Horrific Custody Battle

[aussierules]

First Post to the Board but I have been watching on the sidelines for a while now. I wanted to put this story up here so other guys can learn from my nasty experience. I have broken this into a couple of parts so I do not lose people's attention and I do not lose the text due to a loss of connection with the SPARC webserver.

PART 1.

Lived with the same woman for over 10 years in AZ. We never married and now with the benefit of hindsight I realize why. In 1999 my daughter a wonderful little person arrived and the world seemed right. She was not planned by me at least but thankfully (as you will see later in this story) she is here.

Before I begin let me tell you a little about myself and mum (I will refer to her throughout this message as that if it is ok). I was born outside of the US and I would describe myself as a very high functioning, driven person who has always lived life to its fullest degree. I have travelled the world and lived and worked in places across the globe. Mum was born in the midwest and although she travelled as a kid she did not do most of it until she met me. Mum is about 5 years older than me and she is a fairly intelligent with an undergraduate degree and is a very strong willed woman.

I provide this minimal background information only because it will show how one can never know what is going on in the mind of another seemingly ordinary person who one thinks one knows. The rality my friends is a world apart from that.

Fast forward until 2000 when things between us started to go wrong. I found a PhD locally who worked in MFT and I thought that we decided to try and work things out. I guess they never really got worked out. She wanted another child which to me seemed like a bad idea. Not that my first child is bad but having a child to salvage a relationship seemed to me to be a contraindicated response. Turns out my instinct was right but it was hard to see at the time because I loved my first child so much.

Another fast forward to 2001. We left to spend a summer in MI close to her parents but primarly to work on a project together that I thought or was lead to think would allow us to spend time with one another and address some of the issues we had been experiencing. All seemed to be going fine until one day 2000+ miles from home she dropped what can only be desribed as a bombshell on me. She wanted me to move out of our summer home. She just said that she did not feel our relationship could work out. Remember we were in counseling, we had been with one another for over 10 years and now this. I was sort of devastated but not as it turns out for the reason one might immediately think. I could only think of what would become of my daughter. I came from a home with divorce and to be quite candid I feel like it has affected me in my life journey.

After consultation with our MFT PhD mentioned earlier I agreed to move out of the summer home when I found a trailer nearby (within 1 mile) that I could be close by to my child. At this time I guess I was already more worried about my child than mum. Mum and I talked but clearly something had changed. She denied any affair and nothing was that obvious to me that I could pick "him" out in a crowd if indeed there was a him. Mum would tell me during our brief discussions that she wanted to parent our child together and that she would not take or attempt to take anything from our relationship - monetary or otherwise that was not hers to begin with. AZ is not a common law state so this was not exactly news to me but she seemed like she was being reasonable. Boy was I wrong.

All of a sudden one day she restarted our physical relationship and I thought that whatever the malaise was it had passed. Right after the event she tells me that she is sorry and that yes she is seeing a man that we had employed on a casual labor basis to work on the property we were rebuilding. This man turned out to be a migrant Jamaican laborer who was supposedly replumbing this old house with me. Not to be disgusting but it turns out that was not the only thing this guy was plumbing while my back was turned. Turns out this Jamaican lover is a pretty seasoned dude if you will. He is 16 years younger than mum and he cannot read and can barely write his own name. He has at least one other child from another woman and this child now 9 resides in Jamaica with a maternal grandparent. He has had little/no contact with the child to speak of and only provides periodic financial support to the girl.

The flood gates opened and she tells me that it is not him she is leaving me for but she wants to be done with me. The subject of our child now becomes a differently viewed issue. She tells me that she will have sole custody, I can provide full support for her and the child and I can visit when I like. I am horrified. I tell her that nothing other than total involvement in my child's life is acceptable to me. It was as if it all changed at that instant. All the while I was living in this trailer but I was seeing my daughter every day and she was spending at least half of the nights each week with me.

We stayed in MI until after the smoke cleared from the miserable days of 9/11. She said she was frightened to travel back. Turns out there was something even more sinister going on that she had not mentioned to me. We get back to AZ and I start to get calls from her lovers family or so I was lead to believe. As it turns out it was him and he was calling because she was carrying his child and was 4 months pregnant. She asks me to leave my own home but I do the first smart thing I had done in a while and consult with counsel. I stay put, move her into another room and wait to see what comes next.

