5. Monday. Michele O’Leary. The witness tampering switch judge. Adler Vs Broulidakis. April 2015.

admin / November 26, 2018 / Leave a comment / Letters to Byron

This is the original Letter to Byron page from when it was published Live. All letters from the live blog are migrated to a book along with most of the pictures.

The entire content of Letters to Byron is a book available in Paperback or Kindle.

Selfie, 2010

My beautiful Byron,
Its Monday and I have two hours ahead to write to you and choose a few pictures I am so pleased to have this time to share with you even if it isn’t what we would have chosen, it’s certainly more than family court have allowed us. So let’s be grateful for that much.
At least I can write to you every week in a way that you will definitely be able to read one day. Unlike the letters I was sending through the post, that we now know were not getting to you. This then is our agreed visitation time although I don’t expect you to be able to reply at this time.

This past weekend was great for my work. As far as I am able to work since the accident in June, I am always keeping busy with writing and swimming and physical therapy stuff, trying to get my back better. I have started a new album of my guitar music which is always good for me. Making guitar strings resonate in tune. Harmonious resonance. Even the words sound cool.

I started my morning today with emails and I saw that I sold three photo’s on Getty Images. (I sell pictures that I have taken, through the internet.) The company that sell my pictures pay me some money for their licensed use. That is for example like – a picture of an elephant – and a newspaper wants to use it? They see my elephant picture on the gallery of Getty Images and they want to put it in a story about elephants. But I own the picture? They buy the right to print my picture in their story, pay a sum of money to download it and then Getty Images pays me some money (my royalty) for that usage.

Getting some money from selling photos is one good way to replace my loss of income from other sectors since I lost my main income source, my rental properties that Michele O’Leary gave to Charlotte Adler.

Do you know, two years ago, I still had income from 7b. One of my Riverbank flats, where my tenants who you might remember, Adam and Ellie, were good friends of mine as well as really good tenants. Paying rent every month and treating it like their home because, of course, it was their home.

It was pretty horrible to have to tell them they had to leave because Michele O’Leary ruled that my home and my rental properties had to be Force sold so that Adler and her lawyer could have the money.   That decision meant I had nowhere to live. That was not very nice and created what family law call ‘animosity’ between the thieves and myself.

I bought that flat, 7B, in 1986, with Johns mum, Catherine. And when I bought the next flat, 7C five years later, I became a landlord. I have been renting properties since 1991.

Can you imagine how long a period of time that is?  I liked being a landlord. All my 3 flats were super nice, but 7B had the best space, and the best view. It always attracted super nice tenants. It is described as a ‘Luxurious riverside property with panoramic views over the Thames and Hampton Court Palace’. I spent a lot of money making it super nice. And I was always careful to only allow nice people to stay there. I worked very hard after I moved there to pay off the mortgage completely. So I owned 7B with no mortgage. And it was worth a good amount of money. When it was valued in 2004, it was then £700,000.

I had two other flats, and in one of those, 7C, I housed (free for two years) a confused young lawyer in 2003 who couldn’t pay her bills and had a student loan still charging her even though she was 29. How nice for her to find someone like me to help her out of debt and give her a nice place to live in for free so she could rent out her flat and enjoy some passive income at the same time. For me it is always nice to be able to help people who need help.

I have been lucky enough to be able to house people for little or no money because I owned quite a lot, and I felt grateful for the opportunity to help people who needed help.   When I met Adler I was able to help her advance her lifestyle in many ways, including with free housing, great career guidance and loans that never were repaid. I enjoyed being a generous landlord.

Perhaps I should have reminded myself then that ‘a good turn seldom goes unpunished’. Although who knew this one would turn into a bad egg. I had previously housed seven girlfriends in the 22 years I was a landlord there before I met Adler in 2003.

Since I got divorced from Johns mother in 1991. I had at least seven girlfriends live with me before Adler.  I counted; seven lovely girls all lived for awhile with me in my lovely home and guess what?  Not one of those girls left and tried to steal my house.  They all had a great time there and they are all (most) still friends with me to this day. In fact some read ‘Letters to Byron‘ and write to me with their thoughts about Adler. About parenting. And family court. And lawyers.   Funny how it is possible for many people to separate in a relationship without starting a blackmail war. It is not normal to lie and steal in family court, but if you are going to lie and steal, family court is definitely the easiest place to go. Of course because I lived with a member of family law and saw the day to day operation from the inside of family law I am familiar with how family court works.

