The Leaders

The Alleged Leaders – Protective Parent Groups

• Faye Yager is the most recognized name of the alleged leaders of the underground. She will confess to involvement or at least a phone call with any underground mom. She’ll allegedly admit to it even if she had nothing to do with the case to cover up for those that have direct involvement. We’ve found a picture of her smiling that was taken by photographer Allan Dietrich. Yager once faced a prison term of 66 years. She has been sued with judgments ordered for thousands of dollars. She claims that she doesn’t have any money nor does she exchange Christmas presents with her husband. With a pending grand jury indictment, we don’t think she is smiling these days. We also hear that she is no longer living in Georgia.
• April Curtis (April Brewster, April Meyer, April Yates) may have been Faye Yager’s primary accomplice. April is known as the “Media Whore”, Fabricator and Liar of the Children of the Underground with 4 different children from 3 or 4 different husbands. The Family Law Court Judge in San Bernardino, Child Protective Services and Social Workers believed April Curtis fabricated the allegations against her former spouse. After the parental kidnapping and a Criminal Trial with many witnesses, she was NEVER given custody of her daughter. April grew up a remote area in Oregon (outside of Eugene). When she went on the run with her daughter in 1988, she appeared in a story in U.S. News and World Reports and later on the Geraldo TV Talk Show for which he was sued. Her parents, James and Mary Curtis have admitted to helping to hide several underground moms and their children at the so called Curtis Compound and were never arrested, criminally charged or prosecuted. April was often seen holding hands with Protective Parent Attorney Alan Rosenfeld (now disbarred). April’s daughter Amanda/Mandy subsequently went on the run as a teenager and was featured in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette Article. The FBI needs to investigate her current involvement in hiding any mothers and children.
• Michelle Jones French is Faye Yager’s daughter born in 1969. She had to have been in her late teens when Faye was helping April Curtis and when her mom was on Trial in 1992. For the first time in 2022, Michelle is speaking out. After her mother wrongfully injected herself into less than fifty or so cases and allegedly assisted in the kidnapping of children, we can’t believe Michelle would speak out. As a parent of three sons or step sons, why would she possibly want to give this interview. A parent should want to protect the privacy of those sons and wouldn’t want them connected to parental kidnapping or the belief in widespread satanic child abuse.
• Helen Joan Pennington was alleged to be one of the leaders of the Underground as Executive Director of the National Center for Protective Parents in the ’90s. See her picture at the site of Freedom Magazine of the International Church of Scientology. Joan is the author of a legal book on the Underground for Attorneys representing abducting mothers. She is the one that coined the underground term protective parent. Her co-author was radical feminist attorney Joan Zorza of the National Center for Women and Family Law in New York City. Joan was trying to setup a nationwide referral and expert witness network of pro-bono attorneys to represent underground moms. Her organization would certify and train these attorneys. But we also understand that her organization acted as an Intake Center for Underground Mothers. Our sources tell us that she was in hiding during the Philadelphia Federal Grand Jury investigation. If you ever wondered about motive for these organizations, check out this web page from the OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS that gave her organization an award amount of $236,998 in 1998. Helen Joan Pennington (1933-2019) passed in 2019. 
• The National Center for Protective Parents is the organization that is the alleged intake point, legal referral center, legal training center and shelter for parents going into hiding. They are listed as a New Jersey United Way funded organization. Their Executive Director is Joan Pennington. The Center is now closed. 
• Lydia Rayner of Long Beach, Mississippi is an admitted leader of the Underground. Prior to her appearance on ABC Primetime for allegedly trying to help Bipin Shah, she was known for hiding Dorrie Singley and Karen Newsome. Her organization is Mothers Against Raping Children (M.A.R.C.)
  
