(JNi.media) Oakland County, Michigan, Family Court Judge Lisa Gorcyca on Friday lifted her contempt of court ruling which landed three children of Israeli parents in juvenile detention for refusing to have lunch with their estranged father.
The children, ages 14, 10 and 9, were in danger of spending the rest of the summer in the Children’s Village detention center, where they had been locked up for several weeks, or, as a worst case scenario, stay there until they turned 18.
Judge Gorcyca said in court on Friday that “the count finds that is in the children’s best interests to grant the father’s and the guardian ad litem’s motion to allow the children to attend summer camp.”
The children will attend a Jewish summer camp for the next two weeks, but it is not clear what will be their fate afterwards, since their parents are still locked in a custody battle.
The children’s father lives in Israel.
On June 24, Judge Gorcyca sentenced the children to detention because they had refused her order to let their father become a part of their lives. The children’s parents divorced in 2009. The judge faulted the mother, Maya Tsimchoni, for turning the three children against their father.
The eldest child told the Judge, “I do apologize if I didn’t understand the rules, but I do not apologize for not talking to [my father] because I have a reason for that and that’s because he’s violent and I saw him hit my mom and I’m not going to talk to him.”
According to the Daily Tribune, Gorcyca called the boy a “defiant, contemptuous young man.”
“I ordered you to talk to your father,” she continued, “You chose not to talk to your father. You defied a direct court order. It’s direct contempt so I’m finding you guilty of civil contempt.”
The boy cried: “But he was the one that did something wrong. I thought there were rules .. for not hitting someone.”
“You’re supposed to have a high IQ, which I’m doubting right now because of the way you act,” the judge said. Then she went on a full blown tirade:
“You’re very defiant. You have no manners … There is no reason why you do not have a relationship with your father. Your father has never been charged with anything. Your father’s never been convicted of anything. Your father doesn’t have a personal protection order against him. Your father is well-liked and loved by the community, his co-workers, his family and his colleagues. You, young man, have got it wrong. I think your father is a great man who has gone through hoops for you to have a relationship with you.”
Then the judge told the boy: “You need to do a research program on Charlie Manson and the cult that he has … You have bought yourself living in Children’s Village, going to the bathroom in public, and maybe summer school.”
And she ordered that the children’s mother, and any other family member, may not visit them there.
“You are so mentally messed up right now and it’s not because of your father,” Judge Gorcyca said. “And one day you are going to realize what’s going on in this case and you’re going to apologize to your dad … Dad, if you ever think that he has changed and he’s no longer like Charlie Manson’s cult, then you let us know and we can review the case.”
Judge Gorcyca would not permit Maya Tsimchoni to say goodbye to her son.
Later on, the judge ordered the two smaller children to have lunch with their father, lapsing into a new tirade:
