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Historic Marin Verdict
Fleeing To Protect Her Child
BY
MARIN COUNTY, CA (San Rafael) -- National history was made last week in the Marin County Criminal Court. In a high-profile trial that spanned over two weeks, the 12-member jury found Jonea Rogers not guilty on all counts of violating court custody orders when she fled with her daughter from Marin County in 2000 in order to protect her child from suspected abuse. In courtrooms across the country, mothers like Ms. Rogers are being jailed and losing their children after reporting suspected abuse and trying to protect their children.
"I cried the minute I heard the second 'Not Guilty' verdict," Ms. Rogers said. "It really showed the human side of the jury. They seemed to be thinking about what my daughter and I had gone through and what we were faced with. I really want to thank the jury; they were paying attention in the courtroom."
During the trial, Ms. Rogers testified at length about her concerns of neglect and possible sexual abuse of her daughter. She described in detail her inability to get the court-appointed custody evaluator or anyone in authority at the Marin County Sheriff's Department or Child Protective Services to take seriously her concerns which were shared by many third parties who knew the family, including the child's babysitter.
At a preliminary hearing on February 10, 2005, visiting judge Winslow Christian reduced to a Misdemeanor, the Felony charge of violating a consent decree (278.5 PC) filed in August 2000 against Jonea Rogers who, in desperation, sold her East Bay condominium, closed her San Rafael hair salon and left her family and friends in the Bay Area and fled with her three and a half year old daughter because of her anxiety and fear that Marin's Family Court and Child Protective Services were unwilling, or unable, to support her in protecting her daughter.
The verdict is especially noteworthy because the Marin County District Attorney's office had jailed Ms. Rogers on $500,000 bail for five months, charged her with a felony and placed the child with the father, Ian Stone, and grandfather, the same individuals about whom Ms. Rogers was concerned.
Ms. Rogers also testified about her concerns resulting from the release of a report in early 2000 detailing the close social ties between the Marin Family Law Bench and a select group of family lawyers who called themselves FLEAS --family law elite attorneys. Her ex-husband's lawyers were purportedly members of this elite and favored group.
Subsequently, the Marin Family Court allowed the father to move to Hawaii with the child in 2005, against the advice of the Marin Family Court psychologist, who said the move would be detrimental to the child and questioned the father's motive. Jonea Rogers has a request for custody and the return of her daughter to Marin now pending in the Marin Family Court.
Before fleeing Marin in 2000, Rogers and others had made reports of neglect (an untreated bruised eye) and suspected child sexual abuse, which were unresolved and paradoxically may have resulted in a failed attempt to totally remove her daughter from her custody. (See: "At The End Of Her Rope" and "Bleak Prospects For Runaway Mom And Daughter," Coastal Post June & August 2004.) At the time Rogers went into exile, Marin's Superior Court was in great disarray due to sustained, outspoken public criticism of Family Law Court and Judge Michael Dufficy who eventually resigned from Family Law "for health reasons." The criticism resulted in an failed attempt to recall Dufficy and District Attorney Paula Kamena.
A Related Case
The complaints against Kamena were largely based on dissatisfaction with her prosecution and jailing of Carol Mardeusz, a former court reporter, for allegedly violating a consent decree ordering her to have no contact with her daughter. Mardeusz was later convicted by a jury in Marin and evaluated in State Prison, before eventually serving several months in the county jail. The father had been given full custody of his daughter in Sonoma County, without a formal hearing, after a Sonoma judge reviewed a report that concluded Mardeusz was poisoning the daughter's mind (Parent Alienation Syndrome) against her father.
Prosecutorial Prejudice?
The Mardeusz, Rogers, and a third case, a woman named "V," form a pattern of Marin County mothers, all forced to personally act as their own lawyers in divorce proceedings, all being jailed after reporting evidence of family violence, child abuse and/or child sexual abuse. These women, who never harmed their children, were not only denied contact with their children, but maternal family members were denied contact. With Rogers and "V," the Marin District Attorney not only did not investigate the fathers but placed the children with them while prosecuting the imprisoned mothers for violating the visitation rights of the fathers.