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MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS
MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
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(415)868-0502(fax) - P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924
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Mardeusz Recall Case Reemerges
Father Charged With Felony Child Abuse
By Jim Scanlon
On November 3, 2004, Leo Allen Magers was charged in
Solano County Superior Court, Vallejo Division, with two counts of criminal
conduct, both felonies: child abuse, and corporal injury to a child.
Count I, a violation of Section 273a(a), that he "... willfully and
unlawfully, under circumstances likely to produce great bodily harm and death,
injure, cause and permit a child H.M. and L.M. to suffer and be inflicted with
unjustifiable physical pain and mental suffering ...
Count II charges that he did , "...inflict cruel and inhuman corporal
punishment and injury , resulting in a traumatic condition upon a child, to
wit, H.M.
Also charged are unlisted aggravating circumstances under Court Rules 4.408
and 4.42 which are added to the crime(s) whether or not charged and can include
from 1) The crime involved great violence, great bodily harm, threat of great
bodily harm or other acts disclosing a high degree of cruelty, viciousness or
callousness to 11) The defendant took advantage of a position of trust or
confidence to commit the offense.
Presumably H.M. is the daughter of Carol Mardeusz a mother who was embroiled
with the Superior Courts of Sonoma, Sacramento and Marin, with Child Protective Services and various police
departments over her fears that her daughter was not safe with Leo Magers, her
father. Magers was given full custody of their daughter in August 1995 by a Sonoma judge under unusual, possibly
illegal, circumstances. In December 1996, another Sonoma County judge denied Carol and her extended family all contact with
the child.
Mardeusz failed twice in a futile attempt to gain custody of her daughter by
misleading a judge in Sacramento and later Judge Dufficy in Marin.
In 1998 she was charged in Marin with felony "attempted child
stealing" and contempt of court. She was tried and convicted by a jury.
The Trial
The trial was long and difficult with an appeal, disqualification attempts,
challenges under the Americans With Disabilities Act, the introduction of terms
like "Legal Abuse Syndrome" and "Invisible Abuse Syndrome"
a Writ of Habeus Corpus, Carol getting sick in court, Carol collapsing in court
and being hospitalized.
After an evaluation in a State Prison for women at Corona, she was returned to Marin and
sentenced by judge Verna Adams to 9 months in the county jail, payment of $600
in restitution and 5 years supervised probation. She has now completed 4 years
probation without incident and a recent request to dismiss probation was
denied.
Carol has not seen or had contact with her youngest daughter in over 4
years. A court hearing was actually held in Marin County Superior Court in June
2004 as to whether an older sister could send a letter to her younger sister
living with Leo Magers.
Uproar in Marin
In the late 1990s Mardeusz became the center of an upwelling of anger and
concern in Marin from a variety of sources. In 1999, the Grand Jury was so
concerned over complaints about Family Law Court that it attempted to investigate. District Attorney, Paula Kamena,
blocked any investigation of Superior Court and later began a criminal
investigation of the Assistant Grand Jury Forman for violating secrecy rules.
Nothing came of the investigation, other than the threat of criminal
prosecution, but it has never been officially closed and is still open.
An ad hoc citizens group concerned about favoritism and bias in Family Law Court commissioned a study of that court
by Karen Winner, a New
York family and child
advocate and author. The Winner Report's criticisms provoked print and
broadcast coverage and was followed by the resignation and transfer of a Court
Commissioner and the voluntary transfer of Michael Dufficy, the Family Law
Judge, to Probate "for reasons of health."
Simultaneously, Katherine Ballentine Shepherd, one of the so called Family
Law Elite Attorneys (FLEAS), and an intimate member of Judge Dufficy circle of
close friends, apparently deeply upset over Dufficy's bias towards favored
local attorneys, publicly revealed intimate details of social gatherings at Dufficy's
Sierra Nevada ranch which created the impression
of sophomoric fraternity parties.
Shepheard did not practice long in Marin after her disclosures. She left the
state, or was forced to leave the state for lack of clients, and moved to the
East Coast. It seems likely that Dufficy was secretly disciplined by the
California Commission on Judicial Performance. (See Coastal Post April 2004,
Did Judge Dufficy Lie and Deceive the Voters?)
At that time Mardeusz, although extremely shy and retiring herself,
unwillingly became the center of a citizens' campaign to recall Dufficy and
several other judges. Although the recall group did not include the court
critics that commissioned the Winner Report, this distinction was seldom
recognized and the two were lumped together. With Mardeusz a kind of hostage,
the recall campaign was taken over-hijacked-by a much larger, better funded
group, local proponents of legalizing the medical use of marijuana. This
shifted the focus of reform from Mardeusz, Dufficy and Family Law Court to the District Attorney's policies
toward possession and use of Marijuana.
In addition, Mardeusz's brother ran against Kamena for District Attorney,
which created the impression of political opportunism and certainly didn't gain
any sympathy for her with the District Attorney's Office. (The legal community
of Marin, in an unusual display of almost complete unanimity, supported Dufficy
during the recall and later during his first election in March 2004. He was
originally appointed by George Deukmejian.)
The recall failed miserably, Mardeusz, was separated from her other
daughter, sent to state prison for evaluation and finally sentenced to 9 months
in Marin County Jail.
A Suspicious Death and Media Blackout
In early December 2001 Carol's daughter H.M., now 11 years old, found her 33
year old step mother, Ana Cavazos Magers, unconscious and near death on the
kitchen floor of the Magers' Sonoma County home. Cavazos died later in Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. The coroner's report lists
"Cause of Death" as " Undetermined, Interval - Undetermined.
