crime. We read about a teenager shot 16 times by a policeman and killed. On the next page we read that the entire city council voted to pay the family $5,000,000 in hush money to keep quiet while an election is going on. After the election, the ‘black alderman’ who all voted for the hush money payment call for a Federal investigation into the very shooting that *****.
In the Sykes case (aforesaid) without serving proper service of summons on Mary, without giving the jurisdictional notice to her loved ones, and without a hearing as to her competency and degree thereof, Mary Sykes was adjudicated by a ‘wired judge’ to be incompetent and a guardian was appointed for her. The Corrupt Judge, Lawyers, Guardians, Public officials labored mightily to keep their conspiracy and fiduciary theft under wraps. It was most difficult because Gloria Sykes, the younger daughter, of Mary managed to smuggle contemporaneous videos of her mother out to the internet. Herculean efforts were made to remove the videos from the net, and in many instances the miscreants were able to do exactly that. Showing the fraud of the public officials who were systematically elder cleansing Mary was deemed to be a violation of the PRIVACY of Mary. Some of the videos were actually obtained and destroyed.
As you are aware, Jerome Larkin and the IARDC attempted to silence Attorney JoAnne Denison and yours truly by overt violations of our respective Constitutional Rights and in particular our First Amendment Rights. On the net, and on various blogs such as Probate Sharks, MaryGSykes you can actually see Mary Sykes and determine for yourself as to whether or not see was so incompetent that she needed a guardian who would and could forfeit all her civil and human rights, to wit:
There are 5 videos about “Adam Stern GAL” on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
(This is my google search result – as I am a dinosaur – I am not sure that you will view what I saw – but somewhere each of the five videos is out there).
As these videos are out there how does Jerome Larkin and his gang of co-conspirators contest the images, affidavits, and the Court record. The answer – because they can! Because they can is also the reason that ELDER CLEANSING is a viable and very lucrative cottage industry that is given a pass as to its criminality and the taxes due to the USA and the State of Illinois! Jerome Larkin who pursuant to 18 USCA 371 has joint and several liability for these taxes is laughing all the way to the Bank.
The Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump revolution against the Establishment has ignited us = the great unwashed – and given us fuel to suggest that WE THE PEOPLE are entitled to HONEST GOVERNMENT that protects us all regardless of clout, race, creed, National origin, OR other artificial criteria. Our government may consider us STUPID and ignoramuses but the founding fathers in enacting our Constitution and core principles anticipated such arrogance.
This week marked a major victory for Glen Campbell’s oldest children in what they claim has been an ongoing battle with their stepmother over rights to visit their ailing father. On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed the Campbell/Falk Act, which protects communication rights for people who’ve become wards of the state and those who have conservators over their financial and living situations.
Named after the country music legend and Emmy-winning actor Peter Falk (Columbo, Murder, Inc.), the new law restricts conservators from blocking interaction with loved ones, whether it be in person or via phone, email or mail. And if the disabled person is unable to communicate — as is the case with Campbell, who is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s — his or her prior relationship with the visiting person presumes consent.
Campbell’s eldest daughter, Debby, and son Travis teamed with Falk’s daughter, Catherine, in lobbying the government to get behind the cause. Catherine Falk claims her stepmother tried to prevent her from seeing her famous father, resulting in extensive (and expensive) legal action. Peter Falk suffered from dementia and passed away in 2011. Catherine claims her stepmother neither notified her of her father’s passing, nor of his funeral.
Falk was at the Tennessee state capitol this past Monday, along with Debbie Campbell Cloyd, Travis Campbell and his wife Trudy, Marcia Southwick with Boomers Against Elder Abuse and Joseph Roubichek of the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse. Country legend Tanya Tucker — who dated Glen Campbell in the early Eighties and has remained a close family friend — was also in attendance to lend her outspoken support.
“If this can happen to Glen Campbell, it can happen to anyone,” Trudy Campbell said at the bill’s signing, as reported in a news release from Tennessee’s Senate Republican Caucus. “It is a civil right and certainly a God-given right to see your child and to receive mail from them. We know that thousands of others are suffering from restrictive action by a ward and are very pleased that Tennessee has passed this law to protect them.”
Senator Rusty Crowe (R-Johnson City), who sponsored the bill with Representative Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby) commented that it’s “heartbreaking to hear sons and daughters who cannot spend quality time with their parent after they are incapacitated and their health is in decline,” adding, “We believe this new law strikes the right balance so that it protects the rights of some of our most vulnerable citizens, while at the same time giving the conservator a fair process to follow in protecting the ward.” (Continue Reading)
The only problem with the Falk bills is that they often require you to have a lawyer to protect your rights. I see no reason why the courts have to get involved at thousands of dollars per hour in lawyers fees–a GAL, a lawyer for the Guardian and then yet another lawyer to ask for a phone call and visitation schedule? That’s nuts. A trained volunteer can assist the elder in making up a visitation schedule for just a few dollars to reimburse him or her for gas/travel. I say, forget this nonsense. Get rid of guardianship. Use trained volunteers who are just reimbursed their expenses for meeting with a ward once per week for an hour.
The California State Bar was thrown into turmoil this week after its ousted executive director struck back with retaliation claims alleging that he was fired for complaining about ethical breaches inside the organization.
Joseph Dunn, a Democratic former California state senator, claims in a whistleblower lawsuit filed in California state court Thursday that the state bar fired him from his job last week after he accused the bar’s top disciplinary officer of lying about the organization’s handling of attorney misconduct complaints.
The bar, an arm of the California Supreme Court, is the state’s legal gatekeeper, overseeing bar admissions and managing the state’s attorney discipline system for its 181,000 active members.
Mr. Dunn alleges that the bar’s chief trial counsel, Jayne Kim, who oversees investigations into complaints about attorneys, “unlawfully removed” backlog cases from official reports. “This was done to benefit Ms. Kim in her upcoming evaluation and to fraudulently inflate the productivity of her office,” the complaint says.
Ms. Kim, the lawsuit says, retaliated by filing an internal complaint against Mr. Dunn. The bar then retained an outside firm that billed it $300,000 — at $800 an hour — to conduct an evaluation of Mr. Dunn, according to his complaint.
Ms. Kim couldn’t be reached for comment. As recently as last year, Mr. Dunn had publicly praised her effort in reducing backlog cases.
The complaint also accuses Ms. Kim of failing to enforce a new state law intended to crackdown on immigration consulting fraud.
It’s amazing the salaries that these attorney administrators get and still there is a huge public outcry the Cal. State Bar isn’t doing their job and now this whistleblower suit.
I’m fairly amazed that the ARDC and the JIB have not been sued yet for not doing their job either.
Jerome Larkin is on the war path against attorneys exposing coverups in the court, he has suspended myself, Ken Ditkowsky and Lanre Amu for only telling the truth but he drags his feet on prosecuting a known serious and dangerous felon, Seth Gillman who has committed over $100 million in medicare fraud against the government, and has stolen employee tax funds from their trust account.
It’s only a matter of time before the lid blows off that kettle of boiling fetid corruption stew. And you know it’s going to happen.
You are correct, however, it is quite obvious that the Supreme Court of Illinois is not going to grant the petition under any circumstances – unless the individual judges feel they they might have a bit of culpability. Threatening Judges is not useful or practical, except, when the fix is in – as it is in these cases you have to send the message.
How do you do it?
Answer: it is probably a losing proposition, but you have to very subtlety point out that the proceedings were absurd and so devoid of due process that further appeal is going to occur. AND if you get the raw end of the shaft – the end is not in sight.
Does this work? Ultimately yes.
Why? Public officials suffer from strong cases of paranoia. to become a public official (especially a judge in Cook county) you have to either do something unseemly, or you have to turn your head while someone else does something inappropriate. (I am not going to spell this out!). Thus, exposure of past sins is a constant fear. In addition there are sins that just occurred – these can be a simple as referring to a female employee as “honey bunch!” (NYT article on Donald Trump). Yes, out of context it is disrespectful; however, *****. I used to refer to my wife as “Goody Two Shoes!” (That was because she tried so hard to never do or say anything inappropriate – I on the other hand went out of my way to be obnoxious)
Lawyers do not get to be on the Supreme Court bench because of their legal acumen. The get there because of their political skills! There is a question as to whether some judges are in need of a guardianship!
Now let us apply this situation to real life. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are not accidents. 8 years ago neither Sanders or Trump could have won enough votes to capture any primary or garner a single delegate. why the difference?
A Yale professor got on television and told us that the reason ******* received he support it got was because the American people are stupid. Recently another Administration lackey told us how the Iran deal was sold to twenty something members of the press and the Stupid American public. In fact, the contempt for the intelligence of Americans exhibited by our elected leaders – this is not just Obama administration people – it is cross board arrogance.
In our Universities we have bunches of narrow minded students and faculty who want to censor all opposing thought – and they are rubbing our noses in it. Hillary Clinton’s UBS deal and her campaign rhetoric is a reaffirmation that she and her republican and democratic allies have little respect for you and me.
the truth of the matter is she is right – we are not worthy of respect as we have consistently elected people of low morals and high degrees of intellectual dishonesty.
Now – getting back to basics. The people in power, especially judges, are well aware that they are walking very close to the line. If they cross the line they could be a Dr. Richard Fine, Grant Goodman (Ariz), Lanre Amu, JoAnne Denison *****. If that happens- bingo – disgrace, dishonor, *****.
No matter how Judge Connors twists, turns, or postures she admitted on page 91 she admitted to being wired. No matter who Jerome Larkin postures he is aware that Mary Sykes was railroaded into her elder cleansing scenario and Alice Gore was not robbed of the gold in her teeth by nazi storm troopers – it was a guardian ad litem with connections to nursing homes that orchestrated the atrocity. It was obvious that avarice was her credo and Larkin and his gang of 18 USCA 371 hoodlums *****.
Yes, the individual members of the Supreme Court of Illinois might routinely deny the motion, but they do not know if the SCOTUS having it in the record might cheat the 17,000 to 1 odds and look at this case! Or the Wall Street Journal might *****, or ******.
As your mother used to warn – doing bad things has consequences. Doing the good and/or the right thing may not have consequences – most of the time it yields good consequences. Arguing for Justice for Mary Sykes or Alice Gore is not a vain act – it makes us feel virtuous. It also might attract the 1 in 17ooo chance!
sunita, you fail to note, where is the judge and where is the otherside? In the case of the ARDC, the lines are blurred. The ARDC acts as judge, jury and executioner in one neat package.
also, we are not before the trial court judge. we are before the Illinois Sup. Ct. and Ken is right, on multiple occasions 7 justices have had an opportunity to do the right thing, pick up my pleadings and make a stink over the fact my case is defaming the State of Illinois.
what should happen is that one justice, one brave justice, should have picked up my pleading and done a “In re Weddigen” concurring opinion on it and wrapped the flag around himself and made a glorious grandstand for Truth, Justice and the American Way.
there’s still a chance. the elections are coming up, candidates with poor records on protecting the rights of the people are searching for some BS grandstanding, and this is the perfect case for one party to redeem itself.
political prisoners, grave injustices are always fodder for errant pols.
my blog just gets more and more popular. probatesharks is now getting 10,000 hits per day
If you want a car, you buy it. Or, if you are a thief, you steal it. Business is business. And crime is crime. We presume everybody understands that. It seems fundamental in a real world.And what about public positions? If you want to be a judge, you, or your friends, buy the job. Or, if you and your friends are crooks, you procure the judgeship by blackmail. Yes, there are honest judges in America, but they are an endangered species. [And we have to someday post a story just about that and how some judges in really important matters have been murdered and the Establishment does not deal with that.]As a court reform group, Citizen’s Committee to Clean Up the Courts, we have been greatly interested in two topics for more than 40 years. (1) How does one become a judge? and (2) In the court rulings that we suspect are tainted, “bought”, or just plain crooked, one of the tip-offs is the judge, or panel of judges, issues a ruling containing judicial perjuries, that is, lies they insert based on supposed “facts”, not in the record, but made up by the Judges out of the air. [A Chief Federal Appeals Judge from Chicago that does that is the subject of a previous story of mine. See “Chief Crook in Microsoft Mess”.]Starting about 1966, from various sources, we made up a list of “prices” to procure a judgeship in a major venue, like Chicago. To become a state judge in the local court, such as Cook County [or Crook County] where Chicago is. The price at that time was 50 thousand dollars reportedly donated to a key and appropriate official of the Chicago Bar Association, the lawyers mafia union. [Now the filling of vacancies on the bench, temporary or otherwise, leading later to permanent positions, is done through a Judge on the Illinois Supreme Court, the state’s highest tribunal. More about that later.]To “buy” a chair in the U.S. District Court, such as in a sizeable town like Chicago, in 1966, was 250 thousand dollars, “donated” or “contributed” to the Senior U.S. Senator from Illinois who makes the pitch to the President who generally appoints according to such an order from the Senior Senator, especially if it is from the same political cabal.For a judgeship on a federal appeals court, like in Chicago, that covers appeals from federal district courts in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana—well, the price was a million dollars or then and now, “sky is the limit”. Now those were 1966 prices, and the “costs” have gone up plenty since then.Why would someone, or his cronies for him, pay 50 thousand dollars to be a local state judge? First of all, it beats trying to make a living in the law factories (that is what we call them) and running up and back to the different courthouses and courtrooms. But more to the point, it enables the would-be judge to take care of his political and financial confederates. And since all too often, justice is for sale in America, it enables a person to become a judge and live above his regular income, through pay-offs of some kind, whether in cash or property, perhaps offshore. [At the time of Shakespeare, litigants made judges rich by giving them gold buttons for a favorable ruling.]Suppose there were no morality, no laws against thievery and corruption. There you are, the Judge. You are sitting at a table, or Bench, and on the Bench is a matter awaiting your handling, worth a half a million dollars. So what if 25 thousand dollars, or less, falls off the table, into your suitcase. In business, it would be called a commission, a finders fee, or a referral fee.The really big bucks cases are in the U.S. District Court, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York. It would not be unusual for a multi-million dollar matter to be on the docket of such a Judge. In the federal courts, you are appointed for life. Federal Judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behavior” so says the U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 1. For many years it was up to the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee what was “good Behavior” to be determined, rarely invoked during the history of the nation by way of Articles of Impeachment. That power has now been unlawfully delegated to be determined by a “club” of judges called the Judicial Council of the Circuit. That is, the appellate circuit encompassing the particular U.S. District, such as 7th Circuit, Chicago headquartered.In recent years, the different Judicial Councils referred matters for impeachment to the House Judiciary Committee, against basically honest judges who by their rulings, angered America’s secret political police, the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and CIA.For similar reasons, two black U.S. District Judges were removed by Impeachment, one in New Orleans and another in Florida. In Nevada was removed a federal district judge by a frame-up. He dared pronounce the apparent truth from the Bench, that the Organized Crime Strike Force of the U.S. Justice Department were themselves criminals and mobsters in Nevada. A latino federal judge in California dared pronounce, based on the evidence before him, that the INS and the FBI were the American Gestapo. Luckily, he beat back the Justice Department’s framed-up criminal charges against him, but it took a piece out of his life.Why would a band of “businessmen” get together and “buy” a chair on the federal appeals court, such as in Chicago? And pay one million dollars (in 1966 dollars) or ten million dollars or more in year 2000 dollars? Most all the cases that try to go beyond the federal appeals courts require the petitioner, or loser in the appeals court, to beg the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. It is done by “knocking on the door” and imploring the high court to open the door. Called Petition for Certiorari. In a recent term of the U.S. Supreme Court, on the first day of Court, 1600 such begging petitions were pending on their docket. The high court judges being old and tired, or lazy, or indifferent, refused ALL 1600 petitions. Most every one, by collect telegram from the Clerk of the high court, with just one word “Denied”, no explanation given. Really? No merit in 1600 petitions?So for most cases, the various federal appeals courts are the end of the line. Hence, it is wise to buy a chair there. Many of the federal appeals judges own and operate banks, are tied to banks and other financial entities. We call them Banker-Judges. They do NOT disqualify themselves when their financial links are litigants in their court. Guess who wins in their crooked court? [In the 1960s and 1970s, our work led to the jailing for bribery of the highest sitting federal judge in U.S. history. When we accused a 7th Circuit Federal Appeals Judge, to his face, of bribery, he called a press conference. On all the media, this Banker-Judge, Otto Kerner, Jr., (former Illinois Governor), called me a “liar”. He tried to get a fellow judge to jail me for “contempt of court”. He died an ex-convict, convicted as I accused him. The current federal appeals judges are so angered by our work, they have unlawfully barred me and a TV Show associate of mine, from all the federal courts in the 7th Circuit.]A cynical reality: often after we have fingered a crooked judge publicly, the Establishment, acting just like the mafia, throws away the judge. He is no longer useful to fix cases. Suddenly the local prosecutors remind themselves that the judge in question does not pay his proper income taxes and such. So they send him to jail. No sensible crook would bother to bribe an already-fingered corrupt judge.A hard to find book, published about 1962, is “The Corrupt Judge” by Joseph Borkin. He points out from specific, documented examples, the few times in U.S. history that federal judges were removed from the Bench were when the judge got in the middle between two sizeable financial entities. The competing forces crushed the Judge like a bug. But an underdog, such as a patent owner suing a huge corporation for violating his patent, gets nowhere accusing a judge of crooked rulings. [In 1963, our group originally was called the Committee to Protect Patent Owners.] In Chicago, the Banker-Judges on the Federal Appeals court in three separate appeals on the same basic case, overturned a district court jury’s verdict, including massive fraud, against Sear Roebuck & Co., in an important patented tool case. The Banker-Judges had a financial interest interlocked with Sears and did NOT disqualify themselves.In Chicago, a divorce case has led to a supposed federal investigation of possible judicial bribery in procuring judgeships. The estranged wife claimed her husband bought his chair on the local state court for 20 thousand dollars of the family money. The possible bribery probe target has been the Chief Judge of the Illinois Supreme Court, highest tribunal in the State. His home district is Chicago. He has done some strange things reportedly for his political crony, Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, at one time a Chicago alderman. The judge once appointed a judge from the lowly traffic court to sit in the intermediate court, called the Appellate Court of Illinois. The appointee reportedly did not have sufficient experience to be sitting in the middle level reviewing court.This Chief Judge who has appointed judges to fill a vacancy in the lower courts is quite a character. He goes around town in a cherry red Mercedes. His residence occupies two floors in a ultra-expensive high rise in the Gold Coast district of Chicago. [Hey, is this all on his judicial salary? Really?]Part of the supposed probe is how “Fast Eddie” gets his crony, Chief Judge Charles Freeman, to appoint persons as judges to fill a vacancy. It seems some of them reportedly are also in the Nursing Home business with the judge. [Nursing homes are a favorite “investment” for some corrupt politicians. Such as cronies of Clinton and their Beverly Enterprises chain of nursing homes.]How far will the supposed investigation go? There is an inclination for the FBI, themselves highly corrupt, to quickly hush up the matter. Why? Some have claimed that Fast Eddie, for much of his adult life, has been reportedly a “mole” or stool pigeon for federal authorities, including the IRS and the FBI. Some contend this stems from the way Fast Eddie beat back a murder charge against him, an outgrowth of trying to break a labor union strike in 1959. At the time, Fast Eddie was a law student and claimed he was in class at the time of the crime. Did he strong-arm his teacher for an alibi? Some over the years continue to say so. Some claim Fast Eddie is a key feature in the reported buying and selling of judgeships.By the time of the new century, the prices to buy a chair in the federal courts has gone way up. At least a million dollars is reportedly required now to purchase you a judgeship in the U.S. District COurt in a major district like the one that includes Chicago. Ten million dollars or more is required to obtain a chair in the U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit, Chicago, one step below the U.S. Supreme Court that rejects the bulk of all the begging petitions submitted.So, if you want to know how and why America has come to have a corrupt judiciary, covered up by a venal, lackey monopoly press, and cowardly lawyers, well, these are some of the reasons.Stay tuned.
