Welcome To Fatherhood
Welcome To Fatherhood
S4E22: A Tale of Injustice and Perseverance (ft. Gary Ivory)
Have you ever wondered how deep the rabbit hole of systemic failures and biases in the family court system can go? I invite you to join me in my riveting conversation with Gary Ivory, a resilient father who battled the beast for 16 agonizing years, and learn about his journey of survival, justice, and relentless fight for his child. Gary, a nonprofit executive and author, shares an emotional roller coaster of a narrative that reflects the harsh realities of the family court system and its implications on innocent lives.
Gary recounts the heartbreaking tale of fighting for his daughter's custody while being wrongfully accused of domestic violence. His former partner's skillful manipulation of the system, coupled with systemic failures and racial biases, led to extended court proceedings. His story doesn't just stop at the battlefront of the courtrooms. From hiring private investigators and confronting school superintendents to dealing with a dramatic kidnapping episode, Gary went to extraordinary lengths to see his daughter. His tale is one of caution and inspiration, shedding light on the importance of trusting instincts and navigating the complexities of the legal system.
Gary's experiences serve as a stark reminder of the need to constantly fight for truth and justice. Join us as we navigate this journey and uncover the realities of the family court system, the implications of systemic failures, and the importance of never giving up on one's children, regardless of the hardships faced. This episode is a testament to Gary's perseverance and a call to action for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.
My name is Kelly Jean-Philippe and you are listening to the Welcome to Fatherhood podcast. On this week's podcast, i talk with Gary Ivory. Gary is currently president and CEO of Youth Advocate Programs Incorporated, a nonprofit organization that currently operates programs in 35 states and internationally. Youth Advocate Programs, or YAP, is dedicated to developing community-based alternatives for high-risk and high-need young people and their families so that they rely less on out-of-home care. In today's episode, gary takes us through a 16-year journey both in the criminal and family court systems, where he fought for his innocence and to gain custody of his daughter.
Speaker 2:It was all like a movie. It was like a play. It was like a movie. It was like you play these different characters. You never know who she was going to show up as at whatever time. It was very volatile at all times.
Speaker 2:So I think it had to do with how convincing she was. It's all I can think. And because I hadn't had any system involvement I wasn't a person who had been in the criminal justice system or any of that I just think that she was so compelling that they could not believe that this was made up. But she knew how to play the game. She knew how to manipulate the system. She grew up in the system to a degree in Chicago. She was in the foster care system for a while. She knows the system and she manipulated it And she got the first base before anybody else did. That was a name of the game for her. I'm going to cry crocodile tears. I'm going to say I was a victim, that you were the perpetrator And that worked for her all of her life. So she kept doing it And it worked against me for a while.
Speaker 1:Just a few housekeeping notes. There are times where you will hear some audio interference. I apologize for that And I did the best that I could to clean it up. Also, this is an extended episode due to the nature of the conversation Gary and I had. Lastly, this story does not have a happy ending, so some of the details shared may be inappropriate for young children, as well as triggering to some adults. Thank you for tuning into this conversation and for spending part of your day with us. Now here's the episode. Let's start by asking you to please introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:So my name is Gary ivory. I'm the author of the book on just, which was released a little bit over a year ago, which chronicles my journey over 1516 years to find and save my daughter, and along the way there were many obstacles, including untreated mental illness And what I call system failure failure of public systems to respond adequately to the needs and safety of myself and my daughter on a full time basis. I'm also worked for a nonprofit. I'm a nonprofit executive. You have your programs in can actually we do alternatives to incarceration, alternatives to out of home placement for young people who are at highest risk for being removed from the home. So I know firsthand what it's like to work with young people who have passed 30 years and prevent them from being removed from the home, and so a lot of my story that I chronicle in the book on just I've witnessed through the life of many young people and families that we've served over the last 30 plus years.
Speaker 1:So I have a copy of the book and I started reading it maybe about a month and change ago because I have two kids and other responsibilities. I thought that by this point I would get. I would have gotten further through it, but it's been a challenge. But the parts that I have read have been very captivating, very disturbing, very interesting. So I am hoping to capture some of that in our conversation today For our listeners. the book is based out of your personal experience, which we are going to dive into. Of course, the way that the story is told, with names and stuff like that, has been changed in order to preserve the identities of people, But nonetheless, you are retelling a story that is not something that you've made up, but it is your lived experience.
Speaker 2:That's correct. It is my lived experience from 1999 to 2015.
Speaker 1:Set the stage for us. What is the story about? What are we about to talk about and sort of lead us through the aspects of the story that are relevant to what you said in the beginning. This is a story about you tirelessly working for 15 years to find and rescue your daughter and all of the challenges that you went through. So set the stage for us.
Speaker 2:So in 1999, at the time I was living in Baltimore, Maryland, and I was coming to Texas quite often, where I live, where I was born. Rather, at the time I was living again in Baltimore, maryland, and I met a woman. Her name was Lisa Elizabeth Brown And she and I were. We met at a at a at a at a chapel party And I met her and my friends at the time three friends there. They said she was dancing on the floor alone. I said do not talk to her. I ended up talking to her And it starts a relationship at that time And so I was going back to Baltimore. There was some signs early on that I thought were problematic, but I overlooked those And I just want to caution people. If you see some signs in a person that you're dating that are problematic, then you should heed those warnings. Or if your instincts are telling you that something is not right. So early on I found out something wasn't right, that there was something, some trauma, some middle untreated mental illness, something going on.
Speaker 1:What kind of signs did you see early on?
Speaker 2:Some of the signs I saw early on. The first one she was dancing on the floor by herself, okay, and my friend said that alone was a sign. Right, i'm not sure that was a sign, but it did. Then, early on, there was just constant, like I was going back to the airport to Baltimore in a couple of days. I saw my mother, who was sick at the time, and there was some stalking type behavior. You know multiple calls. I was leaving, she said you're not leaving. And then early on one time I was leaving her apartment and she said you're not leaving, i'm calling the police. And I did leave. She did call the police and said it was criminal trespassing, which never happened.
Speaker 2:So there were some things that, since that things were not, she was lying, making things up didn't seem to be that grounded in reality at times And there seemed to be but also seemed to be these some brilliance, you know some, some sense in which she was really accomplishing a lot. When I met her, she was at Texas Instruments as a engineer in the Calculator Department, so very intellectually gifted. But also saw these very disturbing signs about lying, calling the police over minor things, very small things like opening a door at the wrong time, which would really stir her and create all kind of anxiety for her. So very small things that she overreacted to, and so that started happening in the early days when I met her.
Speaker 1:And at the time that she called the police for the criminal trespassing, how long had you guys been frequencying each other?
Speaker 2:Not many weeks. It was very early in the process And she wouldn't let me take my bags that I had packed with me in a very early in the process, Within a matter of weeks. That's not normal.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so I was concerned about that. And there were and things got progressively. They progressively worsened there very quickly. They really went downhill very quickly from there.
Speaker 2:Within several months I was flying back and forth about six months later, fast forward, there were some additional signs of to the degree that I even did a just look at cursory check, a background check, and saw that she had had some prior incidents with other men in Dallas actually, And what she would do is she had run there, was allegedly had run a person off the highway in her vehicle. She had burst out the windows of some cars of another person She had. She would do things to someone else and victimize them, like she hit a guy with a tire tool one time and then it burst out his windows And then she called the police and said that he did it, that he forced her to do it, it dumped things threatening to her. So she always was able to be the first one to call the police and tell her story And the charges would be dismissed. And that's what her record showed to me when I did that cursory kind of background check.
Speaker 1:So now lead us to the point where you are obviously involved with her and you guys have a child together. Yes, Take us from. lead us from that point forward.
Speaker 2:Okay, so later that year, this is 1999. I'm sorry, this is this is. This is this is 99. She says in about September, october the year, that she was pregnant with my child, and when I heard that I wasn't sure I hadn't expected to have a child with her. I was 34 years old. I hadn't had expected to have a child out of wedlock. I was this person who was on a career path, I was getting ready to run for office, i was a preacher, all these things. And here I am in this situation with her. So when she told me that, of course I was stunned to hear it. And then, october of 1999, due to my mother's progressive illness, she had cancer And so I wanted to be close to her as she had cancer. So at that time I was living in the Dallas Fort Worth area And at that time she started stalking me worse.
Speaker 2:There's are two incidents I just want to mention. One is where I was at a restaurant, popular restaurant called Papa Dose in the Dallas Fort Worth area. She stalks me and would not let me leave the parking lot. I called the police and they just made up all the stuff, said I had a gun. I don't have a gun. I still don't have a possession of a gun, i don't like guns. But she said I did. The police arrest her. It was written in downtown Dallas. That was in the fall of 1999.
Speaker 2:The second incident happened where I went into my apartment one time and she didn't have access, didn't have keys or anything, but she had a tire tool. And the minute I walked into my apartment I've been to Sam's Club she would start striking me with a tire tool and bruised me up pretty badly. When that happened I called the police. The police come and arrest her And she said Oh my God, i'm pregnant, police, don't take, don't arrest me, that kind of thing. But they did arrest her. So with that that happened, the police said you need a restraining order to stay away from her. I stayed away from her, fast forward.
Speaker 2:A couple of months later she reaches out to me through a third party and says please reduce, you know, get the charges, don't file charges because I'm pregnant with your child. So I, after consulting with other people, i went to the police department and told them I want to sign what they call an affidavit of non prosecution. So she's not prosecuted. I just wanted her to leave me alone. Don't ever have contact with me, and the officer at that time she was a lieutenant said sir, please don't do that, because what you're going to do is stop us from prosecuting her. We need to get her off the street. She is really not well. She's mentally disturbed. She's had some history of doing this, but I signed the affidavit of non prosecution anyway.
Speaker 2:That's one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in my life, because all of those things that happened were basically didn't hear from her for a few months And everything was quiet. And my mother passed away in 2000, in early February, and she shows up at the funeral, makes a scene my mother's funeral. And then on a Monday, i'm 34 years old, i was sitting in my office on Martin Luther King Boulevard in Dallas And I get a knock on the door and it was the Dallas police department. They said sir, you, gary Ivory. I said yes. They said we're arresting you for telephone harassment. Lisa had alleged that I had harassed her on the phone. It didn't happen, so I'll go to court. That night I'm going to rain for the first time ever in my life And the judge said the judge, let me release me on bond. And I went back to the office the next day And on Thursday that same week and I'm going to speak this up the judge I had another knock on the door at the YAP office on Martin Luther King Boulevard And they said Dallas police department, you, gary Ivory. I said yes, and they said we're arresting you for retaliation. So it was phone harassment, then retaliation. She said that I called her again.
Speaker 2:So at that time I'll go to the judge and the judge named was Candice Carlson, c-a-r-l-s-e-n. She said to me all right, you're near rain, are you, gary Ivory? I said yes. She said you were here two nights ago, three nights ago. I said yes, i was. And she said well, so you're a guy that wears a suit and you abuse women. I said no, no, i do not. She said well, i'm putting you on a hundred thousand dollar bail And if you ask me another question I'm going to make it a million dollars. So I said your honor, why am I being confined on this for telephone harassment, now this terrorist threat? And she said your bail is 250,000. If you ask me another question, i'll make it a million. So there's a gentleman behind me, an African American gentleman who had been arrested on homicide charges. He was on a hundred thousand dollar bail. I was there on telephone harassment and terrorist threat And he said sit your black you know what down because she'll make it a million. So I sat down, sat in jail 10 days, had bail reduction hearing. During the bail reduction hearing, the woman who shows up from Texas Instruments, my daughter's mother during, where I allegedly threatened her and he didn't threaten her. I did not hear him threaten her. It didn't happen. And we also found out during that hearing that she paid her money to go to court. So she paid her money to lie on her behalf. So I was released after 10 days.
Speaker 2:Those charges were laid on, dismissed And that year she filed several of the charges She did said that I attempted to kill her and my daughter. Those charges that was charged for that, those were dismissed, she said. One time showed up at the office. She said she then starts hitting herself in the stomach in a car and starts bleeding Cause. The police said that I'm the one who hit her in the stomach with my daughter while she was pregnant. That did not happen. The detectives handling the case said your fingers. I played basketball in college. They said your hands are not the hands that hit her. They were the sides of her hands, so that was dismissed. But there were eight charges in one year. Never had it in my life. They were all dismissed Phone harassment, terroristic threat, tempting to kill her and my daughter.
Speaker 1:Let's step back a little bit to the time that you are facing this judge for the first time And clearly it seems to me, from the way that you're presenting it, that this judge had a preconceived notion of you. Maybe she already put you in a type, a type that she's used to seeing, a type that she's used to dealing with, but it seems to me, in the way that you said it, she was just like oh, so you are that type. What did it feel like for you, knowing that you've never had a record before, you've never been in this situation before all the work that you had been doing in the community, your status in the community? What did it feel like to be seen other than how you had been seeing yourself and how others had been seeing you prior to your involvement with this woman and these particular incidents that led you to court?
Speaker 2:Painful, painful, painful. I had been in a leadership fellowship at Baltimore, maryland, again opening, doing alternatives to incarceration for young people across the country, working with gang members across the country. Doing all this work in different states, i felt, and growing up in a family where four of my brothers had done some form of incarceration okay, i grew up knowing about the carceral system and mass incarceration before it was called mass incarceration. So I saw that growing up as a child and I said I'll never go down that path again in my life to where you know, with alcohol or drugs or any of that. And so it was painful being in a predicament where I'm in, caught up in this web of a system without any proof or evidence that it had happened that I did not. And all of this again, i was exonerated for all these eight charges over time. But having to fight just to stay on the ground, just to be not incarcerated. And if I hadn't had the backing of the organization I worked for, i would have been facing 30 plus years in prison over something that I clearly didn't do. Okay, and so it just humiliated me. It caused me to lose faith in the system. It's what I call in the book system failure. How could all these systems fail? The police now one of the police officers, oscar Pesky he all the time said Gary, he stayed with me throughout this process.
Speaker 2:Eventually the DA, the district attorney, craig Watkins, believed my story. But early on I was meeting with all these people the family violence unit, the district attorney, all these people and they were just seeing me. This whole notion of innocent until proven guilty It may be great on paper but it wasn't true in my experience. They were assuming that I was guilty and I didn't have any history of violence. I didn't have any history of abuse. But yet that's exactly how I was treated And just, i think it just has been virtually just being a black man in the system that I think they quickly and the forces of the public safety apparatus were all working together The police working with the DA, working with the court, working with the family violence unit, which was under the DA's unit, and then the detectives.
Speaker 2:There was just a lack of belief. I've been fortunate enough to go to great schools, i've been to Ivy League school and then I'm facing these kind of injustices And I had resources because, again, the organization was backing me. I had individuals backing me, and I had a good job at a good wage And so I had resources. But without that I just would have been sitting in jail for months and possibly years, or possibly prison had given up and just gave in to the system.
Speaker 1:It seems like Gary it seems like, based on what you've said so far, the way that things were beginning to unfold against you was that as constructed, and I don't know how much has changed.
Speaker 1:So maybe that's a question that we can address later on, based on your experience and if you know anything about, if you're still involved in helping young people navigate the system, so you've seen personally and also professionally where things are now. So we'll address that question later on. But it seems like back then, as you were going through this, it seemed like the way the system was constructed, inherently on the forefront, like the first foot put forward seemed to favor more so whatever she said, versus doing the due diligence of the law to investigate and gather information and evidence and all of that stuff in order to prove or disprove the claims that were being made against you. So did it feel like it was more so intrinsically her word against mine, and now I have to prove for myself that what she's saying is not true, because obviously nobody is really giving me the benefit that the law promises to offer, which is innocent until proven guilty.
Speaker 2:Yes, at every step, on every charge, those eight in one year. I had to fight to prove that, not only when she always went to get sympathy, because one of the things is that she could cry at the drop of a hat. So she cried. These tears I'm a six foot seven ball head black man. At that time is about around 200 pounds. So you know, the judge has even said you know, you're a tall black man, she's not in post, she couldn't be. She's five foot six, maybe 130, 140 pounds. There's no way she could be doing these things.
Speaker 2:And I said to the judge at the time your honor, it doesn't matter my size or her side. Truth and using weapons against other people, that can happen regardless of your size or weight or skin color. And I made that case. But it never worked to my benefit until years later when all these things were. You know, a few years later they were all dismissed and all that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it was just the assumption that I had to be guilty, that I had to have done something. So, for example, when she had done those offenses to me back in 99, i told you about those two offenses and I signed those affidavits and done prosecution. It was said in the report that she had to do batters intervention, meaning that if you abuse, other people called batters intervention. At that time She was supposed to go to classes and never did. When she reversed the tide and I don't later on I found out that the way she reversed it, in other words, she was perceived as a perpetrator, but then she shifted to where I was a perpetrator by writing long affidavits, these just personal statements, and she sent these long personal statements to everybody in the DA's office. I have a copy of all this, it's in the book. And so she said oh, gary Ivory, he's a monster, he wants to do these harmful things to me.
