Judge Orders Kids to Spend Years in Juvenile Hall for Skipping Lunch with Dad

Court punishes kids for parents' messy divorce.

Dreamstime

A Michigan judge ordered three children—ages 14, 10, and 9—to be held in a juvenile detention center because they refused to have lunch with their father.

The outcome is part of a custody dispute between the kids' parents, Maya and Omer Tsimhoni, who are divorced. Omer claims Maya poisoned the children against him for spite, while the kids say they don't want to spend time with their father because they saw him hit their mother, according to myfoxdetroit.com.

During a hearing on June 24, Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Lisa Gorcya ordered the kids to spend quality time with Omer. When 14-year-old Liam refused, Gorcya launched into a tirade about how there are consequences for defying a court order:

I ordered you – I will say this again, and apparently you're – you're supposed to have a high IQ, which I am doubting right now because of the way you act, you're very defiant, you have no manners, I ordered you to have a relationship with your dadder – your dad. I ordered you to talk to your father …

Gorcya also tried to intimidate the kids into changing their minds, asking them if they liked going to the bathroom in front of other people and sleep on uncomfortable mattresses—the fate awaiting them at Children's Village, the juvenile hall.

All three have now been there since the hearing. No one is allowed to visit them except their father, but he left for Israel the day after the hearing and has not been back since. The kids are not allowed to see their mother, or each other.

The Observer published a more sympathetic portrayal of Omer, who claims he never hurt Maya—and the police agreed with him when they responded to the incident in question. Maya has brainwashed the kids into thinking he is a bad father, even though he wants nothing more than to spend time with them. Omer remarried after the divorce—which stemmed from Maya's decision to leave—and has a 2-year-old with his new wife.

But regardless of which parent is at fault for the deterioration of this family, it's wrong to blame the kids. To that end, Gorcya's actions seem incredibly harsh and unfair to the confused minors caught in the middle of this dispute.

If the kids remain steadfast in their refusal to see their father, they could stay in juvenile hall until they each turn 18.

What's wrong with these Michigan judges?

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

This judge's comments read very much like she has some personal relationship with the father.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I think your father is a great man who has gone through hoops for you to have a relationship with you.

I mean, what the hell? Read the whole thing. She can't possibly know their relationship with the man. And this is setting aside completely punishment for a custody agreement breach handed down directly to children.

[WoodchipperPatriarch]

Based on the transcript, this judge is the most inarticulate piece of shit I've ever seen.

[Shirley Knott]

Oakland County is a hell hole, and has been for decades. It is adjacent to Detroit and really picked up a bad attitude from the neighbor.

[Rich]

Gorcya also tried to intimidate the kids into changing their minds, asking them if they liked going to the bathroom in front of other people and sleep on uncomfortable mattresses

"Kids, you like going to the bathroom in front of other people and sleeping on uncomfortable mattresses?"

[Fist of Etiquette]

I knew what that was going to be before clicking.

[MJGreen - Docile Citizen]

Same! I'm glad we're all on the same wavelength here.

[Gary Acosta]

I thought it was going to be "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?". But, I had the same scene in mind.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

And the father said, "please your honor, don't send my children to juvenile detention for my sake, I can't bear the thought of them in prison."

Right? I mean, that happened, didn't it?

[Fist of Etiquette]

The father is the only one that has the power to change it. If he feels the kids learned their lesson, he could have them released. But the day after the hearing, he left for Israel for work and is not expected back for two weeks.

Thanks, pops.

[kinghiram91]

What a jackass. I would certainly put my kids before a trip to a stupid piece of land where some bible stuff happened.

[kbolino]

he left for Israel for work

[Fist of Etiquette]

Cue "Cats in the Cradle".

[Stormy Dragon]

*pictures a bouncy Klesmer version of it*

[Bronwyn]

Yeah, I don't care what deadlines are hanging over my head. My kids are in detention, I'm stationed outside the gate until I get them out. Period.

He is no father.

