Police Chief Wants Officials Held Accountable After Harmony Montgomery Murder

A picture of Harmony Montgomery before she went missing in 2019. Courtesy of Justice For Harmony

A New Hampshire police chief believes child protection officials in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts should be held accountable for failing to prevent the murder of Harmony Montgomery by her father, Adam Montgomery.

Speaking at a press conference following Mr. Montgomery’s conviction last week for the second-degree murder of his five-year-old daughter, Manchester Police Chief Allen Aldenberg said it “blows his mind” that the little girl’s disappearance remained undetected for two years.

“I still firmly believe that some people in some other agencies need to be held accountable,” Mr. Aldenberg said, confirming he meant both Massachusetts and New Hampshire officials. “I’m asking for that, this little five-year-old girl deserves someone to be held accountable because that failed along the way. We wouldn’t be standing here today if other people had done their job,” he said.

In December 2021, Mr. Aldenberg’s department was tasked with investigating Harmony’s disappearance after it was discovered that New Hampshire child protection workers, assigned to monitor her, had no record of seeing her since early fall 2019.

A Massachusetts family court judge awarded custody of her to her estranged father, Adam Montgomery—an admitted transient with an extremely violent and lengthy criminal history—before New Hampshire lost track of her. Despite his background, the judge chose Mr. Montgomery over Harmony’s mother, Crystal Sorey.

While Ms. Sorey was struggling with a drug addiction problem, she was receiving treatment, attending parenting classes, and also had no history of violence.

Despite Ms. Sorey’s warnings to the court that Mr. Montgomery was extremely dangerous, Harmony was sent to live with her father. She told Court TV that she urged the court not to give her daughter to “the one person that I begged them never to give her to.”

As a Massachusetts report would later reveal, the judge made the custody decision despite knowing that Mr. Montgomery did not have a strong relationship with his daughter.

“Adam had only spent, in the period just before the transfer of custody, had only spent 20 hours with his daughter, and so he had never had her for a full day,” Maria Moissaides, the director of the Office of the Child Advocate in Massachusetts stated in the 2022 report on the case.

Still, Mr. Montgomery, who was actually in prison when Harmony was born, was granted custody.

As revealed in a preliminary investigation and during his trial in New Hampshire, Mr. Montgomery went on to beat his daughter, subject her to cruel punishments, and ultimately delivered a lethal blow to her because she wet her pants while strapped in her car seat.

After her death, Mr. Montgomery hid her remains in various locations including a walk-in freezer at a restaurant where he worked.

Through his spokesperson, Mr. Aldenberg declined requests from The Epoch Times to elaborate on what type of action he would like to see taken against the agencies he said failed Harmony.

(Left) Adam Montgomery. (Right) Harmony Montgomery. Courtesy of Manchester Police Department

Legislative Action

Mr. Aldenberg’s call for accountability comes amid the consideration of two bills in New Hampshire. The bills seek to incarcerate any parent who interferes with a family court judge’s custody order.

New Hampshire House Bill 1192, entitled “Relative to contempt actions in domestic relations matters,” proposes a significant change to the legal process. It suggests allowing family court judges to order the incarceration of a parent for “willful disobedience” of a court order. This applies to cases involving abuse, alimony, annulment, child support, divorce, legal separation, parenting, or any other matter within the jurisdiction of the judicial branch’s family division, without requiring a hearing and trial process.

House Bill 1006 focuses solely on expanding the contempt powers of judges against parents who don’t comply with parenting plans. It also proposes a parent  who “unreasonably denies or interferes with visitation, custody or third-party custody” participates in counseling “to educate the violator on the importance of providing the child with a continuing and meaningful relationship with both parents.” It also stipulates that family court judges should “utilize any and all powers relating to contempt conferred on it by law” to enforce the parenting plan.

Massachusetts lawmakers in contrast have introduced a series of bill proposals to make child safety a priority over parental rights and to make custody orders by judges less arbitrary.

S909, introduced by Democrats,  seeks to establish a set of factors family court judges would be mandated to follow in making custody determinations.

Another Massachusetts bill, S1581, introduced by Republicans, would establish a failure to report a missing child as a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The bill, if passed, would apply to a “parent, guardian, employee of a home or institution or any other person with equivalent supervision or care of a child,” whether the supervision is temporary or permanent.

A man walks past a poster for Harmony Montgomery in Manchester, N.H., on May 5, 2022. Charles Krupa/AP Photo

Ms. Mossaides had faulted the state for not making a child’s safety a priority in custody orders. She referred to this as “a miscalculation of risk and an unequal weight placed on parents’ rights versus a child’s wellbeing.”

