Law&Crime Sidebar - Florida Mom Claims Ex Was Behind Wicked Child Sex Abuse Plot

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Florida mom Walquiria Cassini, her fiancé, and her adult son were arrested for child sex abuse, but in a stunning twist, all the charges against them have been dropped. Now, Cassini accuses her ex-husband of orchestrating a twisted revenge plot. Plus, the lead detective in the case is under internal investigation for allegedly burying exculpatory evidence. Lawyers Matthew Goldberger and Mac Kenzie Saks join Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber to discuss this shocking case.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, Alex Ciccarone, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Because of the sensational allegations, this investigation was driven by hysteria and confirmation bias, not evidence. Ms. Cassini is not the monster that the public was led to believe. Talk about a 180. A Florida mother, her fiancé, and her adult son were all over. arrested last year, accused of horrific sexual abuse against the woman's two younger sons. A probable cause statement laid out these brutal and graphic alleged details that the children relayed to investigators claiming their mom not only sanctioned and participated in their

abuse, but live streamed it to make money from predators online. But now, after more than a year of investigation, all three defendants have been cleared and the charges have been dropped. and you will not believe who that mom now accuses of plotting the whole thing in a ploy to ruin her life. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. It's just a wild story. It's just a wild story. And we can talk about this. We can bring you a story like this because of the support that we get from our sponsor, Morgan and Morgan. Okay, this is America's largest injury law firm. This is a firm with over 1,000 attorneys who have recovered 25,000. billion for more than 500,000 clients. Think about that. In the past few months, a client in Florida received $12 million when insurance offered just $350,000. In Pennsylvania, another client was awarded $26 million.

That is, 40 times the insurers offer. Morgan and Morgan, they make it easy to fight for what you deserve. You can even start a claim from your phone. So if you're injured, you can start a claim at for the people.com slash LC sidebar. You can click the link below or you can scan the QR code on screen. Valkyria Cassini of Boca Raton, Florida was thrust into the spotlight in March of 2024. She wasn't alone. Alongside her was her fiancé, Ryan LaDano, and her then 20-year-old son, Matthew Cassini. Why?

So the Brazilian native was accused, and I hate to say this, but this is what the accusations were. She was accused of sexually abusing her own sons, with the abuse allegedly beginning when the boys were very young. and only coming to light at the end of 2023. But now, with trial just weeks away, all three suspects, all three defendants have had their charges dropped. And there are accusations that this is all a part of a wicked revenge plot.

Okay? You don't usually see a 180 like this. Now, a little bit later, I'm actually going to sit down and talk to Cassini's lawyers to get a better idea of what was maybe going on behind the scenes, maybe their idea of what's been happening here. But first, I've got to give you background information. how we got here, okay? So it seems it all started in November of 2023. That is when Cassini's two sons were staying with their father. This is Cassini's ex for the Thanksgiving holiday. After

Thanksgiving, her ex apparently refused to return them. According to WPBF, Cassini threatened to move forward with kidnapping charges against him, contacted Ocala police to find her kids. Now, at the same time, Cassini's ex was reporting to law enforcement that his children had revealed something, that they had revealed to him ongoing abuse at the hands of their mother, her boyfriend, and their older brother. But I will tell you right from the beginning, there was some suspicion that there might have been more to the story. Why do I say that? Because according to WPTV, a Marion County deputy could be heard on body camera footage saying to a Palm Beach County deputy, quote, it's possible that the kids are just lying about this because they want to stay with dad, because dad hasn't witnessed

any of this. This was reported to him two days ago, but he didn't call us until tonight. He's more concerned with keeping his kids than he is with the actual allegations. Now, what happens? Palm Beach County launches an investigation, and they bring the boys in for forensic interviews. At the time of the report, one boy was 14 and the other was seven, but both claimed that this alleged abuse had been going on for years and said it only stopped when they went to visit their father for Thanksgiving. Let's talk about this probable cause affidavit that was filled out by a detective, okay? It is incredibly graphic. It is so graphic that we can't even really show you excerpts from it on screen or even read it to you. That's how bad it is. The

