Abuse, or a ploy for custody?

Article Last Updated: 7/03/2006 12:30 AM

Abuse, or a ploy for custody?

By Elizabeth Neff The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake Tribune

What 17-year-old Tiffany Ann Carver says she recalls most from the custody battles that raged during her childhood is not being listened to.    The courts, she says, seemed more focused on her father’s rights than hers.    ”I was never treated like a human being with rights. I never felt like a child. I was just another file, a stack of paper.”    Carver says her claims of abuse at the hands of her father were not believed by California authorities after her mother was branded a “parental alienator” who had brainwashed her.    As a teen, Carver ran away from her father’s home until attorneys from the Alliance for Children’s Rights placed her in a foster home. A court gave her Utah mother sole custody last year. Her father has never been charged and denies the allegation.    Mother and daughter are now urging courts to become better educated about “parental alienation syndrome” – a condition unrecognized by the medical community but often used against one of the parties in a custody case.    A pending case in a Salt Lake City court illustrates that courts continue to struggle with claims of “parental alienation.”        Sorting it out: In 3rd District Court, a mother who has custody of her 9-year-old daughter is fighting claims that she persuaded the girl to make false allegations that her father had sexually abused her. She claims her daughter has been refusing to partake in visitation with her father.    The Tribune has chosen not to identify the family because of the age of the girl and because no criminal charges have been filed.    The father alleges his ex-wife has “programmed” the child, and criticizes the courts and his ex for keeping them apart in past years.    Left to sort out what the law allows is Judge John Paul Kennedy. In a recent hearing on the case, the judge’s frustration was clear: Should he permit only supervised visitation? Can he hold the mother in contempt? Do the child’s wishes matter?    Kennedy has acknowledged in hearings that he is operating in a vacuum of sorts, at some points mentioning he might assume the abuse has taken place for the sake of argument.    In court, an attorney appointed by the court to represent the child blamed the mother for episodes in which her daughter refused to leave the car to visit with her father and locked herself in a bathroom at a supervised visitation center. The judge ordered a period of supervised visitation this summer to be followed by unsupervised visitation.    ”Even if criminal charges cannot be pressed, what is wrong with judges erring on the side of the child and at least providing protection?” the mother tells The Tribune. “As long as this child is claiming she doesn’t want to be alone with this guy, why shouldn’t she be supervised?”    The father brims with frustration when he talks to the newspaper about the case, saying he must constantly defend his innocence, although he’s never been charged with any crime.    ”Nobody buys the story of me doing anything, or I’d be in jail,” he says. “It’s gone on for eight years with no evidence, nothing.”    Experts say child-sex crimes can be difficult to prosecute because they often hinge on the strength of a child’s reports to authorities in the absence of physical evidence.    A Tribune review of case filings over five years published in 2004 showed only a sliver of claims are prosecuted. For example, in 2002 police took reports from more than 2,000 people who claimed to be victims of child sexual abuse. Less than a third were ever filed in court.        Coaching abuse claims? In the case pending in 3rd District Court, three separate reports were made to child-protection officials when the girl was 2 1/2 , 5 and 8 years old. None of the cases was substantiated or taken to court.    The most serious claim was made in September 2003, when the mother contacted the Utah Division of Child and Family Services to say her daughter had been refusing to visit her father, pulling her hair and crying. At an interview at the Children’s Justice Center in Bountiful, the girl shared her writings about alleged abuse.    The notes, coupled with the child’s pride in them and an admission that her mother wrote two lines, led Bountiful Police Detective Julie Feigleson to believe she was coached into making the claims.    Davis County Prosecutor Troy Rawlings declined to prosecute the case, citing evidentiary problems. The Utah Attorney General’s Office said Thursday it is looking into the case, although the mother says she already has received a letter from that office declining prosecution as well.    An evaluator appointed by the court, Valarie Hale, wrote in a 2005 evaluation that she felt the father was not a danger to his daughter. She had harsh words for the mother.    ”The greater concern has been that [the mother] has, at times, interfered with visitation because of her belief that abuse has occurred and will occur again,” she wrote.    Allegations of child sexual abuse accounted for 23 percent of all DCFS investigations in 2005. Of those, DCFS found enough evidence in half of them, or about 2,218 cases, to support a finding of child sexual abuse.        Considering a ‘family court’: One thing is clear in the 3rd District Court case: The allegation of abuse hangs over every turn of the proceedings without ever getting resolved.    It’s a common situation, says guardian ad litem Kristen Brewer.    ”The problem is cases that have serious allegations or findings of abuse get handled procedurally the same way as parents that just can’t agree on visitation,” Brewer says.    In contrast to custody cases handled by the district courts, juvenile courts are required by law to make findings on allegations of abuse in a certain time frame, to have a trial.    ”It’s really bad for people who are alleged to have abused their child too,” Brewer says. “There is never a hearing on the underlying issue.”    For more than a decade, Utah has toyed with the idea of adopting a “family court” system similar to those used in other states that would place juvenile and other family matters, such as divorce and domestic violence, in one courtroom.    Brewer says her office does listen to a child’s wishes. But there is nothing in Utah law that mandates a court take them into account over other factors – until a child turns 16. At that point, a judge by law is required to give their wishes more weight.    Susanne Mitchell, as program manager for the Salt Lake County Children’s Justice Centers, which helps train police on handling claims of sexual abuse, says she encourages professionals to keep an open mind and be neutral.    A 1994 study of cases that came through the center showed allegations were determined to be unfounded 28 percent of the time. In 72 percent of the cases, there was reason to believe the child, she says. Mitchell believes the center has similar numbers today but noted that, even in the larger number of cases, only half are strong enough to pursue criminal charges.    Cases of coaching do happen, she says, but not often.    ”When parents make a report, in most cases it is not malicious,” she says. “It is because they truly believe something is wrong.”        Junk science? Tiffany Carver’s mother, Irene Jensen, says she believes she is one of many parents who have had to battle unfair claims of parental alienation syndrome.    An article by Loyola University law students published earlier this year in the Children’s Legal Rights Journal cited the widespread use of such claims.    ”By July 19, 2005, [parental alienation syndrome] was referenced in 64 precedent-bearing cases originating in 25 states and in 112 law review articles,” the article stated. “Given the rarity of written decisions and appellate review of family court decisions, these numbers indicate PAS’s substantial influence in American courts.”    Jensen says she was caught in a horrible situation for years trying to protect her daughter.    ”They want to make you seem like a lunatic,” she says. “The more you call the police to report what happened, the more [her husband and his attorney] try to do that. But if I hadn’t called police, they would have alleged I had failed to protect her.”    In Carver’s case, Utah child-protection investigators believed she was a victim of abuse. But Utah had no jurisdiction because she was living with her father in California, and a judge there ruled the child was not in danger and sent her back to her father.    Her father has never been charged with a crime and has denied abusing her.    Jensen gets angry, then tearful, when she talks about being accused of alienation. Two child-custody evaluators made the allegation in court and say her daughter was suffering as a result. It quickly becomes a label women are unable to escape, and a powerful sword for potential abusers to wield in court, she says.    ”I have heard from so many other women across the country who have been fighting this. It’s junk science.”