Protective parents: Terms matter in the legal arena.
ABUSER, not NARCISSIST. Child abuse and domestic violence are crimes; the result of choice, not caused by mental illness or personality disorder. An abuser may also have a personality disorder, but this isn’t what causes the abuse. Calling abusive people “narcissists” reinforces legal excuses to ignore crime. Those suffering from personality disorder deserve respect, help, and support. Perpetrators of inter-family abuse suffering from personality disorder first need to encounter meaningful legal restriction before a violation of social boundary is established, the first step in their treatment.
Those suffering due to perpetrated inter-family abuse should not be subjected to mediation/ADR/psychological tests that register trauma as pathology/court-ordered co-parenting classes/referred to as a High Conflict litigant.
Domestic Violence by PROXY, not ALIENATION. Using the term Alienation-saying that a coercively controlling abusive parent is Alienating the children reinforces the myth that this behavior is more common and less serious than it actually is in contested custody cases, which adds fuel to the training organization’s fire that training in this legal tactic is justified.
Instead of adding the multitude of domestic violence cases to reinforce the legal excuse that allows abuse to be ignored by using this mild term, which doesn’t adequately represent a potentially fatal pattern of coercive control, the use of terms like Domestic Violence by Proxy child abuse or inter-family coercive control establishes advocacy for child protection and child safety in our courts.
“A favourite tactic of the bully in the family is to set people against each other. The benefits to the bully are that: a) the bully gains a great deal of gratification (a perverse form of satisfaction) from encouraging and provoking argument, quarreling and hostility, and then from watching others engage in adversarial interaction and destructive conflict, and b) the ensuing conflict ensures that people’s attention is distracted and diverted away from the cause of the conflict.”
At the end of the day, focusing on every minute detail of the web of corruption just takes time away from living our own lives, free from their exploitation.
A child comes into the world in a state of innocence, and the right to this sovereignty of the self is the responsibility of adults to protect. This is our parental responsibility – to protect our children from awareness of adult problems, so they may develop age appropriately to maturity. Your mother would have given her right arm to be allowed to protect you. 
You were a vulnerable child who deserved to be protected from adult hatred, adult issues, and the family court racket. You deserved better. How could a child ever be expected to stand against a group of adults? 
So, to any kids who may be reading this: please know that your mother grieves for you every day. She loves you with the fiercely protective, tender love of a mother’s heart. A love you’ll never comprehend until you have children of your own.
Our kitchens and homes are empty without you. And we wait, hoping every day is the day we can reconnect with you. So please, if you are in this situation or know someone who is, tell your mother you love her. She’s prayed for this every single day.
In the opening scene of The Sound of Music, Maria sings “I go to the hills when my heart is lonely, I know I will hear what I’ve heard before…” 
I’ll never forget the corrupt Child Representative Natalie Koga’s Machiavellian sneer, and her arrogant, fake, sing-songy, patronizing voice: “Lisa, you just need to 
And who could ever forget Dr. Fisher’s disturbing, cringe-worthy performance for a packed courtroom during one of his several days of false testimony!
When I objected, he noted that I had an “anger problem”. But his psychological testing showed the opposite, which of course he omitted from the custody evaluation, like the good little hired gun that he was. When I showed the natural indignation of any normal, decent person to his disgusting questions, he wrote that I was “emotionally labile“.
They are the bottom feeders of their professions who need you trapped, or they won’t have a job. 
I developed “Broken Heart Syndrome” with such severe chest pain, I struggled with my teaching job. I went from the woman doing it all, all the time – raising her child mostly alone, running a teaching studio, singing, and maintaining a large wooded property – to bed-ridden, after these vicious people finished running me through their Kids for Cash machine.
I knew that in order to survive, I had to go back to the country. I fell asleep listening to the music of crickets singing. Walked my dog in the rolling, wooded hills with the sun on my face.
“The mountains are calling and I must go.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there screwed over by our woman-hating, abuser-loving, greedy, corrupt family courts. Mothers are amazing! It takes a really remarkable woman to survive it all. You are loved!♥♥♥You are appreciated!♥♥♥You matter!!!♥♥♥
Mothers create the beauty and magic of holidays! They are keepers of traditions. They are gift buyers and wrappers. They clean, decorate and prepare. They hostess, entertain, then they pack it all up again. They are memory makers, and photo takers. They remember anniversaries, birthdays, and special occasions. They are the card and gift senders.
