The 2021 North Carolina Judge's Shindig Held in a Very Curious Place
In October 2021, hundreds of North Carolina judges got together for three days of training- led by professors at the University of North Carolina- and this shindig was held in Cherokee
A Harrah’s Casino was the site for an October 2021 three day training seminar for North Carolina Judges.
As if a casino wasn’t curious enough, the conference was held in Cherokee County, the site for the state’s biggest Department of Social Services (DSS) scandal. It is possibly the biggest scandal in the nation’s history.
Dozens of parents were tricked by Cherokee County DSS employees into signing what were called “Custody and Visitation Agreements(CVA).”
While these agreements looked real, they actually had no legal weight. In fact, these CVA’s were an end run around a judicial order; several people have plead guilty, including the former DSS Director, Cindy Palmer.
Cindy Palmer, once the director of Cherokee County’s Department of Social Services, pleaded guilty to one felony count of obstruction of justice on Tuesday as part of a plea agreement in which she will not receive an active sentence.
Palmer led the DSS office for multiple years while social workers used a document called a Custody and Visitation Agreement to remove children from their parents without court oversight.
In 2018, shortly after the courts learned of the forms, a judge said it was “not a valid legal document” while another invalidated all remaining CVAs, calling them “unlawful” and “the product of both actual and constructive fraud.”
Cherokee County was still the site of this October 2021 conference.
According to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the conference was titled, “The District Court Judges’ Fall 2021 Educational Conference” and it was held at the Harrah’s Casino in Cherokee County on Wednesday October 20, 2021 through Friday October 22, 2021.
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