FROM THE DESK OF JILL JONES SODERMAN
FCVFC’s position is simple: money can finance pressure, agencies can threaten credentials, and courts can enter judgments. None of those acts make a child’s records disappear or end the duty to examine them.
A Foundation Born From a Child the System Did Not Protect
The Foundation for Child Victims of the Family Courts did not begin as a brand exercise. It began with a death. On Oct. 25, 2005, while I was in Arizona, I learned that a 12-year-old boy whose New Jersey custody case I had worked on had died by suicide. The family’s path through court had included Judge Margaret Mary McVeigh, psychologist Paul Dasher, Ph.D., child-protection authorities, psychiatric treatment, and a custody transfer that separated children from their mother. My published accounts maintain that medical, school, and witness material warning of severe trauma was disregarded while a parental-alienation theory was elevated over the children’s fear and deterioration.[1]
That child became the reason FCVFC exists. Not because one tragedy supplies a slogan, but because it exposes the cost of institutional certainty when the institution is wrong. The file, as FCVFC describes it, did not contain a mere clash of personalities. It contained treatment records, reports, child statements, and observable decline. Yet the machinery kept moving. The adults with titles were credited; the children who carried the consequences were treated as problems to be managed.
Those are grave assertions, and precision is not optional. The Third Circuit’s 2011 opinion confirms that McVeigh wrote a 2001 letter to New Jersey’s licensing agency about my conduct, that investigation and disciplinary proceedings followed, and that I later sued McVeigh, Dasher, and numerous state and private actors. The court affirmed dismissal on immunity, limitations, and procedural grounds; it did not adjudicate my broader account of retaliation as true.[2] That distinction matters. So does the human record. FCVFC’s files describe four brothers: the oldest died at 12; two younger boys entered foster care; and the youngest, a child of a second marriage, was adopted. A current FCVFC brief reports that a second brother later died by suicide and that another lives with profound psychiatric disability. Until death certificates and medical records are assembled in the publication file, those later facts remain FCVFC’s attributed account—not a finding supplied by the appellate opinion.
When Oversight Is Answered With Pressure
The pattern that shaped FCVFC’s mission is familiar: a protective parent reports danger; a court-appointed professional recasts the dispute as alienation; the child’s statements are filtered through adults with institutional authority; and the person who challenges the process becomes the next target. The World Health Organization removed “parental alienation” from the ICD-11 index and states that it is not a health-care term and has no evidence-based health-care intervention specific to it. A judges’ guide published by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges warns courts against accepting parental-alienation-syndrome testimony and stresses that evaluators must distinguish manipulation from a child’s legitimate fear.[3]
Against that backdrop, complaints to licensing boards, threats against professional standing and expensive litigation can operate as more than neutral process. They can impose a price on speech. FCVFC’s correspondence recounts New Jersey licensing actions, contacts with other states and later proceedings in Oregon that I viewed as attempts to chill my advocacy.[4] The agencies involved are entitled to enforce valid professional rules. FCVFC is equally entitled to ask whether those rules are applied evenly, whether a charge matches the work actually performed, and whether official action follows protected criticism. A license is not a gag, a courthouse is not a truth machine, and wealth does not convert accusation into fact.
Our answer has to be more demanding than outrage: preserve the letter, order, evaluation, medical record, recording, transcript, and timeline. Identify who created each item, when, and for what purpose. Separate a report from a finding and a temporary order from a final adjudication. Invite scrutiny of the evidence while protecting children’s identities. Public accusation without support is reckless. Evidence buried because a powerful person demands silence is institutional surrender. FCVFC rejects both failures.
Powell: A Real Judgment, and the Limits of a Courtroom Victory
Powell v. Jones-Soderman is the clearest test of that principle. Scott Powell sued over FCVFC website statements accusing him of physical and sexual abuse. After a bench trial, the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut found Jones-Soderman liable for defamation per se and false-light invasion of privacy and entered a $100,000 judgment: $40,000 in general damages and $60,000 in lost income. The Second Circuit affirmed in 2021, finding sufficient evidence of falsity and reckless disregard for truth. The Foundation itself had been dismissed earlier after service and jurisdictional defects, so the judgment ran against Jones-Soderman individually.[5]
That result cannot honestly be repackaged as a legal victory for FCVFC. It was a defeat in court. But neither can a damages judgment be stretched into proof that every child communication, every underlying record, or every institutional criticism vanished. FCVFC’s Powell Revisited account places the controversy back inside the custody chronology: the daughters’ reported distress, their communications, the role of evaluator Erick Frazer and the Foundation’s dispute with the conclusions accepted in court. That advocacy account does not reverse the federal judgment. It explains why the judgment did not end the argument.[6]
I state that, to my knowledge, Powell never pursued collection of the $100,000 award. The public sources reviewed for this article establish the judgment and affirmance, but do not establish the collection history; that point therefore remains my account unless post-judgment docket records confirm it. The defensible lesson is narrower and stronger: a headline announcing $100,000 sounded like the silencing blow. It was not. FCVFC remained open, kept publishing, and continued accepting cases. Litigation cast a shadow. It did not extinguish the witness.
