Louisiana Voice

Editor’s Note: In keeping with LouisianaVoice’s ongoing investigation of family court abuse throughout the state of Louisiana, it was decided to run her letter here so as to best allow her to convey her frustration with her own experiences with Baton Rouge Family Court. Following is her letter, along with an attachment:

Dear Governor Landry, Attorney General Murrill, Members of the Legislature, and Members of the Press:

I am sending the attached “Duluth Model Power & Control Wheel” to the EBR Family. I adapted it to the “EBR Court Power & Control Wheel,” which is also attached, because I believe my East Baton Rouge Family Court case exposes a broader public-interest problem requiring urgent reform. The attachment also includes the six-page letter from Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Jeff Hughes who offers his own critique of the family court system.

My central allegation is that EBR Family Court and potentially other family courts across Louisiana, together with affiliated domestic-violence, custody, supervised-visitation, legal, judicial, and professional networks, have created or tolerated a structure that monetizes the coercive power of the State. Under this theory, abusive parties are empowered to purchase access to court-backed tools such as protective orders, custody restrictions, contempt threats, supervised visitation, evaluations, attorney-fee claims, delayed hearings, and control over parent-child contact, and use those tools as mechanisms of coercion to control an ex-spouse, dominate the children’s narrative, financially exhaust the family, and transfer family resources, community property, income, and future earnings to family-court-connected professionals.

But this is not only about money. Money is the engine that keeps the system going, but the deepest harm is the loss and endangerment of children and the destruction of the targeted parent. When family court monetizes coercive control, the parent-child relationship becomes something to be bought, restricted, supervised, delayed, and litigated. A court is not merely managing a case when it cuts off contact, delays hearings, forces supervised visitation, ignores motions, or allows one parent to control all access. It is shaping a child’s attachment, identity, emotional safety, and understanding of reality.

The harm compounds over time. A temporary restriction can become practical alienation. Supervised visitation can become a paid substitute for parenting. A child can be taught, directly or indirectly, that the targeted parent is dangerous, unstable, or unworthy before the truth has been independently established. Children can also be cut off from therapists, doctors, mandated reporters, family members, and support systems they need, while the targeted parent is forced to endure the living loss of children they are legally responsible for but not allowed to protect, comfort, parent, or even speak to.

The gravest risk is that false or untested abuse allegations may cause courts to place children with the actual abuser while the safe parent is restricted, discredited, or erased. Allegations involving child abuse, sexual abuse, exploitation, or child sexual-abuse material should be independently investigated by qualified law enforcement and child-protection authorities — not filtered only through paid family-court narratives, private custody litigation, and court-connected professionals.

I am asking for reform: meaningful due-process protections before parent-child contact is restricted; mandatory independent investigation of child-abuse allegations; conflict-of-interest rules for court-connected professionals; limits on paid supervised visitation as a long-term substitute for parenting; public access and transparency in family-court proceedings; review of financial incentives in custody litigation; and measurable accountability for domestic-violence and family-court programs that receive public support or operate through court authority.

I also ask that lawmakers and state officials review the overlap between EBR Family Court, the Domestic Violence Office, IRIS, the Domestic Violence Prevention Commission, supervised-visitation providers, custody evaluators, court-connected attorneys, former Judge Pamela Baker, Laurie Marien, the Governor’s Office of Women’s Policy / Louisiana Women’s Policy and Research Commission, and recent domestic-violence legislation. My concern is that this network creates a serious public-trust problem for Louisiana.

My concern is that this system and the people connected to it are making his administration and the State of Louisiana appear connected to a structure that can be weaponized for power, control, and profit.

Please review the attached document as a request for family-court reform, domestic-violence system accountability, child-protection safeguards, and public transparency. Louisiana families need a system that protects children and victims without allowing court authority to become a paid weapon of coercive control.

Respectfully,
Katherine Diamond