Speaker 2:Well, they started believing her, based on no evidence, based on the history where she'd done this to me and three other people before me. But they didn't believe my story. They believed her story And I later came to find that with her diagnosis, it was very common that people can be very manipulative And people do believe them oftentimes. And so, yes, but the system response, the DA's, the courts, the judges, the detectives and all that I was baffled by how they did not believe it. And again, with my daughter I know we talked about now before my daughter was born. But once she was born, things get worse.
Speaker 1:What was the diagnosis?
Speaker 2:Her diagnosis. Lisa's diagnosis about licensed psychiatrists was borderline personality disorder, a BPD for short, and skit-so-effective disorder which is in the family with schizophrenia. I later came to find that her mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, and so did her brother, who's very much in the father So, and so that's what the diagnosis was, which explains much of the behaviors. once we knew what that diagnosis was. But it was very hard to get her to go to the psychiatrist because she knew that there was gonna be a pretty severe diagnosis at that time.
Speaker 1:Now that the diagnosis is out in the open. You said it cleared up a whole lot of things for you moving forward. So now my curiosity is you had your suspicions about whether or not the child that she was carrying was yours. How did that get cleared up?
Speaker 2:So everything else was in criminal court And then we eventually get to family court Once my daughter's born and we go to court. Before we could even go to court I had sent her money, by the way, in a check I never forget the Bank of America check for $800. Well, she had a couple of extra zeros to the check and withdrew 8,000 instead of 800. And so it started. That's how it started off in family court. They didn't do anything about that. So we did the paternity test. It was my child. And then after that, even before that, she calls me one time really histrionic and says Gary, i can't stop pulling summer's hair. Our daughter's name's Summer, so I can't stop pulling her hair and I can't stop spraying water in her face. I'll see PS. Hold them the time and date that this happened. And I said please go and investigate so my daughter doesn't get drowned. And they they didn't take my daughter away from her, do any of that. So when we get in family court, the family court judge says I wanna bring in a special psychologist to look at this and see who's going to be the best parent for Summer, our daughter. And we went to this woman Dr Linda Treat is her name. We went to her. We sat down and said we're trying to do mediation, right, and she just cussed the lady out. We went to four mediation. She cussed her out, said I'm not doing it, he's not a good father. On and on and on. So we go back to court. And as we keep going back to court, the judge is saying who's handling the case? that we?
Speaker 2:I was traveling 100,000 miles a year. I wasn't married. I had a good support system but I wasn't married. And the court study person said the mom went one time, by the way, the court study person went to her home, to her apartment, and tried to do the study with her and started asking her questions. She was leaving her apartment, lisa's apartment, and she pushed her. Lisa pushed her. Now this won't be the first time that she pushed public officials.
Speaker 2:She court report. So that did happen. It was reported in court. The judge didn't do anything about it. Also, lisa said that I would potentially that I should not have custody of my daughter. I shouldn't have visitations, even though it's my daughter. I'm paying child support. I shouldn't have visitations with my own child because I may sexually abuse my own child. So I wouldn't get an ABLE assessment. Abel, that's an assessment that they did back then And they put your hand in these wires and they bring all these pictures of all these things unsavory things like children and adults and people in bondage and all that. And the test came out normal, in other words, that I did not have a proclivity to abuse children, okay. But I went through the indignity of that and paid $90 an hour to see my daughter for a few months I think it was three to six months while they were administering the test $90 an hour at that time to see my own daughter because she alleged that I was gonna do harm to my daughter.
Speaker 1:How old was your daughter at the time?
Speaker 2:My daughter was less than two years old at the time.
Speaker 1:I am flabbergasted by the way that there seems to be so like to be honest with you, listening to you tell the story. Obviously it's from your perspective, so we're gonna address that also, But it seems like a caricature, if you will. It seems like a movie, it seems like a script for a sitcom that is intentionally trying to push forward a particular narrative. It doesn't seem like it's a true story based off of everything that you've said so far, And I'm just confounded by the fact that here is this person who has this propensity to do these things, to the point that she is now having physical contact with government officials, with court officials, and it still feels like none of that was taken or is being taken into consideration when making these life-altering decisions as to who gets to parent this two-year-old child.
Speaker 2:It is unbelievable And had I not lived it. And I have well over 1,500 pages of court documents, that material evidence in the family court and in the criminal court system in Dallas and eventually in Atlanta, because, as you know, all this was resolved in Atlanta and then back to Texas. But that's I'm getting ahead of myself, but let me just mention a couple of the highlights before we move forward. So I told you about the ABLE assessment and then about that and paying this $90 every time I saw my daughter for an hour. Then there was the issue before the judge made final determination, where I had a visit with my daughter and it was during and she came back and said she had a blister on her finger that weekend. And so Lisa calls the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services some people call it CPS, but they call him and said now I told you, i called them about her potentially drowning my daughter and having all these other things. So I had to call and say Lisa called and said there was neglectful, he didn't give her treatment for the burn on her finger And while she was, while she was in my care, i took her to be babysat by a friend of mine's wife and she said that a nine year old boy.
Speaker 2:I later came find out I was talking to a psychiatrist. Everything became about sexual abuse. She herself was sexual abuse, my daughter's mother at age eight or nine In Chicago. She grew up in Chicago. So sometimes as part of BPD and Schizoaffective you can really live and project that up to abuse you And unfortunately there are a lot of. I've seen this in my work over the years. There are a lot of young children, boys and girls, who get abused by relatives and other folks. So I want to say that that that does happen a lot. But in my case it was all made up And so family court becomes involved.
Speaker 2:I mean CPS or TDFPS at times becomes involved.
Speaker 2:They then I go and meet with a worker.
Speaker 2:They asked me a lot of questions And I get a letter in the mail in about 2003, 2000 or so, and said we have determined or ruled in that there was neglectful supervision while my daughter was with me because she had a burn on her finger, doing everything in this power to support his daughter, support his child. And I have this neglectful supervision letter. So I then go call the TDFPS office in Arlington, texas, meet with a regional director, took them hundreds of pages of documents And they both apologized and wrote me a letter which I still have in my possession today, saying that they determined that that was an inappropriate ruling. They ruled it out, not ruled it in, that there was neglectful supervision. So that did away with the CPC, child tech services or tech department, family tech services issue all together. But I still again had to go through that indignity dealing with when she called CPS or TDFPS, they responded twice, they didn't respond at all, they just didn't. I call that system failure in the book And it happened time after time after time in the state of Texas.
Speaker 1:Now, why do you think that is Gary?
Speaker 2:Normally this happens in low resource families. Poor families don't know the rules, don't know the law, don't have resource setter. I think for me is that she was so convincing for her diagnosis that she acted out. Different characters played different roles. It was all like a movie. It was like a play. It was like a movie. It was like you play these different characters. You never know who she was going to show up as at whatever time. It was very volatile at all times. So I think it had to do with how convincing she was. It's all I can think.
Speaker 2:And because I had had any system involvement I wasn't a person who had been in the criminal justice system or any of that I just think that she was so compelling that they could not believe that this was made up. But she knew how to play the game. She knew how to manipulate the system. She grew up in the system to a degree in Chicago. She was in the foster care system for a while. She knows the system and she manipulated it And she got the first base before anybody else did. That was the name of the game for her. I'm going to cry crocodile tears. I'm going to say I was a victim, that you were the perpetrator, and that worked for her all of her life. So she kept doing it, and it worked against me for a while.
Speaker 1:In terms of now. you have all of this experience that you can look back objectively. You have hundreds of pages of legal documents that you know captures in legal terms and paints a very clear picture. you know the experience that you went through for so long with this individual. But now you've also been years removed from all of that And we're going to jump back into it in a little bit. I just want to ask you this question Objectively now, looking at all of this what do you think were some of the factors, intrinsically or extrinsically, that were just against you from the gate?
Speaker 2:I love the question. At first I think things stacked against me. I was, i told you, i grew up in the family where a few of my brothers were incarcerated men for long periods of time. The system And I did everything in my power to avoid that, going to the right schools, doing all that And so I think it was first race Again, i wouldn't say that before I went through this experience But a black male going through with these threats and everything else, i think that was a big part of it And once you get into the system just on one charge it's very hard to get out.
