PACE provides the Custody Newsletter Archive as a public service. It can be reproduced for private, non-commercial use as long as it is attributed and referenced.

WELCOME

Welcome to the Custody Newsletter. Our tone is informal; we WANT contributions based on your clinical experiences, as well as more formal presentations.

Second, we solicit input from members of all professions. This is why it is not mandatory that any specific References format be followed e.g., the bibliographic notation system of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, etc.

In general, we favor brief articles, contributions ranging from one-half of a typewritten page to about eight typewritten pages.

Issue #6 of the Custody Newsletter continues coverage of the important and complex area concerning the investigation of sexaul abuse allegations.

The bulk of the material is an in-depth review of a very important book by Aaron Noah Hoorwitz, a book largely hailed as state-of-the-art in detecting sexual abuse via the interview.

Although passing mention is made of other tools (dolls, tests, etc.) the work focuses on the interview. While my own preference in this area would be data-based tests (notably the PORT) nonetheless the interview is important and few people conduct them as well as does Dr. Hoorwitz.

Persons conducting investigations of sexual abuse should heed a note of caution offered early-on in this wise and excellent book: evaluators who have strong emotional feelings about sex abuse will conduct poor evaluations.

THE CLINICAL DETECTIVE: TECHNIQUES IN

THE EVALUATION OF SEXUAL ABUSE

by Aaron Noah Hoorwitz.

1992. New York: Norton

At the outset, find out how the whistle-blower feels about sex abuse, i.e., investigate carefully the history of whoever conducts the initial interviews. Were any of them sexually abused? Do they know people who were sexually abused? (In the CN Editor's opinion, this is of great importance, because whoever conducts the initial evaluations can slant forever not only the stories but the actual memories of the involved persons.)

The second chapter covers who to interview first. If the child is the complainant and is upset about the abuse, he or she should be seen first.

In general, the person who is making the complaint should be the one seen first.

When parents disagree about what went on, they should be seen together to confront them with their discrepancies. If they are in agreement, they should be seen separately in order to ferret out inconsistencies. If the process starts with a call from a youth service, thoroughly interview the investigator and find out everything he or she knows and wants to know, and what is to be done with the data.

When interviewing a non-offending parent, it is always important to find the hidden agenda. Is she trying to nail the alleged offender, or does she want him not thrown out of the house? Either hidden agenda would taint the testimony from a non-offending parent.

Hoorwitz feels it is very important to differentiate between two types of offenders. One commits abuse out of being fixated at a regressed level of development; the other is where the regression happened as result of external stressors (which is a common scenario in incest cases).

This is typically where one parent, (usual-ly the father) is dominant and the other (the wife) is dependent. Both parents eventually become hostile. The anger is handled inappropriately and the father displaces emotions originally felt toward the wife onto the daughter who comes to represent the wife, especially if this daughter has been parentified by the mother (who has typically abdicated parental responsibility in such situations). The child then comes to provide the emotional support for the father that he does not get from his wife. The father often lacks confidence to seek gratifications elsewhere.

Dyed-in-the-wool sex offenders, (pedophiles or child molesters) are permanently regressed to an earlier level. They do not usually establish normal adult relationships with others and show signs of regression.

It is important to do a total mental status evaluation for this reason (as well as many others) to see if there is the "profile" that commonly results in child sexual abuse.

If the child has a hidden agenda, say to make sure her father is not arrested, it is often helpful to spell out all of the supportive options that exist for the child so she can feel free to tell the truth.

The following are what the author considers the key considerations in interviewing the child. The first step is to establish the purpose of the interview. In the example he uses I come across one of the few caveats I would have in relation to any interview technique (as opposed to the use of psychological tests): "And I need to ask you to tell it all over again to me, too. I'm sorry about that. I don't mean to make you feel bad, and I'm sorry that you feel bad about saying it all again... (page 47)." Here, he is literally instructing the child that she will feel bad, and almost takes it for granted that he believes the charge and indicates to her that this is what he wants to hear. (However, having said this, I still say the vast majority of this book is excellent.)

Although stating the purpose of the interview may take only a short time, the child could realize that what she says could change the entire fate of her family. The child can be encouraged to speak freely by pointing out that what she says is not at all the only thing the investigators will be looking at, indeed the person conducting the evaluation is not the key decision maker in any event. The child should be reassured that she does not have to figure out what is in everybody's best interest; she should only concentrate on telling the truth.

