New Beginnings with Dr Bandy X Lee
Our global community Town Hall at the close of 2023
Effecting meaningful change in the family justice system must be a community endeavour. This is a matter of vital public interest that concerns all families, and especially children, who deserve harmonious childhoods and the chance to enjoy the best life outcomes possible.
Corruption in children’s law cases is rife, and it is unconscionable. It is time to come together as a global community and say “No more”.
Family court reform is not something to be entrusted to lawmakers who do not understand the reality on the ground. It’s not for family court professionals to make the decisions. Most professionals profit from the system, which puts them in a conflict of interest.
Professionals who support the rights of children and families are welcome to provide their insights and play an advisory role. But it is time for families, the public and our lawmakers to take back control of this dangerous, closed system.
We are enormously grateful to US psychiatrist and violence expert Dr Bandy X Lee who accepted our invitation to join a community event and speak with families around the world to wrap up a turbulent year.
This was a forum where people could have direct contact with Bandy, a formidable campaigner against the horrific violations of the law happening in the “family courts”. Like most people, Bandy had no idea these things were happening — until her own sister became trapped in the family courts and lost custody of her children.
We wanted families to have the chance to ask Bandy their own questions and join in a discussion. As host, I am not sure I facilitated as much openness as I would have liked, but we were working within two constraints: time, and Bandy being quite under the weather.
We are profoundly grateful to Bandy for pushing through her discomfort and giving us the gift of her personal and professional insights this holiday season. As a medical doctor and violence expert with decades of experience in the criminal justice system, her considered opinions have significant weight.
Here is a summary of what was said at what she described as “a true breakthrough moment” where this dangerous system is finally starting to break down.
These are insights that it is important for the public, and especially families involved in family court cases, to understand.
How can we address corruption, perjury and lack of accountability in the Family Courts?
“Family courts” are not courts of law. Why?
There is no due process;
Judges are under no obligation to abide by the law, and
There is no oversight and no transparency.
Our best chance to address the corruption in the family courts is exposure.
The lack of transparency in family courts is covering up criminal activity,
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
It is also helpful for people to know they are not alone.
To address perjury, it is important to understand that everyone is lying. Record everything, document each lie and send it to the police. Bandy’s sister has reported that her child’s guardian ad litem has lied over 160 times.
Poorly qualified and unscrupulous “experts”
We also need to address the issue of poorly qualified “experts”. Courts will accept the testimony of family court “expert witnesses” who may not even have a master’s degree over the opinion of deep subject matter experts with doctoral degrees.
However, there are also mental health experts with doctorates who will produce fraudulent reports for the “family courts”.
Regulatory bodies are not fulfilling their duty to protect the public interest; rather, they are protecting their colleagues and their wallets.
We learned about a new term which can be used to defame mothers: “tangential speech”. This is something that does manifest when someone is under high stress, such as in a situation of violence and when one is threatened with losing one’s child. But the courts deny the natural anxiety and pathologise mothers. On the other hand, courts justify and gloss over violent fathers’ mental health defects. (The roles can be switched in the small amount of cases where the father is targeted).
Crimes committed by report writers in such cases include: perjury, fraud, defamation, professional malpractice and negligence.
Child Protective Services (CPS) and forced adoption
CPS uses bachelor-level workers to pathologise mothers. Sometimes mothers are stigmatised with mental health labels by social workers.
CPS is not independent.
Judges always go with CPS opinions over doctoral-level psychologists. One could have 8 reports of excellent mental health from renowned mental health PhDs, but a judge will discard these reports in favour of a report from a social worker who has not yet earned their Masters degree.
This is a 2 tier system which is characterised by incompetence.
When asked about solidarity between the families going through child custody and child protection cases, including adult adoptees who were victims of forced adoption, Bandy confirmed that these are absolutely two sides of the same coin.
An asset-stripping racket
While there are undoubtedly good professionals in the family law system, the lack of professional standards and accountability have turned family law into a legal Wild West.
In child custody cases, predatory professionals eye up the assets of middle income families and hold children to ransom, knowing that parents desperate to protect them will sell their homes, use their savings and enter into debt to pay extortionate legal fees and finance multiple reports to try, fruitlessly, to prove they are not mentally ill in a sadistic game.
In child protection cases, poorer families are targeted and their children taken into care or put up for adoption. This activates streams of Central Government funding for the state bodies engaging in what is effectively institutional human trafficking.
(In the UK both private and public family law are associated with legal aid certificates being used fraudulently by unscrupulous lawyers.)
The cartel
Bandy has two decades of experience working as a violence expert and a psychiatrist in New York's Rikers Island Correctional Facility, known for its extreme levels of violence.
She disclosed that family court professionals are acting like street gangs and organised crime.
People are terrified to use the words “corruption” and “human trafficking” but Bandy confirms explicitly what many parents know: that family courts are the main centres of human trafficking in the USA and this situation is being replicated in other states across the globe.
This includes the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation, which Bandy has seen in most cases she has been involved with.
