If the state's only dedicated family court is the den of corruption some leaders fear , the Louisiana Supreme Court didn't find it, according to a long-awaited report released to lawmakers this week on the Family Court of East Baton Rouge.

But one Supreme Court justice says his colleagues didn't look nearly hard enough.

Justice Jefferson Hughes III, who has led an unusual probe of the family court, issued a scathing retort Monday. Hughes alleges the family court is led by a runaway cabal of lawyers and judges who wield abusive tactics upon “unfavored” litigants at will.

The court often wrings litigants dry and smears them, its judges prone to abusing their contempt powers to “beat the nonfavored parent into submission,” Hughes wrote in a letter to state Rep. Kathy Edmonston, R-Gonzale

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