After the judge in her Wisconsin divorce case ruled that her ex-husband — a man who had sought treatment for anger and alcohol issues — would get legal custody of and equal time with their four children, Julie Valadez vowed to fight back.
But in every key ruling that followed, the Waukesha County Circuit Court judge overseeing her case, Michael J. Aprahamian, found Valadez’s concerns about her ex-husband not credible and her actions unacceptable. Aprahamian removed her ability to co-parent her children. He held her in contempt at least four times. Aprahamian had her arrested and she was ready to go to jail.
Valadez, whose accusations of domestic abuse had led to her husband’s arrest, ran through a string of attorneys and represented herself at times. Finally, she found a Milwaukee civil right attorney to represent and a public advocate. She also enlisted help from a Washington, D.C., legal assistance for domestic violence survivors.
And in recent weeks, with a pair of rare appeals court victories and Aprahamian’s decision to remove himself from the case, Valadez has found reason to hope that better days are ahead for her and her children.
These types of cases are rare because of the time and money required to pursue them. Valadez’s case provides a window into the largely unexplored world of family court, the appeals process and the problems encountered by women who say they’ve been victims of domestic abuse.
One common concern in these cases is that the family courts will favor shared custody even if one parent is abusive. Sometimes, this can lead to costly legal battles and misapplied law. ProPublica reported in September on another woman’s lengthy family court ordeal, which also took place in Wisconsin’s Waukesha County, but before a different judge. That story explored how Wisconsin courts, in working to give fathers equal parenting rights, often fail to deal with the complexities that arise in these cases and downplay women’s concerns about their own safety and that of their children.
State systems, according to women’s advocates, often put mothers who survived domestic violence at a disadvantage, liable to be seen as noncooperative when the court seeks some sort of compromise.
Valadez, believing that her case was being mishandled, went to great lengths to be heard while also fending off accusations that she was unruly or was somehow failing to do what’s best for her children.
Then, late last year, Valadez won her state appeal challenging Aprahamian’s custody decision on the basis that Ricardo Valadez, her former husband, had not completed the legally required treatment for domestic abusers. In its rebuke, the state Court of Appeals in Waukesha County found Aprahamian had “failed to explicitly apply the proper legal standard” required in cases involving domestic abuse.
The court stated in its Dec. 29 opinion that the judge “read words into the statute that are not there” and “ignored words that are there.” It ordered Aprahamian to reconsider the Valadez decision.
In the wake of that ruling, a January court session drew several spectators from the community: mothers who wore “#Julie4Change” T-shirts, a reference to a website Julie Valadez set up to bring attention to her legal quest.
Aprahamian, however, declined to alter the custody arrangement immediately from the bench. Both sides were directed to appear in court at a later time.
“Why do we have to wait that long?” Valadez whispered to her attorney.
In February, Valadez won again at the appellate level. The court found that Valadez had erred in holding her in contempt for emailing after he had instructed her not to, failing sign a release form and refusing to take a psychological exam.
The contempt charges were a reflection of the tense atmosphere inside the court and how Valadez’s own actions have come under heavy scrutiny.
Ricardo Valadez’s lawyer has said that Julie Valadez has made unsubstantiated claims against her ex-husband and undermined the relationship between father and children. Guardians ad-litem, who were appointed by the court for the purpose of determining the best interests the children, have also supported the idea that Julie Valadez was being unreasonable. The judge described her as disruptive, uncooperative, and unable to comply with his orders.
Aprahamian now agrees to her request for another judge and is off the case. He stated that he was unable to discuss the case with him. ProPublica. Ricardo Valadez declined to comment through his lawyer.
The victories have given Julie Valadez a measure of satisfaction, but they have yet to produce the desired effect: She’s still separated by court order from her four children, ages 8 to 16. The next hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
“It’s been torture,” Valadez said of the legal battle that’s been going on since 2018 and now includes more than 800 documents. “I don’t even know what will happen to our family; it’s truly horrifying.”
Fractured marriages: Alcohol, Outbursts and an Outburst
Julie Valadez was 19 when she married and 21 when she became a mother. Her husband was 27 when she married. He studied to be a pastor, and also sold life insurance.