The second step is to fully disclose that what is said is not necessarily going to be kept confidential. Hoorwitz offers detailed instructions on how this can be stated.

The third step is an exceedingly important one because in it the child is literally taught how to respond to questions. Hoorwitz wants to make sure the child understands all of the following response options. If the child does not know the answer to a question, she should simply say that, that she does not know. She should understand that if she does not want to answer a question she should simply say: "I don't want to say." If she's too scared to speak, she can state this. And the fourth possibility is that she doesn't understand the evaluator in which case she is to say: "You're mixing me up."

The fourth step is to establish rapport with the child. The author feels the following are extremely important: The interviewer should not sit right up next to the child. There should be a distance so the child can "check out" the interviewer.

A note pad should be used because it keeps the interviewer's attention from focusing right on the child. In other words, it reduces the "intensity" factor.

The interviewer should carry out some custodial functions around the office, like trying to adjust the tape recorder or opening a window. The more human, especially with failings, he or she appears to be, the easier rapport is established.

One weakness in the book, perhaps the only weakness, is that Hoorwitz does not seem sufficiently concerned about how the wording of questions can slant a respondent's answers. He knows this; I just do not see the principle reflected in many of the examples he offers. It may be that some of his illustrations, offered as interchanges that took place early-on in his evaluations, in fact took place later, when he had extensive evidence that abuse had in fact occurred. In any event, it is my belief that persons not familiar both with the literature on children's memories and all of Milton Erickson's writings on the ways an interviewer can create certain response "sets" or "frames-of-mind" (e.g., a rigged context in which a respondent will be predisposed to answer "yes" to any question asked), should not conduct investigations that depend on asking questions.

Hoorwitz wisely feels one should begin an interview with children (actually with anyone) with questions that are concrete and easy to answer, so the child knows that silences and shrugs are not the order of the day. These may include things like asking the name, age, grade, etc.

Next, the child should be asked about current strengths and activities as to what is happening at school, what is your best subject, what do you do after you arrive home from school, what is a typical day like.

These questions do far more than establish rapport because it gives the evaluator a chance to see what a child's normal and typical day is like. It is against this background that the abuse allegations will be interfaced.

In the next stage, the child's mental status, development and current functioning are assessed. It is in this section that one would solicit data on things like the parentification syndrome which is so important in abuse cases. It is exceedingly important to establish areas of personal and family dysfunction, since this will not only help with determining whether abuse in fact occurred, but will elucidate the setting in which all treatment options must be considered. It also will reveal the areas that must be addressed to protect the child from abuse in the future.

In the subsequent stage, Hoorwitz attempts to elicit a description of the abuse. One question he uses is: "Could you tell me what happened?" (Here again, I would prefer a much more open-ended approach, since this question assumes that something did in fact happen.) He follows this with: "It's hard to just start right out talking about it..." Again, he assumes there is an "it" that happened.

Moving along, as the evaluator gathers data, it is necessary to gather very specific data. Were threats made or were rewards offered? What explanations were offered by the perpetrator? How did the child respond to this? How soon after the abuse was there a disclosure?

Anticipating the issue of credibility (covered later) Hoorwitz makes the excellent point that one must elicit extremely specific information about the contextual circumstances of abuse, since it is in the ability to give such data that one can begin to make a judgement as to whether or not something happened.

In the next step the effects of the abuse are assessed with a special emphasis on resulting dysfunction.

Hoorwitz claims that the effects of abuse fall into one (or possibly more) of three general categories: a rape trauma syndrome; a post traumatic stress disorder syndrome; a sexual abuse syndrome.

Post traumatic stress: Heightened anxiety; distractibility that can interfere with everyday functioning; preoccupation with the trauma effect; reliving the event in dreams and fantasy.

Rape victims: The PTSD symptoms and also a heightened sense of personal responsibility the victim believing he or she could have done something to prevent it; feeling intensely intruded upon, violated, damaged irreparably and soiled; pre-existing problems become noticeably exacerbated.

Sex abuse syndrome: Could be all of the above, especially where there was unpredictability and violence. Commonly there was intense emotion at the time of the abuse, such as fear, anger or confusion. There is also moral confusion in the child about how a parent is supposed to act. However, there could be other role confusion that might be due to the child's playing an inappropriate role in her family, given her age, for example, housekeeper or surrogate mother, confidante to the father, etc. It is common for the kids to feel like damaged goods.