Ms. Mossaides also said she believes officials were unaware that Harmony feared her father and that decisions to place Harmony in his care might not have been made had that been known.

It came from “a very reputable source that Harmony was afraid of her father,” Ms. Moissaides told NBC News in Boston. “[That] would have made a very big difference, I am sure,” she said.

Advocates for court reform don’t agree.

‘Tons of Cases’

Last year, Tina Swithin, founder of One Mom’s Battle, told The Epoch Times in a story about family court judges stripping custody from a parent who raises child abuse allegations against the other parent, that she has witnessed countless cases. Despite “hard evidence” of abuse being presented against the abusive parent, judges still awarded them custody, she explained.

Ms. Swithin said that any interference with parenting orders by the courts is automatically deemed “parental alienation,” and followed by giving sole custody to the accused parent without any judicial process. “It really leaves them helpless to protect their children,” she said.

The New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NHCDV), which has faced criticism for not taking a stronger stand against family court practices, released a statement last January expressing strong opposition to a bill that seeks to codify the presumption of 50/50 custody.

“No child should suffer severe injury or death because they knowingly are placed in an unsafe home,” the coalition wrote. “HB185 turns a blind eye to what we know to be best practice.”

According to the coalition, it is a known tactic for abusers to seek joint custody as a way to continue control over their children as well as spouses. The bill remains with the Child and Family Law Committee (CLF).

In Harmony’s case, Mr. Sorey filed for sole custody of her even though, according to testimony during his trial, he stated he “hated his daughter right to the core.”

There has been a windfall of family court reform bills introduced in New Hampshire, but legislative records show CLF has rejected most if not all of them. Only bills that seek to reduce child support or promote shared custody have advanced.

The committee, for example, voted that HB1006, which would incarcerate a parent for not complying with a judge’s parenting order, “ ought to pass” while it rejected H499, which called for the rules of evidence to apply in family court cases, which is already permitted in every other state except New Hampshire.

Boston attorney Wendy Murphy, who serves as co-director of the Women’s and Children’s Advocacy Project under the Center for Law and Social Responsibility at New England Law School,  previously told The Epoch Times that she no longer believes in the adage “that it would take the death of a child” to wake up lawmakers.

Like Ms. Swithin, Ms. Murphy said she has seen “tons of cases” where child protection officials have inexplicably forced contact between a child and a dangerous parent.

Before the high-profile case of Harmony Montgomery, New Hampshire was rocked by another murder that involved New Hampshire family court rulings.

In 2013, nine-year-old Joshua Savyon was murdered by his father Muni Savyon when a New Hampshire family court judge ordered him to attend visitations with his father despite reports from  Joshua’s mother Becky Ranes that he had recently threatened to kill his son.

Just before Joshua’s murder, several media outlets reported that Ms. Ranes had a restraining order against her husband. According to published accounts, she wrote on her application for protection that her husband had threatened to harm their son. He also told her he bought a gun and that “It’s going to be either you or Josh and I.”

Mr. Savyon was charged with domestic violence-related criminal threats a year earlier, but the charges were on file without a finding. At the first court-ordered visit he fatally shot his son before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life.

Other states have also been rocked by questionable custody decisions that end up with tragic consequences for children.

Mikaela Haynes, 14, killed herself after a family court judge ruled she had to live with her father who had already admitted to attacking her older sister. Courtesy of Cynthia Haynes

In Missouri, 14-year-old Mikaela Haynes took her own life after learning that a family court judge had ordered her to be placed in shared custody with her father, who was completing a prison sentence for attacking her older sister.

Court records reveal that the father, who had admitted to raping his daughter and was serving a prison sentence for it, was ordered by a family court judge to be granted shared custody at that time.

According to Missouri attorney Evita Tolu, who represents Mikaela’s mom Cynthia Haynes in a wrongful death lawsuit against the child advocate in the case, the judge ordered shared custody despite evidence the father had molested Mikaela. After Mikaela’s suicide, Mr. Haynes, with the assistance of a court-appointed child advocate, filed for custody of his third and youngest daughter. That matter is still pending.

“What really needs to happen is judges and child protection workers who commit dereliction of duty need to lose their immunity and be prosecuted for these tragedies they create,” Ms. Tolu told The Epoch Times. Tolu has spearheaded a bill named “Mikaela’s Law” calling for just that.

Like Massachusetts, Missouri lawmakers have also introduced several bills to make the safety of a child a priority in custody matters.

Under Missouri House Bill 1950, lawmakers propose replacing court-appointed child advocates, who decide the best interests of a child, with a binding bill of rights for children.

The first one is the “right to live in a safe, comfortable place.”