Julie was a mother to three more children during their 16-year marriage. Two of the children are autistic, and she primarily handled the doctor’s appointments and school schedule and arranged for help from behavioral therapists, life-skill helpers and outside specialists.
In court papers, she described enduring her husband’s intimidating and violent outbursts, property damage, verbal insults and alcohol abuse. Her husband admitted that she took refuge at a domestic violence shelter for a few days in 2014. She returned home after that.
The marriage of Ricardo Valadez and his wife, Maria Valadez, reached a breaking point when, according to a criminal charge, Ricardo Valadez arrived home drunk, cursed at his spouse for being on her cell phone, and smashed an Iron to pieces. Officers with the City of Waukesha Police Department found him “visibly intoxicated,” handcuffed him and took him out of the house.
In May 2018, he was charged with one count disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor that is classified as domestic abuse. After he began counseling, it was reduced to a municipal ordinance violation.
At one point, Ricardo Valadez described his therapy sessions in criminal court, saying: “I cried, and I dealt with my alcohol issues. We dealt with my anger problems. We dealt with, obviously, my whole life changing, no longer in a marriage and seeing my children as much as I wanted to see my children.”
He added, “I continue to do counseling just because I want to improve myself as a person. I want to be a better dad, obviously providing for my children.”
He pleaded not guilty and paid a fine.
Julie Valadez filed for divorce by then and obtained a restraining orders against him. She described incidents of stalking and harassment as well as violence, according court records. “He always has threatened me if I was to ever leave him,” she wrote in her request for the restraining order. “He has said a number of times that he would kill me; and if I was ever with someone else, he’d kill them.”
At one point during the divorce, Valadez said, she abandoned her home and moved with her children to a protected address under Wisconsin’s Safe at Home program.
Wisconsin’s family law prizes cooperation between exes, but the law anticipates that interaction between parents in abusive relationships can present a dangerous, if not lethal, situation.
The law empowers court-appointed guardians for children (called guardians ad lem) to investigate any domestic abuse in families, and then advise judges. A 2021 study by the University of Wisconsin, however, found that guardians ad litem typically don’t have enough resources for evidence collection or expert help, and they lack training about domestic abuse.
Julie Valadez argued that the initial guardian was not able to investigate the abusive dynamics of her marriage. She also claimed that a second such attorney was appointed during the appeal. This second attorney was supposed to drag her and her ex back to court over parenting issues following the custody decision.
As the case progressed Julie Valadez irritated the court officials including the guardians and the judge. Aprahamian deemed some of her allegations about her ex-husband “vindictive and picayune.”
As a result of her complaints, police arrested her ex-husband twice for allegedly violating the restraining order — once after he sent her reproachful electronic messages about money and once after he stepped inside the house when she wasn’t there to bring a child to a school bus. Ricardo Valadez wasn’t charged with entering the house and was found not guilty for violating the restraining orders for sending the messages.
Kurt M. Schuster, Ricardo’s attorney, accused Julie in court filings of creating an unsettling environment for her children. “I don’t think she’s capable of putting her children’s best interest above her own,” Schuster said in an interview.
Julie Valadez denies that she has received any benefit from the custody fight. She stated that she suffered a major financial hit when she traded the large house she was paying her husband for an apartment she needed to pay.
“It was a disaster for me,” she said. “I lost everything.”
Skeptical Judge
In early 2020, the Valadez divorce trial lasted five days.
Julie Valadez detailed her accusations of abusive behavior by husband. She recalled one incident in which she said he was “very drunk and being aggressive verbally and physically” as they struggled over car keys and another in which she said he grabbed her arm “to the point where it hurt and left red marks.” She testified that he threatened her, saying she would regret leaving him and he would “make me pay for this.”
She described to the judge her husband’s outbursts, in which he punched holes into the walls of their home. “He had punched them next to my head or he kicked a hole in the wall,” she said in court.
While on the stand, Ricardo Valadez refused to answer certain pointed questions about his wife’s allegations of domestic violence, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The questions included: “Isn’t it true you have physically hurt Miss Valadez?”
Aprahamian issued April 2020 a 34-page decision.
He accepted the recommendations of a court-appointed social worker, and the first guardian. The handoffs were to take place at a police station.