I filed for paternity in November 2001 and she consents voluntarily. In Christmas of that year she miscarries his child. I have mixed feelings on the subject and I felt bad for her but I feel like this is fate's way of setting things straight. My child only knows that her parents are not getting along. A decision is made that she is to move out. I help her fund a home within 5 miles of my own. I realize that I needed to keep the distance small to effect a parenting plan that would truly be a shared parenting time model which was my minimum accept position.

Mum makes 2 trips to see the lover but I refuse to allow my then 2 year old daughter to go with. In March 2002 she moves out and we continue with our parenting plan all without the benefit of court orders because we are trying to get along. We try to resolve our financial ties to one another with agreements to take care of custody also at the same time to save on attorney $$$. Well that is where the fun really began. She took the money but refused to formalize our parenting plan.

October 2002. Without a word to myself or my daughter (now 3) she brings the lover to the US and marries him here in AZ. She moves him in and then calls me on the phone one day and tells me that she is now married to the guy and he will be living in the home I provided. I was not hurt at the marriage part because I was quite glad to be rid of her but all I could think about was what this must be doing to my child. We did not really know who this person was and here he is living in close proximity to my daughter.

Right away things get more weird. Mum gets a viscious local attorney and I get a letter making some rediculous accusations about strange physical contact with my child. My attorney ignores it and says that this is a tactic the other guy often uses & it is not to be taken too seriously. My child comes home to me and starts telling me that she is sleeping in the same bed as this man. I ask mum in a phone call to cease with this practice and she tells me (a) what goes on in her home with respect to my child is none of my business and (b) that sleeping with her stepdad is the same as sleeping with me.

I hire a PI out of LA (close to Jamaica) and start digging. As it turns out the lover/husband/stepdad has a brother who served 2 years in FL for the lude assault of a 7 year old girl. This individual's plea had him register lifetime as a sexual predator and he was subsequently deported back to Jamaica. Nice family. I present the information to mum who says that it is a distortion of my doing despite the fact that I provide her the information I was given by the FL DOC.

The stepdad continues to lay in the bed with my child. I seek an order from the courts to prevent this. During one drop off he came out to talk to me and asked what he had to do to earn my trust. I told him first and foremost get out of my child's bed or get out of the bed when she climbs in to be with her mother. He tells me that there is nothing I can do to make that happen and that if my child did not want to be with him then she would not get in there in the first place. I argue that a decision by a 3 year old to climb into her mother's bed because she is scared of something should not necessitate her having to lay up against mum's partially clothed lover. He does not understand.

Finally the court generates the order which states that nobody must sleep with our daughter and mum partially complies by not having the stepdad in the bed but she continues her practice unabated of sleeping wih my daughter.

THEN IT HAPPENED

In April 2003 - my child is just 4 I get a call just prior to arriving at mum's house from mum. She says that she has changed her mind today and that I am not going to be able to pick up my daughter. I ask why and she gives me some story about wanting our child to see her parents for a while longer before they leave for the summer. I tell her I am willing to work with her on this but not today. She puts the phone down and I call my attorney. He instructs me to get a civil standby a process where law enforcement accompanies you to a pick up or drop off for that matter to ensure there are no problems.

I get to the house and another law enforcement vehicle is already there. My officer goes in and I wait outside. He comes out and says that I am not going to be able to pick up my child today. He cannot tell me why and I refuse to leave. The other officer comes out and says that all he can say is that there is an investigation and that I need to call CPS. If I still have questions he says I can call him later that day. I return to my attorney's office, call my voicemail and lo and behold there is a message from a CPS Case Manager (CM) stating that an accusation or series of accusations have been made against me and that I am not to have any contact with my daughter. I was devastated. I cried like a baby. I pulled myself together and contacted the CPS CM and we agreed to meet in 2 days. I went to meet the second officer who reluctantly told me that I was under investigation - something I had already concluded from my brief discussion with CPS. I was scared, very scared. I had no CPS experiences in my life and in fact no law enforcement experiences to this point but I was to find out really quick that this was a whole new world and one I did not want to be in ...

[TXdadof2]

Thank you for sharing your story.  I know it requires alot of time and emotional energy to recap it all.  However, there's no better way to help others than to share experiences and wisdom that only "those who go before us" can share.  

I, personally, could never have imagined that my STBX would have done what she had done to date.  I don't know that anything would surprise me at this point.  

Please continue with your story............

[aussierules]

PART 2.

