For those who think Catherine Kassenoff’s family court story is unique or confined to the USA, listen to Millie’s story in Canada.
By Millie
Thank you for reporting on Catherine Kassenoff’s story and your work to expose corruption. I am devastated for Catherine’s children and hope the courts will take action against their abuser. Her story is similar to mine, except I live in Canada.
I pray that my children and I do not suffer the same fate as her and her children. I am a registered social worker.
My ex-husband, a physician, and I had three daughters. During our marriage, he abused me for years. In 2015, when I was fighting stage 3 breast cancer, my husband had another episode, threatening to kill my daughters and me. Thankfully, the police came and arrested him before he could make good on his threat
My cancer went into remission, and I left him because, sick or well, his abuse was relentless. After our divorce, I had primary custody. I was a stay-at-home mum, and I obtained my degree online. He had weekend visitations.
At the time, I earned about $40,000 per year. My ex-husband earned over $400,000 per year.
I do not drink, smoke, or take drugs. I don’t swear and have not dated since my divorce because of what my ex-husband subjected me to.
In 2022, just six weeks away from graduating with a Bachelor of Social Work, my ex refused to return the children after his weekend visitation.
The Orwellian named Ministry of Child and Family Development intervened.
Within days of refusing to return the children, he submitted a 33-page document falsely accusing me of abuse and neglect towards two of my girls – Mary, then 12, and Linda, 9 – to the Ministry of Child and Family Development [or Child Protective Services] and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police [RCMP].
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police got down off their high horse to serve the best interest of the moneyed father and helped take two happy children out of their home with their mother.
Due to his accusation, MCFD put in an immediate supervision order and liaised with the RCMP to assist in their investigation. The girls were not coming home. I tried to fight his lies in Family Court. The traction my ex-husband gained by outsourcing his abuse to the legal system was shocking.
It devastated me financially and emotionally, but, more importantly, it destroyed my children’s lives.
Children are the main commodity in family court, but not every parent would agree to sell or buy them. The solution is, whenever possible, stay far away from family court. The minute you walk in, you are the serf to the judge. Your due process rights disappear, and whatever the judge decides for you and your children becomes your fate.
My ex husband is a physician, and the court gave more credence to his false claims than the ACTUAL EVIDENCE I put together.
I lived next door to a child protection social worker, who advocated for me in the strongest possible terms. Our eldest daughter, Janet, 22, and friends, colleagues, teachers, and people who knew the girls leaped to my defense.
I am still deeply traumatized by this phase and have PTSD. The result was that I was allowed only one 1/2 hour a week supervised visit with my children, whom I raised and cared for their entire life.
MCFD social workers monitored the visits and treated me like a criminal. They searched my bag and told me I could not hug my girls. I asked the social workers what they were looking for, and they did not respond. I suspect they were looking for recording equipment. Because they were terrified I would expose their mistake.
In the end, no one would listen to me, and his history of abuse, transcripts of conversations, and letters of support from friends and family who witnessed his abuse towards me and knew me to be a kind, loving, devoted mother to my girls, were inadmissible in court.
Once the MCFD and the RCMP were investigating me, his nasty, vicious, and expensive lawyer, a man well known in town as the ‘go to’ for abusers who wish to outsource abuse, turned up in court, forcing my lawyer to have me agree to hand over temporary custody.
I refused—nothing I said or did mattered. As I entered the family court legal system, the rules of fairness and normalcy no longer applied. Instead, family court was a strange world whose practices I struggled to understand, but I knew this: The parent with the most money wins, so I knew the court stacked the odds against me.
Even my lawyer seemed to be in on it. He forced me to agree to things against my wishes. He shouted so loudly at me once that his paralegal came in to see if I was OK. On the way out of the office, she took me to one side and, with tears in her eyes, told me she was sorry for what was happening to me.
Is that a flying monkey or a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?
A good name for family court agents manipulated by the affluent abuser is ‘flying monkeys’ after the ones in The Wizard of Oz. The abuser, [the wicked witch], stands undetected in their castle, sending agents to maim and damage their victim – the protective parent.
Before, my husband abused me directly. Now, he abuses me through systems, lawyers, court actors, paid psychologists who writes what he tells them, and government agencies.
Recently, he attacked my finances. The court ordered that I pay child support to him, despite him earning ten times what I make.
I currently get one hour a week of contact with my daughters, which he insists is supervised despite no child protection concerns!
I’ve spent $30,000 on lawyers. My lawyer told me it would cost me at least $100,000 more before the proceedings were over.
My ex has money to spare. He paid $30,000 for a psychologist report to support his position. It ignored all the mountain of evidence of his abuse. Though there was no evidence I ever abused my children, the report repeated his lies. Though it did not say I did one single act of abuse, the psychologist wrote he could not rule out my ex-husband’s claims.
Since my ex paid the bill, the psychologist would unlikely bite the hand that feeds him. He could not expose my ex for what he is, a narcissist out for revenge because I left him.
Because my evidence of his abuse is solid, the extraordinary way the MCFD social workers ignored it in their mad rush to support my ex-husband, I filed a complaint. Presently, a senior MCFD investigator is conducting an administrative review and inquiry into the behavior of MCFD social workers.
Meanwhile, the children remain unhappy with their abuser, and I do not have the money to compete with him in the pay-for-play family system.
I have little hope of the MCFD calling out their social workers for the horrific treatment the children and I endured at their hands! Their failure to recognize what happened to me was an extension of his domestic abuse. Their unthinking acceptance of his version of events damaged my children and perhaps my life irreparably.
This beautiful Gold Symbol is the emblem of Family Court. Do not enter its doors unless you have plenty of emblems to spare
I am stunned that this pay-to-play family court system is allowed in our society. Did it take the death of Catherine Kassenoff to wake up the public t0 this ongoing crime against mothers or any parent who cannot compete financially?
The family court system is a sick, depraved, warped, evil world where profit-driven flying monkeys deliver children to the parent with more power and money. But for their cover of being the government’s own flying monkeys, the RCMP would have to arrest and charge every one of them with child trafficking.
Catherine Kassenoff lost her children, got cancer again, and died after years of abuse and a horrific custody battle overseen by the American family court flying monkeys with great glee.
My ex-husband did the same to me, and the Canadian family court flying monkeys forced me into poverty. I miss my two girls, who suffer daily at the hands of their wealthy abuser.
I have resolved that should my cancer reoccur, like Catherine Kassenoff, I will also terminate my life.
