Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Blackballing a visitation supervisor

One of the oddities about my hearing last week is that the Commissioner (Irwin Joseph) seems to be carrying out a grudge against a local Santa Cruz group called SCORE. He handed out a list of the court-approved child visitation supervisors, and implied that one of them had been dropped from the list because she once attended a SCORE meeting.

SCORE is a pretty innocuous group. As you can see from its web site, it only exists to help people deal with the family court. It is not a Men's Rights group, as it has more women than men.

There was a visitation supervisor who showed up to a meeting once. She had taken a course and been certified for the purpose, and I think that she was just advertizing her services. She wasn't getting referrals from the family court, and had to get clients somehow. The other visitation supervisors had full schedules, so it seemed to me that she was providing a reasonable and useful service by telling people that she could also do supervised visitation.

I really cannot see why anyone would see anything wrong with a visitation supervisor going to a SCORE meeting and announcing her services. And yet Cmr. Joseph appears to have blackballed her for that reason. He said that she had attended a SCORE meeting, and so I had to use one of the others.

I suppose I could call that visitation supervisor, and ask her the story. She may not even know why she has been blackballed. But I might get her into more trouble if the court finds out that she talked to the Angry Dad blogger! Yes, that would be ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than being blackballed for making an appearance at a SCORE meeting.

My guess here is that the court likes to keep a very tight level of control over psychologists and visitation supervisors, and it is very paranoid that one of them might learn something that she is not supposed to learn. I know that sounds weird, but I just cannot see an innocent explanation for Cmr. Joseph saying that a visitation supervisor is not on the approved list because she attended a SCORE meeting. What could he possibly be concerned about? Does anyone else have any info or ideas on this?

9 comments:

Unknown said...

We complained to the Elkins Task Force.

Anonymous said...

now that JJJ is out of Family Court, does it really matter regarding the selection of visitation supervisor? Or are you still going to have to see him whenever there's a motion in your case since Salazar washed his hands of your case?

Also, any word why JJJ is out of family court other than the rumor he had an affair? Perhaps complaints to the Elkins Task Force?

South County Kid.

George said...

My ex-wife is picky about the visitation supervisor. I don't know whether I will get Salazar next or not. And I have not heard any more rumors.

Unknown said...

According to a source of mine, judges and commissioners rotate every 4 years and CJ's rotation was due. He was out due to a serious illness. Did Salazar really wash his hands of your case or just defer in this motion?

George said...

Yes, I've heard that illness story also. But it does not explain why the commissioner was abruptly reassigned to another court, and why there was no official announcement of his absense. A regular rotation would have been announced at the beginning of the year, not two months later.

Anonymous said...

Maybe we should start calling him Junk Justice Joseph Mccarthy?

Unknown said...

Sorry to say but I think the reason the visitation supervisor was fired is because of your EX. How ELSE would JJJ know about SCORE?

Anonymous said...

just out of curiosity, is/are there any pending lawsuits or any bills in the state of CA challenging the family law system? I've heard rumors of one being formulated to change support amounts since the data used to calculate them was fraudulent (the sociologist's PhD thesis was recanted 8 years after publication as she cooked the data, but the damage was done). Is this something SCORE is considering?

George said...

I don't know of any serious challenges. Occasionally I hear of a lawsuit or something, but nothing comes of it. We need to educate the public better so that change will be more feasible.