A Michigan judge may have overstepped her bounds by taking the “unprecedented” and “disturbing” action of sending three siblings to a juvenile detention facility for not having a “healthy relationship” with their father, according to legal experts who spoke to the Guardian.

The children’s detention has sparked a fierce backlash both locally and on social media. Dozens of supporters convened outside the Oakland County courthouse Wednesday to demand the children’s release.

Last month Lisa Gorcyca, a circuit court judge in Oakland County, held three siblings – ages nine, 10 and 15 – in contempt of court after they refused to talk with their father, Omer Tsimhoni. Experts were taken aback by the judge’s decision to send the children to a local juvenile facility, Children’s Village, until “you graduate from high school”.

The ruling came amid a protracted and contentious divorce proceeding between Tsimhoni and his wife, Maya, which dates back to 2009.

At a 24 June hearing on supervised parenting time, Gorcyca said the children had been “brainwashed” by their mother before ordering their removal to Children’s Village. A hearing has been scheduled for 2pm on Friday local time.

The children were removed from Maya Tsimhoni’s custody following the hearing. Gorcyca said neither the mother, nor any of her relatives, could visit the children, although their father would be allowed to.

“When you are ready to have lunch with your dad, dinner with your dad, to be normal human beings, I will review this when your dad tells me you’re ready,” Gorcyca said at the hearing. “Otherwise you are living in Children’s Village until you graduate from high school. That’s the order of the court.”

The decision to hold three children in contempt of court who were not parties to the divorce proceedings puzzled legal experts. If Gorcyca took issue with Maya Tsimhoni’s handling of the situation, then an order should be directed at the mother, they said, not the children.

Catherine Ross, a law professor at George Washington University who specializes in family law, compared the situation to journalists who are jailed for contempt of court by refusing to reveal the name of a source, where they remain until they back down.

“That’s basically what the judge did here,” Ross told the Guardian. “You can get out of prison when your father tells us that you’re ready to have a good relationship with him.” Ross said to her knowledge the decision was “unprecedented” in reported cases with established opinions of the court.

She added: “The initial threat of sending them to detention even for a weekend is disturbing enough.”

A court transcript from the 24 June hearing begins with the eldest son being asked if he was prepared to see his father or be sent to Children’s Village.

“I do apologize if I didn’t understand the rules,” the 15-year-old told the judge. “But I do not apologize for not talking to him because I have a reason for that and that’s because he’s violent and I saw him hit my mom and I’m not going to talk to him.” The father has not been charged with a crime.

“I ordered you to talk to your father,” replied the judge. “You chose not to talk to your father. You defied a direct court order. It’s direct contempt so I’m finding you guilty of civil contempt.”

“I thought there was like rules when – rules for like not, you know, not hitting someone,” said the boy.

Gorcyca said the boy had “defied a direct court order” by not talking with his father.

“You’re very defiant,” she told the boy. “You have no manners. You need to do a research program on Charlie Manson and the cult that he has.”

A 25-page report filed last year by a court appointed adviser, William Lansat, spelled out the couple’s litigious past and highlights allegations levied over the years by the children.

In August 2010, for example, a police report was filed after Omer Tsimhoni spent a day with his children unsupervised. But the meeting apparently soured shortly after, and the children called 911, alleging their father “threatened to kill them while at the park”, according to Lansat’s report.

When Maya Tsimhoni arrived, she alleged the father began “pushing her around”, the report says. No probable cause was found to arrest Omer Tsimhoni, who “has always denied making the threat”, according to the report. Maya Tsimhoni sought a personal protection order against her husband, but the request was denied by Gorcyca.

Years later, as the situation deteriorated further, Maya Tsimhoni was forewarned of potentially “grave” consequences for her children if they refused to speak with their father, court records reviewed by the Guardian show.

Gorcyca’s reprimand of the children during the June hearing reflects statements made by Lansat in his 2014 report. For example, he wrote, at a court-ordered parenting session in August 2014, the children “huddled together as if they were sending messages/vibes to each other in some Manson-like behavior”.

Before the children entered a jury room at the courthouse for the parenting time, the report says, “it took at least six deputies, a prosecutor … various court personnel and finally the Judge to get those kids into the jury room”.

Lansat seemed shocked. “For minor children to evade armed Sheriff’s is absolutely appalling,” he wrote. “I advised [Maya] Tsimhoni that unless she gets these kids off the bench, there will be grave consequences – such as placement in Children’s Village.”

The court has tried “every conceivable machination of parenting time” for Omer Tsimhoni – an engineer for General Motors who primarily lives in Israel – but “to no avail”, Lansat continued.

“Consequently, the Court needs to consider, if there is to be any progress a draconian approach,” he wrote.

Lansat recommended in his report for the children to be placed “directly” into Omer Tsimhoni’s care and have parenting time without their mother for “several hours”.

He concluded: “Continuation of the status quo is simply untenable and contrary to the children’s best interest, the statues and philosophy of the various statutes on custody and parenting time.”

Lawrence Durbin, a law professor at the University of Detroit-Mercy, disagreed.

“The judge’s actions seems to run counter to the important mandate of family court jurisprudence, which is to do what’s in the children’s best interest,” he wrote to the Guardian in an email. “Whatever problems were created that caused this couple to divorce, the children should not in any way be held responsible.”

If Maya Tsimhoni in fact has alienated her children from their father, the court “should fashion a remedy against the mother”, he said.

“Don’t send the children to Children’s Village for the sins of her parents,” Durbin said.

Marsha Mansfield, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and director of its Economic Justice Center, said Judge Gorcyca’s decision to hold the children in contempt for disregarding her order to have a “healthy relationship” with their father was peculiar.

“Contempt of court is intentionally violating a court order,” she told the Guardian, “and a court order would be pertaining directly to the parents, not the children. The parents might be required to facilitate placement with the children, but the children aren’t required to do that.”

Local authorities have remained mum on the situation. The office of Oakland County chief judge Nanci Grant declined to comment Thursday, citing the ongoing case.

A statement from Omer Tsimhoni’s attorney, Keri Middleditch – who previously worked with Gorcyca while both served for the Oakland County prosecutor’s office – said in a statement on Wednesday the children received court-appointed attorneys, “none of whom objected to the children’s placement” in a juvenile detention facility.

A Facebook group established to bring attention to the case has over 4,100 members as of Wednesday. A pair of petitions have also circulated – one calling for the children’s release from juvenile detention, with about 5,800 signatures; the other seeking Gorcyca’s removal from the bench, with over 5,000 signatures.

Karen Colby Weiner, the Tsimhonis neighbor in West Bloomfield township, Michigan, said the decision to send the kids to a juvenile detention facility was “awful”.

“Incarcerating them in a place where they certainly don’t belong, that isn’t an appropriate action at all,” she told the Guardian by phone.

Weiner said the children were pleasant kids. On one occasion, they came over to her house and the oldest son “happened to sit down at our piano, and he plays beautifully. I was really surprised.”

Weiner considered the impact it would have on her granddaughter to be removed from school, “yanked away and put in a place for criminals”.

“I think this was a very rash and unfortunate decision on the part of the judge,” she said. “And I hope it’s corrected soon.”