Petition updateInnocent Family ProjectDo Santa Clara Family Law Judges Hate Immigrant Litigants?
Jane and John Q. PublicLos Gatos, CA, United States
Dec 3, 2015
There is more than an appearance that Santa Clara County judges may be too biased toward immigrant groups to rule fairly in modern family law cases. This is a real problem for areas like San Jose, California, that has one of the highest immigrant populations in the country. A group has formed that is especially critical of the Sunnyvale Courthouse in Santa Clara County. Judges like Mary Ann Grilli and James Towery appear to have built a strong record of acting with such bias against non-native English speakers. It is embarrassing for America. For example, over the past 8 years Judge Grilli has demonstrated her displeasure with a Chinese immigrant woman who has poor English skills and has clearly has had difficulty navigating a complex divorce case without funds to pay a lawyer , as she was pitted against her former white spouse who is rich enough to pay $3,000,000 for his lawyer. As the mother stood without legal representation or translation services, Judge Grilli and Towery appeared to tag team the mother with impatience, ignoring her right to be heard and ultimately silencing her with a vexatious litigant status, in an effort to keep her from her children and from investigating fraud the former husband imposed during a divorce proceeding where he hid over $1,000,000. Grilli shows exceptional bias toward Russian and Mexican immigrants, rarely allowing them to be heard and whisking them off to social services when both parties are self-represented , burdening our system further and denying immigrants American justice. parties who wait months for a hearing are often sent away without an order and never being able to produce evidence. Can Judge Grilli even look at evidence if the person presenting it is self- represented , or has an accent? When an immigrant is self- represented, Court Watchers observe Grilli is toxic if there is a lawyer on the other side, showing she is willing to give a represented white sexual abuser custody before she awards custody to an immigrant litigant with no history of abuse. Santa Clara County has done this before, resulting in the rapes and even deaths of children trapped in the family court system. Grilli and Towery's bias against immigrants is more significant even than their gender bias. Stay at home immigrant fathers do not fair well in the court where property, support and custody are at issue when the wife is white and represented. If the Dad has an accent, or dark skin, the Dad won't get a fair hearing in a divorce case before Grilli or Towery either, we can't find one. Asians don't fair much better. Court watchers have observed Grilli ignore domestic abuse and sex trafficking, real issues for San Jose's immigrant populations. In one case Grilli was observed telling one woman who described her husbands' financial and sex trafficking behavior, that financial abuse is not abuse, as the woman and her four children were then sent back to live under the father's reign of terror and control without a support order. In another case, a Russian mother who clearly showed classic signs of sex abuse and human trafficking had her child taken from her by Judge Grilli, for no reason other than Grilli appeared impatient with the mother's Russian accent and the father had a white lawyer. Judge Grilli, a woman herself, appears to be especially biased against self-represented immigrant women, denying them a chance to speak and never considering women financially equal to a men, and never considering men with accents equal to their former white spouses, as the law requires.
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