It is not known what kind of police investigation, if any, was made or what,
if any, action was taken by Sonoma
authorities regarding Cavazos' death. Aside from the unusual circumstance of a
healthy, normal woman of 33 suddenly dying with only a few small bruises on her
thighs and chest and a smashed index finger on one hand, there had to have been
numerous police reports on file of alcohol and drug use and abuse, child abuse
and family violence, since Carol had been making such reports for years, a fact
that was held against her, and was perhaps the most important evidence used in
an evaluation of her which was prepared by the Sonoma County Probation
Department in 1995. It recommended that custody of H.M. be immediately transferred
to Leo Magers, basically because of Mardeusz's numerous complaints.
Incidentally the probation report recommended that the child be preemptively
seized before Carol could read the recommendation and be given an opportunity
to flee with her child!
The Mardeusz's trial in Marin, was extensively covered by major regional
media: The Independent Journal, the Chronicle and the Pacific Sun all covered
the case. Public Access TV submitted an 11 page legal brief requesting
permission to broadcast the trial which was denied.
How strange is it then that the death of Ana Cavazos Magers was not reported
by the Peteluma Press Democrat or the Marin Independent Journal. Stranger yet,
the felony arrest of Leo Magers for child abuse was not covered in the press or
local television. Since Carol Mardeuz had been labeled a "vexatious
litigant," a person who was "poisoning the mind" of her
daughter, destroying the child's relationship with her father and an
emotionally abusive, delusional person, could it perhaps be, that the felony
child abuse arrest of Magers might be seen as an embarrassment to the Courts
and child welfare system in Marin and Sonoma?
Not Out of the Ordinary.
Since June of 2004, the Coastal Post has examined four cases of women in
Marin's Family Law
Court. They are all
in many respects similar. All made official complaints about violence or
threats of violence from the fathers of their child(en). All had limited
financial resources and, at one point or other, were forced to represent
themselves in court. (A very dangerous course for anyone thinking of it.) All
the men had first rate legal representation.
All the men lived with a parent, that is a grandparent, while the women
cared for the children on their own. Three women had their children removed by
a judge without a formal hearing with the children being placed with the
accused parent, unconditionally without periodic official assistance or evaluation
. Three women were jailed at high bail, one, Carol, was formally convicted and
imprisoned, another is currently on trial and the third pled guilty to a misdemeanor
charge in order to get out of jail. Only one of the three isolated mothers has
seen her child, and that one, once, for 45 minutes-and she had to pay!
Bizarre Connections
A nightmarish twist to this story is it's connection with the abduction and
murder of Polly Klass in Peteluma in 1993. Carol, who lived a few blocks from
the Polly's home, reported to the Peteluma Police that a suspicious man had
been in the neighborhood who appeared to be stalking her oldest daughter. This
report was made two weeks before Polly's abduction and murder. For reasons that
are not clear, she was never called as a witness in the trial of Richard Allen
Davis who was sentenced to death in September 1996.
Another unfortunate connection is that Marisa Mariposa Garcia, the young
woman who admitted to suffocating her three year old child in a Mill Valley
Hotel in 2002, was a member of the jury that convicted Carol two years
previously. According to a newspaper article that quoted the woman's mother,
she had been upset by what happened to Carol. Marissa was committed to a state
mental hospital for from 15 years to life in a plea bargained agreement that
avoided a trial.
Confidentiality, Privacy, Secrecy or Cover Up
Virtually all the information in this report came from publicly accessible
documents which although much appreciated and interesting, provide an
incomplete account. There is no doubt that the functioning of State Courts in
each county of California is of great importance to citizens, most of whom never come
into contact with the court system, except, perhaps to perform jury duty. It
should be recognized that court confidentiality and secrecy serve not only to
protect the privacy of those involved but to isolate those involved and can
also obscure and therefore facilitate official negligence, bias and
insensitivity.
In response to a telephone call by the Coastal Post, a friend of Carol's
left a message stating that Carol would not, under any circumstances, make any
statement under advice of her lawyer. Considering what has happened to her, her
position is certainly understandable.
Unlike Marin, it is possible in Solano County to get limited information on
criminal court matters on the Internet. This is helpful but since it takes a
several days to update the web page, it was impossible to determine what
happened at Mager's readiness hearing on January 23, 2005. Something happened which vacated
the start of the trial scheduled for the following day. Was there a plea, a
continuance, if so, why? We will have to wait. Assistant District Attorney in Fairfield handling the Mager's case did not
answer repeated telephone calls.
It seems reasonable however to deduce from public documents available that
Sonoma County has terminated it's jurisdiction due to dependency proceedings in
Solano County on behalf of H.M. and L.M. Dependency proceedings are strictly
confidential and this is probably why Carol Mardeusz will not speak. It would
seem she has to be part of proceedings regarding her daughter, particularly
since Sonoma has withdrawn. She might also be
called as a witness in the criminal case.
In all likelihood the Solano
Juvenile Dependency Court will proceed slowly evaluating the family situation to its own
satisfaction. There might even be a chance for Carol to visit her child.
Dependency hearings are designed to protect parental rights consistent with
the well being of the children involved. Social workers are available who
monitor behavior. Proceedings are different from Divorce Court where two
opposing lawyers present two versions; one states man is good, woman bad and
the other man is bad, woman good with the judge paying lip service to children,
deciding which fiction to promote.
Carol has completed four years of supervised probation in Marin and is in
good standing and in compliance. It appears that the Sonoma Court is out of the picture. Solano
Criminal Court will have to do something regarding the criminal charges against
the father for whatever it is that he is alleged to have done to his children.
It remains to be seen if, should he be convicted, his consequences will be as
severe as the mother's punishment for what she did in resisting the courts in
defense of her child.