Father Convicted for Torturing Son to Death—After Getting Sole Custody

i.e. Death by Family Court

Nov 06, 2022

On Friday, a New York father was found guilty of second degree murder of his 8 year-old son Tommy.

This is a high profile case with MSM (mainstream media) from around the country present for the six week trial of Michael Valva, the father who is now convicted of torturing his son to death by putting him outside all night in freezing cold temps.

But no reporters are are willing to characterize his death as being a result of judges knowingly enabling the father to torture the boy.

i.e. Death by Family Court

Justyna fought long and hard to protect her three boys, but, as usual, the judges ignored the mountain of evidence proving the father was seriously abusive. The evidence included that Tommy and his brothers were being thrown outside in the backyard or garage all night in freezing temperatures—the form of torture that eventually led to Tommy’s death.

UN definition of torture:

"Torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as…punishing him for an act he has committed.

COMMON TORTURE TACTIC?

This form of torture by abusive fathers is apparently not uncommon. In the Coalition’s flagship case “Saving Damon”, Damon’s father, Eric, used to punish him by locking him outside in the cold.

While in hiding with his mother and brothers, Damon had a flashback of being outside freezing cold in Eric’s backyard trying to get to sleep. It was punishment for Damon hiding from him to avoid being sexually abused.

Damon is seen in this one minute video clip hiding under the covers while reliving one of those incidents:

Why do I have to be out here? Why do I hide from him? There’s no point. I just get thrown out in the backyard or something.
Why do I have to do it [sexual abuse]?
Now I'm outside on the hammock and it's so cold out.
I'll just try to get to sleep…

There is a special place in hell for psychopathic, sadistic fathers like Thomas and Eric who inflict this kind of torture on their innocent children. But the worst are the Family Court judges who deliberately enable them.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, who prosecuted Michael, said it well:

No child should ever have to endure such evil acts.

[If you have a case in which your judge allowed the father to torture your children in any way, you can email womenscoalitionintl@gmail.com. We’ll do a column on that.]

JUSTYNA’S VALIANT EFFORTS

Justyna kept begging the judges to listen to her, but they did not, as usual.

Every time I kept telling the judge, if you're not going to remove the children [from the father], they are going to die.

Her case followed the predictable Family Court playbook—ending with the abusive father getting sole custody.

She had been trying to keep custody and protect her children since the divorce seven years ago. Michael wanted to get out of paying child support (confirmed by text messages) so he filed for shared custody.

Judge Hope Schwartz Zimmerman appointed an evaluator. But Justyna suspected he would steer the case to the father so she demanded the interview be recorded. The evaluator refused to record it and Zimmerman refused to require it. So Justyna refused to participate.

There were tons of calls from concerned mandated reporters, which the judges knew about but ignored. The father would engage in many forms of torture, including starving and beating the children.

They are in extreme danger of their lives. They keep regressing in their development, they are not getting food, going to school hungry.

But Zimmerman was miffed about Justyna not getting with the program and subjecting herself to a biased psychologist. That was used to grant the father sole custody, but this would have happened, regardless. This way Justyna did not have to deal with a derogatory report about herself for the rest of the case.

Judge Zimmerman disregarded a mountain of evidence of the father’s physical and emotional abuse of the boys, including video and audio recordings and gave Thomas sole custody.

MORE REVENGE

Michael wanted even more revenge. Once he got custody, he began alienating the children from her. And as is so often the case, the judge allowed it. The boys would tell their mother about how they were not allowed to say anything good about her and that he wanted them to hate her.

He also filed a false claim that Justyna was abusing the boys via corporal punishment. Without any evidence to support that bogus accusation, she was placed on supervised visits and later no contact. This served the purpose of silencing the children and her about the abuse.

The fraudulent petition was eventually dismissed, but a new judge, Judge Joseph Lorintz, ordered her to be on supervised visitation despite her exoneration.

Judge Lorintz unlawfully deprived me from seeing my kids unsupervised.

Justyna refused to be supervised, saying the kids needed to be taken from the father because of his abuse and she should be able to see them unsupervised because she had never abused them. But Judge Lorintz refused and Justyna continued to have no contact with her children. Or, put in the “child’s not-so-best interests” perspective, the judge continued to keep the children away from their loving, non-abusive mother.

When Judge Lorintz refused to grant Justyna’s motion for her children to be returned to her, this is what he responded:

Justyna: Why? On what basis? The children's lives are in danger, your honor.
Judge: Because I said so.

Another unbelievable exchange:

Justyna: My children are coming to me soaked in urine. Anthony is sleeping in the garage. His hands and feet are bright red, your honor. He's not getting any food…
Judge: Ms. Valva, move along. I can't remember everything you are saying because you're saying so much…

A few months later, Little Tommy was dead.

Little Tommy died in a horrific manner. The night before, his father had severely beaten him and thrown him in the garage without a blanket or pillow. He had to sleep on the concrete and the temperature dropped to 19 degrees.

Amazingly, Tommy was still alive in the morning, but he was so hypothermic that he kept falling on his face. His father made fun of him, saying, “He’s so cold. Boo f***ing hoo.”

Hopefully this predator will get life in prison at his sentencing. The guidelines are 25 to life.

The only way Justyna could get custody was by one child dying of the father’s abuse.

The only thing that makes this case stand out from all the other Custody Crisis cases is poor Little Tommy died of the father’s abuse (and that is not rare either). The rest played out as per usual in Family Court.

Judges should NOT have the power to decide the most important aspect of children’s lives, health and well-being. Join The Women’s Coalition to fight for a new system.

IN OTHER NEWS

REUNIFICATION CASE DIVIDES COMMUNITY

There is activism and a video being used in a case of kids being forced into a car to go to a reunification program with their mother. The kids are heavily resisting so it is heart-wrenching and difficult to watch.

PPO’s and DVO’s are rallying around this case to support their position that all reunification programs are bad for kids and the issue of alienation/reunification is gender neutral.

But:

1) Reunification therapists are not necessarily bad (just maybe incompetent) if they are truly trying to unbrainwash kids who have truly been alienated. The real problem is that reunification is usually used in family court cases to do the opposite: to brainwash kids to recant abuse by the father and comply with living with him. THAT is what should be highlighted. Of course it is a shame for children to have to be forced to reunify, but that is the father’s fault for doing the alienating and not facilitating the reunification efforts.

2) Some advocates are claiming they are siding with the children but, in effect, they are supporting a father and stepmother who may have truly brainwashed/alienated the kids. They are getting the kids’ friends to be the face of the protest which will put the kids in an awful position having to explain the situation to their friends if they become unbrainwashed.

But it is extremely difficult to undo brainwashing as it is a form of severe dissociation. For a more detailed discussion of this form of mind control see our previous column: How Judges Weaponize Mind Control. This mother will be very lucky if that is the case and it actually works.

So there are mothers on both sides of this case. Watch this page for updates and a more detailed explanation of why it is harmful to portray Custody Crisis issues like reunification as gender neutral.

Women's Coalition News & Views

Discussion about this post