Two years ago, in 2016, Amlot/Adler and O’Leary judged that I no longer owned my home. Adler said it was hers and the judge agreed. Then she ruled I had to get rid of my tenants and gave Adler the right to force sell my home and my rental property. Based on a ridiculous lie. One so unlikely it doesn’t make sense even to an idiot. One member of family law, O’Leary, gave my home to another member of family law in a process that is best described as larceny.

A family court judge awarded an horrendous amount against one parent, knowing it was going to fuel animosity between parents and knowing that this animosity is harmful to children’s rights to see both parents.
There is a Solicitors regulation authority and they publish an ethical code. It is clear that members should not foment animosity between parents because it is clear that when parents fight, children are affected. But I guess O’Leary and Adler didn’t know about the animosity rule in family law.
In what is called ‘adding insult to injury’, as well as making a bad thing considerably worse, O’Leary awarded costs in her court (which was not her court at the start of the day, she was a last-minute switch judge) against me.  Awarding my home and rental properties to Adler, with costs (her legal costs with Amlot), attracting an 8% interest charge until payment. Costs that were far above £100,000. Like £150,000. That is a lot of debt – adding up at 8%.   Awarding costs by a family judge is in itself uncommonly out of line with family law guidance. After all, is it not important to minimize the animosity between parents in the child’s best interests? As you can probably imagine, I am pretty certain that making me pay Amlot’s costs for abusing you and charging me 8% interest for not paying him was not ever going to be in your best interests or mine. But O’Leary thought so. Obviously. She made that judgment thinking. “Yes, that will be the best thing for Byron.”

In family court guidance to members it reads ‘Avoid creating animosity between parents.’ Litigation increases animosity between parents which is never good for the child.

But not in your case, when family law is involved. Litigation and the punitive judgment by O’Leary could not have done a better job of creating animosity.

Why would any members of family law, especially judges, take a child-centric view in family court, avoiding animosity, when they make much more money out of litigation – fighting in court. That’s where the most money is.

It makes good business sense. Family law is a very profitable business. A multi billion pound a year business. It makes sense only if you don’t care about the child whose life is being affected.

Here’s a summary of Michele O’Leary’s idea of minimizing the animosity between separating parents. In this case your own mother and father.
Michele awarded a property that I bought in 1986, that was in my name, that I had paid the mortgage of on, that I had left to John in my will because he was born there, to a girlfriend. Awarded to a girlfriend who was also the 8th girl to spend time with me in my home. Someone who was 14 years old when I became the owner. Someone who stayed in my home as a freeloading guest for two years paying nothing towards any costs and in fact borrowing many thousands of pounds from me that were never repaid.
When she left, in that horrible ambush on fathers-day, she lied to claim she had an interest in a property she had no interest in, at the same time as sending without prejudice letters demanding £100,000 from me in exchange for seeing my son.

I called the conditions of visitation back then blackmail, but it turns out it was actually really clever family law behavior, because it was sent ‘Without Prejudice” so my lawyer, Graham Coy from MUNDAYS in Cobham explained to me that “We cannot use this in court as it was sent without prejudice.”
That means because of those words he would not tell the judge about the blackmail. That however doesn’t mean this blackmail never happened. It did. She demanded £100,000 from me before she would let me see you.   She wouldn’t even give me the address where she moved you too. That was nasty. I couldn’t even write to you. And I received emails explaining “Until you pay me the £100,000, £10,000 for every year I was with you, you will not see Byron.“

The O’Leary hearing was what boxing people often call a ‘fix’. Decided before she even opened the courtroom door. Michele had made her judgment in a court hearing in which she was not even supposed to be the judge. That was a different Judge.

DDJ Burles was the Judge the Family Court service gave this hearing to. But for reasons of transparent corruption, Michele O’Leary appointed herself judge in the Adler claim that should not have been in family court in the first place. And her very first decision was to cancel the witnesses I had waiting to give evidence to discredit the lies being presented. Another way of describing it is, she obstructed the witnesses.

In addition to believing that Adler now owned my properties, seized by the O’Leary judgment, she also awarded Adler ‘sole conduct of sale‘. So – sole conduct of sale?

What’s that? And what other sensible aspects did this judge include in her judgment?

As if the theft of the property and the award of legal fees in this process with 8% interest is not clear enough, by O’Leary’s judgment, I am not allowed to set foot in my own flat.   That is why when I came to visit you (18 times in two years) we stayed at the Four Seasons in Hampshire and not in my lovely Riverbank flat. It was nice hanging with Oliver the dog, almost like home, and I reviewed that Hotel many times for being a fantastic home from home for our time together there, but lets face it, we would have preferred staying in my home, which was also your home.   7B was vacant and furnished and would have been an ideal place for me to travel to meet with you in England. But O Leary put into her judgement that “He shall not enter 7b.“

Meanwhile, the other flat of mine that appears in O’Leary’s award, 7A, has a mortgage. A huge mortgage. And it is flooded. Until it is repaired it will not be worth the mortgage it owes. When I pointed out that it was flood damaged and not repaired as Adler assured the court it was, I was called a liar and told that the flood damage had been repaired. But it had not. The liar in this story was not me. But there is a big liar in this story and that lie has cost a great deal of money and caused a great deal of animosity that has affected your opportunity to see me.

That was about 2 years back. No more income and plenty of mortgage to pay plus the maintenance on my building. Buildings cost money to maintain. Especially when they are empty for years. Things would fall down, as they do in empty houses, and especially flood damaged houses.
The judgment was that the house had to be sold – but the house could not be sold – because it was flooded.

And still I was required to keep paying the mortgage and maintenance costs that ended up being so much money – I can compare it to the cost of your entire education in private school.   Can you imagine what kind of thinking goes into making court order like that? Enough of a punishment financially to ensure many years of animosity. What happened next became the longest running stale listing on Rightmove. Added 17 September 2017.
Adler/Amlot and O’Leary allocated a sales agent called Savils. And off they went – selling my properties. I was not involved in the process because, obviously, O’Leary ordered that ‘Sole conduct of sale‘ be awarded to Adler. O’Leary set a minimum target price for the sales of 7a and 7b. Once they achieved that amount then I had no say in them selling. That target amount was low. 25% lower than I could have sold them for myself. Like a fire sale price. 

Here is a picture I snap-shotted off the interweb just now. It is a sales listing on Right Move, where UK properties are sold. It went up on 17 September 2017.
It is a ‘stale listing’. Savils have not sold either property, despite offering them at significantly less than the valuation O’Leary accepted, in over 14 Months of trying.

As you can imagine, Savils are not going to be receiving a good review from me.   I will explain why O’Leary’s judgment has increased animosity between the separating parents. That property, where you were born, belongs to me. In my sole name. I bought it in 1986. (With John’s mother.) I paid all the costs on it and eventually paid off the mortgage completely on 7b, the flat I used as a rental income property. And for housing people I liked and wanted to help. It was left in my will to your brother John. It is where he was born in 1989. It was also my first home. The first home I ever owned. Adler had and has no claim to that flat. To win it in family court, she and her lawyer Tom Amlot lied. After a switch of judge at the last minute, her family law friend O’Leary awarded her ownership based a bald faced lie for no reason other than to win money in family court, where shenanighans followed which did not support your right as a child of separating parents and did not respect the ethical code of the SRA.
The flats are empty and running up real costs including Council tax (About £600pm) Their value drops as they are left empty and aging in the dust of neglect. The Judge’s judgment only makes sense if your looking to create animosity. Otherwise, I don’t see how a family court judge gets away with it. And she is getting away with it because I have already informed the President of family law about her conduct and although he is a very smart and capable man he has not taken any action towards enforcing the checks and balances that protect a judiciary from this level of abuse.

