The Luisi children were happy with their father before Judge Stahlin order them to live with their mother.

Jacquelyn changed after she was forced to live with her mother.

'Has Already Destroyed' Children -- 'Trying to Destroy' Father

Judge Stahlin Helps His Friends to Replace Parents

By Ed Oliver
August 27, 2001

The three Luisi children, Matthew who is 14, Adam,11, and Jacquelyn, 9, were kept waiting for a full year after the close of their custody trial before Judge Jeremy A. Stahlin finally found the time to tell them whether they were going to continue to live in Massachusetts with their mother, or live here with their father, or move to Buffalo with their mother.

The judge has now ruled that the mother is free to take the three children and leave for New York with sole legal and physical custody.

The decision has left the children, the father and the rest of the close-knit Luisi family stunned and unable to understand how the judge could callously ignore the plight of these three children, who are flunking out of school and suffer from neglect.

But it is not startling when you realize that this judge, Jeremy A. Stahlin, is another person with black robes who has been working exclusively with social workers ever since graduating from law school. These people who appear before him every day are his best friends.

According to the family, Stahlin told them he would rule in the best interests of the children. But instead, they say, he has issued a politically correct Order in favor of an unfit mother, which also serves to hide the failures of DSS.

The judge did not permit the children to testify at the trial.

“The children will suffer the most,” the father’s brother-in-law, Steven Guilmet, told MassNews after he learned of the decision.  “They won’t have their father, their grandparents, their aunts, uncles and cousins. We’ve done a lot for these children during this entire ordeal. Without anyone looking over Carrie’s shoulder in New York, these children are going to be virtually on their own.”

Mother Unable to Cope

As previously reported in the Massachusetts News, David and Carrie Luisi separated in late 1994. The mother, who suffered from depression, took the children with her to live in New York. She returned the children to their father in the Boston area, however, citing her inability to raise them properly.

The children were rehabilitated with the help of the entire Luisi family, and the kids flourished while living with their father. David was awarded physical custody of the kids when the couple divorced in 1996. The mother then moved back to the Boston area with her boyfriend. The father lost custody of the children to the mother in 1997 solely because she charged that he slapped his daughter. This meant that the DSS became immediately involved. It took the children from the father and gave them to the mother.

The father was forced to wait over a year before he could have a hearing at DSS to challenge the mother’s complaint that he had slapped his daughter. Meanwhile, the mother had possession of all the children because of her false accusation. After another five months of waiting, he was finally cleared of the charge. It then took another nine months for DSS to correct the records.

During that time, Luisi family members complained to police, state officials and the media that the children were suffering from neglect and abuse by the mother and her boyfriend. They were appalled that nobody would take any action on the complaints. They wouldn’t do anything because the DSS was in charge.

The family asserted that Carrie’s boyfriend abused the children, the children suffered from malnutrition, were unclean and dressed poorly, failing in school, misbehaving and wandering the streets at night.

Social Worker Schemed

After David was cleared of the false charge of abuse, he told DSS in 1999 that he was going back to court to regain custody of the children. He complained to the social worker about the children’s plight and that DSS needed to investigate. DSS transcripts themselves suggest that social worker Geneva Trent then conspired with Carrie and her free poverty lawyer to find a way to keep the case open and facilitate Carrie’s move to New York with the children.

The social worker’s efforts culminated in a June 1999 emergency motion, without the father’s knowledge, to stop David from even visiting with his children. The motion was allegedly based on “angry” phone calls from David to the social worker, although her own phone records reflect a concerned father trying to get DSS to investigate the neglect and abuse of his children.

To avoid having to attend “angry man” classes at EMERGE, which would automatically brand him an abuser, David did not return to court to seek visitation until a year later during the trial.

Mother Wanted Trial

The trial was held because Carrie wanted the divorce decree altered to grant her custody of the kids and allow her to move with them to New York. The mother’s free legal team from Hale and Dorr also sought increased child support.

David was granted visitation again at the time of the trial and has been enjoying visits regularly with the children for the last year. The judge also increased his child support payments at that time.

