The Orange County Bar Association (OCBA) recently hosted an instructional webinar titled Child Custody Solutions: Options Available & When to Use Them, the slideshow for which can be viewed here. Documents obtained from the 2021 webinar reveal that the OC Bar instructs attorneys, court professionals, and judges to disregard parents reporting child abuse. The documents show a longstanding practice of funneling protective parents and children to reunification therapists like Jessica St. Clair. According to these materials, court professionals are instructed to view reports of abuse from protective or "safe" parents as vengeful and untruthful.
One slide from the presentation features the caption Reunification Therapy for Dummies, followed by a "Webster's Family Law" definition of the phrase: “I just want to protect my children.” The "translation" offered? “I just want to screw my ex.”
OC Bar Association webinar slide says "Reunification Therapy for Dummies"Photo byOC Bar
Another slide acknowledges that “reunification services are prohibited in Family Court under Family Code 3026.”
Despite this acknowledgment, the OC Bar and the speakers—practicing officers of the OC family court—continue to follow a directive that includes ordering reunification therapy. This practice involves removing children from protective parents, typically mothers, and placing them with alleged or documented abusers. Mothers have often been subjected to monitored visitation for extended periods or indefinitely, with their reports of abuse being dismissed as false. This system, including the flipping of custody to alleged abusers, persisted both before and after 2021.
In 2023, this practice was further outlawed with the passage of Piqui’s Law.
The webinar featured OC family court professionals as speakers, including Nicole Schmidt, CFLS (Bremer Whyte Brown & O'Meara, LLP), Kristen Przeklasa, Esq. (OC Child & Family Formation Law Group, LLP), Dr. Linda Grossman (The Center for Positive Solutions), Dr. Sue Tonkins (Creative Custody Solutions), and Stacey White Kinney, MS, LMFT.
Jessica St. Clair, who recently resigned from all OC family court cases (read the article here), and was later exposed for misleading the court about her credentials (see the article here), was a partner of Dr. Sue Tonkins in the Reunification Specialty Team of OC and Creative Custody Solutions.
Sample legal documents provided by Newport Beach law firm Minyard Morris, are attached to the end of the slide show document to assist family court professionals in directing parents to engage various court professional or to stipulations on custody and co-parenting agreements.
When searching for “Webster’s Family Law,” the only result found was from Merriam-Webster's legal dictionary. Searching the phrase “I just want to protect my children” produced the result: “Sorry, the word you’re looking for can’t be found in the dictionary.”
Whistleblowers and victims of family court, CPS, probate court, foster care corruption, please contact this reporter at juliea005@proton.me.
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