• Amy Neustein Ph.D. of Help Us Regain the Children is one of the alleged other leaders of the Underground. Her organization originally referred Underground Attorney Alan D. Rosenfeld to April Meyer. Amy has a perplexing story of her own as she no longer has custody of her child. Ms. Neustein, also refuses any sort of visitation. Her former spouse, a physician now has sole custody of their daughter. She allegedly conducts the Faye Yager type interviews on young children. She was a panelist with radical feminist Joan Zora and feminist author Karen Winner at the National Women’s Studies Association Meeting where the claim was made that women across the country are losing their children to batterers and child abusers in epidemic proportions as a result of biased family courts. Amy is also on the National Advisory for for MASA (Mother’s Against Sexual Abuse) whose National Office is located in the same area where April Meyer allegedly kidnapped her daughter.
• Connie Valentine’s current organization is the California Protective Parents Association that has a web site that is hosted by the California National Organization for Women. Valentine, was once a state employee who worked with mental health patients was reassigned to administrative duties in 1993 after her appearance on a nationally televised show in which she claimed a satanic cult forced her to kill people when she was a little girl. Her organization used the underground term “protective parent“. Here is a link to the article. She was directly linked to aiding and abetting in the parental kidnapping of Sylvia Clara Simonsen’s children but it is alleged the FBI said she was too old to prosecute. It is also alleged that she engages in harassing the custodial fathers on behalf the non-custodial mothers in these Faye Yager Underground Cases. The FBI really need to raid her home to try and uncover evidence on her alleged crimes. 
• Portia Davis is the Executive Directory of the Ross County Network for Children in Ohio. On her guestbook, she uses the term, protective parent that many consider hard evidence that she is the contact in the Midwest for the Underground. She is a member of the National Alliance for Family Court Justice.
• Margi McCue of Portland/Milwaukee, Oregon has had direct involvement with Faye Yager and a number of underground cases. She is involved with the Unitarian Universalist Services Committee that has many global activities but has not yet been directly connected to the Underground. Margaret Rayna (Laird) ‘Margi” McCue passed in 2017.
  
• Our Children Our Future They are a new organization in California that are strong supporters of the underground. See their web page for a list of quotes from a who’s who list of underground attorneys and supporters.
• Rosalyn Beasley from San Diego, California climbed aboard Faye Yager’s Underground Railroad in the early ’90s with her young son. She was caught in the Montpellier, Vermont, the former home of the the law practice of Underground Attorneys Harrison and Rosenfeld. She use to called The Friends of Elizabeth Morgan. They are alleged to help parents go Underground. At her trial in San Diego, Underground Attorney Alan Rosenfeld showed up and tried to get himself admitted pro hac vice. The Judge did not admit him, so Underground Attorney Rosenfeld left town. Beasley later plead guilty and received probation. Her son now lives happily with the father in a different state. Beasley is alleged to have tried multiple times to re-kidnap her son. We understand she rarely exercises her supervised visitation sessions. Beasley now living in Encinitas, California is alleged to be the main Underground contact in the San Diego area.
• Alliance for Rights of Children (ARCH) use to be called The Friends of Elizabeth Morgan. They are alleged to help parents go Underground.
• Safe Kids International —  Cindy Dumas is the Executive Director of Safe Kids International. See their website and Facebook page.
• Kathleen Russell — She is the Executive Director of the controversial activist group, the Center for Judicial Excellence in San Rafael, California. Despite no professional credentials, this narcissist and self-proclaimed watch dog over California’s Family Courts is promoting the protective parent agenda or cause. As the progressive Family Law Courts in California move toward directing high-conflict divorce cases to Family Reunification Workshops or Programs, her organization wants to roll back the concept of co-parenting / joint custody to maternal custody. When a protective parent violates numerous court orders, does she really think that the  therapists and family law judges are receiving money in brown paper bags? Her organization is more or less holding digital protest signs in front of Northern California’s Family Court supporting these high-conflict protective parent cases. If a child is kidnapped in a Family Abduction Case in California, law enforcement needs to get a search warrant for Russell’s home like the Dede Evavold case.
• Women’s Action Coalition — see their website and Facebook page.
• Donna Medley was once the guardian ad litem for Dorrie Singley’s child in San Francisco. Medley and Underground Attorney Sheila Brogna sued the State of Mississippi on behalf of the child in the Singley case. That case was dismissed by the Mississippi Supreme Court. While Medley worked for the District Attorney’s Office, we understand she allegedly tried to get funds for an underground mom in Yager’s organization. She later worked for the Family Abduction unit investigating kidnapping. We are happy to hear that she now works for the Office of Citizen Complaints. Here is a picture of Medley. We wouldn’t let her near our child.