I can also confirm that this is what is happening to many families I am in touch with. These families are prepared to speak out and provide evidence.
There is no other way to explain judges putting children in the care of men where there is documentary evidence of child sexual abuse. It is not stupidity. It is criminality.
In 2024, I would ask that other professionals develop the clear sighted approach of Dr Lee and stop being gaslit by the family justice community into thinking that the family courts are legitimate organisations.
It is the moral obligation of every professional who has witnessed this to stop using what Dr Lee calls euphemisms and to start using the required terminology.
International trafficking cartel
One participant submitted a question about NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) and ICMEC (International Center for Missing and Exploited Children), and another about the Hague Convention on International Parental Child Abduction.
We did not have a great deal of time to dwell on these answers, but Bandy believes that the first two organisations are used to pursue individuals who try to escape the family court cartel.
I can confirm that the system of “international private family law” administered by the Hague Conference is designed to do the same, even where the children concerned are suffering from the most serious kinds of abuse.
Therefore, it is our view that these organisations form part of an international child trafficking racket, together with the family courts.
Psychologist reports
To the question of whether psychologist reports have a role to play in family court, Bandy responded that they are of such low quality that they are doing more harm than good.
FOIA requests
One participant asked whether filing FOIA requests might reveal that certain court orders are not certified and therefore not legally enforceable.
Bandy’s response was that the courts can simply lock down cases. We also noted that Government bodies are routinely refusing to honour legitimate FOI requests, sooner paying fines to the Information Commissioner at the public expense than reveal poor practice.
The End of Family Court
Bandy mentioned the book “The End of Family Court: How Abolishing the Court Brings Justice to Children and Families” by Jane M. Spinak. I have just bought a copy as a New Year’s gift to myself. We all need to be learning, thinking hard and creatively, outside any and all boxes, to consider how best to bring an end to the family court atrocities.
Unconstitutional courts
Bandy spoke of the informality of the family jurisdiction and an aspect of the civil and family courts that I have also been thinking about: the concept of “unlimited discretion”. She pointed out: “this latitude was intended for benevolence, but is used for malevolence”.
(For a little background on the development of family law in the UK, including the concept of privacy, see this lecture. I am keen to know more about the history Bandy mentioned, which spans more than 100 years).
The same problem applies to the rules on transparency, which were originally intended to protect the privacy of children but have led to a total lack of scrutiny which is endangering children far more than it is protecting them.
The concept of judicial discretion is leading judges to abandon the notion that they need to respect domestic and international human rights laws, including those on freedom of speech.
The question arises: are family courts constitutional?
Are they even courts?
The answer, which Bandy and other experts have confirmed, is no, since they are neither implementing laws nor respecting families’ constitutional rights.
Bandy mentioned a new concept for me: “carve-outs” as a means of ensuring that federal courts cannot intervene in unlawful state level judgments. This sounds like a topic that warrants depth investigation.
I hope that 2024 will see a great deal of activity investigating the multitude of constitutional, civil and human rights issues around the family courts, as well as financial corruption.
Unlimited latitude and lack of scrutiny have led to what Bandy termed “extremely poor outcomes” and concluded “It has never worked”.
Crimes against humanity
Since we are finding ourselves unable to successfully secure criminal prosecution of malpractice and fraud in the “family courts”, a participant asked about the prospects of success with reports to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Bandy confirmed that the ICC is impotent to enforce actions against individual States, and has been undermined by powerful countries which are weaponizing it against weaker ones. This is an important fact to keep in mind bearing the global conflicts currently raging and warrants that have already been, or might be, issued in that context.
Perhaps the family courts have, for better or worse, helped shine a light on State level and international corruption and opened our eyes to deficiencies in our political systems.
Timeline for change
When asked for her view on how soon we can expect reform of the family courts, Dr Lee replied that she considers 2023 has been a true breakthrough moment.
We have seen California ban reunification camps where children are reeducated to accept their abusers in child custody cases.
We have seen UN level reports raising concerns at the Human Rights Council on “egregious miscarriages of justice” in child custody cases, and with the Hague Conference with regard to child abduction law.
We have seen teenage children speaking out about feeling trapped and tortured by family judges.
Dr Lee says that a conservative estimate of 60,000 cases per year where a child is transferred to an abusive parent in the USA is enough to damage democracy. She fears that some 50% of these children will go on to exhibit destructive behaviours, which will be dangerous for society.
Her closing remark was that in forming a collective, campaigning and exposing what is happening we are taking exactly the right approach. We need a social reform movement, and we are already on our way to achieving it.
There is much hard work ahead of us, and Bandy reminds us to take good care of ourselves as we prepare for the fight.
Thank you Bandy for the generous gift of your time. Please know that there are legions across the world who stand with you, with your sister and with every single parent and child harmed by unscrupulous family court professionals.
May you be protected as you continue your in your inexhaustible fight to protect children and defend the integrity of our society.
We look forward to an exponential increase of discussion of the family courts in the public domain.
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