Some parents have had their children removed for yelling at them, allowing them to miss or be late to school or having a dirty home. ~Social worker Anthony Cavuoti

Anna Mae Case Update:
15-charge complaint against Judge Childers

Mr. and Mrs. He file an updated version of their 15-charge complaint against Judge Childers.

The original complaint was filed with U.S. Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Division and Tennessee Court of Judiciary in October 2004. At present, Judge Childers is under investigation for his judicial conduct in handling this case.

In his response to the complaint, Childers continued to lie and to distort facts, but he is having a hard time covering up his misdeeds. This time it will be difficult for Childers to get away with his judicial misconduct.

Hon. Robert L. Childers
Circuit Court, Division IX
140 Adams Ave., Room 212
Memphis, TN 38103
Phone: (901) 545-4022
Fax: (901) 545-5659

In The Chancery Court of Tennessee
for the Thirtieth Judicial District at Memphis

No. CH-01-1302-3

IN RE ADOPTION OF:
AMH, a Minor,

JERRY L. BAKER and wife,
LOUISE K. BAKER,

Petitioners,

v.

SHAOQIANG (JACK) HE and wife,
CASEY LUO HE

Respondents

Complaint against Judge Robert Childers:
Judicial Misconduct and Violations of Civil Rights

On May 12, 2004, Judge Robert Childers, in the Circuit Court of Shelby County, Tennessee, delivered his verdict on the Anna Mae (AMH) adoption case. Childers's decision to terminate our parental rights to our five-year-old daughter, Anna Mae He, was intended to brutally end a fight that should have never taken place. We have never been declared unfit parents by any court. For four years, we have fought tenaciously to get our daughter back from the family who still has her to this day, the Bakers.

By 4:45 P.M. on that May afternoon, Childers had completed his deliberations and wasted no time releasing electronically his 72-page opinion (which was sealed by court order) to a wide variety of news media, before we had received a signed copy of his ruling. In fact, so mishandled was the dissemination of this ruling that our two attorneys, Mr. Siegel and Mr. Gordon, eventually had to access the opinion via a website (We never received the ruling either by email or by mail).

Childers's ruling-intended to be destructive, humiliating, and insulting to the He family-spread all over the internet and the news media like a plague. As we examine the nuts and bolts of this ruling, we were shocked by the extreme bias, by the prejudice, by the obvious prejudgment, by the deliberate omission of crucial evidence, by the blatant lies, by the distortion of facts, and by the undisguised hate so explicitly and liberally displayed in Childers's opinion. Legal experts and media pundits across the country were equally appalled by his ruling and by the harsh, condemning tone he chose to adopt in issuing it. Steven Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern University, commented that Childers "draws every possible adverse inference against the Hes, many of them with seemingly no support at all." Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, pointed out that Childers "tries to divert our attention by spewing venom at the Hes."

D.J. Alissandratos Withdraws

In November 2003, when this adoption case was re-assigned to Judge Childers, Shelby County Chancery Court Judge D. J. Alissandratos had already dragged it out well beyond the two-year limit within which the law requires to conclude such matters. All the while, our child remained in the possession of the Bakers, and a "no-contact" court order was issued by Judge Alissandratos, barring us from having any contact with our child, directly or indirectly. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, the adage goes. We witnessed that first hand.

But after the former trial judge, D.J. Alissandratos, withdrew from the case under pressure of complaints against him, we were hoping for an impartial judge who would fix the myriad of problems caused by the hastily retreating Judge Alissandratos. So, when Judge Childers took over the case from the Chancery Court, we were excited, hopeful, and respectful of him. However, as Childers finally removed his mask and displayed his open malice, his ruling itself became the paper trail of a calculated attempt to violate our basic civil rights. This complaint will show with indisputable facts that Childers is a biased, prejudiced, dishonest, and hateful judge. More importantly, from a legal stance, we will prove that Childers violated the Tennessee code of judicial conduct and our civil rights guaranteed by state and U.S. Constitutions.

