SERIOUS CORRUPTION AND VIOLENCE IN AMERICA’S FAMILY COURTS
Press Release—DR. BANDY LEE PUBLISHES IMPORTANT BOOKS ON FAMILY COURT VIOLENCE
*Some of you know that, since I have become aware through a family member (sister) of the violence occurring through the family courts, I have since turned my gaze from mostly involvement in criminal justice reform to family court reform. As urgent as the many immediate things that are happening around the globe are, society must inform itself of the source of the many ills: family courts.
Or at least this is what was revealed when a United Nations (UN) special rapporteur ran focus groups that overwhelmingly brought up family courts as an issue that needed addressing. When she put out a call for inputs, the UN Human Rights Council received the greatest number of inputs, in the history of its calls for inputs! The origin of the “business model” of family courts? The United States—which has spread its “model” across all 50 states and now has exported it abroad, to create havoc.
I have been calling it the site of the greatest human rights violations on U.S. soil—and many of the violent offenders I have treated in maximum-security prisons, if I were to return to them and inquire specifically, I am sure many would be victims of the family courts. By deliberately sending 100,000 children per year to their torture, rape, battery, and murder for tens if not hundreds of billions in profit, year after year for decades, family courts have compromised our ability—and increasingly the world’s ability—to remain a democracy.
Much like the prison system, which is another secret institution that conducts affairs behind concrete walls with little oversight, brutality and violence flourish in the family court system that sets itself apart through an almost total absence of transparency and accountability—and therefore detachment from the law.
Some MAGA supporters put Donald Trump in office because they expected that, once in power, his administration would hold accountable those implicated in the Epstein sex trafficking scandal. This is an understandable dynamic, even if we considered just the prevalence of family court violence—even though, of course, the Trump administration would be one of the last to hold other perpetrators accountable (it is a complex psychological dynamic that may involve repression, identification with the aggressor, traumatic bonding, or dependency and survival).
I recently gave a testimony before the Arizona legislature on family courts. Here is an article about my testimony before the Idaho legislature this week. Below is a press release on books that have been published with my testimonies and articles on the topic. The magnitude of the problem compels us not to look away.
New York City
Contact: (917) 328–2492
New York Times bestselling author Dr. Bandy X. Lee scarcely remains silent when she sees dangers to the public. She taught at the Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School for 17 years, and has been a global leader in prison reform, community violence prevention, and reductions in structural violence. She became nationally known with her highly-prescient 2017 book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President—followed by a number of books in subsequent years, including Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul and The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Danger to American Democracy and All Humankind.
Just days before the last election, a major article in Forbes featuring Dr. Lee began with a picture of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, holding a copy of Dr. Lee’s bestselling book about Trump. It also served as a definitive guide for former White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly, who may have prevented a nuclear war with North Korea, using the principles in her book.
Since 2022, Dr. Lee has been investigating and writing, perhaps for the first time in such depth, about the full extent of the corruption, injustice, and human rights violations in America’s Family Courts. She has been trying to sound the alarm about the tens of thousands of children who are being sacrificed every year, year after year, because of Family Court violence. A notorious Family Court judge, who is now facing impeachment proceedings, Judge Jane Gallina-Mecca, has repeatedly attempted to intimidate and threaten Dr. Lee with a scorched-earth campaign of unconstitutional censorship.
Despite all efforts to silence her and to force her into submission, Dr. Lee has now published a number of extraordinary books—five books in five days—including her stunning testimony before the influential Arizona Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Family Court Orders. Through these books, readers can learn as never before about what is horrifyingly happening in the deep, dark recesses of the so-called “Family Courts.” These “Anti-Courts,” as Dr. Lee calls them, are entirely detached from the Law and need to be immediately greatly reformed or abolished, Dr. Lee concludes.
Because of the great importance of what Dr. Lee is exposing about America’s seriously corrupt Family Court system, celebrated Washington Constitution attorney, Bruce Fein, Esq., who has helped impeach three presidents, has joined with Dr. Lee in bringing legal proceedings against Judge Gallina-Mecca to protect Dr. Lee’s free speech. He will also be drafting the articles of her impeachment.
