The FCLU is profoundly concerned about NY Judge Robert Onofry and his go-to GAL/Attorney for The Child, Kelli O'Brien. This video records how O'Brien sought to defend Onofry in front of the Second Department Appellate Division, at a hearing on June 14, 2021. This includes mis-reporting what her child-client told her; mis-stating the law; and seeking to besmirch the FCLU for providing support and information to Mr Brandel, a disabled former postal worker whom O'Brien has relentlessly sought to erase from his daughter's life. As further background to Onofry, whose orders are being appealed in this video, he runs a charming upstate court-house like his vicious private fiefdom, Onofry shamelessly rewards friends and colleagues at the expense of due process. 2019 should have been his last year desecrating NY’s judiciary, since he has passed the legal age of retirement; but this is a judge who lives above and beyond the Law. In a two-year-long investigation by the FCLU, evidence has been gathered to show Onofry has engaged in the following reckless and wanton misconduct: violation of the American Disabilities Act; and numerous violations of NY State judicial canons 100.2 (A), 100.3 (B)(3), and 100.3(B)(6). Other criminal misconduct under the penal code and under federal criminal and civil USC statutes include: endangerment of the welfare of a child; illegal, unlawful destructive actions; impropriety and the appearance of impropriety; unfit behavior in bullying of journalists, litigants, pro se litigants, witnesses and attorneys; improper relations with attorneys on a pending case; unlawful and punitive orders for non-payment of an attorney’s fees, using the threat of parenting time; ex parte communications with his favored attorneys; and fraud by and upon the court. The FCLU’s 2018-2019 investigation of Onofry centered on one case – Cecilia Brandel vs William Brandel – which we followed closely, gathering the entire case file, attending court hearings, and speaking to all parties. This study revealed how Onofry traffics lucrative ‘attorney-for-the-child’ business to colleagues like Kelli O’Brien, for whom he acts as a debt collector. Onofry favors certain forensic evaluators like Debra Klinger Rosenfeld, whom he appoints to conduct $20,000-and-up “reports”. He jokes around with, and rules in favor of, family-friend attorneys like Kiel Van Horn, the son of another family court judge, Victoria Campbell. Judges Onofry and Campbell were both city court judges in Port Jervis. As well as being friends with Judge Onofry, Judge Campbell receives campaign financing from the Onofry family, and Campbell returns the favor to Onofry. Judge Campbell served as the Town of Deerpark’s attorney for the ethics committee while Onofry’s law firm was representing that same town—all while the current DA for Orange County served as Councilman there. A very cosy set-up indeed and one which is the very definition of a conflict of interests: “An appearance of impropriety occurs when reasonable minds, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances disclosed by a reasonable inquiry, would conclude that the judge's honesty, integrity, impartiality, temperament, or fitness to serve as a judge is impaired.” On the bench, Onofry’s rulings routinely violate state and constitutional law. Custody and divorce trials drag on for years. The Brandel v Brandel case came to the court in January 2015. Onofry shut down a grossly inadequate trial on July 9, 2018, but, a year later, has still not issued a final judgment. This means this case has been churning along for nearly five years. Onofry tries to deny pro se litigants access to key evidence like the forensic report, until those litigants threaten Appellate Division action, at which point he sometimes relents. As possibly his most egregious act of due-process violation, he refused to allow William Brandel to call the plaintiff-mother as his witness. He also refused Mr Brandel’s application to call five other witnesses to the stand, and cut off his own defense testimony before he had completed it. When Mr Brandel objected, Onofry told him: “You can leave this court room on your own, or in handcuffs.” Onofry violated the American Disabilities Act when he refused to provide basic accommodations to Mr Brandel, a disabled former postal worker, including refusing his request to have an assistant sitting next to him to help with his papers. He went even further, ridiculing his disability, as shown in this excerpt from the official transcript: JUDGE ONOFRY: Now, Mr Brandel is it your position that because of a disability which you have not identified yet, that you are capable of having primary custody of your daughter, but you are incapable of organizing papers; is that what I am to understand? When a litigant calls him out for abuses, Onofry retaliates by taking the child away from the “impudent parent”. Any information you have on Onofry or O'Brien please email to info@fclu.org

WATCH: Unfit to Sit: Judge Robert Onofry and GAL Kelli O'Brien