A New Canaan man is suing his ex-wife’s parents, saying they lied to authorities earlier this year in a painful and temporarily successful attempt to wrest away his two young children, in direct violation of prior court orders, according to a complaint filed recently in U.S. District Court.
In a lawsuit filed last month, the father also is naming three New Canaan Police Department members as defendants, saying they failed to protect him and even worked with his former in-laws in ways that caused severe emotional distress—claims that an attorney representing the officers denies.
“We believe the case is without merit,” attorney John Cannavino Jr. of Stamford-based Ryan Ryan DeLuca LLP, told NewCanaanite.com. “We are going to vigorously defend it and we are confident that it will be resolved in our officers’ favor.”
The plaintiff’s attorney, John R. Williams of New Haven, could not immediately be reached for comment.
According to a suit that Williams filed Oct. 4 on behalf of the New Canaan father, the grandparents took the two kids while they were at a sleepover at a friend’s house in March.
The children went to the sleepover on Saturday, March 19, and at about 12:43 p.m. the following day, the grandparents—who live in Wilton—took the kids from the friend’s house and brought them to New Canaan Police headquarters.
“On March 21, 2016, while continuing to illegally hold and conceal the children, [the grandparents] prepared, signed and swore to affidavits in which they knowingly, maliciously, and falsely swore that the children had told New Canaan police officers in their presence that the plaintiff was subjecting them to physical, emotional and sexual abuse and further falsely and maliciously stating that the plaintiff was a danger to their lives,” the complaint said. “The affidavits further concealed from the court the fact that in 2011 the court not only had awarded sole custody of the children to the plaintiff but had ordered that the children not have contact with [the grandparents] and that, indeed, the court had determined that [the grandparents] were themselves an immediate danger to the mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing of the children.”
According to the complaint, in 2011, the grandparents and their daughter—mother to the kids involved and ex-wife of the New Canaan man—“conspired and colluded together to cause the plaintiff’s kids to make false accusations of child abuse against the plaintiff.”
A Connecticut Superior Court had awarded full custody of the children to their father and ordered that the maternal grandparents were not to contact them, the complaint said.
Those orders “were based, among other things, on expert evidence that the defendants … and their daughter were inflicting upon the said minor children severe neglect including factitious disorder not otherwise specified (Munchausen by proxy), parental enmeshment, educational and emotional neglect and parental alienation,” it said.
Munchausen is a mental health problem that results when a caregiver invents or creates an illness for someone under his or her care, and is a form of abuse.
A clinical psychologist who testified in the 2011 case “had further recommended that the children have no communication with or access to the defendants [grandparents] under any circumstances.”
According to the complaint, the officers who met with the grandparents and children on that Sunday afternoon in March had access to the 2011 information.
Yet “throughout the remainder of the day and evening of March 20, 2016, the plaintiff, having discovered that his children had been kidnapped, repeatedly telephoned the New Canaan Police Department to report their disappearance and seek assistance.”
“On every such occasion, pursuant to instructions issued by [police officers], the true whereabouts of the children were concealed from the plaintiff by the officers of the New Canaan Police Department all of whom stated to the plaintiff only that his children were ‘in a safe place’ without disclosing the reality that they had been given to the very people whom the court had ordered not to have custody of them,” the complaint said.
The father at the same time contacted the state Department of Children and Families to report that his kids had gone missing and that local police officers appeared to be concealing information about their whereabouts, it said.
When a state investigator familiar with the case contacted New Canaan police, he was told “to stall in getting back to [the plaintiff] so that [the grandparents] can file an ex parte motion in court,” according to the suit.
A judge ultimately issued the order, which effectively placed the kids in the grandparents’ custody and restrained their father from contacting his own children, it said.
He hired a lawyer and, following evidentiary hearings in March and April, full custody was restored to him, the complaint said.
“As a result of the foregoing wrongful actions of the defendants, the plaintiff was deprived of his children for a period of many weeks, was caused to suffer severe emotional distress and anguish, and was caused to incur substantial legal expenses,” the complaint said.
He’s seeking coverage for those costs as well as “compensatory” and punitive damages, it said.
“The conduct of all the defendants described above was extreme and outrageous and was carried out with full knowledge that it would cause the plaintiff to suffer emotional distress. It therefore constituted the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress in violation of the common law of the state of Connecticut,” the complaint said.
If this is true, the NC police seemed to have acted in an irresponsible and possibly illegal manner. Very surprising, hopefully all the facts of the case come out and vindicate the department.
Why would you print this stuff? Isn’t it painful enough for the people involved? And this is material for a tabloid not a what’s up in New Canaan site.
Thank you for submitting this mostly thoughtful comment. To answer your questions in order:
1. I published the article because I judge it to be newsworthy, and disagree with your “tabloid” journalism tag. I also will note here that since launching the site, I’ve covered every new civil lawsuit that involves New Canaan residents that I come across. Because the Connecticut Judicial Branch records are searchable by name rather than municipality, I do not claim to have seen all of them. In cases such as this one, where municipal employees are named, I tend to come across them at Town Hall, where they’re publicly filed under state law.
2. I agree that it’s painful for the people involved, which is why I chose not to name any of them and also chose to leave out identifying information regarding the children, such as their genders. It is our intention to inform the community, not to exacerbate anyone’s pain.
I understand that media outlets are easy targets for many—in some cases rightly so—and urge you in the future to consider more carefully questions of tone and content before using language that would lump news organizations together in a negative way. We also do not limit our coverage to “What’s up in New Canaan,” as you say. Kindly see our About Us section here to understand better the scope of our coverage. Thanks again.