The author's summary of the typical effects of abuse: Damaged self-worth, anger, guilt, sadness, fear, anxiety, shame, sense of betrayal; a feeling of helplessness; exaggeration of preexisting problems; preoccupation with the abuse; sexualization of nonsexual behaviors and nonsexual needs; confusion about roles and morality; feeling damaged; feeling cheapened; role confusion in family relationships; difficulty in trust; sexual dysfunction; isolation of affect.

Always keep in mind that what one sees as trauma could be due not to the abusive experience itself but to the complex series of events which follow discovery, which may include the child's feeling that what he or she did was wrong. Keep in mind also that the child must deal with the exaggerated reactions of others, all with their own hidden agendas, as well as court and investigatory procedures.

Even mild abuse may create intense reactions to it; and massive sex abuse may create very few symptoms.

In the next investigatory stage, the evaluator would inquire into reasons the participants might make false statements. As far as the child is concerned, recantations are common. They usually come very quickly after the allegation has been made, when a lot of pressure is put on the child to suppress the allegations. It may be made known to the abused child that either she or her siblings could be removed from the family and placed in a foster home or the father, the money maker, could lose his job or go to jail. The house or mortgage may be in jeopardy. The marital relationship will be at a precarious stage and the mother unsure of who to believe. Talk of divorce may be rampant. The child could come to feel totally unsupported by mother and siblings, all of whom could be enraged at the child for making this trouble.

False allegations often come from the child's desire to protect the mother from perceived father hostility; a desire for revenge against the father; poor reality testing; a need for attention; a desire to be out of the house; a response to the real or perceived wish of one parent or the other in a hotly disputed custody case; a misunderstanding of a school's presentation of good touch versus bad touch.

Lastly, in terms of interviewing the child, Hoorwitz feels that the child should be "patched up" at the end of the interview by making sure that a lot of closure type questions are asked e.g.,: "Would you like to tell me anything more? Do you have any further questions you'd like to ask me? Is there anything else you would like me to know?"

Next, the child should be told in one way or another that this interview is over and now the normal part of life and recovery goes on. Healing methods should be utilized.

In Chapter 5, Hoorwitz, covers common errors in interview techniques, e.g., being too friendly, or too direct and cold, or indirect and vague. One could be too complicated in one's use of language and also overly polite.

Hoorwitz makes the excellent point that the real aim of the questions is to create an atmosphere in which the child can reveal what she needs to say. With very young children, there will have to be many rapport-engendering sessions. There must be the right balance between asking questions and listening. The chapter is also full of other excellent advice for people not only in the sex abuse area but in any area in which it is important to conduct a good interview.

In Chapter 7, the author goes over tech-niques for eliciting descriptions of abuse. He goes after what he calls "script for a movie" data, i.e., sense-based data. (This important concept is described excellently by O'Hanlon and Wilk in Shifting Contexts, 1987. N.Y.: Guilford, and McMaster & Grinder in Precision, 1980. Beverly Hills: Precision Models.) Sense-based data is sort of like saying: "If I were there, what would I see and what would I hear? (i.e., tell exactly what would come in via the sense organs).

Hoorwitz makes the following important points. In order to be able to have faith in what is being said, the data has to be coherent, sequenced in time, consistent and redundant in details. He feels one can operationalize this by telling the child that you are a stranger and because of that you need to understand a great deal of information so that you can see in your mind exactly what was happening as if you were watching a movie. You have to come to understand what you would see and hear if you were there.

There is a need to discuss statements previously repetitively made and of course to point out inconsistencies.

He also considers the use of dolls, drawings, writing and toys. He includes a wise discussion of the limitations of these techniques.

He points out that sometimes techniques that prod or stimulate are not really leading in nature. Leading questions are thought to encourage a child to elaborate in a false direction to confirm an interviewer's preconceived ideas. He feels that if the interviewer has no preconceived hypothesis or ideas this is less likely to occur and they (leading questions) can help just as much to reveal false statements and allegations and also support for true ones. He says: "Leading a child who has made false allegations can result in an abundance of inconsistent and disputable statements. Leading a child who is describing a true experience results, instead, in an abundance of confirmable and consistent statements that are redundant with one another (Page 147)."

Chapter 8, a strong one indeed, goes over techniques to amplify a story's strengths and weaknesses. A very important one has to do with eliciting potentially confirmable statements. He presents some excellent examples of what he means by confirmable statements, and it has to do mostly with supporting details and sense-based descriptions of the context in which the abuse occurred.

