Children sent to juvenile facility for refusing relationship with dad are now going to summer camp
A Michigan judge who sent three children to a juvenile facility last month for refusing to have a relationship with their father has changed her mind about their placement.
In a hearing on Friday, Judge Lisa Gorcyca of Oakland County, Michigan, ordered the children sent to summer camp, the Detroit Free Press reports. The children’s father and guardian ad litem had asked Gorcyca to transfer the children there.
During the hearing on Friday, Gorcyca criticized news media coverage of the case. She said she had the children’s best interests in mind when she sent them to the juvenile facility, where they would not be housed with children accused of crimes.
The guardian ad litem told Gorcyca summer camp was preferable to returning the children to their mother because she had poisoned their relationship with their father, who is living in Israel.
The mother has denied alienating the children. “You can’t force somebody to love,” the mother told the Free Press after the court hearing on Friday. “I feel that when love is given, love comes back.”
Gorcyca had criticized the mother during the June 24 hearing in which she held the children in contempt of court because they refused to have a relationship with their father or even to have lunch with him.
The mother said she had complied with the court’s directive and had urged the children to speak with their father. Gorcyca replied: “Mother, I appreciate that you did say that. It probably was way too late. Your children—you need to do a research program on Charlie Manson and the cult that he has. Your behavior in the hall with me months ago, your behavior in this courtroom, your behavior back there, is unlike anything I have seen in 46,000 cases.”
Gorcyca said the children had been brainwashed in a case that rivaled the worst example of parental alienation she had ever seen.
