Source: https://divorceinconnecticut.blogspot.com/search/label/GIL%20V.%20GIL
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 02:25:06+00:00

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KARYN GIL v. JOHN A. GIL, A.C. 28760 AND A.C. 25912, PART III: THE PRETENSE OF A FAIR TRIAL!
I came from a difficult family and so when I was growing up situations often occurred which should not have. And when they did, I would go to my Mom and say, "But that isn't fair!" and her answer to me often was, "Life isn't fair!" I always felt outraged by her answer, and to be honest, I still feel that way.
I can't understand society looking at circumstances that are fundamentally unjust and saying "too bad" then looking the other way, rather than taking steps to make things right. In the years that I have lived with being tortured by family court here in CT, I have been shocked by the lack of outrage, the indifference of men and women who should know better to the fundamental tenets of fairness.
Of course, my Mom wasn't trying to change the world, she was just trying to run her household, so she didn't get into many justifications for what she was doing. In contrast, what is so galling about the court system here in Connecticut is the elaborate, logic twisting, justifications judges write in the form of memoranda of decision to validate and explain away the outright injustice they are committing.
In doing so, these judges make their decisions sound very scholarly by citing various case law, sometimes long strings of case law in a single sentence. What they don't tell you is that if these judges had drawn a conclusion entirely opposite to the one you were reading they could find a whole string of equally valid seeming decisions supporting that opposite decision.
The whole process of going by case law is a complete farce. That is the dirty little secret that underlies the entire judicial system.
We won't even begin to talk about the cases that ended with completely lawless outcomes which never get mentioned because everyone knows they were formulated to deal with someone who was especially annoying whom the judge wanted to get rid of.
So there is this surface appearance of formal and ordered results that masks complete chaos. Just to give you some insight into the kind of nonsense that goes on, consider this one conversation I had with an attorney recently. I mentioned to this attorney that there is no statute in the State of Connecticut which allows the court to deny custody to a parent based upon parental alienation, a point I have heard judges make in court.
In response, the attorney told me that since Connecticut family courts are courts of equity, not just courts of law, judges are allowed to go outside of statutes in order to make their decisions and exercise their "judicial discretion".
That's interesting, when you think of it!
In other words, this attorney is saying that since Connecticut family courts are courts of equity, judges can pretty much do what they want, concepts of due process be damned.
Perhaps this explains how Judge Herbert Gruendel found it possible to rule against Karyn Gil without according her a fair trial. Thus, on April 5, 2004, Judge Gruendel ruled that Ms. Gil was in contempt of court and that she had committed parental alienation against her ex husband without allowing her to mount a defense.
The court's decision to make its ruling on that particular day was not accidental. April 5 is Karyn Gil's birthday. I could write an entire blog on the family court's manipulative use of birthdays and holidays to conduct devastating court hearings, or release harmful decisions or family relations evaluations. So I have no doubt that Judge Gruendel deliberately chose Karyn's birthday to release his decision in the case as a means to demoralize and destroy her ability to stand up for herself. For those who experience this particular kind of abuse, birthdays and holidays are no longer joyous occasions but instead simply trigger agonizing memories of loss and pain.
Family court is known for making these kinds of emotional guerrilla attacks against its victims, because it wants to crush them to the point where they will not take notice of the major constitutional violations the court has imposed upon them.
For example, in the Gil case, Karyn Gill was not allowed to defend herself. What happened is that, after allowing her ex husband to present the details of his complaint, the court did not allow Karyn to present her evidence or expert testimony. Instead, as soon as her ex husband finished his side of the case, Judge Gruendel stated he had heard enough and went ahead and made the ruling against her.
Of course, here, those of us reading such an extraordinary statement bolstering citizens' rights in family court might start getting really happy, until we read on to the court's next statement which is, "Nothing in Szot, however, suggests that a party's right to present evidence is unlimited." Eilers v. Eilers 89 Conn. App. 210, 218, 873 A.2d 185 (2005).
And it is in that statement where you begin to see the court's long list of exceptions to our constitutional right to due process. The one big one which the court cites in the Gil case is that "the plaintiff did not object to the termination of the hearing."