names of the alleged perpetrators of this abuse are redacted, but based on the charges that were filed at the time, the boys claimed that Cassini and Lundonio yank them out of bed during the night, forced them to strip, and then perform sex acts on them using various sex toys. The boys claimed there were cameras, there was a laptop, there's a computer set up in Cassini's room that men could be seen watching this abuse as it was live streamed. The statement goes into really graphic detail, and that is going to become important in just a moment, but just keep that in mind. Now, the FBI got involved. Okay, the FBI got involved in the investigation in January of 2024. They served subpoenas to all sorts of companies asking them to preserve any kind of information

that might be relevant to this case, right? Information about the Cassini's, Londano, and their accounts, and that included everything from Yahoo and Snap and Microsoft and Google to Amazon, TikTok, T-Mobile. Investigators, they also subpoenaed a website called Motherless, okay? The probable cause affidavit reads, if you're not familiar with it, it says, quote, motherless is a website that describes itself as follows. Motherless is a moral-free file host where anything legal is hosted forever. All content posted to this site is 100% user-contributed.

All illegal uploads will be reported. If you want to blame someone for the content on this site, blame the freaks of the world, not us. Feel free to join the community and upload your goodies. Now, according to Palm Beach County detectives, the day after the investigation got underway over that Thanksgiving holiday, 33 items were erased from the motherless website by one of the defendants, though the probable cause statement doesn't say who. It seems those files, though, were never recovered, so we don't know what they could have been. But here's what we do know. The trio of suspects were officially arrested in March of 2020.

for it. According to Palm Beach County court records, Valkyria Cassini was charged with sexual assault on a victim under the age of 12, two counts of sexual battery by a custodian, and lewd or lascivious molestation. Ryan Landonio was accused of sexual battery on a victim under the age of 12, criminal conspiracy, and use of a child in a sexual performance. Matthew Cassini was charged with sexual battery on a victim under the age of 12 and lewd or lascivious molestation. A search of the mother's shopping history apparently showed purchases of sex toys, nanny cams, a selfie light ring, camera tripods. This is all according to the affidavit. There was a total of 56 devices that were removed from the home. This is according to Cassini's defense team. And these are shocking allegations, right? Shocking allegations that were made by the Palm Beach County detective that were on a level that most people really couldn't imagine if you read through this affidavit. In fact, the judge at their very first court appearance in March of 2024 said, for the past 25 years, I've seen just about everything. So to shock the court's conscience is frankly a difficult proposition at this point in the court's career.

The extent of this is probably never going to be known. Here's the thing, though, after months and months of fully looking into this, fully investigating every part of the defendant's lives, It was announced in October that prosecutors were dropping all of the charges against all three defendants. According to Cassini's defense team, no child sexual abuse material was ever found. And it's filing announcing the no-pros status of Cassini's case. And that's basically where prosecutors drop a case. They drop the charges. It's not a double jeopardy situation.

They could be refiled at a later date. It's not like the person. It's not like the defendant is acquitted, but it's just prosecutors are dropping the case. Assistant State Attorney Karen Black wrote, after a thorough and extensive review of all evidence presented to the state and further discussions with the law enforcement agencies that investigated this case, all are in agreement that the state no longer has a good faith basis to proceed. The state has considered law enforcement's exhaustive review of the digital forensic evidence, the deposition testimony of the victims, civilian witnesses, and law enforcement witnesses, as well as all other admissible evidence. The victim's family has been notified of this decision. If new evidence is presented to the state that supports criminal charges, the state will consider refiling. Now, an order was also filed removing Cassini from house arrest.

The three now exonerated co-defendants, or currently exonerated co-defendants, were part of a news conference announcing the prosecution's decision, this 180 on October 31st. Take a listen. I'm just really grateful that, you know, I can finally, we're at the light at the end of the tunnel. God was very good in giving me the best attorneys anyone could ever ask for. We had a great team, great specialist, and they worked tirelessly, tirelessly to answer all the questions that I had no idea of. I had no idea why they were tying me to all these things, and it was very scary to not know. But I am very blessed that justice prevailed, and we today will be a start of the rest of our lives. And like they said, I'm going to continue to fight.

I miss my boys very much, very dearly. And I want to see change. I want to see justice. I hope that there is never another woman or man out there that has to go through what we went through and potentially have their life destroyed because of a conflict with children. And I'm just very grateful that, you know, the truth prevailed.

