relationship and she realized for the first time that it wasn't just her safety and well being anymore it was also the safety and well being of her child and that was her wake up call and unlike so many victims of domestic violence she had the courage to leave at that point so she was able to step out of herself and cloak her situation and really see it for what it was she was in an abusive relationship and she needed to get out so when her child was four months old she took that child and made a decision that no parent should be forced to make to raise their child by herself without the help of her boss the baby's father and she raised the child by herself until the child was sixteen months old until the circuit court of this case ordered overnight unsupervised weekend visitations with with that child or mr worthington somebody who's never really expected any extended period of danger seriously the child's physical mental moral or emotional health and this court decided recently in ray j got you in an opinion by justice neck which was joined by justice appleton  reasonable depends on what type of visitation is sought and whether that would endanger the child for example if there's the statutes simply contemplates for example electronic visitation it's hard for for  me to imagine other definitely visitation how that could seriously the child's physical health type of visitation that sought his weekend visitation overnight unsupervised well under that circumstance there may be or there was no limitations on that your honor so there their purpose presumably could be a situation there is some time limit so it would be difficult for the other three for example pick the child out of state come back within forty to forty eight hours which was the  facts and and what the circumstances of the case are was yes in visitation or georgia i believe that he was i there was some discussion in the record about  the responsibility of her transportation that that she dropped off the child in georgia and that he would bring her bring the child back to the way and i believe the court in this case actually were that she's not responsible for transportation so practically i think what i'm not aware of what's happened since we're both practically what would have happened is that he would have driven to illinois and visited with the child because he had a flexible work schedule in a prosecutor and they work together in the states for these office for several years at the time just money she had been a prosecutor for seven and a half years and had substantial experience in domestic violence court oh and she excuses for herself that it was the worst cycle accident she she didn't believe them because it wasn't consistent with what was on her body and he personally also with this very demeaning and offensive language that swinging it around the room and for the alarm clock in the shelves are around now granted that these are overreactions and picking by themselves one may say ok that's a strange thing but you'll see thing to do but aside from that she also testified about her believe on what the the visitation should be in this case and and she was asked do you have an opinion based on your knowledge between can mr worthington internet news with and or and the violence you have an opinion as to whether mr worthington should have unsupervised visitation answer at this point i would not recommend unsupervised contact question would you he would never do that again but fortunately from that time on it just less of escalated from property destruction to actually hitting her multiple times and as as as or as an attorney i understand that the position that this court has said with you will be with you determine when domestic violence occurred that's yeah i just every day stressors in every day hardships that couples  that he's asking does it meet that standard for the overnight unreasonable overnight  us do but before i go into my she'll have to respond to a couple of the points that mr parker made and maybe answer a couple of the questions that the justices asked him and with all due respect to counsel for ms whi that to characterize the events that led up to that order of protection as him randomly showing up at her workplace after nothing had been happening i think that ms characterizes what actually happened here and again i know you're familiar with the case and you're familiar with the record i don't want to be overly pedantic about this but by the time that order of protection was entered there had already been a family division case in front of judge otwell going since early february what happened was mr worthington had come to illinois at least once or twice in those intervening months because i think it was on sometime in april that he came for the court and said yes i'm the child's father i want visitation that happened in april the events surrounding that order of protection were there they were supposed to have a hearing in front of judge well that day and he apparently had showed up to her workplace at some point he was in illinois for a hearing this wasn't just out of the blue it was supposed to appear in her new job that day and if you look at the record if you look at the docket entries for whatever reason that hearing didn't take place but there was supposed to be hearing that they this isn't a case of someone just randomly dropping in and saying oh i'd like to suddenly torpedo your life they were supposed to have a hearing  and that's the bottom line so it's a bit of a mischaracterization to say that he just ignored the situation entirely as soon as she filed her initial petition to establish parentage mr worthington was in the case many donor not so but i believe what had been happening was they initially determined that mr worthington was the father and then they were going to work on the issues of child support custody and visitation and i don't think it was ever a serious as i'm sure you're aware often happen when you have pro se litigants involved on the other question i wanted to address was justice connects question about residential custody and i can't speak for a judge well but just at least in my law practice i don't think you should have put it in the order but informally that we usually throw around that to distinguish it if there's a joint custody situation and so you'll talk about you know both parents have legal custody of the child but one of them will have physical just to keep things free as you're all aware he's visitation cases the standard i'm review is of use of discretion and so the question we need to be asking ourselves is if  reasonable person if there's no reasonable way anyone could agree with what judge otwell didn't the situation that much i just don't think that's the case here because judges in most situations but particularly in family cases they need that discretion is they're taking it just a massive amount of information they're looking at people fighting with each other in their courtroom and yelling at each other they're taking it sometimes incoherent presented frequently pro se incoherent presentations highly emotionally charged material witnesses who completely contradict each other so that it sounds like neither one of them is telling the truth that's what these family lodges are dealing with and that's why the standard on appeal is so high why it's abuse of discretion and i don't think you can say that judge i well rolled arbitrarily or that he didn't employ conscientious judgment in this case he looked at the evidence that was before through their attorneys to work out so he verbal schedule for when your client was traveling back and forth with these various hearings how you how you worked out with the order of protection enter it it was entered by the father and there's a very brief default hearing on it and i think ordinarily in those situations you'll have a visitation exchanges in a public place where there's and there is an opiate where it's one of do whatever it is that might be harmful in your view work to do what the judge job will take for me he said the incident involving the girls night out me the impression i got from and again i wasn't mr worthington's trial counsel so i wrote then you're looking at the coat the court record