Local News May Finally Be Buying into Family Court and CPS Coverage
In the last few months, several local stories have exploded onto the national scene
One persistent complaint from those who have had their lives destroyed by family court or Child Protective Services (CPS) is that local media refuses to report on these issues.
While that’s generally true, it’s a bit of an exaggeration. These issues have received some coverage locally for years. Here is a story which is a decade old of a caseworker going to jail for lying on reports.
The Tsimhoni case first broke locally in Detroit before receiving international attention. In that case, the judge, Lisa Gorcyca, threw three children- all straight A students- into juvenile hall for refusing to have lunch with their father and compared them to Charles Manson.
“You need to do a research program on Charlie Manson and the cult that he has … You have bought yourself living in Children’s Village, going to the bathroom in public, and maybe summer school.” Gorcyca said in a hearing.
I first met Neil Shelton in 2015; he told me that no one would touch his story, near where he lived in North Carolina. This was largely because his ex-wife had hired Sarah Stevens to be her divorce lawyer. Stevens was also a powerful State Representative.
Within a year, Neil’s story had wound up in the local Mt. Airy News, and he was featured in a news story by North Carolina journalist Bob Buckley.
Still, stories, like the one above, were generally an anomaly; primarily, local media coverage was rare.
Most of the time, things go the way they have gone in Connecticut. While there have been all sorts of coverage of abuses by courts in Connecticut, that coverage rarely makes it into the local press.
I first covered Connecticut abuses in 2015; they feature prominently in the book “Worst Interest of the Child” and more recently both Wayne Dolcefino and Frank Parlato have delved into it.
You are not likely to find evidence of widespread court corruption in any media in that state.
Most recently, when they did cover it, the media in the state tried to paint the lawyer for Karen Riordan as out of control after she was disbarred.
A disbarred attorney who failed to show up for a May court date to address her disbarment and use of client funds has one week to come up with $15,000 for a mental health evaluation.
Middletown Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher disbarred former Hamden attorney Nickola Cunha, 54, of Wallingford, earlier this year after she filed a motion requesting that a family court judge be removed from a pending divorce case because he “showed bias in favor of Jewish litigants and the disabled,” court documents said.
She also repeatedly defied the judge’s orders to help a trustee appointed to aid her clients and failed to show up at scheduled court dates, documents said.
The details of Karen’s case won’t receive much attention in Connecticut. My previous interview with Nickola is here.
Local coverage is critical because that’s where it will have the most impact.
Over the last few months, I have noticed a change and it might be the beginning of something.
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