By Frank Parlato

Christopher Ambrose, a suspended attorney and former Hollywood TV writer, has always sought to control the narrative. In Connecticut family court, where secrecy is the rule, not the exception, and court-appointed “experts” can be bought by the hour, he always succeeded. 

He took his three adopted children from their mother and kept all the marital funds. He had won every motion. He silenced every outcry from his grieving children, deprived of their mother – made.

Victory was sweet.

Or was it?

In federal court — where filings are public, and perjury has consequences — his control slipped a little. All it took was $405 and a judge who refused to seal his sworn financial affidavit.

That refusal detonated the long, quiet war Ambrose has been waging against the mother of his children and his children for six years. Once that affidavit hit the public docket, his 18-year-old daughter, Mia, saw what her father had been telling a federal judge about her.

She decided to hold him accountable.

$405 MISTAKE THAT BLEW OPEN THE DOOR

Ambrose is a plaintiff in three federal defamation cases in the Connecticut District Court, with the same judge.

One of them is against me for reporting on his divorce and custody successes. 

One is against psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X.  Lee for her disclosure that she diagnosed him with psychopathic traits that make him positively dangerous to his children, a conclusion Ambrose claims is defamatory. 

The third is against blogger Tina Swithin, who publishes a website called One Mom’s Battle and once wrote an article about him, saying his children and their mother said he was extremely abusive to them. Her defense is the truth. His children and their mother say he was savagely, ruthlessly abusive, in fact criminally abusive.

In the Lee case, Ambrose stumbled. He attempted to avoid the $405 filing fee by submitting an in forma pauperis affidavit claiming poverty. He then asked the Court to seal it.

Judge Sarala V. Nagala refused. In her order, she wrote that IFP affidavits carry a “strong presumption of public access.”

As a side note, in his subsequent lawsuits against Swithin and this writer, he paid the fee.

Mia Ambrose, now 18,  read her father’s affidavit – the one he signed in March.  She saw that he claimed she lived in his home, that he supported her financially, he bought her food and paid her phone bill, and counted her as part of a four-person household.

Mia — safe from his abuse, safely outside his control — made her own sworn affidavit that flatly contradicts what Ambrose swore before the court.

“I have not lived with him since August 2024.” — Mia

Not lived with him since 2024? But Ambrose swore she was there with him in Connecticut – there on Beach Road, living in near poverty with him, with him paying all her bills, as he drained his modest retirement account, as she dutifully attended high school.

It was a pretty scene of a loving, self-sacrificing father.

Mia’s federal affidavit is Exhibit H in a sanctions motion, a point-by-point rebuttal of her father’s sworn statements.

Her very first declaration is decidedly unambiguous:

“I have not resided with Christopher Ambrose since August 2024.”

She followed it with:

“Since my departure, Christopher Ambrose has provided no support of any kind — financial, material, or educational.”

And then:

“He withheld my identification documents — my birth and adoption records, Social Security card, and passport — to maintain control and prevent my independence.”

Ambrose told the court he supported three children – and named her in his affidavit.

Mia responded:

“Every statement or filing in which he claims to support three children is false as to me.”

“I have lived independently in another state at a confidential address known to law enforcement for my protection.”

The protection she speaks about is not from some random stalker. It is from him.

He told the court she was a full-time student he was supporting.

Mia wrote:

“His conduct prevented me from completing high school.”

These aren’t minor discrepancies. They are direct reversals under oath. 

And we haven’t even started with his other sworn statements. Some would call them lies. A judge would call them perjury.

When you lie on a federal affidavit to avoid a $405 filing fee, that’s perjury. The penalty, at minimum, is dismissal of his case against Dr. Lee. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(A), dismissal is mandatory.

It is up to the judge to refer the case for criminal prosecution.

Stay tuned for part 2.