Our correspondence though will be interesting for you one day. My letter to Sir James Munby. And his reply. (He is no longer in that job now. He retired.) If you add to the overall consequence of the O’Leary judgment the 8% interest that I have to pay on the six figure costs award that O’Leary gave Adler and Amlot and then ask if it legally appropriate to give the ‘sole conduct of sale‘ to someone who can profit more by not selling than by selling. In other words, O’Leary’s judgment enables and encourages Adler to not sell, and still get 8% interest on a six-figure sum that compounds with every passing month. At the same time costing me a ton of money and adding debt to my financial position to make sure I will not be able to afford any legal representation.

 That’s not going to increase animosity between the child parents at all? Not to the thinking of Michele O’Leary.   Meanwhile, let’s look at the value of just my flat 7B.   Savils, appointed by Adler following O’Leary’s judgement, offer it, unsuccessfully, at £550k.  During the court order process with a fresh coat of paint I could have sold 7B for £750,000. Its market value in 2016.

I had a buyer for the entire property. Freehold and three leases. But instead of agreeing to my proposal to sell as a ‘going concern’ Adler/Amlot and O’Leary prevented me selling it in the way best suited for maximum return. A freehold with three leaseholds as a rental-income going concern. Instead they ordered it be sold according to the O’Leary judgment. (Two leasehold flats giving away 50% as beneficial entitlement.) And they decided to sell 7b for £550,000. That is comfortably £300,000 less than I could have sold for ‘unflooded’. And, even at that low price, Savils have not sold it in 14 months. At the same time forcing me to end my income generating tenancies.  Which invited the question Why?  Either Savils are the worst sales agents on the planet, or shenanigans have occurred. After all Judge O’Leary agreed the value and set a date for a sale and set an amount. The date was 15 October 2015. You would expect, at that low price, £550.000, that lovely flat would have sold in two weeks. But it did not.  Why? Ask yourself, did the judge stop me having any say in the sale of my own home and award ‘sole conduct of sale‘ to Adler, who then has not sold it in three years.  Meanwhile the sale price went lower because by delaying the sale political events overtook the market value at the time I wanted to sell. That is Brexit happened and the market demand decreased. Making the prospect of sale worse.

Imagine, if, as seems likely, I do not received any money from the sale of my property by O’Leary’s court order, these three have stolen a £2 million+ asset from me and left me paying all the costs in upkeep while expecting to receive not one penny from their disposal method.

Along the way awarding me a half million-pound legal debt. (At 8% interest.) That is legal in British family law? It is if you try and see your son when the solicitor mother decides you cannot.  You can bet the animosity between your parents soared when I read that judgment by O’Leary. And that as I sit here writing now, having not had one penny from the sale of my property even despite the court ordering its immediate sale, while I continue paying all the costs with no rental income, I consider there may be a sprinkle of animosity spilling over between your parents specifically caused by the O’Leary judgment leading to this moment right now.   Me writing to you from California because I cannot even speak to you on Skype thanks to legal events which I say is simply criminal conduct. Lies made law by lying lawyers.  Although we do not speak thanks to you know why, I hope you know I did not give up on you and just disappear from your life because of anything you did.   Family law literally made me homeless in the UK, seizing my home in a way that means I haven’t received a penny to this day. Twice, Adler and Amlot prevented me knowing your address. So I could not even write to you. Once for a month in 2013, then for nine months in 2016. A total ten months where I asked “Provide me with Byron’s address’ and they did not.   She could do that legally you see because what was I to do about it?   It is not an offense in family law when it comes to you and me. I wrote to my lawyer, Mathew Spring about it. But, as with every other misconduct by Adler, the same outcome followed. They just did nothing and although by law she had to give me your address, she did not.  Imagine, owning three properties and having nowhere to live in the UK because a liar stole your homes? O’Leary then ruled I could not enter my flat, 7B, which was sitting vacant because I was forced to get rid of the tenants. So if I managed to pay enough to lawyers to arrange permission from Adler to see you for a few days I had to stay in Hotels with you.   That was not a good judgment made with the child’s best interests in mind. It is a criminal judgment that has costs consequences that run to many million.