Shared legal custody, however, was a different matter because of questions whether the former spouses could cooperate (although the social worker thought it unwise for either of them to act without the other’s input). Julie Valadez argued her 2018 restraining orders against her husband made communication difficult and that she alone should be in legal custody.
Aprahamian made note in his ruling of Ricardo Valadez’s 2017 arrest. Referencing incidents that spurred the divorce filing, the judge wrote that there was a “pattern of domestic abuse occurring coincident to the initiation of this case.” But he said he would not take into consideration Julie Valadez’s other accusations.
“The Court does not find credible Ms. Valadez’s other allegations of abuse and battery, including uncorroborated allegations of sexual abuse, physical abuse, stalking and property damage,” Aprahamian concluded.
Ricardo Valadez was described by the judge as an alcoholic. He had also lied to him about his sobriety. Still, he wrote, “As a general matter, the Court found Ms. Valadez not credible.”
“She was evasive in answering questions and repeatedly asked to have simple, straightforward questions repeated prior to answer,” Aprahamian ruled.
Katherine J., then guardian-ad litem, asked De Lorenzo whether she believed she could cooperate with her husband if she was awarded joint legal custody. De Lorenzo if she believed she could cooperate with her ex-husband if awarded joint legal custody, Julie Valadez said at trial: “I have been cooperative.”
“Can you answer the question?” the judge asked.
“If I would be cooperative, is the question? Can you repeat your question?” she replied.
De Lorenzo obliged but warned: “Try and listen to my questions. They’re pretty simply stated, Ms. Valadez.”
In an interview Valadez stated that she was simply trying to understand what she was being asked in this and other similar situations.
Aprahamian concluded that Ricardo Valadez “likely would put his children’s interests above his own.” He ruled that Ricardo should have sole legal custody, giving him control of decision-making on major issues in the children’s lives, though he was instructed not to change the kids’ school or doctors.
Julie Valadez was very disappointed by the decision. She worried about how her ex would handle all the special services for the children, and about his drinking habits and anger issues.
“It was just a dangerous situation,” she said. “To me it seems obvious.”
In June 2020, she began handling her own appeal. Later, Jay C. Johnson, a Washington, D.C., attorney, assisted her as pro bono counsel with DV LEAP, a non-profit that assists victims in pursuing appeals in domestic violence cases.
Judges have wide discretion in custody cases and appeals are rare, said Elizabeth Vogel, DV LEAP’s managing attorney. Many litigants in family court don’t have a trial attorney, discover it’s hard to find an attorney to pursue an appeal and face short deadlines to file challenges.
DV LEAP saw merit in Julie Valadez’s case because the judge had recognized a pattern of domestic abuse but had concluded wrongly that her husband still had satisfied conditions for custody despite not receiving adequate counseling.
“Julie’s case is, sadly, such an excellent example of how judges take liberties in their reasoning to get around statutes that are meant to protect survivors,” Vogel said.
The Court of Appeals ruled that Ricardo Valadez did not have sole legal custody. He had not proven that he had successfully completed state-mandated treatment of batterers in a certified program.
Also, though Aprahamian required “absolute sobriety” from Ricardo and ordered the exchange of children at the police department, the appellate court ruled he did not make the safety of Julie and her children a “paramount concern” in determining who the children would live with, as required by state law.
Aprahamian’s judgement was reversed and the appellate court referred the case to the family court for reconsideration.
After the favorable decision of the appellate court, Johnson tweeted that the decision “sets strong precedent for domestic abuse victims who are seeking custody of their children.”
Appeal to a Higher Court
During the year and a half that the case was on appeal, Vogel said in an interview, Aprahamian appeared to subject Julie Valadez to “an extreme level of retaliation” through his multiple rulings.
That’s not unheard of. All across the country, women have shared their stories. ProPublicaFamily courts have not only ignored domestic abuse allegations, but have also taken away time or all of their time with their kids for making what they consider to be minor or false allegations of abuse.
Judges can hold these women in contempt if they complain openly, file motions, or refuse to comply with court orders.
In Valadez’s case, tensions between her and the judge never seemed to abate, and along the way she lost the ability to regularly see her children.
Aprahamian appointed a new guardian ad litem, Molly Jasmer, in September 2020 to interact with the appellate court and represent the children’s best interests.
