LIGHTNING RELEASES – San Jose, CA — 02/10/2014 – This is the longest supervised visitation case in the U.S. in disregard of the child’s wishes. The divorce was finalized in May 2008. According to the court’s records, the custody battle after the decree of divorce was allegedly due to complaints by the 5- year-old daughter, who complained about being abused at her father’s place. However, the mother was the one removed of custody and is even facing a criminal proceeding of civil complaint instituted by the father, for seeing the young kid at the church and gave her fruits. The basis of the order for father’s complaint, according to the mother, is an order that had already been vacated but the court still maintains the prosecution.
Mother has a dream for freedom, for children’s rights and pleas supports. Shekinah World Mission Center is saddened by fact that a mother and child are separated for three and half years, and prays that justice will prevail on behalf of Mother. The Mission would also urge the court to take notice of the strain that Mother has been put through in the matter and show compassion by dismissing the contempt proceed against her.
On August 4, 2010, the minor’s counsel BJ Fadem stated: “The 5-year-old has expressed to me she does not want to go Father’s house. That Father hurts her. That Father and Richard, the stepbrother, hurts her. .. she was hit in her head, nose, ear, back, side, and was stepped on her toes.” The mother, Yi Tai Linda Shao, stood up to protect her child but was surprisingly taken away custody.
On August 4, 2010, the day the custody was taken away, it was a Case Management Conference. The screener instructed Mother to bring the 5-year-old to the Court with an excuse of conducting interview; surprisingly, the child was immediately locked in a room and was ordered to stay there for more than 3 hours. The court prolonged the hearing to afterhours. When the hearing was over, at 5:40 p.m., the little girl was crying in tears when being escorted out. On the next day evening, the child exhibited 1.5 inches’ purple swelling under each eye, spaced out without a smile, wearing a red coat without hands in the sleeves. When her brother hugged her saying good-bye, she trembled.
In fact, on August 5, 2010, unknown to the mother, there were orders filed that day without even a hearing. As testified by the court’s screener, how the August 5 orders were made was because of a voice mail from the father’s attorney to the court, at the late evening of August 4, 2010. The father’s attorney admitted in his declaration filed in June of 2013 with the Court that he did call in the court at the night. Nevertheless, no one knows the contents of such conversation, nor how long the conversations took as the Court disallowed Mother to obtain discovery on the phone records. Mother filed a motion to set aside these orders based on violation of Constitutional Due Process and extrinsic fraud. In July 2011, the Court granted mother’s motion but maintained in force the vacated orders.
According to the court’s documentation, before the court interviewed the victim, the girl, on the father’s abuses, the court had determined that the mother should be removed of custody. The social worker assigned by the CPS to investigate on the father’s abuses was involved in the case before. On the first day she was assigned, August 2, 2010, the first thing she did was to contact the father. Then she called in the court to cause the screener to make recommendation to change custody. Then the social worker interviewed the minor harassing her, threatening the minor that she would remove custody away from the mother because of her complaints. (Declaration of Mei-Ying Hu, teacher at Happy Childhood who witnessed the harassment.)
According to the notes of the screener for her conversation with this social worker, there was discussion on how to set Mother up. The social worker stated that she was unable to prosecute the mother in the Child Dependency Court, and thus used the Family Court to deprive custody. The Family Code did not set the strict standard for custody deprival as in the Child Dependency Court. “It is a loophole of the legal system and such loophole is being taken advantage of,” says the mother.
According to the phone records from the desk of the social worker, as produced by the County Counsel’s office, on the next day, August 3, 2010, the social worker called father for 8 minutes, then immediately called the court screener. The screener recorded on her notes: “the bottom line didn’t return child to mother father did not allow to go to vacation scared to leave child in ny.”
The mother petitioned the court to disclose the CPS files and discovered a phone record documentation of the social worker who handled the kid’s first complaint- sexual abuse. It shows that on the eve prior to the scheduled hearing for the father’s motion for emergency screening, before an order for screening was in existence, Sarah Scofield, Director of Family Court Services, phoned the social worker and represented herself as the screener of this case. Their conversation contents were to incriminate the mother including Ms. Scofield’s statement that she would talk to the judge. “All conversations took place in dark. I was never given notice that I became a target in protecting my 5-year-old,” says the mother.
After the screening was ordered on a case management conference held by the court on May 5, 2010, Ms. Scofield’s name was enlisted by the father as his first witness for the screener to contact. Ms. Scofield’s involvement could explain why the screener would listen to the bottom line instruction of the father that was delivered by way of the social worker. “Ms. Scofield is only a supervising staff and should not have involved with this case,” says the mother. The mother issued a subpoena to depose Ms. Scofield, the Court (Judge Zayner) suppressed such subpoena on June 24, 2011, according to the court’s documentation. Based on the above evidence, the mother filed a motion to set aside the Orders of August 4 and 5 of 2010.
According to the court’s documentation, the motion was granted but the vacated orders were simultaneously ordered to continue in force. (The Findings and Order After Hearing, filed October 31, 2011. The October 31, 2011 order was based on the court’s decision of July 22, 2011.While Item 1 of October 31, 2011 Order states that the August 4, 2011 Order is vacated, Item 2 of the same order, says that the vacated order, denying Mother custody, should continue.) Waited for three years, the court eventually set an evidentiary hearing which took place in July this year.
At the hearing requested by Mother to regain custody, the following experts testified on behalf of Mother: “The mother is conscientious about the emotional and physical needs of her children,” said Dr. Michael Kerner, a forensic psychologist. “The accusations against the mother are at most speculative,” said Dr. Jeffrey Kline, Diplomat at the American Forensic Psychologist Association. However, this expert testimony was not adopted by the Court. The mother was again denied custody. Mother appealed from the decision, now pending with California Court of Appeal, 6th District, with the case
number of H040395.
