Holding Judges and Officers of Family Courts Accountable
FCVFC's Accountability Project
The FCVFC wishes to announce the continuation and further development of the FCVFC Accountability Project: Holding Judges and all Officers of Family Courts Accountable. The Accountability Project is a public awareness and action initiative responding to the growing national crisis in the family court system. Across the United States, family courts have deteriorated in their legal process and lost sight of their mission to protect the civil rights, privacy, and integrity of children and families. The role of the family as the primary source of socialization and dissemination of respect for law has been deeply undermined by the conduct of these courts.
To date, the FCVFC continues to report on the state of family courts across the United States, which we assert are functioning as child trafficking and criminal enterprises. We allege that court actors are colluding to drive federal funds to the states through the abuse of legal process. Judges, court-appointed attorneys, and other officers of the court are actively enacting maneuvers that result in protective parents—those who bring complaints of abuse before the court on behalf of their children—being redefined as abusers themselves. This deeply harmful and false narrative has been facilitated by the manipulation of the discredited theory of “parental alienation.”
This so-called theory was developed and marketed by Richard Gardner, M.D., a controversial figure who, before his death by suicide, promoted the idea that children were sexual aggressors who provoked adults into abuse. Numerous peer-reviewed analyses have discredited Gardner’s theory, citing its lack of scientific validity and harmful effects in custody litigation. For example, Faller (1998) argued that “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS) lacks empirical support and misleads courts into misidentifying abuse victims as alienators. Similarly, Meier (2020) found in a large national study that alienation claims are regularly used to override abuse allegations and punish protective mothers.
One of the unique and deeply troubling aspects of family court structure is the nearly unrestricted power of judicial discretion. Unlike in criminal court, where discovery and evidence production are mandated by statute, family court judges may operate without comparable requirements. Shielded by judicial immunity, judges can invoke discretionary privilege to issue orders that bypass critical legal processes. This undermines due process and strips families of civil rights protections. Legal scholar Wexler (2001) has warned that “therapeutic” goals in family court have often been used to justify departures from standard legal protections—especially when judges wield unchecked discretion.
In addition, family court judges regularly limit expert witness participation to individuals selected from court-approved lists. This has fostered an incestuous environment where a small pool of court-appointed professionals repeatedly appear in case after case, often facilitating pre-determined custody outcomes that result in transferring children into the custody of their abusers. These outcomes are further incentivized by federal funding streams available through Title IV-D and Title IV-E of the Social Security Act. While the legislation was intended to promote child support enforcement and foster care services, a 2009 Urban Institute report warned that performance-based federal incentives could distort priorities—encouraging removals, custody challenges, and litigation, especially in contested cases.
Protective parents are routinely threatened with contempt orders, financial penalties, and even incarceration or bankruptcy. Children are discredited, isolated, and placed in the custody of their abusers under the guise of “therapy,” often administered by court-appointed professionals who actively work to disqualify legitimate experts and practitioners with actual training in family dynamics and trauma.
Child Protective Services (CPS), an agency widely recognized for its bureaucratic inefficiencies and failures, has become an extension of the family court system. CPS agents routinely support fabricated claims and participate in what amounts to institutional perjury, enabling judges to remove children from safe environments. Police departments enforce these orders, effectively kidnapping children from protective parents. With a “court order and the cops,” children are taken and placed into “therapeutic” programs funded by court order and backed by federal dollars—amounting to billions annually.
Many of these “therapeutic” programs are modeled after psychological manipulation and behavioral control techniques disturbingly reminiscent of those used in MK-Ultra, the infamous and illegal human experimentation program run by the CIA from 1953 to 1973. MK-Ultra employed psychoactive drugs, sensory deprivation, coercion, and forced compliance techniques without subjects’ consent. Psychiatrist Ross (2006) has argued that similar principles of coercive psychiatric control—although now in civilian forms—have resurfaced in family court practices, especially in forced “reunification” therapies.
One such program, Family Bridges, was developed by Gardner along with Richard A. Warshak, Ph.D. (author of Divorce Poison), and other licensed psychologists. Family Bridges employs behavior modification techniques based on the theories of B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov, using operant conditioning through positive and negative reinforcement. Mercer (2019) has extensively critiqued Family Bridges, describing its psychological framework as coercive, lacking peer-reviewed evidence, and functioning more as a mind-control program than therapy. Films like A Trip to Pluto, used in some of these settings, were analyzed in academic reviews for their use in thought reform and emotional manipulation of children.
Such “reunification therapy” and related court-mandated programs are entirely inappropriate and do not constitute legitimate therapeutic practices. Therapy, by definition, must be confidential, grounded in trust, and designed to foster honest and open communication. Instead, in the family court context, therapy has been perverted into a surveillance system—a tool of coercion used to manipulate subjects and report back to the court. Silberg et al. (2013) emphasize that such interventions often serve to invalidate abuse disclosures, especially in cases involving sexual abuse and domestic violence, under the pretext of restoring “family unity.”
Through the FCVFC Accountability Project, our organization is committed to exposing and rectifying these abuses. Our experts analyze every aspect of each case—including legal, forensic, medical, and psychiatric elements—to educate families and advocate for appropriate legal and criminal prosecution. A core goal of our project is to explicate and challenge the legal mechanisms that interfere with justice, identify violations, and demand accountability at every stage of litigation.
From the outset of each case, through its progression and final disposition, we document every deviation from lawful procedure and ethical behavior. Accountability must be enforced on a per-case, per-action, per-outcome basis. Ethical violations by judges, attorneys, court-appointed professionals, and therapists must be scrutinized and addressed in accordance with the Canons of Judicial Ethics, the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, and mental health licensing standards.
In this pursuit, the FCVFC files formal complaints with licensing boards and initiates civil rights litigation in federal courts, including appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States when necessary. Financial damages and restitution are vital for repairing the devastating, lifelong consequences of these abuses. Victims of judicial and professional misconduct deserve redress for the trauma inflicted by the malevolent actions of judges, their enforcers, and their appointed agents.
Civil and criminal litigation to challenge these atrocities is now underway across the country. We will continue to refine our understanding of these systemic dynamics and pursue the legal interventions necessary to expose, halt, and prosecute the corruption within the family court system.
For information on the Foundation for Child Victims of Family Courts, visit FCVFC.org.
Citations
Urban Institute. (2009). Child Support Enforcement: Incentives and Program Challenges.
Ross, C. A. (2006). The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists.