{The podcast is with Anna Berezow}
On Friday January 26, 2024, I witnessed a shocking hearing from Washington state.
The hearing was presided over by Judge Matthew Lapin, though I erroneously put the photo of another judge on the YouTube video.
Judge Lapin gave sole custody of a four-year-old girl to Alexander Berezow, despite Berezow barely knowing this girl. The four-year-old has been raised primarily by her mother, Anna Berezow, who joined me on the podcast. Anna is currently living in Poland with her daughter.
That part of the decision is not what shocked me. Alex has admitted, repeatedly, that he fantasizes about hurting and molesting his daughter. Below, starting approximately sixteen minutes in, Berezow makes the admission.
He makes the admission, starting seven minutes in, here as well.
Judge Lapin paid little attention to these shocking admissions, calling them a product of his Harms OCD. In fact, Harms OCD is consistent with having disgusting thoughts, but never acting on them.
Harm OCD is a common subtype of OCD that causes intrusive, unwanted thoughts, images or urges about harm to oneself or others—these are called obsessions, the “O” in OCD. In general, thoughts about harm should always be taken seriously, which can make symptoms of harm OCD especially frightening. But make no mistake: People with harm OCD are not more likely to harm themselves or others than anyone else.
There is even a subset of OCD referred to as pedophile OCD.
There is a problem with this assertion. During hearings in 2023, Berezow admitted to “getting wet down there” while feeding his daughter.
That is no longer simply intrusive thoughts, but something much worse.
Judge Lapin spent over a half hour verbally saying his order, and he did not address this admission.
This goes far beyond OCD and into something much more dangerous.
To top it off, Alex barely took care of his daughter, when he was still with Anna. Here is part of a statement from the nanny.
Anna told me in the interview that Alex could not parent for than fifteen minutes per day.
Judge Lapin paid lip service to this. While acknowledging that Alex did very little child rearing, he will have his parents there to help Judge Lapin mused.
The more I look at this case, the more it looks like Judge Lapin is conducting a Josef Mengeleesque experiment with a four-year-old as a guinea pig.
Alex doesn’t likely merely have OCD but something much more dangerous. This girl barely knows him, and she’s lived her whole life in Poland with her mother.
Judge Lapin wants her to be flown by force to live with a man who fantasizes about molesting her, while barely being able to feed her.
Why did Judge Lapin come to this conclusion? Anna is- of course- a parent alienator: Judge Lapin used the term parental alienation numerous times during his reading of the order.
That’s not surprising. Pedophiles love to use parental alienation as their go to defense. It’s what Woody Allen used. I discovered four pedophiles in St. Louis County alone using that defense: Mel Ven DenBergh, James Judy, Robert Stientjes, and Michael Thomas
Judge Lapin is from the “every child needs both parents” school of thought, the Mathew Walsh school.
Judge Lapin downplayed any and all concerns Anna had while bemoaning that her daughter is being raised by one parent. He spent more than five minutes at the beginning lecturing about all the problems kids in Anna’s daughter’s position have. That hearing is below again.
Ironically, Judge Lapin’s order allows Anna a few hours per week to see her daughter: if he really believes every child needs both parents, he has just removed one parent by court order.
No matter, Judge Lapin couldn’t imagine any good reason why Anna kept Alex away from their daughter. In his mind, she is conniving and manipulative, and his order reflected it.
His bias really showed when he mentioned Paul Thacker, a journalist who sometimes gets retweeted by Elon Musk. Thacker attended a hearing and tweeted about the case.
Thacker and Berezow have crossed paths; Berezow has been accused of smearing other professionals for a living.
Judge Lapin asserted that Thacker’s presence was part of a campaign by Anna to smear Alex.
The parties spent the better part of the first three minutes of this hearing talking about Thacker, who was watching that hearing; his tweets were even entered into evidence.
Anna argued then that the tweets were irrelevant, and she made the same argument to me.
We have open courtrooms in America, free speech, and free press. Thacker’s presence should have been irrelevant, and the fixation on him is evidence of Judge Lapin’s bias.