It seemed like an eternity for the family while they awaited the judge’s decision on Carrie’s custody request and permission to move away with the kids.

The family said they expected that the judge would probably keep things the way they were, that is, David and his family would continue to see the children regularly on visits and help them with their problems, while the mother kept custody so she could continue to get free services from the state.

The family felt that ample evidence came out in the trial proving that Carrie was an unfit mother, and they felt the judge would never let her go to New York with the children.

But, the decision was issued this year in late July to let her go, and the mother has already made travel plans for New York.

Judge Stahlin had increased David’s child support obligation at the end of the trial last year to $405 dollars per week. In a further blow, when the judge issued his trial decision last month, he recalculated the amount David has been paying since 1997 and said he owes an additional $20,000. David must now pay $450 per week or $1800 per month in child support for the next ten years.

Luisi told Mass News that he will now have roughly $75 to $100 per week left over for living expenses under the judge’s new ruling. He said if he doesn’t laugh at the absurdity of it, he would have to cry. Four of his recent pay stubs from before the new ruling, show he has been averaging about $150 dollars per week in take-home pay after all the deductions.

Judge Stahlin Trying to ‘Destroy David Luisi’

Luisi’s attorney, Dan Henderson, told MassNews “The judge’s order was extremely destructive and punitive. The court has already destroyed the Luisi children and now it is trying to destroy David Luisi.”

Attorney Henderson said that David Luisi is now over $30,000 in debt for legal fees and related expenses associated with the case. He said that with the meager take-home pay the judge allowed him, David would be effectively prevented from traveling to visit his children in the Niagara Falls area of New York.

Henderson said that Luisi is a loving father and hard working man. He said fathers like him are something this country needs more of, yet judges bow to the feminists and set out to destroy fathers and families in order to feed the abuse industry that has sprung up around “family courts.”

Henderson said many men face similar situations and are forced to move in with their parents. They then become reviled as so-called “deadbeat dads,” because they are stripped of their family and most of their income and they therefore lose any incentive to work hard.

Steve Guilmet commented that, “Judge Stahlin is vindictive and the award of child support arrears is certainly punitive. After all these years no one has at least explained what David is being punished for. I do know that the system has been doing everything in its power to break this man. They certainly are relentless. Where does a man go to appeal this persecution?”

The Luisi family noticed that the judge’s order mirrored the final arguments and recommendations submitted by the Hale and Dorr poverty lawyers who represented the mother. They wondered what took so long for the judge to issue his decision because it appeared he had rubber-stamped what the poverty lawyers told him.

The judge and poverty lawyers appeared to rely heavily on a GAL report prepared by Joanna Scannell years ago. The report was rebutted during the trial and condemned by Attorney Henderson and the Luisi family as inaccurate, hastily thrown together, and biased in favor of the mother.

The Luisi family, who consistently beat down doors over the years to tell people that the children were neglected by the mother and DSS, were flabbergasted to read in the judge’s decision that Ms. Luisi “overcame her depression,” and as a parent was “able to give her children the safe, consistent care they require. This includes her sensitivity to their special needs, and her cooperation with their teachers and other care givers to meet the children’s needs.”

Judge Stahlin continued, “Mr. Luisi, in contrast, since the divorce, put what the court can only assume were his own emotional and ego needs ahead of those of his children by failing to visit or seek visitation with them for a full year. It is in the best interests of the children to be in the custody of the parent who is not only able to meet their needs, but who will continue to put the children’s needs ahead of her own regardless of adversities that may be encountered as the children grow up.”

An astonished David Luisi told MassNews it was DSS and the mother who went to a judge without his knowledge in 1999 and halted his visitation after they realized he was cleared of the abuse charge and was about to try to get his kids back. And now, said David, the judge holds it against him that he didn’t visit the kids during those months before the trial. He explained that if he sought supervised visitation, he risked having to attend the EMERGE program as a condition, and that would have torpedoed his chances at trial because you are required to “confess” that you are an abuser in order to complete the program.

Attorney Henderson said he would be conferring with the family about any possible legal avenues that remain to be pursued.

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