The child should always be asked to repeat the story because this gives either an opportunity to make the story more consistent or to bring in contradictions.

He feels that consistency can definitely be checked with the asking of leading questions. He goes into a great deal of difficulty to justify this procedure. I agree wholeheartedly with his arguments here, provided the "leading" is done with care.

It is exceedingly important to ask what Hoorwitz calls epistomological questions. This follows from the fact that children incorporate into their own statements things they have heard from others or information they come to believe others want them to offer as valid. Hence, it is important to find out how they obtained the knowledge they are offering as "facts." This would involve questions like, "Who told you that?", and "What does that word mean?" and asking for sense-based examples of statements like Mommy is drunk, or crazy or acting like a whore.

Chapter 9, another strong one, covers differentiating true allegations from false ones.

He makes, by the way, the wise and practical point that if you are going to testify on these matters you ought not only to tell how one recognizes abuse but also how one recognizes lying.

First, one would cover reasons for disclosing and not disclosing at a particular time. One would consider all of the reasons that one would have to disclose or not to disclose (e.g., a young child may not even understand that something bad was happening).

The absence of a reason for disclosure at a particular time may be due to a child's difficulty in remembering what happened or an inability to express herself, or embarrassment or anxiety about discussing these experiences with someone else. When there are no qualifying conditions, one should definitely wonder whether there are other things afoot that may have caused the launching of a sexual abuse allegation.

As already mentioned, one would look for the presence or absence of typical effects of abuse.

There are certain scenarios which are typical of abuse and others which are typical of different problematic situations. The sexual abuse scenario is one where the daughter is parentified, the parents are emotionally distant from one another, the mother is absent from the house for long hours and the father gets emotional attention from the daughter.

Scenarios which often lead to false allegations are visitation and custody disputes, the adolescent's desire to rebel, hatred for the father for other personal reasons, revenge for parental emotional abuse or strict discipline, the child's desire to get a step-parent or other companion out of the house, an attempt to protect the mother from domestic violence and misinterpretation of good touch-bad touch presentations.

One looks for either many or few confirmable statements, consistencies and inconsistencies among statements, an invariant sequencing and positioning of the details of what took place; congruence between the times that things happened and other things in the environment and a congruence between the time required for the abuse to have occurred and the time it was reported; in other words, there has to have been enough time for the events to have taken place and they have to jibe with other facts; there should be coherence and redundancy of detail as opposed to confabulations; and what Hoorwitz calls "messy reality versus tidy fiction." It is false allegations that usually come completely wrapped up in tight little stories. He says: "A real story is messy with details, potential tangents, and incomprehensible illusions, all of which will be compatible with one another and resonate with redundancy. On the other hand, fiction can be very tidy, especially when it is cleansed of the kinds of inconsistencies found in confabulations (Page 193)."

He has this excellent sentence: "... A person telling a true story can go on endlessly when asked to elaborate, whereas the creator of fiction is done. His elaborations are limited by the world he has created, by the assumptions on which his piece of fiction rests (Page 194)." This is another way of saying that when a person makes something up, he or she usually makes up only what has to be made up and there is no thought to create an entire contextual reality around these events.

In gathering specific data, one would deal with when it happened, where it happened, who else in the family was present or absent and if absent where were they, where did this fit into the schedule of the day, in which room did the sex abuse occur, what did that room look like, where was the couch located, the TV, furniture, especially important what clothes did the victim have on, the time of the day, the season of the year, was it an isolated incident, chronic, did the occurrences conform to a pattern of gradually getting to be more and more and what was the sequence of any sexual acts, and what was the frequency of their occasion and what were the ages involved.

One also considers whether one deals with secondhand or firsthand information. Firsthand information appears to be privileged fact, that is, only someone there could know it. He offers as another example knowledge of sexual matters inappropriate to one's age: a five year old who describes a penis as looking like a hotdog and dripping white stuff sounds very credible. (However, one cannot depend on this).

He points out congruent versus incongruent messages and offers the following as an example: "He didn't do it to me, but what should I do if he does it again (Page 197)?" This type of statement may sound farfetched, but I know from my own experience it is quite frequent. This is because the child is anxious to achieve two goals simultaneously. On the one hand, she wants very much to tell somebody that sexual abuse has occurred, but on the other, she is trying hard to protect someone or maybe the breakup of her family, so she ends up by literally revealing both. Hoorwitz points out that while, legally, the mental health professional is not supposed to deal with issues of credibility, and actually may be prevented from doing so in the courtroom, most judges welcome data that addresses these concerns.