Speaker 2:You did. You know that's a lot of research behind that. Number two, i think it had a lot to do with her manipulation of the system. Again, she went to before I was arraigned on one of those charges. She had gone to the judge beforehand crying, having people send letters into the judges, send letters to the DA, doing that. I mean, she was doing the most And I think the system responded to that to protect her And I think that was because there had been some cases where there was some abuse of women And I think the system overreacted to that.
Speaker 2:Thirdly, i think these, a lot of these were elected officials And I think you know they were trying to protect their own reputation And if anything went wrong they were going to err on the side of caution and take action against me. So I think those were some of the things And I just think there were some deep systemic failures that were made in the book I call them system failure that were made along the way with all of the systems You know, the TDFP, the child welfare system, the police, the schools. They didn't. When my daughter was being mistreated, me and those schools didn't respond to her abuse that was going on. I mean, there was just system failure all around And I just think a lot of it had to do with race. It also had to do with, again, her manipulation and these systems trying to protect themselves And I think a lot of people were flat out fearful of her. Okay, flat out fearful.
Speaker 2:One time I was doing a visitation to pick her up when she was under.
Speaker 2:We had these supervised visits And I was taking picking her up And I was just about to go inside the place where we did the exchange And Lisa got into an altercation with a gentleman out front And she drove up beside him and was cussing him out and started hitting on his front window. And I'll never forget going to the gentleman who has happened to And my daughter was a couple of years old at the time and said, sir, this woman has a lot of mental needs that are unaddressed. Would you please go to court and let them know what happened? Because she just went to the man's court. He has a girlfriend, a wife, in the car and just started beating on the windows for nothing, almost beating the, almost burst the windshield, just for nothing. And so these things happen. She'd have these splashes of anger that goes with that diagnosis, and so I think those are some of the reasons that this happened and why it was so prolonged. People were very, very, very fearful of her because they knew she would act on it And she let people know that.
Speaker 1:Here's my thought Not necessarily to combat or in contrary to what you just shared. what I'm finding fascinating about your story and this conversation is, you know what you said earlier. there's the sense that the systems are here to protect you right, or to at least work fairly so that if someone is falsifying information about you and falsely accusing you, the due process will take place. And this is something that people love to throw around, you know, in events where I mean, we all live through 2020, right, we all live through some of these really high, intense cases being played out in the public sphere, in the public arena, and due process is one of those things that keeps getting thrown out left and right. as wait, let due process happen, because the aspiration is due process will reveal who the guilty party is and who the innocent party is in a just and fair way.
Speaker 1:Now, i think some of us, by experience, whether personally or just being observance of time and what have you, we know that that is bull crap.
Speaker 1:Nonetheless, due process is this thing, but it just feels like that due process is not always well, due process is not exempt to some of these other deeper assumptions about society and about, you know, race and about gender, like due process, is not exempt from that, and the reason why I say that is I think, from the outside looking in, it may appear that more often it is women who are the victims of men doing some of the things or all of the things that you were accused of. But when the shoe is on the other foot and it is the man who is the victim of a woman doing that, the same level of attention to detail, the same level of credibility, the same level of taking these, this thing seriously, is not lent to the man who is the victim of abuse at the hand of a woman. And so how did that play into, or do you think that played into, what your experience was?
Speaker 2:Well, kelly, i think that's a great question And I do think that's exactly what happened in this case, right When I went to Family Court. Dallas has a big family court, george Allen Court Building. Most of the people fighting for custody, you know, were women, and so I think you're right, i think a lot of there was a lot of bias towards especially when it came to custody and caring and all that for children towards women, and I think that affected the DA's office, the Family Violence Unit. I think that affected the court when I was in Judge Brenda Green's court and Family Court. I think that affected the police and how they responded. I think it affected whether I got supervised supervision or not because I was a father with a shoe on the other foot fighting for my child.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of men who fight for their children. I was one of those who did that And I just think they gave her the benefit of the doubt for all those reasons. So a lot of these system leaders themselves need to go through some bias tragic, or something so that there can be fairness in the system, because for me there just wasn't, you know, fairness until we went to Georgia, and Georgia, as they say they call Texas is a daddy state, but they say Texas is a mama state, but Georgia is a daddy state. That's a mantra that's used by some attorneys And I found that to probably be the case. So, yes, i do think it's true that, just you know, i didn't get that. How was I being a neglectful father? Because my daughter had a small blister that you could barely see with the naked eye on her feet. But yes, i do think a lot of those biases had a lot to do with why there was this presumption of guilt and not this presumption of innocence.
Speaker 1:Here is something that I just recalled years ago, when I started this podcast, or two years ago, i spoke with a woman who she's a lawyer. She's an attorney and she represents men and family court, i think in California and in Nevada, if I remember correctly, and we had a lovely conversation and this is something that she brought up And I want to get your opinion on this, because this seems to be characteristic of your experience in terms of why Lisa was always getting the benefit of the doubt, and this is something that's called the tender years doctrine. So, for those who are hearing about the tender year doctrine the tender years doctrine in law, this is what it means And I copied and paste very quickly, while you were talking, this definition off of a website on Google. It says the tender years doctrine is a prominent common law principle and family law and custody jurisprudence. It presumes that during a child's tender years, generally regarded as the age of four and under, the mother has the superior skills to care for the child and she should have custody of that child.
Speaker 1:Now the doctrine is becoming discredited in custody disputes due to the predominant view of sexual and gender equality, but it seems as though and this is something that the attorney that I had spoken with several years ago she said that also that it seems, like you know, over the years, this doctrine, even though it's becoming more and more discredited, there are still. It still has a grip on family law. It still has a grip that the law itself and the system itself has not been able to shake off. Because there are many people who sit on the bench who still, very much so, believe this ideology. By virtue of being mom, you know this. This child ought to, not even should ought to, go to the mother as opposed to the father. And so that, to me, skews the way then that arguments for the father, evidence in favor of the father is determined, is interpreted, is engaged with.
Speaker 1:Because, if I'm already predetermined to believe this thing, right, this, this ideology, this perspective that during those years when the child is four and under, it is most beneficial to the child that the mother should be the custodial parent. At what expense? right? It seems like it doesn't matter what you do. You could stand on your head, gary, you could grow another head. It doesn't seem like you would be considered or given a fair shot necessarily.
Speaker 2:Wow, i've never heard of this doctrine before. I will know a lot about it over the weekend because I'm going to read a lot about it. But that is very evident to me just by observation and empirically that that is being enforced in many of the family courts. I was involved in family court here in Dallas, in Houston and in Atlanta And I do think they had a big influence. But when it comes down to child safety and when it comes down to resources, keep kids and all that, that doctrine as you explained it, can be dangerous because a lot of times there could be things going on with a woman as well that could affect her ability to parent.
Speaker 2:And in the case with Lisa it was very, very evident with the almost drowning of my daughter, the spraying her to face, the doing all these things, the hitting herself in the stomach even before she was born. Those things would not have been it just the courts, a two parenting plan. We came up with a parenting plan. I had my sisters who were gonna help support her Later on my girlfriend, who's now my wife. She helped support her. The bottom line is as great as a parenting plan we had for her, while they didn't wanna go with that Because of this. It's probably because of this doctor, but I do think it applies.
Speaker 1:So let's move the story forward even more. She obviously gets custody of your daughter, right, so pick it up from there.
Speaker 2:So we have joint managing conservatorship That's the technical term for it Now I was supposed to be and a joint managing conservators. She has primary custody. She's the one who has custody, but I'm supposed to have visitations And she's supposed to ask my permission before moving her to another school district or any of that. The minute they give his joint managing conservatorship, she moves to the Houston area So I couldn't see my daughter, even though I was doing everything I should. I was paying child support. By the way, from my first child I was paying an only biological child. I was paying more. It's supposed to be 17. Because to me, the importance to me was to have a relationship with my daughter, but a lot of states revenue. It's more important than relationships, the way I say it in the book, and it should be the other way around. It should be about who can have the best relationships with this child and support them. But again, attorney generals and folks like that get elected based on how much revenue they're able to collect from fathers and mothers or whoever has custody of the child. But anyway, she gets the joint managing conservatorship. She moves away.
