Pro-LGBT protesters gathered outside the civil courthouse in Houston on Friday.
William Flowers, top left, and Jim Evans, who were married in Connecticut last year, have five children between them.
A while back we told you about a Harris County associate judge’s order barring a gay man from leaving his children alone with his husband. On Friday, protesters gathered outside the civil courthouse in Houston (above) as Judge Charley Prine signed the order, which he first issued in June.
William Flowers married his husband, Jim Evans, in Connecticut last year. Flowers has three children — a 14-year-old boy and twin 9-year-old girls — from his marriage to Lacey Flowers, which ended in divorce in 2004 after he came out as gay. Evans also has two children from a previous marriage.
When William Flowers tried to get full custody of his three children, a jury ruled against him. Then Prine issued the order barring the kids from being alone with Evans — or anyone who isn’t related to them by blood or adoption — without Lacey Flowers’ consent.
There are no allegations of abuse in the case, and Williams Flowers says he believes the judge is trying to punish him for being gay. Prine has declined to comment, and the couple says their only recourse is to appeal to a higher court.
A Facebook page has been launched calling for Prine’s removal from the bench. There’s also a petition at Change.org. Watch a video report from ABC 13 below.
While they may have been married in Conneticut, the State of Texas does not recognize other states, or should I rephrase, Same Sex Marriages. And Yes, the wife does have All Legal Protection for her children.. So what is the Big Deal ??? Get Over it, the ex wives are in charge, like it or not !!! And the more there is a fight to remove judges simply because some did’nt get Their Way, remember, it works BOTH Ways…
These children aren’t stupid. They will grow up and see the discrimination sowed by their mother, as well as the court. The truth is powerful. The younger generation know that Gays are BORN GAY! People continue to push their judgements on others, resulting in this type of tragedy … Gays using straight women to be accepted, then later following their path and dumping them. The blood is on the hands of those encouraging them to live a LIE! They will be the ones who pay … WHAT ONE SOWS, SO SHALL THEY REAP!
shea, sweetie, i think you might have chosen the wrong website for someone with your…er….um….sensibilities?
seriously? do you really believe a father should be denied the ability to have his children over unless he can stay with them the whole time? what if the they divorced and the father had a new girlfriend, do you think that the judge would side with the ex-wife then? the ex-wife and the judge need to realize it’s not all about them.
and as for ex-wives being in charge, is that what happened in your divorce? did you make the mistake of marrying a gay man and that why you are so bitter?
Shea, I don’t follow your logic. Parents leave their children with baby-sitters, neighbors, friends, and relatives all the time. Rare is the parent whose children never leave their sight. With no allegations of mistreatment on the part of the ex-husband’s new spouse, there is no reason I can see (unless there’s something the article’s leaving out) to ban him from watching the children. And no ma’am. Ex-wives are NOT in charge. Not when it comes to dictating who their ex-husbands are allowed to marry. That’s a strange logical fallacy you’ve constructed.
Shea, I’m not sure what country you live in but parents should have equal rights no matter their beliefs unless it is endangers the children and clearly this is not that case. You should really research this before you go spouting off, these two fathers probably make a better mother than you ever will, How dare judge them! This is obviously a homophobic matter and not just the judge …..hint hint!
Really , I am sure if you were the mother of these children, you would feel differently about it, You sound pretty sour, A judge doesn’t need to be removed just because you don’t agree with his decision, is that the way you run your life, if you don’t get what you want, your hateful and judgmental, everyone’s entitled to there own feelings.
