MEDIA TAKES NOTICE:

NJ PARENTS PLAN PROTEST AT THEIR BILLBOARD IN TRENTON RESCHEDULED TO OCT. 22 NEAR FEDERAL COURT HOUSE  (State & Canal Street)

SEE TRENTONIAN NEWSPAPER ARTICLE BELOW FOR DETAILS:

(FCLU.org Billboard Protesting Family Court Injustice, located on State & Canal Street in Trenton, near Federal Court House)

REPRINTED ARTICLE FROM THE TRENTONIAN NEWSPAPER

Today I walked out of my Joint smoking a joint, and I ran into a billboard on East State Street near City Hall across the street from the Federal Courthouse. (Yeah, I feel in the open air I should have as much right to smoke my joint as the tobacco addict does to smoke his plant.)

I instantly loved this billboard, it was right up my antagonistic alley. Here was a big sign calling the courts corrupt, right at the Fisher Federal Building — that’s ballsy. Somebody wanted some attention, and me being a media whore myself — I’m game. So check out this billboard.

After my initial reaction to it I decided do a little research and reach out to the people behind it.

I was able to find out the sign was paid for by a group called FCLU — Family Civil Liberties Union (FCLU.org). It’s made up mostly of men who’ve been screwed by the system, but there are also women in this group who have been screwed as well. Its founder, Greg Roberts, www.FCLU.org, fought a false accusation through the NJ Family Court system for years to no avail. I was able to make contact with Roberts as well as one of the group’s members named Derek Syphrett.

I personally met Syphrett in the Burlington County Jail two years ago, he was fighting a family court–inspired imprisonment. I’ve been there and done that too.

Syphrett explained that the FCLU is a nonprofit dedicated to reforming what the group sees as a dysfunctional family court system. “Its ridiculous and shameful that here in a New Jersey people are losing their children without even being provided a hearing, a chance to testify, or having any evidence properly examined by the court. The most precious thing in most parents’ life (their children) can be taken from them without even having a proper hearing to decide the matter, or a chance to defend their parenting rights.”

Roberts didn’t mince any words about the group’s position: “The New Jersey Family Courts are perhaps the greatest fraud ever perpetrated upon the people of New Jersey. For example, there are many parents in our group who have been deprived access to their children/had their custody change without a proper fact-finding hearing, sometimes without any hearing at all.”

While it might be easy for people to presume these men are just two “disgruntled litigants,” they both provided specific examples of how the NJ family courts have often disregarded the very laws that the courts are supposed to follow.

Mr. Roberts adds, “We are looking to get this story out and the billboard is part of that. We are tentatively planning a rally in Trenton on Friday, Oct. 2, 2015 (weather permitting). We want the media there, and most importantly: We want to get the public involved in this movement.”

I’ll be at this protest. I lost visitation and custody of one of my daughters simply because I publicly told the truth about marijuana. Judge Bell stripped me of my visitation and custody in 1999; as she ruled she said she didn’t care about my First Amendment rights—it’s all about the child’s well-being—and I never got a fair visitation ever again. (We endured unbelievable restrictions that made visitations horrible for us all, and sadly they were more like a punishment for my daughter rather than a chance to spend quality time with me.)

Mr. Roberts says, “We want your readers to hear our stories, and to join our movement for reform, because New Jersey’s families and children deserve much better treatment and honest services from our courts. The public can contact us to find out more at www.FCLU.org/reform, we set up a dedicated phone line (856-441-FCLU), and we expect that this billboard and the ones we purchase in other NJ cities will help us start THE meaningful public conversation, that our letters, calls, and motions to the courts have to date failed to accomplish.” And Mr. Syphrett adds, “There are constitutional violations involving family courts. So parents effectively don’t have constitutional rights—they can’t be enforced in federal court because of the Family Exception Doctrine (a judge-made law, not a legislated law) and the Rooker-Feldman Doctrine (another convenient law created by federal courts, purportedly to avoid conflicts with state courts, but in reality this law benefits state lawyers and harms families).”

I’m certainly no stranger to having my constitutional rights violated by family court. I totally experienced this at the hands of Judge Simandle who used the Doctrine to keep my family court issue out of federal court. The state’s family court took away my visitation for exercising my free speech. I never won my visitation back.

But on January 24, 2003, Judge Irenas was able to overcome the Rooker-Feldman Doctrine and issue his ruling that freed me from my five-month-long illegal imprisonment in Burlington County — I was a political prisoner for making commercials in which I publicly told the truth about marijuana.

For the content of my free speech, calling for the legalization of marijuana, the state imprisoned me and took my child.

But any way you slice it, you can’t win at family court. Federal Judge Simandle used the Doctrine to keep the federal courts from interceding in my state family court case. (Family courts seem to be exempt from the Constitution.)

For the exact same content I went to jail and lost my child for, saying legalize it, Judge Irenas ruled the state actions unconstitutional, Judge Simandale ignored in regards to my free speech in regards to family court.

I agree with Mr. Roberts – the family court system is corrupt. I’m so joining this group.