Hoorwitz ends the chapter on differentiating true from false allegations with an example of his own testimony in court so the reader can hear how he actually operationalizes his own principles in a courtroom situation.

In one of the final chapters, one in which his thoughtfulness and wisdom shine

through, he struggles to define "sexual abuse" in terms of the complex settings in which such behaviors occur. He asks us to consider the following scenarios.

A man violently rapes his 14 year old daughter while he is drunk. He admits to it, and the daughter suffers severely because of this rape.

Another man began playing with the breasts of his daughter when she was 5 years old, and over the next few years moves on to oral and genital intercourse. He tells her this is what fathers normally do. She is confused about her father, about her own relationships in the family, her attitudes about boys, but does never come to fear her father or become otherwise symptomatic.

A 30 year old teacher falls in love with a 15 year old male student in her class, she seduces him and has intercourse with him every chance she gets. She does not see that what she is doing is wrong, considering him a "grown-up". The lad himself is, as might be said, in seventh heaven. His mother is enraged.

Another man felt an overwhelming desire to touch the breasts of his 13 year old daughter. He does it this one time only. He apologizes and it has never happened again. The girl is confused but other than that, experiences no other ill effects. She tells her friend about it who goes on to tell the authorities. The end result was that the father had to move out of the house. The young girl is confused and desperately wants him back.

A man accidentally rubs the vagina of his 15 year old stepdaughter while wrestling with her. She becomes somewhat confused but goes on to enjoy wrestling with him any chance she gets. He is not aware at all that she is aroused by these encounters. One day a child protective worker knocks on his door and tells him he is under investigation for sexual abuse.

A 40 year old mother walks around her house naked when her 5 and 7 year old boys visit her on weekends. The other parent, the father, objects; she disagrees. She has a "nudist" mentality. The issue goes on to become a change of circumstances and hence a visitation-custody dispute in court.

A father has been kissing his daughter on the lips when she goes to bed ever since he can remember. It began when she was 3 or 4 years old. The girl is 14 now, and he feels uncomfortable about this. His wife tells him he should have stopped a long time ago. He debates the question and is shocked one day to find that a child protective worker is at his door asking him about this behavior.

The author wisely says should we lump all of these kinds of categories together under the generic heading "child sexual abuse"?

The author reminds evaluators that their job is not to decide if the abusive act was right or wrong, but to rather ask a much more manageable question and that is: What exactly is harmful about this specific situation and what should be done about it?

He sets up four categories: inappropriate behavior; sexual exploitation; sexual abuse; and rape. He then sets up four possible outcomes. (A "grid" table is presented, showing the outcomes associated with each situation.)

Rape results in all 4 negative outcomes: what he calls blurred psychological bound-aries in the victim; it manifests an exploitation of the power relationship between people; it involves the use of physical and moral force to prevail over the wishes of someone else; and could very well involve the infliction of pain.

What he calls sexual abuse involves three of these four areas: blurred boundaries, the exploitation of power and the use of physical and moral force to prevail. Exploitation involves two of the four "negatives." These are blurred boundaries and exploitation or power, while inappropriate behavior, the author asserts, results in blurred boundaries only.

He makes the wise point that the meaning of a trauma is in terms of the total psychological/cultural context in which the act takes place. He points out, for example, that in early Egyptian society it was not unusual for incest to occur and it was not traumatic, he believes, because it was culturally acceptable and expected.

One of the final chapters offers, in summarized form, all of the steps the author goes through to perform an evaluation. It is an excellent checklist, but as the author cautions, should only be used by people who have really grappled with (and hopefully grasped) the issues covered in the book.

The author carefully points out that all of the factors that exist in a given situation must be addressed in the treatment plan. He tells of the case of a 12 year old who said that her father had touched her vagina on numerous occasions and that he had occasionally penetrated the vagina. She also said he had forced her to accept his penis into her mouth.

The father countered that he did it because he was drunk and when drunk he becomes lonely and jealous. He claims this is motivated by the fact that his wife is preoccupied with her ex-spouse. She openly flirts with him to taunt him and has even talked about getting back together with him. He explained further that she has made it impossible for him to administer discipline to the children partly because

she never does this at all and in part because she gives mixed messages to the children. She undermines him consistently.

She counters with the fact that his discipline is often excessive.