[Veillantif]

But give him some credit: like any loving father, he did hire a PR firm to plant pieces more sympathetic to him, like this one in yesterday's NY Observer.

[Rhywun]

It sounds to me like the parents should be in prison instead of the kids.

Oh, and no comment about the judge.

[Libertarian]

"Oh, and no comment about the judge."

It's almost as if there has been a ..........chilling effect.......around here.

[croaker]

I'm not chilled at all. Maybe parking a woodchipper in front of the courthouse will get this cunt's attention, since melting down her voicemail hasn't.

I'm not in Michigan. Blow me.

[Free Society]

I like your style.

[Bronwyn]

Considering the violent comments on the Facebook page, I think the woodchipper saga has not made the rounds sufficiently. Those "execute them all" evildoers need to be slapped with subpoenas ice packs, STAT!

[macsnafu]

You mean they need to be handed iced drinks, surely! Anybody willing to do the hard work of hyperbolic threats deserves a tall, cool one.

[r3VOLutionarykind]

"What's wrong with these Michigan judges?"

Michigan... Indiana... same difference. Oops.

[perlchpr]

Michigan, Miami, whatever...

[Bill Dalasio]

Robby, what are you doing, trolling for comments to get Preet Bharara's attention?

Well, I certainly hope that none of the children ever decide to visit whatever skills they learn Children's Village on Judge Gorcya. Because that would be a real shame. I might even shed a tear.

[Kivlor]

Nah, he's trolling for Barbara McQuade's attention today. Won't be happy until we get some attention in all 11 of them.

[tarran]

Welcome to my hell folks!

If you ever want to lose faith in humanity, hang out in probate court when custody disputes are being heard.

The legal system treats children as a weird hybrid between chattel of their parents, and beneficiaries owed support by their parents. One thing that kids don't get is agency; they are not parties to the dispute and generally have no representation. If they do have representation, it's generally a poor one, in the form of a guardian ad litem (a guardian for the purpose of this litigation) who conducts an idiosyncratic investigation within a very circumscribed envelope of the sorts of people he can talk to and the subjects he can discuss, and then forms his opinion as to what's in the kids' best interest. Over the years, my ex and I have had two GAL's appointed, and the confidence with which they pronounced their wildly divergent opinions and laughably wrong narratives they constructed to explain their observations* have left me thinking that they are a poor way to give children a voice at the court.

*one essentially used an error he made in writing down one of my answers to arrive at one of his major conclusions!

[tarran]

With that having been said, the judge is way out of line here. If he wants his custody order to be obeyed, the appropriate thing isn't to throw kids in detention; it's to order the kids and the dad into reunification therapy - to move the problem out of the legal sphere into the more appropriate psychological sphere. Jailing the kids isn't going to make the kids hate their dad less!

[Lee G]

Jail solves everything.

/prison guard union - politician - soccer mom - uncle bob

[tarran]

... but it's not jail! It's only juvenile detention which is totally different from jail! It's not intended to punish children but to help them!

That's a line I once was fed by an employee of the probation office of the juvenile court for my county.

[Scarecrow & WoodChipper Repair]

What's aunt sally -- chopped liver?

[X[redacted]s]

She's a drunk.

[Scarecrow & WoodChipper Repair]

Naw, she's uncle bob.

[Jed Templin]

you're supposed to have a high IQ, which I am doubting right now because of the way you act, you're very defiant

With all due respect, your honor, defying you is the mark of a high IQ.

[Judge Chipper]

No respect is due.

[perlchpr]

Zero is still a number.

[Stormy Dragon]

And this is what happens when you treat children as the property of their parents rather than individuals with rights of their own.

[Stormy Dragon]

To be more explicit: what is the difference between this dad wanting to send his kids to juvie for refusing to eat lunch with him and a dad forcing thier kid to go to conversion therapy or some creepy fundie ex-gay camp?

[Jordan]

One involves actual violence, and the other doesn't. Not that the dad wouldn't be a piece of shit in both cases.

