At last I heard commotion outside my motel room door. I lowered my hands – moist with tears and snot – and looked up.
The police had instructed me to wait while they checked my status. At the same time my toddler son was being returned to the woman who had been forcing his head under water, had placed him in garbage bags and intentionally deprived him of sleep. The latter intent was to dissuade him from his desire to see me … his father. The same woman, his mother, explained that she would never burn him with cigarettes … because that would leave marks.
The moment demanded urgency. This was the time to act, to stop what I knew could happen to my son. There were cases of clinical depression or postpartum depression in mothers led them to kill their own children. I had to explain the horror that had been going on for months. But the moment did not belong to me.
The moment at hand belonged to the comely, blonde Royal Canadian Mounted Police woman who swung the door open with vigour, handcuffs glinting as they swayed on her belt. Young and shapely in her dark uniform, she was demonstrably authoritarian and made a bee line toward me. Two male officers followed, one on each side. They appeared less strident, even relaxed. She wasn’t relaxed. Her swagger meant business and it intensified when she saw I had been crying. This was a woman who recognised true masculinity and felt at ease with true it. She wasn’t seeing that now. Emboldened by my despair, she displayed disgust openly – a worm who had taken a child from his mother.
The moment would never again belong to me after that day at the motel. I had exposed to the public the failures of prominent lawyers back in Milwaukee, rousing immediate fear among those who never imagined their negligence would lead to this. Cover-up became the paramount concern. But over the course of years the truth did begin to emerge.
The events that led to revealing lawyer misconduct in this case were in many ways remarkable. Each time I made a move toward exposing the lawyers who made the moment in the motel possible – Milwaukee lawyers who later contrived accusations of mental illness to conceal their perfidy, a mother’s postpartum depression and a child’s abuse – fortune rewarded me. It were as if a deity somewhere saw what had happened, felt offended beyond tolerance and decided, “No, this is just too much even for an unjust world.”
An effective but false storyline was set that day. It was promoted and reinforced by influential lawyers and a judge and lapped up by media not willing to offend the sources of future stories. They hatched a scheme to avoid loss of reputation and diminished careers. I think they surprised even themselves, with the extent to which they allowed and encouraged venality and blatant, illegal conduct to avoid responsibility. They dug the proverbial hole deeper while they confronted the unusual circumstance: someone outside of their jurisdiction exposing them to criticism. They had no colleagues in Europe who could help them in their cover-up.
An American who had been denied First Amendment rights in Milwaukee used those rights effectively in a European nation, where it was more difficult to conceal evidence or influence cronies, as they had done with such ease on home turf.
“Get up, “she commanded, “and turn around.”
“I was afraid she would kill him; she could have, if I hadn’t acted,” I explained. “My son could be in danger now. I would like to talk to someone who knows what’s happening to him … .”
I sensed the hollowness of the words right as I spoke them. She had been forewarned and instructed on what to think and believe. But remaining silent was no option.
“These can go on tighter if you continue like that,” she threatened as the cuffs locked into place.
I was handed over to her companions and taken to a prison cell in the bowels of some building. Nothing that I said or asked for there registered or merited a reply. My plea for a lawyer went unheeded. Such is the power of an accusation of mental illness; such is the power of corrupt lawyers who use false accusations to conceal their professional negligence. Their treachery would extend to the point of falsifying court-ordered psychological reports. They even dragged Interpol, the international policing agency, into the attempted cover-up.
The good offices of the U.S. government were exploited to provide Interpol with false information, claiming that I was “armed and dangerous,” and “mentally ill.” The same smear went to the
University of Basel, where I lectured in the Chemistry department and edited research papers, sending the department into hysterics.
I eventually told the story of legal system corruption in Milwaukee in the books “Beyond Outrage,” followed by “Lawyers Broken Bad,” and “In the Place of Truth.” Now I tell the story on the blog www.markinglin.com.
The circle of Milwaukee lawyer corruption began with a Guardian ad litem, Lawyer Thomas Frenn, who concealed evidence of an ill mother’s attempts to harm her own child in her madness. He did this to protect another lawyer and prominent politician, Thomas Bailey. Frenn failed to testify in court in deference to Judge Hansher, who didn’t want evidence put forth to the public pertaining to past negligence.
Because I refused to plea bargain, because I refused to betray my child by stating that I had confabulated, as Hansher had demanded, he imposed a no-contact order until my son was 18 years old. He was five at the time. Hansher’s message was, “Do not expose local lawyer misconduct! ”
Hansher then informed the public that the entire case hinged on the father’s mental problems, not lawyer misconduct. When his own, court-appointed psychologist claimed the opposite in his evaluation – that I had been truthful in my assertions, Hansher refused to withdraw his malicious, false assertion. That accusation ultimately spread to Europe, as intended.
The circle of lawyer corruption went around to completion with Federal Officer Cordell Wilson. When informed by a court appointed psychologist that falsified mental health reports had been submitted as official, he deliberately ignored the information to protect Judge Harsher and Lawyer Martin Kohler, and the people who might influence his career.
The story of a woman suffering from mental illness – and a well-established history of such with evidence – was replaced with remarkable ease. It was only through protection in a foreign jurisdiction that the story could be told in Milwaukee.
Many in Milwaukee already know the names of the circle of lawyers who benefited by concealing evidence, intimidating witnesses, altering psychological reports, fabricating false circumstances, tampering with a jury, providing false information to a jury and to Interpol. The actions by these lawyers could be characterised as racketeering of a sort, an anomaly only in appearance.
The significant names: Lawyer Thomas Frenn, Guardian ad litem who chose to protect a lawyer colleague instead of the child who needed it; Martin Kohler, nominally a defence lawyer who betrayed his client to please the judge; Steven Glynn, appeals attorney who protected Kohler and the judge from their own wrongdoing, Robert Elliott, purveyor of false claims of mental illness to deflect from unethical/illegal conduct by colleagues.
see the blog for updates: www.markinglin.com
