Updates

On March 28, 2018, AmiLiving published

...
a story entitled “Baby Boys, Come Home.”
The story was about Julie Goffstein, who
lost all access to four of her six children

Aar
largely because she is an Orthodox Jew.
There’s more
to the story...

By Michael Volpe

sees
 My
.As
name is Michael
Volpe. I’m a Jew

ron
who was born in
Russia, and my
parents brought
me here when I
was almost seven
years old, largely
to escape
persecution.
I first published

es ıt
an article about
Aaron’s mom’s
custody battle in
The Daily Caller,
which led to a
much more in-
depth story on
their custody in
these pages.
In between, I’ve
conducted a series
of covert
interviews with
Aaron.
 Updates

The Courts
The previous Ami Magazine article about
Julie Goffstein’s case, “Baby Boys, Come
Home,” was well received, but many readers
were left with the impression that there
must be more to the story. Its just not
possible for the courts to be so unfair to a
mother and her children.
Indeed, this is a perfectly reasonable
response. We live in the United States of
America, with religious liberty, due process,
the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and
the rest of the amendments. The framers
took great care to make sure this kind of
injustice doesn’t occur, so there must be
something more.
If your only experience with America’s
court system was through your social
studies and history classes in school, that
might be a reasonable assumption. I have
been exposing court corruption since 2013,
hallways of Marjory Stoneman High
School on February 14, 2018, shooting
THE MOST
and there are a few things I’ve learned. The at anyone who got in his way, Aaron REMARKABLE
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and due
process are all theoretical; in court, all too
Goffstein hid inside a closet in a class-
room. THING
often, money talks. Quietly, he sent a text message to his AARON TOLD
ME IS THAT
In this case, Julie’s husband—who was mom—even though a court has forbidden
a successful real-estate developer, while him to have any contact with her.
Julie was a stay-at-home mom—had all
the money, and Julie had none.
“Hey, Mommy, I wanted to say hi. I
wanted to talk now because there is a
NO ONE IN
I also learned one other thing. In their school shooter on my campus and we are THE COURT
courtroom, judges do as they please, and
they are given broad discretion by appeals
locked down.”
Aaron told me that though he knew he EVER ASKED
judges. was not allowed to speak to her and that HIM OR ANY
In court, the adage is true—power cor-
rupts, and absolute power corrupts abso-
she might even get in trouble as a result,
he still sent it: “She had a right to know.” OF HIS
lutely. And no one has more power over In fact, up until this text message, his SIBLINGS
WHAT THEY
the Goffstein family than Judge John Sieve. mother didn’t even know what high school
I first published an article about Aaron’s he attended, because the same judge who
mom’s custody battle in The Daily Caller,
which led to a much more in-depth story
had taken her kids away from her and
barred almost all contact hadn’t required
WANTED.
on their custody in these pages. her ex-husband to provide her with basic
In between, I’ve conducted a series of information, such as which school the
covert interviews with Aaron. children attended.
“I’m perfectly calm. To be honest, this
The Parkland Shooting isn’t the scariest event in my life,” Aaron
As Nikolas Cruz barreled down the said next.