It was about this time with my attorney telling me to just wait and see that I decided this approach was fundamentally flawed. I did some research and hired a well known forensic trial consultant (FTC) to aid in my case.

I arrive down at CPS and meet with my new CM – a female of around 30 who seemed nice enough but clearly the vile nature of the accusations had troubled her. They were so egregious that they had given her pause for thought. As with all these types of things the State of AZ could not tell me who made the complaint but by listening it soon became very clear that mum was at the steering wheel when this particular plane hit the side of the hill.

I asked if I could tape the entire meeting which the CM agreed to and we met for around 3 hours. I did the tape to ensure our recollection of events was identical. By the end of the meeting the CM consulted with her supervisor and said she needed more time to do her review but that she saw no reason why supervised visitation could not be restarted right away. I did not like the supervision part but figured it would only be for a few days. The CM contacted law enforcement and mum neither of whom wanted to comply with the CPS directive. The CM made it clear to both parties that visitation was to restart immediately all be it supervised.

I made the CPS CM aware that my child had been interfered with at her pre-school not 2 weeks before and perhaps if anything had happened it might be source misattribution. The CM did not understand what this was and why law enforcement had not become involved when they were told in a manner consistent with the AZ Administrative Code. Lots of finger pointing subsequently ensued and the pre-school was closed down permanently later that year but they were not prepared to look at all circumstances in their totality. They thought they had a guilt father and damn it they were going to make it stick.

In these discussions the CM disclosed that they had already interviewed my child at the Mummy/Daughter house as well as the local Family Advocacy Center – a fancy name for a place they try to get disclosures from children who often have nothing of their own to say. Turns out I find out later on that mum has made a series of audio tapes with my child interviewing her. Mum has no experience doing so but this is the evidence that CPS was so concerned about. On the tapes are mum asking my daughter whether or not I had urinated on her. This problem as described by mum is called uraphilia and without incurring the wrath of the mental health community if I get it wrong is a passive sado masochistic tendency disorder/behavior unlike its nasty brother coprophilia. One thing you need to know about my little girl is that she understands what the truth is and what a lie is and with the benefit of hindsight having drilled this into her at an early age was my saving grace.

This accusation was pretty clever. It is obscure enough to be way beyond what most people in a small town in Arizona have seen, it is disgusting enough to get a visceral response from those exposed to it and best of all there is no physical evidence I can lay my hands on to disprove it. I begin to realize what I am up against so my FTC hooks me up with a nationally known psychosexual expert to perform a complete battery of tests to appease CPS who wanted me to try and disprove what mum had accused me of. As I am sure all the informed parties on this list know about it is one thing to prove something but it is a whole different ball game to prove that the something did not happen.

Supervised visitation restarts on a lousy schedule (2 hours per visit in a strange place with someone staring at me not 2 feet away once per week) but it is hard. My child wants to know why she cannot come home with daddy. I reinforce that while there is a problem I am working on it and I will have it resolved as quickly as I can and that she can then come back and see her cats and dog. So I head off to see the psychosexual expert and meanwhile the State of AZ through CPS and law enforcement is busy trying to do yet another so called forensic interview. My legal team which now includes one of the State of Arizona's best criminal legal minds goes to court to prevent more violations of what are called here the Interagency Protocols for Investigation of Child Sexual Abuse cases. They succeed in first getting a delay until they can get some controls around the process. The State of AZ wants to use a so called expert out of Phoenix that does not know her you know what from a hold in the ground but she will only be available in 45 days or so. That gives mum more time to try and coach my little girl which did concern me at the time. As it turns out I should have had more faith in my child and her constitution. In this hearing the judge assigns a GAL to supposedly protect my child. This 60+ year old woman swoops in and now I am fighting mum and her.

Within the next 2 weeks all of the psychosexual data comes in and the FTC briefs my criminal attorney and off he trots to see law enforcement and the prosecuting authority. Remember no charges have been filed and I have NEVER been interviewed. They did try to get me to say something in a phone call they setup between mum and I shortly after the accusation was made but all they got was me denying any guilt 31 times in a 45 minute call. My attorney goes in with hundreds of pages of data to support my claims. The State agrees to review the material but will not be dissuaded from having yet another go at my child with their so called expert. Subsequently my criminal attorney says that in all of the capital cases he has tried he had never seen a case where a client took such proactive steps to prevent a wrongful prosecution or grand jury indictment. I have the FTC to thank for that.