[Scarecrow & WoodChipper Repair]

Which one involves no violence?

[kbolino]

We could lower the age of majority, but I don't think you'd like that any better.

[kbolino]

Another possibility, I suppose, would be to create a tier or two between legal minority and legal majority wherein your parents have less responsibility and accordingly less control over you. I fear greatly though that any such proposal would just be used as an excuse to push the age of majority higher, whereas in my not-so-humble opinion it should be lower (although 18 would be acceptable if e.g. 14 was the age at which you could drop out of school and get a full-time job).

[Dark Lord of the wood chipper]

There seems to be a wood chipper shortage in Michigan.

*disclaimer*
Fuck you, you arrogant twat. If you're dumb/evil enough to ruin people's lives over petty bullshit then you can just endure someone saying mean things about you on the internet. If you can't, then go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw.

[croaker]

+1000

[Bronwyn]

*APPLAUSE*

[GILMORE, LVL20 Blowhard]

Alt text = "Whose the childish one"
Previous Robby piece = "it's impossible to say for sure whose lying""

I blame Microsoft (damned *context neutral* spell-check). And of course the lack of a Columbia Journalism degree. I suspect there is also some conscious spite of the copy-editing commentariat.

[Agammamon]

It just goes to show what a lack of accreditation and government licensing does to standards.

[GILMORE, LVL20 Blowhard]

Everyone is just crowd-sourcing 'spelling' these days.

[Agammamon]

What're you complaining about? We're libertarians. *squints menacingly* You aren't asking for a grammar *authority* are you?

[MJGreen - Docile Citizen]

It's strange because I always see the mistake done the other way, with who's used when they mean to use the possessive whose.

[UCrawford]

And here, I thought that Gilmore had simple excluded a comma and failed to appropriately capitalize a title.

"Whose, The Childish One"

🙂

[Jose Chung]

"simply"?

[UCrawford]

I typed it on an iPad...my iPad sucks for typing.

[Agammamon]

During a hearing on June 24, Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Lisa Gorcya ordered the kids to spend quality time with Omer.

How does this happen in a country with a 1st Amendment specifying *freedom of association*.

The judge could certainly order that the mother has to *allow* the kids to spend time with the father, but there isn't even a flimsy 'public accommodation' fig leaf to cover ordering the kids to associate with him.

This order is *blatantly* unconstitutional and outside the authority of even a family court judge. The fact that these kids are still in confinement is just insane. Even a mediocre lawyer working in the PD's office should be able to get this overturned by appealing to the next higher court.

[GILMORE, LVL20 Blowhard]

"How does this happen in a country with a 1st Amendment specifying *freedom of association*."

Technically, the 1st amendment doesn't specify anything of the sort.

Freedom of Association was only ever specified as a necessary pre-existing condition for speech in a few selected cases. And the most significant of those actually cited the 14th amendment

"the Supreme Court decided in favor of the petitioners, holding that "Immunity from state scrutiny of petitioner's membership lists is here so related to the right of petitioner's members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in doing so as to come within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment" and, further, that freedom to associate with organizations dedicated to the "advancement of beliefs and ideas" is an inseparable part of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

[Agammamon]

. . . or the right of the people peaceably to assemble . . .

Peaceably assembling, for example, somewhere where the father *isn't*.

In any case - I'll conceed your point about the 1st Amendment but . . .

There's no place in the constitution that say you *don't* have freedom of association, and the 9th is pretty specific about that.

[croaker]

The 9th and the 10th were pretty much dead on arrival.

[kbolino]

Freedom of assembly is kind of meaningless too if the government gets to decide who you can and cannot associate with.

[kbolino]

That should probably read who you must and must not associate with, since of course the government doesn't understand the difference between "allow" and "require".

[Mr. Paulbotto]

How does this happen in a country with a 1st Amendment specifying *freedom of association*.

The freedom of association clause in the 1A is no longer applicable, because raycissms...

[A Self-Identified $park?]

Plus children are only like 3/5 people or something.

