July System Failures - Part One

by Robin Sax

When you see injustice all the time, as I do every day at work, you get used to it. It's a sad reality of my profession, where I too often witness bad results for victims of horrible crimes. But rarely do I see such disgusting manifestations of system failures as I did this past week in two cases. The first, the one I'm exploring today, is the case of Baby Vanessa. The second example will be up tomorrow, in part two of this post.

These two cases make one think of flipping through the Discovery Channel, TruTV, or the like, where one encounters unbelievably sensational crimes and incredible wrongs. I worry that we live in a disheartened, blasé society -- one that prefers to ignore critical issues rather than engage and change them. It's painful to watch our system fail our citizens, and I refuse to stand on the sidelines. This is important, and these two cases are happening now!

BABY VANESSA

The battle for baby Vanessa made headlines last week when a local KNBC Los Angeles journalist, Tara Wallis Finestone, got wind of the heartbreaking tug-of-war between the adoptive mother Stacey Doss (right) and birth father Benjamin Mills, Jr.

Doss adopted Vanessa at birth with the help of an adoption agency. This was a legitimate adoption. Unfortunately, however, the birth mother lied - under penalty of perjury - on the forms when she stated the child was as a result of a “one night stand” and that she had no idea of the birth father's identity.

Before you condemn the birth mom for lying, consider these harrowing facts: Benjamin Mills, Jr. has four other children (none of which he has custody of); he has a child endangerment charge on his record; and he has been imprisoned for domestic violence – once pulling the birth mother so hard by the hair that when the police arrived at the house, they discovered bloody clumps of hair all over the floor. So when the mother could not care for baby Vanessa, do you blame her for not listing this man as the father on the adoption papers?

Baby Vanessa, now two years old, has been ordered to return to Ohio where she will be cared for by her paternal grandmother, whom she has never met. Stacey Doss, Vanessa’s adoptive mother, was given until July 16 to turn over the child.

When Doss filed a petition of adoption for Vanessa on July 1, 2008, all she wanted was to give Vanessa the love, security and stable, supportive family network that she enjoyed. Since then, Stacey has been engaged in stressful and expensive (to the point of nearly wiping out all her income and potentially losing her home) litigation with the birth father (photo left) – a convicted felon who resides in Ohio and whose legal fees are being paid by the State of Ohio and the State of California.

Since birth, little Vanessa has lived with the only mother she knows - Stacey Doss - in Southern California. Baby Vanessa has been safe and happy and has an extended family of loving grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins with the Doss family. Stacey is being challenged by the birth father, who is African-American; Toddler Vanessa is bi-racial . While Stacey is Caucasian, her extended family includes bi-racial children and marriages . The big question is why does the birth father want to uproot Vanessa from her loving home with Stacy? What are his motives?
“I ask all decent people from both California and Ohio to help me in this cause, not only to ensure Vanessa stays permanently with the only loving family she has ever known, but to bring situations like this to the attention of the public for all adoptive parents who are fighting a fight like this,” said Stacey. “I'm frightened for my daughter and have cried endlessly at the thought of her being taken away from me and placed with complete strangers. How would you feel? In this instance the law has lost its common sense and regard for human decency . . . children are not a commodity that you put in a warehouse until a decision is made as to where to place them!” As you can tell, Stacy is distraught and at her wits end with trying to fight this.

Stacey has said, “Even though this case has been gut wrenching, the decision to adopt Vanessa is still the best decision I ever made.” Stacy plans to commit the rest of her life to adoption reform, making it easier, faster and more affordable so that no one suffers needlessly the way she and her daughter have.

Regardless of where you fall on the question of whether an adoptive mom should trump a biological parent – how about considering the best interest of the child? After all, in family court cases that's the exact standard that we use to determine the custody orders of natural parents when there is a divorce. In this case, it's not even a close call. The best interest of this child is with Stacey Doss.

So, if we can all see it, how come Benjamin Mills, Jr. doesn’t? Why wouldn’t he want to do what was in the best interest of the child? While I can only speculate, it seems to me that the cycle of violence is continuing. This a person who has been convicted for domestic abuse. An integral part of the domestic-violence cycle is power and control. And what better way for Benjamin Mills to jack bio-mom around than keeping her from doing what she wanted? So, while the tug-of-war appears to be between Stacey Doss (adoptive mom) and bio-dad, in my opinion it's really bio-dad's desire to gain power and control over his favorite victim, bio-mom.

For more information, read "The Battle For Vanessa" and the most recent update. Check back tomorrow for my second post, this one on a self-confessed mafia hit-man who got a get out of jail free card.