Oh, I see. In other words, the court does not dispute the fact that Karyn Gil's due process rights were trampled on, but simply states that it is ok because she did not object!
So if the court tramples all over your rights and you are so frightened and intimidated that you fail to object, or you have a typical scumbag attorney who is in cahoots with the other side and does not object, then that makes it acceptable to trample over a litigant's constitutional rights. Of course, as a self-represented party when I have stated my objections to the court, I've been bullied, threatened and subjected to directly personal attacks on my character.
In this regard, what happened to me is that during my trial the judge told me that court rules no longer require that a litigant state his and her objections for the record and since they are no longer required, he was going to forbid me from doing so. I suspect this was one of those rulings put into place for special people but not considered precedential by attorneys in the know! Otherwise, I think we're going to have to rewrite all of the Law & Order shows to bring them up to current legal practice.
A second exception to the right to due process is the trial court's freedom to manipulate at will which expert testimony comes before the court and which does not.
For instance, in Karyn Gil's case, Judge Herbert Gruendel was willing to accept the expert testimony and medical records prepared by Dr. Nancy Eisworth, Jane's psychologist from four years prior to trial, but he was unwilling to accept into evidence the expert testimony and medical records from Jane's current psychologist, Dr. Laura Ginther.
Ordinarily, mental health information over a year old is not allowed into evidence because it is considered stale. O'Neill v. O'Neill, 13 Conn. App. 300, 303, 536 A.2d 978, certification denied, 207 Conn. 806, 540 A.2d 374 (1988). Again, we could get excited by how empowering the O'Neil decision is, particularly since it takes into account that a psychological evaluation is only relevant to the timeframe in which it is produced, and hardly has relevance four years later. However, as usual, with family court there are always loopholes when a family court judge feels like exercising them.
Like I said, in the law, for whatever direction a judge wants to go in when it comes to his or her decisions, there is always a large catalogue of case law to draw upon which provides you with sufficient case law to go and make any kind of decision you want to make.
So despite, O'Neil there is Yontef v. Yontef and Blake v. Blake which allows the judge to do what he dang well pleases with old medical records. There you go with a Judge having the right to exercise his judicial discretion no matter what.
When Judge Herbert Gruendel ruled that he was going to bar testimony and medical records from Jane's current therapist, Dr. Laura Ginther, the court cited Connecticut General Statutes Sec. 52-146c (b) in regard to psychologist-patient privilege. This is a good law that protects patients' rights to confidentiality. However, I can't tell you how many family court cases I've observed where judges have simply denied litigants those protections and forced their therapists to disclose confidential medical records and provide testimony in open court court regarding their clients, or at least threatened to, or else allowed opposing attorneys to do so, and get information simply by threatening.
So, as I say, the court is all about doing what it wants, when it wants, how it wants, disregarding the law, or making the law up as it goes along.
The bottom line is, if the court wants the truth to come out in a case such as Gil v. Gil, why prevent a perfectly solid, current witness from going on the stand? There are questions any attorney can ask a child's psychologist without causing any harm to that child's treatment or confidentiality. One I can think of which would be quite pertinent and relevant to this case, for instance, and not at all harmful to the child is as follows, "Do you think that Karyn Gil has been parentally alienating her child from John Gil?" A quick "yes" or "no" would do and still protect the rights of the child. Of course, this genius level question only emerged six months later after this particular show trial was over when Jane was driven to the point of suicide by additional abuse from her father. Then, and only then, did Judge Gruendel himself finally allow Dr. Laura Ginther to go to the stand and provide the testimony she'd had all along that Karyn Gil had not committed PAS.
So who was against such testimony? Who blocked it? Who barred it? Who prevented the truth from coming out and instead continued to allow Mr. John Gil to subject Karyn Gil and her daughter to ongoing legal abuse?
The answer to that question is, the Guardian Ad Litem first of all--well, yes, the judge who went along with it, but primarily it was the Guardian Ad Litem who was supposed to be acting in the best interests of the child, but chose not to: Attorney Campbell Barrett of Budlong and Barrett, LLC -- that is the man responsible for this travesty, this monstrous breakdown in the right to due process.
KARYN GIL v. JOHN A. GIL, A.C. 28760 AND A.C. 25912, PART II: PAS THEORY GONE WILD!
