D.C. Family Court Targets Protective Mom and Brain Trauma Expert to Shield Deep State Dad
By Richard Luthmann with Michael Volpe
Court Muzzles Mom, Puts Kids’ Lives at Risk
A District of Columbia Family Court judge has slapped a gag order and a sweeping protective order on a mother in a high-profile custody battle, barring her from even taking her traumatized children to the ER without prior court approval.
Judge Veronica Sanchez issued the retaliatory orders against Victoria Scallan, a protective mom who’s been desperately following doctors’ orders to shield her kids from further harm. The gag order silences Scallan from speaking about the case, while the protective order effectively makes basic medical care a legal landmine.
Observers are stunned.
“Instead, the court is threatening the mother … with contempt. Her crime? Trying to protect her children,” said children’s advocate Jill Jones Soderman, founder and executive director of the Foundation for the Child Victims of the Family Courts (fcvfc.org).
She is outraged that Victoria Scallan is being treated like a criminal.
The shocking edicts mean that if one of Scallan’s children has a medical emergency, she must beg the very court that has ignored their doctors.
Critics say Judge Sanchez’s heavy-handed approach is less about justice and more about protecting the “deep state” dad at the center of the storm.
The case pits a mother fighting to save her kids’ lives against Joseph A. “Jay” Scallan III, a powerful father with D.C. connections – and a court seemingly bent on keeping the truth under wraps.
Top Brain Doctor Issues Dire Warning
At the heart of this drama is a world-renowned neurologist, Dr. S. Gregory Hipskind, MD, PhD, who is begging the court to follow the science.
Commentators have dubbed him “the Michael Jordan of SPECT scans” for his perfect 172-0 record in getting his brain scan evidence admitted in court under the Daubert standard.
Dr. Hipskind has repeatedly warned that enforcing separation from the mother or forcing contact with the father could trigger a medical catastrophe.
In letters to the court, Dr. Hipskind detailed how Scallan’s children suffer severe trauma-related disorders: PNES (psychogenic non-epileptic seizures), AMPS (amplified pain syndrome), and PTSD from abuse.
Even the thought of being taken from their mother or made to see their father sends the kids into psychological and neurological tailspins.
Dr. Hipskind put it bluntly: any arrest of the mother or removal of the children will “VERY LIKELY” precipitate “severe PTSD-like” symptoms in both children and, in one case, seizures “associated with apnea and, potentially, death.”
He has pleaded for the court to halt its course and let him present his findings, to no avail.
On The Unknown Podcast, which recently spotlighted the case, co-hosts and journalists Michael Volpe and Richard Luthmann marveled that this expert is being ignored.
Dr. Hipskind is “a top PhD and MD… the G.O.A.T. of SPECT scans,” Luthmann said, noting the neurologist’s impeccable credentials.
Yet Judge Sanchez has shut the door on Hipskind’s science, effectively gagging the very medicine that could save these kids. Every day the court refuses to hear him, the danger to Andrew and his sister mounts.
“Deep State” Dad’s Bizarre Behavior
Why would a judge disregard such dire medical advice? Many point to the child’s father, Jay Scallan, a well-connected DHS official, as the beneficiary of the court’s blind eye.
This is no ordinary custody litigant – Scallan hails from an elite Beltway family with deep state ties and a penchant for scandal.
He’s worked on government robotic canine projects and even circulated a vulgar video of a robot dog sex act, later insisting that having sex with machines “isn’t bestiality” since the devices aren’t real animals.
Colleagues were appalled by the lapse in judgment. Scallan’s on-the-job antics don’t end there: internal footage allegedly shows him sleeping during remote work hours, including dozing off on the floor and even in his bathtub on taxpayer time.
“We’re paying this man to sleep,” an incredulous insider quipped after videos surfaced. Scallan’s erratic behavior extends to the home as well. Family court records describe him neglecting and verbally abusing his children, and even subjecting them to disturbing sexual situations with a pet dog.
Despite a documented problem with alcohol and a warped sense of sexual ethics, this father has enjoyed kid-glove treatment from the D.C. court. His child support obligation was mysteriously slashed from $3,000 a month to a token $75, and he even cut off his kids’ health insurance with little consequence.
Scallan’s privileged background undoubtedly helps: his family boasts multiple luxury homes (from a Canadian border estate to a South Carolina retreat) and membership at the exclusive Chevy Chase Country Club, hallmarks of Washington’s power set.