If you want to see more posts from Shelton and evidence of corruption in the Cook County injustice system, then stand-up for Shelton by coming to court and assisting her with finding civil rights and defense attorneys as well as help her raise funds for her defense. Read more here.
Courts in this country under the guise of nice sounding laws daily take children from loving parents for profit based on hearsay and without due process. This is a national crisis. The numbers are staggering. This produces life long affects on mental health, education, and productivity, as well as destroys the family structure, something that in the U.S. is being clobbered from all sides. Please read this post and ACT.
UNITED WE STAND – DIVIDED WE FALL
TAKE BACK OUR COURTS FROM THE CORRUPT – FORCE CONGRESS TO LISTEN!
Also send your request to the U.S. Attorney Eric Holder at:
U.S. Attorney Eric Holder U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001
e-mail = ffetf@usdoj.gov
Office of the Attorney General of the United States (202) 514-2001
The following are links to the evidence proving that Cook County Circuit Court Probate Judge James Riley accepted bribes to fix a case. This is the tip of the iceberg of Graylord 2.
Also the links for three cases presently before the U.S.Supreme Court concerning judicial corruption and treason are also presented that reveal extensive pervasive and systemic corruption and lawlessness in the Cook County Courts. Please write U.S. Attorney Eric Holder and ask for an investigation:
U.S. Attorney Eric Holder U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001 e-mail = ffetf@usdoj.gov Office of the Attorney General of the United States (202) 514-2001
These three cases are presently pro se before the U.S. Supreme Court.
I filed a 2nd Supplement – a transcript which I haven’t posted yet, but which is attached. I am scanning them into the Scribd web site and will have a link soon.
The supplement to this petition that was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court is as follows:
We have also uncovered millions of dollars of felony federal funding fraud in divorce cases. You can read about this at the web sites that follow about Cook County Judges, although this is happening in all counties in Illinois.
U.S. Supreme Court case no 11-10790
The following petition for writ of certiorari, U.S. Supreme Court case no 11-10790, is just one case that illustrates the systemic problems in the court system. It is concerning a divorce case where David Bambic wrongfully, unconstitutionally, and unjustly lost custody of his children and falsely is accused of being dangerous to his children due to lies and hearsay from his drug addicted ex-wife, Catherine Wood, who was given custody, while the court is refusing to acknowledge that the Department of Children and Family Services invested the accusations against him by his ex-wife and determined them to be unfounded which proves the judge’s orders for custody and the divorce are illegal and void. Coincidentally Ms Wood worked in an Indian American Health as a drug-addiction counselor. She steals drugs from her clients.
This reveals that it is a systemic problem that judges deny due process, violate statutes and give kids to the abusing parent based solely on hearsay.
I and many others have sent out hundreds of FOIAs and have now been able to determine the paper trail as to how federal funds are being misused.
The machine however has a strangle hold over the press and none of you will cover any of this.
The US S Ct denied the latter two cases and petitions for rehearing are pending. Clearly if they don’t issue summary orders concerning these cases then they are refusing to enforce their own rulings and constitutional rights.
Linda Lorincz Shelton, PhD, MD
Stop Illinois Corruption
David Bambic
Illinois Representative for govabuse.org
and many others including 400,000 members of GovAbuse.org
Judge Joseph C. Polito, in Will County, IL, in the Twelfe Judicial Circuit Courts was caught using court computers for six months to look up porn sites, yet the Will County States Attorney has not indicted him for misuse of funds or illegal use of government property.
He gets paid $170,000 by taxpayers to look up and watch pornography.
This picture of David Bambic protesting this fact says it all! “Pornlito” has presided over many family court cases. They should all be reviewed due to his biases. How many sexual abusers have been wrongfully given custody of their children?
Good news is that Annabel Melongo is now out of jail after being wrongfully incarcerated for two years with grossly excessive bail set by the incompetent and Dishonorable Judge Mary Margaret Brosnahan on two fraudulent charges of eavesdropping ($30,000 bail) allegedly for recording phone conversations with a court reporter and for remote computer tampering ($500,000 bail increased from personal recognizance when arrested for eavesdropping then reduced to $300,000 and then reduced to personal recognizance bail when eavesdropping charge dropped). Tell me why recording conversations with a court reporter, a public employee, is a crime! Write your legislator to change this law!
The complete story about Melongo is on a web site that purportedly was written by Melongo here. Apparently Carol Spizzirri, CEO of now defunct Save-A-Life foundation that had through fraud obtained millions in government grants from Homeland Security, Illinois, Chicago Public Schools and many other agencies by snowing such prominent politicians as Chicago Public Schools Chairman (now Secretary of Education) Arne Duncan, Sen. Richard Devine, Rep. Jan Shakowsky, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and many others, who failed to use due diligence to check her out. Spizzirri put on her government grant applications that she was a senior nurse, although she was never more than a candy striper. She is a big con artist.
It is particularly surprising that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has not indicted her and cannot explain how the $50,000 her office gave to SALF was spent.
Melongo is still fighting the charge of computer tampering. Her pending motion to dismiss is here.
Dr. Linda Shelton tried to get her out of jail with filing two next-friend petitions for writs of habeas corpus – read them here and here. For this LEGAL act she was charged with contempt of court and summarily, unconstitutionally sentenced to 16 months in jail. The Illinois courts all the way up to the Illinois Supreme Court have been violating the law. So her appeal has now been sent to the U.S. Supreme Court – read it here. Her complete story about this whole situation with many links is on this blog here.
It appears that the State of Illinois, pushed by IL AG Lisa Madigan and certain judges will go out of their way spending millions on fraudulent prosecutions of Shelton and Melongo to discredit them and keep this story out of the public eye.
Its time the public spoke up. PLEASE WRITE THE FOLLOWING OFFICIALS AND COMPLAIN about the wasteful use of your tax dollars and the cover-up of corruption and fraud!
Cook County Board President Tony Preckwinkle 118 N. Clark Street Room 537 Chicago, IL 60602 Phone: (312) 603-6400 Fax: (312) 443-4397
Mayor Rahm Emanuel City Hall 121 N. LaSalle Street Chicago, Illinois 60602 By Phone: Dial 311 (within Chicago) If calling from outside of Chicago, call: 312.744.5000
The Honorable Eric Holder United States Attorney Attention: Public Corruption Task Force (Re: Judiciary) U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001
US Attorney for Northern Illinois United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division 219 S. Dearborn St., 5th Floor Chicago, IL 60604 Phone: (312) 353-5300
United States Judicial Conference Care of Honorable Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court The Honorable John Roberts United States Supreme Court 1 First Street, N.E. Washington, DC 20543
The following are excerpts from Melogo’s Internet web site which gives all the details about her cases including copies of all legal documents, discovery, and orders.
How It All Started
· April 27th, 2006 : discussion arose between Carol Spizzirri and Annabel Melongo on salary issues. Carol Spizzirri wanted to pay her 47K for being both the computer software and network administrator but Annabel wanted 60K. An agreement was never reached, so Annabel was fired.
· April 28th, 2006: Annabel called to inquire about her check. She’s told to pick it up coming Monday, May1st, 2006.
· May 1st, 2006: Annabel stopped at SALF on her way to Chicago. While waiting for her check, Saquan Gholar and Bob Cokinis informed her of computer issues. She’s told some people can’t access the network to view files whereas some can. This is later confirmed by other employees. After receiving her check, she demanded to see Carol . Carol was in a meeting with Rita Mullins, the former palatine mayor. On her way back from Chicago, she stopped again at SALF to see Carol, which still wasn’t available. She then called Vince Davis, one of Carol’s manager and she’s told that the computer issues were taken care of and that her help wasn’t needed. Later that day, she gets an email forwarded to her, in the email she’s accused of creating the incident. She replied to the email by forwarding it to various SALF employees and calling Carol a pathological liar. Other than requesting tax documents months later, that’s the last time Annabel was in touch with SALF officially. Little did she know that this small incident will spawn a case that will challenge Illinois’ political and legal system.
Timeline With ABC Report
For an untrained eye, it seems ABC investigative report has nothing to do with Annabel’s case. Well, not so fast!!! ABC report might have well triggered the senseless complaint even though the investigation conducted by the Attorney General Office didn’t warrant such charges.
Let’s look closer at the timeline. At the end of the report, [Emmy award-winning investigative reporter] Chuck Goudie says, “After terminating that interview three weeks ago….” The report aired November 16th, 2006. Which means the actual interview took place around October 26th, 2006. The charges, the arrest warrant, the complaint and the detective visit to Annabel’s apartment all happened on October 31th, 2006. More over, ABC didn’t just walk to SALF without warning. Common sense dictates, a notice was given to the organization to prepare for the interview. The nicely decorated room testify to that. Let’s say ABC gave SALF 3-4 weeks notice, it then becomes apparent that SALF knew of ABC’s visit around September 29th – October 6th, 2006. Are you curious to know when the Attorney General Office called the meeting to determine the charges? October 20th, 2006. Bingo!!!
Here’s what might have happened. SALF had an ongoing project estimated at around 40M with the Homeland Security which would have propelled the organization nationwide. However, it had no statistics proving the 1.6 million children being trained claim. Also it was legally in big troubles for unaccounted federal and state money. With the help of Lisa Madigan office, a black ship had to be created. Annabel, the helpless black sheep, was then charged to have remotely deleted all the files in the organization along with all the quickbooks and the annual reports that SALF ever had. Moreover, Carol’s credibility having taken a toll at the end of the interview, the charges became the means to discourage further investigation. In that way, even when the ABC report aired, she still had the weapon to tell America and the Homeland Security ( See Section ‘Who’s Carol Spizzirri’ ) to overlook her lies and to consider the fact that over 1.6 Million children were trained even though she couldn’t prove it. Very clever!!!
Here’s “what [Illinois Attorney General ]Lisa Madigan might say [about corrupt Save-A-Life Foundation and their felony funding fraud – obtaining government grants from Homeland Security, Chicago Public Schools, State of Illinois, etc.]
“ You can’t handle the truth. Son, we live in a world with expensive political campaigns and those campaigns need to be financed by someone. Who’s going to do it? You Annabel Melongo? You ABC? I have a greater gubernatorial ambition that you can possibly fathom. You weep for the money and curse Carol Spizzirri. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what a campaign costs. Carol Spizzirri’s though full of lies and deceptions saves political lives. My refusal to prosecute Jon Burge though calculated and incomprehensible to you saves my career. I don’t want them prosecuted because deep down I know that’s what we do in Illinois. I need Carol Spizzirri in that role. I want her in that role. In Illinois we use words like earmarks, connections, pay-to-play. We use these words as the backbone of our politics. Other states use them as punch lines. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to people who rise and sleep under the blanket of the legal system I provide and then question the manner in which I provide it. I would rather want they say thank you and go on their way otherwise I suggest they go through a campaign. Either way, I don’t give a damn what people think they’re entitle to.” “
The family courts allow court-appointed child representatives and guardian ad litems in divorce court (family court) to extort families and impoverish them by ordering payment to them of $300 to $1200 per hr – often with final bills of >> $50,000, in addition to paying outrageous rates to private attorneys for each parent, as well as paying for psychological counselors and other court appointed persons who evaluate the family situation. As the average American family makes around $40,000 – $60,000, this guarantees that families will be impoverished. then the judges order the families home sold, children’s college funds confiscated, and all assets sold to pay these fees.
This surely is not in the best interest of the children as the state law mandates!
TO: All Members of Judiciary I- Civil Law Committee
FROM: Milijana Vlastelica, On behalf of all victims of court-ordered child representation
Subject: The Judiciary’s Objection to $150/Hour Fee Cap to the Court-Appointed
Children’s Attorneys as Provided in House Bill 5544 Deviates from the
Legislature’s Established Practices; Some Possible Solutions
Most of us are still recovering from the Judiciary’s objection [February 29, 2012] to establishing the fee caps for the court-appointedchildren’s attorneysin divorce cases especially that this objection is not in sync with the Legislature’s well-established practice to set the exact hourly rate for other types of court-appointed attorneys. For example, in death-penalty cases, the Legislature did not leave it up to the court-appointed private attorney to set his own hourly rate, but it capped his fees at $125/hour (adjusted for COLA) per 725 ILCS 124-10. In non-death penalty cases, attorney’s fees are based on 725 ILCS 5/113-3, set at $40/hour for court time and $30/hour for non-court times.
Therefore, it is difficult to comprehend where this rationale, which some Representatives expressed that the court-appointedchildren’s attorney should be making as much money as privately retained attorneys, comes from.
Our research indicates that nowhere in this country are the court-appointed attorneys allowed to set their own hourly rateexcept in Illinois in the Family Court.
Per the attached research article entitled, “Issues Relating to Guardians ad Litem”, dated January 2003, the Hawaii Legislative Reference Bureau conducted a study of the practices that exist in Hawaii and on the mainland with respect to guardian ad litem and appointed counsel in child protective cases and in the Family Court. The Bureau’s research reveals that the court-appointed guardians in other states are paid either flat fee per case or block of cases per contractor fixed hourly rate. For example, in Alaska attorney GALs receive $70 to $80 an hour; in Arkansas, guardian ad litems are salaried between $37,000 – $57,000 per year depending on experience; Attorney ad litem contractors who are part-time receive $800 per case per year; In California, Contract attorneys are paid flat rates per event. The juvenile court panel of attorneys are compensated at a rate of $75 per hour in court and $50 for out of court work. If an attorney had twenty-five cases, the attorney would receive $20,000 per year; In Colorado, some attorneys were compensated on an hourly basis and others on a flat-fee basis; most attorneys who represent children in dependency and neglect cases currently are paid a flat fee of $1,040 per case for 24 months of representation. If the case has not yet closed after 24 months, attorneys may bill at hourly rates of $45 for out-of court work and $55 for in-court work (which is the same rate paid to other public attorneys in Colorado).