Reeves: The Silencing Strategy, Updated
The Reeves case is not an appendix to Powell. It is the next test. In January 2019, Karl C. Reeves sued FCVFC and me in New York County Supreme Court over five ethics complaints posted during his divorce and custody dispute. The complaints targeted public and private actors involved in the case and contained severe accusations about Reeves. He denies those accusations and seeks damages. The case has now consumed more than seven years of motions, discovery, document demands, and deposition practice.[7]
The record is not one-sided. A separate 2021 New York decision involving DailyMail.com recited an arrest report, family-offense allegations, text messages, audio, and video showing Reeves discussing drugs and snorting an unidentified substance. That court held that the newspaper’s reporting of court records and proceedings was protected and dismissed the claims against the publisher. The same decision recorded Reeves’s denials and his counsel’s position that the accusations were false and part of an extortion campaign. It also noted that the criminal charges were dismissed under a plea arrangement requiring compliance with an order of protection, and that Family Court had awarded him temporary sole custody while the custody case proceeded.[8]
That collision of evidence and outcome is exactly why FCVFC refuses to accept the slogan that a charge dismissed means the underlying record never existed, or that a custody order conclusively resolves every reported danger. But it is also why advocacy must be exact. An arrest is not a conviction. A recording must be authenticated and put in context. A child-protection report may be indicated, unfounded, or unresolved; those classifications have legal consequences. A temporary custody order is not an all-purpose certificate of conduct. If we expect courts to honor those distinctions, we must honor them in our own work.
In August 2020, the trial court denied Reeves’s request for a default judgment and permitted FCVFC and me to file a late answer. That was a procedural reprieve, not a merits victory. In February 2026, the Appellate Division affirmed the denial of our motion to dismiss the defamation claim. The appellate court held that the action falls within New York’s broadened anti-SLAPP law, meaning Reeves ultimately must prove actual malice by clear and convincing evidence. But at the dismissal stage it found a substantial basis for his claim, reasoning that the disposition of the criminal charges and the temporary sole-custody award should have given defendants serious reason to doubt at least some published accusations.[7][9]
The court also held that the ethics complaints themselves were not protected as fair reports of court proceedings; that many challenged statements were factual rather than rhetorical opinion; and that the documentary record did not establish the truth of all accusations as a matter of law. That ruling did not find FCVFC liable. It ruled that the claim may proceed. Calling it exoneration would be false. Calling it the end would be equally false. The merits remain to be tested against the full record.
The Fight Over the Record Itself
The live dispute now reaches the heart of FCVFC’s mission: who gets to see the evidence. On Aug. 18, 2026, I filed a sworn opposition to Reeves’s motion to seal specified Family Court transcripts, orders, and child-protective materials. I stated that I believed the publications were true based on records and information I personally reviewed; that those materials are relevant to the defense; and that a public complaint accusing FCVFC of malicious falsehood, paired with a sealed evidentiary record, would leave the accusation visible while hiding what we say supports our answer.[10]
Reeves’s counsel answered that the motion concerns the privacy of a nonparty child, not Reeves’s embarrassment. His reply says the proposed order would preserve access for the court, parties, and counsel, while shielding enumerated child-sensitive records and the portions of filings that quote them. It argues that Social Services Law § 422, Family Court Act § 166, and the child’s welfare overcome public access. It further notes that the First Department affirmed a 2022 custody award to Reeves after finding that the mother failed to prove domestic violence by a preponderance of the evidence.[11]
That is a serious position. Children are not exhibits for public consumption. Names, intimate forensic-interview details, and medical information can be protected without surrendering public accountability. But a sealing order must not become a narrative weapon—public accusation on one side, inaccessible rebuttal on the other. The court must balance those interests, and this article does not pretend that the motion has already been decided. FCVFC’s position is that protection should be narrowly tailored, the child should be anonymized, and as much of the evidentiary basis as lawfully possible should remain available for public evaluation.