“The guy’s like another Hunter Biden without the crack and the hookers,” Luthmann observed, alluding to an heir coasting on family name.
“Yet the D.C. court, the elites, are protecting their own.”
Indeed, to critics, it appears Judge Sanchez is shielding a deep-state darling – robot dogs, warts and all – at the direct expense of two vulnerable kids and their protective mom.
Radical Attorney & Legal Rookies Block Evidence
In Judge Sanchez’s courtroom, science and safety have been sidelined by a cast of court appointees and attorneys who seem determined to quash any evidence favoring the mother. Leading the charge is Emily Gelmann, an attorney whose profile raises eyebrows.
Gelmann is an avowed feminist – a women’s studies major turned lawyer. Yet, she has made it her mission to paint the protective mother as the problem and keep Dr. Hipskind’s medical evidence far away from the record.
Sources say Gelmann’s marching orders are clear: keep the damning brain scans and trauma diagnoses out of the courtroom at all costs.
The case also features two court-appointed guardians ad litem (GALs) from the powerhouse firm Jones Day LLP – both relatively recent law school graduates. Lawyers Graham Foster and Janessa MacKenzie‘s inexperience has proven “dangerously” inadequate.
According to a new motion Scallan filed to disqualify them, these rookie GALs had no prior experience, just “three hours of video-based training and a binder,” and zero background in trauma or child psychiatry.
They promptly lived up to those slim credentials.
The GALs are accused of ignoring urgent medical emergencies – when told the children’s health insurance had lapsed and were in agony without treatment, one shrugged it off as “not really my purview,” displaying “alarming disregard” for the children’s basic needs.
After reports that court-mandated interviews triggered one of the child’s self-harm and seizure episodes, Victoria Scallan begged the GALs to alert the judge and postpone any further traumatizing meetings.
She even forwarded Dr. Hipskind’s explicit warning that more interviews could be “psychologically, possibly irreparably, harmful.”
The GALs’ response? A flat refusal – they claimed they “can’t just call up the judge” – and forged ahead, effectively telling this desperate mother: too bad.
They have blatantly ignored Dr. Hipskind’s directives that separating the kids from mom or forcing them into in-person encounters could trigger “flashback terrors, psychogenic seizures…painful muscle spasms, suicidal ideation, apnea, and even death.”
Such life-and-death warnings should stop anyone in their tracks – but not these court appointees.
Tellingly, the GALs never even contacted Dr. Hipskind (or the children’s psychiatrist) to hear his expert insight, even as of mid-July. This willful blindness violates the most basic duty to act in the children’s best interests, Scallan argues.
Her motion also slams the GAL team for trampling the Americans with Disabilities Act by refusing any accommodations for Andrew’s disability, and for operating in secret, failing to share information, and effectively shutting Scallan out of her own case.
The filing calls their removal “imperative” to protect the children. As Scallan puts it, this is science vs. spin: qualified doctors and specialists on one side, and on the other a cadre of ambitious young lawyers (and an “angry” activist attorney in Gelmann) paid to downplay abuse and shut out inconvenient facts.
Outrage Mounts as Mom Fights Back
The Scallan case has become a rallying cry for family court reform advocates, who say it exposes a system dead-set on silencing protective parents and whitewashing abuse.
“It’s a conveyor belt to abuse, and the children are the ones paying the price,” warns Jill Jones Soderman,
Soderman, a veteran child-advocacy expert, has praised Victoria Scallan’s unwavering fight for her kids. By defying gag orders and refusing to give up, this mother is shining a light on the court’s cruelty.
Soderman says the professionals in this case are “blindly executing a pre-scripted plan… putting traumatized children back into a toxic household as if nothing happened.”
In her view, the family court has utterly lost its way, prioritizing obedience over evidence and punishing the very parent trying to save the children.
“The so-called professionals refuse to review the evidence… They don’t want hospital records. They want obedience,” Soderman observed, condemning the court’s approach.
Meanwhile, Victoria Scallan is fighting on through legal channels. Her motion to oust the GALs is one step toward getting real fact-finding in front of Judge Sanchez.
She’s also imploring the court to hear directly from Dr. Hipskind and other treating experts – the people who truly know what these children have endured.
As it stands, a respected doctor’s warnings are being ignored, and a devoted mother is gagged under threat of jail.
The question haunting observers: Will D.C.’s family court wake up before it’s too late? Each day that politics and influence trump science and child safety, the Scallan children remain in harm’s way – and a mother’s desperate war for her kids rages on.