Upon the Hawaii Legislative Bureau’s comprehensive research, the Bureau concluded and recommended that, “Attorneys providing guardian ad litem services should be compensated equivalent to other ‘public service’attorneys”.
Here in Illinois, without any formal studies, some members of Judiciary concluded that the court-appointed children’s attorney in divorce cases, should be making as much money as mom’s and dad’s privately retained attorneys. As shown above, this practice deviates from the well-established standards that the Illinois Legislature adopted in the past which is to cap the feesfor all court-appointed attorneys; and, it also deviates from the standards established by the rest of the United States.
Therefore, this letter is a plea to those members of Judiciary to reconsider their position, and to realize that the only solution is capping the fees at $150/hour or establishing some type of flat amounts.
If we set the court-appointed children’s attorneys fee to be a flat $1000 per case as some other states are doing it, but with the explicit provisions that they cannot withdraw from the case until the case is concluded, and that they must attend all hearings and all status dates where they are not needed (because they are currently doing it, and billing the parents), I guarantee that all the cases would be concluded much faster. The divorcing parents would have money left for their children’s education; the courts would not be overbooked; we may not need as many family court judges, and this would help the Illinois budget as well.
In the alternative, if some Representatives continue objecting to the fee cap of $150/hour and/or insist that the court-appointed child representative should be making as much money as privately retained mom’s and dad’s attorneys, then, perhaps the Legislature can afford the parents some remedy by revoking the absolute immunity that the Courts recently gave to the court-appointed children’s attorneys. If the court-appointed children’s attorneys want to be, and deserve to be at the same pay level or higher than the mom’s and dad’s privately retained attorneys, then they also should be held accountable for their actions and professional negligence. If mom’s or dad’s attorney provides substandard level of service, he or she can be sued for legal malpractice. The court-appointed child representatives, on the other hand, cannot be sued for professional negligence or intentional tort no matter how much they damage the child. Nowhere on Planet Earth does this exist that a private professional in a capacity of a court-appointee sets his own hourly rate, can make as much as one million in annual revenue, and not be held liable for his work or lack thereof.
In addition, I would recommend that the judges have no input as to which private attorney is awarded these appointments. Currently, the same judges always appoint the same child representatives. This practice, where a trial court can award an extremely lucrative business to a private attorney, provides a breeding ground for corruption, whether it is happening or not.
In Albuquerque, N.M. a federal jury awarded $22 million to Stephen Slevin, 58, for civil rights damages because he was kept in solitary confinement for two years and forced to pull his own tooth after being arrested for drunken driving, even though never convicted. He never saw a judge! Slevin was arrested while driving through the southern New Mexico county of Dona Ana in August 2005. He ended up in solitary confinement because he was suffering from depression and someone checked a box on a form indicating he was suicidal according to his attorney Matt Coyte. Although given drugs for depression he never saw a doctor until weeks before his release. Slevin was released in June 2007. “He was stuck in a 6-foot-by-11-foot cell with a concrete bench for a bed. And he sat in that cell. We had documentary evidence that he didn’t get out for anything — for recreation, a shower — for months at a time,” according to his attorney. For more details see Washington Post article here.
The same thing happened to me (Dr. Linda Lorincz Shelton). I was wrongfully convicted of aggravated battery of an officer (ramming him with my wheelchair) – when Cook Co Dept of Corrections Sgt Anthony Salemi attacked me, falsified his records, and committed perjury. I was sentenced to two years.
For details of what happened and why I am innocent, read my appeal here and another blog post here.
Read the outrageous improper unconstitutional IL Appellate Court decision where they ignored my arguments and the law and denied my appeal based on defamatory ad hominem attacks against me making all sorts of false statements about me that were not in the trial record and that they got through hearsay from other corrupt officials here.
Read a detailed description of what happened here.
At the IL Dept of Corrections Dwight Correctional Center, despite being disabled and very sick at the time (unable to walk due to starvation and dehydration and having diarrhea all over myself), I was punished with solitary confinement for months- denied water for four days when I arrived, while unable to sit up and get to the water fountain in the cell – denied underwear, wash cloth, towel, soap or anything in the cell except a suicide smock and two inch mattress on the floor – yes this means I was swimming in diarrhea and yelled at for messing myself – because the Cook County Jail falsely told them in order to torture me that I was faking my medical problems ( I have a partial right hemiparesis, heart and lung disorders, and chronic pain) – denied appropriate medications – not let out of the cell for even an hour a day – denied all phone calls – they ignored everything I said. They failed to forward, even rudimentary medical records or follow up on them for days. I did not shower for months – as the shower in unit was so cold it aggravated my neurological problems and when I did shower made my legs turn blue and painful for hours, etc.
When I had a severe, life-threatening reaction to the food (all the meat is soy substitute and heavily loaded with artificial chemicals, flavors and coloring), (briefly stopped breathing with severe respiratory distress requiring emergency IV medications – a nurse saved me), they said they “fixed my allergy to the food” by pureeing the food! That’s like giving peanut butter to someone allergic to peanuts! The Director of the medical unit was a nurse practitioner!!! So, instead of playing Russian Roulette with the food, I didn’t eat, starved and lost 60 lbs in a few months. I was so dehydrated with such abnormal blood tests that I had to be treated in an emergency room immediately after being released. The prison Dr. Shiker said nothing was wrong with me!! The medical care is provided by incompetent staff from Wexford Medical Group. They make profits by not sending inmates to the hospital, even when it is needed.
This happened in 2008. I am still fighting to be vindicated and to have Sgt Anthony Salemi arrested for perjury and battery of me. Another post containing details of this unlawful arrest and wrongful conviction is here. I am still fighting to have the Cook County Assistant States Attorney John Maher and Andrew Dalkin arrested for Nifong-like prosecutorial misconduct and Judge Joseph Kazmierski removed from the bench for judicial misconduct. It was like the Salem Witch Trials in terms of denial of due process and allowing illegal defamation of me by the prosecutors. The bottom line is I am innocent. My physicians, both Dr. Joan Briller in cardiology and Dr. Boris Vern, a neurologist testified that it was physically impossible for me to have raised both legs and kicked the officer in the chest due to spinal cord injury and partial paralysis of right leg, along with the severe dehydration (and resulting weakness proven by blood tests). The law states that if a doctor testifies to a situation and his testimony is not refuted by a doctor from the other side (state’s attorney) then the statements made by the doctor must be considered true by the jury. In Interest of Ashley K., 212 Ill.App.3d 849, 156 Ill.Dec.925, 571 N.E.2d 905, 930 (Ill. App. 1st Dist.. 1991) [“Expert medical testimony and medical evidence are by their nature too recondite to be refuted by nonmedical testimony. . . . It is therefore plain that the circuit court erred. The circuit court cannot disregard expert medical testimony that is not countervailed by other competent medical testimony or medical evidence. Moreover, the circuit court, itself, cannot second-guess medical experts. If the circuit court does not follow medical evidence that is not refuted by other medical evidence, the circuit court is acting contrary to the evidence.” ]
From: kenneth ditkowsky <kenditkowsky@yahoo.com> To: j. d. <jdit@aol.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2016 12:34 PM Subject: Re: “LOANS” dirty little secrets
Corruption in Cook County, Illinois is not new. Corrupt, wired, and/or fixed judges is not new in Illinois – what is new is just how overt the cover-up has become. People who complained have been vilified as a matter of tradition; however to bring you back to the golden era
Buying A Judgeship by Sherman H. Skolnick
If you want a car, you buy it. Or, if you are a thief, you steal it. Business is business. And crime is crime. We presume everybody understands that. It seems fundamental in a real world.
And what about public positions? If you want to be a judge, you, or your friends, buy the job. Or, if you and your friends are crooks, you procure the judgeship by blackmail. Yes, there are honest judges in America, but they are an endangered species. [And we have to someday post a story just about that and how some judges in really important matters have been murdered and the Establishment does not deal with that.]
As a court reform group, Citizen’s Committee to Clean Up the Courts, we have been greatly interested in two topics for more than 40 years. (1) How does one become a judge? and (2) In the court rulings that we suspect are tainted, “bought”, or just plain crooked, one of the tip-offs is the judge, or panel of judges, issues a ruling containing judicial perjuries, that is, lies they insert based on supposed “facts”, not in the record, but made up by the Judges out of the air. [A Chief Federal Appeals Judge from Chicago that does that is the subject of a previous story of mine. See “Chief Crook in Microsoft Mess”.]
Starting about 1966, from various sources, we made up a list of “prices” to procure a judgeship in a major venue, like Chicago. To become a state judge in the local court, such as Cook County [or Crook County] where Chicago is. The price at that time was 50 thousand dollars reportedly donated to a key and appropriate official of the Chicago Bar Association, the lawyers mafia union. [Now the filling of vacancies on the bench, temporary or otherwise, leading later to permanent positions, is done through a Judge on the Illinois Supreme Court, the state’s highest tribunal. More about that later.]
To “buy” a chair in the U.S. District Court, such as in a sizeable town like Chicago, in 1966, was 250 thousand dollars, “donated” or “contributed” to the Senior U.S. Senator from Illinois who makes the pitch to the President who generally appoints according to such an order from the Senior Senator, especially if it is from the same political cabal.
For a judgeship on a federal appeals court, like in Chicago, that covers appeals from federal district courts in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana—well, the price was a million dollars or then and now, “sky is the limit”. Now those were 1966 prices, and the “costs” have gone up plenty since then.
Why would someone, or his cronies for him, pay 50 thousand dollars to be a local state judge? First of all, it beats trying to make a living in the law factories (that is what we call them) and running up and back to the different courthouses and courtrooms. But more to the point, it enables the would-be judge to take care of his political and financial confederates. And since all too often, justice is for sale in America, it enables a person to become a judge and live above his regular income, through pay-offs of some kind, whether in cash or property, perhaps offshore. [At the time of Shakespeare, litigants made judges rich by giving them gold buttons for a favorable ruling.]
Suppose there were no morality, no laws against thievery and corruption. There you are, the Judge. You are sitting at a table, or Bench, and on the Bench is a matter awaiting your handling, worth a half a million dollars. So what if 25 thousand dollars, or less, falls off the table, into your suitcase. In business, it would be called a commission, a finders fee, or a referral fee.
The really big bucks cases are in the U.S. District Court, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York. It would not be unusual for a multi-million dollar matter to be on the docket of such a Judge. In the federal courts, you are appointed for life. Federal Judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behavior” so says the U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 1. For many years it was up to the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee what was “good Behavior” to be determined, rarely invoked during the history of the nation by way of Articles of Impeachment. That power has now been unlawfully delegated to be determined by a “club” of judges called the Judicial Council of the Circuit. That is, the appellate circuit encompassing the particular U.S. District, such as 7th Circuit, Chicago headquartered.
In recent years, the different Judicial Councils referred matters for impeachment to the House Judiciary Committee, against basically honest judges who by their rulings, angered America’s secret political police, the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and CIA.For similar reasons, two black U.S. District Judges were removed by Impeachment, one in New Orleans and another in Florida. In Nevada was removed a federal district judge by a frame-up. He dared pronounce the apparent truth from the Bench, that the Organized Crime Strike Force of the U.S. Justice Department were themselves criminals and mobsters in Nevada. A latino federal judge in California dared pronounce, based on the evidence before him, that the INS and the FBI were the American Gestapo. Luckily, he beat back the Justice Department’s framed-up criminal charges against him, but it took a piece out of his life.
Why would a band of “businessmen” get together and “buy” a chair on the federal appeals court, such as in Chicago? And pay one million dollars (in 1966 dollars) or ten million dollars or more in year 2000 dollars? Most all the cases that try to go beyond the federal appeals courts require the petitioner, or loser in the appeals court, to beg the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. It is done by “knocking on the door” and imploring the high court to open the door. Called Petition for Certiorari. In a recent term of the U.S. Supreme Court, on the first day of Court, 1600 such begging petitions were pending on their docket. The high court judges being old and tired, or lazy, or indifferent, refused ALL 1600 petitions. Most every one, by collect telegram from the Clerk of the high court, with just one word “Denied”, no explanation given. Really? No merit in 1600 petitions?
So for most cases, the various federal appeals courts are the end of the line. Hence, it is wise to buy a chair there. Many of the federal appeals judges own and operate banks, are tied to banks and other financial entities. We call them Banker-Judges. They do NOT disqualify themselves when their financial links are litigants in their court. Guess who wins in their crooked court? [In the 1960s and 1970s, our work led to the jailing for bribery of the highest sitting federal judge in U.S. history. When we accused a 7th Circuit Federal Appeals Judge, to his face, of bribery, he called a press conference. On all the media, this Banker-Judge, Otto Kerner, Jr., (former Illinois Governor), called me a “liar”. He tried to get a fellow judge to jail me for “contempt of court”. He died an ex-convict, convicted as I accused him. The current federal appeals judges are so angered by our work, they have unlawfully barred me and a TV Show associate of mine, from all the federal courts in the 7th Circuit.]
A cynical reality: often after we have fingered a crooked judge publicly, the Establishment, acting just like the mafia, throws away the judge. He is no longer useful to fix cases. Suddenly the local prosecutors remind themselves that the judge in question does not pay his proper income taxes and such. So they send him to jail. No sensible crook would bother to bribe an already-fingered corrupt judge.
A hard to find book, published about 1962, is “The Corrupt Judge” by Joseph Borkin. He points out from specific, documented examples, the few times in U.S. history that federal judges were removed from the Bench were when the judge got in the middle between two sizeable financial entities. The competing forces crushed the Judge like a bug. But an underdog, such as a patent owner suing a huge corporation for violating his patent, gets nowhere accusing a judge of crooked rulings. [In 1963, our group originally was called the Committee to Protect Patent Owners.] In Chicago, the Banker-Judges on the Federal Appeals court in three separate appeals on the same basic case, overturned a district court jury’s verdict, including massive fraud, against Sear Roebuck & Co., in an important patented tool case. The Banker-Judges had a financial interest interlocked with Sears and did NOT disqualify themselves.
In Chicago, a divorce case has led to a supposed federal investigation of possible judicial bribery in procuring judgeships. The estranged wife claimed her husband bought his chair on the local state court for 20 thousand dollars of the family money. The possible bribery probe target has been the Chief Judge of the Illinois Supreme Court, highest tribunal in the State. His home district is Chicago. He has done some strange things reportedly for his political crony, Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, at one time a Chicago alderman. The judge once appointed a judge from the lowly traffic court to sit in the intermediate court, called the Appellate Court of Illinois. The appointee reportedly did not have sufficient experience to be sitting in the middle level reviewing court.
This Chief Judge who has appointed judges to fill a vacancy in the lower courts is quite a character. He goes around town in a cherry red Mercedes. His residence occupies two floors in a ultra-expensive high rise in the Gold Coast district of Chicago. [Hey, is this all on his judicial salary? Really?]
Part of the supposed probe is how “Fast Eddie” gets his crony, Chief Judge Charles Freeman, to appoint persons as judges to fill a vacancy.It seems some of them reportedly are also in the Nursing Home business with the judge. [Nursing homes are a favorite “investment” for some corrupt politicians. Such as cronies of Clinton and their Beverly Enterprises chain of nursing homes.]
How far will the supposed investigation go? There is an inclination for the FBI, themselves highly corrupt, to quickly hush up the matter. Why? Some have claimed that Fast Eddie, for much of his adult life, has been reportedly a “mole” or stool pigeon for federal authorities, including the IRS and the FBI. Some contend this stems from the way Fast Eddie beat back a murder charge against him, an outgrowth of trying to break a labor union strike in 1959. At the time, Fast Eddie was a law student and claimed he was in class at the time of the crime. Did he strong-arm his teacher for an alibi? Some over the years continue to say so. Some claim Fast Eddie is a key feature in the reported buying and selling of judgeships.
By the time of the new century, the prices to buy a chair in the federal courts has gone way up. At least a million dollars is reportedly required now to purchase you a judgeship in the U.S. District COurt in a major district like the one that includes Chicago. Ten million dollars or more is required to obtain a chair in the U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit, Chicago, one step below the U.S. Supreme Court that rejects the bulk of all the begging petitions submitted.
