Unbelievable

[Rutabaga]

Judge jails children for not having lunch with father:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/09/michigan-judge-bullies-children-in-open-court-for-refusing-to-see-their-dad/

http://popehat.com/2015/07/09/judge-lisa-gorcyca-doesnt-hate-kids-judge-lisa-gorcyca-hates-failure-to-submit/

R

[Cynus]

Sometimes people make very little sense.

[Cole Parker]

She needs to be sent to a place where she'll have to go to the bathroom in public, repeatedly. Obviously this is a matter of some excitement for her, and making her do it will probably show others how she gets off on it.

C

[colinian]

What I don't see here is an advocate for those three children. No one is representing them or their rights. If this is the way the Oregon Family Courts are run – as a concentration camp with a Fuehrer judge having total control – something needs to change. Until such a change, I sure wouldn't want to live in Oregon if I had children.

Colin

[Nick Deverill]

The article is quite unusual for a piece of journalism in that it admits to not knowing the full picture, but that's to its credit - not its detriment. Something is clearly very wrong about the situation, and it could be the mother has brainwashed the children. Or not, we just don't know.

But, whether the kids have been brainwashed or not, they are the victims - not the father, the judge or any part of the legal system. To punish them here is just so wrong. Where the hell is the Guardian Ad Litem for them - and if one (or three) has not been appointed, why not? It's quite obvious they need a legal friend.

[Cole Parker]

From Reuters:

July 10, 2015 7:38 PM

A Michigan judge released three siblings from juvenile detention on Friday two weeks after she sent them there for defying her order that they have lunch with their father when he was visiting from Israel, ABC affiliate WXYZ reported.

At an emergency hearing, Judge Lisa Gorcyca said the children - whose parents have been involved in a custody battle for more than four years - could leave detention and attend a camp for the rest of the summer.

She had earlier found the children, ages 9, 10 and 14, in contempt of court when they told her they did not want to meet with their father.

They live with their mother in Bloomfield Hills, a suburb of Detroit, and the judge placed them at Mandy's Place, which houses children removed from their parents' homes to be protected. The children were not housed with juveniles convicted of crimes or awaiting court hearings.

A court-appointed attorney for the children and the father's attorney had petitioned the court for different conditions from the county juvenile facility, local media reported.

"We're happy with the outcome today, the kids are out of Mandy's Place, they are going to enjoy a camp program," Linda Stern, an attorney for the mother, told reporters.

"Love comes with love. You can't terrorize someone to love, you can't force someone to love," the mother told reporters after the hearing.

For five years the courts have been working to build a relationship between the children and their father. The mother has said she fears her ex-husband would harm the children or kidnap them, the Detroit News reported.

Attorneys for the father, and the judge, have said the mother has damaged the children and influenced them to resist therapy and efforts to reconcile them with their father, the Detroit News said.

(Reporting by Fiona Ortiz in Chicago; Editing by Eric Beech)

In my opinion, the judge still needs to be kicked off the bench with a steel-toed boot, size 18.

This doesn't say if the kids will be together, or if their mother can visit them.

C

[Rutabaga]

The 13th Amendment abolished involuntary servitude. These kids are not guilty of any crime except having deranged parents. There is no legal basis for forcing a kid to have lunch with someone against his will.

R

[Rutabaga]

The 13th Amendment abolished involuntary servitude. These kids are not guilty of any crime except having deranged parents. There is no legal basis for forcing a kid to have lunch with someone against his will.

R

[Hoskins]

I went to the hearing where she reversed her decision and allowed the kids to go to camp instead of staying in state care. The statement she read to the court was one of the most self serving, ass-covering pieces of journalism - it clearly wasn't a legal opinion - I've ever heard. It had more to do with how angry she feels about being portrayed as a baddie in the news than it did about, you know, what's right for the kids and family.

To sum up, she's an asshole.

She needs to be removed from the bench or at the very least censured for her actions. I think she acted out of frustration that she's been trying to get these kids together with their father and they're having none of it, so she popped a gasket. Which is fine, we're all allowed to be frustrated once in a while except that she's a goddamn judge who's supposed to be impartial.

One of the people there was going to start a petition to have the case removed from her docket, and have her behavior assessed. I hope they find she needs to go to camp.

[Cole Parker]

There is a certain lawsuit here, Oregon will pay the family millions, and the judge will be removed. I think that's a safe bet. She has no status left as a judge.

It's really difficult to get past the fact that she feels she's the one here who's been wronged.

C

[Rutabaga]

This is in Michigan.

Here in California I have found that there is a certain unhealthy personality that ends up as judges in both family court and probate court. The civil judges rotate through those assignments, but the judges with any brains or integrity move heaven and earth to get out of that assignment as fast as possible. The ones who stay tend to be very arbitrary and difficult to deal with, generally doing more harm than good in my opinion. I think the nature of the work just fries their brains, or brings out their meaner side.

I wholeheartedly agree that this judge should be removed from the bench. This case shows that she lacks any semblance of judicial temperament. I suspect that there are others just like her in adjoining courtrooms however.

R