202 | AMI•LIVING | SEP TEMBER 20, 2018 | 11 TISHREI 5779

 So what could possibly be more fright-
ening than a homicidal maniac shooting
one’s classmates indiscriminately?
Aaron told me that it was the moment
last year when a relative told him that his
mother was in jail. A court order handed
down by Judge Jon Henry Sieve of
Hamilton County, Ohio, forbade him to
have any contact with her.
All he was told was that she was in
jail— not how long she’d be there, what
she was there for, or if she would ever get
out.
As it turned out, his mother had been
sentenced to six months in jail for a con-
voluted contempt-of-court order; she only
served two days, and it’s possible she was
already out of jail by the time Aaron was
notified.
Aaron was told none of this. No one in
a position of authority—including his
father—felt he had a right to know these
details.
Background
After his parents divorced, Aaron ini-
tially lived with his mother—that is, until
a court order changed custody in 2013.
The reason: Julie and her six children were
Orthodox Jews, while the father was no
longer religious, and this alienated him.
Aaron was whisked out of his mother’s
house one day with no explanation and
was sent to live with his father, who even-
tually moved from Ohio to Florida.
Remarkably, the oldest two boys re-
mained with their mother.
Aaron told me that he hasn’t seen them
in years but speaks to them regularly on
the phone.
The most remarkable thing Aaron told
me is that no one in the court ever asked
him or any of his siblings what they
wanted. Judge Sieve decided to uproot an
entire family and split up siblings without
even bothering to ask any of them what
they wanted.
 Updates

In addition, Sieve’s decision favored

secular over Jewish schooling: “Fulfillment
of their secular education requirements
is quintessential to the best interest of
these young children.”
This wasn’t the only bigoted thing Sieve
said.
When Julie moved to an Orthodox
Jewish community in New York, Sieve
made an issue of it: “Father testified to
his concern that once the children were
in Brooklyn, New York, in an insular com-
munity, they would never come back.”
In making this decision, not only did
Sieve violate Julie Goffstein’s First
Amendment rights, but he established
precedent.
A 1996 Massachusetts case, Kendall v.
Kendall, involved a similar dynamic. A
family was raised Orthodox until the
father left the faith and became Catholic.
When that tension caused divorce, the
away by his father, much like an Etch-A-
Sketch erases the screen.
THE
father argued that the rest of the family’s Julie told me a story about Aaron when CONSTITUTION,
faith isolated him, but the court noted,
“We reject the defendant’s claim that the
he was four years old. They had brought
his newborn brother home a day or two THE BILL OF
divorce judgment established Judaism as before Shabbos. On Friday evening, there RIGHTS, AND
DUE PROCESS
the religion to govern his children’s up- was chaos in the home and Aaron walked
bringing. In limiting the children’s expo- to shul by himself. When his parents
sure to the defendant’s religion, the judge
merely recognized the preference that the
discovered that he was missing, they called
the police, who found him outside the
ARE ALL
parties allowed to develop and one that shul—he refused to get into the car THEORETICAL;
the defendant, until recently, encouraged.” because it was Shabbos.
“That’s how ingrained [being an obser- IN COURT, ALL
Erasing a Lifestyle  vant Jew] was,” she said. TOO OFTEN,
Until he was uprooted in 2013, Aaron
had been raised Chabad-Lubavitch.
When he was taken from her, he lost
not only his mother but his way of life— MONEY TALKS.
Initially, when Aaron refused to give his school, his friends, and his commu-
up his practices, his father used to drag nity.
him across the carpet. He would smack
his and his brothers’ yarmulkes off their What Does Aaron Want?
heads, force them into a car on Shabbos, Aaron was clear that if his voice were
and even force-feed them nonkosher food. heard, he’d be living with his mother and
The way Aaron described it, the experi- older brothers and observing Judaism. He
ence was like an Etch-A-Sketch toy. He said that this is how his younger siblings
started out living a full Chabad-Lubavitch feel as well.
lifestyle. Slowly, that life was stripped In fact, he is just waiting until he is

