Prominent Milwaukee Lawyers Concealed Child Abuse …
“avoiding disclosures at trial.”
The plea bargain never materialized, so the trial had to be rigged.
The past is never dead, it isn’t even past.
– William Faulkner
It’s ironic: teachers, caregivers and others are mandated by Wisconsin law to report suspected child abuse … while lawyers can impede investigations and conceal evidence of abuse with impunity.
How do we know this? Because the lawyers named below did just that. You might want to ask them about it.
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Okay, you can’t make every baby happy, but you can make every baby sad.
Baby Will here has been smiling from the start. He gets love and hugs from parents and relatives every day. Good fortune may shine on him.
Other babies not so much; they become acquainted with deep pain early on.
You’ll be surprised at the people who enable child abusers to flourish.
After the paediatrician at Froedtert Hospital explained that, “The lawyers … they go after me when I draw attention to clients for child abuse … I just can’t do that anymore,” I took my child directly to the law offices of Quarles and Brady, lawyer David Jarvis. I retained what I thought would be a powerful law firm. I wanted Jarvis to personally experience the damage. The child couldn’t walk, could no longer talk. Animation had been beaten out of him. He was drained, sitting directly before our new lawyer.
The child’s mother had been shouting symptoms of severe clinical postpartum depression for some time. She had once again forced her child’s head under water as punishment for … ?
“Help this child, “ I pleaded. “My efforts for months have met with silence and inaction.”
Jarvis assured that, if I retained him, he would get the case into court quickly to help the child. Jarvis lied. A court hearing on what had been happening repeatedly never took place.
Instead, Jarvis consulted with Judge Fran Wasielewski – to whom I had already complained about the child’s suffering – and with either lawyer Tom Bailey or Tom Frenn, the worse-than-useless guardian ad litem who knew what was happening but valued “discretion” and his relationship with Bailey.
Despite my objection, it was decided that, as the paediatrician had warned, it was best to conceal what had happened to the child. There would be no court hearing and no legal action to stop the abuse.
Foolishly, I had thought that my mistake earlier was not hiring the right lawyer at the right kind of law firm. The problem went far deeper. So it was – on that day, at the esteemed offices of Quarles and Brady – that I decided to end my son’s horror to prevent further damage to his nervous system. I took him to safety.
The punishment for protecting my child, action that Wisconsin law requires, was severe beyond comprehension or common sense. That punishment made use of unlawful and unethical acts that were effectively concealed by lawyers until I published the story from Switzerland.
Jarvis wasn’t the only lawyer who knew about the abuse. Marvin Margolis had taken a stab at a diagnosis earlier: “Maybe the mother has Munchausen by proxy?” he ventured.
Lawyer Kohler, however, advised differently, “She doesn’t have Munchausen by anything. The father is going to plead.”
Judge Hansher gave Kohler 18 months to coerce a plea bargain that avoided disclosing earlier negligence.
There were higher priorities than the child’s welfare. The integrity of the system and the reputations of fellow lawyers were at stake. That took preference in what the lawyers considered the greater good.
The following is a list of lawyers and their misdeeds in the enablement of child abuse.
(Lawyer David Jarvis (Quarles and Brady): All lawyer Jarvis had to do was his job – as an officer of the court and as a decent human being. But an impediment stood in his way. Jarvis’s first loyalty had to be the sensibilities of fellow lawyers, specifically Tom Frenn and Tom Bailey. Bailey’s client was the abuser, while Frenn had deferred to Bailey’s wishes to shield his client.
Jarvis’s failure to act or to merely appear in court to verify that he had seen the child, and that the father had pleaded for legal assistance, could have prevented prosecutor Matestic from spewing a toxic, determinitive lie to the jury, that there was no evidence that the father took any steps to protect the child. Jarvis’s part was one piece of evidence – but a critical, dispositive piece – in over two years of trying to get relief from horrors perpetrated on a child, only to have the evidence concealed at trial.
Jarvis played the common lawyer game, Grab, Duck and Dodge, the slick used car salesman lying through his teeth until the car is off the lot, then going into denial like a frightened tortoise into its shell. I had to struggle mightily until Jarvis finally released his records to me.
Lawyer Martin Kohler: Assured Judge Hansher that he would acquire a plea bargain from the father to avoid messy disclosures in court. Kohler was granted time to coerce his goal, including threats of further harm to the child if the father didn’t state that no abuse had taken place.
Kohler staged a sham trial with Hansher’s complicity. All defence evidence and witnesses were kept from being exposed to the jury, including a letter from the above paediatrician and other medical evidence. Significantly, Kohler saw to it that Quarles and Brady, lawyer David Jarvis, were not implicated. Kohler kept from the jury that the father made numerous and officially recorded efforts (lawyers, police, judge) to stop serious injury to the child.