The October 31, 2011’s Order, adopted by the present judge in November 21, 2011’s hearing, is already pending appeal for two years under the case number of H037820. The mother pursued writ of habeas corpus and appealed up to the U.S. Supreme Court, but none of the courts would review the case. The custody trial judge commented on the third day of the trial that she felt so sorry about the situation but cannot back the clock for three years. Two days later, her attitude completely changed. The All purpose judge, Judge Theodore Zayner is powerful in the Santa Clara County court. His daughter-in-law is also a judge.
In Taiwan, the judges must pass strict exam, not like the judges in the U.S. with the majority of them become a judge by way of a single politician’s appointment.
On December 16, 2013, the Family Court ordered to prosecute Mother for contempt upon father’s complaint that mother met her child briefly in a church and park and gave the child fruits. Before the hearing, a family court lawyer Felicia Lucero, Esq. wrote a note to the mother that the court “must” dismiss the complaint as the subject order stated in the complaint was already vacated on July 22, 2011, pursuant to Item I of October 31, 2011’s Order. Yet what was considered by the lawyers as legally impossible did happen. The entire legal proceeding in the past 40 months was likewise shocking the conscience of the legal society.
The family court is designed by the lawmaker to protect the minors but a little child’s wishes to be with her mother was oppressed for 42 months, a lengthy period that even an adult could hardly endure. The law empowered a family court judge to privately punish a mother outside of criminal court without a restriction. For each cause of contempt, it is 5 days’ jail term, said the family law attorney. A loving mother is facing 20 days’ jail term threat at the family court and yearning for help.
“I have seen many people who have suffered injustice because the courts allowed the wicked to prevail. I am really worried about America, once a blessed land of God. We really want the U.S. to rediscover the politics, laws and economy as it was in the beginning, when God created the United States, says Pastor Peychen Young.
“The legal system is defective,” says the mother. The major issues pending on appeal are all based on violations of Mother’s Constitutional due process rights. First, the original orders of August 4 and 5, 2010 were vacated because of lack of notice to Mother of the hearing. August 5, 2010’s orders were made with a phone call from Father’s attorney to the court without presence of any attorney.
Second, while the Court was well aware that it is unconstitutional to deprive a parent of custody without an evidentiary hearing, the court committed gave error by denying Mother the required due process hearing and basing its decision on a vacated order.
Third, California Welfare and Institutes Code requires the Court to consider child’s preference of choice of parent for the children who reach the age of 4 in a Child Dependency Court proceeding, but California Family Code did not state the age. The mother alleges in her appeal that the age 4 in CWIC should be equally applied to family court setting, which should not have a different criteria; the family court should be required to respect the expressed wishes of a minor of 4 years old or more, especially when the order is adversely affecting the minor’s life and liberty guaranteed under California Constitution Article 1, Section 7, subdivision (a), such as in custody deprival situations.
Fourth, there is no law delineating the obligations of the child’s attorneys in representing a minor nor the situations they are to be removed.
“First Corinthians 13:4 states: ‘Charity suffereth long, and is kind.’ While to forgive is ordained by God, here the mother was deprived of such ‘charity’ by the court. The mother came to me with a broken heart. She spent three years trying to have a second child, and endured six months of bed rest before giving birth to a little girl, all with the hope of seeing the child grow up. We wish the loving public to help bring them back together and to give them the joy of being together; especially during the Christmas holiday, when people are enjoying family time together,” says Pastor Peychen Young, of the Shekinah World Mission Center.
Pastor Young also stated: “I have two parrots. At one time I separated the pair. As time went by, I observed that boththoefm looked sad and lacked an appetite. When I put them back in a single cage and saw their renewed happiness this lead me to think of this case. All animals need to know intimacy and charity, including human beings. The relationship between a mother and her child is a close relationship. That relationship should not be broken or both will have a broken heart. I wish to see Ms. Shao and her child together and happy again, just like my two parrots. It is my desire that Ms. Shao no longer be involved in a lawsuit in which all she is asking is that her relationship with her daughter be renewed.”
The contempt proceeding is at Sunnyvale Family Court of Santa Clara County, Department 82, where Judge Theodore Zayner is presiding. The appeal, under the case number of H037820, after pending for more than 2 years, is going to set an oral argument. The girl was 5 when she was forcibly taken away from her mother. She will turn to 9 in March this year.
Will the Court of Appeal make new laws? Mother proposes the following new legislations:
(a) all parental deprival should be handled in Child Dependency Court to avoid more lose standard for parental deprival in the family court. Parental deprival is one Constitutional Substantive Due Process Rights that should not be overlooked.
(b) There is no law throughout the 51 states of the U.S. about the specific obligations of a minor’s counsel and the specific situations that the minor’s counsel be removed. American Bar Association’s published guideline on child abuse representation should be codified.
(c) The Family Code has conflicts with Welfare and Institutes Code in the State of California as to the court’s attitude in respecting a child’s wishes.
(d) The doctrine of stare decisis should be restricted where the other judge’s decision violates Constitutional Due Process.
(e) The family court should not have jurisdiction to handle criminal prosecution of civil contempt to avoid private justice.
(f) The court’s phone records should be allowed discovery when ex parte communication with a party is proven to be in existence.
(g) The CPS was given too much power, which has caused numerous families broken, that should be limited the state’s budget.
For details please contact the mother, Yi Tai Shao, shaoyitai@gmail.com; Tel.: (408) 332-6978. Chronology and evidence of incidents: http://shaochronology.blogspot.com
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