The case in which Childers engaged himself in judicial misconduct centers on the Bakers' petition to terminate the parental rights of Jack (Shaoqiang) He and his wife, Casey (Qin) Luo, in support of an involuntary adoption of their minor Child, AMH. Because the case had been dragged for four years with many twist and turns, it is necessary for us to provide some case background and a summary of the important events below.

In 1999, due to financial and legal hardships, the Hes signed over the temporary custody of their newborn daughter Anna Mae to the Baker family, who offered their assistance to the He family to help them tide over their difficult times. The Bakers assured the Hes that they needed the custody (testified to as limited duration of time) for a good-will purpose, i.e. to enroll the newborn baby into their family health insurance so that AMH could be medically protected. Several months later (November 1999), after the Hes got back on their feet and asked for their daughter to be returned, the Bakers announced that they had decided to adopt the child. The Bakers tried but were not able to get what they wanted in the Juvenile Court. The second judge in Juvenile Court, Harold W. Horne, at a June 6, 2001 hearing asked the following two questions of the Hes and the Bakers:

Is there any written adoption agreement between the Hes and the Bakers?
Is there any clear evidence that the Hes abused or abandoned their child?

When the answer was "no" to both questions, Judge Horne said in court:

"There is no way any court is going to allow you to adopt the child. I will tell you on the front end. The parents have a right to have their child back."

He Case Moved to Chancery Court

The Bakers promptly requested to have the hearing continued to June 22, 2001. Judge Horne granted this seemingly innocuous request. However, on June 20, 2001, two days before the pending hearing that seemed very likely to rule against them, the Bakers unexpectedly had the case moved from Juvenile Court to a higher court, Chancery Court.

The Bakers then sought to terminate the Hes' parental rights so that they might adopt the Hes' daughter. Chancellor D. J. Alissandratos was to hear the case. Quickly, attorney Larry Parrish joined the Bakers' legal team. As a former prosecutor, Parrish had worked intimately with Judge Alissandratos on a high-profile case, which was later overturned by Tennessee Supreme Court because Parrish was paid illegally by a private group.

Attorney Kimborough Mullins was the Guardian ad Litem in this case, appointed by Alissandratos in July 2001. The next month Dr. David Goldstein became the court-appointed psychologist and about six months later Linda Holmes, attorney ad Litem, was appointed by Alissandratos to represent Ms. Mullins. In so doing, Alissandratos unnecessarily prolonged and complicated this case while barring the Hes from any contact, not even indirect, with their daughter.

At the first hearing in Alissandratos's court (February 7, 2002), he issued the famous "No Contact Order", which was later testified by attorney Parrish to be an ex-parte order issued without an open hearing and without the presence of the Hes or their attorney. Right after the Hes' counsel Dennis Sossaman withdrew from the case on February 14 of 2002, attorney David Siegel took up the Hes' case on a pro bono basis. His immediate action was to challenge the myriad of unusually harsh orders issued by Alissandratos, such as the no-contact order, a command to post a $15,000 deposit to the court within one week, an order to pay for DNA and psychological test fees, and so forth. And finally, about a year later, Richard Gordon joined Siegel to represent Mrs. He.

This was the situation of the case when Judge Childers took it over after Alissandratos recused himself in November 2003, two-and-a-half years into the case, due to a charge filed by the He family jointly with the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. that called into question his favoritism toward the Bakers, his ex-parte deals and his delay to conclude the case within the 2-year limit set by the law. Seemingly mindful of that missed deadline, Judge Childers expedited hearing the case of whether or not to terminate the Hes' parental rights.

Such rights are fundamental rights protected by the U.S. and Tennessee Constitutions.

Termination of parental rights is considered a very cruel instrument of the law, reserved only for the worst parents. Termination of parental rights is practically synonymous with the death penalty, as it marks the death of the family union between parent and child. To terminate one's parental rights, the law requires a heightened burden of proof, strict legal guidelines, and clear and convincing evidence.

However, as we will show next, Childers's ruling to terminate our parental rights was based upon nothing but wholesale character assassinations, deliberate omission of crucial evidence, distortion of facts, and unfounded assumptions. All these actions committed by Childers are violations of the code of judicial conduct and our civil rights; we therefore have no choice but to file a complaint against Childers. In the rest of this 48-page complaint, we will substantiate each of the charges against Childers with convincing evidence and solid facts.

Table of Contents

Complaint against Judge Robert Childers:

Judicial Misconduct and Violations of Civil Rights

Charge No. 1: Childers violated normal confidentiality in an adoption case by releasing his entire opinion in an electronic format to the media

Charge No. 2: Childers did irreparable harm to Anna Mae by releasing his entire humiliating opinion to the media and public and his lack of professionalism damaged public confidence in the judicial system

Charge No. 3: Childers willfully released the electronic copy of his opinion on the Internet to vent his extreme personal hatred and malice

Charge No. 4: Childers showed extreme animosity and bias against Mrs. He from the very beginning of the case

Charge No. 5: Childers displayed a racial elitist attitude in his writing and failed to maintain even the pretense of justice

Charge No. 6: When quoting testimonies of the same people (like the Bakers), Childers chose only those words that favor the Bakers' motion for adoption and deliberately omitted other vital statements that contradicted his prejudgment about the case

Charge No. 7: Childers lied in his opinion when he stated that the Bakers did not inhibit, discourage, or otherwise interfere with any reasonable desire of the Hes to visit Anna Mae He, an important basis for his willful abandonment theory

Charge No. 8: Childers is biased in his interpretations of the January 28, 2001 incident, an important factor in his conclusion of willful abandonment

Charge No. 9: Childers is further shown to be biased by twisting and distorting facts in his conclusion that Mrs. He willfully failed to request visitation in her petition to get Anna Mae back

Charge No. 10: Robert Childers' conclusion that the Hes sought custody of AMH only to avoid INS deportation is a willful distortion of the facts

Charge No. 11: Childers masqueraded the Bakers' hearsay statements as the Hes' testimonies to deceive the public

Charge No. 12: Childers deliberately used falsehood to support his "best interest" argument

Charge No. 13: Childers' conclusion that "there is parental misconduct or inability to parent by the Hes" is unfounded and is an example of his malicious defamation against the Hes by arbitrarily made-up accusations

Charge No. 14: Childers' other "best-interest" conclusions are completely groundless, discriminatory, and full of narrow-minded chauvinism

Charge No. 15: Childers' conclusion on the origin of the "no-contact" order indicates a conspiracy to cover up the misconduct of the Court itself

References

Charge No. 1: Childers violated the confidentiality of an adoption case by releasing his entire opinion in an electronic file format to the media.

On May 12, 2004, before the Hes' attorneys even received the court's email or a signed copy of his ruling, Judge Childers had already eagerly submitted his entire 72-page verdict in electronic format to the media and various websites, such as www.wreg.com. The file was then spread all over the World Wide Web in a matter of hours.

This act of detailing the verdict to the media and to the general public, especially before informing the lawyers of his verdict, raises ethical questions about the judge. More crucially, doing so is a direct violation of court practices and state adoption laws, which clearly require all parties involved in an adoption case to protect the privacy of each set of parents for the best interests of the minor child, no matter which set of parents wins the case. In fact, during the entire course of the trial, Judge Childers himself repeatedly made it clear that all court records needed to remain sealed for the protection of the child and the two families involved.

Yet Childers's 72-page ruling contains very detailed private information about the two families, the Hes and the Bakers, and their four-year fight for this five-year-old Chinese girl. For example, his ruling includes such information as the Hes' and Bakers' birth dates, birthplaces, education histories, employment histories, pre-marital and marital histories, financial information, medical information, their respective social relations, the relations between the Bakers and the Hes, and Anna Mae's birth date, birthplace, and her medical history, etc.

This kind of information is extremely personal and sensitive; furthermore, it is clearly supposed to be confidential under the Tennessee adoption statute and must be kept confidential to protect the privacy of the child in question and to minimize any possible damage to that child and the parties involved.

TN code annotated 36-1-126.

Record kept under seal - Confidential records - Access to certain records - Preservation of records.

"Upon conclusion of all termination of parental rights proceedings which were filed in conjunction with an adoption proceeding; all adoption records, court reports, home studies, preliminary home studies, other reports or other documents or papers or other information concerning the placement or attempted placement of a person for adoption, or other information concerning the litigation of the adoption or attempted adoption of a person which information is in the office of the judge or clerk of the court where the adoption was filed or where the surrender or confirmation of parental consent or revocation of a surrender or parental consent was taken, or any such records, reports, or documents in the offices of a licensed child-placing agency, a licensed clinical social worker, or in the county, regional or state offices of the department of health, or in the county, district, and state offices of the department of children's services, shall be placed and remain under seal, except as provided herein or in § 36-1-118(e)(4), or in title 68, and shall be confidential and shall be disclosed only as provided in this part."

There is no provision in the code that allows a judge to violate this law, nor is there a provision to exclude court opinions from the broad scope of information covered by this law.

(Furthermore, on May 14, 2004, only two days after his final ruling, Judge Childers took the initiative to issue a well-prepared public speech to news media, trying to justify his decision. Childers encouraged the public to read his opinion off the Internet. His public statement, intending to adversely affect the outcome of our impending appeal, was quickly and widely broadcast. (See Charge No. 5 below.)

The Tennessee Code of Judicial Conduct Section 3B(9) states:

"(9) A judge shall not, while a proceeding is pending or impending in any court, make any public comment that might reasonably be expected to affect its outcome or impair its fairness or make any nonpublic comment that might substantially interfere with a fair trial or hearing. The judge shall require* similar abstention on the part of court personnel* subject to the judge's direction and control.

This Section does not prohibit judges from making public statements in the course of their official duties or from explaining for public information the procedures of the court. This Section does not apply to proceedings in which the judge is a litigant in a personal capacity.

Commentary - the requirement that judges abstain from public comment regarding a pending or impending proceeding continues during any appellate process and until final disposition."

There was absolutely no need for Childers to publish the entire opinion; he could have released just the final paragraphs of his decision for public record. But for questionable motives that we will uncover in our subsequent charges, Childers intentionally chose to publish the entire 72-page opinion all over the media and on the internet, again in direct violation of state laws and the judicial code of conduct.

Charge No. 2: Childers did irreparable harm to Anna Mae and the public faith in the system by releasing his entire humiliating opinion to the media via the internet

The Court repeatedly told all parties of interest that the law to protect the confidentiality of the records and court reports of an adoption case is designed to protect the privacy and interest of the child in question and families involved, especially in such a highly publicized and bitterly contested adoption case that hinged on the termination of parental rights. Furthermore, the privacy of these papers serves to ensure that the child in dispute can grow up with less probability of psychological and emotional trauma regardless of the outcome. Unfortunately, what Childers did was in direct opposition to what he demanded in court. Childers's opinion is full of what he himself considered "confidential" information. Worse, Childers's opinion on Anna Mae's birth parents is savagely negative and demeaning as he portrays the Chinese couple as pathological cheats and frauds.

It seems that Childers fervently exhausted all the derogatory or negative words in his vocabulary repertoire to blast Anna Mae's birth parents. His verbal assault against the Hes included words such as "fraud," "deceitfulness," "without remorse, repentance or conscience," "dishonest," "unstable," 'unfit," "calculating," "theatrical," "self-interest," "manipulative," "hysterics," "perjury," "lie," "questionable character," "ends-justify-means-philosophy," "filthy," "foul smell," "violate societal rules," "irrational and bizarre," "irrational and erratic," "falsely accusing persons," "questionable personality," "manipulative publicity," "parental misconduct or inability to parent," "neglect," "inattentiveness," "unhealthy and unsafe," "emotional instability," and many others.

