05/13/2024
Found this article written about me:
Protected: ERIE CO. JAILS AND TORTURES DEVOTED, WHITE, MIDDLE-CLASS MOM OF 3 ON THE DAY AFTER MOTHER’S DAY, BECAUSE SHE CAN’T PAY A DELIBERATELY-INFLATED ORDER FOR CHILD SUPPORT.
POSTED ON MAY 23, 2017
Maryann Petri of Girard, on Monday May15th, turned herself in at the Erie County Prison, rather than have to pay for a heavy-handed, five-man SWAT Team from the Erie County Sheriff, to come and arrest her. Maryann is not incarcerated for committing a crime, or because she represents any threat to society whatsoever; Maryann is a victim of the jail-for-profit racket called Erie County Domestic Relations, which manufactures “deadbeat” parents with deliberately-inflated Child Support Orders, in the expectation that the friends and relatives of the victims, better cough-up the extra cash, and will, to keep their loved ones out of jail. It doesn’t make any difference whether or not you can pay, or how much proof you have that you simply can’t. If hypothetical Judge Shelly, believes your new spouse, parents, or siblings, have anything, they become the judge’s targets; and you’re getting an Order based upon their presumed capacity to pay blood money and legal fees, to keep you out of jail. If your relatives have to go into debt, well, they’d better get busy. If you haven’t got the well-heeled connections Judge Shelly thinks you’ve got, as in Maryann’s case, no problem; you go to jail, in a win-win for the judge. One way makes money for her friends, the other way makes more money, for more friends. Is this morally right or legal? Of course not, but that isn’t a problem for the people at Domestic Relations, most of whom are above the law, can tailor the law to a predetermined, desired outcome; and are schooled in the belief that, “anyone who appears in front of a judge, is a piece of scum who deserves what they get,” whether actual justice, legal, or not. This is what happens when there’s no oversight, no accountability, and the party charged with keeping the judges and Domestic Relations honest – the Court Administrator; looks the other way, lets the judges do whatever they want, cashes his checks, and keeps his mouth shut; except to say, “Everything is great at the courthouse.” It may be great for him and his taxpayer-paid cronies, but for the litigants, not so much; nor for the taxpayer. What begat this jail-for-profit business? Well, in addition to naked greed, and the unquenchable desire to generate more legal fees; the Erie County Prison needs to maintain an optimal number of inmates to justify its grotesque size, but the population of Erie has fallen considerably. There are no longer enough criminals to meet the necessary quota, not even close, so a new source of inmates had to be found to make up for this, “inmate shortfall.” The Erie County Court rose to the occasion, and created a seemingly limitless fountain of inmates, via inflated Orders for Child Support. Since people can’t possibly pay these oppressive sums, voila, like fish being shot in a barrel, they go to jail. If the prison needs more inmates, they can increase the number of inflated Orders; if there are too many, they can issue fewer. The amount of extra dough this scheme generates for the judges’ BFFs, the lawyers, is substantial to say the least; this being paid for by the fish, who are fighting a rigged battle that they can’t possibly win. All the lawyers know this, but few of them will tell a client in earnest, and most clients don’t want to believe the game is really crooked, but it is, as they eventually find out; after they’ve been bilked out of enough filing fees for prejudged Conferences and proceedings, that were advertised as being impartial. Quote – “Men don’t win Support cases in Erie County.” Not unless they “know someone,” anyway. Lawyers exist who will take a client’s money, and then happily torpedo the client’s case if the judge doesn’t like the client. Clients are expendable once the check is cashed; but the lawyers have to work with the judges every day, they need to keep them happy, and they get paid whether or not they win or lose for the client. The judges and lawyers never disclose their improper relationships to any of the litigants, but instead pretend like they don’t really know each other, haven’t discussed the hearing beforehand, and aren’t meeting for lunch at the Erie Club during the break in the trial. Why should a litigant need to know that the opposing lawyer is the judge’s BFF, especially when the judge Orders the litigant to foot the bill for the BFF’s services, which is another common practice in Erie County? The non-criminal detainees, who get no lawyers unless they can pay lots of money, now constitute a regular, major percentage of prison inmates, and have become a big source of revenue for the Erie County Sheriff’s Department, through arrests and the “work-release” program. If not for the inflated Support Order, the Sheriff would be out all that money, and 60% of his budget would be idled. The scheme was going along great, until the County started running out of funds with which to pay the jail costs, that prop-up this literal robbery-at-gunpoint of Erie County citizens; so