So, if you want to know how and why America has come to have a corrupt judiciary, covered up by a venal, lackey monopoly press, and cowardly lawyers, well, these are some of the reasons.
From: kenneth ditkowsky <kenditkowsky@yahoo.com> To: j. d. <jdit@aol.com> Cc: Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2016 11:00 AM Subject: Re: “LOANS” dirty little secrets
When you add the cost of the election to the ‘pay off’ to the ward committeeman to get a ballot slating (now believed to be $150,000 in that Gym Bag that John Kass = Chicago Tribune) referred we are talking serious money. Only the naive would believe that the profit motive was not involved, and when you examine that elder cleansing scandal that Jerome Larkin is doing his 18 USCA 371 cover-up you now see a motivation for 1) the cover-up, and 2) the graft that judicial corruption is so famous.
When you start to add up the facts that surround the elder cleansing scandal it is no surprise that Larkin go so excited when he heard the both JoAnne Denison and I were calling for an HONEST INVESTIGATION. When Cynthia Farenga reported to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission that the Probate Sharks blog had picked up the call and the efforts of the lawyers and judges involved in the Mary Sykes case 09 P 4585 had not been able to silence us, Larkin commenced his own brand of intimidation. He had to! The entire cottage industry of extorting money from potential judges was being threatened and billions in unpaid and evaded State and Federal Income taxes would be exposed as not only uncollected but ignored!
The shame of Greylord was raising its ugly head and this time there would be more than a token number of Judges, Judicial officials, and lawyers going to jail – *******. Any HONEST INVESTIGATION would be fatal! With the extortion and pecuniary rape of probate (and possibly other estates) by corrupt judges, lawyers, judicial officials et al of the elderly – such as Mary Sykes, Alice Gore, Carol Wyman **** – overcrowding of the jail facilities could be a real crisis. Rapists and Murders would be displaced so that Judges and Lawyers could fill their spots!
The tie in to the 700% surcharge of the health care industry was obvious and ******.
Today, Larkin and his co-conspirators feel safe! Up to now the cover-up has worked! Until law enforcement bring home the message by bringing Larkin and some of the other high profile public figure miscreants to justice it will be business as usual for a long time.
This article does nothing but raise the question, why are these people giving tens of thousands of dollars, if not over $100,000 to get judgeships? And why is one man in Chicago funneling them-Ald. Eddie Burke and his wife is on the Supreme Court! and then when Ken Ditkowsky and Lanre Amu expose corruption in the courts, and that is verified by Crain’s Chicago business (Judge Lynn Egan), the clients kick her off their boards and apologize, but Lynn Egan is still on the bench and Ken and Lanre are on the outs?
What kind of justice is this and just who or whom is in charge–Eddie Burke and take a look at his Wiki page and articles on him. While not indicted for corruption (yet), he seems to be at the hub of the center and a maze of it, making Chicago look like a laughingstock of corruption. The wolves are clearing running the hen house, the sheep field, and the cow barn!
Benchmark contributions
Primary winners in contests for Cook County court
seats solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars through their
campaign committees. Should we worry about their independence?
by John Flynn Rooney
Marvin Leavitt shelled out more than $280,000 of his own money in an unsuccessful bid last spring to win a Cook County circuit court seat. Though Leavitt’s tab was notably steep, it reflects a trend. While the high-profile Illinois Supreme Court primary races earlier this year garnered attention as big-bucks affairs, candidates in some less-visible Cook County trial court races spent more than $100,000 too.
In the race to fill the countywide vacancy created by the 1999 death of Judge Joan M. Corboy, Leavitt and three competitors spent about $460,000, which is believed to be a record amount for a circuit court contest. Ironically, the winner of that race, Chicago lawyer Joyce M. Murphy, spent nearly $39,000, while the second-place finisher, Leavitt, a circuit court judge sitting by temporary appointment, forked out almost $284,000, with much of that cash coming through loans from himself.(Leavitt says he wound up financing much of his own campaign and won’t hold any more fundraisers.)
The level of total spending in that race differs only in degree from other campaigns for seats on the Cook County bench. The 20 candidates who won March 21 primary races raised — and spent — more than $600,000, campaign disclosure reports filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections show. The Illinois Election Code does not limit how much a candidate can receive or spend, and the campaigns for the circuit seats encompassing Chicago and suburban Cook County doled out a total of $619,291 for staff salaries, consultants’ fees, media advertising, campaign literature and fundraising receptions.
While some judicial candidates say they don’t like their campaigns raising money, they say it is nonetheless necessary with an elected judiciary. But critics charge such fundraising can lead to the appearance of a conflict of interest because most of the contributions come from lawyers.
“The problem is [that] to spend the money, you have to raise it,” says Marlene Arnold Nicholson, a DePaul University law professor who has written about the funding of Cook County circuit court races. “That means [candidates’ committees] go to attorneys, which at least has the appearance of a possible conflict of interest, or they have to use their own money.”
The victors in races for circuit and subcircuit seats, which represent smaller geographic areas than those elected countywide, spent about $30,000 on average, with one candidate spending only $3,200. Of the 19 circuit court seats that appeared on the primary ballot, 12 involved countywide races, while the other seven contests occurred in subcircuits, districts created by the legislature to boost minority and Republican representation on the bench in Cook County.
18 | October 2000 Illinois Issues
“The average spent by winners [in judicial races] at least in comparison to other big states — $30,000 per victor — is not a startling average,” says Patrick M. McFadden, a Loyola University law professor who has followed judicial campaign financing. “You start to get startled when the total campaign expenditures become multiples of the annual [judicial] salary.”
Cook County circuit judges are paid $132,184 annually and are elected to six-year terms.Judges elected countywide and from the subcircuits serve all county residents and typically hear matters ranging from traffic tickets to high-stakes personal-injury cases and constitutional issues.
Illinois’ judicial ethics rules prevent candidates from personally soliciting or accepting campaign contributions. But the candidates can establish campaign committees to conduct fundraising. And the dollars for last spring’s races arrived from several sources, with most coming by way of contributions from lawyers and other individuals. Labor unions, business executives and relatives of candidates also supplied cash.
Sources of campaign funds can raise questions of propriety. For example, should candidates accept contributions from attorneys who may later argue a case in their courtroom?
“I do not think judges or judicial candidates should have to solicit money, primarily from lawyers, to finance their campaigns,” argues J. Timothy Eaton, a Chicago lawyer and president-elect of the Illinois State Bar Association. “Whether or not those lawyers ever actually appear before the judges, it certainly gives the public the appearance of impropriety.”
Campaign filings reflect more than the rising level of spending in circuit races. They highlight the often- personal relationships between contributors and candidates. Reports show, for instance, that the largest individual contribution to a winning candidate in the Cook County circuit races was $7,000 from the late Judge Joan Corboy’s father, powerhouse Chicago personal-injury lawyer Philip H. Corboy, to her widower, James R. Epstein, for his race in the 9th Subcircuit. Richard J. Holland, director of investments for CIBC Oppenheimer Corp., gave $5,000 to Paul A. Karkula’s judicial campaign, representing the biggest contribution to a winning candidate by a nonlawyer. Karkula is a judge sitting by interim appointment who worked as an associate for Chicago lawyer Edward R. Vrdolyak’s firm before joining the bench.
Meanwhile, the Chicago Fire Fighters Union Political Committee kicked $3,000 into the coffers of Matthew E. Coghlan’s circuit court campaign. Coghlan, a Chicago firefighter and part-time assistant Cook County state’s attorney, won a primary race for a countywide seat after spending $25,829.
The cash can flow both ways, though. The Cook County Democratic Party endorsed candidates in each of the dozen countywide vacancies, and most of those candidates transferred $13,607 from their war chests or contributed to the party organization, while the remainder transferred smaller amounts, records show. The party requires all slated candidates, including those in nonjudicial races, to contribute funds toward the printing and mailing of campaign literature, says Thomas G. Lyons, the party’s county chairman.
Historically, Democratic candidates prevail in those races, and no Republicans ran in the March primary races for the countywide spots. A lone contested circuit court race — for a seat in the 15th Subcircuit — is expected to appear on the November ballot.
So intense was the drive to spend on judicial primary campaigns that personal loans from the candidates played a big part. At least 10 primary winners loaned their campaigns approximately $115,000, ranging in amounts from $1,000 to $30,000, records show.
In fact, these loans put a new twist on long-standing concerns about the sources of contributions to judicial campaigns, says Seth Andersen, director of the Elmo B. Hunter Citizens Center for Judicial Selection, a branch of the American Judicature Society. “Obviously, someone who is spending most of their money on their own campaign is not going to be seen as being beholden to their own contributors,” Andersen says. “But I think the concern instead is that the system is evolving so that only those who can afford that kind of personal outlay can run for the bench.”
Yet even personal wealth offers no guarantee of victory. Leavitt was defeated by Murphy, who loaned her campaign $5,500, money she considers “well spent.” Murphy’s personal outlay of cash approximates the $5,000 last-place finisher Thomas J. Lawler, an assistant Chicago corporation counsel, estimates his campaign spent altogether.
While Leavitt received the backing of the Democratic Party, he says he later determined that some committeemen weren’t going to support him, prompting him to pump $216,100 in loans into his campaign in the two months before March 17. He also kicked in $38,500 for “in-kind” contributions to pay consultants and printing costs for campaign literature.
In-kind contributions, services or materials that are provided, are not included in the total expenditures of campaign contribution reports.
“When I learned that certain of the committeemen had indicated they weren’t going to endorse me even though I was the slated candidate, I felt compelled to publish literature that I could distribute into the community to demonstrate that I was found highly qualified by almost every bar association and [was] superior to the other candidates in the race,” Leavitt says.
Further, Leavitt, who received nearly $25,000 in individual contributions, says he chipped in so much of his own money for the race because when he ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois appellate court two years ago, he raised some funds from supporters.
In Cook County, it’s judge-making time, and it ain’t pretty. On June 25 and 26, at the Democrats’ “pre-slating,” 41 lawyers who are appointed judges appeared and begged and groveled for party slating. There are two 1st District (Cook County) Appellate Court vacancies and 10 countywide Circuit Court vacancies (which may expand to 12 to 15 by the December filing deadline).
The slated candidates will be anointed in late August. That means that 31 lawyers’ egos will be sliced, diced and eviscerated, but who really cares about suffering attorneys? There is no American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Lawyers.
There are 387 jurists in Cook County, three on the Supreme Court, 24 on the Appellate Court and 360 on the Circuit Court, of whom 75 are elected countywide and 147 are elected from the county’s 15 subcircuits, while 138 are associate judges appointed by Circuit Court judges. The elected judges stand for retention every 6 years, and they never lose; the associates are subject to reappointment every 4 years. When vacancies occur in either the Appellate Court or the Circuit Court, they are filled by appointment by the three 1st District (Cook County) Supreme Court justices, Anne Burke (the wife of the alderman), Charles Freeman (a Circuit Court judge from 1976 to 1990) and Mary Jane Theis (a Circuit Court judge 1988 to 1993 and an Appellate Court justice from 1993 to 2010). All were slated. All are Democrats. They have a rotation system for appointments. Once a justice makes a pick for a vacancy, they “own” that spot and pick all subsequent vacancies. Freeman, who is black, has a lock on vacancies created by black judges.
Nobody gets named unless Ed Burke*, the chairman of the Democrats’ judicial slatemaking committee, approves. Those appointed to elected judgeships must run for election at the next election.
Then it gets dicey. Voters don’t know judicial candidates or their qualifications. Slating usually, but not automatically, guarantees nomination, and the Democratic nomination guarantees election, since the Republicans never field candidates. Since the early 1990s a continuous stream of unslated Irish-surnamed women have won countywide and subcircuit primaries. In contests throughout the 1990s and 2000s, when a lot of men ran, a single Irish-surnamed woman always won. Black voters, in particular, have an aversion to ethnic names; if it sounds Polish, Italian Hispanic, Greek or Asian, the candidate does not get their vote. Black voters tend to vote for candidates whom they know to be black or, in their absence, for Irish or neutral names.
However, the tables have turned. For decades, too many male candidates guaranteed the nomination of a woman, but now it has evolved to the point where too many Irish-surnamed women on the ballot may guarantee the nomination of a man.
Of course, the Democrats are the party of “diversity.” Race, gender, geography and, now, sexual orientation, are uppermost. The permutations are endless. In the Appellate Court race, with two spots, five candidates appeared for slating: appointed incumbent Bertina Lampkin, who is black, along with four Circuit Court judges, William Stewart Boyd and Leonard Murray, both of whom black, Raul Vega, a Hispanic from the North Side, and Eileen O’Neill Burke, of Maine Township in the Northwest Side 10th Subcircuit, who is backed by the suburban committeemen.
That presents slatemakers a problem of Einsteinian proportions. There can’t be two black candidates for two spots. Lampkin will be slated, even though Boyd, who sought slating in 2014, was promised 2016 slating when he didn’t run. There can’t be two men, but there can be two women. Expect Burke and Lampkin to be slated and win. Vega and Boyd will wait until 2018.
There are certain ironclad rules defining judicial slating, the violation of which consigns one to political purgatory.
First, no “hacks” need apply. Every supplicant must be rated meaning qualified or highly qualified by the bar associations, of which there are 13. A “not recommended rating is fatal.
Second, there is the “Step Aside Rule.” There are limited judicial openings. If a supplicant appears and impresses, has “juice” (meaning clout with some committeeman or special interest), and promises not to run if not slated, that begets an IOU. In other words, come back in 2018 or 2020. However, the aspirants who “stepped aside” in 2012 and 2014 are back with their IOUs, like Boyd. Now it’s his turn, but the quota-conscious Democrats aren’t going to slate two black candidates, so Boyd can sit in the Divorce Division for 2 more years.
Third, don’t run for judge unless you’ve got $100,000. The party’s “assessment” for each slated candidate is $35,000, which pays for two countywide mailings of the sample ballot, with bios and pictures, and the procurement of 10,000 signatures on nominating petitions. Every judicial aspirant must, from mid-2015 through March of 2016, attend Democratic ward and township cocktail parties or dinners and buy $250 to $500 worth of tickets per event. There are 50 ward organizations and 30 township organizations. That’s $50,000. Plus, there are “judge makers,” astute, well wired political operatives who tell the clueless lawyers where to go, what to do and how much to donate. A “judge maker” charges about $25,000 per client.
Fourth, quotas dictate. There needs to be a pre-ordained number of women, blacks, Hispanics and, now, gays. In 2016 there are 10 to 15 countywide judgeships, and at least half must be women and one-third must be black, with one Hispanic and one gay. There is overlap, such as with a black woman or a gay male minority, etc.
Fifth, there is leverage. Over a 2-year period, there are 10 to 20 Cook County Circuit appointments to be made, and usually two or three Circuit Court judges get elevated to the Appellate Court. The lawyers who appear before the slatemakers and “step aside” and not run in the primary, are on the short list for future slating or associate appointment. Those who buck the party and run are blacklisted.
Sixth, there is the exposure factor. Many lawyers appear to get themselves known by the committeemen, angling for a future judgeship, by appointment or slating.
Seventh, those appointed to a judgeship must run for that judgeship. If they lose, adios. There’s no second chance.
Eighth, there is practicality, reality and strategy. The slatemakers want winners. Candidates with Irish surnames win, especially women, so it’s risky for the party to slate somebody who is a guaranteed loser, such as somebody with an odd-sounding name. An example is Sean Chaudhuri, an Asian Indian who is seeking 2016 slating. Kiss him goodbye. Any opponent with a Mc or O’ surname, affixed to a Bridget, Maureen or Colleen, will clean his clock.
However, the Democrats have a well choreographed “Plan B,” which involves slating “alternates.” It takes only 2,200 signatures to get on the March 15 ballot, and Democratic committeemen can deliver 10,000 signatures to each slate candidate. There’s a 90-day petition-circulation period, commencing Sept. 15, with filing by Dec. 15. A serious wannabe (or unslated) judge can get 5,000 signatures, either by himself or by paying for it at $5 a signature. The insurgent candidates network, hold back their petitions to see who files, and then file in the most winnable race, such as those with too many men or with an unelectable slated candidate.
The party bosses also hold back. There are usually three to five judges who “coincidentally” decide to retire in December, days before filing. Lickety-split, the alternates’ petitions are on the street, and they file unopposed, as only committeemen can get 5,000 signatures in a few days. That’s how non-Irish-surnamed men get on the bench, and it’s the only way Chaudhuri can win.