So we have this case where the father, John A. Gil, is repeatedly taking his ex-wife Karyn back to court for trumped up charges of PAS (parental alienation syndrome), stating that she is interfering with his visitation.
In fact, there was no evidence of any kind of interference. but as we all know, there is no need for the Court to have facts in order to draw absurd conclusions.
Furthermore, it was clear from the beginning that Mr. Gil had mental health issues and he was ordered to go to therapy to deal with them. However, he refused to cooperate and follow those orders. What is troubling is that instead of holding him in contempt for violating those orders, the Court saw fit to let the father continue to flout them. In addition, at the time, the Gil's daughter whom I have called Jane, was also court ordered to have therapy, but John Gil refused to allow her to have any therapy at all--another violation of a court order.
Then, as I have stated, father kept this case going for a full fourteen years dragging his ex-wife and their daughter through the Courts trying to make them miserable.
I'd also like to update you as to the situation in the present. In a recent meeting with Karyn Gil and her daughter, they showed me a legal document that Mr. Gil sent to his daughter last week through an attorney making extensive demands of his daughter. I'm like, this guy never stops. And he did this just before Christmas to make his actions even more devastating than they have to be.
This is the story of a man who has an unlimited capacity to abuse and the story of a family court system that appears to have an infinite willingness to allow him to do so. We can see this in the many hundreds of cases where protective mothers endure legal abuse in the hands of Family Court here in Connecticut.
For a major example of this capability, consider that during the trial in this case, the Judge had the bright idea to ask Mr. Gil why he continually brought his ex wife to Court. His answer? Mr. Gil stated that the reason he kept returning to Court was that he wanted to bankrupt his ex-wife, Karyn Gil.
He also stated that he was doing it so that when his daughter turned 18, he intended to show her the transcripts of the Court proceedings so that she could see what a piece of trash her mother was.
What is ironic here is that this was billed as a case of mother committing PAS. In fact, the words coming out of this father's mouth are a straightforward indication of his clear cut intention to alienate the mother from the child by destroying the mother's reputation with the child. In fact, father was the parent alienating the child, not the other way around.
You'd think that the Judge hearing this testimony would have immediately shut this case down and ruled in favor of the mother who was being legally abused in this case. But no, there wouldn't be any such luck. In Jane's own words, "The fact that in the State of Connecticut someone can get away with an answer like that is beyond comprehension."
Clearly, this was a case in which there was a dire need for an advocate for the child to act in her best interests and protect her from the harm and damage caused by father's legal abuse. Despite the many failures of the Court in this case, it did take make an effort by appointing Attorney Campbell Barrett of Budlong and Barrett as Guardian Ad Litem in the case.
Unfortunately, Budlong and Barrett is a notorious law firm that has long been mixed up with numerous cases that have ended up as high conflict cases and is known for its vicious and bullying behavior. As a case in point, this law firm sent me a threatening letter when I was working the Colleen Kerwick case stating it would sue me for my press coverage of the case. Following up on that threat, Attorney Kukucka, a member of this law firm, took it upon himself to go the West Hartford police and filed a report in an attempt to get me arrested simply for writing blogs about family court on my website. These are the extremes this attorney firm is willing to go to in order to silence anyone who exposes its wrongdoing to the public.
At first, Attorney Campbell Barrett appeared to be ready to do his job. According to Jane, he met with her and told her that if there was ever a time she wanted to call him, she could do so, even if she just wanted to talk about Harry Potter. According to Jane, he never asked her anything about her situation or her relationship with her mother and father. Jane does remember telling him she was afraid of her father and didn't want to have any visits with him.
Despite this auspicious beginning, Attorney Campbell Barrett ended up simply ignoring Jane's needs. In fact, at the most, he only ever met with her two times. Also, when Jane eventually did come to a point where she wanted to speak to Attorney Barrett she called and left messages asking him to return her phone calls, but he never did.
Finally, Jane wrote Attorney Barrett a letter asking him to call as well, but he still failed to contact her in return.
When the case returned to Court, Attorney Barrett accused the mother of making Jane write the letter and he also stated that while Jane had attempted to contact him numerous times "he had no intention of calling [Jane] back." During cross examination, it became clear that Attorney Campbell Barrett pretty much knew nothing about his child client, not even simple kinds of information such as her age.