204 | AMI•LIVING | SEP TEMBER 20, 2018 | 11 TISHREI 5779

 18— when he will be emancipated—and
he will then go back to his mom. He said
he has no plan to maintain a relationship
with his father after that. Furthermore,
he flatly rejected the notion that his father
was being alienated because the rest of
the family wanted to continue a Chabad-
Lubavitch lifestyle.
He believes that his siblings will all
follow him back to their mother when
they each turn 18.
Indeed, it’s tragically ironic that Peter
Goffstein claims to be alienated while he
does everything he can to destroy any
relationship his children have with their
mother.
Aaron said he is aware of what hap-
pened in court—though he doesn’t think
his younger siblings understand why their
mother was removed, suddenly and
without explanation.
What Is Parental
Alienation?
I’ve learned that parental alienation is
routinely misused in court, the way it was
in this case.
In simplest terms, parental alienation
is a situation in which one parent turns
the children against the other parent in
a nasty divorce. But there is little agree-
ment on anything about this situation—
the definition, the symptoms, or the cure.
As I said in the previous article, it turns
into whatever anyone wants it to be.
In this case, Peter Goffstein claimed
that because he was no longer an obser-
vant Jew, he was being alienated because
the rest of the family was Orthodox.
If you’re someone like Julie Goffstein,
this is not much different from being
accused of witchcraft, because you are
about to be the target of a witch hunt.
That’s why Judge Sieve decreed it from
the bench. While parental alienation is
technically a psychological phenomenon,
Sieve made this decision without consult-
ing a psychologist or psychiatrist. On top
of that, the psychologists who looked at
the case rejected Peter Goffstein’s asser-
tion that there was parental alienation.
“Mr. Goffstein also believes that ‘the
Chabad movement and Orthodox Judaism
[are] a rigid, radical sect,’” stated Dr.
Michael Nelson in a 2011 report for this
case, adding, “He simply sees his oldest
two sons’ current refusal to visit him since
October 2010 as being an effort by his
wife to alienate them from him, attribut-
ing this to her being immersed in what
he considers as extremist Judaic Ortho-
doxy.”
But Sieve overruled everyone and
decided that parental alienation did exist
in the Goffsteins’ case.
Annalise Rice
Consider the story of Annalise Rice,
whom I interviewed last year when she
was 19.
She lived with her mother after her
parents’ divorce.
Everyone had accused her father of
abusing family members, but his claim of
parental alienation eventually trumped
these accusations. She and her siblings
were forced to live with him; she ran away
several times, choosing to live in foster
care and even for a month in Canada with
her mom over living with her father, as
the court had ordered.
Like Aaron, she told me that when
custody was changed, she received no

