Jim's Story:The Devastating Story People Have Been Waiting to Hear

 

Jim Linnehan's Affidavit in Support of His Opposition to Sandra Fyfe's Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings

 
 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE  EASTERN DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS --------------------------------------------------- Theodore S. Brown  James Linnehan  Jane & John Does                                                   Plaintiffs  v.                                                                           CIVIL ACTION: 00-CV-11048-REK Eli Newberger  Children's Hospital Amy C. Tishelman  Barbara Cohen  Brockton Division of the       District Court Department       of the Trial Court of Massachusetts Mass. Dept. of Social Services  Eileen Kern  Sandra Fyfe Christopher Salt  Jack McCarthy, Jr.  John and Jane Smiths                                                Defendants ------------------------------------------------------     AFFIDAVIT OF JAMES LINNEHAN IN SUPPORT OF HIS OPPOSITION and MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF OPPOSITION  TO MOTION FOR JUDGMENT ON THE PLEADINGS

 

I, James Linnehan, hereby depose and say that: 1. I am a plaintiff in the above-captioned action. 2. This affidavit contains the facts primarily specific to Sandra Fyfe, It supplements the one I wrote in support of my opposition to Christopher Salt's Motion to Dismiss. For convenience of the court, I've repeated a few preliminary facts contained in my "anti-Salt" affidavit and I've omitted interaction I had with another dozen or more caseworkers -- from DSS through social workers to psychologists. 3. My son Ssssss was born on 9 February 1985.  4. Around two years later, the boy's mother, Robyn Gerry a/k/a Robyn Gerry Sylvia and Robyn Gerry-Sylvia ["Robyn"], left Maine with the boy while a Maine court order allowing me visitation was in effect.  5. After 10 months, I found them in New Bedford, Massachusetts.  6. Soon thereafter, I moved to Massachusetts to be near my son, but the Maine action was still pending. Maine never declined jurisdiction over me and Robyn. No home-state hearing occurred in Massachusetts.  7. In the months that followed, Robyn, Ssssss, and I drove together from Massachusetts to Maine to participate in a court-ordered mediation and back again to Massachusetts. Abuse was not alleged in Maine. 8. As of 1988, I had a temporary order from the State of Maine allowing me visitation with my child. I wanted more visitation. Mediation was ordered to resolve my request. Robyn steadfastly refused to agree to more visitation. In March 1988, after a 3-hour-and-20-minute session, the mediation came to a stalemate. 9. Literally one day after the mediation in Maine stalemated as to the visitation issue, Robyn made an appointment with Defendant Eileen Kern ["Kern"], who shortly thereafter filed with DSS a 51A report of suspected emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of Ssssss.  10. I did not know that Kern reported anything to DSS. 11. Shortly thereafter Kern both recommended to Judge Harper that a sexual-abuse assessment be done and filed a complaint (pursuant to G.L. c. 119, sec. 51A), alleging that I had emotionally, physically, and sexually abused Ssssss. 12. Suddenly there was a restraining order on me, and I was not allowed to see the child. (After that, but for two supervised visits with the child when he was around five years of age, I did not see Ssssss again.) 13. The court then ordered the Collis Center to perform the assessment, and it was done during May and June 1988.  14. Defendant Sandra Fyfe, M.S., who has represented that she was working for the Collis Center, has also represented that she met with Ssssss and with Robyn. Fyfe certainly never interviewed me nor observed me and my son together. 15. The Collis Center Executive Director, Thomas Tanguay, met with me. Thomas Tanguay recommended supervised visitation.  16. Although Tanguay recommended that I be allowed visitation with my son, Fyfe wrote the report and included the recommendation that I not be allowed visitation -- with or without supervision -- with my son.  17. According to various reports which I have seen, Fyfe shared her so-called information or her beliefs with Christopher Salt, with DSS, and with the court, despite there being no document in the records which I've seen which confirms that the court appointed either her or her employer, the Collis Center, to perform an assessment. The written record shows only that Fyfe's report was received 18. Because I never abused my child in any manner, Fyfe could have had no reasonable cause for a suspicion that Ssssss had been sexually abused by me. Everything she knew had to come from Robyn and/or Kern. 19. Because I was never told what occurred when Fyfe interviewed Robyn and Ssssss -- if, in fact, she did -- so I do not know whether she had a reasonable cause for suspicion that someone else abused Ssssss in some manner. I was never allowed to call Fyfe for examination. 20. In the meantime, notwithstanding the Maine temporary order for visitation, Robyn sought and obtained a temporary restraining order against me from the District Court in New Bedford, Massachusetts. That restraining order was ultimately extended indefinitely. 21. There was no "home state" hearing to determine which state had the authority to exercise jurisdiction. 22. Also in May 1988 the court ordered an investigatory report by Christopher Salt, a licensed social worker. Salt filed the report on 1 July 1988.  23. At DSS, an investigator, Robert Mendez, supported Kern's suspicion. Neither I nor my half-dozen prior attorneys got the DSS reports, unredacted or redacted, and I myself simply got a letter saying the accusation had been substantiated (now called "supported").  24. It was not until 25 May 1999, eleven years later, after I wrote the Attorney General's office as well as DSS that I got my first copy of the 1988 DSS report . . . and that report was redacted. 25. Almost immediately, DSS brought a care and protection action in New Bedford Juvenile Court, and I brought a paternity and custody action in Bristol County Probate & Family Court. 26. I was ordered to withdraw my case in Maine.  27. After reading Salt's report, I was asked a question by my then-lawyer in the court hallway. I could, literally, not respond: I was so traumatized that I spontaneously lost my voice. Over the years many diagnoses were rendered: hyperfunctional voice disorder, maladaptive vocal and respiratory habits, vocal chord nodules. . . . 28. I can still remember my tears when I could not articulate.  