I am unable to get through to my child on the phone because mum continues to block all phone contact despite CPS' instruction that she makes our child available to me. I become more and more concerned about attachment loss given that we are around 90 days since normal visitation was interrupted. Of course the cowboy from law enforcement and the hapless CM do not understand and they just repeat that when they saw the child last she seemed happy. What a bunch of idiots is what I thought to myself!

The GAL refuses to accept that mum lied and that the accusations must be true. She comes to see me but it is clear she has preconceived notions about me having met with mum many times prior to our first visit. This confirmatory bias has continued to this day but these days as I will allude to she has limited involvement and now retains her role just to (a) generate more fees and (b) avoid the stigma of exiting a case before the finish, whatever finish really means. The GAL assists in getting us in to see the CE for which she slaps herself on the back and then charges us for it. She says that although she does not believe me she will ultimately defer to the PhD because there is no way I could fool him. If that is not an inflammatory statement then what is?

We receive an initial unsubstantiated from CPS and mum goes bananas. She goes down to their office and complains that I am a danger to my child still. They agree to keep the case open until the custody evaluator determines what should occur. I was not happy of course but I can smell victory coming. We recommend a CE to the court and he gets selected. As it turns out he is an expert in child suggestibility so he could see what contamination had occurred in the context of the tapes. The CE who is nationally known also determines that in his opinion there is NO empirical evidence to support the allegation that any child abuse occurred and certainly not at my hand. He documents this and orders a restart of my unsupervised visitation and recommends a 3/3 shared parenting model as being in the best interests of the child. Mum was livid. She had her counsel tell the judge in a status conference that the CE must have an IQ < 10 if he cannot see what I am doing.

Shortly after CPS formally closed the case once and for all and we are headed to court to get a temporary order. My child's mother would not restart the visitation without the judge telling her that she had to. Such is the level of intolerance in this woman that this was the only action that would force her to give me back my child. We go to court and the judge orders a restart right after the hearing. I was jubilant. He further orders the 3/3 go into effect that day and that we operate under it until there are further orders from the court.

More to follow ...

[true]

Hey there,

Well, I must admit that I am waiting for the additional part of this horrific event in your child's life. It is parents like that who make it tough on the child who tells the truth to be heard and kept safe.

I am hoping that there is positive light at the end of this dark tunnel.

true

[nosonew]

Anytime now...and my heart goes out to you and your little girl!

[aussierules]

The damage to me personally was great but the damage to my child from this first round of allegations of child abuse was greater. For me it was as simple as loss of friends, loss of money and loss of self esteem. I could not possibly have known how hard this was on my child until a combination of subpoenas and attorney applied leverage produced the product of the State of Arizona's efforts in my case.

As it turned out mum had taken my daughter to her pediatrician days before the referral and when asked by the doctor if she was concerned about child abuse she said that she was not and specifically as it related to me. Days later she was in the office asking for anal/vaginal exams and UAs for non-existent infections caused by my alleged bad behavior. In the space of 2 weeks the pediatrician had done 3 internal/external exams of my daughter. On top of that the State of Arizona through CPS at its family advocacy center did at least one more and subsequently when the Queen of Forensic Interviews (NOT) did hers there was another. These are the ones that I know about. Add to that the burden of all of the not so forensic interviews – I know of 5 totaling 5 hours + but there may have been additional that for some reason did not make it onto video tape. It is kind of scary to think about that possibility because the ones that did make it were insidious and depressing to watch.

After the second unsubstantiated things resumed to normal whatever normal was/is and despite warnings from my FTC that women who do this once do not give up I figured it had been a few months and maybe she was done. Wrong. Early in October 2003 I received a call from CPS – a new CM who was somewhat familiar with my file history. She said that another complaint had been made against me for physical abuse of my child. In reading the referral subsequently the accusation amounted to inappropriate touching a little child rape thrown in for good measure. Not much of an improvement on the first accusation really and again designed to sicken people who might have cause to get involved with our case.

This CM seemed sympathetic on the phone but by now I have my guard up. She asks some questions to try and validate the complaint that was made. She asked about whether or not there had been any judicial orders on custody. I told her yes and agreed to fax a copy of the documents to her at CPS. She stated that she had seen this type of accusatory pattern of behavior before and I should try not to worry. It was a silly statement really but I believed at the time she meant well. She stated that at this time she had no plans to interrupt visitation because again the statements made by mother had not been corroborated by our child. The CM indicated that the matter had been escalated to a regional director in AZ and that CPS had determined given the case history and mum's pattern of making accusations that they were not going to do a medical exam something which they are entitled to do under their standard operating procedure apparently.

