An upstate woman vowed to disobey a judge’s orders to send her child to visit his ne’er-do-well father in prison, saying she’d rather go to jail than connect the boy with the biological dad.
Vanessa Volino, 35, spoke exclusively to the Daily News in the aftermath of an appeals court ruling that she must send her son Vincenzo Volino, 5, to visit his father, David Kadio, in prison.
Volino said she would ignore the recent ruling — even if the Court of Appeals upholds it.
“They’re going to have to put me in jail because he’s not going,” Volino told The News. “My child is not going to a maximum-security prison.”
Kadio has completed four previous stints in state prisons for attempted burglary, burglary, reckless endangerment and leaving the scene of an accident dating back to 1990, according to the state Department of Corrections.
Volino met Kadio while he was incarcerated in the same prison as her brother. The two had a brief relationship, and Volino got pregnant after Kadio was released in 2010.
Little Vinny hasn’t seen his father — who is serving a 16-years-to-life term at Clinton Correctional Facility — since he pleaded guilty to the burglary charge in 2011, when the boy was 15 months old.
He lives with his mother, her husband and their two children in Queensbury, near Glens Falls.
A panel of state appellate judges castigated Volino for “perpetuat(ing) the fiction that the stepfather is the child’s father.”
Kadio, 42, was prevented from having any contact with Vinny or Volino between 2011 and 2012, but sued in 2013 to try to restore visitation rights with his son.
A family court judge sided with Kadio, ruling that Vinny get counseling before talking to his father over the phone and visiting him once a month in prison. The appellate court upheld the lower court’s ruling, but said the frequency of visits should be four times a year.
Volino has challenged Kadio’s application by arguing it would be too traumatic for the boy to learn the identity of his real father and visit him in prison.
“Vinny started calling my hubby ‘dad’ on his own. No one forced him to,” she said.
The lower court’s ruling means the dad can tell his son “he loves him,” Kadio’s lawyer, Michelle Rosien, told the New York Law Journal, which first reported on the ruling.
Volino said she plans to take her case to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.
“We’ve been fighting this thing since 2010. We’re looking at easily $60,000 (in costs). For what?” She said. “All so this kid can go to maximum-security prison to visit a man who used to wait for people to go to work so he could break into their apartments.”