Speaker 2:I hire private investigators. I find her in different schools. I found her near Spring Texas. She was living there for a while, different places. She was moving every year to stay away from me. This time she was dating her attorney. His name is Marcus Norman. He's still an attorney, practicing attorney And he had a relationship with her. Again, he was representing her, but he was also her lover And I'm throwing this in because, even though that's not by law you're not supposed to do that he's the one who gave her the legal protection. He fought her legal battles for her. So whenever she would go do something crazy which she did a lot he would always bail her out and help her, which kind of gave her license to go and do this stuff.
Speaker 2:So if she moved to different places I would see her at school wherever she was located. I did this for from age three or four, all the way till she was age nine or 10. I was filing motions for enforcement, filing all these things in courts. No response whatsoever. Eventually, when she was age nine fast forward, she was near the Houston area And at that time I go meet with the school superintendent and ask him could I see my daughter? And they said we don't know if she attends school because they were all fearful of her, this school superintendent I'm talking to, and they eventually said, yes, she's in school. So I got to see her again when she was age nine.
Speaker 2:So from nine to 10, i didn't hear from her for a long time didn't hear from her. Then I get a call out of the blue from Lisa And Lisa says hey, we're doing a party for summer And she's turning nine or 10, i believe 10. And we're about to move out of state. She didn't tell me where. So I go to Houston, make a long story short. My daughter's there, i see her And Lisa was there. She had bought her a lot of gifts And one of the things she would do, she would go buy a lot of these gifts, like these big bicycles and all these expensive gifts, and then the minute the party was over, she would go take the gifts back to the store. Oh wow, and it was a show. It was all a show. My daughter told me this. It was all a show.
Speaker 2:And so then, after that event, i hadn't heard from my daughter for a while. So, through my wife at this time, i married Christy. My wife was my girlfriend at the time. And let me go back to just one other event that happened before this event, because I think it's important in the book. And then I get to the move to Atlanta, because this is where the battleground really was.
Speaker 2:Before we moved to Atlanta, where my daughter was about three or four, we were dropping summer off at. During an exchange for summer, we dropped her off at this place called Ballet View Mall. We met there. My wife was driving, i was in the passenger seat, summer was in the back seat. It was Easter Sunday. A lot of times I used to preach on Easter Sunday. Again, i'm a preacher And I didn't preach that Sunday And so we went there. We were driving back. It's about five or six o'clock in the evening And Lisa is there. She has a green Ford Explorer at that time And the minute she gets out of her vehicle, sees her pull up, she comes into the car trying to kick my wife in the head. She pulls summer out of the back seat, calling all kind of epithets. And it was just crazy. She was trying to hit my daughter. She was trying not hit my daughter, she was trying to hit my wife, all this stuff.
Speaker 2:So the next day my wife gets a call from the Dallas Police Department And they said we have two cases of attempted vehicular homicide against you, one against a child, one against Lisa. And so my wife went in at the time, talked to the I mean she wasn't my wife at the time, my girlfriend, but later came alive And they asked her what was this? True, my wife told her the real story, which is Lisa's the one who was violent. Like I said, she always beat you to the punch, she, she as she. So they, the detective said we're going to call her in. So she called in Lisa to the office and told her the detective his name was Detective Elkin She said Lisa, and she was. Lisa was there with her attorney and boyfriend. I called her her lover and her lawyer in the book because there was her lover and lawyer. And so they went into the CD.
Speaker 2:At that time everything was those CDs right. She said I have a CD of you of this whole incident at Valley View Mall. Did you, were you the aggressor or was Christie the aggressor in this whole thing? And she went outside and said she started bursting out crying. She said I'm so sorry I lied about all this. She had written that in this affidavit again that Christie had tried to kick her in the head, tried to hurt her, tried to hurt Summer, tried to do you know all these things. So at that time she signed she makes her sign statement that she filed false charges. That wasn't a technical term, i think it was called malicious prosecution And her attorney was there with her. He was temporarily, his law license was temporarily suspended, as it has been for several times Interesting, but they didn't do anything to her. That's once again another big episode where my wife could have spent 60 years in prison over a lie And she had it on tape saying you made this up and the system didn't respond. So that's just one other case of just how the system response was just so poor.
Speaker 2:Okay, so fast forward to 2000,. I guess about 2011,. I made up my mind that I was going to try to find my daughter And, by the way, before that I had gone through some years where I had never drank, really until I was about 25 years old. Kelly And I went through a challenge. All this was happening to me. You know I wanted to be in Congress by the time I'm 40. I wanted to be a nonprofit executive. All this, i was just devastated. You know this was nine years of. You know, on the battlefield, as I call it. I have a chapter book called on the battlefield, and so when she had moved to Atlanta I made one last effort. I don't want my daughter to be either killed by her mother or I thought that she was going to become so abused that she would commit suicide or be sex trafficked. We work with a lot of kids in the work I do, trying to get kids from being sex trafficked, and so I knew that was going to happen to her. So my wife agreed that I was going to go to Atlanta and try to find my daughter.
Speaker 2:Through a lot of connections of my wife and mine, we find someone who finds a guy who Lisa was dating in Atlanta. His name is Buster Barnett. He played a former football player. He was about my size and height, about six, seven, so he was teaching in a school in Atlanta, in fact at Mainer Jackson, i think. That's a high school there in Atlanta and they had developed a relationship. There's a documentary out about this, by the way, that he interviewed on. I wasn't interviewed on that documentary, but there is a documentary, how Not to Kill Your Husband about this whole story on the bio channel Anyway, and Lisa Brown is captured in that video about this whole Atlanta experience.
Speaker 2:But she started getting courting him. She made sure that other women wouldn't date him or anything, and she starts calling his wife. He was married And she starts calling his wife, being really disruptive, and so she causes a scene to where she gets fired from that school. She then goes to another school in Buckhead area of Atlanta And so, once I found all this out, i got an attorney in Atlanta. I dropped her last 2011. And then I go to the school where Summer was attending, meet with the superintendent not the superintendent, the principal of the school And the principal says to me your daughter is in trouble And they said we can't let her. You see her or anything. You can see her in the cafeteria, but we can't let you take her or anything like that because she's threatened us. And once again, when she threatens people, they get fearful because they know she'll take action. And so the whole thing in Atlanta starts Eventually. My lawyer file says we're going to file a motion for visitation in the Fulton County Courts. But we filed that motion.
Speaker 2:First of all, we get it served, and that was a big problem in Texas. We could never get it served. She was very evasive So she used the family violence laws to make sure I could never know where she lives or any of that. And so then she goes to Atlanta. She says we can't serve her. She always hid her car and all that. So my attorney gets a person who knows how to chase down people and get them to get them served. You can't evade him. So she was leaving her school at Buckhead area of Atlanta. She parked her car up on a hill And he laid under her car and said you're served. You had to go to that extreme just to serve her to go to court.
Speaker 2:Oh wow. So she came to court. This was in again, 2011. She goes to court And this was her big mistake because she didn't have to go to court. She could have fought and prized her that we found out a way to serve her. So she goes to court. The judge I'll never forget her. She says where's your child? And why isn't she here with you? She said your honor.
Speaker 2:She brought a lot of documents. She said I never wanted to see his daughter again. And she said why? She said well, he has a drinking problem. And I told her. She said the judge asked me did I have a DUI for driving with alcohol?
Speaker 2:I didn't do any other drugs, but I did drink alcohol excessively at the time And I was no longer drinking alcohol. I haven't drank since 2008. It's 2023. I haven't drank since then. But the judge asked two questions. She said well, are you drinking now? I said no, i've been in treatment, showed her evidence of that. And then, secondly, she said is there anything I need to know about you that would put you wouldn't be a good parent to her? And Lisa started bringing up the charges in Texas And she said and I gave her proof that all of that was dismissed.
Speaker 2:The last thing she brought up was well, he had a neglectful supervision charge in Texas Not charged, that's not a charge, that's a procedure. And she said and I showed the judge the letter I knew she'd bring it up where the Texas Department of Family Protective Services ruled out that there was an neglectful supervision. So the judge said I want him to see his daughter And I want him to see her very quickly. The judge laid out orders, said I want him to see his daughter. So just a few weeks later I was back in Atlanta. Judge said come to court with summer so that he can see his child In the meantime. Allow him to see her if he wants to.