And Cassini also posted a photo of herself and her two co-defendants to Facebook, saying in part, quote, standing here today, I'm filled with gratitude. gratitude for the incredible support I've received during one of the most challenging times in my life. When the path ahead seemed uncertain, I was blessed to be surrounded by people who believed in me, fought for me, and never let me lose sight of hope. Okay, so before we talk to Cassini's attorneys face to face in just a minute, I want to quickly note something else, okay? Another piece

of this story that is really adding to the drama of all this. So the detective who wrote up that probable cause statement, that person, under investigation. Yeah, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office confirmed to WPTV that the detective is now the subject of an internal affairs investigation. In fact, according to a motion that was filed with the court, Detective Amy Hoffman appears to have actively avoided having to testify about her conduct. That is an allegation. It states this. The arresting officer and lead detective, Amy Hoffman, was originally scheduled and subpoenaed for deposition for September 25th, 2025. The day before her deposition, the state requested the deposition be rescheduled because Detective Hoffman believed she had the flu.

Okay, so the defense agreed to reschedule her deposition to October 14th. People get sick, right? Then it says on the morning of October 14th, 2025, Detective Hoffman called the undersigned and informed them that she would not be attending because she was not re-sapened for this new date, even though it was rescheduled at her request in coordination with the state. and she was clearly aware of the deposition based on her calling the undersigned. So the depot was rescheduled again, this time, to October 22nd. But guess what? On the morning of October 22nd, 2025, Detective Hoffman again contacted the undersigned, reporting that she had been up sick the night before and would not be appearing for her deposition.

During the previous several weeks, significant issues concerning misrepresentations in Detective Hoffman's reports and the potential loss or destruction of exculpatory evidence, have come to light. These issues bear upon Detective Hoffman's credibility. And according to the filing, prosecutors spoke with Hoffman's supervisor, and she finally appeared for her deposition, but Detective Hoffman indicated she had not prepared at all for her deposition and did not wish to be deposed. She was afforded 45 minutes to review 27 pages of reports printed for her by the state. When her deposition resumed, Detective Hoffman was asked whether the 27 pages of reports provided by the state represented the totality of her reports in this case.

She indicated that there may be other reports which she characterized as non-substantive. At detective's request, Detective Hoffman left to retrieve her reports on her computer. After more than an hour, Detective Hoffman returned with a total of 58 pages of reports, including reports of substantive investigation work that is exculpatory. For example, exculpatory DNA analysis and exculpatory communications between Detective Hoffman and the FBI. Neither defense nor the state had ever seen the missing 31 pages of reports. And then they alleged that Hoffman proceeded to answer, I do not recall to basically every question the defense asked. This is according to the court paperwork. And when the defense

rescheduled again to give her more time to get acquainted with her own case, she reportedly didn't show up. She apparently told prosecutors she was sick again. I know. Obviously, there is a lot to talk about in regards to the story. And to do that, I have two special guests. So I want to bring on Ms. Cassini's attorneys. I'm joined by Matt Goldberger and McKenzie Sachs. Thank you both so much for coming on. Congratulations. This is a huge win. So just to be clear, right off the bat, let's start here. You can confirm after these charges have been dropped. You can confirm what, that this whole story, this whole case was what, essentially fabricated from top to bottom? 100%. The kids did allege that Ms. Cassini and her oldest son, Matthew Cassini, and her boyfriend

were sexually abusing them and putting it on the internet for profit. The FBI for over 18 months seized all of the devices in her home, and they conducted a thorough forensic examination of those devices, there was not a single piece of evidence showing that there was any access to child pornography, any posting of child pornography, nothing in relation to any live streaming for profit. And so, in addition to, you know, the lack of evidence there, we also uncovered evidence that shows that this narrative was orchestrated for quite some time by the father, Ms. Cassini's X, law enforcement was ever made aware of it. And it's, um, I don't think that it is a situation where you can take out, uh, the live streaming allegations and it, they're, they're two

intertwined. There's no proof of live streaming and there's proof that this narrative has been orchestrated. Yeah. And I wanted to ask you about that. So Matt, the prosecutors, they noted that there's new information, right? New information's come to light that has said, we got to drop these charges. What is the new information? Why the change now? Well, it's interesting, Jesse, because it wasn't really new information that law enforcement didn't have access to from the beginning if they looked thoroughly and analyzed this situation. But I think that the entire story started to unfold for the prosecution that, look, this was a messy split up between our client and her ex that started in 2020 when she moved and filed a lawsuit to evict him