[perlchpr]

outside the authority of even a family court judge

Whoa there, madman. Let's not go crazy now. There's nothing outside the authority of a family court judge.

[TMLutas]

The court awarded joint legal custody and mother with physical custody. Mom has apparently been messing with visitation for years.

[Brochettaward]

What the fuck does that have to do with a judge imprisoning kids?

Listen - if all three say they don't want to be with the father, the last solution any sane person would come up with is incarcerating the kids. And no decent father/human being would want that.

Frankly, the kids seem to be right here. Their father is a cunt.

[Tak Kak]

"Dadder"?

Is that a regional term?

[MJGreen - Docile Citizen]

I ordered you ? I will say this again, and apparently you're ? you're supposed to have a high IQ, which I am doubting right now because of the way you act, you're very defiant, you have no manners, I ordered you to have a relationship with your dadder ? your dad. I ordered you to talk to your father

Urge to chip rising...

[LarryA]

If she thinks she can outstubborn a 14-year-old, she's too stupid to tie her shoes, much less wear a robe.

[MichaelL]

As short as the comment is, it demonstrates the truth, when it comes to prohibitions. Going to prohibit drugs? Working well! Going to prohibit alcohol...Never worked! God prohibited the forbidden fruit from Adam...Worked out well Prohibit the Tennessee battle flag?...More will be sold and exhibited! All at the same level as "ordering" kids to talk to their dad. I had mine adopted to another man because I could not afford the lawyer, that did not do his job, the first time! Too bad, mom, I see them now. At least my kids are more scared of their mother's wrath than they are of me! The oldest invited me to her high school graduation. Hateful women like my girls' mother, deserve to be prosecuted. Problem is, the cute blonde might be willing to flirt (or more) with the judge for a better deal!

Maybe that is the deal with the judge. She is not impressed by the actions of either parent and can consider that the woman could be part of the problem! Forced counseling did not work for my step-son and his father! Once the father got out of child support, he was out of his son's life. There are deadbeat dads who need to get their darned acts together, too! Dads who want to be part of their children's' lives need to show it more than this guy did. But, employment is a major part of maintaining the terms of child support! So, another Catch 22!

[UCrawford]

The Observer published a more sympathetic portrayal of Omer, who claims he never hurt Maya?and the police agreed with him when they responded to the incident in question. Maya has brainwashed the kids into thinking he is a bad father, even though he wants nothing more than to spend time with them. Omer remarried after the divorce?which stemmed from Maya's decision to leave?and has a 2-year-old with his new wife.

And these claims from Soave stem from what facts in evidence? If Soave is citing the Observer article's claims, he should probably make that more clear. If this is his own opinion that the mother poisoned the children against the father, he shouldn't be presenting this as fact.

It's generally rare that I look at the byline of articles here before I read them, but I can usually pick out a Robby Soave piece very quickly by seeing things like this sprinkled throughout. It's probably a sign that he needs a bit more editorial guidance.

[A Self-Identified $park?]

Something something didn't Columbia something.

[UCrawford]

Werd. 🙂

[Trevor St McGoodbody]

Since when are "defiant" and "intelligence" mutually exclusive traits? I dare say that they go together quite nicely.

[Agammamon]

An intelligent person would understand the power imbalance and would bend like a reed to avoid getting broken in two.

[Trevor St McGoodbody]

Some people act defiantly in situations with power imbalance on purpose. These are just children, so I don't think that's the case, but children willing to act defiantly in the name of self interest or higher principles, even if it's partially in ignorance of consequences, in no way means lack of intelligence. I'd say in many cases it's the sign of a mind who can think critically. Over-deference to authority figures isn't necessarily desirable or proof of any kind of great mind.

[ant1sthenes]

Yeah, I think the missing quality there is pragmatism, which isn't really expected in the young.

[A Self-Identified $park?]

The state is a just god, but an angry god.

[DRM]

Ah, Ms. Gorcyca. I remember when she was an idiot of a prosecutor . . .