Speaker 2:So the next time I came to Atlanta I did get to see her. Lisa didn't want to see her, but I did get to see her for like an hour. Summer wouldn't talk to me And she was just saying. At that time she was 11 years old. She said Dad, just please leave this alone because I don't want to upset mom and all those kind of things. I understood what she was doing. She was trying to protect her mom. She also knew that her mom would get abusive towards her And I later found out that was very, very severe abuse Because there was a Garnett Lydem that was signed And the Garnett Lydem found out And I found out through Buster Barnett, the NFL football player. He and I became good friends And he started telling me Gary, lisa was very, very abusive.
Speaker 2:He told me a few stories And I'll just tell you a couple of these. She said one is she didn't do something. She asked And she just knocked her over the couch in the face And she was bleeding profusely. He told me about that story. He told me about the story where Summer had gone to the bathroom in her and she had lived in a condo And Lisa said the bathroom's not working or something, but she had to go. She's 11-year-old, she goes to the bathroom And the toilet over floods the floor a bit And she made her take the feces off the floor and put them on her face. Just wipe the feces all over your face. That was her punishment for that. She also went to Buckhead School and told all of us through the body this is what I'll do to you. She told him a story about my daughter and how she made her own feces all over her face. So those were things that happened. So I got to see her in Atlanta.
Speaker 2:The judge was becoming very concerned And in March of 2011,. The judge said I want you to bring her here with you to court. So, gary, can the father can get to visit with her And, if he's interested, take her to visit with him. Well, she didn't show up. She comes to court and didn't have with my daughter And she lies and says well, my daughter is in Michigan at a camp. The judge said didn't I tell you to bring my daughter, your daughter, your daughter, to court? And she lied. And she said I'm sorry, your honor, i lied. So she purged herself And so the judge didn't get her on purgery. She said I'm going to tell you this now If your daughter's here, bring her here within an hour, i'm putting you in jail. So within about 60, 90 minutes, my daughter shows up with some woman I didn't know. Judge says Mr Ivory, you get to spend time with your daughter. You can as long as you want.
Speaker 2:I didn't spend, since she was really four years old, other than school settings when I've been to visit her. So I got to take her to the school to spend several hours with her. I went to drove in my rental car to the Atlanta Hartfield Airport And when I went there I sat in the airport with her. Lisa was following me full time And then I got ready to leave, i walked her out and she went to stay with me.
Speaker 2:There was another event And we're coming to a close here to how this all ends. There was another event to where my wife came down with me And we met with her at Greenbrier Mall, which is near Atlanta, and the judge just said we want you to do an exchange there again so you could spend more time with her. But when I get to Greenbrier Mall, my wife and I are waiting And there was a gentleman who showed up looked like a Malcolm X actually, and he was there with Lisa. And I said who is this person? She said, well, he's here to do supervised visits. I said, lisa, the judge did not give supervised visits, the judge gave unsupervised visits. So I tried to walk with my daughter to a little pizza station to get her a slice of pizza. Just a few feet away And he's following me and grabs me And I'm like, sir, this is my child, i'm just trying to take her to get pizza and a drink. So that didn't go well. My wife and I quickly leave that scene.
Speaker 2:I tell the judge and the gory net light him. There's a gory net light him assigned by that time And thank God for the gory net light him because they started looking into things. By the way, the gory net light him, she starts looking into things and said that threatened her because she started looking at school records and all this And Lisa threatened her. So she said this woman really is violent And we got to do something. So that's when we move from emotion to visitation to actually eventually moving for custody. So the next phase of the thing is we go to mediation in Atlanta And we go to mediation. The mediation didn't work out at all. Lynn said I'm never going to cooperate. This is my child. We're to May of 2011.
Speaker 2:And the judge says I want some to spend time about most of the summer with you, mr Ivory And Lisa, when you're in Houston, because she's lived in Houston. She's from Chicago but lived in Houston. When you're in Houston, let him pick her up at a cheesecake factor and make that exchange. I went there in June of that year. She didn't show up. I waited for hours. I was let down again.
Speaker 2:So that summer, a little bit later, june or July, we worked out an arrangement to where I could meet her somewhere between Dallas and Houston. Now I did mention that when I had a 10-year-old party, when my daughter was 10 years old, there was a woman there who was with Lisa at the party. I tried to get her number because I was trying to talk to somebody who could help mediate between Lisa and me. Well, this same woman shows back up when I was picking summer up outside of Houston, texas, back in June or July of 2011. And at that exchange she drops her card on the ground and I picked it up And I take summer with me to stay with me for the summer.
Speaker 2:So on the way home I called the woman. Her name's Lynette. She was summer's godmother. She owned a barbers salon in Houston. She was good friends with Lisa. We talked for hours at night. She said Lisa is really mentally disturbed. She had been abusing summer. She was her godmother because she saw her slap her really badly in the salon one time in her own salon in Houston. So she's a Gary, i'm going to do anything, but I don't want to get killed either, and her husband did neither, because again, she carried a gun. Lisa did. People were very fearful of her So kept summer summer.
Speaker 2:Lisa files motions in Dallas filing that I had And she made a lot of other allegations. They weren't of a sexual nature, but she made a lot of allegations. So I go to court in Dallas again in the family court system. They determined that I've had jurisdiction, not the Texas courts, so they gave some temporary orders and they allowed me to keep her that summer without any supervised visits. So Lisa is still working. She knows I'm filing for custody. Everything's moving forward in Dallas.
Speaker 2:So fast forward to the and then Lisa decides into late 2011,. She's gonna let Summer stay with her dad in Houston. but her dad was. He had a lot of mental health problems. He was a bad alcoholic And so she let Lisa. Lisa allowed Summer to stay with the grandfather and her uncle, who was a paranoid schizophrenic so he couldn't care for himself, while she went back to Atlanta and dating Buster Barnett.
Speaker 2:While she's dating Buster Barnett in Atlanta, i get a call from a DA outside of Atlanta saying hey, do you know Lisa Brown? I said yes And he said we have several charges against her. She had attempted to blow up his car, meaning Buster Barnett. She threw toilet paper under his big body bins and tried to blow it up. She threw several items at him. she ran at him, almost hit him. She ran into a fence. She was threatening his wife. She was just decompensating. She was just going just really badly decompensating. So he called me and said we're gonna try to bring the Texas stuff together in Atlanta and we're trying to get this woman off the streets because she is dangerous. She had already threatened Buster I didn't tell this part that Buster wouldn't give her money to get a new car. And when she didn't she said she started saying that he hit her. She hit herself. She used to do that, sometimes not afraid to hit herself. And she then went and called the police and said he hit her. And then that same thing she'd been doing all these years And then he is facing charges. Like I said, he was had never faced charges. He paid professional football for the Buffalo Bills And he's facing the same thing that I'm facing Charges. She does the same thing everywhere. She goes Fast forward back to Texas.
Speaker 2:All these things happened to Atlanta. Atlanta didn't prosecute because Buster wouldn't go along with her being prosecuted. So she's living in Texas with the grandfather. I'm not. I'm seeing her while she's in Houston as much as I could, without throwing off the granddad that I was seeing her in school and everything Fast forward to judge that fall in the fall of 2011 or 2012, makes a determination that I was awarded custody, but I didn't want to spook her So by going to the school. She was living in spring Texas, so eventually I go to the school and show them the orders. With the police I went and told the sheriff's department saying I've been ordered out of the Georgia courts, that I have full custody of my daughter and I have a pickup order to pick her up from this school. When that happens, the school calls Lisa. Lisa is on a Monday. That Monday by four o'clock Lisa was on the ground from Atlanta back to Houston on the ground and then just raises all kind of chaos with them, threatens people and everything else. Okay, she's again. She's living with the grandfather this time. So we wait a few more months.
Speaker 2:The judge files another pickup order out of the order I filed. I had another attorney. I had attorney in Houston because they were filed. They said you gotta get a pickup order out of Houston. I got a pickup order out of Houston. That was in March of that year. Great attorney, tiffany Harvey, what's her name? She.
Speaker 2:Then we get the pickup order. I go there in Houston. I get her out of the school, out of the spring Texas schools, get her home. Everything's going well, we're getting her adjusted. Get her enrolled in school. She's living with us in Cedar Hill, Texas, where I was living at the time. Well time I get her home.
Speaker 2:About a week later I get a knock on the door. It's a constable. The constable says to me Mr Ivory, we're gonna have to take your daughter with us, saying that I had sexually assaulted my own daughter. So when that happened I was just devastated. So I knew it didn't happen. But again, with Lisa, it's not about whether it's true or not, it's just what's going to get the outcome that she's desiring. So make a long story short.
