Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Scary Bedfellows, Slater, AFRA and CPS Watch

AFRA President William O. Tower
In a strange alliance that raises questions about the loyalties and trustworthiness of two large grassroots parental rights groups in this country, this blogger has learned that the widely despised guardian ad litem Dan Slater has joined forces to represent CPS Watch and its founder Cheryl Barnes, and American Family Rights Association and its president William O. Tower in a lawsuit filed byAmerican Family Advocacy Center's director Suzanne Shell.

CPS Watch founderCheryl Barnes
CPS Watch, Barnes, AFRA and Tower have been accused of copyright infringement, unfair trade practices,  unfair competition, racketeering and more. The complaint also accuses CPS Watch and AFRA of false and misleading advertising.

Slater is renown in Fremont County parental rights circles as a guardian ad litem who always sides with the CPS workers and opposes reunification of children with their parents. Reports from families whose children are represented by Slater indicate he doesn't meet with the children, doesn't conduct his own investigation, won't contest anything CPS wants, and won't provide proper representation of children as their GAL.

Dan Slater, Fremont County anti-family GAL
In one case, he was actually appointed as GAL for a mother who had a mild disability in order to prevent her own mother, trained and certified family advocate Christine Korn, from helping her with her case. The appointment of Slater as the mother's GAL was a ruse by the court and CPS to take away her right to make her own decisions on her behalf and behalf of her child.

A GAL is appointed to represent the best interests of the child or the party they represent, unlike an attorney who represents the legal interests according to what the client wants. In this case, appointing Slater as GAL for the adult mother, Slater participated in the effort to deprive this mother of her right to make her own choices regarding her legal representation. Slater was able to substitute his -- and through him -- CPS's desires as far as how the mother would be represented in court. Slater did not meet with the mother he was representing, and fulfilled CPS's agenda in railroading the mother.  He also successfully participated in insuring that the mother not be allowed any contact with Suzanne Shell, who was featuring this mother's story for a documentary.

Slater has also been active with other Fremont County lawyers and CPS agents in trying to shut down the legitimate business activities of the American Family Advocacy Center under the direction of Suzanne Shell.  This explains why he would choose to represent AFRA and CPS Watch against her. He wants Suzanne Shell out of the picture, and this seems to be a good way to accomplish that. But we suspect Meconi, Marshall and others in Fremont County are backing him, and he's doing this as part of a larger agenda to destroy the parental rights movement and any participation by family rights advocates in child abuse cases.

The salient question is: Why would CPS Watch and AFRA get into bed with this person who has opposed their parental rights agenda so successfully for so many years in Fremont County? Are they really in this for parental rights, or for their own glory? They know he has harmed the cause of this movement, and of AFRA members in Fremont County, but they still choose to associate with him.  If they will join forces with the enemy, and turn on one of their own, who else will they turn against?

In the mind of this blogger, AFRA and CPS Watch has turned against the parental rights movement and against all parents fighting CPS when they joined forces with Dan Slater and Fremont County. It would not surprise this blogger that AFRA and CPS Watch will be Slater and his CPS pal's next target, and they would deserve to be next on the anti-parental rights list.

Anyone who is part of the parental rights movement needs to bitch slap AFRA and CPS Watch for joining forces with the enemy and helping the enemy to destroy the grassroots parental right movement. They don't deserve the support and membership of real, dedicated parental rights advocates when they join the fight against parental rights themselves.





Saturday, May 7, 2011

Rocco Meconi. . .Demagogue

For our first installment, let's discuss the attorney who represents Fremont County Department of Human Services (DHS).

The Richest Man in Fremont County?
In Colorado, counties administer child welfare cases. They get to set up everything relating to how these cases are handled, with literally no oversight over how the counties manage their cases.

In Fremont County, as in many counties, a private attorney provides legal representation to the county child welfare agency under contract. Rocco Meconi has represented Fremont County for years.

Meconi has shamelessly bragged that he makes over $400,000 a year representing the county. This, in one of the poorer counties in Colorado. The average median income in Fremont County is $34,150. The per capita income is $17,420. Fremont County ranks 38th out of 64 counties. Over 11% of the population are below the poverty level, making rich pickings for a rogue child welfare agency with a demagogue illegitimately at the helm. It is a county whose primary industry is prisons, and is home to fifteen prisons, including the only Federal Supermax prison in the United States. Prison communities are notoriously corrupt, and Fremont county is no exception.


View Larger Map

By way of comparison, #1 Pitkin County per capita income is $40,811 and median income is $59,375. #64 Costilla County per capita income is $10,748 and median income is $19,531. The difference between Fremont County and Costilla County per capita income is less than $7,000, and between Fremont County and Pitkin County is $23,391.

"I get paid on an hourly basis. When [Suzanne Shell's] involved, we always have contested hearings, and I make a ton of money. But it doesn't help the families or the kids." Meconi made this statement in an article in Westword.  After years of first hand observations and reports from reliable sources, we find this statement about contested hearings not helping the families who are swept up in his child welfare net to be true.

