UPDATE, April 29. In addition to the charges he is facing in Gwinnett County, Georgia, Carmine Baffa now also faces nearly two dozen more charges in Cobb County (also in Georgia), including statutory rape and aggravated sodomy.
As a non-custodial parent, I have been fighting since 2004 to keep Carmine Baffa out of my children's lives.
Carmine was taken into custody April 9. When I wrote the following and posted it on the 11th, it was virtually the only site on the web that had anything negative to say about the man. Everything else that came up on a "Baffa" search was the stuff that's been on the web for years - all glowing, all praise, all wonderment. You had to dig pretty deep online to find chatroom conversations from 10 years ago that pointed to what is going on with the man today.
Considering what Carmine had been hauled in for, I thought it would be a good time to share things that he has done to me and my family in recent years, lest his supporters think that what he is now being accused of comes out of a clear, blue sky.
[April 11]
As I write this, Dr. Carmine Baffa is sitting in the Gwinnett County jail (in Georgia) facing charges of child molestation (possibly "aggravated") and rape (it looks like of a minor, and nothing to do with my children, thankfully).
Carmine Baffa began counseling my ex-wife and my boys sometime in 2004, about two years after our divorce. I was fine with it until I asked my ex-wife what Carmine discusses with the children. I was told it was none of my business. Red flag.
It wasn’t long before I started hearing things from my oldest son that indicated attempts by Carmine to divide me and my children (emphasis added):
When my boy told Carmine that I wouldn’t take him to see Star Wars: Episode III because it was PG-13, my son related that “Carmine said he would take me to a PG-13 movie.” Nothing like having your parental authority and guidance undermined.
“Carmine said there is no reason for you to raise your voice at me, and that I don’t have to see you anymore on the weekends if you keep doing it!” What the...?
“Carmine said I don't have to be mad at mommy 'cause it’s not her fault you moved out,” inferring to the 6-year-old the need to assign blame, and if it isn’t mom’s fault, well, who’s left? You always want young children of divorce saying it's one or the other parent's fault; otherwise, how else can you foster animosity between them?
Red flags.
My youngest son reported that Carmine had struck him during an incident at Disney World (yes, Carmine used to take families to Disney World to observe his clients in a “stressful environment” to see how they would interact, as if this dynamic couldn't be observed while taking your kids down the cereal aisle at the local grocery store - ironically, it seems Carmine was the one stressing out at Disney World).
My youngest son also said that Carmine threatened to beat him up just this past August if he didn’t behave. Carmine is 52; my son is seven. Both of these incidents with my youngest son were verified by my ex-wife and treated as if nothing were wrong. Red flags.
Let's review. Apparently, the wisdom of Carmine would say that it’s not okay (or, not "useful") to raise your voice to a child; that it is, in fact, so harmful that parents who do so should be separated from their children. However, there may be times when it is useful to threaten them with violence, to smack them, or (allegedly) to just out and out rape them. Gosh, I hadn’t thought of that.
For three whole years after the divorce, I had been seeing my boys about 26 days a month, and I'm the non-custodial parent. One day in August of 2005, I e-mailed Carmine and flat told him to stop seeing my children. The next day (and my ex-wife has verified this), Carmine directly influenced my ex-wife to implement the default visitation schedule in our divorce settlement. This instantly limited the boys and I to about eight days a month. (There was a serious flaw in the wording of the settlement that allowed my ex to get away with it.)
For the next year, I had to fight in and out of court to restore about 95% of the time the boys and I formerly enjoyed. The glaring irony is that my ex-wife had told me that the boys were "in therapy with Carmine to help them deal with the separation issues of divorce." I was unaware of any issues along those lines - the fact that the boys were seeing both parents virtually every day since the divorce must have been blinding me to this possibility.
The brilliance of Carmine is that only he could fathom that the way to help children cope with non-existent "separation issues" is to suddenly, drastically, and arbitrarily increase the separation between the children and one of their parents, thereby CREATING separation issues. Does this sound utterly backward to anyone? It did to our court mediator, too.
But let's look it squarely in the face and recognize that Carmine was helping to greatly reduce my parenting time to punish me for openly opposing his involvement with my children. That is family counseling at its finest.
On more than one occasion, I asked my ex-wife and e-mailed Carmine requesting to see his credentials for counseling children, or to counsel parents on parenting issues, or to counsel anyone. My requests were always ignored. (No, I don't wonder why.) And people have been shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for his...I'm not sure what to call it.
After I had heard of the incident at Disney World (which occurred in '04 but wasn't related to me until '05), it became my policy to make a statement to my ex-wife everytime I heard that she and the boys were heading to Atlanta to attend one of Carmine's seminars or to spend a weekend at his house: "I don't want Carmine near the boys, and they are never to be alone with him."
I was sickened to hear that during one of their weekends at Carmine's (within the last year), it was "just us and mom, and another girl was there for the weekend. She was 13 or 14." I asked if the girl's parents were around, too. "No," the boys said, "it was just her. Her parents were in [another state], where they live." Big, red flag.
Amazing that my gut feeling compelled me to make that statement to my ex-wife before they'd go to Atlanta, and yet I had never even met the man. But people who actually worked with him directly were able to be convinced that sending their teenage daughter to spend a weekend with Carmine would be somehow "useful." I have to wonder if his eyes don't become large swirls as he talks to you.
Well, thank you for sharing your incredible wisdom with my children, Carmine. We laughed at your mugshot – it was the first time I had ever seen what you look like. Your involvement with my children over the years has given me the opportunity to teach them the meaning of “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” You were the object lesson. Hopefully, it is a lesson they have learned well.
By the way, where IS your doctoral degree from? There are so many people who have been asking you that for so many years. Maybe that will come out during your trial. I’m sure a lot of interesting things will.
I'd wish you luck at the trial, Carmine, but I just can't. As far as I'm concerned, you're finally home, and you need to stay there.