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 Updates
explanation.
“About a year later, a woman whom
Annalise didn’t know—since identified
as Susan Olson, an attorney, and the
guardian ad litem in the case—picked her
up, taking her to her father’s house,” I
noted when I wrote about Annalise’s story
for the website Community Digital News
in May 2017. “She then began living with
her father, with no explanation for why
she could no longer see her mother.”
In Rice’s case, the court rejected all
evidence of abuse and determined that
their mother was putting these thoughts
of abuse in their heads to alienate their
father. This is the most common bogus
use of parental alienation—as a response
by a parent who is accused of abuse.
206 | AMI•LIVING | SEP TEMBER 20, 2018
The Rucki Case
To understand how far courts will
go to advance a phony claim of pa-
rental alienation, consider the Rucki
case, which I’ve been tracking for
more than two years. I even wrote a
book about it with Sandra Grazzini-
Rucki’s attorney, Michelle MacDon-
ald, in October 2016, entitled
Sandra Grazzini-Rucki and the World’s Last
Custody Trial. AARON
BELIEVES
The Ruckis initially agreed to a divorce
in 2011. His ex-wife, Sandra, received
physical custody of the children but ap-
proximately a year and a half later, she
THAT HIS
was forcibly removed from her home, SIBLINGS
forbidden to contact her children, and
WILL ALL
FOLLOW
HIM BACK TO
THEIR
MOTHER
WHEN THEY
EACH TURN
18.
| 11 TISHREI 5779
deemed a parent alienator. These orders
were issued by a Dakota County, Min-
nesota, judge named David Knutson
despite the fact that David Rucki’s had a
history of violence and repeated protective
order violations.
On January 12, 2012, the GAL (guard-
ian ad litem) that Knutson appointed,
Julie Friedrich, a non-practicing attorney,
first accused Sandra Grazzini-Rucki of
parental alienation in a written report.
The report was entered into the record
without the benefit of cross-examina-
tion—lawless hearsay in any other court,
but perfectly legal in Knutson’s family
courtroom.
After Friedrich’s less-than-expert
report, Knutson appointed a local
psychiatrist named Paul Reitman to
diagnose parental alienation. Reitman was
appointed in late August 2012 and met
with Grazzini-Rucki and four of her five
children one time for approximately half
an hour. After that appointment, he sent
the court a letter saying that there was an
emergency situation in the home and that
the court needed to intervene and remove
the mother because of extreme parental
alienation.
On September 5, 2012, Knutson held
a telephone conference with the attorneys
for David Rucki and his ex-wife and the
GAL; without hearing any testimony, the
court decided to forcibly remove Sandra
Grazzini-Rucki from her home.
Knutson’s court order, signed on Sep-
tember 7, 2012, was so extreme that he
blocked both parents from having custody.
Sandra Grazzini-Rucki had to leave her
home on two hours’ notice without telling
her children; she had been forbidden to
do so. They were placed with their mater-
nal aunt.
On April 19, 2013, Sandra’s two oldest
girls were taken to the police station,
where they were told they would have to
live with their paternal aunt, and eventu-
ally their father.
The girls were escorted to this home by
police; approximately 30 minutes after
the police left, they ran away. On the road
they called their mother for help. She took
them to a friend who recommended the
girls live with a couple who ran a home
for abused children.
With the girls still missing, Judge
Knutson held a custody trial on Septem-
ber 11-12, 2013, although he’d made all
of his decisions beforehand.
Knutson also signed a motion in limine,
which forbade any evidence of abuse.
The result of this hearing was that
Knutson gave David Rucki sole custody,
with no visitation rights for Sandra
Grazzini-Rucki, who was also ordered to
pay alimony and child support even
though her ex-husband had already re-
ceived 100% of a multimillion-dollar
estate.
Conclusion
The children in these stories—and many
others—are pawns caught in a court
vortex. Lawyers accumulate thousands of
billable hours over the years. Court profes-
sionals (as I call them) all charge $200 to
$400 an hour for their quack therapies
and evaluations.
These court professionals go by names
like guardian ad litem, custody evaluator,
parenting coordinator, and therapist. I say
there’s not a dime’s worth of difference,
though technically they have different job
specifications.
These cases are often brought by wealthy
men like Peter Goffstein and David
Rucki, who are able to pay endless legal
bills, especially when they’re funded by
favorable divorce terms. Because these
court professionals are court-ordered,
parents must pay for them or lose their
kids. l
 Updates
Waiting for
the Boys
All it takes is the opening
of a pinhole. Julie Goffstein
is still waiting to be
reunited with her sons...
but is one step closer.
By Victoria Dwek
“I have to be mentally prepared to talk,”
Julie tells me when we reconnect one
Wednesday morning. I know that many
of you have been praying for Julie Goff-
stein, Basya bas Devorah Leah, since you
first met her on these pages in the Pesach
issue. Out of all the stories I’ve written
throughout my career, it was Julie’s story
that took the most out of me. I remember