The Individuals and Organizations that Profit and Support the Underground/Protective Parents

• Rita Smith — She was the Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in Denver, Colorado. As a Domestic Violence Advocate, she a supporter of those extremists that believe domestic violence is a one-way street “the abuser can only be the male” vs a two-way street “Family Violence”. In supporting this old school concept of domestic violence, she has also directly supported underground moms or protective parents that kidnapped their children. Many non-extremists members of the Domestic Violence Community will not directly support protective parents that engage in parental kidnapping. In September 2014, she became a paid adviser to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on domestic violence. She is apparently now the former executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.   
• The Leadership Council —  A nonprofit organization that misuses psychological services to empower their professional reputations and indirectly promote such causes as “protective parenting”, parental kidnapping, maternal custody and lobby against such causes as “parental alienation syndrome. Their advisors include: Paul J. Fink (APSAC), Joyanna L. Silberg, PhD, Toby Kleinman, Esq., Richard Ducote, JD, Seth L. Goldstein, JD, Hol. Sol Gothward, JW, Geraldine Stahly, PhD, and Joan Zorza J.D.
  
• Child Abuse Solutions The Executive Director is Underground or Protective Parent Attorney Meera Fox. Their list of faculty include Linda Barnard, Richard Ducote, Vincent J. Felitti, M.D., Robert Geffner, Seth Goldstein, Hon. Sol Gothard, Karen Hawthorne, Hon Eugene Hyman, Megan Lehmer, Geraldine Butts Stahly and Joyanna Silberg.
• Alan D. Rosenfeld is one of the Underground Attorneys.  He is known for his tousled hair, beard and wrinkled suit. He is known for flying around the country without time to buy a new suit or visit the barber. He’ll enter a new case, ask the court to have the public defender or a local attorney sponsor him for pro hac vice status. Sometimes, the judge will not mandate that the sponsoring attorney appear in court. In criminal cases, the local county will pay for expert witnesses to fly in from all over the country. He’ll get the local domestic violence shelter to raise funds to pay his hotel bill. Some allege that he is paid from a trust account that is setup before the mom goes into hiding. They are promised lifetime legal representation if they are arrested. He represented April Curtis. He tried to get his colleague Sheila Brogna from the Dorrie Singley case to represent Amanda Otter. Alan provides a statistics that 100,000 mothers go into hiding each year. This statistic sounds more like a promotion for his practice. He has been suspended once by the Vermont Bar for recommending to a client that she violate a court order and for not having good financial records. The AVVO Directory reports he has been suspended once. Our subscribers tell us that he is often seen holding hands and hugging his clients. He walked Amanda Otter to school when she was younger and was present when one of April Meyer’s kids was born. He received a sanction in 1991 by the Vermont Bar Association and was suspended for 6 months in Colorado in 2008 in PEOPLE v. ROSENFELD The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Complainant, v. Alan David ROSENFELD, Respondent -No. 06PDJ094 – November 21, 2007 Alan Rosenfeld is now disbarred. 
• Joyanna L. Silberg, PhD — She is the new extremist psychologists that is taking on plight against our family law courts awarding joint custody to parents after any domestic violence allegation. Her claim that 58,000 children year in the U.S. are abuse victims that are ordered by the family court to have unsupervised contact with abusers when their parents divorce has tenets lobbying our courts away from the preferred joint custody to maternal custody. Her current poster child for her cause is now Jennifer Collins.
• Ted Gunderson is the private investigator and former FBI agent who appeared in many early underground cases. It was once alleged that Faye Yager was able to get Ted to help keep her out of jail. Ted retired from the FBI in 1979, and opened his private ivestigation firm, Ted L. Gunderson and Associates in Santa Monica, California. He is known for his belief in and investigation of criminal conspiracies involving cults run by government officials. This includes the McMartin Preschool alleged tunnels which was proven to be false. In other words, Gunderson is a private investigator and has the ability to find evidence for the underground cases. See his Wikipedia entry. Ted Gunderson passed in 2011. 
• Womanspace, Inc. is a nonprofit agency providing an array of services to women in crisis in the Mercer County, NJ. They have claimed to have helped over 22,000 women. With Ms. Pennington speaking at a meeting in 1996, we would encourage law enforcement to investigate family abductions from the shelter.