Dr. Dongxiao Yue, author of the 15-point public response to Childers's ruling, commented that in the entire US judicial history, Judge Childers's ruling is probably unmatched in emotional and verbal intensity. The abusive words Childers used against the Hes were stronger than those selected to describe even a criminal sentenced to death penalty.

After finishing and publishing his abnormally lengthy opinion, Childers appeared complacent in his unmatchable achievement (as proven by his posture on television). But was he really confident about it? It seems he was not, because only two days after his ruling, i.e. May 14, 2004, Childers made the unusual move of trying to justify his decision before the news media in some long statements from the bench:

...my reason for publishing the detailed opinion is to inspire public confidence in our judicial system by making it as transparent as possible... My decision was rendered based on facts, evidence, statute and case laws, without bias, prejudice, or sympathy...

Childers's claim that his violation of the privacy requirements was for the purpose of inspiring public confidence in the system seemed laughable. A closer study of his opinion showed that most of Childers's "findings" were simply character assassination of the Chinese couple and the whole of the document is not much more than an exhibit of emotional verbal abuse. Judge Childers was not even able to maintain the appearance of justice. Naturally, his opinion quickly drew harsh criticism from the public. One week after his ruling, an influential local newspaper, Commercial Appeal, published three articles in one day, all containing pungent words against the ruling. Clearly, Childers's ruling and the way he publicized it has damaged public confidence in the judicial system.

On the rare occasions that his accusations happen to contain filtered evidence, a rational and impartial judge in this type of case would have kept said accusations confidential, not only for the consideration of the adults' privacy, but also for the best interest of the minor child Anna Mae. It's likely that when Anna Mae grows up, she will stumble upon such hateful language on the Web; though Judge Childers decreed from his bench that parental rights were hereby terminated, the biological connection between Anna Mae and her birth parents cannot be severed by a piece of paper. Yet the probability that Anna Mae could be emotionally damaged to learn that her biological parents were labeled cheats and frauds all over the world via the internet will likely prove extremely hurtful. Childers is fully aware of this possible consequence - during the course of the ten-day trial, he specifically heard detailed testimony from cultural, behavioral, and psychological experts about the bond, reunification, and root-seeking that occurs between adopted children and their birth parents, especially among those of interracial or intercultural upbringing.

Despite Childers's repeated admonition in court that everyone involved must be sensitive to the long-term protection of the child in question, he's now created a circumstance whereby someday Anna Mae is likely to find out simply by entering her own name in an internet search engine that this supposedly honorable Tennessee judge concluded by "clear and convincing" evidence that her birth parents were the lowest category of human beings in the world. She will be hurt beyond words. She will think herself a victim of neglect or abuse. And even if she errs on the side of assuming she was an unwanted Chinese girl and ultimately shows no interest in seeking her birth parents who abandoned her as educated by the Bakers and as concluded in Judge Childers's opinion, she is still likely to have classmates and friends of curious mind who may perform such a simple search, violating her privacy regardless of her wishes. Rather than having proved that Anna Mae's birth parents are guilty of being neglectful of and insensitive to child's best interest, Judge Childers's words and deeds caused irreparable and irreversible damage to Anna Mae's self-esteem.

Childers labeled Anna Mae's mother as a woman marked by "a pattern of instability, deceitfulness and dishonesty" and ignored her successful care of her other children in the four-year battle to defend her parental rights. In the eyes of some closed-minded people, her greatest flaw is that she is being Chinese and being unable to communicate effectively in English.

When he repeatedly states in his opinion that we willfully abandoned Anna Mae, an allegedly unwanted child "rescued" by the Bakers and prevented from returning to a perceived life of poverty and gender discrimination in China, Childers effectively risks pun