Monika Ciemięga

Judge since 2007, District Court in Opole

No, we are not a caste. We perform a profession of a specialised nature. Every single day we take decisions about people’s lives, about money, about the fate of families, about freedom.

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I wanted to be an actress. I was in a French-speaking theatre in high school. We took Polish plays to festivals in Grasse, and we won prizes. However, I realised that I did not have the talent of famous Polish actor Jan Frycz. I also thought about becoming a writer and, of course, many writers had been lawyers: Goethe, Schiller, Molière, Witold Gombrowicz, my beloved Bohumil Hrabal, Juliusz Słowacki, and Zygmunt Krasiński… I also wanted to study in Kraków. I could not decide what to do and, as a result, I was late with my application. It was only when I told my story to the lady in the dean’s office that she accepted my papers. I do not miss acting anymore, although I would love to have a small part in a Pedro Almodóvar film! Or even Tarantino.

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I work in the family division of the court. The cases are incredibly delicate. For example, I might have to decide which parent should have custody over a child although both parents offer similar opportunities for the child, but it is impossible to grant them both parental rights because of a deep conflict between them, or I might have to take a child away from their parents. These are terrible decisions that have to be made.

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There was one case that I regard as a complete failure. A boy who was placed in a Police Custody Centre. He should have been there for no more than 72 hours. He sat in a cell, bars on the windows, bars everywhere, full surveillance with cameras and two-way mirrors to keep an eye on what he was doing. I issued a very specific ruling for the boy to be placed in another institution, but nobody wanted to carry it out and as a result the boy spent five months in the Custody Centre. And yet when I, as the embodiment of the court, make a ruling, surely that ruling should be enforced. Unfortunately, that is not the case and I am haunted by that case of the boy night and day. One of my judgments which deprived parental rights to a child was amended. The child returned to its parents, and when their file returned from the regional court, I thought it was a disaster waiting to happen. An annulment by the regional court is never pleasant. I have only ever experienced an annulment where I was deemed to be at fault once. I take amendments in child custody cases really badly, less so with child support cases. It means I have done something wrong, and that I really did not pay enough attention to the case, which would be difficult to take as I have a lot of experience in the family courts. The hardest thing to take is when I see that nothing good will come from an amendment in a judgment. In the above-mentioned case, just four months later, I had to take the child away from his parents again, this time with visible evidence of mental and physical abuse. A judge relives these tragedies and I cannot just go home and forget about it. Psychologists have supervision sessions, however, nothing of the sort exist for judges, especially in the family courts. We do not have anywhere to go to or anyone we can talk to and say: “I did this. Was that good? Was that the right thing to do?”

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I was the face of the Opole human light chain in 2017. I speak out all the time and take part in debates on the rule of law. I am now facing disciplinary charges. Under a special act of December 2017, I was relieved of my duties as deputy president of the district court in Opole by fax without a word of justification. The official stamp was smudged so it was not clear who had signed the letter, but I recognised the initials of Łukasz Piebiak, the then Deputy Minister of Justice. The initials were actually larger than the letter itself.

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Everything that has been happening since 2015 has opened me up more to the problems of ordinary people. I started to look at myself. When I was a young judge I thought, “I’m great, right?” Of course I did the very best I could but today I see the things I could have changed. I try to talk to people in the courtroom rather than take a stance from above. I try to discuss things with everyone.