The Underground Attorneys

• Alan D. Rosenfeld is the Attorney for the Underground. Alan Rosenfeld is known for his tossled hair, beard and wrinkled suit flying around the country without time to buy a new suit or visit the barber. He’ll enter a new case, ask the court to give have the public defender sponsor him with pro hac vice status. The county will then pay for his expert witnesses to fly in from all over the country. He’ll get the local domestic violence shelter to raise funds to pay his hotel bill. Some allege that he is paid from a trust account that is setup before the mom goes into hiding. He currently represents April Meyer. He has tried to get his colleague Sheila Brogna from the Dorrie Singley case to represent Amanda. He has been suspended once by the Vermont Bar for recommending to a client that she violate a court order and for not having good financial records. Our subscribers tell us that he is often seen holding hands and hugging his clients. He walked Amanda to school when she was younger and was present when one of April Meyer’s kids was born. Alan Rosenfeld is now disbarred. 
• Sheila Brogna is another Attorney for the Underground. She first became involved with the Underground becoming the attorney for Dorrie Singley’s child. Singley died while Underground in New Orleans and the child surfaced in San Francisco. The custody of the child went back to the father and Brogna appealed it to the Mississippi Supreme Court. She wrote an article for Family Advocate Newsletter of the American Bar Association about the Underground. In June of 1997, she chaired a breakout session of a ABA meeting on representing children. She talked about a minor child’s right to choose her own attorney rather than have one appointed by the court. In this case, her claim was that 13 year old Amanda Otter, daughter of Underground leader April Meyer chose Brogna. 
• Toby Kleinman is an alleged new protective parent attorney from New Brunswick, NJ who appeared at a Family Violence Conference in San Diego in 2001 discussing Desperate Moms Taking Children Underground.She is quoted as follows: “Mothers every day are put in a catch-22,” said Toby Kleinman, an attorney who has consulted on cases involving protective mothers who took their children into hiding.

The Legal Conference Circuit / Expert Witnesses

• Battered Mothers Custody Conference — Their website has been taken down. Each year, the conference provides a protective parent speakers that include lawyers and underground moms. See their Facebook page.
• The Leadership Council is the group of extremist child abuse professionals that support protective parents and domestic violence advocates that want to roll back the clock to the days of maternal custody at any hint of a family violence allegation of a mother. For the cause, there are some that believe these professionals would see child abuse in every case.
• The Child Abuse Forensic Institute The board of this organization contains Seth Goldestein, Joan Pennington and Ann Haralambie. We mention Haralambie to the extent that an unnamed woman approached a recovered underground child allegedly on behalf of the noncustidal underground mom. The woman inappropriately told the 14 year old child if he wanted to live with his mom, the child needed to contact Ms. Haralambie. This event occurred several weeks after Haralambie attended a law conference in which underground attorney Sheila Brogna gave a seminar on the legal rights of children to choose their own attorney. BTW, it was Brogna who tried to become Amanda Otters’ attorney with Alan Rosenfeld represented the abducting mother.
• Richard Ducote spoke at the National Organization of Forensic Social Work on 15th Annual Conference on April 19-22, 1998 on The Dr. Elizabeth Morgan Story: An Insider’s View. Ducote is one of those expert witnesses that surfaces at the trials of these abducting parents. He currently represents underground mom Rosalyn Beasley (see above), who plead guilty to going underground with her son in the late late ’80s and was arrested in Montpellier, Vermont — birthplace of the underground. Here is a link to a picture of Richard Ducote.
• Seth L. Goldstein, J.D. spoke at the National Organization of Forensic Social Work 15th Annual Conference on April 19-22, 1998 on he Problem of Sorting Out Child Sexual Abuse Allegations in Divorce Cases Goldstein is another one of those professionals on the legal conference circuit and who participates as an expert witnesses that surfaces at the trials of these abducting parents.
  
