Opinion ID: 2278018
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The underlying domestic litigation

Text: The Helinskis sought to end their marriage of some five years. At a hearing held on July 26, 1985, before the Circuit Court for Baltimore County (Jacobson, J.), Mrs. Helinski opposed her husband's request for unsupervised visitation with the child, who was then two years old. She alleged that Mr. Helinski had previously sexually abused their daughter. The mother offered as part of her evidence the opinion of expert witness Dr. Charles Shubin, a pediatrician at Baltimore's Mercy Hospital, who testified that his examination of Jackie had revealed a well-healed scar within the child's genitalia. Shubin asserted that the scar was characteristic of, and diagnostic of, a sexual injury. The trial court granted the parties a divorce, and permitted Mr. Helinski rights of unsupervised visitation with his daughter. It said: I do not believe Mr. Helinski has demonstrated in any way he is the kind of man that is going to do these terrible things to his own child. I don't know what is behind all of this, but I do not believe that he is guilty of ... any child abuse of his two year old child; and I will not deprive him of the opportunity to visit with that child. The trial court stated that while it could not explain the origin of the scarring described by Dr. Shubin, it found no connection between the injury and Mr. Helinski's conduct. Mrs. Helinski immediately filed a motion to amend the visitation provisions of the divorce decree. She also denied her ex-husband access to the child, which prompted him to petition the trial court to hold the mother in contempt for violating the visitation order. Thereafter, on August 20, 1985, the Helinskis appeared once more before the Circuit Court for Baltimore County where Mrs. Helinski repeated her suspicions of child abuse as justification for defying the court order. She proffered the testimony of Petitioner Leon Rosenberg, Ph.D., child psychologist and associate professor of medical psychology and pediatrics at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, whom Mrs. Helinski had consulted in the interim between the two hearings. The trial court then, in effect, reopened the hearing of July 26 in order to reconsider the question of visitation, and thereby addressed for a second time the allegations of sexual abuse along with the new issue of contempt. Rosenberg testified that the diagnosing physician, Dr. Shubin, had referred Mrs. Helinski and Jackie to him. He stated that he had evaluated Jackie three times in all, first alone with Jackie, and twice more in the company of the mother. During the first interview, Rosenberg said, he engaged the child in conversation, observed her gestures towards her private parts, and the two together made drawings on paper to allow the child an additional way to refer to the parts of her body. He testified that by these methods he elicited from Jackie that she feared her father because he had hurt her in the genital area, and that she was afraid to see her father out of anxiety that he might hurt her there again. Rosenberg opined that the youngster's presentation had been honest and spontaneous, without coaching by the mother or another adult. Calling the contents of the interview extremely clear, the psychologist concluded that the child had undergone a painful and frightening experience involving sexual abuse by her father. Rosenberg said that his evaluation included a family history taken from Mrs. Helinski, the mother's accounts of Jackie's behavior arousing suspicion of abuse, the medical report of Dr. Shubin, a telephone conversation with Shubin regarding that report, and a telephone conversation with a Child Protective Services social worker, Martin Piepoli, who had earlier interviewed the child using anatomically correct dolls, with reference to which Jackie had indicated that her father had hurt her in the genital region. Rosenberg acknowledged that he never spoke with Mr. Helinski before reaching his conclusions. He conceded, too, that he had known from the outset that the trial court at the July 26 hearing had found no evidence of abuse by the father. Testifying that unsupervised visits posed a danger to the child, Rosenberg recommended that they be suspended until Mr. Helinski received psychological examination and counseling, which might then lead to supervised visits. Stating that it was not convinced that the father had caused the child's sexual injury, but that some danger existed, the trial court ordered psychiatric evaluations of both Mr. and Mrs. Helinski, with a ruling on visitation to await the results; the court further granted Mr. Helinski's request that Jackie be examined by a child psychologist of his own choosing. The rest of the August 20 hearing dealt with procedural matters and with Mrs. Helinski's alleged contempt of court. [1]