October 6, 2005
I am hereby bringing charges against Judge Douglas Wong of grave misconduct. Judge Wong must immediately be removed from any cases involving me and my family, must be bounced and removed from the bench, and must be arrested and jailed for endangering my 13-year-old daughter. I further demand that my case be reheard today on an emergency basis by another judge.
I had a scheduled hearing on my case today, October 6, 2005. Judge Wong committed several acts of serious misconduct. First I must say that before my case was called I saw several other cases where litigants were pulled yelling and screaming from Judge Wong's courtroom. In those cases, I spoke to some of the litigants and advised them to calm down, and even though their complaints may be valid, yelling and screaming would not help their case and would only make matters worse. Then, after my case was called, I had the same reaction to the egregious misconduct of Judge Wong and had to be dragged yelling and screaming from his court room. The fact that Judge Wong evokes this response in many people should be evidence that he is unfit for his position on the bench.
My case involves my daughter Anusha Rankoth Sloan, age 13, who lives with her mother Dayawathie Rankoth at 40-08 12th Street, Apt. 3E, Long Island City NY 11101 along with two of my other children, Michael and George Sloan.
About one year ago, Dayawathie got involved with two brothers she met over the Internet who were residing in Tioga County, Pennsylvania 16946. She went out to Pennsylvania to meet them, and came back pregnant. I know the location only because she asked me to take care of one of her children while she was gone. She called me regularly from a neighbor's house in Tioga County because, she said, the brothers would not allow her to call from their own phone. Incidentally, the number she called from was 570-835-5380.
Later, they started coming to visit her from time to time. I often came to see Dayawathie or she would call me on the phone. (She does not have a working number). However, in early March I received calls from the neighbors informing me that Dayawathie had gone away for some weeks and had left two drug dealers in her apartment along with my daughter, Anusha.
Naturally, I came to see what was going on. I went to the apartment and would knock on the door. I could see from the spyhole in the door that there was someone inside, but nobody ever spoke. Dayawathie would have always come to the door if she was there, so she was definitely not at home.
In late March, she came back. She had given birth. She called me over to show me her "cute little baby" of which she was very proud.
However, after that I never saw her, until today. The neighbors informed me that the two brothers from Pennsylvania had moved into her apartment full time and were dealing drugs. The neighbors told me that I had better to court and do something about this. They were very upset that somebody like this, who are basically white hillbillies from the Appalachian Mountains, had moved into their project, which is the Queensbridge North Housing Project. In particular, Anusha's best friend who lives in another building in the project told me that I better go to court to get some protection for her friend.
At first, I did not believe that they were dealing drugs, because they did not look like pot-heads. However, I did a little research and learned that Tioga County, Pennsylvania and similar areas are centers for methamphetamine production, precisely because they are far away from any city and methamphetamine production involves basically cooking fertilizer which creates a horrible stench. I realized that these two brothers exactly fit the profile of the typical methamphetamine producer and user. Before this, I had never even heard of methamphetamine.
On July 20, 2005, I filed my petition in court for the custody of Anusha. By that time, I had not seen Dayawathie or any of my three children with her in three months, whereas previously I had seen them weekly. I was surprised when the judge set a far future date for the hearing, which was October 6, today.
For the last 14 years since June, 1991, I have had running conflicts with Sister Theresa Coutney and Dorchen Leidholdt of Sanctuary for Families, who basically kidnapped Dayawathie and the kids away from me in June, 1991, when I had just brought Dayawathie into the country on a tourist visa. Anusha had not been born yet. In 1992, I filed a federal lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York, against Sanctuary for Families for kidnapping my children, which they got dismissed by claiming that they had no contact with Dayawathie, which was a lie. These have been numerous court proceedings involving them ever since. Their strategy every time has been to get me arrested and then move Dayawathie and the kids so that I cannot find them and then default the case and claim that they do not know where they are any more. They moved Dayawathie and the kids five times during 1995 to 1997. They stopped doing this when they realized that every time they move Dayawathie, she would call me and tell me her new location. Thereafter, when Sister Theresa came to see Dayawaythie, Dayawathie would hide me in the closet until she left.