Part 1 of my post
This judge is even worse than that. If you’ll spare the time to read this whole thing, you’ll see why this judge needs to be removed from the bench. Here’s what he did to my step daughter…
My Fiancee and his ex-wife have been separated for 4 years now and during their very turbulent first year of separation, his adopted parents were babysitting their 1 year old daughter quite a bit while my fiancee and his ex wife were getting their affairs in order. The parents stayed civil, and had a verbal agreement about visitation and custody which they stuck to. They even hung out at each others house with other friends to be around their daughter as often as possible. During this time my fiancee’s parents were growing creepishly close to their granddaughter and even referring to each other as “Mommy” and “Daddy” in the babies presence confusing her about who her parents were. They took liberties with the baby such as putting her on medications she didn’t really need, hacking off her long beautiful brunette locks because her thick hair was too much for them to handle (keeping in mind they only kept her an average of 3 days a week), they set up, not just a bedroom, but a full on children’s sanctuary with a 50″ flat screen TV mounted to the wall with all the best electronics attached to it, and a closet so packed full of clothes that the baby didn’t have enough time to wear them all before she grew out of them. Once it became clear to the Mother that they were waaaaaay too attached and were undermining her authority and wishes for how to care for her daughter when she was working, she started only allowing them to keep her about 3 days a month, only after they begged to the point of tears, saying they were in their 60’s, very sick, and that their granddaughter was the only twinkle of happiness in their life.
A year later, the Father was living back at home and began to keep his daughter more often while his ex wife was preparing to have her 2nd child.
On Black Friday 2009, my fiancee went shopping and running errands and left his daughter with his parents. During that time SOMEONE molested the child. The only people around her that day was his Mother and Father. When the child’s Mother gets her back a day later, she immediately notices the scratches and redness of her daughters vaginal area and calls her ex husband in a panic asking for an explanation. He didn’t believe her because of some incidences from the past while she was pregnant and hormonal (Not yet understanding emotional pregnant women). She ended up waiting 2 days to take her to the doctor where the results of the rape kit were inconclusive because too much time had gone by.
2 months later and just before the child turned 3, the grandparents became so worried about petty details in the child life, such as diaper brands, sleeping schedules, and minor scrapes and bruises from her being a kid, that they filed for primary custody. The day of court Mother had car trouble on the way, didn’t make it in time, and the grandparents were given a default judgement of temporary primary custody.
Why was this okay with the Father? Because he was currently living with them and working 2 jobs to get back on his feet and his parents manipulated him into believing that the paperwork was just a formality and that they were going to sign custody back over to him when he was ready to move out.
1 month after this happened, he and I became an item. I immediately became close to his ex wife simply because we started out having a lot of respect for each other for a number of reasons.
His parents and I were getting along well at first. They invited me to dinner several times a week even letting me know it was okay to sleep over because their son and I were 25 year old adults with “needs” as his Dad said…naturally we were happy to know there wouldn’t be any weirdness about it.
But after spending a lot of time at their house around their granddaughter and seeing the family dynamic, I could immediately see that they didn’t just see themselves as grandparents. I also noticed pretty quick that the grandfather was always all to eager to help out and handle baths, diaper changes, and dressing of the, now 3 and a half year old, little girl. especially since the grandmother was sick, had no energy, and could barely handle a flight of stairs.
Having a very strong family background law, I read over his legal paperwork and clued him in to what his parents were doing not just legally, but in every other way with this child. I wrote up and filed several documents for him to try to fix the situation but there was only so much i could do without a formal education of my own and without any real power or resources.
After talking to the Mother in more detail about the alleged sexual abuse in November 2009, about her own experiences with her in-laws, and a few details about my boyfriends past with his family, it was clear what was happening.
These people have never had friends or family around their twin son and daughter, they were never once allowed to sleep away from home, even with family, and were overprotective of their kids to a very extreme point. My fiancee and his twin sister spent their childhood and teenage years in their bedroom with TV, movies, music, video games, and computers because their parents believed that if they didn’t WANT to be home, they’d be out doing drugs, having sex, joining gangs, and committing crimes. My fiancee was 16 before he was allowed to go more than 2 blocks from home in their middle-class, suburban neighborhood.
5 months later in June 2010, my fiancee and I locked down an apartment that we were set to move into in September. A few weeks later, I slept over at his house and the next morning we made breakfast for his family and told them we had gotten our own place and that we made sure to get a 2 bedroom for his daughter. His Mother looked at him and said, “Oh well there won’t be any overnight stays for a very long time, son.” That’s when we snapped. We knew we were going to have to get a lawyer and help his ex wife get her primary custody back so they could be parents without contending with people who had no real rights and whose opinions and methods of parenting were not so good. Apparently the grandparents were going to have to be legally forced into getting it through their thick skulls that they were ‘grandparents’ not ‘parents’.
