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In Family court, Scott Naso reiterated his reasons for suspending his in-laws’ visits with his 4-year-old daughter and said the state’s grandparents visitation law was being used as a weapon against him
For more reporting about the grandparents rights trial in R.I., click here.
WARWICK, R.I. — A father who is trying to keep his late wife’s parents away from his daughter testified Friday that he didn’t believe they could be trusted if the Family Court granted them visitation.
Scott Naso told Judge Felix Gill that he believed his in-laws lacked “credibility, character, judgment, and a moral compass,” and that his 4-year-old daughter, Laila, would not be safe with them.
“I believe wholeheartedly they are morally corrupt, and they are the reason my wife, my daughter’s mother, and their own daughter, is not here,” Naso testified on Friday, in a grandparents visitation rights trial in Kent County Family Court.
His in-laws, retired pediatrician Dr. Siavash Ghoreishi and retired pathologist Dr. Jila Khorsand, murmured quietly with each other in the courtroom as Naso spoke.
Naso testified that they had blamed him when Shahrzad “Sherry” Naso, his wife and their only daughter, died on April 24, 2024 after her breast cancer reoccurred and metastasized.
He said that Khorsand accused him of “causing stress” that killed Sherry Naso and mocked the funeral services he arranged as a “narcissistic display of artificial grief.”
Naso’s lawyer spent much of Friday’s hearing going over his previous testimony, where she and the judge asked about the reasons he was refusing to allow visits.
Naso had allowed his in-laws to visit with Laila several times after his wife’s death. But by July 2024, he had become uneasy with their behavior, and he emailed them not contact him or his family and friends. His in-laws took him to court.
In the fall of 2024, Family Court Judge Debra DiSegna ordered supervised visits, without holding a trial as required by law. Those visits were suspended in February 2025 when Naso asked the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families to investigate his in-laws. He has refused to resume visits.
Since then, Naso testified, he discovered that Ghoreishi had prescribed 124 medications for Sherry Naso over the last decade of her life. The medication masked signs that her cancer had returned, because Ghoreishi didn’t inform Sherry Naso’s doctors that he was treating her, they wouldn’t know that her cancer had returned, Naso said.
Naso also testified that he found text messages between his wife and her parents that misdiagnosed her symptoms and disparaged their marriage. He came to believe that their actions contributed to his wife’s death.
On Friday, Naso also reiterated how he had found dozens of medications, including prescription bottles for Xanax that Ghoreishi had prescribed for Khorsand and his office manager. He told the judge he believed the pills were being funneled to Sherry Naso.
Naso said that Ghoreishi had not informed him of the American Medical Association Code of Ethics and Rhode Island Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline rules against physicians treating family members when he was Laila’s pediatrician and prescribing medicines for Sherry Naso. He discovered that Ghoreishi had written 36 prescriptions for Laila by the time she was 2 1/2. That included prednisone, which Ghoreishi and Khorsand forced down her throat the day Sherry Naso died, without Naso’s permission.
Naso repeated that he discovered that Ghoreishi had filed insurance claims for him, his wife, and his daughter with Blue Cross & Blue Shield, and that dozens of the claims appeared to be fraudulent.
He told the judge that he believed his in-laws let their state medical licenses expire in 2024 to avoid accountability.
“As I sit here now in March, those reasons [to stop visits] have only been amplified by a hundred through their testimony and depositions, and things that I’ve learned,” Naso said.
Since this trial began in October 2025, the judge has heard very little about an important factor in any grandparents’ visitation rights case: Why visits with her grandparents would be in Laila’s best interest.
Under the law, a judge needs to consider the reasons a parent believes that it is not in the child’s best interest to have visits with their grandparents.
The judge asked Naso about whether Laila would find out that he believed that her grandparents were responsible for her mother’s death.
Naso said he’s been vocal about his beliefs and knows that Laila will learn about them when she’s older. “My daughter deserves to know what happened,” he said.
The judge asked whether she would know that her grandparents hold her father responsible for her mother’s death.
“I wouldn’t know,” Naso responded. “I don’t want her to have any contact with them.”
The judge said that Ghoreishi and Khorsand had testified that they wouldn’t disparage Naso. “That doesn’t change anything for you?” Gill asked.
“There are a lot of things I don’t believe that they’ve said and that this litigation has proven as well,” Naso said. “I absolutely believe they would say things to my daughter.”
Ghoreishi and Khorsand have both said they love the little girl and want to be in her life. They paid for the surrogacy and egg donor that produced Laila and several embryos that are still in storage (Naso is Laila’s biological father). Both spent a lot of time at the Nasos’ home after Laila was born, and all but moved in with the family after Sherry Naso grew sick again in December 2023.
Both have testified that Naso is a fit parent to his daughter. Both have denied any wrongdoing and promised not to administer medication to Laila. Ghoreishi previously testified that he didn’t believe he was doing anything unethical by treating his daughter.
On Friday, Naso told the judge that he didn’t believe them and that they lied about their actions.
He also said that the state’s grandparents’ visitation law has been used as a weapon against him.
“They were talking about using this legal process to bankrupt me, to the point I wouldn’t be able to live in my house and my daughter in the house that me and my wife built,” Naso said.
When he first asked his in-laws not to visit in July 2024, Naso said, he had been open to resuming visits after he had time to mourn his wife and Laila to grieve for her mother.
“I still have not had that opportunity, Your Honor, and it’s been almost two years,” Naso said.
He became choked with tears, and looked up at the ceiling. The judge sat facing him, and the courtroom fell completely still.
“I am broke, but they haven’t broken my will to protect my daughter,” Naso said, briefly touching his hand to his heart. “I may be broke, but they haven’t broken me.”
The trial will resume the week of April 20, during the second anniversary of Sherry Naso’s death.
Amanda Milkovits can be reached at amanda.milkovits@globe.com. Follow her @AmandaMilkovits.
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