I will say upfront that I was not at this meeting and it was not broadcast on CTN surprisingly enough. So my review of this meeting is largely dependent upon another person's observations! You can obtain official minutes of this meeting online at:
To start, there were more arguments regarding the approval of the minutes of the meeting. There was some discussion of Robert's rules for meeting minutes. Attorney Linda Allard requested an administrative meeting in private to discuss these matters further. So the minutes were tabled for the moment.
Dr. Stephen M. Humphrey was the expert there to provide testimony on that date.
I am particularly aware of Dr. Humphrey's infamous involvement with the Joe Watley and Karin Hasemann predictive neglect case where the parents were wrongly denied custody based on false allegations of mental illness. Likewise, Dr. Humphrey was involved in Hector Moreira's case which is another travesty of justice, so it is unclear why the task force would allow a tainted mental health professional to provide testimony. But again, this task force has appeared to attract a gathering of an unusual amount of crooks all in one place!
Dr. Stephen M. Humphrey is highly experienced in forensic evaluations for the purposes of custody. He went to Rutgers University for his undergraduate degree and then continued on at the University of Connecticut for his Ph.D. He was post grad at New Haven. He has practiced in Hartford since 1995 working with low income families in the Hartford area. He does around 70 evaluations a year for child protection services and about 10-15 family evaluations for divorce. Ok guys, if he charges around $10,000 per evaluation as many do, multiply that by 10, you have a quick $100,000 to $150,000 right off the bat before he goes into the evaluations for the state. I wonder how much a state paid forensic evaluation costs. But seriously, that's quite a lot of bucks!
Essentially, Dr. Humphrey believes that children benefit from the involvement of both parents. While children benefit with father's involvement, 70 to 80% of single parent families are headed by the mother. In the literature regarding father's involvement, the absence of the father is associated with less school, unemployment for men, and early pregnancy for women. Of course, there haven't been any studies regarding what happens when there are absent mothers in a family. Wait until those results start to show up, particularly the studies where the mothers were protecting their children from abuse or were falsely accused of parental alienation and the children eventually become aware of it or are already aware.
What counts in growing healthy children is the quality of the relationship with the father. Is the father authoritative and emotionally engaging? Is there a considerable degree of both warmth and structure? If there are low exposures to parental conflict or if the children are shielded from parental conflict, the outcome in their lives can be just the same as kids from intact families. When father doesn't have a positive relationship with the children, this situation is associated with poor development. Single parent families can be healthy as long as both parents are available and can be involved with the children.
The kids did better in joint custody in all categories of adjustment. There is some research indicating that the presumption of shared custody does not work out. I would like to see copies of these studies and the names of these studies.
Shared parenting is based on the presumption that kids should spend time with the parents in the same pre-divorce manner that they did before. Is shared parenting viable with divorced parents? It would require parental cooperation. It would also be dependent upon how closely the parents live to each other. If there are long distances to travel shared parenting could be a problem. There should also be shared confidence that the father is a competent parent.
Dr. Stephen Humphrey stated the only 1.5% of families went through a full custody trial and he felt there was too much focus on the 1.5% of families that continue on acrimoniously for years and years. Of course, I recognize that Judicial Branch insiders such as Dr. Humphrey and his pals Attorney Sharon Dornfeld, Attorney Sue Cousineau and Mr. John DiTunno whose general mean spiritedness oozes out of their pores and pretty much every ill considered comment they make continue to emphasize how high conflict divorces are extremely rare. But guess what--the high traffic my blog and other Connecticut blogs receive that cover judicial corruption show that this isn't true. While few cases may end up in all out custody trials, numerous others are resolved or set aside only to be restarted later as a consequence of judicial corruption and abuse.
Or, as my collaborator on this report stated, "This is not true that there is a small percentage of high conflict cases. Just go online and you will see thousands of parents in similar situations. Furthermore, there may be a 1.5% of cases that go to trial, but that's because by that time the lawyers have colluded with one another to threaten the parties with lies and false statements."
Dr. Humphrey ordinarily deals with extreme cases where children have been beaten and they are very emotionally and physically damaged and child protection is involved. When it comes to interpersonal violence, the stereotype is that the father is the perpetrator, while with parental alienation, or gatekeeping, the stereotype is that the mother is the perpetrator. Both are examples of individuals who want to maintain control.
Humphrey states that only a small percentage of parents can manipulate the feelings children have towards their parents. He claims that only a small percentage of these incidents rise to a pathological level. He has been on 3 cases in 10 years where he saw extreme, pathological and restrictive cases of alienation. He feels that a radical response isn't required in most situations. He further talked about a passive versus active manner of conducting alienation. Of course, in cases of judicial corruption or where the mental health professional is colluding with the attorneys, cases of alienation or DV by proxy are often redefined as something else such as poor parenting, abuse, Munchausens by proxy or something of that nature. So Dr. Stephen Humphrey's data is very likely not accurate.
There can be attachment issues for a child if there is any disruption of his or her relationship with the primary caregiver.
Attorney Sharon Dornfeld stated that she would like to see other articles concerning shared custody. Also, she asked, what is shared parenting. Dr. Humphrey said that the research on this, but he believes it consists of 25% to 35% of access time for the non-residential parent.
Jennifer Veraneault then asked whether anti-social personality disorder is a large factor among the 1.5%. Dr. Humphrey stated there is a high incidence of one or more parents with personality disorders in high conflict divorce. Ms. Veraneault also asked how many parents walk away from some reason or another? The response was that 80% choose not to proceed with litigation. So 1.5% is the number of people not going into litigation and there were 18.5% who gave up in the middle of the litigation for some reason or another, but not necessarily because they agree with stopping.
In the case of the person who wrote these notes, he stated that the GAL told him right before the trial that most of her cases never go to trial. Then she threatened him and told him that the Court did not have to look at the custody evaluation which, ironically, did not recommend sole custody to the mother which the GAL chose to recommend. So lies, manipulation, threats, fear of jail, all of these issues are factors in whether a case continues on to trial or whether it remains in court with low levels of ongoing conflict for years and years to come. To me, there is no appreciable difference between the two circumstances.
(To be continued...)
(To be continued...)
No comments:
Post a Comment