Kathy Dahlkemper, our downwardly-mobile County Executive, obligingly raised Erie County property taxes, putting property owners on the hook with the targeted, manufactured “deadbeats,” to pay for this institutional flim-flam. How many more tax increases will be needed to support this racket while the local population continues to shrink; and how long will the suckers who own property tolerate these increases for jailing more parents? We assume that all Orders might not be inflated. If yours wasn’t, then count yourself blessed, or with good connections; but the judges decide the cases at intake, and we’ve seen enough inflated Orders to know that they’re a frequent favorite at Domestic Relations. Ms. Petri’s troubles began in earnest when she discovered that her first husband, Ralph Ferris, had hidden a marital asset during their divorce, in the form of a pension fund, a portion of which she should have had an entitlement, so she decided to sue. Mr. Ferris had since gotten remarried to Sharon Ferris, who had become employed at the Courthouse in the Probation Dept.; thus enjoying access to all the judges and all Erie County OCY caseworkers. Should this situation demand a venue change or judge’s recusal? In an ethical reality, yes, but not so in Erie County. Subsequent to that event, Maryann’s legal fortunes took a decidedly negative turn. She was subjected to two separate malicious OCY investigations for “Emotional Abuse,” of first one, and then another of her children. Virtually any veteran of a contentious Custody battle at the Erie County Courthouse, can tell you that spiteful complaints to OCY, are a standard tactic used by angry parents to smear one another. Women’s complaints are generally investigated, men’s generally ignored, along with the good of the kids. Judges and lawyers love contentious divorces and Custody cases for the heady income they create, and the judges will often consistently rule for the “bad” parent, standing logic on its head, and preying upon the desperation of the other parent as a means of keeping the parties coming back to court, ad infinitum. Judicial assignments are completely rigged at the courthouse, the judges cherry-pick their own cases, so they can see that their friends and relatives get taken proper care of in court. If you ask the Court Administrator about that, he’ll give you a BS story about how cases are randomly assigned. Don’t you believe it, it’s 100% false, just like most of the info dished out by Domestic Relations. Pet lawyers shop their petitions directly to the chambers of the judge who will give them anything they want, and simply bypass and ignore Court Administration. The welfare of the children is never important, only the welfare of the wallet, and how the children can be used as pawns, to separate the parents from as much money as can be gotten until they’re completely cleaned out. All the judges and lawyers are well aware of the OCY/Custody scam, and it is known that at least one judge in town, has made an OCY complaint on behalf of one and against another litigant; with the deliberate intention of destroying the Custody case of the non-favored party. Like all the swindles we’ve seen, we assume this is not an isolated event, but is a likely frequent practice, especially with that particular judge. As is also customary in Erie County Family Court, the judge in question based these actions on improper, one-sided, ex parte information, gleaned from “getting an earful” in the judicial chambers, from a crony attorney and/or client. Nonetheless, the judges will unfailingly present and maintain that an OCY filing is a major revelation and indictment against the targeted parent, and the results of the “investigations,” are usually as foregone as a Support Order. Ultimately, both OCY cases against Maryann, were thrown out by a not-from-Erie Administrative Law judge that actually looked at the evidence, or lack thereof, and ruled on the merits of the cases, which were zero; however, when OCY slaps a trumped-up “Indicated” child abuse finding on an innocent parent, as was done to Maryann in both these two instances, it can take up to a year before the victim gets this “finding” expunged. Forget about the amount of money that it costs. Meanwhile, the real victim of this scam is branded a Child Abuser, but with no conviction in Court, and in such cases, the “indicated” party is forbidden contact with children and/or the elderly in any professional capacity. Those things are problematic for a nurse, specific clearances are required, and as a result of OCY’s actions, Maryann was unable to get the required clearances before an employer deadline, and lost her job, which she has not been able to replace. At the same time, one Erie County judge used the fabricated OCY findings as an excuse to take away Maryann’s Custody rights; and where Maryann had previously been a recipient of Child Support from Mr. Ferris, another judge slapped her with an inflated Support “Obligation” of nearly $900 monthly, using the income level at her former job as a nurse, as a basis of “income capability,” to inflate the Order far beyond Maryann’s actual ability to pay. Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the “inflatee,” Maryann, does not have the relatives with the cash that the judge thinks. Her husband was unable to simply absorb the loss of her income, plus pay the inflated Support, which was based on her previous income from the job OCY caused her to lose, for no good reason; so Maryann now sits in jail, at taxpayer expense, courtesy of inflated property taxes. In writing the Support Order, the judge made the claim that Maryann’s inflated Support level was warranted because the “behavior” which cost her her job was “voluntary.” In other words, the trumped-up OCY charges that were expunged by a different judge in another court, were being reinstated by this Support judge, who was unilaterally reversing the other judge’s decision with no trial or other basis, and treating Maryann like a convicted Child Abuser; referencing “voluntary behavior that never occurred, and ignoring the facts that the charges in both instances were proven false, and Maryann had been fully cleared. Double jeopardy would be only one of a long list of improprieties committed by the judge and Domestic Relations on the way to issuance of the deliberately-inflated Order. One more thing. The act of using incarceration to willfully deprive an inmate of necessary medical care, was ruled an Unconstitutional violation of the 8th Amendment by the US Supreme Court in 1976, because it causes “wanton infliction of pain” upon the victim. It is cruel, capriciously exercised, and contrary to universal Human Rights that our government has sworn to uphold. Nonetheless, it remains common practice throughout US prisons to provide substandard or non-existent care, and Erie County is no exception. If you’re a so-called “deadbeat,” and you require prescription drugs of any kind, as Maryann does, for whatever reason; your prescriptions are summarily cut-off the minute you enter Erie County custody, and usually won’t be resumed until you get released. This is the legal definition of torture, another reason that it’s Unconstitutional, but it happens in Erie County every single day, funded by property taxes. If you think you shouldn’t be paying for Maryann’s incarceration, or for torture in our local jail, we urge you to call the following officials, and ask them why this is allowed to continue? Tell them the day is long past for rewriting the abusive laws that our judges exploit, and to stop making the laws more vulgar at the judges’ request. Ida’s additions: 1)Unlike a criminal charge, an abuse indications by OCY, via the “CY-48” form, is basically a conviction for child abuse in which the target is not allowed a trial, counsel or even access to the evidence. Indicated people are not allowed to work in any environment that may potentially have children or seniors (which covers pretty much 90% of available jobs) or even come close to them. Targets are only allowed to appeal the decision after their clearances have been compromised, therefore it’s a loophole that the system has in the “presumption of innocence”. All that is required is for an OCY employee to file it, no evidence required. We consider child abuse a crime and, as such, it should be treated seriously as a crime, not as a bogus “indication” that neither criminally charges an abuser nor allows innocents to defend themselves. 2) Unlike criminals, child support inmates have no right to a public defender or a phone call. If there’s no money for a purge amount, how would there be any to pay for a lawyer that charges thousands in retiner and hundreds per hour? They are convicted without a trial by the same judge that inflated the support in the first place, making them easy targets for judges friends, allies and generous sponsors. Unfortunately for Maryann, her husband does not have the means to This pursuant to a rigged Support Contempt proceeding, wherein Ms. Petri was, though facing jail, not entitled to a lawyer; and had no legal representation, as she cannot pay her inflated Support Order, much less afford an attorney. She faced a lawyer with decades of experience from a firm that’s as cozy with the judges as any firm in Erie. There isn’t much doubt that he and the judges are frequent lunch partners and/or golf buddies. This is a disgrace. Criminals get better treatment in this Commonwealth. Ms. Petri is a responsible remarried Mother of three, who, until she ran afoul of the wrong people at the Erie County Courthouse, held a decent paying position as a nurse at one of our local hospitals. More on that, later. The interesting thing about this system, is that it was designed to target black males, who still constitute the largest number of support arrests by far, although the black population is only 7% in the County. Once the corrupt system was fully established, as the hunger for revenue is generally colorblind, the system expanded to black females and white males, now finally to white females. A sad truth is, while it’s possible that whites receive the largest number of inflated Orders, there simply is no way to know; more whites have friends and relatives with money, and more whites have access to credit, so a much smaller percentage of whites-with-inflated-Orders, incarcerated.