Lawyer Thomas Frenn Guardian ad litem who prioritised his relationship with lawyer/politician Thomas Bailey, the abuser’s lawyer. Frenn advised the father that “You son’s abuse looms large only in your mind.”
The idea here was that, if the ill mother’s actions toward the child were just ignored, she would stop the abuse!
Frenn’s stupidity was broadly based and profound. It emerged that he didn’t really want to act as a guardian ad litem, but had financial problems and needed the money. A puppy chasing its tail would have been more helpful than this self-centred idiot. Frenn refused to testify at trial, claiming he didn’t know anything about any abuse. Lawyer Kohler granted his colleague’s wish, as no one would be permitted to testify for the father.
Judge David Hansher. Deliberately misadministered the trial for the charge of interference with child custody. To ensure success, at Kohler’s behest Hansher permitted a friend of Kohler’s to sit on the jury in place of the only black person deemed eligible. All corroboration by witnesses and evidence, which Hansher well knew had long been in preparation, was denied to the jury.
Enraged at the father’s refusal to plea bargain, Hansher later took revenge and ordered that the father not be permitted to contact his son from age five to 18 years. Hansher went on to make use of falsified mental health reports to justify his decision.
Prosecutor Fred Matestic. Concealed from the jury all efforts by the father to protect the child. These took place over the course of months before taking the child to safety. Matestic claimed to the jury that court and medical records in his file drawer, including lawyer Jarvis’ legal representation and betrayal, did not exist.
“Where is his evidence?”
Today, Matestic hides behind a shield of faux Catholic piousness at St. Mary parish, Hales Corners, emblematic of a coward’s rush away from himself into a world of denial.
Lawyer Robert Elliott: Hired by Kohler to conceal wrongdoing at the trial and to smear the father, undermining the father’s claims. Private investigator Ira Robins once referred to Elliott as, “the biggest dirt bag lawyer in the State of Wisconsin.”
Elliott lived up to his reputation. He spread the rumour that the father was mentally ill, dissuading lawyers from representation. Elliott had also threatened Mark Murphy, a lawyer who came to the aid of the father by reporting misconduct that he had observed on the part of lawyer Kohler in a letter of support. Elliot hauled Murphy in front of a judge. The two, judge and enforcer lawyer, explained to Murphy exactly how the practice of law had to work in Milwaukee.
Lawyer Murphy backed down to save his career.
Lawyer Steven Glynn. In the legal appeal, after assuring the father that he would disclose grievous wrongdoing that had occurred at the trial and concealed evidence, himself ultimately hid the wrongdoing to protect Hansher, Kohler, Frenn and Jarvis, and the reputation of the lawyer tribe.
Dishonourable mention: Lawyer Margaret O’Connor. Played good cop for Kohler. Assured the father that, among others, a child care worker who observed the abuse would testify. That potential witness was deliberately misled about the date of the trial and was kept away. After the trial, O’Connor helped Kohler conceal all wrongdoing.
In a recent email, O’Connor warned the father to stop telling this story.
“Or else what, Lawyer O’Connor?”
Federal Officer Cordell Wilson: Received information from a federally appointed, court approved psychologist that two court ordered mental health reports had been falsified to undermine the father’s account and to conceal wrongdoing. Wilson refused to disclose the report, helping Hansher perpetuate the false conviction.
What kinds of men are these?
What kind of man enables child abuse and protect child abusers? Do they “hold their manhoods so cheaply?”
What manhoods?
These men comprised a morally bankrupt, mutually intertwined, incestuous gang of pretenders. They formed a chain of complicity, a row of ethically hollow dominoes, each failing and falling when he reached a point of professional and moral decisionmaking – to stand by the law or to kneel to their primitive god, but a god who promised protection if they remained loyal to the tribe.
To a man they formed a eunuchs’ brigade, self-employed to guard the tribal lawyer temple. Lawyer eunuch No. 1 without question was lawyer enforcer Robert Elliott. He made sure that everyone in the tribe held to the same story, gangster-like.
And Elliott succeeded.
Each in his own way, these men turned their backs on a child in desperate need. The reason? Abject fear. Priority one: “Thou shalt not cast aspersions on fellow lawyers.” Above all, tribal members must be protected from criticism, individual lawyers must be guarded from reputation damage. Violate the rule and watch a law career disappear.
Mind you, these are the same men who boast of their legal prowess to their mistresses and escorts in Milwaukee taverns. (The wives likely already know the truth and have stopped listening.) Legal eagles to a man, in fact the worst kinds of cowards, cowards who do not dare speak up when they see legal system wrongdoing or when asked to stand for anything other than career safety.