the way that we are and then i will tell you what it seems to me is he thought that somehow was more important this grows no doubt when maybe there was some degree of unseemly behavior i guess because she was out with a girlfriend and over him by that that had greater significance than the testimony and rebuttal save for your client denying that any of it ever occurred these allegations of emotional abuse and domestic  violence again i can't speak for judge i well or hear inside his brain but the impression i got from him was that here is a judge again he's faced with these litigants who are flatly contradicting each other and so the impression i got was that he was looking and there's no me unlike in a lot of these cases that involved in this if you say there's no medical records there's no psychologist or psychiatrist testimony there's nothing you could look at that even approaches being objective from either side so i think by seizing on that incident he's looking at something that everybody agreed actually happened to some extent or another because this when doc didn't deny that happened mr worthington didn't deny that something happened that night and even  cavanagh testified about the lead up to that incident and i think especially in this speaks to part of the problem is that we're talking about all these other alleged incidences of violence those are all things that happened here's where the child was  born and that's another reason i think judge will probably look at this girl's night out incident because that's the one instance the one allegation of something mr worthington did that actually occurred after the child was born because everything up until that point write i think i think his response to that was that he didn't want to give him a ride because he had the baby and he didn't want to put the baby in the car seat late at night and drive across town i think that was so he the record w again it was one of the few that happened after the child was born and that's again that's part of the problem with a lot of the other this case is it goes you have people who are and i don't mean to bruises and scrapes but she's cheese and those are from a motorcycle accident but i knew better i knew that ken mr klaas that when you're a trial judge and you're looking at that what are you supposed to think i mean was she lying when she told her illiterate friend is she lying now it's what is what his job will do with that information he's getting and he's getting hearsay sometimes double hearsay from officers of the court these are lawyers testifying who he would think would know better than to say things like well i just don't think that he should be around the child and supervise because of what i know what she told me he did i don't think it's any surprise that judge will found that evidence to be somewhat lacking in not worthy of this much weight because again  here is entitle to have a judge believe that you're not entitled to credibility just because you're an officer of the court just like mr worthington isn't forced to be disbelieved by the court because he was convicted of conspiracy to commit residential burglary when he was seventeen but that's not how it works you still have to convince the judge that you work ratable that your story checks out and judge i will because he's the one sitting in that courtroom observing the demeanor of the witnesses assessing their credibility he is the one who makes those determinations and again that's why the standard on appeal is of use discretion because he has that why discretion to look at the whole picture and by the way it's not just all of this testimony that we're talking about your job w of the entire universe of facts surrounding this case he's aware of this with north unilateral decision to take the child from his home state of georgia and come to illinois he was aware that oath that she if there has to be visitation she wants it to be supervised visitation with the child's take care provider that's exactly what he initially ordered at that if you were hearing and her response to that was to say no no you're not thinking about the baby i change my mind i don't want to do that this is the again the universe of facts the judge out well is taking him he's making his determination there was one more thing i wanted to touch on for complete my presentation and that in the greek window of reefs it repeatedly it's they're just examples of the high flown rhetoric that has surrounded this case from day one they're calling mr worthington he's a felon he's an absent dad he's an out of state father i just wanted to point out first of all he's an absent dad because she left the state they were living in she left if he tries she leaves the state he tries to find his son and have a relationship with his son he's an abuser he's a stalker that's what they're going to say if he does that they're going to say oh he didn't try to see his kid he's not really interested in his life and the same goes for fact that their son is a baby at this point if he tries for visitation now they're saying oh you know he's just a baby and we need to ease into it in the child doesn't know him well the child doesn't know because he she talks with the child that's why he doesn't have a great relationship with his son because she's not but even still if he doesn't ask for visitation now if he doesn't do this now then they can always say well you know he didn't show any interest for the first few years that child's life so you know it's too late that it's inconsistent with his view of the relationship between the parties in your korea's behavior the impression that i have gotten from the record is that judge out well considered the relationship between them to be a very bad and toxic one which may be why he left the order of protection in place as it pertained to mr feet and somehow believing that an order of protection is going to limit what they say or talk to each other about and the three of us were trial judges for a long time we know about and we know just about how much worth that piece of paper has he say no i'm holding it you can't talk to me about that either of them holding you i don't i don't track th i can in a case like this where the family lived in the in saying i'm in county and the grandparents were here you know we have a situation where they say have a group or call and they'll pick up the child and the you can have visitation and everybody's happy with that because there's some comments to the effect that if procedurally he were able to vacate the order of protection would be i'm sorry so i don't think that he believed he was procedurally able to do that which might be why he only modified it as opposed to making it and again i think that the circumstances surrounding the entry of that border protection had a great deal to do with his impression of it because again she got the emergency order of protection it was on june sixth they both appeared in front of judge otwell in the middle of june and the time again i wasn't there but the docket entry doesn't say anything about an emergency order of protection between r t it's he wasn't served with summons to the emergency order until june twentieth the plen hearing which was not in front of judge otwell was on june twenty third so again these are this is the universe of facts that the judge i will is aware of surrounding this case that it's all order that he didn't show up for because he had already been in illinois twice before that and it was an order not entered by him in which judges are doing specifically right and it's hard to say i mean actually that is if we take the record apart look at the top of the page and look at it but it does say that on the with that in mind we respectfully request that this court affirm the decision of the court below violently and he was now over the property destruction to being derogatory and physically abusing his with north to now saying those things to her friends he wasn't even if he was is now reaching beyond that now mean this court said it best in major you whenever you're looking at what's going to happen in the future it necessarily is a speculative you don't exactly know what's going to happen but you do though what what's happened in the past