I need to go backwards before I can go forwards because I did not find this next part until the following Monday. As it turns out mum had gotten a little smarter. This time she did not make the referral herself. She let her concerns be known to a mandated reporter who despite not having confirmation from our child decided to report the concerns to CPS. This way the blood was not on mum's hands but someone else's. I went to see this doctor on Monday and requested a copy of the office visit for the date in question. I was denied access to my records by the doctor because there was a note in the file written by mum that was handed to the doctor and they did not want to give it to me.

I immediately made my attorney aware and we subpoenaed the full medical record for my child and after the doctor consulted with her own counsel to validate whether or not she had to comply she did turn the file over in its entirety. This process did however take 10 more days to accomplish. As it turns out this note from mum to the doctor was quite interesting. Given that mum had failed previously to get my child to go along with her she did not want to make another daddy accusation in front of the child so she hands over a note that says I am concerned that daddy is touching our child's bottom and putting her in the empty bath and doing bad things to her. Mum knew full well that had she stated this in front of our child that my daughter would have said what she said all along "daddy did not do anything.". The doctor did some questions about good and bad touch and truth and lies, subjects that my daughter has a very good grasp on. The net was that my child said that she was fine and that nothing had happened to her that she thought was bad touch and that she felt ok.
Despite this the doctor did another anal/vaginal. I guess she thought my daughter had not been abused enough at her mother's hand. They did another UA which also came back negative 3 days later.

Back we go to the weekend before. Sorry about the jumping around but I want you all to see what I was going through. So this CM and I agree that she can come to my house on Sunday to visit for a few minutes so she can see my daughter and I and see if something was amiss. She observed our child and asked a couple of innocuous sounding questions and then once my little girl had spoken to her alone for a few minutes about what life was like at the Daddy/Daughter house and what she was up to the lady left. No attempt was made to interfere with our visitation. She did ask that I not discuss this latest accusation with our child which was not a problem because I have no desire to give it any more credibility than it already had.

The CM heads down to see mum who just happens to be at home with her husband – you remember him the brother of the sexual predator and her best friend an attorney (not representing her in this case mind) who had just recently tried to end her own life and who was in therapy. Nothing like being judged by a group of your peers is there? I know the next part because someone at CPS provided me through counsel an unredacted copy of the CM's notes from the visit to mum's house. Throughout the meeting mum made accusation after accusation about my alleged deviant behavior, the fact that I had been abused as a child by my parents (I had not) and that I had a sexual freaky side. She demanded that the CM remove our child but the CM stated she had seen the child just a few minutes ago and she was doing fine and that there was no evidence of any abuse going on.

Next day the case was given back to the CM who handled the first referral and within 2 more days it was closed without services. It should be noted subsequent to this that the CM who handled this off hours call apologized to my counsel for violating my right to confidentiality and she assured us it would never happen again. So in summary case #1 – uraphilia – 87 days, case #2 – child rape – 5 days. It appeared that CPS had figured out what she was doing and was not about to waste necessary state resources on silly accusations. I was disappointed to find out that the CM did not cite mum for emotional abuse as she had indicated that she would. We are still working this issue with CPS but believe it or not it had to take a back burner position because there was even more to come that I did not forsee.

Stay tuned ...

[Stepmom0418]

My heart goes out to you and your daughter!

I have to say that you have a way of keeping your readers in suspense! Come on we want to hear the rest!

[aussierules]

PART 4.

Life again returns to what it was like after accusation #1 but I am resolved to be even more careful and diligent than I had been before. I do not think I made any mistakes relative to the parenting of my child but clearly my child's mother is an opportunist when it comes to stuff like this.

Another status conference and the judge on the GAL's request (who was being pushed like a dog down a dark hole by mum) orders that our child to go see a therapist to deal with the stress of our situation. I have mixed feelings about it because I know that this is an attempt by mum to get a new battering ram to beat me with. There were no PhDs here that could or more correctly would see our child. Many of the good mental health professionals do not want to go near court. Finally we end up with a thirty something unmarried lesbian who has a specialty supposedly in attachment disorder but who thinks she can help.