In interviewing all of these persons, the author shows a keen awareness for the hidden agenda of each. The father, of course, will not want to go to jail and will minimize what happened. The wife will have to steer an uneven course because she does not want to lose him and will therefore give distorted information. The 12 year old has been trying to balance all of these messages and this must be considered in trying to find out what exactly happened.

The author wisely says that one of the ways to find out where one should go in a case like this, especially when it becomes impossible to find out exactly what did happen, is to find the degree of genuine cooperation each brings to the treatment situation and the degree of improvement shown.

He warns that clinicians should not jump into treatment without thoroughly understanding the dynamics involved by contrasting two cases. One case showed eventually that a majority of the symptoms that a child manifested which were first thought to come from sexual abuse in fact stemmed, at least in largest part, from learning disabilities. More accurately, it was the learning disabilities that lowered her esteem to the point where she acted provocatively and maximized the chance that she would get into some kind of sexual problem. If the learning disability goes untreated, the behavior will probably continue and she will be at risk.

He shows another case where it seemed the symptoms stem from some obvious family dissension, when in fact sexual abuse was the key item.

All in all, The Clinical Detective, by Aaron Noah Hoorwitz, is an excellent book, where its virtues exceed by a country mile its few limitations (The Clinical Detective: Techniques in the Evaluations of Sexual Abuse: 1992. N.Y.: Norton).

AUTHOR: Editor, The Custody Newsletter
350 South Main Street #211, Doylestown, PA 18901

Dr. Michael Hahn alerts CN readers to a very compelling book. The contents would make its reading almost mandatory for those persons relatively new to custody issues.

A GOOD BOOK FOR LAY PERSONS AND PROFESSIONALS

Judge James Stewart, a Family Law Judge at the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, has written an exceptionally practical book titled California Divorce Handbook (St. Martin Press, Rocklin, Calif., 1991). As a psychologist who has testified before Judge Stewart on several occasions regarding custody and visitation matters, I have been impressed by his fairness and wisdom. Judge Stewart here provides a clear exposition of what goes through a judge's mind as he assesses expert data that is presented to him. His ability to detect sham, posturing and counterproductive gamesmanship is a pleasure to behold as he writes in a readily accessible manner about various court procedures. He demystifies the legal labyrinth by providing a guide through the various complex issues that must be faced. Since most individuals are emotionally overwrought at the time of divorce such clarity and practical information may very well lighten their burden.

In the first section of the book titled "How to Approach Your Dissolution" he explains how an individual should approach the dissolution of his or her marriage with very specific advice on how to select an attorney, whether mediation should be tried, and how to minimize unnecessary expense. By carefully explaining the settlement conference process he provides markers for the uninitiated to help clarify their understanding of the forces affecting their dissolution.

In the second section of the book titled "Basic Law and Procedure the Layperson Needs to Know" he provides very practical information under the chapter headings of Child Custody, Child Support, Spousal Support, The Family Home, Protecting Your Emotional and Physical Safety and Attorneys Fees. Each chapter ends with a very specific list of "Dos" and "Don'ts" that optimize an individual's chances of reducing emotional and financial cost while going through the legal process.

The book is also an invaluable guide to mental health professionals who want to provide the court with meaningful information about a dissolution matter when children are involved. Judge Stewart is quite candid about a judge's preference for evaluators and therapists who understand the importance of neutrality. He warns therapists that it is imperative that they not be seen as hired guns and that their credibility is not necessarily related to the length of their curriculum vitae. It is startling to note that Judge Stewart has little confidence in most members of the mental health community providing him with unbiased information. He implies that many mental health professionals may be blind to the interference of their own financial interests on their good judgement, common sense, or professional integrity.

Judge Stewart's skepticism towards questionable opinions is counterbalanced by his sensitivity for the need to have professionals insulate children from the trauma of court proceedings. He relies on the skill of mental health professionals to assess the degree of bonding between a child and his/her parent, and to understand and weigh the various issues in making custody and visitation recommendations to the court. In his discussion of access schedules, he makes the excellent distinction between equal time not being the same thing as equitable time from the child's perspective. His thoughts about false accusations of molestation or abuse in a substantial number of custody disputes are very relevant and important to those professionals struggling with these questions.

Judge Stewart points out to parents that a neutral evaluator's recommendation is likely to be the courts recommendation in 86% of the cases, so that a parent should have a very compelling reason to challenge such a recommendation. He then proceeds to give some very specific "Dos" and "Don'ts" advice for the parents to consider if they want to challenge the evaluator's findings.

