Court Opinion

ID: 9845256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:17:51.841583+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:57.515499
License: Public Domain

NEELY, Justice,
dissenting:
In this ease, the majority opinion makes a simple process into a complicated one in *350hopes that no one will see what is really going on. Syllabus Points 2 and 3 set up numerous hoops for the circuit court to jump through when the case is remanded to him. The majority opinion states:
[I]f there is an allegation involving whether one of the parents sexually abused the child involved, a family law master or circuit court must make a finding with respect to whether that parent sexually abused the child.... if the sexual abuse allegations were previously tried in a criminal case, then the transcript of the criminal case may be utilized to determine whether credible evidence exists to support the allegation. If the transcript is utilized to determine that credible evidence does or does not exist, the transcript must be made a part of the record in the civil proceedings so that this Court, where appropriate, may adequately review the civil record to conclude whether the lower court abused its discretion.
If this case had taken place in the New York Supreme Court where hundreds of judges decide thousands of cases each month, the majority’s opinion would have been warranted. However, this case and the related criminal case both took place in the Circuit Court of Putnam County with Judge Watt presiding. Judge Watt has been involved in this case from start to finish and he heard all of the evidence at the criminal trial in which George D. was acquitted. Only after hearing all of this evidence did Judge Watt allow Mr. D. supervised visitation. The majority needlessly sets more hurdles in front of George D. after he has been acquitted of all sexual abuse charges and after he has passed a lie detector test administered by the state police. It is a mindless exercise in teaching one’s grandmother to suck eggs to point out to an experienced trial judge that the civil standard of proof is lower than the criminal standard of proof. This Court has no reasonable grounds from which to infer that the respondent is such a simpleton that were there the least doubt in his mind concerning the children’s safety he would allow any visitation, supervised or unsupervised.
We now have a system in which a female parent need only scream child abuse in a loud voice to keep the, male parent from seeing a child. Indeed, sexual abuse these days seems to arouse all the hysteria that was associated with witchcraft in yesteryear. In fact, it has even spawned a witch-huntingesque cottage industry, to-wit badly trained, ideological rape trauma experts, rape counselors, bachelor level pseudo-psychologists, social activists, and other assorted species of jacklegs. I am a firm believer that the best interests of the child are paramount, but that does not mean never allowing a father to see his children when the evidence preponderates on his behalf even though, like an accused witch, he cannot clear himself beyond any shadow of a doubt. Continuous yelling and screaming of an accusation does not make that accusation any more true.