I took our child for the first few meetings because that is how the schedule worked out. I make it very clear to the therapist that my understanding of what she is supposed to be talking to our child about and that she does not attempt to turn this into a try to prove dad molested his child exercise. She said that she understood her role and that she would focus only on the development of feelings and coping mechanisms. Sure sounded harmless enough at the time but not all is as it seems to be. And then it was mum's turn with the schedule the way it is. Suddenly the sky darkened and things became unclear again.

I am able to ascertain this next part because I got these "progress" notes from the therapist and I have walked backwards to try & reconstruct what transpired in these sessions that were attended by Mum/Child/Therapist. Mum indicates to therapist that our child is playing with herself excessively to the point that she cannot leave her house because of it. DOGGY DOO is what I think of that story. The therapist notices one time in one session that our child grabbed at her crotch – perhaps it itched who knows but the therapist signs on to mum's game and off we go again. That was enough to make it into the progress notes as "confirmed". Well let's look at what has happened to this child. She has had so many anal/vaginal exams and so many people have wanted to talk about it because daddy has done so many things to it, I think it is little wonder that she is touching it. In my experience when I am with her it is unremarkable. I remember when I was a kid I used to periodically touch mine. Given all the things this little person has been through it is a wonder that she is not whipping it out for all to see. Sure she did think it got her attention but I had always made it clear to her that this part of her body was her own and it was private. Of course she wanted to know why all these other people wanted to talk about it and I told her that was because someone had said bad things about daddy and her vaginal area. When I become aware of this latest twist I ask the therapist if she had possibly not looked at the issue properly. I provided her reports from my FTC from the Mayo Clinic that showed girls of her age masturbate 50% of the time and it is considered NORMAL. Why then if my child is doing it does it become remarkable? I asserted that perhaps my child was so sensitized to the issue that maybe she did touch it a little more than others but the more they bloody well talked about it the worse it would become. It was as if this woman was caught in the headlights of a truck. She just stared at me like I had wandered in from Mars. I guess nobody disputes the intellect of a therapist.

Within days I get a letter from mum stating that we needed to visit on this masturbation issue. After consultation with counsel I write back and state my long held belief that if she is seeing this perhaps it is because she is stressed at her home and she needs to relieve it or perhaps our child has figured out that people pay more attention to her when the subject of her anal/vaginal area comes front and center. I suggest to her that maybe if she stops making silly allegations about it or even talking to it that the behavior if true will cease. That just fanned the fires of hate some more. I get more stupid notes back and I ignore them as there is no way I am going to get her to see the insanity of her ways. I rarely see my daughter touch herself but I have told her that if she wants to play with herself she can do it in private as long as she washes her hands before and after. I am not going to make out like it is a dirty thing because it is not.  My child observes those rules and it is perhaps why I am not seeing it but wanting to explore your own body on your own is fine.

I go back to see the therapist on my normal schedule and we talk about this subject some more. I provide her with more possible scenarios, my own way of dealing with the problem and she concedes that I might have a valid point. You see I take very copious notes in all of the meetings that I have whether it is counsel, GAL or therapist so she damn well knew her position on this issue would find its way into some letter I wrote that would make it hard for her to credibly take a position that was in opposition to these latest statements she just made.

Sure enough I go back to see the therapist in about 3 weeks – mum had been a couple of times in between and the therapist beams at me and says we have the masturbation thing under control. Mum says it is no longer happening. BS is what I think. I remind the therapist that if a behavior had reached an acute state such as mum had described it would not just cease to happen. The therapist thought for a bit about it and said we should just be glad that it was under control. See what really occurred as far as I am concerned was that mum figured out that this approach was not going to get her any new referrals to CPS and that she needed to try a new tact if her new battering ram was going to help her. It is amazing to me how supposedly intelligent people like this therapist can be fooled into thinking all sorts of things however stupid they might be.

Something I hear in one of these sessions gives me pause for thought. The therapist out of the blue talks about what she believes her role is and she rambles on about how kids do not disclose information about their abusers sometimes and that while she is not counseling our child as a victim of sexual abuse if that were to occur then she will of course pursue it in the context of her therapy. I already knew this was coming. Ladies and gentlemen may I now introduce you to CSAAS – Child Sex Abuse Accommodation Syndrome. Not a DSM4 recognized diagnosis and indeed widely recognized as junk science but here it was coming out her mouth. I consulted with my FTC and we provided a large amount of material to calm this new fire. When I delivered it to her through counsel the therapist was more than a little shocked. Just because AZ is a backwater and CSAAS is not officially regarded as rubbish it does not mean it does not fall into that category.