from her home. She tried to co-parent with him. He was irresponsible. And then she still had the kind of the grace to allow the boys to go to his home in Ocala, which is about four hours away from Boca Raton before Thanksgiving. And then he refused to return them. They were missing school. He wasn't responding to their text messages. She's not. the one that called the police and said, my boys have been kidnapped. And she let her ex know, this is what I'm doing. I should have gone to family court a long time ago to really formalize this custody arrangement. I regret not doing that, but I'm going to court tomorrow. It was then and only then that night that he called the police nocala and said, hey, I'd like to report

that my boys have been sexually abused. Obviously, that kind of allegation is taken seriously. And so the FBI got involved, Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office were involved. They spent months digging through our client's life looking for any evidence they didn't have it and and there was there was so much kind of circumstantial evidence that that this father was was alienating the the kids against mom that he was feeding them lies about mom some really like toxic uh tick and and and uh youtube content about how all women are skanks all all women who leave men are are are horrible and regret it, and we've been covered all of that in some of the cell phone evidence that we obtained. So a lot of that information I think was available to law enforcement

at the time, but they really ran with the sensational allegations that were made. And in some ways, we're fortunate that the allegations were so sensational because when you tell a lie that big in 2025, there's going to be proof of it when the FBI. the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world is involved. And in 18 months, they finally concluded there's no evidence. We've gone through every device. We have sent grand jury subpoenas to every internet provider. We don't have any evidence here.

And the state law enforcement detective, she really could never wrap her mind around the fact that the very large check sheet she wrote when she authored this arrest affidavit just couldn't be cashed. Ultimately, we're very happy that the state attorney's office made the right decision and said, we cannot go forward. And to be clear, is the state attorney's office, is law enforcement, are they saying, yeah, her ex made all of this up, he lied. And if so, is he, do you know if he's going to face any sort of repercussions? So have they formally acknowledged that he made all this up,

maybe coached the children to say this? And is he going to face any sort of repercussions for this? So there's the answer to that is that the prosecutor's office is never going to to go that far. We don't think. We know that there's there's significant cell phone evidence that we really only got our hands on in the last couple of weeks that that is consistent with that. I think it's probably unlikely that anything criminal is going to happen to this father. And there's probably some good policy reasons for that. You don't want to dissuade legitimate allegations of abuse to be reported in the event that they're considered unfounded, that somebody is going to face criminal liability. And so we do really feel like it was a failure by law enforcement.

One thing that I think is really interesting is that from the beginning on day one, when our client called 911, and then her ex made this sort of competing phone call a couple hours later to report the sexual abuse, those first responding deputies were very skeptical. They're talking on body cam and we have the body cam footage and they're saying it's very possible these kids are lying because they want to stay with dad. And somehow, you know, that recognition, that intuition by the first responding officers never made it to the detective who really, I think, treated this case like a career-making case for her. Well, it did make it to the detective. She just chose to ignore it. That's right. Yeah, can I can ask you about that, McKenzie? So this detective,

Amy Hoffman, my understanding is now part of an internal affairs investigation. You know, there is a, there's this motion that you filed, this motion in limine, where it says that the probable cause affidavit was sensationalistic. It was a sensationalist. It was misleading. It was based on assumptions, conjecture, speculation, that this led to all this negative press coverage for your client. So just to be clear for our viewers and our audience, what makes you say that Amy Hoffman, you know, cross the line, that this wasn't just her recounting what was said to her or what was said by these boys in their forensic interviews? What, in your opinion, crossed the line? Yeah, there's a couple of things I can point to. I think number one, that if she was

in terms of crossing the line, if she was just going to report on what the boys recounted to her, then she would not have included all of the information regarding the motherless. You know, that's specifically mentioned in her probable cause affidavit. She would not have mentioned any sort of sex toys. She would not, you know, whether or not they were found in the home. She would not have mentioned these things about BitTorrent, Venmo, Zell, electronic forms of payment. Because at the point in which she wrote those things in the affidavit, She and the FBI had already received back evidence to show that they not only were they not relevant,