Now I no longer come to England at all. I have nowhere to live and thanks to the judgment, no money for a hotel to house you in and most significantly, no way of arranging visitation with you because of Tom Amlot’s excellent letter writing. Which I am sure you will enjoy reading one day to see just why Adler, a family lawyer, chose to retain a lawyer like Amlot when she left with you.   He did a really good job of making sure animosity stays at a level that means I am not likely to keep running up legal bills trying to arrange visitation with you that is clearly obstructed for financial penalty.  Even if we put to one side the list of nonsense family law has placed between you seeing or even speaking with me that has stolen five years of your life with me that can never be valued in a damages claim against the culprits, what has happened makes the way forward quite clear.   Either family law is right – and I am a liar who is better off out of your life, and fined the proceeds of a lifetimes work in a completely legal process by a good judge – or this cabal of family law is a corrupt mess, who must answer to an accountability process.   And pay reparations. To both you and to me.  While all this was going on, and by all this, I mean the subject of the Amlot/Adler/O’Leary representation of the SRA ethical code, I had a very expensive and seemingly capable property lawyer from a top London firm negotiating the sale to make sure I at least received the 50% of my properties. Even at the lower price that Adler/Amlot offered them for sale through Savils. Making the best of a bad deal.   I couldn’t tell on her to the Law Society or report her to the Family Court abuse system. Because, as you will see later in the story of Amlot/Adler and O’Leary, they are above any law. I did report them to the head of Family law, Sir James Munby, so that’s about as far as I could take it. He said “Yes the O’Leary judgment is wrong.   You can Appeal it.” But no Appeal process exists, so that was a waste of £80,000. Nothing happened after that.  I still didn’t receive your address for post and although I had a journalist at a Newspaper, the Daily Mail, interested in running this part of the story. Their lawyer explained to me that “They will protect their right to secrecy with a vengeance, relying on a 58 year old word salad called Section 12 of The Administration of Justice960.”

I am painfully aware of the position you are in. You have already been used as leverage, first in a £100,000 blackmail for visitation claim, and then with every letter Amlot and Adler wrote pursuing their disgraceful dishonest claim for Beneficial Entitlement in family court, where Adler perjured herself repeatedly and O’Leary patted her on the back. O’Leary does not have your back. Backing off is the best course I could take, so I did. And in any event, I didn’t have any money to pay a family lawyer to enforce the law about concealing the child’s address from the parent specifically to cause the parent discomfort, after paying family law many hundreds of thousands of pounds in cold hard cash to see you for just one single visit in 2014, when you spent two weeks with us in California,. So I just waited hopefully and sure enough, after Nine months I received a letter with your address on it.   That was December 16, 2016, and from that very day I started the twice weekly ‘letters to Byron.‘ That became a real thing. Choosing photos and getting them in the post on a very specific calendar. Every Monday and every Thursday. So you would know, twice a week without fail, I was thinking of you.   Meanwhile Savils began selling my two properties. Posting 7B on Right Move on 15 September 2017. Today is 26 November, 2018. It’s not sold for a very good reason.  ‘Sole conduct of sale’ award from one family law member to another remains a flawed judgment on many levels.   Savils have not sold either of the two properties awarded to Amlot/Adler.    O’Leary’s judgment deems it in the child’s best interests that:  - I keep paying the mortgage and maintenance costs every month. (As I have done always. Adler never paid one penny towards either.)  - I cannot legally enter my own property, one I have owned since 1986. If I want to see you in England I have to pay a lawyer to negotiate it and then pay a Hotel for the visit while my home, the one I bought and paid for in full, is sitting empty. So – guess how that affected me being able to visit you in England?  - Adler/Amlot earn 8% interest on costs far into six figures, secured against a charge on my property. As long as the property doesn’t sell, and they get paid, the interest keeps accruing. 7a will not sell because it is flooded. While they say it is not. But it is. So it will not sell. So they are liars. But they get away with it.  - Eventually, something will happen and team O’Leary/Amlot and Adler will force a family law solution through in which I receive nothing excepting the value of the story about Amlot/Adler and O’Leary’s, property theft, child abusing blackmail and the necessary reforms to British family law.  - I continue to be denied all communication with you, even by telephone.

