Pleading Out
Oregon courts endorse fraud once again, as kid-snatching attorney Kyla Mazhary-Clark avoids prison through lesser charges
Another day, another Oregon attorney coddled, another family left in ruins, and another court that has shown that it is incapable of — or uninterested in — confronting fraud and legal abuse.
This time, it’s Albany attorney Kyla Mazhary-Clark who has pleaded guilty to a measly two counts of custodial interference in the second degree, related to her virtual kidnapping of Jamie Crompton’s children in 2019, when Mazhary-Clark was still a law student.
The reduced misdemeanor charges¹ are a far cry from the thirteen felony counts of perjury and custodial interference that she originally faced, for weaponizing her legal knowledge to defraud a family judge into awarding her custody of Crompton’s two young daughters.
Mazhary-Clark’s lies are on the record in that case, through her own admissions, and nothing about this plea bargain can erase that.
Mazhary-Clark, who is now a state-paid public defense attorney, will serve no prison time, but must pay a mere $1000 in restitution to Crompton.
Appallingly, Crompton still does not have her children back, and has not seen them in a year: She’s been forced to fend off Mazhary-Clark’s legal teams’ attempts to weaponize DHS against Crompton, and poison the courts.
Crompton can now only get relief by wading back into the toxic custody case, and continuing to shell out money to a private attorney. There is a hearing in the matter scheduled for early March.²
Lincoln County District Attorney Jenna Wallace gave Judge Sheryl Bachart³ an impassioned argument and a concise history of how Mazhary-Clark abused the legal system, and how “the court system failed Ms. Crompton.”
“I presented this case to the grand jury… and there have been law enforcement individuals who have been involved in this case: every single one of them is horrified that a person can lie to the court and steal someone’s children.
“At the end of the day, the defendant will have to live with knowing that that is how she has children… that she used the court, manipulated the court, used Ms. Crompton, manipulated Ms. Crompton, to get a family.”
This shocking case highlights Oregon courts’ absolute refusal to acknowledge or remediate instances of clear — and often confessed — fraud in civil cases. It is as though local judges are invested in perpetuating the bad and unjust outcomes they were tricked into granting, apparently for fear of looking like they possess poor judgment.
In this instance, it was Linn County Judge Rachel Kittson-MaQatish who made the unfathomable decision to award custody of Crompton’s daughters to Mazhary-Clark, based almost entirely on her word.
As an alarming aside, Kittson-MaQatish recently threw her hat in the ring for an opening at Oregon’s Court of Appeals, where she would most certainly continue to inflict catastrophic damage upon families.
The March custody hearing will not be heard by Kittson-MaQatish, but instead by Polk County Judge Rafael Caso, whose track record on this case (and others) reveals his own disappointing susceptibility to fraud.
While Mazhary-Clark will remain on probation for two years, it is yet unknown if she will retain custody of Crompton’s stolen children, or if her bar license will be suspended, or if she will at least lose her government contract for dishonesty and criminal conduct.
Such contracts are lucrative enough for her to afford a high-price defense team of her own, and are permissive enough to allow her to take on paying clients, even as she appears in court on behalf of poor defendants. Dishonest attorneys such as Mazhary-Clark should not be the kind the beleaguered agency wants on its payroll.
Only Crompton responded to my request for comments, expressing her understandable disgust with the criminal and civil cases. “I had no communication, no parenting time put into place, not even a thought into making things right. I have no words to express the anger and pain they have created. This is how good people go to jail and criminals like her are practically coddled.” She added, “I don’t care about money. I want my daughters home.”
One has to question exactly what off-the-record and prejudicial garbage the judges involved in this case have heard about Crompton, because nothing in the civil or criminal record (or the DHS records) explains this mistreatment of her, and nothing supports her continued estrangement from her daughters.
Undoubtedly, Mazarhy-Clark’s civil and defense attorneys will abuse the case delays and plea bargain to retain custody, and claim that “too much time has passed” to return the girls to their own mother. That’s a tactic that is often deployed in Linn County, and which is disturbingly effective.
Stay tuned for part 2 of this story, in which I will read between the lines of what was spoken at today’s sentencing, and explain what it appears to mean for Linn County Circuit Court, and Kyla Mazhary-Clark’s former law partners and associates.
¹ The second-degree custodial interference was reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, due to Kyla Mazhary-Clark’s “history and character,” and in consideration of the “nature and circumstances of the crime.”
² $1000 will cover just a few hours of Crompton’s attorney’s time. The monetary fine should have been tenfold.
³ Wallace and Bachart, both from Lincoln County, were handing the conflict case for Linn County.