they were either for completely legal purposes that she was now assigning a sinister intent to, or they were just not relevant at all to the investigation. So if she truly just wanted to recount what the boys were saying and make that to be probable cause, then she would have just put that she reviewed the CPT interviews of the children, and this is what they were saying, and therefore she's making an arrest based on. on that. But she didn't. She took it further because she wanted to stake her career on this case. She wanted to make headlines. And I will tell you, I represented Ms. Cassini at first appearance. I was there reading the probable cause affidavit for the first time, 10 minutes before

the judge is calling up the case. And me, as her lawyer, even in a defense attorney, I'm reading it thinking, okay, there's likely going to be some evidence here in the future to support what she's put in this affidavit and that's again me as her defense attorney so when i then have the judge up there saying this shocks the conscience of the court and if you ever see the light of day again to my client um you know it's understandable that people are going to think that um of course that these things did happen um but you know just by way of example to um point to an exact uh statement she made that we know is a lie. I mean, she put, uh, Detective Hoffman put in her report that there was a motherless account that was deleted by Mr. Lundano, one of the co-defendants. Um, and we know for a fact now

that that is not true. There is no connection of Mr. Lundano, Ms. Cassini or her oldest son to motherless. There's no connection that they ever had a motherless account or that they ever even accessed the website. And certainly there is no evidence whatsoever that he deleted an account, one day after their investigation began. So that is right there, a flat out lie. And again, she completely embellished and fueled speculation on a lot of her statements. I read your filing. What was the, where did it come from that they attributed the account to your client?

I know it was this big P92 account. What was it? Why did they make the allegation that that was an account affiliated or connected to your account? understanding it correctly. Sure. So when the FBI became aware that there were these live streaming allegations, the first thing that they do is they send grand jury subpoenas to internet service providers and all of the internet accounts that our client, Ms. Cassini and her son or her boyfriend

had. And the FBI gets back a series of logs of IP addresses. What we learned in this case is that our client, for example, she had a T-Mobile phone and T-Mobile assigns a very short-duration IP address to your internet connection. It's sometimes as short as a few seconds. It's based on tower congestion with their 5G towers. So from her Yahoo email account, her Instagram, these totally legal, normal websites, the FBI gets back thousands of IP addresses.

They then cross-reference those IP addresses against a database of IP addresses that they're interested in from other investigations. and there's one hit, I guess, one piece of commonality, an IP address that at one point our client used for Yahoo or Amazon, for example, that had logged into this motherless account under the username Big P92. So then the FBI agent sends a grand jury subpoena and a search warrant to motherless and gets all of the IP history for that Big P92 account. And there's just one piece of commonality.

What they got back, though, is that out of about 2,000 different IP addresses that that individual had used to log into that account, about 750 of them were from a static home internet connection that was a charter communications internet connection in Zephyr Hills, Florida, which is about 30 minutes north of Tampa. So they got the name of that subscriber. They got his, he happens to be born in 1992, consistent of the big P92. They never called him. I can tell you that McKenzie and I had a week or two before trial, we figured we'd pick up the phone and call him. We did something that the law enforcement never had. But even before the arrest was made, before this probable cause affidavit was authored, they know that this motherless account, it's probably a red herring. It's truly a coincidence when you've got tens of thousands of IP addresses that our client has used

and they're looking for any sort of commonality. And yet they have the kind of the main IP account that this motherless.com user had logged into. They never followed up with that lead. And it was really a reckless thing to put in the probable cause affidavit that this was their motherless account. We think this is where they were streaming child pornography. for you. And that's really what kind of led the news and the judge took notice of at first appearance. And it was a kind of an uphill task for the last 18 months to walk back that allegation because it was it was kind of so sensational. And it was really, I think, only in the

last couple of weeks that the state realized what the IP address evidence meant and more importantly what it didn't mean. Right. And I appreciate you clarifying that point. And there's something else that McKenzie, you mentioned, how the probable cause affidavit, it provides this details about what was found in the home, right? This camera equipment, the purchase, the possession of sex toys. Are you saying that your client never purchased this, it was never in the home, or that these materials were there, but they weren't relevant, they weren't used for any insidious or a legal purpose? It is a combination of both.

There is an implication in the report that I think, again, was written intentionally so, that makes it seem like there were these sex toys that the boys are alleging were used to abuse them that were found in Ms. Cassini's room. There were no sex toys found in Ms. Cassini's room. I can say that there were a couple of other adult materials found. and different parts of the home that were not relevant at all to what the children were even alleging was used or to the case at all. And those were, again, just little tidbits that she took to try and create, you know, this villain of our client that really was just not relevant at all to the investigation.