I was hoping that now that Dayawathie obviously has two men living illegally in her apartment with our children and has given birth, they would stop this boring practice of trying to have me arrested as a way to defeat my right to custody of my children. I was wrong, as that is exactly what they tried to do again today.
Their new lawyer, Alexander Reid Karam, was just admitted to the bar this year, 2005. He was in elementary school when this litigation started 14 years ago and probably has no idea of this history or what they sent him into. I heard him tell the court attorney, Mr. King, that he wanted me arrested, which Mr. King refused to do. However, Mr. King did advise Mr. Karam on how to draw up a petition to accomplish his purposes. This I feel was the first of many ethical violations by Judge Wong, because Mr. King told me that he works for Judge Wong, and I saw Mr. Karam writing out papers and petitions and giving them to Mr. King and Mr. King taking them into Judge Douglas Wong for his signature.
This was clearly an egregious ethical violation because I was there and yet some secret proceeding was taking place which I was not being told about, as Mr. King refused to talk to me.
My case was scheduled to be heard at 9:30 AM. However, my case was not called. Instead, for hours there was going back and forth between Mr. King and Mr. Karam and the judge, while Mr. Karam called Dorchen Leidholdt on his cell phone to receive instructions from her. Meanwhile, I called home and told my wife that they were trying to arrest me. In a mad panic, my wife who had been on her way to work instead took off from work to come to the courthouse with my baby thinking she would not see me again.
Finally, my case was called at 3:30 PM. By that time Mr. Karam had prepared a counter petition based on instructions he had received from Mr. King. Dayawathie signed this new petition in the courthouse. Although he talked many times at length to Mr. Karam, Mr. King refused to speak to me, thereby depriving me of the right to explain all of the above.
When the case was finally called six hours later at 3:30 PM, Mr. Karam, I, and the law guardian, Vladimir Cadet, entered the courtroom. Mr. Karam had previously told me that he was going to have Mr. Cadet removed from the case and he was going to represent my daughter as well. Mr. Cadet was allowed to address the court at great length. However, I was not allowed to speak AT ALL. I had documents in my possession which would have immediately proven that what Mr. Karam told the court was a lie. In particular, the petition Mr. Karam filed in open court stated "Petitioner attempted to enter respondents home on multiple occasions between September 26 and September 29, 2005". However, I had with me an affidavit of service signed by a police officer, Officer A. Fong, which stated that on September 29, 2005 at 1720 PM he had entered the apartment and served Dayawathie Rankoth personally with the summons in this case. Obviously, if I had engaged in some sort of misconduct, I would have been arrested at that time. What had really happened was that the court had ordered that Dayawathie be served with the summons eight days before the October 6 hearing date. For that reason, police officers repeatedly went to her address between September 26 and 29 to try to serve the summons. I did not go there. I never entered the building. I did not knock on her door. The New York City police did that.
What really happened is that knowing that there was going to be trouble if I hired a normal process server to serve the court papers, I went to the New York Housing Police Department located at 35th Avenue and 21st Street in Astoria, Queens and asked them to serve the papers for me. The first time I did this, I waited in the police station for four hours while waiting for the police officer to serve the papers. Finally a police officer came back with the papers at 1:20 AM saying that he had knocked on the door real hard several times and nobody had answered. This probably explains the knocks on the door that Mr. Karam complained about.
I came back on September 28. This time the officer on duty sent me to the housing project and told me to wait for the police there. Four police officers came. Two went into the building to serve Dayawathie with the papers. The other two waited outside with me. They obviously knew there could be trouble. However, the two who went up soon came down saying that a girl (probably my daughter, Anusha) had answered the door and stated that her mother was in the hospital. I later called the hospitals and there was no such person there.
I came again on September 29. It happened on the way to the police station that I saw the two drug dealers from Tioga, Pennsylvania sitting on the bench directly in front of Dayawathie's house. However, when I came back with the police who had brought me in a police van this time, the two drug dealers had disappeared. The police told me to get out of the van and wait in front of the building. Again, two police officers went up to serve Dayawathie Rankoth and the other two police officers waited with me outside the building. While waiting I was able to observe through the stairwell window Officer Fang and the other police officer enter her apartment. They spent five to ten minutes inside the apartment, during which I am sure Dayawathie was talking their heads off. They came down, informed me that she had been served, signed the papers, gave them to me, and basically told me to get the Hell out of there, which I did.