spending the days while I was working
on that article in a depressed fog, just so,
so sad for Julie and what she was endur-
ing.
Here was a frum, loving, stay-at-home-
mother, raising six beautiful boys...when
suddenly, her real-estate developer
husband decides that he no longer wants
to have anything to do with Judaism. He
tears her apart through the biased Ohio
court system, leaving her destitute and
bereft of custody of her four youngest
sons.
Today, Julie’s two oldest sons, of whom
she was awarded custody, are away in
yeshivah. Her four youngest are living in
Florida in the home of her ex-husband
and his non-Jewish wife, who enact severe
retribution if they catch any of the boys
208 | AMI•LIVING | SEP TEMBER 20, 2018
attempting to contact their mother. “I love
you, Mommy” messages still get through
here and there.
“Levy, my second-youngest...my little
lovey bear—he has been in touch, but he
has to be careful. Carla, Peter’s wife, goes
through their phone, and if she catches
them being in touch with me, she’ll take
it away. They have to be careful. I don’t
want them to get punished.”
This Sukkos, it will be four years since
she last saw her boys. How can a mother
survive without being able to see her
babies for this long?
Even though this mother is still sepa-
rated from her children, there has been a
turning point in the case since we last told
you the story.
Julie has retained an excellent lawyer
who has successfully transferred the entire
case from Ohio to Florida. This took a lot
of time, but now the case is officially open
in Florida.
“Steven Swickel is top-notch. It’s a
| 11 TISHREI 5779
blessing that I found him,” Julie tells
me. “He’s very sharp and he knows what
he’s doing.”
When her ex-husband moved with
her children to Florida, it worked to
her benefit as there was no way she
could have gotten anywhere in the
anti-Semitic environment she found in
the Ohio court system. Florida judges,
in contrast, are familiar with Orthodox
Judaism and don’t consider it to be some
type of extreme cult, as it was portrayed
in Ohio.
“They’ve made a couple hurdles that
we have to work past. One of the issues
with the last Ohio court order was that
I was barred from seeing my children
unless I had a psychological evaluation
by a person of my ex-husband’s choos-
ing, which I would have to pay for. We
are hopeful that the Florida judges will
see that this is a biased ruling. First, if
there’s a need for a psychological
evaluation in a court ruling, there needs
to be a reason, and there is no reason
stated. And then he chooses the person?”
He would obviously be able to choose
someone he has in his back pocket and
would be able to keep preventing Julie
from seeing the children. Normally, if it
was decided this was necessary, the court
would choose the evaluator. An opposing
spouse is never given the power to choose
something like that.
“My attorney is working on getting past
that. He says that this is going to come
back to bite them. This was done just to
prevent me from seeing the kids and not
for any other reason, and in the Florida
court system, that’s grounds for losing
custody. When one spouse puts up road-
blocks and prevents the other spouse from
seeing children, Florida looks at this
negatively. The state court system is very
much in favor of children being able to
have a relationship with both parents.”
***
Another big change for Julie is that the
community has really rallied behind her.
“A few of the doctors I work for [ Julie
works in the medical field] are really going
out of their way to fundraise for me. Dr.
Friedman is an amazing person and a
mentch. Both Dr. Friedman and his col-
leagues have been vouching for me, going
to different synagogues to share my story
and fundraise, and publicizing the letter
from Rav Yitzchak Yosef, who wrote that
this is a true case of pidyon shevuyim.”
Julie received the letter from Rav
Yitzchak Yosef after the case was brought
to his attention by a friend who had read
the article about her last Pesach.
***
Although the changes are positive, Julie
experiences the ongoing pain of separation
and fears that she’s losing credibility with
her children. She keeps telling them it
will be “soon…soon” and “Yeshuas Hashem
k’heref ayin,” but the day has not yet come.
I tell her that I don’t think a parent can
lose credibility with a child. They know
she is working hard to be with them again.
“My worst fear is to let down my kids,”
she says.
***
Now that Julie has the right attorney,
the issue is raising enough money to be
able to see the case through to the end.
B’ezras Hashem, in the coming months,
we’ll see Aaron, Eli, Levy, and Ari re-
united with their mother and older broth-
ers Reuven and Yaakov. Hopefully, we will
soon be able to report good news. l

MONEY
DOESN’T EQUAL
AUTHORITY
Financial abuse is using money to
control your spouse.

Whether you’re being hurt physically, emotionally,

intimately or financially, there is help.
Domestic violence is a pattern of power and
control. It’s never your fault, and it’s never okay.
Shalom Task Force offers a confidential place to
turn for help, referrals and support.

Confidential 888.883.2323
Hotline (TOLL FREE)
NO CALLER ID 718.337.3700
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It hurts to call A domestic abuse hotline.

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