Guest MINDSETTER™ Anne Grant: Family Court and the Art of the Deal

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Guest MINDSETTER™ Anne Grant

 

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Why would Governor Raimondo nominate a chief judge of Family Court who had been censured as a lawyer for making a $20,000 loan to a judge who ruled on his cases?

Family Court has turned into a public works project for lawyers. It will celebrate its 55th birthday on June 2nd. When the sleep-deprived legislature established this court in a cavalcade of deals during its final all-night session in 1961, many were already salivating for the jobs it would create, from the chief judge down to the lowliest clerk. 

I learned about deals after I came to Rhode Island in 1988 as executive director of a nonprofit that advocates for battered women and their children. State House leaders offered our group of domestic violence agencies a grant to hire seven court advocates—on the condition that two of those jobs would go to people they would name.

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“Hope” seems like a positive state motto, until we learn how many Rhode Islanders hang their hope on patronage. Getting a job by patronage is the opposite of getting one by merit. Patronage lies at the heart of our state’s chronic cynicism and lack of self-esteem. Instead of doing an honorable job in the position they hold, many seem preoccupied with jockeying for their next job.

We watch the repeated spectacle of insiders getting state jobs presumed to help the needy. Gossip mills run full-throttle on the grist of what jobs are being created and who will get them. Meanwhile, conscientious legislators and state-workers get smeared by the same brush.

One custody case cycled through the courtrooms of eleven Family Court judges before landing on the bench of Judge Michael Forte, Governor Raimondo’s nominee for chief judge. At least one of the first ten judges had recognized domestic violence. But civil courts cannot prosecute crimes. They leave the battlefield strewn with wounded children.

In 2003, the case’s eleventh judge saw coercive control: “I feel [the father] is abusing the court system for his own purposes…taking advantage of his children…of his former wife. I think he is really devious. I think he has no desire to really look into the best interest of the…children. And if anyone is causing pain to these children and not allowing them to reestablish a relationship [with him]…it is he who is doing it.”

This insight brought no closure for the mother and children. Instead the judge decided he had become too “biased” to rule on the case, and he sent the shell-shocked family back into the fray, where their twelfth judge, Michael Forte, accused the children of being manipulative for refusing to visit their father.

Over these children’s 14 years within the Family Court system, not a single authority connected the dots to finally help them. Later, State Police exposed the fraudulent credentials of the court’s mediator, who had worked closely on their case along with 750 other cases spanning a decade as a well-paid imposter. The children’s guardian ad litem would gain notoriety for defrauding the fund that paid him to represent poor litigants. Neither court official ever got prosecuted.

Instead of helping families in crisis, many lawyers feed off them until children turn 18. Rhode Island deserves better.

Constitutional End-Run

In 1994, voters approved a constitutional amendment to select judges based on merit rather than patronage. Statehouse leaders defied this reform by creating a system of magistrates, so chief judges had to hire statehouse insiders in order to get their courts’ funding.

Magistrates, who resembled judges, got their jobs through patronage. They multiplied from three in 1994 to eighteen today. Rhode Island deserves better.

When Governor Raimondo also nominated one Family Court magistrate to become a judge, she freed up the position for legislators to reward yet another loyal insider. Watch that spot. The new chief judge must oblige the powers that be -- just as he made that ill-advised loan. It is the art of the deal. And Rhode Island deserves better.

Acquiescence is not evidence of judicial temperament. Let’s hope the Governor, the Statehouse leadership, and all our chief judges prove their merit by working together to change Rhode Island’s culture into one that cherishes honor, transparency, and genuine hope.

Anne Grant is writing a memoir about the paradigm shifts in half a century of marriage.  She can be reached at [email protected].

 

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