Speaker 2:We go to court. Judge Lopez is court and I also am talking to a detective. The detective said to me somebody's going to jail over this. It's you or her. And if I found out you did it, you're going to jail. If I found out she did it, she's going to jail. I said, judge, i'm perfectly fine with that. So at that time my daughter's godmother, lynette, comes down, brings summer. She let summer stay a few days with her And they go and meet with the detective without me present. The detective asked her several hours of questioning. They had a lot of other professionals within that room And they found out that summer said that she had to make this up because her mom threatened her that she rehearsed all this with her and told her what to do And she didn't do it. She was gonna kill her.
Speaker 1:Wow, and how old is summer at this point?
Speaker 2:Summer's 11 to 12 at the time. So at that time the judge puts out a warrant for Lisa Brown. So she goes, my daughter's at school, lisa tries to go to the school to pick her up from the school And when she does that, the police, she gets into a big altercation with the principal of school because the principal already knew that I already told him what was going on. The police come and arrest her based on the detective putting out a warrant for her arrest for filing false police reports, because that abuse didn't happen. Once again, yeah. So when she gets arrested she gets back out And the next day Marcus Norman, her lawyer and lover, gets her out of jail And then everything goes back to normal for a minute, until a couple of weeks later.
Speaker 2:Lisa shows up at my house about four o'clock in the afternoon and she comes there and she calls Summer on her cell phone. Said come outside, summer, come outside, your grandfather wants to see you. Summer's crazy about a granddad And she told her all these lies. Summer walks out to the car. Lisa snatches her from the car and runs off, gets on the highway. At that time we informed the police department. The police department starts working on a national Amber alert, so that next day there was a national Amber alert issued. I think it went to all 50 states. If not, it went to several states. I had several people around the country calling me saying you're on national news, your daughter has been kidnapped and all that, wow. So what happens is Lisa goes on this run, the police are calling her, she stays in Oklahoma, she changes my daughter's name to Dreya That's what she calls it. Don't call yourself Summer, say your name's Dreya. And she put on Muslim guard, said you act like you're a Muslim so they won't mess with you or something. So they're in Oklahoma staying the night And Summer sees it on TV and says mom, we're on national news, there's an Amber alert out for us And she's don't worry about that.
Speaker 2:So the next morning they get up, they're going through Missouri all the way to near Illinois And that's where her uncle stayed. He passed to the church there And the FBI is on the case at this time. The FBI finds her. Well, first of all, they track her. They find where she was at the. She was at a. She stopped. Let's see what got her. And the FBI had opened up every ATM throughout that area because they knew they were fine. So they saw her getting money out of an ATM And then they put a tracker on it. So they tracked her all the way to Indiana. She was at uncle's church. They saw her there getting uncle's car. She goes to an apartment. Next morning FBI raised the apartment. She's there in the closet. They say you, lisa Brown, they arrest her. She stays there. They transport Summer back to Dallas And the FBI keeps her detention there. Then they release her back to Dallas.
Speaker 2:While she was in Dallas about two or three months later waiting trial on the kidnapping and interference of child custody charges, they accidentally released Lisa. So at this time, the police was escorted my daughter to school make sure she didn't get kidnapped. They did that for a day. They had a car outside of my house. They also, when she got released, they really had patrols around the house because they were afraid she was gonna come and try to kill us. So, lisa, the US Marshals got involved and about five so days later they found her. She was staying in somebody's basement in Dallas. So she's back in court.
Speaker 2:We go to kidnapping, so we go to court in 2013 on the kidnapping charges and interference with child custody. The judge ruled out the interference with child custody, but they said she was guilty of kidnapping. The judge at that time said we're gonna put her on probation and we're gonna and what they call mental health probation. They say she has mental health issues, we need to get a mental health probation, but they allowed her to go back to Atlanta or wherever she wanted to without any supervision. Big mistake. So she goes back to Atlanta, she starts plotting again, she starts doing all the violent things for a buster or all that, and then she starts plotting And we didn't hear from her for a few months until one day.
Speaker 2:This was, i think, about June or so of 2015,. One day we get my wife in the kitchen. She sees someone in a car, a black SUV, looking at binoculars through our window. It was Lisa. So I call immediately, call the judge. Judge Hawthorne was her name. That was the judge.
Speaker 2:The judge again released her and I called her. I said, judge, the blood is on your hands. And she said what do you mean? The judge is on, the blood is on her hands. I said it's what I said. I said when I, when you're in court, i told you that if she was released without what I suggested, would she be put in at least a psychiatric hospital for a few months, something? We need to do something. Cause she was too unstable, i said, because you let her out, she's doing more harm. Now She's got kidnapping. She's outside trying to kill us And she had already told Summer that she was going to. She could hear her us shooting me and my wife, but she didn't want to kill her. She'd already told Summer this. okay, so we at that time they put police protection around us again. They don't put her. They had her come to court. Big mistake.
Speaker 2:So later on that month, a few weeks later make a long story short I'm in my wife and I in our bedroom. It's about 10 or 11 o'clock at night And Lisa Summer comes in the room. Yeah, dad, dad, dad. I said what's going on? Summer, what's going on? She said mom's dead. I said what do you mean? she's dead? She's not dead, she's yes, on Facebook, she said I saw the body.
Speaker 2:And so what we found out was is that she had Buster Barnett. The boyfriend in Atlanta had told her that he was getting back with his wife. Lisa said no, you're not getting back with your wife. I'll be damned you're not getting back with your wife. So Buster was working for the Atlanta School District. He didn't believe her.
Speaker 2:At that time Lisa had already purchased handcuffs And I know all this because after the fact I got all these things in my possession, she had purchased handcuffs, tape, just a lot of different things to do a kidnapping, to hold somebody hostage. She goes to Buster Barnett's house, puts a gun to his wife's head and gets her in the car, rides around with her for over a day. They're in stores and everything on camera. But she was afraid. Sandra this is wife's name She was afraid to say anything because Lisa had a gun. She was afraid she was gonna kill her.
Speaker 2:So during that time Lisa is talking back and forth with Buster. She's talking back and forth with her dad. Her dad's like please turn yourself in, she wouldn't do it. She also found out that Buster had a girlfriend. Is one or two, i don't know if one lived in Mississippi. I know that I think another one lived in New Orleans, but I'm very sure about the woman in Mississippi. Buster calls her, or the husband.
Speaker 2:Somebody says, hey, lisa's headed your way, she's got my wife hostage. She may be trying to bring you hostage too, because Lisa was trying to get the women out the way so she could have the man That was her MO. Just like before I was married, when I was dating her, she tried to get my wife out of the way so she could have me, and she willingly killed the woman to get to the man. That was just her, the way she thought. So she tried to get Buster. She tried to do these very threatening. She did these threatening things And then eventually police around her.
Speaker 2:She crosses over into Alabama. There's a high-speed police chase Buster's talking with her phone, dad's talking to her on the phone and she pulled over. She shot Buster's Barnett's wife in the mouth. She then shoots herself on the right temple and that's how it ended. We then, after that happens, lisa's sister, a summer's aunt who lives in Dallas. We hadn't met her before We reached out to her. We had a ceremony at my house. My wife and other people were there and we went to this place called Prayer Mountain. We released balloons and that was how it all ended. Furniture rings.
Speaker 1:I am searching for words and I am still trying to wrap everything that you just shared, because of how intense everything was and for how unbelievable it all seems.
Speaker 1:What continues to be troubling to me, Gary, is that the amount of time that Lisa was able to manipulate her way out of legal accountability and the amount of effort and resources, on the other hand, that you had to invest just to get to a point where you were not.
Speaker 1:It almost feels, like Gary, that you had to buy your credibility, and I say it that way in terms of the amount of resources that you had that you ended up investing just to buy your credibility. So here are a couple of questions that I have as we try to bring this conversation to a close, knowing full well that there is no nice way to wrap a bow around any of this. I think the most pressing question for me right now is Lisa is obviously not here to tell her story because, as you have just said, this whole thing ended in a murder suicide. It can easily be said or assumed by some people that you may have undoubtedly embellished this story to make yourself look like the victim and demonize her. So why have you chosen to tell this story in print? More particularly, why have you chosen to share the story on this podcast?