We began working with the Mother (who now had given birth to a 2nd daughter) and her new husband until she got her custody back.
Part 2
The first time his daughter came back from the grandparents to our apartment, she had a swollen vagina, a urinary tract infection and was waking up nightly screaming from a nightmare. This was when I became 100% positive that her Grandfather was molesting her. She’s verbally underdeveloped and unfortunately only had about a 20-word vocabulary and didn’t really understand simple questions, so she couldn’t tell us what was happening at her grandparents house.
Later when she was potty training, she would cry that it hurts to pee and would say “Aw Paw” meaning “PawPaw”. I assumed this meant she wanted him to help her potty because he was the one who normally assisted with that sort of thing. Of course I was soon to find out that she was trying to tell me what PawPaw was doing to her when he helped her potty.
On November 11th, 2011, her grandpa dropped her off at school and her step dad picked her up from school that afternoon. She got in the car crying and red-faced and her folder showed that she had been disciplined that day. This was very much out of the ordinary for her. On the way home she cried out to her step dad that “awpaw” had poked her “down there” in the shower. Step dad raced home and informed her Mother of what had happened and a quick visual examination confirmed it. The Mother called me crying in a panic asking what to do and I told her to call the police and make a report that instant and get ready to take her to Texas Children’s hospital. I told her the next step was to get a lawyer to file an injunction to prevent the grandparents from being allowed their court ordered visitation for the following weekend, which she did to the T.
Later that evening, my fiancee and I met her, her husband and the child at the hospital where it was confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had been sexually assaulted. To make matters worse, we also found out that while the grandparents had primary custody, they removed the parents contact info on file at the hospital and added a note that no one was to be contacted but them regarding the child. That was illegal considering that they had to inform both parents immediately of any emergencies and get consent for any non-emergency medical issues.
So to make a long story longer, the grandparents got a very expensive lawyer and convinced Charley Prine that the Mother must have assaulted the child herself to frame the grandfather so she could pull their custody and have the right to move out of state to a military base where her husband was soon to be stationed. First of all she would need the Fathers consent. Second, we discussed that issue as soon as it was decided that the Mothers husband was going to the military and she more than understood that we wouldn’t allow although there would be compromises for her beyond the typical.
So today, the Mother gets supervised visitation every Tuesday between 3:30pm and 6:00pm, and the child sleeps under her molesters roof 26 days a month.
If Prine really believed the Mother did it, he would be seeking charges against her. And aside from that, even if he believed the grandfather didn’t do this (which common sense says he definitely did) why would he risk it? What if he is wrong?
It gets even sadder…my fiancee’s twin sister is pretending not to believe that her Father did this and is now trying to be the Mommy. She has quit her job and now spends every moment she’s awake at her parents house playing Mommy and manipulating her niece.
This little girl is being coached on a daily basis to lie when she’s asked about the incident, her hair is hacked of yet again, shes constantly on prescription drugs because the grandparents are so overprotective, and she refers to her parents as “Bad Mommy” and “Bad Daddy” and her Aunt and her husband as “Good Mommy” and “Good Daddy”.
This judge has handed this little girl over to old sick people who would be lucky if they lived another 2 years. The Grandmother has had heart and brain surgery and is considered a miracle patient, she’s on 30 different drugs which included heavy sleep aids that cause her to pass clean out with drool dripping down her chin for 10 hours a night and 3 hours during the day for her nap while the Grandfather is alone to do whatever he wants when he’s awake during the early am hours of the night.
All 4 of the parents have been completely tapped out financially from these legal issues, can barely keep roofs over their heads, and can’t seem to work enough to earn the money for a decent lawyer to fix this.I want this piece of shit judge off the bench. He was obviously paid off for this case and the one this article is on. He has an innocent face and evil in his heart.