BOSTON — A bill presented to the Massachusetts legislature by state Rep. Lenny Mirra (R-Georgetown) on behalf of a parent is calling for the removal of an Essex County Probate Court judge.
The proposed legislation follows claims from a Groveland man, Walter Sorenson, who alleges that Judge Abbe L. Ross, a probate court judge in Salem, showed bias against him in his 2018 divorce proceedings.
“Initially I thought that she was biased against fathers,” said Sorenson, who was assigned Ross as a judge for his divorce case. “But later I found that she sides with a party and favors one side all the way through.”
His case is not unique, according to a petition that has been circulating, which alleges Ross has handled her cases improperly and with bias. As of Friday, the petition had garnered 339 signatures.
Ross declined to comment for this story.
Sorenson alleges that in his particular case, his children’s file from the Department of Children and Families (DCF) was not allowed to be admitted as evidence.
“My kids never got a voice in the lower courts,” said Sorenson, adding that his kids had run away from home as a result of the judge’s ruling in the case.
In 2019, Sorenson won a ruling in which the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Appeals Court determined that Ross had issued a conclusion that “was legally erroneous and therefore an abuse of discretion,” when she denied Sorenson’s motion for additional time to assemble records in his appeals case.
The ruling also stated that “on the other hand, the judge did not abuse her discretion in concluding that the husband failed to prosecute his appeals from the contempt judgments,” and that Sorenson “failed to show that the judge abused her discretion in this respect.”
His appeal, which had been dismissed by the court, was reinstated after that ruling. Sorenson said he has since been assigned a new judge, who he has found to be more impartial.
Mirra said that the bill calling for Ross’s removal is on the docket for the coming legislative session. The representative noted that he had known Sorenson for a long time before filing the legislation on his behalf.
“I was happy to do it,” said Mirra. “I don’t know much about this particular judge, but I do think we need to do a better job holding our judges accountable.”
Since submitting the bill, Mirra said he has received 12 calls in support of the filing.
Pilar Mate, who wrote the petition, said she lost custody of her daughter as a result of a case that went before Ross. Like Sorenson, Mate said her daughter’s testimony to DCF was not allowed to be admitted as evidence for her case.
“When you enter her courtroom, she has already made a decision,” said Mate. “She chooses one person that she is going to favor, and she makes life hell for the other one.”
A 2020 appeal of her custody case ruled against Mate, with court documents stating that the appeals court “(discerned) no abuse of discretion” from the judge “in granting the father physical and legal custody of the child and ordering supervised parenting time for the mother.”
After her case, Mate said she began looking for other litigants who had experienced treatment they believed to be unfair from Ross. She found more than a dozen people, she said.
“We filed countless complaints with the Judicial Conduct Commission, contacted our state representatives, and filed numerous petitions to remove Abbe Ross from the bench,” said Mate. “Finally, we got our bill of address docketed.”
Ross worked as an attorney for her own practice in Boston from 2004 to 2014, when she became an associate justice for the Suffolk Probate and Family Court in 2014. She now works at the Essex County Probate and Family Court in Salem.