Mothers are forever connected to their children at the most basic, fundamental, core physical, cellular, mitochondrial, neurological, spiritual and emotional levels. They are all of this and so much more…they are your only, irreplaceable Mother!
Our beautiful life was stolen from us. An innocent child was forced to finish growing up without his Mother, while I went from the Mom expected to do everything to not allowed to even send a Birthday or Christmas card.
It’s illegal to continue filing custody motions within less than two years of a custody decision. But Judge Levinson and Natalie Koga, Child Rep didn’t care. My ex-husband filed EIGHT petitions for Custody, forcing my son and I into abusive litigation that lasted over six years, with countless harassing motions and delays so I would run out of money for representation. Many hearings were set at the last minute so I would lose income. Custody would no sooner be decided in my favor, when he would charge back into court with ever new and shifting allegations. This made it impossible to earn a living. Verbal and emotional abuse, and physical intimidation by the attorneys became customary.
Judgment in early 2012. But at the last moment she demanded to “stay on free of charge” – her opportunity to churn and charge the case, and advocate for my ex-husband’s twisted campaign. After they finally erased me from my child’s life, suddenly she produced an enormous bill, and continued adding to it! Judge Levinson simply rubber-stamped it at the very last moment. 
Shrinks with sanctions on their licenses were brought late into the case – Koga’s strategy to override the findings of one of the most highly respected custody evaluators in the state, Dr. David Finn’s evaluation recommending custody to me, with findings of Pathological Parental Alienation, Domestic Violence and family exploitation against my ex-husband.
When I could no longer afford an attorney, I stood alone, mute, not allowed to present evidence, while Koga and opposing counsel #6 Meg Jackson, stood together, insulting me, lying, all the while laughing, too many times to count. This forced me to file my evidence into the court record through Affidavits. It’s all in there, but wasn’t allowed to be presented in court. They thought depriving a child of his Mother while demeaning her in public was amusing. Judge Alfred Levinson joined in taking twisted pleasure in the cruel charade.
vicious email sent LESS THAN ONE DAY after my elderly, ill father passed away at our family farm – 150 MILES AWAY FROM JUDGE LEVINSON’S ROLLING MEADOWS, IL COURTROOM – TRYING TO BULLY ME INTO NOT ATTENDING MY FATHER’S FUNERAL! Since when do divorce lawyers have any business trying to decide who goes to private family funeral?
It is interesting that three key people from my case all abruptly “retired” around the same time. Judge Levinson retired a year early, around the same time as child representative, Natalie Koga (age 52), as well as Elliot Heidelberger. Levinson & Heidelberger both retired on the same day. Another attorney, Meg Jackson, was left off the ARDC lawyer registration for awhile, then came back with a different first name – “Mary Elizabeth”, and moved her practice to a different county. “When a ship is sinking, rats jump ship. So most likely, they were afraid of some inquiry by the ARDC (Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission, or JIB (Judicial Inquiry Board) (and for the JIB, they made sure they were there long enough to collect their government pension.) Most are not afraid of any inquiry because neither the ARDC or JIB really care about bad lawyers/judges. They only care to get rid of those who make the profession look bad – that means either public (or soon to be made public) screwups, or those making the profession look bad by exposing the corruption.” – A Chicago Attorney familiar with my case
“In 1979, a young attorney named Michael H. Minton successfully argued that a housewife was worth more than $40,000 a year. The public snorted and the press made fun, but the ramifications proved enormous. When the dust finally settled, the 33-year-old Chicago lawyer had catapulted matrimonial law into an entirely new arena.” 
our materialistic, superficial, money driven society. How many of us have heard a stay-at-home Mom say “I’m just a Mom”. Somehow, we’ve been sold this notion that being a Mom is not for “smart women, educated or high-value women.”
Many of us have also been confronted with the disturbing reality that women who can afford an attorney such as Michael Milton will come out of their divorce at least somewhat protected, without becoming impoverished, raked through the system, and children stolen. Sadly, we learned the old adage still holds true: you get the justice you can afford.
AMother'sHeartSongsUnsilenced 