According to insiders, the candidates likely to be slated for the Circuit Court are Aleks Gillespie, Maureen Hannon, Alison Conlon, Brendan O’Brien, Daniel Patrick Duffy, Carolyn Joan Gallagher and Rossana Fernandez, Travis Richardson and John Lyke (who are black), and Devlin Schoop, who is backed by the gay bar association but who is not gay.
Alternates are Chaudhuri, Pat Spratt, Pat Heneghan, Carolyn Joan Gallagher, Mary Melchor and Joe Cleary.
For lawyers with identifiably Polish, Italian, Greek, Jewish, Asian or Eastern European surnames, it’s appointment only.
Two subcircuit contests bear watching. In the 10th Subcircuit, stretching from Park Ridge to the Ravenswood 47th Ward, appointed incumbent Eve Marie Reilly faces at least two Irish-surnamed women, Katherine O’Dell, who lost in 2014, and Colleen Daley. James Crawley, who is gay and who is from the 47th Ward, will run, but the proverbial 800-pound gorilla is John Garrido, a Chicago police lieutenant who lost for 45th Ward alderman in 2011 and 2015, getting 6,053 and 7,263 votes, respectively. “I’m looking at it,” Garrido said. Of the 229 precincts in the subcircuit, 48 are in the 45th Ward. “Maybe John Arena will back me,” joked Garrido. “If I’m a judge, then I won’t run against him again.” Against a fragmented, Irish-surnamed field, with three women, Garrido could win.
In the Hispanic-majority 6th Subcircuit, which takes in the 1st, 26th, 30th, 31st, 32nd, 33rd and 35th wards, attorney Richard Cooke got everybody’s undivided attention when he loaned $500,000 to his campaign account. Cooke moved into the district from River Forest. The appointed incumbent is Anna Loftus. Expect several Hispanic candidates to file. Can Cooke’s money buy a judgeship?
By Russ Stewart.
thanks for writing this Russ
More information. “Fast Eddie” is known as if not the center, but at the hub of all major corruption in Chicago. From Wiki on him:
Edward M. “Ed” Burke (born December 29, 1943) is alderman of the 14th Ward of the City of Chicago. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the Chicago City Council in 1969, and represents part of the city’s Southwest Side. Chair of Council’s Committee on Finance, Burke has been called Chicago’s “most powerful alderman” by the Chicago Sun-Times.[1] Burke was named one of the “100 Most Powerful Chicagoans” by Chicago Magazine, describing him as “[o]ne of the last of the old-school Chicago Machine pols.”[2]
Burke is the longest-serving aldermen in Chicago history.[3] He was a leader of the “Vrdolyak 29” during the first term of Mayor Harold Washington, the “Council Wars” era. Burke and his staff were the subjects of federal and local investigations, and members of his staff were the targets of indictments and convictions involving payroll and contracting irregularities.[4]
Burke is the lead partner in a law firm that specializes in property tax appeals and which includes clients who do business with the city. Burke’s wife is Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne M. Burke. He and his wife werefoster parents and were party to a protracted, highly publicized, racially charged child custody dispute.
It’s just so nice to know that Ald. Eddie Burke is in charge of channeling all the judges in “crook” County. Of course, he got his wife onto the Supreme Court where she “handled” Ken Ditkowsky’s kangaroo ARDC trial and Lanre Amu’s too. For that dirty job, Anne Loftus was suddenly granted a juicy appointment as a Circuit Court Judge.
Sure. Really?
And from Illinois Issues Online, a report from NPR comes this interesting article and quote
Ms. Joanne Denison, I thought I would write a short few paragraphs to try to capture words that describe the pain and suffering of a family destroyed.
I have always been the glue to hold our family together. Each branch of personalities so vastly different from the next, so harshly entangled with thorns and thistles of racial oppression. I am a graduate of Tuskegee University with a conferred Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering. Through harsh brutal torturous racism, three different positions, two different States, and ten years (a decade), I went through a life similar to Carl Brashear as portrayed in the movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Men of Honor, in the nineties. Is this the twilight zone? Still in the nineties, this is happening!!! White managers gather to watch me nearly lose my life in a work assignment just as they did in Carl’s divining assignment. I was nearly dead (uncontrollable blood pressure and kidney failure at 34 years old) and full of anger for the harsh treatment. I left out on disability solely for this issue. I sacrificed what would be today an 80,000.00/year position for sanity and peace, no regrets.
Less than twenty years later, mother gets dementia and the thugs of our family are set over me and my mother due to our race, poverty, and my disability only. No other fault so whatever than the power to discriminate. Our family is caught in a living never ending nightmare of utter oppression due to a society with no respect of person or the elderly to remotely just LOOK AT THIS CONDITION and consider what happened to us. No one of power to stop this inhumane conditions care. I am forced daily to beat back a memory of ever having a loving and caring mother just to survive the reality. Our family has set goals and are committed to getting the word out about racism and the systematic destruction of dark skinned people of America. The original name of our Facebook group Global Citizens Unite to Fight Corruption in America proved to long, thus we later changed it to Global Citizens Unite with 8000 members in less than three months of existence.
Sandra A. Black
Case Summary for: Sandra A. Black, *************** Marion, Indiana,
Case number: 27D03-1008-GU-185
Case Name: Guardianship of : Mildred Barber, an Adult
Case Jurisdiction: Grant Superior Court 3
Judge(s): Dana Kenworthy (Recused) current Warren Haas
Relationship to you: Mother
Opposing counsel: no counsel
Service: Was not an issue because the protected had been overcome by her predator son. Thus yes she was always sent information that was inadvertently handled by her predator.
– how were they notified (phone/email/mail/in person)?
2. Isolation
The order removed my (Sandra Black) as the original petitioner and all rights of any interest so whatever in the guardianship of Mildred Barber
How are the visits limited? No visits so whatever. Mildred Barber is under strict isolation of her abusive son in which the family has had to surrender and succumb to the corruption of the judicial system, State Adult Protection Services that couldn’t admit fault in handing Mildred Barber over to her predator, which is undoubtedly now evident, but through concealing and cover-up by pure avoiding the abuse, destroyed property, stolen property, which is still in continuance due to the need to keep Mildred Barber enslaved to her high school drop out, seriously marijuana addicted, cruel and abusive son that is not wanted revealed how badly devastated her existence has been reduced due to corruption, incompetence, and purely lack of concern for the quality of life of Mildred Barber.
Are there medical records indicating visitation limits: None, no care as to her activities or visits. She is purely a slave for her income. No love
Is there a list of “permitted visitors”: No, what ever happens, they just allow to happen.
Who made up the list: No list, no visitors due to the horrid condition of abuse and bullying over the years family had to vacate interest due to the torture and agony forced to partake in by guardians and Judge Haas as a condition to visit.
Who is your loved one not seeing right now (list name and relationship) where the visits are limited and how are they limited: People who used to force a visit includes:
Myself 1. Sandra Black daughter 55 years old
2. Felicia Ogunbuyide granddaughter 29 years old
3. Kemuel Eliyahu Ben Shem grandson 19 years old severely scared
4. Chrisdeon Ogunbuyide great-grandson 10 years old
5. Victoria Goree great-granddaughter 4 years old
6. Isaiah Goree great-grandson 3 years old
7. Jewel Nadrowski Niece 49
8. Jessica Ganaway Niece 32
9. Jessie Gilmer Nephew 55
10. Yania Westbrook Niece 36
11. Lester Barber Nephew 57
Friends and other family that can not visit due to near physical violence and severe verbal abuse of fowl language
3. Chemical Restraints
Is your loved one taking any forms of chemical restraints or psychotropic drugs: Not known have not had contact since October 2015.
Are you allowed to check to see if they are taking such medications? No contact to avoid abuse
Do you have the disabled person’s medical records? No Why or why not: Not allowed involvement no one cares about the disabled’s health or wellbeing other than going through pretenses. She goes to doctors appt. and leave with no one to care about asking questions or suggestions for her health. All is pure protocol, no personal care of interest for Mildred Barber.
Is the person drooling or do they have slurred speech? Dramatic shut down of communication from onset of abuse and isolation. Mildred Barber lives with no one to set up entertainment or activities. She ends up psychotic arguing or playing with herself to survive the utter loneliness. This is all for a son who utterly has contempt for her, but neither the court nor Adult Protection Services would remotely try to ask people who KNEW, like mother’s home care providers to her home for her brother. In the end, as it was self evident they all chose to conceal and cover-up abuse and thefts by her son.
Does the Guardian have a court order permitting the administration of psychotropic drugs? Court and Guardian by law have final say, but son runs all day to day care.
Has the disabled person ever been held down and shot up with drugs against their will? No
4. Abuse of Disabled
Since the guardianship proceeding, has your loved one been abused? YES!!!
Please state all ways in which they have been abused.
Mother’s dogs, plants, and most all possessions either died, were sold off, or just disappeared. My brother took her home and made her the prisoner in her own home. One plant was from my grandmother’s grave who died in 1989, I was supposed to pass it on to my children, but he killed it. Her car was taken away prematurely because the doctor was told about mom’s visions (HALLUCINATIONS) that mom experienced every since a child in her awaking state. All my life I have heard of her visions and dreams some came true. Elijah did not know mom so he couldn’t tell the doctor that this was what occurred regularly in mom’s life. When asked to do so and explained that mom always saw things when waking up as she had reported to them of a man over her bed. I was told he would not deal with those white folks; I had no business going to court.
After mother was ordered finally stuck she, then realized that her son was not going to get her all the things he had promised her to go against me in court, in court mom would say that she only wanted me to visit not for guardianship and immediately protested the final decision in October, 2013. By November, 2013 Mildred and Elijah my brother were in an all out war, guardians ignored all complaints. Mildred was threatened bodily harm and to burn down her home cursed out, horrendous verbal abuse. Then when she wouldn’t succumb, he began isolation. Mom told me that she tried to kick him in his balls and my brother told her if you do that again motherfucker you’ll be a dead mother fucker. This is my brother, I know it was not dementia. It was told to guardians and ignored. He took her phone stating that she would try to call the police on him. Guardians stated that she couldn’t afford a phone. All her income had been badly mismanaged by the state by allowing Elijah to run the household.
Mom got so bad off from the abuse that we did not leave from our visit and the police were called by my brother. They said they wouldn’t order us to leave because there was no order. The guardian came out Jared Quarles and ran the ENTIRE FAMILY out and kept my brother in the home. Present were Sandra Black, Felicia Ogunbuyide, Kemuel Shem, Jessica Ganaway, Daniel Batchelor, Jewel Nadtowski. We were told that mom did not have 12.00 dollars to her name, that’s why she couldn’t afford a phone and we would all have to get out and stick to our hours of visitation. We all left and mother and he were in a fierce battle for him to get out.
Then he forced her out of her room off upstairs, with no phone, no TV, sealed bathrooms, into utter solitary confinement. All reports were in vain as the guardians didn’t care and it continued for months until Mildred had a complete psychotic break. In one week’s visit (At this time guardians set up that I could only visit 5 hrs once per week actually in order to get five hours I had to agree to bathe my mother or be restricted to only 2 hours, I took the 5 hours. And also one weekend visit once per month). Every week mother reported horror stories. I would find her forced to stay in her room also video documented. Thus all manner of lost privileges not due to illness, but inadequate persons to care. This extreme and very harsh abuse went on from the end of court in October till around April, 2014. When mom psychotic broke my brother got real scared contacted me and family member to help mom to stop talking to herself. He had began to hid all mom’s possessions like her TV, Dishes, glasses, cups, silverware, Towels, face cloths so that on our scheduled visits neither she nor we could have access to necessities. Again the guardians didn’t care. Visits were sometimey due to both the guardians and Elijah sabotage of the few hours that I did get.
I began a daily protest in July, 2014 through February, 2015. My city is racist and the local paper would not cover the story nor would anyone else. Buy August, 2014 Marion Police investigator for abuse Tammy Wolf, went out and found that she suspected bullying by my brother and called both the guardians and APS. By now all is hopeless due to corruption. They ignored her totally and the APS lied to her that they went out in 2012 and there were no more complaints. I told her, Tammy Wolf that was a blatant lie as not only had I been calling the APS, but also Mr. Joe Newman, retiree from the City of Chicago and friends to me and my mother called them too. He was told that any manner of abuse to my mother is of no concern to APS as it would have to be handled through the courts. When I called, my son, and daughter called APS would never pick up and we always left messages that went unreturned thus ignored.
Soon after Tammy Wolf’s investigation, mother started reporting how happy she was, then it turned into her being interested in my brother. Remember this would be told to me 5 hr visit one week and then 5 hr visit the next week where she told me that he was having sex with her. I thought that someone might care about the fact that unrelentlessly mom tried to get rid of my brother from Oct 2013 till this point and now after T. Wolfs investigation she’s all excitedly happy. Like what happened, in 2012 with the first order by Kenworthy, but the APS announces to my brother that they would come out so that he could have time to take her to dinner and whoo her over so by the time they come out mom is happy so no problem. This was now well documented with Marion Police involved that mom was not happy with my brother and now again T. Wolf comes out and mom’s life magically changes and she’s happy. I was sickenly supprised when mom told me that she was having sex with my brother. So confused as to what to do as mom no longer had any rights. She was ill so does her saying she is having sex with her son even matter to this system? I 100% didn’t know if my brother could do it to keep mom under wrap as he had been doing through out the entire case. It was so horrid of a possibility that I couldn’t go to the police that my mother was saying my brother was having sex. Then after talking much with family over the weekend, I decided to report what mom told me and give them the video recording of it. Just as I was horrified so was the police to request a rape kit. I attended the rape kit investigation which took in access of one hour because mother continuously said that she was married to my brother and that he told her not to tell because the police would get him. Mom repeated this story continuously and the guardians were told that they would prefer even though they couldn’t tell if a rape had occurred mom shouldn’t go back into the home. The guardians said there was no proof of a rape and therefore she is to go back. The next week visitation mom is very sad and depressed. I asked her why because she told me that GG (my brother) was so very good to her. She said, “HE GOT OUT OF THAT.” This was immediately sent to guardians all ignored. After this Elijah stepped up the abuse and refused to leave and allow visits. Tammy Wolf would help by calling the guardians who just began ignoring. From November, 2015 until March, 2016 no visits were allowed without abuse until the State Reps got involved to reestablish visitation, but NOT TO END ABUSE.
Mother was brought to my home from March thru October 2015, she would go straight to her bed as she was ordered at my brother’s I would work to get her out of that behavior have a couple of nice days, then mom would be forced where she didn’t want to go with a person didn’t want her, but did want her house and not to look like an evil person. I couldn’t get the guardians to work with me to free mom by just telling my brother that he would be needed to keep the house (of course give him mom’s house so that she could be free to be a person again). Always ignored, no answers to fix the abuse. We knew it would never end after a lawyer was finally hired by my daughter who came into money. That lawyer said that nothing could be done, no one in my family ever could have my mother because of the judge’s prejudice against me. He offered to take money to talk to the APS to change mom’s case because it was clear that they were not listening to me. I asked my lawyer, doesn’t it look bad if all the time I had told these people that mom was not liked that all the horrible things would happen and then if they hear you say it and it is already set that they do not want to look bad. What will happen? He said, you’re right. I couldn’t get the abuse to ever stop our family would live in hell forever with my mother. So after the lawyer, the entire family gave up and left mom to one son who despises her and no family.
List any hospitalizations and approx. dates where abuse was a problem. Unknown, uptil October 2015, my mother was a very healthy woman other than dementia. We went to parks, restaurants, walks, the fair, shopping, to my knowledge my mother is nor allowed anywhere, but the doctor and her room. She is not allowed to use any other restrooms in her own home. Last I was visiting her there. I learnt that mom was forced to wear TWO diapers to go wet longer. Proof will be seen in how my brother used 2 to 3 times more diapers that I did the months we shared my mom. They didn’t care.
Was the disabled returned to the same abusive situation? YES
Did the court direct that the abusers (attorneys, GAL’s, case managers) investigate allegations of abuse? My mother is not allowed any investigation since court accept for the rape kit, which said she should not be returned. Also there were two other occasions that went unreported due to our family is not allowed any way to stop abuse. There was a small bruise on the inner leg that looked like rubbing it was on one leg. Then there was a tall man, used for relations, this was never said as sexual by my mom, but he was always mentioned and when I told my brother, it stopped. Mom quit asking for her tall guy that she wanted to talk to who liked her. Nothing else we can do.
Abuse can consist of bruises, cuts, broken bones, broken skin, bed sores (very serious), aspiration of food into lungs (because patient was not sitting while eating, very serious), malnutrition, dehydration, etc. There was only ONE injury looked like a bb gun shot, found out later as guardians and my brother tried to hide it from me. The sore was deep perfectly round and meaty? Mom said the kids were hurting her, spring of 2014, but her foot was in so much pain (FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES) and I wasn’t allowed to help her get medical treatment.
