On March 28, 2018,
AmiLiving
published a story entitled “Baby Boys, Come Home.” The story was about Julie Goffstein, who lost all access to four of her six children largely because she is an Orthodox Jew.
Aa
Updates
M
name is Michael Volpe. I’m a Jew who was born in Russia, and my parents brought me here when I was almost seven years old, largely to escape persecution. I first published an article about Aaron’s mom’s custody battle in The Daily Caller, which led to a much more in-depth story on their custody in these pages. In between, I’ve conducted a series of covert interviews with Aaron.
on
THE MOST
REMARKABLE
THING AARON TOLD ME IS THAT NO ONE IN THE COURT EVER ASKED HIM OR ANY OF HIS SIBLINGS WHAT THEY WANTED.
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AMI•LIVING
| SEPEMBER 20, 2018
| 11 ISHREI 5779
hallways of Marjory Stoneman High
School on February 14, 2018, shooting
at anyone who got in his way, Aaron
Goffstein hid inside a closet in a class-room.Quietly, he sent a text message to his
mom—even though a court has forbidden
him to have any contact with her.
“Hey, Mommy, I wanted to say hi. I
wanted to talk now because there is a
school shooter on my campus and we are
locked down.”
Aaron told me that though he knew he
was not allowed to speak to her and that she might even get in trouble as a result, he still sent it: “She had a right to know.” In fact, up until this text message, his
mother didn’t even know what high school
he attended, because the same judge who
had taken her kids away from her and
barred almost all contact hadn’t required
her ex-husband to provide her with basic
information, such as which school the
children attended. “I’m perfectly calm. o be honest, this isn’t the scariest event in my life,” Aaron said next.
The Courts
Te previous
Ami Magazine
article about
Julie Goffstein’s case, “Baby Boys, Come
Home,” was well received, but many readers
were left with the impression that there
must be more to the story. Its just not
possible for the courts to be so unfair to a mother and her children.
Indeed, this is a perfectly reasonable
response. We live in the United States of
America, with religious liberty, due process,
the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rest of the amendments. Te framers took great care to make sure this kind of
injustice doesn’t occur, so there must be
something more. If your only experience with America’s
court system was through your social
studies and history classes in school, that might be a reasonable assumption. I have
been exposing court corruption since 2013,
and there are a few things I’ve learned. Te
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and due process are all theoretical; in court, all too often, money talks. In this case, Julie’s husband—who was
a successful real-estate developer, while Julie was a stay-at-home mom—had all
the money, and Julie had none. I also learned one other thing. In their courtroom, judges do as they please, and they are given broad discretion by appeals judges. In court, the adage is true—power cor-rupts, and absolute power corrupts abso-lutely. And no one has more power over
the Goffstein family than Judge John Sieve.
I first published an article about Aaron’s
mom’s custody battle in Te Daily Caller, which led to a much more in-depth story on their custody in these pages.
In between, I’ve conducted a series of
covert interviews with Aaron.
The Parkland Shooting
As Nikolas Cruz barreled down the
Updates