[croaker]

Apparently the black robe subtracted about 40 points of IQ.

[MoriahJovan]

Whether or not the dad is doubleplusgood and mom has poisoned the well (I'm not willing to assume she didn't and I'm not willing to assume she's wrong, either), the judge is a right cunt.

She got mad because the kid wouldn't mind her.

And another three libertarians are born...

[Rob]

Doesn't this punishment violate the spirit and intent of the 8th Amendment?

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Sending the siblings to juvenile detention and not allowing them to see any family members, including each other, is cruel. It's an excessive punishment for refusing a judge's order to have lunch with their father. Tarran made an excellent comment above, "[The] judge is way out of line here. If he wants his custody order to be obeyed, the appropriate thing isn't to throw kids in detention; it's to order the kids and the dad into reunification therapy - to move the problem out of the legal sphere into the more appropriate psychological sphere."

[Libertarian]

Nine. The youngest kid was nine. NINE! Words fail me.

[croaker]

She also compared the teenager to Charlie Manson.

What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 80?

"Your honor."

[Gary Acosta]

For profit detention... the scourge of the Earth in my opinion.
Link to most recent tax returns:
http://42xe9j271ksy1n0hzfzi1qd.....12-990.pdf

Non-profit, but with several highly compensated individuals. Over $1,000,000 reported lobbying expenses. I think we now have some idea where these funds are channeled!

[Pinky]

By all means, read the whole court transcript linked above at the link "launched into a tirade".

Neither Rand nor Kafka, working separately or together, could dream of the evil that is this Judge Lisa Gorcya. Chills ran up my spine at page 20, line six when ten year old Rowie Tismhoni, having suffered the judge's badgering, browbeating and coercion finally reverses his begrudging capitulations and rises up as a man and says I will not kneel to a tyrant. Then little nine years old Natalie, Rowie's sister, speaks in her own firm voice and affirms for herself that she too will not capitulate to evil. It's an inspired moment that must be read. You must read the transcript, if you read nothing else for the rest of your life.

[Mindyourbusiness]

I did. Don't know how the state of Michigan could have put someone like this on the bench. If recall is available, she should be recalled. If impeachment is a possibility, she should be impeached. Maybe disbarment?

[tz]

Lovely. The ex-wife brainwashes the kids, and everyone here becomes ultra SJW feminist because all men, all fathers, all dads are evil rapists (how else did the children come to be)?

[Rob]

Even if the kids are brainwashed, the judge's tone towards them is unacceptable. Throwing the kids into juvenile detention while threatening to keep them there until they are 18, denying them access to their mother and her family, and denying them access to each other is undeniably cruel.

[IMissLiberty]

I knew the son of a traffic court judge. The son had a habit of telling people what they wanted to hear.

The only good news in this story is that this judge is not the kids' parent. The judge clearly is not confident of his own authority, as evidenced by how threatened by children he is.

[MoButterMoBetta]

Someone should feed that judge into a wood chipper, feet first, after shooting her, and then put her in a special hellish place.

I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman,
I'd prefer a hellish place on Earth be reserved for her as well.
It is judges like this that need to be taken out back and shot
It is judges like this that WILL be taken out back and shot. FTFY
Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the message across clearly. Especially if you feed them in feet first.
Why do it out back? Shoot them out front, on the steps of the courthouse
Fuck that. I don't want to pay for that cunt's food, housing, and medical. Send her through the wood chipper.

Let me know when the subpoena and gag order arrives.

#notatruethreat

[macsnafu]

Whatever happened to "It's for the kids"? This is nuts.

[JRS1001]

Family court - another reason many men are skipping the "getting married and starting a family" part of their lives.
Government has a unlimited ability to screw up everything they touch - this being the application of family law.
Not only is it completely arbitrary but also malicious and biased. It also has the bad habit of swatting butterflies with sledgehammers.

In order to stop this we have to get government out of the "arbitrating family relationships" business. All they have done is make everything more complicated and expensive. Let people work out their problems