| Home | The Father I Am | |
| Media Arrest Plead/Bond Hearing Sentence Parole Blogs
NEW!! Read the 1st Three
Chapters Court Hearings
Other Pictures
|
Court Hearings 2002 Patricia filed for Divorce in February of 2002. Between her filing and our Final Decree in December of 2004 we averaged a hearing a month. We spent time in Family Court, Domestic Violence, Civil, Bankruptcy and finally Criminal. The majority of hearings were recorded and are public record. November 15, 2002 On November 15, 2002 Judge Jewell held a trial on the merits. The trial ran for a little over three hours and focused on child custody issues. For all the appearance of progress the results of the trail proved at best, a complete waste of time, at worse, the trial lad the foundation for much of the subsequent chaos. If you view a trial as a place for victory or defeat, the casual observer would conclude that I ‘won’ this day. I received effective custody of the children and timesharing weighed in my favor by a three to one margin. No one wins, ever. And the mechanics of the process still fill me with dread years later. The Court hires a psychologist to evaluate the family to decide issues of custody and timesharing. Literally, the entire future of the family is placed into this stranger’s hand and after only a handful of hours your fate is determined. Our case may differ from the norm but after the evaluation the lawyers met with the psychologist and the Guardian Ad Litem without Patricia or I. They simply wanted to avoid giving us time to react. Patricia did find out the results early and placed blame on Jessica for refusing to paint Glen as a villain. Patricia spit in Jessica’s face and locked her outside for a couple of long winter hours. Patricia told Jessica that Jessica could cry a river of tears before she would love Jessica again. Me? I read the report a half hour before we went into Court. It is difficult to discuss the evaluator-- Dr. Gayle Zieman. I wrote an article titled “The Role of Psychology in Divorce” that describes my general thoughts about evaluation, but there are plenty of specific thoughts. The simple fact of the matter is that we paid Zieman thousands of dollars for an evaluation that proved highly inaccurate and was never implemented. Within three weeks of Zieman’s reports, State Protective Services documented a long history of physical and mental abuse of the children by Patricia and removed the children from Patricia. Somehow Zieman missed all of this and his plan went out the window. Every single paragraph of Dr. Zieman’s report contained a factual error, many of them material. One that puzzled me for a long time contained wording about Patricia’s fiancé’s relationship with his own parents. Several months later Dr. Zieman confirmed that the paragraph actually was about Glen. It is also amazing in his written report and testimony how often Dr. Zieman simply stated that he did not know. He did not know why Glen and his mother were estranged. He did not know if Patricia had ever been a victim of domestic violence, and so on. This leads to another issue. Psychological rationalizations aside, Zieman had substantial evidence on why Glen disliked his mother to include Glen’s psychologist’s own strong opinion about the countless police reports Patricia filed against Glen, Zieman heard messages where Patricia threatened Glen, and of course the family stories. Why not express an opinion? Why not provide the Court with the information needed to make a decision? In other areas, Zieman clearly censored the information provided to the Court. Why, because the Court does not make the decision-- the Psychologist does. The professionals restrict what is said in open Court. They tell the judge what they want the judge to hear not what they know. What did Judge Jewell think when things fell apart three weeks later and the Guardian came back to Court on January 15th and asked that I be awarded full custody and Patricia only see the children with a visit supervisor present? And a year after that when she was arrested for plotting my death with the children in the house? It is also critical to remember that the lawyers need the psychologists. Do not count on your lawyer pointed out what a poor job the psychologist did, they need them on the next case.
Track 1 Track 2 Track 3 Track 4 Track 5 Track 6 Track 7 Track 8 Track 9 Track 10 Track 11 Track 12 Track 13
|
|