Any divorcing parent or any mental health professional involved in domestic law practice would be well advised to read this book before working with attorneys or the courts. Couples or mental health professionals who read this book are likely to benefit substantially from familiarity with

the readily accessible wisdom contained in it.

AUTHOR: Michael Hahn, Ph.D.
719 Colorado Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94303
(415) 321-0332

*******************************************************

CUSTODY COURTS AROUND THE COUNTRY

Our legal system extends wide discretion to the judges and other critical decision makers who deal with custody disputes. No single ruling, regardless of its origin, imposes extensive restrictions on these decision makers. A practitioner seeking guidance in any phase of custody decision making must look beyond individual statutes and rulings. Familiarity with custody law as a whole, paying special attention to discerning the intentions of the lawmakers, is where guidance can be found. Hence, the following is in commentary form, and in no instance is a report EVER intended for legal use.

NON-PARENT AWARDED CUSTODY

This case, which is purportedly about awarding custody of a child to a non- parent, illustrates the fact that one must read between the lines to see where a particular judge is heading in a family court setting, where much more discretion is left to an individual judge than is the case in other civil or criminal courts. The wording of this matter shows that a Court of Appeals in Florida upheld a Trial Court when it awarded custody of a child to a woman who had taken care of her for 13 years, instead of to her father. It cited the girl's strong emotional and other interpersonal ties to the woman who had taken care of her since age 18 months, and the fact that she resented her father who had cut ties with her over the years.

It turns out that the father had murdered the girl's mother and had spent time in jail. True, the court did say that to go

back to the father would be detrimental to her welfare, but in their wording, cited the bonding with the caretaking woman with whom she lived. It is my belief that the actual operative principle here was how the court felt about trusting a man who had already committed murder, and especially how this daughter would feel about him. In the wording, the court said that a change would disrupt her family and social life and educational opportunities. But, again, I do not believe this was really what was on the judge's mind and the collective minds in the Court of Appeals. Often, judges must work within the legally available opportunities to find a way to use their common sense. This happens much less in non-family courts, (which is why it is often so difficult in a custody case to predict how any individual judge will react).

THE SLIPPERY WORLD OF RELOCATION

In November of 1991, Nevada would not recognize a California order that stopped visitation privileges awarded to a mother by a Nevada court. Apparently, the father moved to California one month after the Nevada ruling had been forthcoming and attempted to have a trial court in California vacate visitation privileges for the mother. Nevada cited the Parental Kidnap-ping Prevention Act in saying that a state cannot modify another state's custody order unless the rendering state either no longer has jurisdiction or has declined to exercise such. Nevada said that the PKPA was designed to stop this very thing, so-called "forum shopping."

California had attempted to cite the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act, but Nevada said that this need not follow, because California's version of this Act does not allow it to accept jurisdiction in a case unless the state which issued the original order lost or refused jurisdiction.

My reading of all case laws which involve relocation leads me to believe this is a murky area indeed.

It seems to me as I read decisions from around the country, that relocation laws are becoming more lenient in favor of the parent who has primary physical custody of the child. There have been recent rulings supporting parents who relocate simply on the basis of "unhappiness with the present location" or "depression based on an inability to visit with relatives."

It used to be that the parent who wanted to move (and hence disrupt visitation between the child and the other parent) had to prove some serious reason for doing so, and had to show that the move would be not only economically necessary for the parent but overall in the child's best interests. Even though the trend seems to be in the opposite direction, one still encounters court systems which will make relocation quite difficult. Pennsylvania, for example seems to speak out of both sides of its mouth. The highest court in Pennsylvania recently upheld a relocation case in which it did not seem to me the mother's reasons for wanting to move were all that powerful i.e., she claimed she was depressed being

away from her family, most of the members of which lived in California. In a case on October 7th of 1991, it was asserted that a noncustodial parent who does not want his or her child to relocate has the right to a full hearing before the child can be moved from the jurisdiction, or at least pretty soon after that. Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled that this decision comes from the fact that a parent has the right to maintain a continuing and meaningful relationship, and moved toward a standard where it would have to be shown the move would be in the child's best interests. More and more, courts are assuming that if the move appreciably helps the parent who has primary physical custody, then the move is automatically in the best interests of the child.

Here again, it is likely that all of the salient reasons, or better said, the reasons the judges are really taking into account, must be found "between the lines," e.g., a judge might rule against relocation if it is done for revenge, or manipulatively. The legal justifications cited may not reveal these matters.