Was a feeding tube inserted against the disabled’s will? NO, my brother is not going to allow them to take mom out of the house because he wants to have the home free. During the time that I was literally not allowed visits, the police and prosecution said that my mother would be thrown into a nursing home. This was over a year ago, because mom was nearly bed ridden from lack of care or concern. Now nurses work for my brother and may be forcing her to sit up and walk around?
What is the hygiene of each place the disabled has been placed into? Please list any incidents where the disabled was living in filthy conditions and the approx. dates. Hygiene meets the bare necessities, but seem to be legal. The worst is that she does not have help to remind her to go to the toilet and the use of two diapers for her to sit longer.
Have you made any complaints? If so list dates and brief summary of complaint and its outcome. There are hundreds of emails to the guardians, letters to the APS, the Congresswoman Susan Brooks, Calls to State Reps Amanda Banks and Kevin Mahan.
Were you told you could visit, but then you were blocked by the guardian? No, just couldn’t take the abuse anymore and the ignoring of how the ENTIRE family was suffeing. Once Lester Earl Barber, accompanied my son to pick up medicine for my mother and was afraid that he would be physically attacked. The guardians could NOT send a lady to my mom’s home alone because they were all afraid of my brother so they had to hire a man to deal with my brother. But mother is forced to live in it. Because of a cruel and corrupt judge who told me that he didn’t care if I never saw my mother again.
Did the court issue orders you could visit, but then the visits never happened? No
Did the disabled want to live at home or with a relative but the court ordered them into a nursing home? No, the disabled wanted me to care for her immediately after court as my brother promised her that she would drive her car again and have total control over her home if she just keep me blocked away and if she didn’t do it that she would be put in a nursing home and lose everything. I was told this immediately after court October, 2013. I didn’t report it until later in November because mom was easily tricked by my brother, which would make her forget all he did to her and do what he told her to do.
Did the court find it was all right to pay a nursing home for care but not pay a family member to care for the disabled at home or in the relative’s home? Unknown, my brother has sole care, but tells my children that he rarely ever sees her because a nurse does that. Also he cut her nails off because she was supposedly attacking him.
If there was isolation, how many times did you see your loved one per week, month or year? For the first year, 5 hrs, one day per week and one weekend. Then just not allowed at all from Novemeber 2014 to February, 2015. Then from 1: 00 PM Monday to 1: 00 PM Friday then my brother took mom for the weekend from Friday to Monday when she always clearly was unhappy and voiced it to guardians. But the guardians FORCED her to go to the abuse they said because the judge wants it like this. I was losing my son, my health is such that I don’t handle being abused I literally get uncontrollable high blood pressure and kidney problems. Watching mom tormented like this with absolutely no way to end it was making me life threatening ill so for the sake of our family and my health I had to give up in ordered not to live in the abuse. My mother and I were best friends. We were so much caring for one another. I realized that my relationship was highly unusual in that mom and I never had any serious arguments while she did not suffer from dementia. I loved just laying in bed with her and going to her world of her child hood. Since my brother doesn’t know my mom he can’t talk to her like that. We listened to music, watched the same movies together, Mr Ed, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, Archie Bunker, and mom loved it. Nothing for mom, with my brother just walls. He lies that he reads the Bible to mom because mom loves to hear a man read the Bible. Any of mom’s friends, co workers can reveal this to be a lie that mom just wants to be read to and no company or conversation. Mom did not know who my brother was since 2014. But if you mentioned Sandra or Sandy, mom always was happy to hear of me. By now she may have forgotten, but I think my mom will still know me just by the mention of my name. My brother was shocked when my daughter was able to say the first syllable and mom could finish her name while she doesn’t even know my brother’s name even if you mention it. That’s because they were NEVER close in life.
5. Abuse of Family
Have you or any family members been falsely arrested because of the guardianship? Please provide details, if so. NO
Have you been defamed, false lighted, slandered or libeled by the court or any attorneys?
YES,
Elijah, who was never in mom’s life changed his life, for my life and told the court that I was everywhere, but Marion, Indiana. Misleading the court to think that I wasn’t in mom’s life. In reality, my brother was never in mom’s life other than what he could take from her and they both despised each other in the end until dementia, when mom seemed to forgive him. I didn’t think of mom’s character. If you ask my brother he will tell you that mom’s favorite saying. I’ll forgive, but I’ll never forget. My brother made me out to be so poor I was trying to rip my mother off. I have a life insurance policy of 100,000.00 dollars for incase anything every happened to me that I have kept up since I was 35. My brother has nothing for his children. Has no relationship with any family member other than a son who plays Xbox for now. His two daughters, myself, and my daughters, nor son have any relationship with me. I have his daughter on my AT&T phone account. I have never ever yelled or cussed his children, nor do they LOATHE me. My children loathe him for the severe dishonesty against me and the abuse they told me later he did to them BOTH physically and emotionally. My children report horror stories of being beat with a boot, hair dryer, having to hide under the bed from him out of fear of him, and several beatings.
In my family, my brothers were together, and mom and I were together. My Brother Pat’s letter in my book will verify that as truth even though he is trying to support our brother Elijah. Trying to say that mom is not sick that I was making it all up because I never saw mom mad at me. So now it was my turn to get what the boys always got. But they were judged for dealing drugs, taking drugs, being cruel, abusive, and unappreciative. I was a complete opposite.
Warren Haas was given a deposition by a nurse (Barbara Daniels also in my book) for my mother who explained that my brother was not close to my mother. In his order he make ZERO mention of mom’s nurse to her home for years testimony and goes solely off what mother was told to tell the GAL that I said if she didn’t give me control of her money I would throw her into a nursing home. It was this testimony that the judge said that he didn’t care if I never saw my mother again.
If so, please list approximate dates and what was falsely said about you.
Have false civil charges been brought against you or a family member? NO, I tried to have the prosecutor get my brother for perjury which is 100% provable. I was told it can not be done unless the judge in the case wanted to pursue it. Yes, the corrupt judge who wanted my mother stuck in hell for my forcing his colleague to recuse.
False accusations of theft, missing assets blamed on the wrong person, etc?
Yes, my brother just lied about everything and since he had mom (by changing the locks and kicking me out of the house) to make it easier on the case they GAL and Judge Dana Kenworthy just said it was truth without asking anyone so whatever about my brother’s character. Then just made it automatic that I had a disability therefore no matter what that was automatic unfit.
Were you the subject of a gag order not to talk about or post information on social media, blogs and the internet (please attach order). No
6. Constitutional Rights
Has the court issued any gag orders or “location” orders where the disabled person cannot travel as desired. No, we just don’t have access by the guardian.
List dates of all gag or location orders, a brief summary of the content.
Did the disabled ask for an attorney and receive one prior to the hearing for guardianship? no
Was the attorney clearly independent, or did s/he not fight for the disabled’s rights? no
Were you told that the attorney must come from a secret list the court keeps? no
Was the disabled given a choice of attorneys? no If the disabled could not choose, did the family choose freely? no
Did the disabled come to all court hearings? yes
Was anyone told not to talk about the case on social media or on the internet? Explain. no
Were they prevented from coming to any hearings? I was ordered REMOVED as a person of interest even though I petitioned the court. The clerk was ordered to throw away any motions or attempts by me to move the court. If not, why not? Was transportation provided? no
Was the disabled ever told not to speak in court when they wanted to make a point? no
Were any of the family members told not to speak in court when a family member wanted to make a point? Yes, my son, but he was a minor at age 14. He wanted to tell how abusive my brother was, but the court Dana Kenworthy said he could not speak.
Did the disabled person want to waive any rights (right to a hearing, right to an attorney, right to be present at their hearing, who would be the Guardian?) Was the waiver of rights recorded? no
7. Mental Exam
Did the disabled get a full and fair mental exam by an independent doctor of the disabled’s choice? No
Why or why not? They didn’t ask
Did the court appoint any evaluators? Only a GAL who did not try at all to determine what type of person I was or what type my brother was. Just my brother had her, although I testified that he did not like my mother, it did not matter. Same with APS if you were able to con the elderly then that meant your were the one who should be with her. There were several predators into mom’s home. The first a man who mom got angry at me for telling her that he was a predator. So when the lady (Shynithia Cook) came around the first part of 2010, she moved in on my mom with her daughter and I was too afraid of alienation by mom to tell her that this woman was a predator. So I called the APS out to look at what was going on with my mother. I told them about the delusional AT&T rants, and the fact that mom moved this person who is practically a stranger to her. He did not investigate, instead he went out and socialized with my mother and the predator and since the house was clean. Steve Sumner went back and reported that I was the problem because the house was clean and the predator had mom happy. The GAL never contacted APS to know this had happened. She did the same things with my brother. When Dana Kenworthy orders mom stuck with my brother. My brother then kicks out the predator Shyinthia Cook who was using mom to baby-sit her daughter while she went out on the town. And I happened by with no one in the home but mom with her eyes swollen shut from crying and I write letters to congress to get help for mom. This is when in 2012 Blackwell (I believe) calls my brother so that he can fix the visit and have mom happy.
Did these evaluators come from a secret list the judge had? no
Was a full physical exam conducted before the mental exam to determine if there were any treatable conditions? No, mom was determined incompetent solely due to the doctor’s stated of dementia and our family statements. The GAL had planned to say nothing was at all to matter with mom, but when she called about the 5,000 dollars mom took out of her savings to pay my brother’s loan that he made her take out and mom didn’t remember. That made her automatically incompetent. Elijah got angry because he wanted full control so he filed that the court was racist. I too requested reconsideration and then at this time the APS was called in and ordered to fully investigate mom’s cause. By the day of the court BOTH GAL and APS said they didn’t have time to investigate that they knew that did enough and stand by their reports. They NEVER investigated and the judge ruled.
Was the disabled informed in advance of the exam to prepare for the exam? no
Was the disabled told in advance the results would be used in court to guardianize him or her? no
Did the disabled sign a waiver they knew the results would be used in court against them to guardianize them? no
During the exam did the disabled have their glasses and hearing aids and did they function properly? She had dementia
8. Final Days on earth – not for our case yet
Did the disabled receive appropriate medical treatment and medicines at all times? unknown
Was the disabled put in hospice against his or her will or instructions?
Did the disabled leave a Medical Power of Attorney or living will that said “no hospice”?
Does the disabled’s religion prohibit hospice (Roman Catholic, Jehovah’s Witness, etc.)
Was the disabled narcotized to death with psychotropic drugs while food and water were withheld?
Was the disabled cremated to destroy evidence of the murder?
9. Assets
Were any assets missing from the inventory or accounting that you were aware? YES, mom’s burial insurance is gone and the guardians have told me that they are going to lie and say that it never existed even though the GAL recorded it as existing. Mom’s furniture, car, many assets were sold all her movies, her home was rented out by my brother he is on recording saying that he collected the first and last rent. I suspect him holding the mom’s things hostage.
Please list any valuable asset that was missing and if an inusrance or Bonding claim was filed and the result of the claim.
I didn’t know the name of the insurance, I just knew of its existence. Anyone who knows my mother knows our family believes heavily in insurances, but not my brother as he did not consider himself family with us. I always tried to unite him and get him to change how he didn’t see us (Mom and I) as family. That’s how he found out to take mom from me is because I called him for help to let mom have a break so that she wouldn’t be so angry and then he voiced no, he wanted to take mom over.
Did a nursing home get paid any kickbacks for placing the disabled there? NO, But mom’s car was given away to someone, but no one was allowed in the family. The guardian was stating that my brother thought he would get the car if I was happy he didn’t. I told her of course not. I know that I, my daughter, and mom’s niece all inquired to buy or sell the car, but we were all blocked away. Then when my brother does what he does, took over and went to the bank to buy it the guardian sold it out from under him. I would rather my brother have the car than an outsider. Now my brother is the type who would rather see mom or I lose than what’s fair due to his hatred. But even after all that my brother has done I do not hate because he’s been sick all his life. From the age of about 4 or five years old my brother sold our baby brother Pat to our neighbor for a candy bar and never tried to get him back. This is the way he was from birth just sick greedy.
Did the disabled get the funeral and burial of his or her choice? My brother does not KNOW my mother he will not be able to fulfill her wishes because he doesn’t know them.
Further Comments:
If you need the daily documented emails you can create a folder for my emails and I can send the many of them. Or I could send a sample of a few emails. The video of mom talking about having sex with my brother can be available here is the video EXACTLY ONE WEEK LATER with mother depressed for losing her lover. My brother said that I brain washed my mother into saying that she was having sex with him. But you could see the video this is a pure academy award acting. How could a person of dementia be taught to act like that and what was she going to gain? When my brother said to say that she did not want me to have guardianship she would get everything back from the court and her car and drive again. Of course mom didn’t want me for guardianship. She wanted her promise he had offered her. But what possibly can I offer mom with a five hour visit to act like she was having sex with my brother. And by the time she goes to the rape kit on Monday two days later she still is having a serious relationship with my brother, but by Friday she’s depressed and I supposedly made that all happen. Here’s mom depressed over losing her boyfriend, my brother.
This is so sad for me, but I can’t believe they forced mom to live like this. This was 2014. I can up load her happy excited about having sex with my brother but would put a privacy code. I can’t allow that video to be public it is so horrible for her to be on top of the world and happy because she’s having sex with her son.
This video is exactly one week later. Remember that I can’t have but 5 hours with my mother ONCE PER WEEK. They said mom can not be moved solely because no sperm was found even though the nurse told me that she can not RULE OUT that sexual act didn’t occur because this was three days later and mom could have not shown it, but just how mother talks about him not wanting the police to get him and her saying that she was married to him, that they are together this is a problem. Once week later you can see that mom understand that the relationship changed and that what my brother was doing before he is no longer doing. But the police over the rape, the guardians, prosecutors, APS all don’t want to help my mother out of this ordeal.
Let me know if you want more documentation of action emails.
I have already contacted the Senate Subcommitte on Aging to find out when their next hearing and I will be bringing with all the forms I have been collecting on abuses in guardianship.
Below is a link to the the survey form on abusive/horrific guardianships
If you were in one of these, please print out the form and email it to me at http://www.denisonlaw.com
There are also forms for if you have been in an abusive custody battle, or in a state custody kidnap battle
1) Abusive Guardianship form. Where elder or disabled guardianized under corrupt “target, isolate, medicate, drain the estate, medicate to eliminate, cremate.”
please post and cross post. I want to go to Congress with the results of these forms and say these cases are NOT isolated incidents and demand that the proceedings be investigated and children and elders be returned to their families and the money be paid back to the families.
please return your filled out form to me via facebook messenger or via email to joanne@justice4every1.com.
While I won’t reveal the details, your prayers and I hope posting and cross posting on this blog worked to find this young lady.
Apparently LT fears for her life in the new institution or home and the parents are once again contacting the authorities to bring this woman home, so keep on praying.
I have advised them to file more police reports, complain to all the state attorneys general, file objections in court, file with the Inspector Generals because assuredly state health care funds are used to do this.
So please keep on praying. It’s our most powerful tool.
Miss LT needs to be returned home and end this nightmare for her mother, father and brother.
Thanks to all of you who posted and cross posted this mother’s plea.
Someone was able to make this Mother’s Day very special for one good mom out there.
Case Summary: Alicia Perry, a 67 year old woman.
Case No.: 2013 ADM 22; 2014 CCC 118
Jurisdiction: Washington DC
Judge’s Name: Erik P Christian
Alicia Perry’s mother took out a reverse mortgage on her home to fix it up in 2006. In order to do this, Alicia and her mother, Selena Abrams, had to remove Alicia’s name from the deed because she was not age 62 yet. The amount of the loan is unknown. Selena was solicited during a church function.
The home was worth approximately $500,000. Alicia was told she could put her name back on the deed at any time. Then, at age 62, then the reverse mortgage would be rolled over to Alicia Perry and she could live in the home until she passed. When Alicia turned 61, she and her mother put her name back on the deed as joint tenants with rights of survivorship. Alicia turned 62 in
Selena Abrams passed in March 2012. Financial Freedom (later it was transferred to One West Bank) wanted to foreclose and sell the house but they couldn’t in foreclosure court. So they filed a proceeding in Probate court to circumvent the normal court procedures. Sister Nneka Abdur Rachman was appointed the PR by the court in Sept 2013. The case was first filed Jan. 2013. At first, Judge Christian dismissed the case in May 2013. Then the case was reinstated in Sept of 2013 and the judge invalid the deed on June 3, 2014 over Alicia’s objections On this day the Judge said he would issue an Order for Contempt, but he forgot to do this. The inventory for the house took 2 hours. But the judge issued an order that Alicia had to stay home for five days, 9 am to 5 pm. The original inventory was due Nov 2013. What he wanted to do was pass attorneys fees to the lawyers in the courtroom . Alicia objected and filed motions to reconsider. The mortgage company then moved to foreclose and sell the home and the court approved the order. The home was sold on May 2015.