If I had been allowed to speak in the courtroom of Judge Wong, I was going to show this affidavit of service from a New York City Police Officer and explain all this, which would have disproven the claims made by Mr. Karam. However, Judge Wong would not allow me to speak at all, not one word, yet he allowed Mr. Karam to hand up documents which the judge then read and signed. This is grave misconduct. Surely, any competent judge would want to see an affidavit from a New York City Police Officer, relevant to the case. Judge Wong's behavior was more than merely discourteous. He repeatedly yelled and screamed at me and over and over again said that I was going to be incarcerated if I said anything at all.
Mr. Karam also alleged, "On or about October 3, 2005, Petitioner approached Respondent outside her apartment building and said words to the effect of 'You're not going to see Anusha after Thursday,' and, "I'm going to take one child at a time away from you.'"
This is pure fiction. I have not seen Dayawathie since April. No such conversation has ever taken place and I would never say any such thing, and obviously so, because after he served the papers on September 29, 2005, Officer Fong who was accompanied by three other police officers strictly warned me not to come around that house again. I would have been crazy to go back there only four days later in the face of such a warning and only three days before the scheduled court hearing on October 6, especially since that housing project is under constant police surveillance. The police are around there all the time. The police also know that particular apartment well because 911 was called more than one hundred times while Surinder Singh was living there with Dayawathie during 1998-2001. Surinder Singh was arrested six times in that apartment and was finally presumably deported.
Obviously, what this was all about was that Mr. Karam wanted to claim that there was some recent incident which merited an order of protection, so he invented this story. Again, because Judge Douglas Wong allowed Mr. Karam to wax eloquent and speak at great length while refusing to allow me to say even one word, I was deprived of my right to refute this obvious falsehood.
In addition, the law guardian, Mr. Vladimir Cadet, was allowed to speak. Mr. Cadet told the court that he had interviewed Anusha and Anusha had told him that her mother, Dayawathie, never uses drugs in the apartment. However, that is not the issue here. I have never claimed that Dayawathie uses drugs and I believe that she does not use drugs. She does not even smoke or drink, nor do I. However, she has two men living in her apartment with my 13-year-old daughter and she leaves my daughter alone with these men for extended periods of time. That is my allegation, which was not denied. I suspect that there are warrants for their arrest in Tioga, Pennsylvania, which is why they came to New York, but since I do not know their names I cannot check on this. It seems odd that two white hillbillies are living in an almost all black New York City Housing Project.
The end result was that Judge Wong considered a petition which was handed up in open court by Mr. Karam which I was never allowed to see. I believe that it was the hand written document that Mr. King earlier in the day had instructed Mr. Karam to fill out. Judge Wong then issued an order of protection that I am not to approach Dayawathie or my kids. In so doing, he granted Mr. Karam's petition which I never got to see or respond to while at the same time refusing to consider my petition which I had filed on July 20. Judge Wong adjourned the case to November 22.
This means that by doing this while ignoring every known legal procedure, Judge Douglas Wong has effectively given legal custody of my 13-year-old daughter Anusha to the two drug dealers who are living in Dayawathie's apartment, at least until November 22.
I think now you understand why I am demanding that Judge Douglas Wong be removed from my case and removed from the bench and indeed arrested and prosecuted. It is outrageous that any judge would allow one side to speak while prohibiting the other side from saying anything at all. I further demand that my case be reheard today on an emergency basis by another judge.
Very Truly Yours,
Samuel H. Sloan
Copy to:
Alexander R. Karam
Sanctuary for Families
67 Wall Street, Suite 2211
New York NY 10006
www.sanctuaryforfamilies.com
(212) 349-6006 ext. 320
Vladimir Cadet
89-31 161st Street, Suite 505
Jamaica NY 11432
718-297-0004
Judge Douglas S. Wong
Queens County Family Court
151-20 Jamaica Avenue
Jamaica NY 11432