Talking About Reform Laws for Family Court with Greg Penglis on Action Radio
He likes my ideas, but he said that they still need a lot of work.
I was on Action Radio with Greg Penglis last Wednesday.
Find the podcast here.
I jump on about an hour in for an hour; Greg and I spend time in the second half hour talking about Orange County, CA. corruption: particularly the manual I found.
In the first half hour, we spoke about some laws I have proposed and one, Mikaela’s Law, which was drafted by Evita Tolu.
Find more on that law here.
We started by chatting about The Elaine Pudlowski Act; this is a law named after the very corrupt St. Louis County area guardian ad litem (GAL) and lawyer Elaine Pudlowski.
The now infamous Zoom conference where nearly forty corrupt St. Louis GALs talk about Elaine’s troubles is below.
At about thirty two minutes in, Sarah Pleban, pictured above, states, “This threatens to take down the entire system…Judges are in on it.”
I have wanted to take down that system since hearing that.
This law attempts to reform while taking down the entire system, by eliminating all court appointments.
“This would take down the entire system because they’re all guardian ad litem which would eliminate them.” I said to Greg Penglis.
“What you’ve got here is a pretty decent law,” Greg told me, “What I want to do is just have it expanded a little bit.”
He said that for anyone writing a law, each law needs to have an introduction, which states why you are proposing the law. Second, he said that the law needs to cite the current law, “and then you want to have your proposed law of what you want to change.”
He continued, “What you’ve done is great. It’s citizen legislation. It’s simple, it’s straightforward. Here’s the problem, but what I think would make it a lot better is…a little more detail on why you’re doing this and who Elaine Pudlowski is.”
I made some changes following our discussion and the Elaine Pudlowski act as it currently stands is found here.
Greg suggested that listeners and people on social media help make the law better. Feel free to drop a comment here or at the link for improving the law.
The current law covering GALs in Missouri is here.
Next, we talked about “The Caseworker Accountability and Transparency Act.”
This law would require Child Protective Services (CPS) caseworkers who visit parents at their homes to wear a body cam, like the police, and it requires them to provide parents with a Miranda like warning, here’s that part of the law, “A caseworker shall not enter your home unless permitted in without an appropriate warrant or other court order. Any answers to our questions shall only be done voluntarily and shall not be coerced. A parents’ failure to answer any questions shall not be used as the reason why children are taken. Furthermore, the caseworker shall announce the purpose of their visit prior to asking any questions.”
I said that this is a bill that could work on the state and county level and Greg suggested I add another proposed bill for the county level, which I’ll do.
Lastly, we talked about Mikaela’s Law.
That’s a law in Missouri which would end quasi judicial immunity for GALs in Missouri.
This law was proposed by Evita Tolu; this makes sense since she sued her GAL, Elaine Pudlowski, and that lawsuit was dismissed based on quasi judicial immunity.
Tolu’s complaint, originally filed in the 21st Judicial Circuit Court in St. Louis County on Dec. 4, 2020, was reassigned by the Missouri Supreme Court to Judge Steven Ohmer of the 22nd Judicial Court after 31 judges recused themselves, according to media reports. That’s because Tolu alleges they received an email from presiding Judge Michael Burton discussing her lawsuit.
“Once the judges received this email from him, they started recusing themselves because judges cannot receive any extra-judicial information outside of court proceedings and so the judges were following the rules of judicial conduct,” she said.
Judge Ohmer dismissed Tolu’s lawsuit on June 4, in part, due to quasi-judicial immunity and judicial immunity for the court-appointed professionals.
Evita testified about Mikaela’s Law in front of the Missouri legislature.That testimony is below.
Mikaela’s Law is named after Mikaela Haynes, who killed herself when the court was determined to force her to have contact with her dad, even though he was already molesting her and her sisters.
Megan Fox at PJ Media has written extensively on this case.
Mikaela Haynes was fourteen years old when she took her own life after being repeatedly forced to spend time with a convicted child rapist, her father Charles Haynes. Haynes is currently in prison in Missouri serving a sentence for raping Mikaela’s half-sister, Melissa, when she was a young teen.
The nightmare for this family began when Melissa gave her mother a note disclosing that her stepfather, Cynthia Randolph’s husband Charles Haynes, had been abusing her for years. Randolph left with her three children, reported the abuse to the police, and filed for divorce. Haynes was arrested, charged, and pleaded guilty to sodomizing Melissa.
Guardian ad litem (GAL) Jennifer Williams was appointed to the case because of the abuse allegations. Instead of protecting the children from Charles Haynes, an admitted child rapist, Williams acted tirelessly to give him and his enabler mother access to the children, while accusing Randolph of “educational neglect” for homeschooling the girls. Even after putting the children into a public school, where both children made the honor roll, proving there had been no educational neglect, Randolph lost custody of the girls to Haynes’s mother Bernice because of Williams’s influence over the court.
Randolph reported that Mikaela became despondent after finding out that Williams, who was entrusted to act in Mikaela’s best interest in the custody dispute, announced her intention to testify on behalf of Charles Haynes at his sentencing hearing after he pled guilty to sodomizing Mikaela’s sister. “On 11-23-2018 she heard that Jennifer Williams, her own guardian ad litem was going to be a character witness on behalf of Charles Haynes for the sexual molestation of Melissa. That devastated [Mikaela],” Randolph told PJ Media. “She said ‘I’m going to hang myself before I go back to foster care.'” Mikaela hung herself in the family home the very next day.
Greg seemed to like this law as well.
“You’ve got some good ideas; you’ve got some good advocacy.” He said, “I would enlist the people of the family law project.”
He’s referring to the family law page attached to his show.
I’ll continue to update as these laws take shape.
I follow you, I read most of your writings. Decided to join for year.
So desperately looking for the silver bullet someone has used to keep their custody case ending with the children in the hands of the abuser, narcissistic and uncaring parent, mostly fathers. Laws would be good. Getting rid of FC would be the greatest news. So many unethical unprofessional "Expurts" need to be behind bars. Maybe all court custody cases should be run through Civil Court where it is public and has "accountability". We definitely need to remove these people from being exempt from the law. The major pillars of the Family Court stopping fair play is the GAL, the unethical lawyer being a leech to the parent with bottomless pit of money and all the other unethical players. The Caring Parent ends up penniless if they try to keep getting the fair hand in all of this. The Mom and children both end up with PTSD and nasty psychological problems. How many of those young school shooters are the aftermath of the broken Family Court System?
There is a GAL in the Maricopa County Family Court System that definitely needs to be in prison for a very long time, Stephanie Stromfors. She is not a GAL unless GAL means Guards All Lies. She is another Elaine Pudlowski. I just hope we do not lose another child in AZ due to a fathers action or the child giving up with no hope of ever being free of fear and with his mother.
Keep up the good work Mike.