Contested hearings don't work in Fremont County. Parents and children don't have any rights in Fremont County, thanks to Meconi's stranglehold on the agency and the courts. He can and does, singlehandedly control the outcome of the cases. His vendettas against parents who assert their rights and resist his tyranny are legendary, his methods of retaliation against anyone who crosses him, sinister and shocking. Yet, he runs his perverted operations with impunity. Even the U.S. District Court in Denver will not touch this teflon troll. The Attorney Regulation Counsel genuflects to him, and takes his word as Gospel, whether or not the evidence supports it.

It is reasonable to conclude, Rocco Meconi is getting rich off of the backs of the babies in Fremont County. And he does it with such relish! He has been heard to complain that DHS should not provide funding for the parents to comply with the horrific case plans the caseworkers devise under his malevolent guidance. He views his abuses against children as victories. What kind of victory is it when the kids are so terrified they run and hide when the doorbell rings, have night terrors and suffer PTSD as a result of his victories? It's a Meconium victory, one that only a truly deprave person could celebrate as a positive outcome.

Yes, dear reader, Rocco Meconi has exerted unyielding power and pervasive influence of the administration of Fremont County child welfare cases. He demands the caseworkers perform their duties according to his dictates. Fremont County parents are not receiving social services from caseworkers, they are receiving them from the puppet master from hell, Rocco Meconi. He has substituted his lack of professional training and experience in social work for the training and experience of those caseworkers whose job it is to administer these cases.

He has also trained the judges in the law regarding child welfare, completing the set up of this demented demagogue's little empire. Rocco Meconi controls child welfare agencies and courts in Fremont County, as if it were a little Sicily. There are no checks and balances, no separate branches of government. There's just Meconium law.

Attorneys representing parents and children absolutely will NOT do anything against Rocco Meconi in court. They all just wilt and cast their clients up for sacrifice. They have reported they are afraid of him, of what he will do to their law licenses and practices. . . and their children, if they oppose him too effectively, too vigorously, too successfully, or if they attend training designed to improve their representation of their clients.

Certain cases from Fremont County have been reviewed by outside agencies, who declare Fremont County practices to be deplorable and shocking. It is any wonder with a shitty attorney acting as if he were a social worker? Meconi couldn't win a dependency case on the merits, according to the rules and statutes before an impartial court. If he could, why would he have to resort to chicanery, threats and bullying to stack the deck in his favor? He has to lie, cheat and steal to win, which makes him a loser.

Meconi ran for district attorney of Fremont County in 2004, and was defeated by a young woman, Molly Chilson, who had only passed the bar a few short years earlier. Meconi boasted over thirty years experience practicing law. Reading between the lines of this very sound trouncing, it is evident that the public hates Meconi.

District Attorney - District 11 100.0% of 64 precincts reporting

Candidate               Party       VoteCount        % Votes Cast
Molly Chilson         Rep           21,978              62.4%
Rocco Meconi        Dem         13,265              37.6%

If there had not been a secret ballot, the results may have been completely reversed. People will only resist Meconi if they can do it anonymously. Still, we found this humiliating defeat to be extremely hilarious and totally predictable. Meconi's delusions of grandeur aside, one can only squeeze the public so long before they slip through your fingers and start fighting back.

They are talking and telling all behind his back and have been for years. The conspiracy of silence is now broken. We will be telling all on this blog. . . let's just see if Meconi has power over the first amendment.

Rocco Meconi. . . a fitting name for a Fremont County mobster of child trafficking, donchya think?

Demagogue: one who uses rhetoric and propaganda to gain power that would not given if truth and logic held sway.

Cultural Dictionary
demagogue  [( dem -uh-gog, dem -uh-gawg)]
A politician who seeks to win and hold office by appeals to mass prejudice. Demagogues often use lies and distortion. ( See  Adolf Hitler and  Joseph Stalin.)

Dictionary.com, "demagogue," in The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Source location: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Introduction

Fremont County Department of Human Services, under the legal acumen of  their attorney Rocco Meconi, has been the terror of families and children for years. The child welfare practices are inconsistent with statutory mandates. They play dirty, making liberal use of lies and manufactured evidence. Meconi plays fast and loose with the law, using dirty tricks to get the win, and defrauding the federal government in the process. Ignorant courts don't catch his dirty deeds, and grant his requests in violation of the law and to the great harm of the children.

The schools play along, becoming killing fields where children are turned in for benign issues that are twisted out of reality into surreal parodies of child abuse which deprive the children of their parents to line the county coffers with federal funding.

Most are terrified of this vicious juggernaut. We say, enough is enough. We will now put the Fremont County players under the same microscope they judge parents by, telling all and naming names. Past. Present. Future.

Meconi at the helm, DHS will retaliate by taking the children of anyone who dares speak out. If the courts allow it, we will tell it. It's time the courts in Fremont County stop kowtowing to the Meconi and hold the line of the law against him. Only then, with the families in Fremont County be safe from abuses at the hands of petty tyrants.