Alicia left the house in December 2014 because Alicia had been falsely threatened by judge numerous times because he knew he should not have invalidated the deed. So the judge kept on saying Alicia would go to jail unless she allowed an inventory of home she owned, although she had complied. The judge filed contempt against her saying she would not allow the inventory by the sister but that was a lie. She did in fact open the home for the inventory and she was there for the 5 days set by the court. The judge also said that Alicia would go to jail unless she turned over keys to the Realtor on X date, but Alicia had already left the home due to the threats by the judge and the fact there was no heat in the home. The judge, to this day, after repeated motions by the Public Defender in Washington, DC, refuses to dismiss this bench warrant though it is clearly moot. He claims he “must see” Alicia and not her attorneys. Alicia is afraid to return.
The arrest of Alicia occured on Oct 21, 2014 and the judge issued the bench warrant claiming Alicia “Failed to comply with a court order, she failed to appear on 1/27/15″ (though there was no “must appear” court order in the record).
In Dec. 2014 she was in the home with no heat and the court repeatedly threatened Alicia with jail. She left Dec. 15, 2014. On the 17th of January 2014, she sent the keys to the bank via overnight Express Mail.
On Jan. 27, 2015, Atty Tillman (for the PR) said that AP did not cooperate with the Realtor. The Bank was getting antsy because there is a $300,000 balance is left the estate is owing to the Bank. Tillman told the judge the house “had been listed for months” but the Realtor said that the house was removed from the listing.
On Jan. 27, 2015 date the court found, without evidence, that AP had failed to cooperate with the Realtor, even though there was no court order that she had to comply with a Realtor or the sale or showing of the property.
In Feb 2015, the judge issued the same extradictable warrant. He piggy backed on the Octo 2014 warrant. “Failure to comply with court order, failure to appear on 1/27/15, contempt/misdemeanor.”
He used a criminal warrant for a civil matter.
In addition, the Judge granted an Order for Possession of the property, despite the fact no Eviction proceeding had been filed against AP. She did not receive any Eviction Summons, Petition for Eviction or Notice of Hearing.
To this day, the judge refuses to dismiss the extradictable bench warrant which only issued, IMHO, to cover up his crime of giving away AP’s home to a few courtroom buddies.
Some background. Patrick Murphy was running the Office of Public Guardian at the time the famous fire c. 2006 broke out killing 6 people at 69 W. Washington Ave. They died in the stairwells because “someone” locked them. That “someone” committed manslaughter and has never been brought to justice. There needs to be an investigation. News articles initially on the internet reported the fire with boxes of documents and accelerant. Later this would change to a fire in a storage area and a faulty light fixture was the cause. Right. Investigation anyone? Apparently all the older lawyers in Chicago know what happened, why don’t the authorities and why don’t they publish truthful reports?
Next, Morris Esformes is by far the slumlord of for profit nursing homes (and to begin with, even the best of nursing homes are nothing but slums, interrment camps, gulags and ghettos for the elderly and disabled). His counsel once wrote me and sad that Ken Ditkowsky got something wrong in a statement he made about Rabbi Morris Esformes. I told him fine, I would correct it and in its lieu, I published a slew of far worse new articles I found in mega media on his nursing home operations, which I understand have been transferred under scrutiny from the FBI/DOJ.
In the Esformes situation my informant told me that the public guardians office was up to its neck in the involuntary placement of homeless people in nursing homes, and some of the very miscreants who occupy prominent judicial positions in the various elder cleansing cases were supervisors at the public guardian’s office. We have not been able to verify if these people received remuneration for their assisting the homeless in their involuntary placement and subsequent elder cleansing. Today’s Sun-Times has the following article, to wit:
In a town where the political hacks disdain “beefers” who “talk out of school,” it’s rare to hear the thoughts of a sitting Cook County judge anywhere outside the courtroom.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Murphy, who was the county’s longtime public guardian, broke with tradition this month in two email blasts to Chief Judge Timothy Evans and the rest of his colleagues.
Murphy uses the lengthy missives, which I obtained, to propose what could be radical changes to the sprawling, politically tainted court system.
A main suggestion involves changing the way almost half of the judges are chosen. Murphy also calls for other potentially significant changes, including term limits for the chief judge and presiding judges, and greater input from the more than 400 judges across the county in the court’s $223 million annual budget and other matters.
OPINION
“I submit that our present system quells creativity, quashes dissent and quiets alternative approaches,” Murphy wrote in the latest of his emails on Tuesday. “Individual judges are frequently afraid to speak out about issues.”
Murphy was careful to note he sees Evans as a “decent, caring and intelligent leader” who inherited the system he has overseen since 2001.
But Murphy alleged that “the law was not followed” in the recent appointments of 13 associate judges. An Illinois Supreme Court rule states that the chief judge and a group of judges “selected by their fellow circuit judges” should make up the nominating committee for associate judge openings.
“In the over-50-year history of the circuit court, the nominating committee has never been selected by other judges,” Murphy wrote. “The chief judge distributes the names of the individuals he chooses to be on the nominating committee. The rest of the judges are given no options and are told to sign off on the chief’s selections.”
That means “a tiny coterie” handpicked by the chief judge controls the selection of nearly 40 percent of the county judges, Murphy says.
The 13 associate judges sworn in on Monday were among 26 nominees put forward to the rest of the judges by the committee Evans formed.
“I am told that over 300 candidates were interviewed,” Murphy wrote. “We were asked to vote on 26. We know nothing about the credentials or expertise of the other 275 or so candidates. By law we should.”
Instead, Murphy argues, a committee elected by the judges should select nominees for associate judge from among all applicants.
Murphy, who is assigned to the Bridgeview courthouse, also says openings on the bench should be posted and judges should have a say in who is transferred to those spots.
“Rumors persist that qualified judges are at times overlooked for ‘plum’ assignments in favor of those who might be politically connected,” Murphy says, without offering specifics.
Murphy claims other unnamed judges have proposed hiring a “professional court administrator” and limiting the chief judge to two terms. Evans is nearing the end of his fifth three-year term.
“The process to select associate judges has been been called the closest thing to judicial merit selection in Illinois,” said Evans spokesman Pat Milhizer. “Some of the best and brightest attorneys have joined the court through this process.”
Milhizer said 75 percent of the circuit judges supported Evans’ picks for the nominating committee and that the process allows the judges to back write-in candidates for associate judge.
Murphy — who was public guardian for 26 years before being elected to the bench 11 years ago — declined to comment.
The Democratic Party elites who control the judicial-appointment process might dismiss Murphy’s beef as the grandstanding of a phony reformer attempting a power grab.
But the more people have a say in choosing judges and running the courts, the more difficult it could be for clout to infect the system.
From: kenneth ditkowsky <kenditkowsky@yahoo.com> To: “jdit@aol.com” <jdit@aol.com> Cc: Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 3:10 PM Subject: Re: cynical or honest???
After the Lanre Amu disciplinary proceeding, the spoliation of evidence and non-verbal secret evidence in the JoAnne Dension proceeding along with the discriminatory and kangaroo nature of IARDC proceedings it is hard to believe anything GOOD about the justice system in Illinois.
Thus, I am been following up on an informer’s statement concerning Rabbi Morris Esformes. I trust you remember Mr. Esformes. He is infamous for his nursing homes. It has been alleged that he sent thugs out to round up homeless people. The homeless people were then garnered into the custody of the Public Guardian’s office and placed in Esformes nursing home facilities. An internet search revealed some interesting revelations, to wit:
Rabbi Morris I. Esformes, more unregistered sex-offenders and violations in his nursing homes. UPDATE: numerous heat related deaths at his homes +
By Stephanie Gehring Staff writerAn owner of an embattled Evergreen Park nursing home said the state’s crusade against his facility is being fueled by politics.
Morris I. Esformes, who has 51 percent ownership at Emerald Park Health Care Center in Evergreen Park, said village officials don’t like the kind of residents Emerald Park treats.
“This is about politics,” Esformes said. “This is not about the safety of Evergreen Park.”
The 249-bed facility serves both mentally ill and geriatric patients.
Esformes said Mayor James Sexton, state Rep. James Brosnahan and state Sen. Ed Maloney have never been to Emerald Park to see the center first hand.
“Beside the fact that they’re anti-mental health and anti-black, they’re probably anti-Jew because I’m an ordained rabbi,” Esformes said Thursday. “If it was up to the mayor, he would have lily-white geri-atrics knitting all day. The world isn’t like that.”
Esformes’ remarks come on the same day his lawyers appeared in court to try to keep state officials from placing Emerald Park in receivership and eventually closing it down.
Sexton, Brosnahan and Maloney said Esformes’ remarks were unfounded and their concerns are based on activities inside and outside the center.
“That’s a beautiful thing for a rabbi to be saying,” said Sexton, who planned to contact his attorney.
He added that it was easy for Esformes to blame everything on politics.
Brosnahan said Esformes is chiefly responsible for the center’s operations.
“He has shown to be a person who doesn’t care about the residents or the facility,” Brosnahan said. “He has shown no regard for the safety of community residents, especially young children. He can point all the fingers he wants to … but he just has to look in the mirror.”
Maloney added that he was called to action because of documentation that outlines problems at the center.
“All I know is what I (have) seen in police reports over the last seven or eight years,” he said. “It is well-documented by Evergreen Park police, Illinois State Police and the state department of public health that it is simply not a safe home for residents there. This latest incident regarding sex offenders puts the community in jeopardy, as well.”
Esformes said he is working within state laws.
“A client can’t be placed into a long-term care facility without the approval of the state of Illinois,” he said.
He said patients are screened by agents and placed in his facility with the state’s blessing.
He argues that a sex offender arrested at a park by Evergreen Park police posed no danger to residents.
“They were on a planned activity,” Esformes said. “They were supervised. There was no chance of any client coming too close to a child.”
The arrested sex offender was one of 10 found living at the facility, 9125 S. Pulaski Road, earlier this month. Two of those men were unregistered.
Despite the numerous violations from the state’s health department Emerald Park has received since 1997, Esformes said all facilities have deficiencies.
“Sexton and Brosnahan have put so much heat on the state health department that any little thing we do is under scrutiny,” Esformes said. “They don’t want to hear our side of the story. There are deficiencies in every facility.”
Sexton said the state’s actions are related to the “shenanigans” at Emerald Park.
“I don’t have two unregistered sex offenders at my house. I don’t have eight registered sex offenders at my house,” he said. “He (did). He would still have them if we hadn’t brought it to the attention of the public. This is just laughable.
“All I’m doing, all Brosnahan and Maloney are doing, is representing their constituents. And I don’t think any of those sex offenders, registered or unregistered, are our constituents.”
Tammy Leonard, spokeswoman for the state health department, said while many facilities have deficiencies, Emerald Park’s history is unique.
“We do have many facilities that don’t have deficiencies,” Leonard said. “Even those who do, don’t have as many and at the severity that this facility has had. The history of this facility is unique, and that is the reason why we are taking these extraordinary measures. They have an egregious compliance history.”
The state stepped up actions against Emerald Park because of its April 22 survey and past history.
“It had nothing to do with any outside pressure,” Leonard said.
She said the state’s main objective is residents’ safety.
“If we see a situation where residents are imperiled, it is our job to fix it,” Leonard said.
Lawyers for Emerald Park Health Care Center have until this afternoon to respond to the state health official’s request that the Evergreen Park nursing home be placed in receivership and eventually closed.
Circuit Court Judge Patrick McGann gave lawyers until 4:30 p.m. today to respond to the state’s request. Judge Julia Nowicki will hold the hearing at 11 a.m. Monday.
Melissa Merz, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, which filed the complaint Wednesday, said no one was surprised by the judge’s decision.
“We are looking very forward to Monday and looking forward to presenting evidence that we believe will establish the gross mismanagement that put residents and the community at risk,” Merz said. “We want to get into receivership and get it closed down.”
Esformes’ attorney Arnold Pagnucci, who said he had not seen the complaint until it was hand-delivered late Wednesday, told the judge the court had an obligation to hold the hearing within five days. But he asked for some time to prepare his client’s defense.
“It’s the only way the defendant is going to get any opportunity to be heard fairly,” Pagnucci said.
Esformes was not in court for the hearing.
The judge asked Deborah Simpson and Yolanda Ricks from the attorney general’s office if they objected to giving Pagnucci some time.
“We would like to have the hearing as soon as possible,” Simpson said. “We have a room full of witnesses. The health department has taken drastic measures and put monitors in place 24 hours because of the way the place is being run.”
Health department officials said placement of monitors in facilities is not typical.
Evergreen Park officials were outraged earlier this month when they learned about the 10 sex offenders living at Emerald Park.
The village board subsequently enacted an ordinance that prohibits sex offenders from living at any long-term care facilities in the village. On the same day the ordinance was approved, the nursing home administrator said Emerald Park had changed its policy and would no longer accept sex offenders.
McGann told Simpson and Ricks during Thursday’s hearing that he had read the complaint and the sex offenders had been removed.
“It’s not just the sex offenders,” Simpson said. “It’s the entire administration.
“This owner appears to view fines and violations as an ordinary course of business,” Simpson said.
Emerald Park has been in trouble with state regulators in the past. A license revocation hearing was scheduled for July 18.
In October 2003, Emerald Park was fined $20,000 for not providing nursing services that matched residents’ needs.
The state also disciplined the nursing home for not properly monitoring a resident who passed out and died after becoming intoxicated. In another case, a patient exchanged sex for cigarettes, became pregnant, and the pregnancy was undetected for eight months.
Esformes said he had planned to meet with state health department officials today, but the meeting was canceled Thursday afternoon.
He said he also wants to work with the village and state legislators.
Esformes, who has spent 35 years in the field of long-term care, said the bottom line is about patients’ rights.
“I’m not going to lay down for these people. If I did something wrong, I’m going to admit it like a man. Don’t be judge and jury. Don’t play God. These people are entitled to a quality of life,” he said.
Sexton also said he was willing to give the situation his all.
“We are committed to being there as many days as it takes and doing whatever we need to do to get our neighborhood back,” he said. “We have been held hostage for 10 years.”
Published November 06, 2003 Southwest News-Herald – City Edition
Twelve arrests were made on Oct. 28 when local and state police raided Presidential Pavilion, 8001 S. Western Ave.
Officials from the Chicago Lawn (8th) District Police Department stated that 10 of the arrestees were listed as living in the Wrightwood nursing home.
Included in the arrests were Willie Johnson, 50, who was charged with theft; Helen Long, 65, who was charged with invasion of privacy; Leroy Stewart, 52, who failed to register as a sex offender; Regina Johnson, 45, who was charged with drug possession; and Earl Smith, 70, who was charged with drinking on the premises.
Included in the raid were Anegla Martinez, 34, who allegedly violated her probation; Alvin Lewis, 38, who was charged with theft; Pamela Lacy, 43, who was charged with prostitution; Albert Douglas, 64, who was charged with drug possession; and Cecelia Miller, 17, who was charged with child neglect.
Others who were detained by police were Dawn Rambo, 22, of the 2700 block of West 61st Street, who allegedly failed to register as a sex offender; and Kathryn Smith, 44, who was arrested after failing to appear in court on another charge, according to authorities.
All of the offenders except for Stewart had warrants out for their arrest.
The owner of Presidential, Rabbi Morris I. Esformes, could not be reached for comment.
State Sen. Jacqueline Collins (D-16th) said that she is aware of the police raid and has asked for an immediate investigation of the healthcare facility by the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Presidential became the center of controversy when allegations of illegal drug use and other actions reportedly occurred at the nursing home.
Questions on the facility’s screening process were also brought up, especially when Presidential used to just house senior citizens but later admitted people as young as 20 years old.
Both local organizations and state legislators such as Collins and state Rep. Mary Flowers (D-31st) have tried to pursue legal actions to regulate reforms at Presidential.
Collins said that she has also spoken to Gov. Blagojevich about Presidential, and is looking for a long-term solution in the screening process of the residents and staff of Presidential Pavilion.
This may be a model for other nursing homes in similar situations, said Flowers.
3) http://www.shamash.org/tanach/tanach/commentary/likpeshat/likpeshat.09.03 … Alderman Edward M. Burke will be honored by The Associated Talmud Torahs of Chicago at its Annual Keter Award Banquet on Sunday evening, November 23, at the Chicago Hilton and Towers. Dinner Chairman: Rabbi Morris I. Esformes. Save the date. For more information or to RSVP please call Scott Harrington at 773-473-8493.