Meanwhile, outside of court, the father, John Gil, was continuing to hit Jane and she was forced to comply with substantially increased visitation with him.
Faced with this impossible situation, Jane spoke to her therapist who encouraged her to speak to the GAL and made sure she was able to connect with him. When she did, Attorney Barrett told Jane that she had to continue visiting her father "or else her mother would get in trouble." That is when Jane became suicidal.
The therapist was then in a difficult position. Even though she was a mandated reporter, the therapist was Court ordered to defer the decision as to whether to contact DCF to the GAL. Since Attorney Campbell Barrett refused to contact DCF himself or allow the therapist to contact DCF, the therapist couldn't do anything to protect her child client.
As a consequence, after considering her options, the therapist decided to write a letter to the judge explaining that there was an urgent concern and that these visits to the father needed to be stopped. Thankfully, the judge finally listened to Jane and the visits were terminated. This same judge later asked the therapist, "Do you believe there was parental alienation in this case?" And the therapist answered, "Absolutely not."
Essentially, Attorney Campbell Barrett refused to advocate for his child client, obstructed any attempt to protect his child client from further abuse, and did whatever he could to promote the father's interests at the expense of the child. Again, here is another case where quack theories of PAS have caused a mother and child major harm and damage. When will this scourge end?
KARYN GIL v. JOHN A. GIL, A.C. 28760 AND A.C. 25912, PART I: THE PAS PARENTING PLAN FROM HELL!
As you can imagine, writing a blog like mine, I end up hearing many stories of tragedy and suffering that have played themselves out in family court. One case that I have found particularly striking is that of Karyn Gil v. John A. Gil. This is a divorce case that was filed in 1999, but continued to have activity up until 2013--in essence amounting to 14 years of litigation.
This is the classic high conflict divorce that frequently plagues family court and provides the subject matter of my website.
I first met Karyn and her daughter, who is now attending College, when the Task Force was meeting at the Legislative Office Building last year. Both of them were interested in providing their testimony and telling the Task Force about the injustice they suffered.
For the sake of privacy, I will call Karyn's daughter, Jane.
Jane pretty much told me that she is extremely unhappy with her father and that she doesn't want to have anything to do with him. She told me of a traumatizing incident where he showed up at her high school graduation uninvited. She said she was absolutely outraged that he came to this event without her permission. Her primary concern which she expressed to me was how she could obtain a protective order to prevent her father from doing the same thing at her College campus and showing up uninvited again.
Listening to her speak, I wondered what could possibly have occurred to make this young lady so adamantly opposed to having any contact with her father.
I'm sure many of you here would think this has to be PAS. But, in fact, I don't think this is the case. From what I heard, John Gil did not have a relationship with his daughter well before the divorce took place. As he acknowledged in court, he had never bonded with the child, not even before both mother and child moved out of the marital home.
What actually happened here is that this young lady basically observed her father hound her disabled mother through the family court system for 14 years, drain her Mom dry financially, and pound her with legal motions as she tried to defend herself. Then Jane saw her father continue on to get a completely unjustified contempt judgment of approximately $30,000.00 against her mother.
This is my point that I make frequently in my blogs. When these high conflict divorces occur, do the abusive parties ever consider how it appears to their children. I mean, seriously, do any of the women think twice when they come home and say, "Boys, girls, I put your Daddy in jail today!" Or how about the men, "Boys, girls, today I made sure Mommy won't be bothering us ever again--you won't have to have anything more to do with her. She's out on the street."
What this young lady saw was that her mother who is disabled and who supports herself and her daughter on a limited disability pension now has to pay considerable legal fees to defend herself and, on top of that, has a $30,000.00 or so judgment that will leave her financially insolvent for the rest of her life.
What kind of idiot judge would issue an order like that? Oh, I see, Judge Herbert Gruendel.
The basis for the judgment against Karyn Gil was that she had interfered in the father's relationship with the child by restricting visitation. In other words, this was the typical scenario where the father uses false claims of PAS as a means to take revenge on the mother. In looking at the specific dates noted in the Motions for Contempt where the father claimed he was denied visitation, each of them were dates where he never showed up or where he stated he didn't want to see the child. In other words, these charges were completely fabricated.
