Thomas Savage's sneer at my college and my alleged political affiliations (and the inaccuracy of his facts) offers a small glimpse of the kind of personal attacks and unscrupulous methods used by his profession against parents in family court ["Baskerville bays nonsense on divorce and dads," April 4].
According to Mr. Savage, family court is so fair that defendants receive not one trial but two. And before being incarcerated over child support, parents are apparently tried twice more.
Surely Mr. Savage understates his case. In family court, parents can get dozens, even hundreds, of "trials," if we count, as he does, every time an innocent parent is hauled into court without having committed any legal infraction and issued with some "order" about how he must conduct his private life if he wants to stay out of jail.
Many parents are forced to appear in court on a regular basis, each time ordered to open their wallets to attorneys like Mr. Savage, even if they have not hired them, and pay other exorbitant "debts" they have done nothing to incur.
Indeed, family court has
Do any of these numerous trials involve a jury? Is there ever a formal charge? Are parents ever declared innocent and left in peace?
Or are these quickly improvised hearings, in which parents are barely permitted to speak before the judge takes away their children, confiscates their savings, seizes their homes, attaches their wages, and jails them without any semblance of what most Americans consider a fair trial or due process of law?
America's family courts are ideologically driven kangaroo courts. These feminist tribunals are the shame of American justice.
They are creating a police state that will only expand along with the federal funding that drives them until other media follow The Free Lance-Star and expose this appalling abuse of government power.
Stephen Baskerville
Purcellville
The author is associate professor