See promotional material online for one of the law firms involved:
Clients First: The interests of our clients always come first.
Shared Purpose: We are relentless in working to achieve the goals of our clients, colleagues and communities.
Integrity: We conduct ourselves in accordance with the highest ethical and professional standards at all times.
Were the above the values that David Jarvis exhibited? Loudly espousing professional ethics is the bait that gets jettisoned like an empty bottle of Jim Beam when political/professional influences rub up against client needs.
In the end, Hansher and Elliott were so cocksure of their invulnerability that they attempted to deflect scrutiny from their dirty deeds by counting on falsified mental health reports. If you’re going to exploit an abused child, you may as well run the table and exploit the category of mental illness.
A Swiss lawyer in Zurich with whom I consulted grinned when he heard this story, and opined, “Sure … these American lawyers followed the “weakest link” rule of law practice. You and the child represented the weakest link in a closely regarded chain of influence. Imagine the problems … had it come to light in court that they didn’t protect a child in distress, forcing a father to act on his own. You had no influence. You had to go.”
Well, I did go, to Switzerland, where I am free to exercise First Amendment rights denied me by a corrupt legal system in Milwaukee.
For these law firms and their lawyers, there was more career liability to exposing negligence by lawyers than violating profession ethics and the law. The tribal imperative dominated the thinking entirely. That kind of incentive will yield such results as described here every time.
Despite complaints to oversight boards, lawyers and media, these men never faced even the possibility of personal accountability for their cravenness. All were confident they could continue to betray clients and their oaths because the lawyer tribe would protect them.
If Milwaukee media did its job effectively and examined low profile legal cases, the kinds of cases that matter to common folks, it would be more difficult for lawyers to play Grab, Duck and Dodge. But journalists and editors too run scared: scared of losing sources, scared of offending the influential, scared of intimidation and law suits.
The best that can be done now is to broadcast the above names and this message. Clear the field, give other potential lawyer Murphys at least a fighting chance.
Mark Inglin
Zermatt, Switzerland
41 33 821 0936
Books on this case: Beyond Outrage (www.beyond-outrage.com);
Lawyers Broken Bad (www.lawyersbrokenbad.com)
Post Script
The Sum of All Fears
At the start of WW II the United States Military – the Marines – investigated what qualities a young man had to possess to allow him to storm enemy-saturated Pacific island beaches, where he faced certain death. It turned out that men who expressed simple values, ideals and attitudes – like not cheating on girlfriends, being close to their mothers, avoiding unfair advantages in test taking in high school, thinking it was bad to lie – these were the men to be counted on in combat on the beaches, the kinds of men who fought courageously for values, for family and country.
From the start of Kohler’s legal representation I had explained that my priority was to have a speedy trial, to expose the truth about what was happening to Erich, and thus to ensure his safety. Kohler sensed an achilles heal immediately and began to exploit it. He went on to promise trial date after trial date for 18 months, raising expectations only to dash them repeatedly … to gain psychological advantage, to hasten a plea bargain.
I recall one occasion in court, where Kohler explained to Judge Hansher that he wished to attend a golf game, and thus a promised trial date would need to be postponed. While explaining this to the judge both he and Matestic grinned, as if everyone there were in on the joke. Hansher raised no objection.
On another occasion, again in court, Kohler explained that another scheduled trial date had to be postponed for a trip that he was planning, to go to France. Again, there was mild amusement as he and Hansher bantered back and forth. The trial had no priority at all. I had not realised it by then, but the only outcome expected and allowed was a plea bargain that concealed the abuse.
In those days I had a hard time understanding just how degraded, how depraved our legal system had become, how it bore no relationship to what I had been led to believe or to think, as I had had no previous experience with the law. I was also hurting deeply, as I understood that Erich’s mother, in her illness, was entirely capable of doing further harm to him or even taking his life. In my naivety I remarked to Kohler, “Those excuses you gave Hansher, they were just lies, weren’t they, just silly excuses that you knew Hansher would quickly agree to?
“Is it that easy to lie to a judge in open court?”
Kohler projected his usual confident smirk. “Lying?” he questioned. “Oh no, not lying,” he went on in mock solemnity, “You see, the truth is a very funny thing.”
The Milwaukee legal system functions by allowing every form of funny thing, client betrayal and lying by defence lawyers to appease judges, to gain plea bargains through coercion that remains concealed in various forms. That is expected and that is normal. In the process, lawyers have debased themselves to the point of committing violations of ethics and law and then having colleagues protect them, more or less like the criminals they either go after or defend.
It can be assumed that the men named here, Kohler and Hansher and crew, are well beyond any notion of courage in a courtroom or anywhere else, but would freeze instantly on the beach with never a shot fired.