From what Jane told me, her father was physically and psychologically abusive towards her from a very young age, so I can imagine that visitation would have been problematic from the beginning. This is confirmed in the Appellate Courts report of the parenting agreement which stated that "the defendant [i.e. father] would not exercise overnight visitation until the child's psychologist deemed that it was appropriate." If you already have the child seeing a psychologist at the age of four, and there are overnight restrictions on the father's visitation, clearly there are indications that father is a problem right from the start.
Still, once the parenting agreement was signed in 2000, Karyn Gil must have thought that everything was all set. This is the problem with many people who are in a high conflict divorce. They have no idea that the seeds of decades long dissension are often embedded in that initial parenting agreement.
What is interesting to me now that I have been in the system myself long enough is that I can immediately recognize a Parenting Agreement that is a set up for extensive and long term litigation based upon PAS right from the start. Such agreements usually involve a visitation schedule that is confusing and extremely difficult for the residential parent to follow, and the Gil parenting agreement was no exception to that rule.
In the Gil Agreement of 1999, father was allowed visitation two days per week. In the footnote it states, "Under the visitation scheme, the dates and times of the visitation were to be arranged three months in advance, as soon as the defendant received his work schedule. This scheme was later modified by stipulation of the parties so that the visitation would be arranged thirty days in advance."
A year later, the agreement was defined further to state that defendant would have the child from 9:00am to 5:00pm on weekends and from 4:00pm to 7:00pm on weekdays. The agreement was then modified further to state, "The defendant (father) would provide the plaintiff (mother) with his work schedule with requested days and times for visitation, and the plaintiff would respond with a list of changes based on the child's activities and other commitments."
To be honest, I have never heard of a schedule like that. So every month you have a different schedule? Of course, this kind of visitation schedule inevitably leads to mixups and miscommunications, particularly since you have a couple that isn't getting along. Then, sooner or later, you have mother hauled back onto the mat in court because she is "restricting father's access to the child." Surprise! Surprise!
And this parenting schedule didn't have to be this way because father had a regular five days on, three days off schedule. As he stated in court, "I know my schedule forever." The only intent of a vague, inconsistent, hard to follow parenting schedule is to trap the protective mother and drag her back to court with false charges of PAS.
I can guarantee you absolutely that in the vast majority of cases where there are eventual accusations of PAS, at the same time you have visitation schedules that are PAS ready in terms of being vague, inconsistent, ambiguous, easily misinterpreted and misunderstood.
John Gil accused his ex wife of "shorten[ing his] hours of visitation and, on numerous occasions, den[ying] visitation." Well, that is very easily done when the times change from week to week and month to month and you have a child that occasionally gets tired and doesn't want to go or else has other kid's activities to participate in that, say, run overschedule. In particular, most children under ten prefer a regular routine and find being randomly passed back and forth from one parent to the other in these changing circumstances very stressful. Then the kids start to act out during the exchange from one parent to another so then you have the residential parent saying, "let's do this at another time." And since the schedule is open enough for that parent to hang herself, you then have trouble and conflict.
With a vindictive father who is hell bent on litigation, this is a scenario that easily translates into long term litigation within the court system.
What I don't get is why pick on a disabled Mom with no money to pound away at--you'd think the Court would pick on someone their own size.
From my perspective, having spent considerable time in court in my day, my ex-husband was repeatedly in contempt for failing to adhere to agreements regarding the children, failure to pay child support, failure to respond to discovery requests--you name it, he did it. But I was never able to get a judge to rule on a contempt motion against my ex, and I certainly was never able to get him punished or have him pay the multiple thousands of dollars it cost me in legal fees to pursue my divorce. I'd say the vast majority of high conflict divorce cases are like this -- multiple motions for contempt, but maybe .0005% ever end up with a ruling of any kind, let alone a fine.
Yet this John Gil was able to get a contempt ruling of up to $30,000.00 against his ex wife based upon her violation of a parenting plan that is probably the most difficult to follow in the history of CT Family Court? Seriously, how did that happen, because I would really like to replicate what he did so I could get some of my money back.

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