Finally, as I mentioned, Anna and her daughter are both currently in Poland and have been since 2020.
That makes this a case governed under the Hague Convention for International Parental Abductions.
One of the features is that as a signatory, Poland could be required to honor Judge Lapin’s order, and that country would return Anna’s daughter based on this order.
Anna said she and Alex spent six months in Poland in 2020.
Judge Lapin made a big show of saying that Anna blindsided Alex by refusing to leave minutes before they were to go to the airport back to the US.
Anna told me she did this on the advice of counsel and because of disturbing behavior by Alex.
Judge Lapin insisted that King’s County, Washington was the appropriate jurisdiction, and as the judge, he would be the authority, but that decision is dubious.
Normally, a child needs to be domiciled in a jurisdiction for six months before a court can assert jurisdiction.
That would make Poland the appropriate venue, and in fact, there are currently proceedings in that country for this case.
Check out my stories on Narkis Golan for more on the Hague Convention, and Golan won an important victory in the US Supreme Court which may have relevance for Anna. The US Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in that case.
The child’s mother is Narkis Golan, a U.S. citizen, and his father is Isacco Saada, an Italian citizen. Saada and Golan married in 2015, and according to district court findings, Saada became habitually violent toward Golan, and often in front of the child.
Although the trial court found that B.A.S. was not the target of Saada’s violence, it found that the incidents B.A.S. witnessed were “chilling” and detrimental to the chid’s cognitive and social-emotional development. According to court records, Italian social services agencies also determined that B.A.S. had been exposed to dangerous violence.
In 2018, when B.A.S. was two years old, Golan traveled to the United States to attend her brother’s wedding. She never returned to Italy, and instead opted to live in a domestic-violence shelter in New York with the child.
After Golan failed to return to Italy, Saada filed a case in federal court in New York to force Golan to return B.A.S. to Italy under the rules of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The Hague Convention mandates that custody disputes are resolved in the country of the subject child’s residence, so as to prevent parents from fleeing to foreign countries to obtain a legal advantage. However, the Hague Convention allows an exception for cases in which there is a “grave risk” that returning to the home country would cause physical or psychological harm to a subject child.
The district court ruled that B.A.S. could be returned to Italy so long as protective measures were put in place (such as Saada’s attending therapy and parenting classes, paying Golan’s living expenses, and the couple living separately). On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit affirmed, and found that the district court had not erred in interpreting the Hague Convention to require consideration of the protective measures.
Hopefully, a court higher than Judge Lapin’s will consider a parent fantasizing about molesting his child “consideration for protective measures.”
Update:
I failed to mention originally, and I need to mention this. I reached out to Alex several times for comment. He did not respond. He did, however, reach out to the court.
I also reached out to his current attorney, Jeff Whalley, but he didn’t respond.
I also reached out to his former attorneyMark Gouras, and based on this conversation, Gouras may have a crush on me.
After my initial query, he gave this response.
Mr. Volpe:
You are misinformed. I am not Mr. Berezow’s attorney. Please do not contact me again.
I noted that his name was on a previous order.
He responded as such.
Mr. Volpe:
I was his attorney in the past. You are taking a 2022 document and making a false assumption. You don’t seem to understand how court proceedings work. I am not going to explain it to you.
Again, I do not represent Mr. Berezow. For the 2nd time, please do not contact me.
Since he was being a typical scumbag lawyer, I made fun of him. So, he finally responded like this.
Mr. Volpe:
RCW 9A.46.110 defines stalking as:
(1) A person commits the crime of stalking if, without lawful authority and under circumstances not amounting to a felony attempt of another crime:
(4) Attempts to contact or follow the person after being given actual notice that the person does not want to be contacted or followed constitutes prima facie evidence that the stalker intends to intimidate or harass the person. "Contact" includes, in addition to any other form of contact or communication, the sending of an electronic communication to the person.
This is your 3rd, and final warning, that you are not to contact me.
I will let my audience know how Christmas dinner 2024 at the Gouras house goes.
Michael Volpe Investigates Special Report: an Interview with Anna Berezow