Reeves therefore sharpens the principle Powell exposed. The issue is not whether litigation is real; it is. The issue is whether litigation will be mistaken for proof of every disputed fact before trial, or used to make the cost of public-interest advocacy unbearable. The anti-SLAPP ruling itself confirms that the publications involved public petition and participation. It simultaneously warns that public-interest speech is not immune from accountability. FCVFC accepts the test: put the sources, chronology, contrary evidence, and publication decisions under disciplined examination.
What a Victory Actually Means
Power likes a simple scoreboard. Judgment entered: victory. Motion denied: defeat. Damages demanded: fear. Records sealed: silence. Family-court cases resist that convenience because the lives involved continue long after an order. Powell proves that a judgment can be legally decisive and still fail to erase an organization. Reeves proves that surviving dismissal is not exoneration—and that forcing an advocate to spend seven years defending speech is itself consequential even before a verdict.
For FCVFC, victory cannot mean saying whatever we please. It means creating a record strong enough to survive hostile review; correcting what cannot be supported; protecting children without protecting systems from scrutiny; and refusing to let wealth, official title, or litigation expense decide what the public is permitted to examine. It also means pursuing lawful complaints, civil actions, and damages claims for families when competent evidence and counsel support them. Defiance without proof is noise. Proof without the courage to publish is a locked drawer.
Truth Requires Courage - and Discipline
FCVFC will continue to publish, produce videos, file professional complaints, support lawful litigation, and pursue damages where competent counsel and admissible evidence provide a path. We will distinguish what a document proves from what a witness reports, what a court found from what an advocate disputes, and what remains unverified. That discipline is not retreat. It is how truth survives a motion, a deposition, and hostile cross-examination.
The McVeigh-Dasher history supplied the wound from which FCVFC was formed. Powell supplied the judgment that critics expected to end it. Reeves supplies the current contest: five publications, competing bodies of evidence, a demand for enormous damages, an appellate ruling that keeps the claim alive, and a fight over whether the public may see the records invoked by the defense. Together they show why our work cannot depend on applause or a favorable docket entry.
Wealthy adversaries may treat legal expense as leverage. Officials may invoke authority as if authority were self-validating. Courts may issue rulings that the public mistakes for a complete history of the children whose lives produced the dispute. FCVFC’s mission is to keep the rest of the record from vanishing. We will not be intimidated into silence, and we will not confuse defiance with carelessness. When the dust settles, the durable force is the record itself—preserved, sourced, tested, and placed before the public. A judgment can decide a lawsuit. It cannot command history to forget.
Source Notes
[1] FCVFC, “Government Agencies - Threats & Intimidation Tactics Used to Silence Whistleblower Experts,” Apr. 22, 2025; and “Holding Judges Accountable,” June 13, 2024.
[2] Jones-Soderman v. McVeigh, No. 10-3111 (3d Cir. Apr. 25, 2011) (not precedential).
[3] World Health Organization, “Parental alienation”; National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, “Navigating Custody & Visitation Evaluations in Cases with Domestic Violence.”
[4] Google Drive source: “FCVFC AZ / OREGON LICENSING BOARD COMPLAINT - 4/2025.”
[5] Powell v. Jones-Soderman, 433 F. Supp. 3d 353 (D. Conn. 2020), aff’d, No. 20-532-cv (2d Cir. Feb. 26, 2021)
[6] FCVFC, “Powell Revisited Part 1,” June 2, 2021; Part 2, June 3, 2021.
[8] Reeves v. Associated Newspapers, Ltd., 2021 NY Slip Op 34084(U).
A courthouse can decide liability without acquiring ownership of history. Powell produced a judgment against Jill Jones-Soderman, and intellectual honesty requires saying so. Reeves presents a different record, unresolved merits, an actual-malice burden, and a sealing dispute that could leave the accusation public while burying the evidence the defense invokes. The answer is surgical transparency: protect the child, redact identifying details, authenticate every document, expose the record, and force each side’s claims through adversarial testing. FCVFC earns credibility when it distinguishes allegation from finding and defiance from carelessness. Wealth can finance years of pressure. It cannot purchase the final word.