Nursing Home Complaints Continue By YVETTE PRESBERRY
Published August 28, 2003 Southwest News-Herald – City Edition
On behalf of Wrightwood residents, one man is fighting in court some alleged criminal activities that occur in a nursery home on the Southwest Side.
Wrightwood resident Anthony Philbin, president of the Wrightwood Improvement Association, filed a complaint against the Illinois Department of Public Health, alleging that patient care is in jeopardy at Presidential Pavilion, 8001 S. Western Ave.
According to Philbin’s complaint, some of Presidential’s patients have illegal narcotics inside the facility, and sell drugs on the street and in front of stores.
Philbin also noted in his complaint that police have raided Presidential and arrested several people, and one resident stabbed another resident.
During a pre-hearing on Aug. 21, Naomi Dunn, Deputy Chief Counsel for the Illinois Department of Public Health, said that IDPH representatives talked to police in April who could not confirm of a raid.
There was evidence of a deficiency in operations of facility
Dunn said that there was a physical assault between two residents, though but a surveyor stood outside of Presidential for a number of hours and didn’t see Philbin’s claims.
Overall, there was only evidence of a deficiency in operations of the facility, said Dunn.
The pre-hearing was set for Philbin to discuss his complaint and present any other evidence that he had against Presidential.
After Administration Law Judge Linda Maschek set the actual hearing for Sept. 23, Philbin warned that he would present Presidential’s allegations to the media if a sooner date was not set.
“This is too serious a problem,” he said.
Tammy Leonard, spokesperson for the state’s Department of Public Health, said that 66 complaints have been filed against Presidential since July 2002. Of that total, five were found to be valid.
Leonard also said that Presidential was fined $5,000 on April 29 because of a violation in food service sanitation.
While Presidential’s sewage water was backed up and flooding the kitchen, the facility’s staff continued cooking meals while standing on milk crates.
The Wrightwood facility is co-owned by Rabbi Morris I. Esformes, a successful magnate in the nursing home industry who owns several facilities in Illinois and Missouri.
Throughout the last few years, Esformes has been involved in litigations dealing with residential care in his nursing homes.
When Presidential’s staff members, residents and nearby businesses alleged of narcotic purchases and use by the residents in 2002, Esformes and Presidential administrator Michael Rosen refused comment after several calls were made to their offices by the News-Herald.
Both Esformes and Rosen were unable to be reached for this story.
Dunn said that the state’s Department of Public Health can only investigate allegations that occur within a nursing home.
“If, by chance, we overstep, we step into someone else’s jurisdiction,” said Dunn.
The situation seems problematic because representatives from Ald. Thomas Murphy’s (18th) office said that local enforcement can only patrol the neighborhood outside and around Presidential.
Incidents that occur inside the facility fall under state jurisdiction.
In order for a nursing home to close, a repeat occurrence of a federal violation has to happen in the facility,said Leonard.
Annual surprise surveys are made by health inspectors who look at staff functions, residential care plans and other factors.
If violations are found, the facility can be forced to make a correction plan or take one from the state’s health department.
If the same problem happens again, then steps will be taken to revoke the facility’s license.
“Closing a facility is a process,” said Leonard.
Philbin was hoping to put an end to the allegations surrounding Presidential with a hearing with the state’s Public Health Department, but felt shut down in the pre-hearing.
He was advised by John Smock, project coordinator for the Wrightwood Community Development Corporation, to get a lawyer. However, Philbin said that he is not sure the WIA can afford one.
“I’m completely disgusted,” he said. “We’re over before it’s supposed to be started.”
Last Action Date Chamber Action 2/8/2005 House Resolution Adopted
Synopsis As Introduced Congratulates Rabbi Morris I. Esformes on the establishment of the “Rabbi Morris I. Esformes Professorship” at the University of Chicago.
Actions Date Chamber Action 2/2/2005 House Filed with the Clerk by Rep. Lou Lang 2/8/2005 House Placed on Calendar Agreed Resolutions 2/8/2005 House Resolution Adopted
HR0085 LRB094 08111 HSS 39647 r
1 HOUSE RESOLUTION
2 WHEREAS, Rabbi Morris I. Esformes received a Bachelor of 3 Arts in social sciences in 1970 from Roosevelt University; he 4 attended Hebrew Theological College in Skokie and received his 5 Rabbinic Ordination in 1970; he has continued his education at 6 Roosevelt University by taking courses in social work; and
7 WHEREAS, Rabbi Esformes is a Managing General Partner at 20 8 nursing homes in two states, Florida and Illinois, and at 9 Larkin Community Hospital in South Miami, Florida, at Woodland 10 Towers in Deland, Florida, and at Park Plaza in Chicago; and
11 WHEREAS, Rabbi Esformes served as the Executive Director of 12 Arie Crown Hebrew Day School from 1973 to 1976 and as 13 Administrator at Birchwood Pavilion Nursing Home in Chicago 14 from 1970 to 1973; and
15 WHEREAS, He served on the State of Illinois Commission on 16 Mental Health in 1978 and on the Illinois Council for Long Term 17 Care as Vice-President from 1977 to 1979; and
18 WHEREAS, Rabbi Esformes has been actively involved in his 19 community; he is a Past President of Arie Crown Hebrew Day 20 School, and a board member for Hebrew Theological College, 21 Telshe Yeshiva, the Wisconsin Institute of Torah Study, 22 Associated Talmud Torahs, and Hannah Sachs Girls School; he is 23 President Emeritus of Morris Namias Hebrew Academy in New 24 Jersey and the founder of the Chicago Community Kollel; he is 25 on the National Board of Ben Gurion University in Israel and 26 Torah Umsorah and the board of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for 27 Holocaust Studies; he is a member of the Social Welfare 28 Committee of the Jewish Federation Committee of Metropolitan 29 Chicago, Past Vice President of Congregation Adas Yeschurum, 30 and Past President of Cong. Adas Bnai Israel; and
HR0085 – 2 – LRB094 08111 HSS 39647 r
1 WHEREAS, Rabbi Esformes has been the recipient of numerous 2 honors, including the Yissacher Zevulun Award from Lakewood 3 Yeshiva in 1980, the Founder Award of Telshe Yeshiva in 1981, 4 and the Associated Talmud Torahs of Chicago Morris Esformes 5 Scholarship Foundation; he was honored by Chicago Community 6 Kollel, Post-Graduate School for Rabbis in 1982 and by Arie 7 Crown Hebrew Day School in 1983; he was honored by American 8 Friends of Ohr Somavach in 1985, by American Friends of Kerem 9 B’Yavneh in 1985, by Lakewood Yeshiva in 1990, by Yeshiva 10 Gedola Ateres Mordechai in 1989, by Central Yeshiva Beth Joseph 11 in 1988, by Neve Yerushalayim in 1994, and by Yeshivas Brisk in 12 1998; and
13 WHEREAS, On Wednesday, February 9, 2005, a reception is 14 being held to celebrate the establishment of The Rabbi Morris 15 I. Esformes Professorship; therefore, be it
16 RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE 17 NINETY-FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that 18 we congratulate Rabbi Morris I. Esformes on the establishment 19 of a professorship in his honor at the University of Chicago; 20 and be it further
21 RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be 22 presented to Rabbi Esformes as an expression of our respect and 23 esteem.
Does anyone wonder at this point in time if Mr. Larkin has a problem with the SCOTUS case 14 361 Ocasio vs. United States? An HONEST INVESTIGATION IS VERY APPROPRIATE AND IF IT SHOULD BE FOUND THAT LARKIN WAS PAID – in any currency – FOR HIS 18 USCA 371 AND 18 USCA 241,242 ACTIVITIES THE HOBBS ACT IS ANOTHER VEHICLE AVAILABLE to address his activities; however, as Illinois is in such dire financial circumstances, I would urge the Illinois Department of Revenue to collect the taxes that Larkin owes as the result of his cover-up of the cottage industry of elder cleansing.
For the record, I do not hold anyone who would be a party to elder cleansing and taking possession of the gold in her teeth to be a person entitled to my respect and esteem.
This morning I noted an e-mail that referred to the most recent Supreme Court of the United States decisions and alerted the public to the aforesaid decisions. As is my habit I sent copies of the e-mail to everyone is sight. I do this because even though I recognize the fact that Jerome Larkin, the Illinois attorney registration and disciplinary commission, and the Illinois Supreme Court do not believe in the rule of law and ignore the FIRST AMENDMENT as well as ABA Rule 8.3, 18 USCA 4, 18 USCA 371, 18 USCA 241,242, ***** these decisions are very important. Unfortunately the IARDC and the Illinois Supreme Court are not alone and lawyers who express complaints against corrupt judges, lawyers and judicial officials are intimidated and silenced. The perfidious miscreants in black robes and similar garb continue their evil ways unabated.
That said, in the document I sent you and others are two significant cases. The key case – which I hope to discuss with Andy on Thursday is summarized as follows:
Date Filed: April 26, 2016 Case #: 14-1280 BREYER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and KENNEDY, GINSBURG, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ALITO, J., joined. Full Text Opinion: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-1280_k5fl.pdf
First Amendment: Employers may be held liable under the First Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for demoting an employee in an attempt to prevent them from engaging in political activity protected by the First Amendment,even if the employer is factually mistaken about the nature of their employee’s activity.
Petitioner worked as a police detective when he picked up a campaign sign for his mother that endorsed a mayoral candidate running against the incumbent mayor, who had appointed the Chief of Police as well as Petitioner’s direct supervisor. Fellow officers saw Petitioner at one of the candidate’s distribution centers holding the sign and the following day Petitioner’s supervisor demoted Petitioner to patrol officer in retaliation for what the supervisor incorrectly perceived as involvement with the campaign. Petitioner filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in federal court. The district court found that Petitioner’s First Amendment rights were not violated because he had not engaged in protected conduct and that conduct protected by the First Amendment must be actual and not perceived to be actionable. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court disagreed, holding that employees are entitled to bring claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the First Amendment when their employers demote them and intend to demote them in order to prevent them from engaging in political activity protected by the First Amendment, regardless of whether the employer was mistaken about the employees conduct. The Supreme Court found that the First Amendment’s textual focus on government conduct and concern about discouraging individuals from engaging in protected speech justified holding employers liable.It was further noted that the chilling effect on protected speech is the same with or without a factual mistake on behalf of the employer regarding the conduct of their employees. REVERSED and REMANDED.
The significance of this decision is that it is almost on all fours with the disciplinary cases that we have had to endure. Amu – had an absolute right to echo or have Crains Chicago Business disclose the Corruption of Judge ****** in not disqualifying herself in a case in which she was on the board of the defendant corporation, and her bother was the attorney for the corporation. Larkin had no right to insert himself into the POLITICAL speech abhorring the patently wrongful conduct of a sitting judge. Ditto for our calls for an HONEST INVESTIGATION, your blog and my letter to the Attorney General of the United States.
In Florida Norkin’s objection to the arbitrary ruling of a judge was protected speech and should not have subjected him to discipline because the corrupt judge found him to be annoying. Free speech may be annoying – it is however protected. *****
In the Direct TV case the SCOTUS made it clear that its ruling were not suggestions but the Rule of law. Each lawyer and each judge has sworn to uphold the Constitution. That means that sua sponde each is required to rebuke the criminal conduct of Larkin and the Larkin-like 18 USCA 371 co-conspirators.
This brings us to the 2nd case.Ocasio v. United States. While Mr. Larkin is not conspiring with the miscreants in the Sykes case, Gore Case, ***** to engage in nefarious vehicle transactions, it is very clear that his aggressive suppression/repression of objection to elder cleansing is an unmistakable manifestation of the elder cleaning for profit that occurred in so many Illinois cases including but not limited to Sykes, Gore, Tyler, Wyman ******. The fact that Larkin is reported not have filed the required ‘ethics reports’ is strong evidence that in some manner he is ‘wired’ and has been paid. The lack of interest in Judge Connor’s admission on page 91 of her evidence deposition that she was wire is another nail in the coffin. The lack of action on citizen complaints concerning a certain group of lawyers famous for their acumen in reducing the pecuniary value of guardianship estates or during their tenure at the Public Guardian’s office allegedly turning homeless people into cash!
The Ruling of the SCOTUS are not suggestions = they are the RULE OF LAW. It is time for the ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT to sua sponde rid Illinois Government of corrupt public officials such as Jerome Larkin and re-establish honor, dignity, integrity, honesty and respect for the Rule of Law to Illinois.
I do hope you have all survived the weekend. I know for many of you it has been hard. I have received scores of emails from mothers and children separated by corrupt courts in both probate and in (anti) family court.
I wish you all a belated happy mother’s day. My mother is gone, but I still love her and miss her and talk to her everyday out loud but unseen. She is not dead, but lives on in a different dimension. A much happier and more wonderful dimension.
I have heard from all of you, and I want to pass it on, that having a mother you cannot see because a guardian, a GAL, a court ordered it, was not possible creates the worst mother’s day possible. I still hear from scores of children, depressed in grief, the cannot see their elderly mothers at all, cannot even call them, or even send them a note or a card or even flowers for mother’s day. Doug Franks called me and said he could see his elderly mother for a few hours and he was so happy he could do this, but wait a minute, why can’t he spend every waking hour with her? Does not the Bill of Rights ensure this for both him and her?
I know the judges and GAL’s read this blog. What monster does this? If mom wants to see her children and hear from them, who are you to stand in the way? The Federal law on Elder Abuse now considers this a crime. My victims that write to me have much more coarser words and phrase for what you condone and aide and abet.
Gloria Sykes could not see, call or even write her own mother except for a handful of times for more than 5 years. What monsters participate in this evil?
Bev Cooper could not see, call or even write her mother for 10 months, and when she and 20+ friends and family were allowed to do this, it was discovered a feeding tube was implanted against the will of Alice Gore, and her 29 gold teeth had been pulled. For what? Pennies on the dollar?
The Drabik and Richards sisters–9 of them, had to endure the fact their Aunt Lydia Tyler and their Mother Rose Drabik were both narcotized to death against their will when the money ran out– and $1.5 million was fell off Rose’s inventory, and $9 million + from Lydia’s. And for what?
Story after story crosses my emails and facebook and phone calls every day.
Ken and I and all the other probate blogs–NASGA, probate sharks, etc. beg and plead for this to end, but we are still suspended from the practice of law by the Illinois Supreme Court who knows very well what we do–where the corruption ends and begins, how the mega nursing home corps and mega pharma rules the world of the nursing homes, where according to the probate courts, all elders must go and be stripped of their assets and it be given to tied in corrupt attorneys and courtroom vendors, against their will. Go ahead and ask them about how they love attorney Seth Gillman, a known convicted felon in Elder Abuse, but the ARDC hates myself and Ken Ditkowsky for just telling the truth on a blog.
And don’t ever question a preferred lying scum bag shrink on the witness stand, because if you do, the court will seal the records (Judge Quinn and Estate of Reichert).
It all must be given to court room friends and attorneys.
As the lawyers said most brazenly in a 60 minutes report on a corrupt foreign official plying his money laundering biz on a body cam, “we are the attorneys and we run the US” corruptly and without any ethics or morals and no one will challenge us. Well, did the ABA or the NY bar disciplinary board challenge these 12 attorneys salivating over laundering hundreds of millions in corrupt foreign funds? Of course not!
The ABA pulled dozens of citizen comments defending me and crying foul on my license suspension. A former ABA president was part of the “it’s okay to launder money” expose on 60 minutes. The ABA just pulled their support of a book that would have exposed the oppression of civil rights activists and whistleblower lawyers in China.
This was supposed to be the land of the “free and the brave”. What happened? Did our ancestors write the Bill of Rights on Charmin?
You tell me why corruption in the courts keeps children from seeing their parents or even speaking to them on mother’s day. You tell me why corrupt (anti) family courts are denying parenting time or 50-50 co parenting time to parents that were never declared “unfit” with due process, a notice, a written motion, discovery and a hearing? In case you didn’t know, 50-50 co parenting time is now the law in Illinois since Janurary of 2016, but I don’t see the courts enforcing it. No parent is declared “unfit”, a very high standard, but 50-50 coparenting time is denied on a whim or “discretion” of the judge.
But I will send my wishes for justice to all those that deny the strongest of karmic ties between parents and children today–the maternal bond.
And don’t think that no one cares. It is my understanding that a mother’s prayers for her children are given highest priority by the Divine Ones, then a mother’s prayers for anyone.
So don’t be discouraged. The most powerful tools we have on this earth are prayer, love, hope and our karmic bonds between mothers and their children.