I am of the opinion of late anyways that if one nips stuff like this in the bud that it does not go too far. I put the therapist on notice about CSAAS and that my "team" was well aware of it and it's lack of credibility in the scientific community. My comments to the therapist even made it into the progress notes and this one goes back into the cupboard perhaps for use with the next poor fool that comes along. What was interesting about this was back on accusation #1 which is where I subsequently remembered that I had heard it the local law enforcement sex crimes expert who spells vagina as Virginia (yes it is true) made some mention of the fact that maybe our child was not ready to disclose. I think he had received some training from the nut in Phoenix with her Liberal Arts degree who is now the State of Arizona's expert on forensic child interviews. We had planned to depose him but believe it or not he managed to avoid it after 7 months. See my final thoughts when I get there for more about this particular subject.

The GAL requests a meeting with my counsel and I. She indicates to us that she is going to meet with mum and her attorney also. That turned out not to be true as I come to find out later but I guess there is no penalty for lying if you are an officer of the court. In this meeting the GAL restates her long held belief that she believes our child disclosed to mum at some point even though under the grilling she got from CPS & Law Enforcement she said nothing to make anyone believe that to be true. The GAL gives us her lopsided view of events and discounts all of the items we have become aware of e.g. mum still sleeping with child. She says that she has a whole different "shtick" for mum when she sees her but of course as I stated above that meeting never occurred.

November 2003 rolls around and one day I pickup my little girl on the normal schedule. She gets in the car and starts telling me that mum is going to take her to the doctor to have her vaginal area looked at. I asked why and my daughter says that she does not know. I ask if anything is hurting or itching and she says no. I smell a rat and immediately call the first CM who always seemed more reasonable. She concurs that this may be mum about to do it again. The CM contacts the therapist and between them they decide to call the doctor and try to determine why mum is going to take the child to see the doctor.

Believe it or not there is more to come ...

[hagatha]

I would think by this time your daughter is showing signs of sexual abuse. Simply because her mother has insisted she have, what is it now 5 or 6 pelvic exams. And I am sure mommy dearest is doing her best to get this little baby girl to agree she has been abused. If mommy dearest continues to tell her about the alledged abuse she will eventually come to believe.

Your duaghter still needs therapy to overcome the fact  her MOTHER sexually abused her by allowing the continued exams.

There was a guy on this site some yrs ago that went through something similar. He was evenually awarded custody with mom having supervised visits. Although initially she continued to alledge sexual abuse of their children, it fell on deaf ears. She has since cut off all contact with the children and chooses to no longer see them.

I have a feeling you will finish your story with a happy ending, as in custody was awarded to you. However if this is Not the case, I would think that a petition to the court for sole custody based on mommy dearest's physical and sexual abuse would get you there.

the Witch

Remember . . . KARMA is a Wonderful Thing!!!

[aussierules]

I agree that what mum is doing is abusive. Unfortunately the way CPS is in Arizona at least is that they do not like finding against mothers. Mine is no exception to this rule of thumb. The threshold for this type of emotional abuse seems to be higher than for anything else CPS is involved in.

I was very lucky because my little girl is not suggestible to any degree and when compared to her peers she does not even register. Despite violating every portion of their own protocols and in spite of the amount of time afforded mum to coach my daughter more every one of her six plus attempts has fallen by the wayside.

My little girl sees the situation as mummy and CPS/Police against her and daddy. She views the situation in terms of teams. She and I are one team pitted against mummy's team. I am proud of my daughetr because she understands right from wrong and throughout interrogation by police, CPS, mum she never broke and never said anything that would implicate me in anything inappropriate, immoral or illegal.

The kind of therapy she was getting was NOT for the things you suggest. Instead we were all working to develop her coping skills and to allow her to deal with this crap better. I see that as treating the symptom of the problem not the problem itself.

Mum continues to threaten me and make more accusations. It has now gotten to the point that the law enforcement agencies (there are 2 - county and city) do not even write reports when she calls in. CPS opens referrals as they have to by law and promptly closes them as they should be UNSUBSTANTIATED. I keep trying to get those elusive words of SUBSTANTIATED for emotional abuse against mum but thus far the state has not cooperated.

I hope you are right. I will not give up because I do realize that my child needs me just as much as her mother. What she needs more than any specific parent however is her parents to acknowledge, sustain & nurture her relationship with the other parent. I am not sure that I will ever get mum to do that.

The road is long and lonely.