STATE, COUNTY PURSUE PERSECUTION OF MARYANNE GODBOLDO AND CHILD; APPEALS COURT HEARINGS TUES. JULY 10

Appeals Court hearing set for Tues. July 10, at 10 a.m

By Diane Bukowski

July 9, 2012

Maryanne Godboldo spoke at rally in Hartford Memorial Church only days after her release from jail in 2010.

DETROIT – After the extreme mental and physical torture that Detroiters Maryanne Godboldo, Mubarak Hakim, and their daughter Ariana Godboldo-Hakim experienced since a horrific police assault on Godboldo’s home in March, 2010, and the kidnapping and forced medication of Ariana, prosecutors for the Wayne County Juvenile Court and the County are not done with them yet.

The Department of Human Services (DHS), represented by the state attorney general’s office, has challenged the parents’ right to Ariana’s custody in cases to be heard in the Michigan Court of Appeals Detroit office Tues. July 10 at 10 a.m. The office is located in the State Building (known as Cadillac Place), located at W. Grand Blvd. and Second, on the 14th floor.

The family is asking supporters to attend.

Attorney Allison Folmar speaks to media after Godboldo criminal court hearing July 8, 2011.

“We are continuing to fight, and my attorney Allison Folmar has pulled a small group of attorneys together to focus on combatting the illegal, court-sanctioned abduction of Michigan’s children,” Godboldo told VOD. “But it is not easy. Ariana is still suffering from the effects of her forced confinement and medication at Hawthorn Psychiatric Hospital. We just try to hang in there from day to day.”

Not only was Ariana forcibly medicated for six weeks with at least four anti-psychotic drugs, Hawthorn staff took away her prostethic leg. Her mother has filed a police report that she also was infected with a sexually-transmitted disease (STD) while at Hawthorn.

World-wide support has buoyed the Godboldo-Hakim family during their ordeal. Their case exposed for the first time Wayne County Juvenile Court’s stunning long-standing practice of removing children without judicial review or a judge’s order as required by state law. A social worker simply brought in an order for removal, got a probation officer to stamp the Juvenile Court Chief Judge’s name on the order, and then called the police to summarily remove the child(ren) in question.

Wayne County Juvenile Court Judge Lynne Pierce, under severe public and media scrutiny, finally ended DHS supervision of Ariana in a ruling Dec. 12, saying medical plans for the child under Dr. Margaret Betts appeared to be more than adequate. The same day, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Gregory Bill emphatically dismissed all criminal charges against Godboldo, replicating 36th District Court Judge Ronald Giles’ earlier action.

DPS Child Protective Services worker Mia Wenk (Facebook photo)

Godboldo said the custody appeals stem from a continuing vendetta by Wayne County Juvenile Court Prosecutor Deborah Carley and DHS worker Mia Wenk. Prevented from contesting medical plans for Ariana, they have focused on what they say are insufficiencies in her education. Another hearing will consider whether the court order used to take Ariana from her home was valid, Godboldo said.

The case began when Godboldo had Ariana immunized in preparation for her return to regular schooling. Ariana’s reaction to the immunizations was severe. Godboldo took her to the New Oakland Child Adolescent and Family Center, not knowing it was a research facility for testing new drugs, as an administrator admitted to VOD.

She signed a consent form allowing Ariana to be medicated with Risperdal. The drug has since been exposed nationally as a dangerous anti-psychotic drug with severe adverse side effects, including extreme weight gain, the formation of breasts in males, and mental disorientation.

The form said Godboldo could take Ariana off the drug at any time. When Ariana began experiencing the side effects, Godboldo took her to a private doctor who weaned her off the drug. However, when she told The New Oakland Center, they and another agency, the Children’s Center, reported her to Child Protective Services.

Wenk, who has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and had been on the job for only three years, admitted during the custody trial that her reason for removing Ariana was “because her mother wouldn’t give her the medication.”

Attorney David Robinson filed an eloquent civil lawsuit May 10 on behalf of the family. Defendants are the City of Detroit and the police officers involved in Ariana’s removal, Wayne County and various employees, Mia Wenk and her supervisors at Child Protective Services, as well as Hawthorn Psychiatric Center and its employees.

Attorney David Robinson

He cites a “court system policy and procedure that allowed, supported and condoned the entry of perfunctory court orders for extraction of minor children from their parents to be the product of rubber-stamped justice.”

He adds, “This case is as well about governmental agencies . . . .who failed in their diligence to properly investigate allegations of neglect or to adequately probe the background of a minor child’s history instead looking only to find biased support for hapless allegations in order to place a mother and her child in the clutches of an indifferent system, and about a police system itself ignorant of its own rules and authority that conspired to arrest, extract and separate the nurturing bond between the mother and her child.”

Robinson condemned Wenk in no uncertain terms.

“Mia Wenk, devoid of proper medical or psychiatric training . . . .knowing how easy it was to have an unauthorized court employees stamp a judge’s signature on an order of custody for the minor, impulsively and grossly negligently petitioned the court securing what she alleged to the police to be a ‘warrant’ improperly directing Thomas Trewhella, Michael Nied, Kevin Simpson, Robert.Stankiewicz, and Ahmed Morsy to wrongfully engage Godboldo in an unconstitutional 4th amendment patently wrong invasion into her home resulting in her apprehension.”

Godboldo faced multiple criminal charges stemming from her refusal to leave her home so the police could take her child, including two-year felony charges of assaulting, battering, wounding, resisting, obstructing, opposing or endangering the officers involved.

Angel Moreno Jr. The Michigan Supreme Court dismissed all charges against him April 20, 2012, upholding the common-law right to resist illegal police conduct.

For a time, hearings on those charges were stayed by 36th District Court Judge Paula Humphries because a Michigan Supreme Court decision citing the statute involved, MCL 750.81(d), was pending. Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Edward Ewell overturned the stay, subjecting Godboldo to a grueling criminal trial in addition to the custody battle.

Ironically, the Michigan Supreme Court finally upheld “the common-law right to resist”
unlawful arrests, warrantless home invasions, and other unlawful conduct by the police, in a landmark 5-2 decision, People v. Moreno, on April 20, 2012. It overturned an earlier appeals court decision in People v. Ventura that claimed the statute outlawed resistance even to illegal police conduct.

Despite that fact, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy has not withdrawn her appeal, filed months late, of Judge Bill’s decision dismissing the criminal charges. The Court of Appeals has not decided whether it will allow the appeal, but the case remains open on its docket.

To read lawsuit filed by David Robinson on behalf of Godboldo family, click on godboldo complaint.

The Justice4Maryanne Committee’s website is at http://www.justice4maryanne .

“Free Ariana NOW!” Petition on Change.org

http://www.change.org/petitions/free-ariana-now