Some courts in some states have ruled that if a child is to relocate, and the other parent wants to stop it, he or she would have to show that the move would adversely effect the child. There is a tendency away from this, toward a thrust in which each parent has the burden to show that what is wanted is in the best interests of the child.

SAVE UP THOSE FREQUENT FLYER BONUS MILES

A mother who had moved from California to Switzerland tried to have her ex-husband's suit dismissed (he was trying to modify the custody order) because it was inconvenient for her to come to California. A California Court of Appeals decided that the mother could not do this. They explained that as long as California met the criteria contained in the UCCJA, then California would be where the hearing would be held. If the mother had asserted that the trial court lacked jurisdiction because it did not meet the criteria of UCCJA, then this would have been another matter. She simply

claimed it would be inconvenient for her to come to California. If she had claimed the other, that the criteria of UCCJA were not met and that her competency was the issue, then there was a chance that jurisdiction could switch to Switzerland since there was no evidence in California that would have to do with the matter of her competency. The fact is the father had thought to modify the custody arrangement simply because he could not maintain contact with the children in Switzerland. The court noted that evidence pertinent to this was available in California.

HELD FOR RANSOM

It didn't help a father when he claimed that he took his child out of the home state (from Washington to California) not because he intended to deny the child's mother access to the child, but merely because he wanted to persuade her to come to join them to work on reconciling the marriage. The court affirmed his convic-

tion for custodial interference in the first degree, and politely said that children "are not chattels and they cannot lawfully be used in such a manner..." This is a polite way of saying you can't kidnap a child and hold him for ransom, even if the ransom is for some personal emotional matter of the heart.

YOU'RE ON THIN ICE IF YOUR DATA COMES FROM ONE COMPLAINANT ONLY

Here we deal with a very complex issue. A psychologist had apparently seen a child for 30 sessions and came to court to testify. She put forth her view that the child had been sexually abused by the father based on her observations of the child in these 30 sessions. The trial court denied the validity of these allegations, and this was confirmed by a Snoted that evidence pertinent to this was available in California.

HELD FOR RANSOM

It didn't help a father when he claimed that he took his child out of the home state (from Washington to California) not because he intended to deny the child's mother access to the child, but merely because he wanted to persuade her to come to join them to work on reconciling the marriage. The court affirmed his convic-

tion for custodial interference in the first degree, and politely said that children "are not chattels and they cannot lawfully be used in such a manner..." This is a polite way of saying you can't kidnap a child and hold him for ransom, even if the ransom is for some personal emotional matter of the heart.

YOU'RE ON THIN ICE IF YOUR DATA COMES FROM ONE COMPLAINANT ONLY

Here we deal with a very complex issue. A psychologist had apparently seen a child for 30 sessions and came to court to testify. She put forth her view that the child had been sexually abused by the father based on her observations of the child in these 30 sessions. The trial court denied the validity of these allegations, and this was confirmed by a Superior Court. The father was actually awarded two thousand dollars in attorney's fees. The Superior Court claimed that the psychologist received all of her information from one side only (the child and her mother), and hence was presenting information already before the court via testimony from this same side. Moreover, she was told that she was not entitled to an opinion on the truth of the accusations; such is for the trier of fact. (This distinction, between information and the truthfulness of information, has been covered in much detail in other law/psychology works e.g., see the chapter Psychology in the Legal System in The Psychologist's Legal Handbook

by Stromberg et.al., 1988. The Council for the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology.) The psychologist was allowed to testify at great length about what she observed in working with the child.

These are not cut and dry matters. While it may be true that mental health professionals are better able than lay persons to judge the "truthfulness" of an assertion, it is also true that one must keep in mind research like that of Ekman and O'Sullivan ("Who Can Catch a Liar?" 1991. American Psychologist, 46, 913-920) wherein some of the pitfalls of differentiating truth tellers from liars are well documented.

This is why I believe one is on firmer ground with tests than interviews, in which one reports actual statistics to the trier of facts rather than interview-based opinion. This is especially urgent if one could not gain access to all involved participants.

MORE ON TESTIMONY IN SEX ABUSE CASES

In a very long and complex case, a psychologist, rather than presenting evidence for or against the possibility of sexual abuse having happened, performed a number

of tests and evaluations and came into court to say that in his opinion the child was telling the truth. As just mentioned, this was struck down.