And then in terms of like, you know, allegations of a ringlight, our client, one of the things she was doing, and I think it's actually kind of important. And she works in healthcare, or she did work in health care before she was arrested, specifically in men's sexual health. And so she had a TikTok that actually gained some traction around the time of the COVID lockdowns. And it was called erection correction. And she did purchase some things as, you know, props for her TikTok content. She also purchased like a ring light, like a backlight camera for her making that content. and the detective knew that. We knew that.

And so to ascribe a sinister intent to that was really mislead in the court and the public. And then, you know, just to give you another example of the liberties that we feel like this detective took throughout the case, when she did finally execute the search warrant and get into the home, we get a search warrant inventory. And one of the things that's listed is a black dildo. When McKenzie and I finally had a chance to go to the sheriff's office evidence, locker and view it. It wasn't a black dildo. It was a black bong. It was a penis-shaped novelty bong that anybody who has ever seen a bong knows what it is. And I can tell you, the evidence technician kind of laughed. It was found in her 19-year-old son's room. It was not a piece of evidence in the case, but it was sort of to us just indicative of the liberties that the detective was taking with anything

she found in trying to stick with the narrative that she began the case with. And let me ask you about Detective Hoffman, this internal affairs investigation. I mentioned before the difficulties of even having her sit for a deposition. But can you tell us what's going on with her, the investigation into her? We don't know at this point. I can tell you that just probably an hour or two before we received the dismissal from the state attorney's office. I received a call from a captain at the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office asking me, you know, he was in receipt of something I had authored, asking me if I wanted that to be forwarded to IA as a formal complaint. He wanted me to know he was in receipt of it and asked me if I wanted to have that

forwarded to IA and which I told him absolutely. You know, this detective, she needs to to be held accountable. You cannot be making these reckless disregards for the truth, but also assumptions and speculation and playing with people's lives. I mean, she was playing Russian roulette with these people's lives. And so as far as where the IAA investigation is, that's all we know at this point in time. Do you plan to take any kind of civil action, any kind of lawsuit? You know, it's certainly something that our client is considering. it's something that we as lawyers are doing some research on. And so I don't want to comment any further than that.

I think it's only been about four days. Our client was just so thrilled to finally have this aspect of the nightmare done. On Thursday night, she got to go to the beach and watch the sunset for the first time in two years. She had either been in custody or house arrest. Her boyfriend with whom she lived before the arrest and who her ex really was trying to to drive a wedge between the two of them. The first time they could embrace and touch was in our office on Friday when the ankle monitors were removed. And so it's very recent. But I think that it would be crazy if our client didn't think about some recourse because of the damage

that has been done in her life over the last two years. Of course, the emotional damage, the financial damage, the stigma of all the news reporting and all the allegations. and the probable cause affidavit, someone could read that and say they're guilty. They don't even have to be proven guilty. And so to have someone be exonerated like this, to have the charges dropped is a very rare but major, major development. My understanding, though, is Ms. Cassini still doesn't even have custody of her children, right? It seems that if this is really, you know, the allegation is true that her ex fabricated all of this,

maybe to get custody of the boys got what he wanted, right? I mean, do we know what the status of her contact with her children has been? Or was she able to speak with the kids? Can you elaborate a little bit more on that? Yes. At this point in time, she's not able to speak to her boys. There was a pretrial, no contact order that was part of the criminal case that has been since dropped, obviously, with the case.

But there is still a final injunction in place where she, unfortunately was put in the position. And I don't think that enough people in the public know about how these two systems can intertwine such family court and criminal court. She was put in a position where early on when she was arrested and dependency court was, you know, making its case where she had to either choose to speak on the allegations and have a trial, which as a defense attorney, I'm always going to tell her not to do, especially with open. charges in an open investigation or agree to the final injunction until her boys turn 18. And so it's really, you know, she's between a rock and a hard place. And at that point in time,