• Professor Hal Pepinsky This feminist criminal justice professor at the University of Indiana has been a long-time supporter of the Children of the Underground and protective parent group or cult. Faye Yager has been a frequent lecturer in his classes. However, here is what he wrote about Faye Yager.

The Journalists (Protective Parent Movement Reporters)

• Mackenzie Carpenter In 1997, Carpenter did a story with Allan Detrich on the Children of the Underground. This story was setup a number of months in advance with advance knowledge by Mackenzie Carpenter that Allan Detrich would photograph the parental kidnapping by Underground Mothers. We don’t know who orchestrated the story, but our guess would be Faye Yager and April Curtis who were never criminally prosecuted. Carpenter testified when subpoenaed that Faye Yager told her that she had assisted Ellen Dever in going “underground”. We believe Carpenter’s actions were irresponsible as a journalist and it is possible these crimes may not have been committed without the media’s involvement. 
• Allan Detrich In 1997, Detrich, a photographer for the Toledo Blade was present at the parental kidnappings of Ellen Dever, Bonnie Rubenstein and April Curtis’ daughter. Detrich’s wife Mary Detrich, a physician is also alleged to be involved. Later in 2000, kidnapper David Hughes was arrested in his home. Alan Detrich was fired by the Toledo Blade for altering photos, a major ethics violations of photo journalists.
• Elaine Aradillas – A writer for People Magazine, she wrote a spoon-fed piece for the Genevieve Kelly protective parent case. She actually interviewed an abducted special needs child. We hope People Magazine will never let Elaine Aradillas cover a story involving children again.
• Cara Tabachnick – Cara first reported for the Protective Parent Cause in 2010 as a reporter for the controversial Daily Beast in a story: When Fathers Kill Their Kids (Kathleen Russell (no professional credentials)/Joyanna Silberg (protective parent supporter) provided quotes?). In 2017, with the adoption of Family Reunification Workshops and Camps to address parental alienation, Cara Tabachnick wrote another protective parent controversial story for The Washington Post Magazine. In the story, she discredits the entire Family Reunification process in cases where it is obvious one parent (usually the mother) is alienating the children.
• Dede Evavold – A writer for the Red Herring Alert. Her home was searched that led to evidence in finding Samantha and Gianna Rucki in the Sandra Rucki Felony Parental Deprivation Case. Evavold was the campaign manger for Michelle MacDonald in her unsuccessful campaign for Minnesota Supreme Court Judge.
• Karen Winner is a radical feminist former news reporter whose child custody views of maternal custody vs. paternal custody is allegedly as outrageous as the KKK or Osama bin Laden. Her web site lists herself as an investigator of family courts, but she does not have any professional credentials or has never raised any children.
• Anna Quindlen She wrote one her her last columns in the NY Times about protective parents and underground moms and reports a case involving a mother who killed herself and her child. As a news reporter for Newsweek, she writes an article to support Andrea Yates, the mother who killed her children. We feel sorry for Quindlen’s children.
• Garland Waller In 2001, this Assistant Professor at Boston Univeristy produced a bias documentary entitled Small Justice: Little Justice in America’s Courts promoting the protective parent group or cult. There are some letters (letter1 letter 2) on Professor Waller’s site from children that could not have possible be written by these children without coaching from the non-custodial mothers.
• Paula S. Fass is a U.C. Berkeley History Professor that authored a book on Child Abduction in America. She’s a history professor not a psychiatrist, psychologist or social scientist that has no formal training in child abduction cases. Her book is inaccurate and depits her personal opinions on this subject matter. We’ve seen her quoted by the Associated Press and wonder what educational training she has received to form her opinions. AP reporters should have contacted more reputable sources such as those that have authored research papers or studies published in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s literature.