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Betty Broderick, Convicted Double Murderer, Eligible for Parole

UPDATE: Elisabeth "Betty" Broderick has been denied parole for her conviction of fatally shooting her husband and his new wife. During the Jan. 21 hearing, which was heard two months earlier than originally scheduled, Broderick told the California parole board, "I allowed the voices in my head to completely take over. I took the lives of two wonderful people who were loved by many." After board members asked for details of the shooting in which Broderick shot the couple using a .38 caliber handgun, she told them, "Linda [the new wife] came at me and the gun went off." After the no-parole ruling, Richard Sachs, a San Diego prosecutor, told CNN that Broderick showed no remorse. The former socialite won't be eligible for parole again for another 15 years.

by Cathy Scott

It’s a new year and a new opportunity for La Jolla socialite Betty Broderick, who in 1989 murdered her ex-husband and his new wife by creeping into the couple’s bedroom before dawn and shooting them as they lay sleeping. Incarcerated since 1991, Betty is eligible for parole this March -- the first time since her second-degree murder conviction and sentence of 32 years to life in a California prison.

In March 1993, I wrote an op-ed piece about the case for the San Diego Union-Tribune. The column, below, is still relevant today:

A final chapter in the Broderick case

March 17, 1993

The never-ending saga of former La Jolla socialite Elisabeth "Betty" Broderick has again surfaced, but this time it's her children who are having the last word. And it is about time.

Three of the four Broderick children are taking their mother to court (Betty was served papers last week in prison). This is the same woman who murdered their father, garnering national attention and, at times, public sympathy after sneaking into her former husband's Marston Hills home and fatally shooting him and his wife in their bedroom. The nation watched the sickening tale unfold on television with Court TV's cable coverage of the trial, two made-for-TV movies, Oprah Winfrey interviews of two of the Broderick children and, on another occasion, Betty, not to mention newspaper accounts of the case. During Oprah's interview last November with Betty Broderick, the divorcée continued to weave the histrionic tale and sob story of a woman scorned. But this time the public knew better.

After all, with the advent of Court TV [now Tru TV], we were able to view her courtroom outbursts firsthand as the second trial aired in its entirety. Meanwhile, all has been quiet on the prison front where Broderick has been incarcerated since her murder conviction in 1991.

But now it's time for the Broderick children to have their day in court. After watching the film The Prince of Tides, I drew some obvious parallels between the fictional Wingo clan and the tragically real Broderick family.

In this motion picture about Tom Wingo and his twin sister trying to deal as adults with the effects of their highly dysfunctional childhoods, actor Nick Nolte says, "I don't know when my parents began their war against each other. But I do know the only prisoners they took were their children." The Broderick children, too, were sadly taken hostage by their parents' hatred for each other and the loathing their mother nurtured over the years for their father.

Besides the two shooting victims, attorney Dan Broderick and Linda Kolkena Broderick, the Broderick children have been horribly victimized. And like the Wingo children, they were dealt a dirty hand to sort out. At the end of The Prince of Tides, Nolte's character says, "I've learned to love my parents and all their hysterical flaws, and that there is no crime too bad that a family can't forgive."

There is, however, a crime the Broderick children can't ever forget, let alone forgive, and that's the cold-blooded murder of their father at the hands of their mother. Kim, the oldest of the Broderick children, who testified against her mother during the second trial, said it best when she told Oprah, "We've been gypped out of a nice life." Betty Broderick, in her most recent interview with Oprah, welled up with tears at the mere mention of her offspring, but shed no tears for Dan, and spoke of him in the present tense.

She referred to her children -- Kim, Lee, Dan and Rhett -- three of whom are grown, by their childhood nicknames of "Lee-Lee" and "Danny."

It's obvious that Broderick still won't let the memories of her self-described once "perfect life" die. Although Broderick seems to believe she is the sole victim in this tragic scenario, her children must live with the loss of their father and stepmother, and deal, at least on a minimal level, with their mother whose selfishness and blind greed forever took him away from them. But now the tables have turned, and Broderick is at her children's mercy. It seems only fitting that her ultimate punishment is at the hands of her offspring who, as she confessed to Oprah, hadn't once visited her in prison.

The reason, she explained, was that it's "a long, dangerous drive" to the Central Women's Facility in Chowchilla where she is serving a 32-year sentence. Despite the title of the CBS movie, "Her Final Fury: Betty Broderick, The Last Chapter," the last chapter in this sad saga appears to be the Broderick children's civil suit.

They will have the last word. Three of her four children (Kim, Dan and Rhett) are asking for more than $20 million dollars each in damages in a wrongful death suit against her. Broderick's attorney, Jack Earley, has stated that Broderick (who quitclaimed her La Jolla condo to her boyfriend) has no assets.

But with her penchant for publicity, she no doubt has a book or two in the making. Deputy District Attorney Kerry Wells, who successfully prosecuted Broderick, couldn't have said it better when she was quoted in the Nov. 2, 1992, issue of People magazine as saying, "I've had my fill of Elisabeth Broderick.

“She was not a battered woman.

“She was getting $16,000 a month alimony.

“She had a million-dollar La Jolla house, a car, a boyfriend.

“I see abused women every day with broken bones and smashed faces.

“Give me a break."

Amen.

Photos courtesy of The Associated Press.

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