the priority had to be, let's fight your criminal case. Let's win this. Because if you go to prison for life, it doesn't matter if you have no contact with your children. So right now there is that final injunction, but certainly we know from talking to her and we're helping her through it, she's turning now that fight to trying to get that injunction modified or dissolved and it unfortunately is going to take some time of course and even when she does you know hopefully win on that front which we believe she will it's going to take time with therapy with these boys to really undo the harm that's been done here i mean we have interviews with these boys where the youngest one is talking about how he doesn't want to live with strangers and how he just wants mommy and daddy to be back

together, but he's feeling like he has to say these things because he doesn't want to live with strangers. So to us, we're like, who's telling you you have to live with strangers? Where is that coming from? That's a huge sign. And we had experts, too, that reviews these, review these interviews. And they agreed with us. That's a huge sign of parental alienation of brainwashing. And so it is going to take time regardless for her to get contact back. with these boys. And is Ms. Kassini upset in any way with her children after all this or no? I think she's just sad, especially one thing that we had to report back to her after we took the deposition of the young boy is he said, oh, I don't have a mother anymore. I don't have a,

we mentioned his maternal grandmother my name. She's not my grandma anymore. And then in this same interview, he, as McKenzie is saying, he's saying, I want mom and dad to live together again. I just want, you know, and so she was just really heartbroken by that. She was an incredibly strong person. I mean, she lost a really lucrative career in health care. And while the case was pending on house arrest, she was cleaning pools to fund a defense and to, you know, be productive. And so she's a strong person, but she really feels sad. I think she, she shared with us that she was so looking forward to the trial, which was coming up in a couple of weeks, because in her mind and her dreams, there would be this moment where the boys would run through the courtroom door and hug her.

And that's delayed a little bit. The injunction that McKenzie alluded to was entered without any findings of fact or any conclusions by the judge. It essentially was she cannot contest this right now because that would be waiving her rights to remain silent in a criminal case. And so we feel very good about that injunction being dissolved and there being some sort of reunification. It's just, it's going to take a little bit of time. And from what McKenzie and I learned in our investigation, going up to Ocala, the boys are not being well cared for. They're not in school. And so, you know, time really is of the essence.

Just to piggyback off of that, I can tell you, too, that since this news has broken, we have received a call from a neighbor. up in Ocala, where the kids are living. And the message from the call was, call me as a witness to help this mom get her kids back because these kids are not being treated correctly. Wow. And how's Matthew doing? So her other son, who was caught up in all of this and the charges were dropped. Do you know? He's a great kid. He was 19 when he was arrested. I guess that makes him 21 now. He was the half-brother of these boys, but really, you know, cared for them and was a good brother. And there were some efforts as, you know, in the months leading up to the allegations and text messages were the father, who was not Matthew's biological father, but they had a

relationship for basically Matthew's entire life. He was trying to kind of bring Matthew on board with this scheme. And Matthew stood by his mom and, you know, was subjected to a potential mandatory life in prison felony as a result of it. And so I think he suffered a lot of psychological trauma. When the arrest warrant was executed and the FBI came in with 50 military uniformed agents and really visceral body cam that we're happy to share with you, they took Matthew aside And they tried to flip him against his mom and Ryan and said, you know, misled him. He said, you know, if you were a victim, if this is a cycle of abuse, then, you know, let us help you. And as a 19-year-old, it was probably a very confusing situation.

It sort of reminds me of the times when false confessions can occur. And yet he stayed strong. He stood by his mom and was very patient throughout this case as well. And so it was really, I think, vindicating for him as, as, well as our client. But talk about reputational damage. I mean, he's a young kid. He's just starting out his life.

And he was planning on going to college before all this happened. And so now he's going to have to figure out, you know, a way forward with all of this hanging over his head. It's tough. It's an incredibly distressing situation. It's, again, before we jumped on, I said, it's not every day you see something like this.

It's not every day that you see a 180 in charges being dropped. And this is basically, you know, in complete fabric and lives have been affected. Lives have been destroyed. I really appreciate you both taking the time. Matt Goldberger, McKenzie Sacks. Congratulations and congratulations to your client as well. We'll keep a careful eye on what should happen next in her life. We definitely wanted to bring this story to light because, again, it is really, really unfortunate and disturbing on many levels. But thank you so much. Thank you. We appreciate, you know, giving our client a platform to talk about her story because it is important. Thank you. That is all we have for you right now here on Sidebar,

everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. You can follow me on X or Instagram. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. or Spotify.