Speaker 2:Well, the reason I want to share in this podcast. First of all, i think that I saw one of your podcasts and I'm impressed by it The reason I wrote the book and telling the story. I'll speak at the Fathers Good conference next month. I'm doing a lot of those things. One is I don't want other fathers men or women, for that matter, people who are custodial parents or non-custodial to go through what I went through. There are a lot of things that I learned through this experience, right. Secondly, i want to make sure I'm sending the signal that Lisa was not, i believe, a moral monster. There's a term called moral monsters. I don't think she was a moral monster. Bad things happened to her. She had a lot of trauma, generational trauma And those things started at eight years old when she was sexually assaulted by her uncle, john. That scarred her forever. She never got treated for that. She never got help for that, and I want to tell people that story too.
Speaker 2:And I don't think in this, even though I didn't do any of the things that were alleged to me. I didn't do any of them And I have records for that. You know people that know me know that I didn't do it, but there's a lot of documentation through the criminal courts as well as through the Family Court and Child Protective Services as well, in Atlanta, in Houston and in Dallas. So all this is on the record. I don't have any lies to tell. I just want to help other people. I want to help other fathers, i want to help other mothers. But this kind of thing should be happening in the United States of America And I want to challenge the legal system to not this, this, this presumption of innocence. It's not always true. In my case there was not a presumption of innocence, right, i was treated guilty from day one.
Speaker 2:So those are the reasons I'm telling the story. And then there are a lot of her relatives who are living today her aunt and others who who relatives of hers, who loved her unconditionally who would tell the same identical story. So and there's already and again a dark documentary out about this the Buster Barnett supported How Not to Kill Your Husband. That's out about this part of about this story. So that's the reason I told the story to help other people, that to never give up on their children, even then. You know, i'm lucky because I had a wife and a support system around me and an organization to back me up So I could endure this 16 years of a living hell. But a lot of people don't have those kind of resources and or support system. So I'm one of the lucky ones And I want to be able to tell the story that I came through it, as well as encourage fathers or parents in general Hey, don't, don't ever give up on your child, regardless of what the hardship is.
Speaker 1:What is the nature of your relationship now with Summer And how has she been able to process through this history regarding her mom?
Speaker 2:She's 22 now She's she's going to college. She hasn't finished yet. I'm on her about that. You know, when I first got her, i had a good team of people a trauma therapist had a psychiatrist involved making sure there wasn't anything going on there. There was a good team. My wife very, very supportive. Christy was very supportive. So I think we had a good team of people supporting her. She's in a good place. That means she doesn't have struggle. She does And I think she feels some sense of weight.
Speaker 2:She testified in court. I never forget. She wrote a four page letter in court during the kidnapping trial And I told her baby, don't demonize your mom. Your mom wasn't a moral monster. Your mom had a lot of bad things happen to her. She had a lot of trauma And as a result, she's doing these things. She's not a moral monster. So she wrote a four page letter. I have that letter to this very day And I put it in a book as well that she wrote herself overnight And she didn't demonize her mom or didn't make her out to be a moral monster, and I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2:But I think she still feels some guilt. That's a strong word, but since some guilt about her mom, about testifying and just about, you know, her mom not being here. Is there anything that could have been done differently? Why did her mom act this way? You know her mom would put her I didn't tell the story, but she put her in these when she was a kid. She put her in these big big go to a store to get these big brown bags that holds materials, leaves or whatever, and she would tie her up in it and start stabbing the bag and said I'm gonna throw you a head in Texas and your body parts in Atlanta. She said that to her all the time, right. So that's scarring, right? That didn't go away overnight. That's a lifelong process to healing over things like that. So she's in a good place to be what she's gone through.
Speaker 1:And so what is the nature of your relationship with her?
Speaker 2:It's a very good relationship. I was just talking to her. She was checking in with me last night. She lives in the Dallas area, she's doing well, has an apartment And we communicate very, very often. We have a good relationship that that a father and daughter should have. You know, it's a very, very good relationship. There have been some rough spots there, but we're in a really, really good place.
Speaker 1:Personally to you. What did this experience, or the sum of these experiences, cost you? And I'm not talking about financial price. What did all of that cost you? What is the impact of this story to you personally?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, that's. That's a tough question. The impact is that I'm proud that for some reason, i was after going through a drinking, having a drinking problem for a while, things like that. That, i think, is lived by the grace of God that I was able to rebound and still be able to be there for my daughter, my family, my wife, my step kids, the whole family. So, but I think that the impact on me is definitely taken a toll The trauma of 16 years of repeatedly not knowing what the next move, of a person who could be violent at any given time, with these these mental health diagnoses, safety concerns.
Speaker 2:I was traveling $100,000 a year. My wife was here with the kids while I was going, traveling and trying to keep other young people from being locked up. It made me lose a lot of you know, i'm an optimist by nature and it made me lose a little bit of faith in how these systems work right. Yeah, i saw them work for the kids, but I saw them work firsthand for me And they didn't work very well. The child welfare system didn't respond very well. The district attorney didn't respond the way they should have Somebody detected something? on and on and on. So I have more skepticism than what I had right. I had full faith that people will respond and protect, in the best interest of kids, the whole best interest of the kids thing that people throw out on time. A lot of people have the best interest kids. They have the best interest of keeping their jobs and their political office or whatever. That's what they have the best interest of. So I saw how all of that works What I call these eight public agencies that fail miserably in my case And that can happen to other people, and I just don't want that to happen to people.
Speaker 2:But I grew up in a tough environment. I actually had brothers went to prison. I saw people get shot at in the house and my own house when I was a kid And I think some of that had to do with why I allowed myself to meet someone like that. After years of therapy and thinking, talking through this, i think some of my unaddressed trauma from childhood made it okay to talk to somebody who was demonstrating all of these signs. That should have made me run. Instead of running away from her, i ran to her. What does that say about me? that I ran to her? I thought about that. I processed that a long time, but it's had a huge impact on my life. But in another sense, i believe this adversity has helped me to be able to help other people on a scale that I never would have. We're working on a movie documentary now about this whole story from God and exactly who's going to pick it up, but I think it's going to be able to help a lot of other people in so many ways.
Speaker 1:If you could offer a word of council, a word of encouragement to dads who are fighting and advocating for their rights as fathers. What would you say to dads who are in this fight currently?
Speaker 2:Thank you for that question, kevin. Thank you for all these questions. They're really terrific. First of all, i would say to them please don't give up, even when it gets dark. Amid all those arrests that I had and having to go through the indignity of taking able assessments and saying I sexually abused my own daughter and things like that which didn't happen in courts and law enforcement back that up. Don't give up because there is light on the other side of the tunnel if you don't give up and if you don't give in to cynicism and despair.
Speaker 2:Number two if you're in a court battle, make sure that you have allies who support you. You know allies could be people who know you in your faith community or people that can be a good witness for you and know your character and things like that. And too often men go into these child, into these courts and family court and don't have a lot of allies on their side. And having allies is very, very important, i would say. Number three is come up with a plan with other people that can help you with that, not just attorneys, but a parenting plan on how you can help to support your child and how the you know, so that 24-7 you have a parenting plan And a lot of times that can help in cases like this.
Speaker 2:At the back of the book I give some recommendations both to courts and practitioners and other people that could, and including fathers Custodial and non-Costodial and non-Custodial fathers about things that they can do to if they're facing these situations so that it doesn't have to be as protracted as my case was. And lastly, i would say, don't wait to file. If you have a petition or something you know it's a found in the court system family court, criminal court. It's about who makes the move first. Right, and Lisa always did things and I was reacting to it.
Speaker 2:And if you're just reacting to the situation, you're never going to win or get you know custody or visitations or whatever. If you're trying to do So, be proactive. Don't sit back and wait, because if you sit back and wait for them to make a move, who are that other party is, then it tends to not work out in your favor. So those were some of the things that I say, but again, i made some recommendations in the book that I think go into more detail about. When you're dealing with high conflict, you know, custody disputes.
Speaker 1:Once again, gary, i can't thank you enough for choosing this podcast to share your story. Yeah, thank you for responding to all of the questions. Thank you for your time. Thank you for writing the book. I yeah, i'm still at a loss of words for everything that we covered today, but my I align my hope with yours as well through this conversation, so that it can help, it can inspire, it can encourage someone who is in the midst of this, or someone who might find themselves in the midst of this, to keep advocating, to keep fighting, to keep carving out their rightful space as father, as parent for their children, in spite of how daunting the systems may make the whole process seem. So thank you so much, man. I really appreciate the time that we had in conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you, kelly. Thank you for those amazing questions. Thank you for this platform for people like me to be able to share our story. It's very much appreciate it, yeah.