I've had to use my speech therapy exercises each day until this day. 29. Subsequently, I suffered a potpourri of physical and psychological symptomatologies: agoraphobia, depression, insomnia, headaches, nightmares, appetite loss, weight loss, inability to concentrate, loss of trust in public officials, the judiciary, and mental-health workers, and extreme mental distress and anxiety.  30. Losing trust in social and mental-health workers has been particularly distressful to me inasmuch as I had and have to work with them on a daily basis.  31. I've never gotten over the pain of not seeing my son. The accusation of having abused him was the most horrifying thing in my life. I come from a loving, supportive family. I am troubled that my son does not have one. That is something I would never have wanted for him. He's had no father. His mother's unsuccessful attempt at marriage was disruptive to his life in another way. A boy needs a father. My son has not had one because of the defendants. 32. The stress of hurdle-jumping from worker to worker, court hearing to court hearing, lawyer to lawyer, and being in the same place after all these years. I never thought of it in terms of "altered judgment," but there is no question I was stunned at first, then I was enraged, and ultimately I was numbed, numbed being probably the must accurate word to describe how I was, my state of mind. They might just as well have cut my tongue out because I didn't get a chance to voice my opinion. 33. I did everything I could. I asked a "million" questions of each of my lawyers. I did whatever they told me to do even when I strongly disagreed with them. I felt I had no choice.   I did whatever the court ordered me to do, even when I  strongly disagreed with the judge. Again I felt I had no choice. The only thing I really knew was that something was terribly wrong with the system. I felt overwhelmed by it all.  34. I sought reviews and redetermination by the court several times. Some lawyers said it would be quicker to get a review every six months rather than appeal and wait several years to hear that I did not succeed in overturning the decision of Judge Harper. I paid several thousand dollars to one lawyer, but then he went to practice in Rhode Island. His law firm said they'd perfect the appeal, but never did. Six lawyers and thousands and thousands of dollars later, I was no further along, knew no more about what was causing my legal problems and WHO was causing them than I knew at the very beginning.  35. The frustration from the beginning until now has been ever-present, and each time I confronted it or contested it, I became sick in one way or the other. I tried traditional and nontraditional medical treatment -- everything from doctors through meditation.  36. Yes, I knew that my son and I were being harmed, but I never had sufficient notice of what the cause of the harm was, nor who was causing it. The players changed so rapidly and frequently that the effect of the input of each of them was impossible to assess. I had not met some of these people.  Nor had I been given an opportunity to confront them. To this day, I have never seen any evidence of the basis or bases of their reports: no therapy notes, no progress/process notes. The only thing which was recognizable was the accumulative effect of the successive reports and opinions.  The "system" was like a runaway train crushing me and my child in its path.  37. But for two supervised visits with Ssssss when he was around five years of age, I last saw him when he was three. Ssssss is now 15 years old.  38. I tried repeatedly to no avail to get visitation, if not custody, and at no time was I afforded by either court an evidentiary hearing or an opportunity to confront my accusers or to test the alleged evidence against me. 39. No testimony was taken in court. 40. The disparaging reports had further consequences on my life. I was injured beyond belief when I could no longer see or communicate with my son in any manner or at any time, or take him to visit with my family and friends on holidays and other special occasions. My younger nieces and nephews are now at the age where they ask, "Do you have any kids?" I say "Yes" and then they ask, "Where is he? When can we play with him?"  I find those occasions, euphemistically, somewhat depressing. 41. The pain of losing my son has endured these many years. I hired six lawyers (excepting the present one) and have made multiple attempts at "review and redetermination." The courtroom in Juvenile Court has always been closed. 42. I continue to suffer anew the obloquy of everyone involved or who came to be involved with my case, and to suffer the loss of any relationship with my son. 43. To this day I must confront doubt; for example, a woman I recently met asked, "Does your son ski?" I could only answer, "I don't know," and then inevitably I had to explain why I did not know. "It all started with a little Day-Glo  dinosaur from a cold cereal box. . . . Oh, yes, and let's not forget Batman and Robin and Batmobile and the Batcave!" It's been a living nightmare.  44. I believe Sandra Fyfe participated with some of the other defendants in two or more predicate acts against me. They communicated by telephone and letter their biased presumptions, their flawed and specious conclusions and opinions to each other and to third parties not named in this action, that I had sexually abused my child. They suggestively and improperly questioned the child until Ssssss allegedly accused me, and rubber-stamped each other's decisions that I had sexually abused my child. 45. In my opinion, the pattern was to receive income from future services which had been made mandatory when sexual abuse -- true or not -- was found. To Fyfe, a finding of sexual abuse meant more court appointments for her company and referrals by other local area, so-called mental health workers, who would recommend counseling or the continuation of counseling  by their respective agencies for the children, counseling for the parents, batterer or anger-management programs, sex-offender programs, testing, multiple evaluations, repeated testing, and so on -- out of which has grown a multi-billion-dollar sex-abuse industry. 46. I was not allowed to confront the accusing Fyfe in a court of law before I was deprived of my relationship with my son, Ssssss, and I've suffered damages that are a direct result of those acts. 47. I last saw my son, Ssssss, when he was three years of age. Ssssss is now 15 years of age. Ssssss likely has no independent memory of me.  Signed under the pains and penalties of perjury. James Linnehan  James Linnehan

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