Opinion ID: 6536625
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Proceedings Following The Assault

Text: The morning after the assault, the child left the house again without Andrea's permission; she was picked up by John's wife, Kimberly, and resided with John and Kimberly until the end of the proceedings at issue in this appeal. John took the child to the hospital the morning after the assault, and he obtained an ex parte domestic violence protective order on behalf of both his daughters. Andrea moved to dissolve the order, and on July 5, 2017, a magistrate judge granted her motion with respect to the younger daughter, but not the older one. That same day John filed a motion to modify custody, requesting sole legal and primary physical custody of both children. The superior court held a status hearing on September 21 for both the domestic violence case and the motion to modify custody. Among other things, the parties argued over the fact that John had taken their older daughter to see a psychologist despite the fact that Andrea retained sole legal custody over her. The court scheduled an evidentiary hearing for October 4 and 5. Various witnesses testified at the evidentiary hearing, including Andrea and the older daughter, who each described their version of the assault. [summarized above in Part II.B] Andrea also sought to justify the incident, explaining that her mother had practiced even harsher forms of punishment when she was a child. Noting that other punishments had failed to correct her daughter's behavior, Andrea explained that she did not regret her decision and would make the same one again if confronted with the same circumstances. The older daughter testified at the hearing that she did not want to return to live with Andrea, and that she still had some marks from the assault that had not yet gone away.  John introduced photographs of the child's injuries after the assault and testified that a doctor performed a CAT scan of her nose because it appeared to be broken, but that the test showed it was not. Another witness who saw the child right after the assault testified that her injuries appeared minor at the time, and were not as serious as those in John's photographs. John also sought to call as a witness the psychologist who had seen his daughter. Andrea objected and the court ruled that it would not allow the psychologist to testify. The court seemed to conclude that John lacked the authority to bring his daughter to the psychologist, because Andrea had sole legal custody, and that he had done so for litigation purposes rather than to secure emergency treatment. In its final custody order, the court explained that it declined to permit John to take advantage of overstepping his legal and medical authority when he took [his daughter] to a counselor a day before the [September 21] hearing. At the end of testimony on October 5, the court dissolved the existing ex parte domestic violence order to the extent that it prohibited contact between Andrea and her older daughter, and scheduled supervised visitation between them. On October 13 John filed an expedited motion to suspend this visitation until a therapist had approved its time, place and manner, arguing that the child was not ready to see Andrea and that [r]elations between mother and daughter cannot be normalized without therapeutic intervention. The court decided that this motion was moot when it delivered its oral ruling on custody three days later, and denied it in its final custody order. On October 16 the court held a hearing to decide John's request for a longterm domestic violence protective order and his motion to modify custody. John argued that Andrea's assault of their older daughter resulted in serious physical injury because it produced protracted impairment of health, and so triggered the rebuttable presumption that she should not have custody. 3 He also argued that the assault constituted two or three distinct incidents of domestic violence because Andrea interrupted the beating to look at her daughter's phone and - in the child's account - to tell her to get in the shower. Andrea argued that her use of violence against the child was excusable as reasonable discipline. 4