There are so many battles to fight once you get into a high conflict divorce that you really have to choose which ones you want to get involved in. However, for a brief period I considered reporting my corrupt custody evaluator to the Department of Public Health.
To my dismay, what I found out is that it is almost impossible to get the Department of Public Heath to investigate a corrupt custody evaluator.
Why?
Because in order to determine what kind of wrongdoing a custody evaluator may have done, the Department would have to have a chance to take a look at the custody evaluation and they state that they are unable to do that unless they have permission from both parties.
Their reasoning, for what it is worth, is that they would be violating the confidentiality of the other party if they reviewed the custody evaluation without his or her permission.
Of course, what with the way high conflict family court cases go, the contents of the custody evaluation may be posted on the internet in the Memorandum of Decision on the case, but that is of no consequence to the Department of Public Health.
The end result is that, with a policy of this kind in place, there is no way that the Department of Public Health can investigate any custody evaluator because it will be an extremely rare situation where both parties are going to agree that the custody evaluator committed some kind of wrong doing. Because whichever party benefitted from the wrongdoing isn't going to agree to have it investigated, naturally enough.
It is not only custody evaluators who then get an exemption from oversight and accountability. The same issue arises if you have a psychologist who is involved in treating the family through the family court system. Again, both parties would have to agree to have a review of the treatment records.
And the same would occur with a Co-Parent Manager, because again you'd have to have the agreement of both parties for the review of records.
So literally, any mental health professional who works with families will be able to avoid the consequences of violating their professional ethics because there is no way to hold them accountable.
Recently, Protective Mother Susan Skipp reported the psychologist, Dr. Sydney Horowitz for fraudulent billing practices and received a response from Jolanda M. Gawinski, a supervisor in the Investigations Section of the DPH, stating, "At the advice of the Attorney General, the Department of Public Health is required to obtain releases from both custodial parents prior to obtaining information/records required to investigate complaints involving shared custody." Since they were unable to get that from Susan Skipp's ex husband, the Department declined to investigate the complaints.
And this policy is coming right from the top, from the Attorney General of the State of Connecticut!
A policy of this kind pretty much guarantees that mental health professionals working with Family Court in the State of Connecticut have complete immunity.
Personally, my experience has been that it doesn't even matter if you have joint medical records which limits access to the evidence you need to assertain whether there is any culpability. I had the experience of submitting a complaint against an unethical Co-Parent Manager and did not need medical records of any kind to prove the wrong doing. The Department sat on the Complaint for a full year before dismissing it in a two sentence letter.
The bottom line is, the Department doesn't want to involve itself in cases where Family Court professionals are involved. The end result is that these mental health professionals show a blatant disregard for ethical practice and have a cavalier disregard for the clients' constitutional and due process rights, as well as their rights as mental health clients.
In essence, the Department of Public Health has opened up the hen house and invited all the neighborhood foxes in for a feast, and when you look at the sums of money involved, it truly is a feast. I paid $14,000 for the piece of shit custody evaluation in my case. How much did you guys pay? I'll bet that much and more.
The comment section is below! Tell me YOUR war stories!
about 15,000 on a guardian ad litem that did nothing. I know more from her about her family than she aske d about me. She never spoke to my kids teachers or acknowleged the 18 letters of support of which 3 were from MDs. The Family Service was very biased as well. The primary
ReplyDeletecame out from a brief evaluation time with my childrens father and lawyer laughing heartily. I had just spent a long a difficult time in same room with evaluator and had broken down when he asked if I had ever been sexually assaulted by my husband . I had not expected to be asked that and now wish I had not even bothered to acknowlege such. My confidentiality was violated as well. It affected my family court outcome. I feel I havee no protection under the law, no recourse. The court people may have good intent bu they are very easily fooled by sociopaths. Amazing really.
If the court people were only fooled by a few sociopaths, I'd say, ok, anyone can make a mistake. But the fact that family court, custody evaluators and GALs are so frequently in support of sociopaths leads me to believe their support of criminal types is intentional and motivated by money, i.e. the money they can make by placing all the power in the hands of the abuser in the family.
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