Judge Gallina-Mecca is now threatening to have Dr. Lee and her sister driven out of their home and subjected to unconscionable financial charges and possible imprisonment. Dr. Lee’s sister’s two children were seized by violent police raid from her four years ago, under false charges that were immediately dropped, but the children were never returned. As Dr. Lee wrote about what happened, entirely outside of constitutional bounds, dozens of similar victims of Judge Gallina-Mecca came forward, and the petition for her impeachment has exceeded 2700 signatures. Please read in Dr. Lee’s many publications about the grounds for the impeachment, as well as the criminal charges that should follow, in a judicial campaign that causes the Pennsylvania “Kids for Cash” scandal to pale in comparison.
Journalists and major podcasters are urged to review Dr. Lee’s new books and to interview her about the Family Courts. Dr. Lee can be reached at Bandy@BandyLee.com, and her website is BandyLee.com.
Announcement:
Dr. Bandy X. Lee is holding weekly live sessions on:
“Special Topics in One World or None”
The next session will be this Friday, July 11, 2025, at 12 noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT on Zoom. A paid subscription is required to receive a link the morning before. Thank you!
Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist who became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that emphasized the importance of fit leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on fit leadership that has been recently expanded, in addition to a volume on how unfitness in a leader spreads and two critical statements on fit leadership. Dr. Lee warned that journalists and intellectuals are the first to be suppressed in times of unfit leadership, and it is happening here; she continues, however, to be interviewed or covered abroad, such as in France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and Canada (with notable articles in Estonian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and Korean). She authored the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; and 17 scholarly books and journal special issues, in addition to over 300 opinion editorials. Dr. Lee is also a master of divinity, currently developing a new curriculum for public education on “One World or None.”
Persistence...overcomes resistance...that is how I see you Dr. Lee. I’m heartbroken that you and your sister’s lives have been dedicated to uncovering such evil. I’m sorry that your niece and nephew have had to endure such pain.
Q: What do the data from the field of psychology’s most important and most misunderstood experiment teach us about cruelty?
A: The oscilloscope readout from Benjamin Libet’s famous experiment shows a cognitive process between a stimulus and a voluntary behavioral response. The process lasts roughly 500 ms (one half second) and is comprised of two phases. Unconscious intent is formed in the initial 300 ms phase, and the conscious mind becomes aware of the impending response in the final 200 ms phase. When the response is a physical act, the conscious mind is a passive observer. When the conscious mind is an active participant, the response is conscious deliberation.
You can treat the symptoms of a disease until it becomes resistant to treatment, and then the disease must be cured, and a disease is not cured by treating its symptoms. Instead, a cure begins with understanding the disease’s root cause. Then, and only then, does an effective way to eradicate the disease from the body become obvious. The principle applies to an individual’s body and to the body politic.
Cruelty is a voluntary act by humans causing unnecessary suffering experienced by other humans, and it is the product of immoral intent. So, we need to understand the root cause of immoral intent, and that involves understanding Libet’s experiment.
Q: Is intent synonymous with unconscious intent?
A: Yes.
Q: Does that mean unconscious intent is moral or immoral?
A: Yes.
Q: How is unconscious intent moral or immoral?
A: In a word, maturity. Maturity is the intent to create something of lasting value without causing unnecessary harm, and immaturity is the intent to create something of limited value without concern for unnecessary harm.
Q: How does the conscious mind function?
A: If unconscious intent informs and triggers a physical act, then the conscious mind is a passive observer. Otherwise, unconscious intent is informing and triggering conscious deliberation, and then the conscious mind is an active participant.
Q: Why are so many people immature?
A: Because the misdiagnosed disease is evolving to the point that treatments that are effective in limited contexts are largely ineffective in a broader context.
It is not surprising when a potentially effective response to a crisis is unorthodox. “Due process” is how that potential is realized, but it is not surprising when the response is initially ignored.
Q: Why do people ignore due process?
A: Because of the 300 ms cognitive process that forms unconscious intent.
Q: What now?
A: Apply due process to the field of psychology’s current understanding of its most important experiment. That will reveal a correct understanding. It is then, and only then, that an effective way to eradicate the disease from the body politic becomes obvious.