Children’s Court Judge Accused of “Perverting the Law”

FATHER:  SOCIAL WORKER PROVIDED “MANUFACTURED ACCOUNT” TO JUDGE IN CHILDREN’S COURT

by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 3, 2016) — In the case of an Alabama couple attempting to regain custody of their three children from the state of California, the father, Roosevelt Williams, reported that he was denied a Marsden hearing requested in August of this year by Judge Marguerite Downing.

The resource USLegal.com defines a Marsden Motion as “a request to the court by a criminal defendant to discharge their lawyer on the basis of being incompetently or inadequately represented by counsel,” and Mr. Williams characterized the need for it in his case as stemming from “a breakdown of Attorney-client relationship.”

The couple’s eldest child, who is now nine, was placed with his maternal grandparents in September 2011 amid allegations that the mother, Kanika Williams, suffered a nervous breakdown, a claim she has denied and said is not supported by medical records, particularly by a physician in Alabama.  A second child was removed from the parents’ custody the following year, and a third in 2013 after she resided with Kanika for nine months.

Kanika and her husband, Roosevelt, claim that they have never harmed nor neglected their children and that social workers have invented reasons for their children to be “detained” by the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).  The couple has been compelled to travel back and forth between Alabama and Southern California as hearings on their children’s cases take place, the most recent of which was on September 14.

In an email sent to The Post & Email earlier this week, Williams wrote of Downing’s negative decision regarding the Marsden motion, “This hearing that is afforded to all American citizens, was denied by Judge Downing for me and for my wife. For me,  my attorney asked to be relieved from her duties and she  was denied this Right, which essentially results in forced representation. I then, challenged Judge Downing competency and ability to make appropriate rulings by asserting a challenge to her Jurisdiction, which is never waived and has been asserted against her by myself and my wife.  When I challenged Judge Downing Jurisdiction to hear this Case, she ran off the stand into her chambers and I was escorted out the courtroom by the bailiff.”

He added, “Soon after my parental rights was terminated that day. My wife parental rights were terminated as well and she wasn’t even present.”

As The Post & Email reported on Monday, Roosevelt and Kanika expected the two eldest children to be returned to them as early as 2013, approximately two years after the first case was opened on their eldest child. All three of their children are now residing with Kanika’s parents, who are seeking to adopt them.

Kanika claims that all three children have suffered “horrific trauma” while outside of Roosevelt’s and her custody.  They have not seen their children for over a year, and telephone contact is reportedly extremely limited and monitored.

Roosevelt has filed several complaints against a number of social workers involved in the ongoing cases. In one, he alleged that social worker Gerald Udenezue committed “perjury” in the courtroom by alleging that Roosevelt threatened him over the phone. In his email, Roosevelt made a similar statement about a different social worker. “CSW Laquisha Grandbery [sic] lied on the stand by saying I haven’t contact DCFS about visitation. She said these lies on the Stand and in her social worker report, as well as embellished her lies by stating to her Supervisor that I have been uncooperative. She also committed perjury stating that I called her a ****** in the parking lot of children court to attack my character and to divert the attention off of the real issue which is her failure to set up  a visitation schedule as Court Ordered. I didn’t even see her in the parking lot and can someone please tell me what relevance does my opinion of her have to do with my right to parent and be left alone by the State of California Los Angeles County DCFS?” he wrote.

“Family reunification services” initially offered to parents whose children have been placed in foster care have been terminated for all three of the children, with the elder two currently scheduled for adoption by Kanika’s parents.

Further to Grandberry’s alleged statements and behavior toward him, Roosevelt said, “The goal was to portray me as a angry black man when my emotional state is beyond anger and again , irrelevant to my abilities and capabilities to parent my children without any third party interference. The social worker  also stated on the stand that she questioned my daughters, XXXXX and XXXX Williams, who are 4 and 3 years old, respectively, about visitation and she was told it was true that her mom gave them pizza on one visit when that is not true. The extent of the lies, get more outrageous and ridiculous the longer the case was Open. I have never violated my visitation, of which, the visitation Ordered was for me and my wife to have separate visitation with OUR children, even though we are married and have had joint visitation in the past, with even the social workers monitoring those visits. Judge Downing took the manufactured account of the social worker and minors who have been rehearsed to say whatever the Grandparents and social worker tell them to say in order to justify this ludicrous case, as truth and terminated my family  reunification services with XXXXXX in a gradient step toward the ultimate goal of terminating  my and my wife  parental rights to all of our children.”

“Judge Downing is the poster child for perversion of the Law and corruption,” he contended.

Downing also presided over the cases of the eight Henderson children, who were taken from their parents by DCFS when they were falsely arrested, spending approximately two months in jail. At the time, there were six children in the family, but two children subsequently born to the couple were also taken away as infants despite no signs of neglect or abuse.  To the best of The Post & Email’s knowledge, all eight children were placed in adoptive situations, and the parents, Jeffrey and Erica Henderson, separated.

According to Roosevelt, Downing told Jeffrey Henderson and him the same thing: that he needed to leave his wife in order for her to have any chance of regaining custody of the children.