metro

Judge's decision to send
kids to detention center
sparks controversy.

Ryan Fishman I Contributing Writer

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Village detention center (intended for abused
or neglected children) for civil contempt of
court after they refused to have lunch with or
even speak to their father after Gorcyca had
ordered them to have a "heathy relationship"
with him.
Their parents have been involved in a con-
tentious divorce dispute since 2009.
At an emergency hearing on Friday, July
10, Gorcyca released the Tsimhoni children
to spend time at a Jewish summer camp.
Their story made international headlines
not long before their release, when attorney
Lisa Stern of Hertz Schram PC in Bloomfield
Hills was hired to represent Eibschitz-
Tsimhoni and went to the press and Gorcyca
to plead for their freedom.
A Facebook page created by a group of
local Jewish mothers to call for the children's
release also added to the public attention.
The page attracted more than 3,000 "likes" in
less than 24 hours.
Stern initially agreed to speak with the JN
about the case, but later declined. The father's
attorney, Keri Middleditch of Alexander
Eisenberg Middleditch & Spilman PLLC in
Birmingham, declined to be interviewed by
the press.

A History of Conflict

The latest is another disappointing chapter
in the family's complicated saga that alleg-
edly began in Israel, some six years ago,
when Tsimhoni was traveling for business
and returned home to find his wife had fled
to the United States to divorce him and had
taken their children with her.
The couple was married in Israel in 1995,
but raised their kids in Ann Arbor until
2008, when Tsimhoni accepted a job in Israel
with plans to move the family there perma-
nently. In 2009, Eibschitz-Tsimhoni filed for
divorce in Oakland County, citing her home
in Bloomfield Hills as the family's address.
An international controversy in its own
right, U.S. District Court Judge Robert
Cleland, after hearing testimony in a Detroit

courtroom from both parents, ultimately
found neither "fully credible or fully persua-
sive" and decided not to send the children
back to Israel with their father.
Omer Tsimhoni, a traffic safety researcher
and General Motors engineer, has been
accused by his wife of assaulting her and
threatening their children's lives.
Eibschitz-Tsimhoni, a pediatric eye doctor
and glaucoma researcher at the University
of Michigan, has been accused by her hus-
band of kidnapping the children to avoid an
Israeli court terminating her custodial rights
because of his allegations that she manipu-
lated the children to alienate him.
Fast forward to last Friday's emergency
hearing, Gorcyca found herself both back-
tracking on earlier threats the three children
would remain at Children's Village until they
maintained a "healthy relationship" with
their father or turned 18, and defending her
prior orders by chastising the media and
public for rushing to judge her decision.
"While this court's remedy in this particu-
lar situation may seem drastic and offensive,
so, too, is the notion ... that the only way to
maintain a stable and loving connection with
the mother is to vilify and reject the father:'
Gorcyca said at the hearing.
The judge, while highly esteemed by many
other judges and attorneys, was vilified
by many on social media and in the press
internationally. Outraged voices castigated
what they labeled a punitive, psychologi-
cally damaging treatment of the children
when ultimately their parents should be held
responsible for their own neglect.
Some blasted her comparisons of the
children to members of the Manson family,
despite the judge's protestations the three's
behavior was "unlike anything [she has] ever
seen in 46,000 cases:'
As unique as the now-public facts of the
Tsimhoni family's legal battle may seem, for
attorney Douglas Wartell, who's specialized
in contentious family law matters for nearly
40 years, parental alienation is far too com-
mon.
"The judge is trying to get at the truth,

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Friends and community members protest the detention of the
three Tsimhoni children by an Oakland County judge.

and it's further complicated when the kids
are being put in the middle," says Wartell, co-
founder of law firm ADAM, the American
Divorce Association for
Men.
"If Mom was encourag-
ing parenting time, then
maybe they would have
been released [sooner]:'
he said. "Judge Gorcyca
feels there was something
fishy here, that Mom is
Douglas
doing what she can to poi-
Wartell
son the relationship.
"Parental alienation is a strategy some par-
ents use in divorce proceedings when they
have control of the kids and paint a picture
that everything is horrible and talk about
everything Daddy's done wrong.
"Frankly, I'm sure they've both done good
and bad; that's what happens in families like
this; but nobody knows the facts, and I'm
glad the judge isn't just falling for [Mom's]
stuff or separating one parent from the kids
on a mere allegation:' Wartell said.

A Well-Respected Judge

Like Wartell, attorney Jordan Dizik at Hauer
& Snover in Bingham Farms noted parental
alienation alone does not make this case
worth discussing.
"What makes this case unique is how
the judge handled the
alienation issue, osten-
sibly placing them in
foster care Dizik said.
"Ultimately, it's too hard to
say whether that was right
or wrong without know-
ing every detail.
Jordan Dizik
"Gorcyca is known as

being very fair and very even-keeled on the
bench. This is a five-year case, and nobody
but the judge and the parties to the case
know everything that's happened. It's hard to
Monday-morning quarterback it, but I can
say she's a smart, competent judge, and pre-
sumably had reasons for doing what she did:'
Attorney Josh Faber of the Berlin Family
Law Group in Troy echoed those sentiments
when it comes to Gorcyca's reputation as a
judge.
"Our firm has had countless cases in
Oakland County over three decades, and
many with Judge Gorcyca," Faber said.
"There are only so many family law judges,
and I have never had a negative thing to say
about her. She's the type of judge lawyers love
to see pulled on a case; she works with attor-
neys and works with the parties:'
Faber suggests Gorcyca is particularly
prepared to handle a matter as caustic as this
one. "She's a judge that cares about families
and not just moving cases off her docket," he
said. "She cares about the people she's work-
ing with and the families.
"I don't view [sending the children to
Mandy's Place] as having been a punishment
or see it as punitive in nature he contin-
ued. "Does it have an impact on the kids?
Absolutely, but Gorcyca's reasoning behind it
had to be with the end goal of helping them,
not harming them:'
Around the same time the Tsimhonis mar-
ried two decades ago, Wartell was litigating a
similar case, representing a father who hadn't
seen his children in three years.
"It sticks in my memory weir Wartell
says, as he recalls the facts of a case in Wayne
County Circuit Court.
"This dad came to me wanting parent-
ing time, and said his kids hated him, and

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July 16 • 2015