In April 2021, Jasmer filed a 38-page brief with the appellate court outlining why Aprahamian’s ruling was correct. The brief was also signed by Ricardo Valadez’s attorney.
A month earlier, Aprahamian had taken away Julie Valadez’s parenting time with her second oldest child, then 13, after she didn’t make the boy available to meet with Jasmer. Because the judge had already ruled on custody a year earlier, Valadez questioned Jasmer’s involvement.
Jasmer declined comment.
Valadez challenged the no-contact order in family court as well as in a suit she filed against Aprahamian, Jasmer in federal court in May 2021. The suit was dismissed.
“From my standpoint, it’s not personal,” Aprahamian said of the federal suit in a July hearing on the Valadez custody case. “It’s like ‘The Godfather.’ This is just business.”
Less than a month later, Aprahamian issued a bench warrant for Julie Valadez’s arrest for failing to comply with his directive to sign over certain records and undergo a psychological exam requested by Jasmer. At the same hearing, he suspended her parenting time — in effect, preventing her from seeing any of her children except under limited, supervised circumstances.
Will Green, Will Green’s attorney at the moment, was shocked. “Holy cow,” he said in court.
“Am I saying she is going to cause harm to them intentionally? That’s not what I’m saying,” the judge explained. “I’m finding she’s taken steps that are not in the best interests of the children and continues to do so.”
The judge was frustrated that Valadez brought her children along to Jasmer when she served Jasmer with the federal lawsuit.
Psychological testing is widely used in custody cases when there is a concern about a parent’s fitness.
The use of such tests, however, can be unwise when there’s a history of abuse, according to the Domestic Abuse Guidebook for Wisconsin Guardians Ad Litem. It states that victims of abuse may be able to show signs such as anxiety, paranoia and trouble sleeping. They might also have frequent worry or blame others.
Ricardo Valadez wasn’t asked to take such an exam.
“I was found to be a fit parent,” Julie Valadez said of the initial custody order. “I was never found to be an unfit parent. They had provided no valid reason for me to have a psych eval.”
Aside from some therapy sessions together, she said, she hasn’t had any significant time with her one son for nearly a year and her other three children for several months.
Valadez avoided jail when the Waukesha County public defender’s office got involved and persuaded the Court of Appeals in September 2021 to quash the bench warrant and stay the jail term during her appeal of the custody decision.
She received additional assistance when William F. Sulton (a Milwaukee civil rights attorney) agreed to represent the client last fall.
“The case is so unusual in that the judge tried to put her in jail,” Sulton said. “So I really believe she was at risk of losing her liberty.”
Said Sulton: “Unfortunately, the court system does not treat unrepresented people with the respect that they deserve. And so it is not uncommon to see judges and other lawyers singling out, with draconian measures, people who are unrepresented.”
In reversing Aprahamian earlier this month, the appeals court found that the type of contempt the judge used was “punitive” and not lawful — except in one instance when the judge used it to preserve order in the court when he took issue with Julie interrupting him. It vacated all three other contempt rulings.
It took Valadez months of perseverance to get those rulings. She searched for transcripts, switched lawyers, filed court documents, appeals, and studied the intricacies and procedures of Wisconsin law. She believes her appeals exacerbated tensions inside Aprahamian’s courtroom.
“They didn’t want this,” she said. “It’s a big deal to get reversed like they did.”
At the crux of the appellate court’s ruling in the custody case were the counseling sessions Ricardo Valadez attended as a result of his criminal case and Aprahamian’s decision to accept those as proof of rehabilitation even though they weren’t certified by the Wisconsin Batterers Treatment Providers Association.
Ricardo Valadez’s lawyer said his client has received additional counseling. A few days later, his lawyer filed a new document with court stating that Valadez had completed a 20-week domestic abuse treatment program from a certified provider.
Aprahamian’s replacement will now have to rule on custody and other related issues. Sulton stated that Valadez’s most recent treatment program must be ignored. There is no evidence it reduces violence.
It remains to be determined when Julie Valadez will be able to be an active mother again to her children.
“I just want to get my kids back,” she said. She said that their Christmas gifts are still waiting for them by the fireplace in her apartment.