I will tell you what I think?  If there was no criminality happening here, first there would have been no win for Adler in the O’Leary hearing because it would never have happened. The claim of Beneficial entitlement is a nonsense.   Second, it would never have got to court with no evidence unless Adler/Amlot had ‘multiple witnesses’ to prove their claim without any evidence. They did promise that. The hearing went ahead. Then, exactly as I said at the time, they had no witnesses. O’Leary was not set down as judge. No doubt Judge Burles would have allowed the witnesses I had exactly as was set down by the Court Service. And noted that Adler had no witness. She lied about that. My witnesses were there and ready to show the lie by Amlot and Adler.

There is no doubt that in an honest judiciary that claim for ‘beneficial entitlement’ would have been thrown out. It only progressed beyond a preliminary hearing because Adler claimed she would ‘bring multiple witnesses’ to give the evidence that she did not have. Surprise surprise, at the actual hearing, she had not one witness. Obviously – because who would go to court for her to be witness to a lie?

But even accepting the O’Leary judgment and making the best of it, if I had been allowed to sell my property to the buyer I had in 2016, we would have moved on even despite my disgust at the judgment of Michele O’Leary.
I would still have had enough money, if the figures had been real, to clear over £600,000. Enough to start the legal application to have you with me. (All I had to do is play a deposit of £100,000 to take the matter forward with British Family law.)

It remains now, as it has been from the outset, my view that you would enjoy a far superior life experience and education with parents there for you all the time, with some ethical character to show, instead of your current reality; two members of family law with the ethical standards they represent.   I continue to believe the climate here in California and the opportunities for outdoor activities would represent a better choice for your education than the cold rainy gloom of New Malden. Even without factoring in the advantages of considering your choice in this matter, as you told me when we discussed who you wanted to live with, being considered.
Meanwhile, once the judgment prevented me from selling and discounted me from involvement in the sales process, the market kept trending down. And as that trend continues, the property gets older, day by passing day, and will cost more to make it shiny for sale at top dollar. 7a Riverbank remains flood damaged. That will never achieve the price O’Leary judged that it will.   While they delay for year after year, with the interest on the costs award ruling up at 8%, without rental income I am no longer able to pay the mortgage and associated costs of the property I won but that they switched into Adler’s name. If I default on that, because it’s all in my name, the debt is against me – not her. It is no secret that I have called them lying thieves for lying and thieving as they have done. When it’s true that people lie and steal then it is true that they wear that title, thieving liars, in an honest representation.

So, it’s almost two hours now, my beeper says ten minutes to wrap up today’s letter. Which is a little bit longer than usual. That is because I wanted this to be written down for you to read at some point when you are older.

Next up, I am thinking of writing to Savils. The agents who have failed to sell these premium riverside properties in what is approaching 18 Months. I am interested in why they run a Right Move advert for over one year without having the professionalism to realize that the listing needs to come down and something needs to be done.  It is counter-productive, if selling is your intention, to leave a stale listing up telling buyers “hey stick around – this is a distressed property. Hasn’t sold in over one year.” It has not sold because, obviously, it is flood damaged. O’Leary may have ruled that it is not flood damaged but as I say, she is lying and the fact the property is flood damaged is why I can safely call her liar for lying without fear of standing corrected. P’Leary lied. Repeatedly. A lying judge who’s lies are the reason I am writing now and not with you.

To date the lies in the Amlot/Adler and O’Leary’s action against me has cost me north of £3,000,000. Which leaves me with two thoughts.  I would have liked spending that money raising you and secondly;  O’Leary has no case to answer to the SRA, no accountability for either criminality or gross incompetence, or any monitoring body that that might exist to provide oversight on judgments precisely the same as O’Leary’s, because it is really good for children. Not abusive at all, to increase animosity between parents by awarding unpayable punitive costs against one who is not a child-abusing member of family law.

You couldn’t make up stuff like this. Yet it happened. And continues to happen every passing day while these participants continue their family law practice. I have kept a copy of all the documents in this case and hope one day there will be some interest in reading them.

Miss you,
 Love you, 
Daddy xxxxxxxxxxxx

The fifth letter, about Michele O’Leary, the switch judge who obstructed the witnesses set down for the hearing she was not set down for by the Court service. The full story of how this witness tampering judge impacted on Byron’s life as well as mine by breaking laws that would have anyone other than a family court judge jailed for a long time is in the book.
Letters to Byron available on Paperback or Kindle.