Court Opinion

ID: 9559278
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:25:28.030928+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:10:31.911610
License: Public Domain

GOLDEN, Chief Justice,
dissenting, with whom GUTHRIE, District Judge, joins.
I respectfully dissent.
In 1991, when the mother and father divorced, the court awarded primary custody of the couple’s minor children to the mother and granted the father liberal visitation. Later, when the mother, a homosexual, told the father that she wished to establish a household with her companion, Peggy Keating, the parties agreed to transfer primary custody of the children to the father and to allow the mother liberal unsupervised visitation. In February, 1992, the district court entered an order to this effect which incorporated the parties’ agreement.
In July, 1993, the mother and Ms. Keating had a commitment ceremony in which the mother’s children participated. In August, 1993, the father and Ms. Christine Thompson married.
*953In late January, 1994, the father filed a petition in the district court seeking to modify the parties’ divorce decree by increasing the mother’s child support obligation. On March 11, 1994, the father filed an amended petition seeking to suspend the mother’s visitation or to impose supervised visitation based on allegations that the mother’s alternative lifestyle is contrary to the children’s emotional and physical well-being, the mother and her companion engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct during the children’s visitation, and the behavior of the mother and her companion during the children’s visitation is psychologically and physically damaging to the children.
The district court entered a temporary restraining order which severely restricted the mother’s visitation and contact with her children.
The mother denied the father’s allegations asserted in his amended petition. The trial on the amended petition was held in early July, 1994. The trial court’s decision letter was issued on July 21,1994, and was incorporated by reference in the court’s order of September 8, 1994, which modified the divorce decree by severely restricting the mother’s visitation. As part of the decision, the court barred the mother’s companion from any contact with the children. The mother has appealed the district court’s decision.
In its decision letter, the district court recognized that the father had the burden to prove a substantial change of circumstances and modification of mother’s visitation is in the children’s best interests. In its decision letter, the district court expressly identified two, independent grounds for its decision to restrict the mother’s visitation. With respect to the first ground, change in circumstances, the district court found that since February, 1992, when the court transferred custody to the father and granted liberal unsupervised visitation to the mother, these changes had occurred: (1) the mother had involved the children “in homosexual activities such as a gay rights parade and a ‘commitment’ ceremony between the [mother] and Peggy Keat-ing” and (2) the “eroticization” of the children during the mother’s visitation. About the “eroticization” finding, the district court characterized it as the most evident change and relied on the opinion of the father’s expert witness, Mr. Rhodes. Although it is not altogether clear from his testimony, Mr. Rhodes’ usage of the term “eroticization” appears synonymous with the term “sexual abuse.” Independently of its reliance on Mr. Rhodes’ opinion, however, the district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that the children “have been exposed to sexual behavior inappropriate to their ages while visiting with [their mother].” The court based this finding largely on the testimony of the father and Christine who related what they had seen or heard after the children returned from visitation with their mother.
With respect to the second ground for its decision, the district court discussed the impact of the mother’s lifestyle on her visitation with the children. After stating that the mother’s open homosexuality
has [created] and is likely to create confusion and difficulty for the children, and ... is likely to negatively affect the development of the children’s moral values, and because the State has an interest in supporting conventional marriages and families, ...
the court announced “the Court would find it appropriate to reduce the [mother’s] visitation with the children even if the issues of sexual abuse or eroticization were resolved.”
In its review of the district court’s decision, the majority concludes that the district court erred in basing its decision to restrict the mother’s visitation on the mother’s lifestyle. I agree with that majority conclusion; I would go further, however, and hold that the district court’s expression of personal views on this subject casts sufficient doubt upon that court’s capacity to remain “open to the conviction which the evidence might produce” that the district court’s decision must be reversed and this matter remanded for a new trial presided over by a judge who does not hold such views.
Moving from that underpinning of the district court’s decision, the majority then makes rather short shrift of the only other basis supporting the district court’s decision: *954the father proved that during the mother’s visitation with her children she eroticized or sexually abused them. The majority concludes, and I agree, that the testimony of Mr. Rhodes, the father’s expert witness, and the testimony of the father and Christine on this allegation is without value. Implicit in the majority’s analysis is a determination that the district court erred in considering these witnesses’ testimony at all. I agree. Mr. Rhodes was not qualified and, moreover, his categorical bias rendered his testimony worthless. Similarly, the categorical bias of the father and Christine rendered their testimony worthless. Without the testimony of these witnesses, the father’s case fails.
But the majority does not stop there. Instead, it identifies a substantial change in circumstances neither advanced by the father nor found by the district court: “a lifestyle clash so intense and detrimental to the children that it rises to the threshold of a substantial change in circumstances.” According to the majority, the children’s inappropriate behavior “was a warning sign of a substantial change in circumstances.” The majority identifies “the zealous machinations” of both the father and the mother as the cause of this substantial change in circumstances. It seems to me that the majority has far exceeded its review function and has engaged, improperly, in fact-finding. Were I the fact-finder, and I am not, I read the record differently from my colleagues. As I understand the evidence, the cause of the children’s inappropriate behavior is found in the father’s and Christine’s “zealous machinations,” not the mother’s.
The record quite clearly reveals that the father and Christine worked long and hard at alienating these children from their mother. They should have been held in contempt for what they have done; instead, they are, despite the spin placed on it by the majority, rewarded for their outrageous behavior.
I find it a strange and unacceptable rule of law that the majority invokes to “limit the damage done by mutual parental insistence upon use of the children as weapons in an acrimonious contest between lifestyles.” In nearly every custody/visitation case this court hears the father and mother have engaged in an acrimonious contest. But the court abandons its responsibility for reasoned and informed decision-making when it arbitrarily without reason chooses one side over the other simply to put a stop to the battle. In the majority’s rush to end the battle, in the name of serving the children’s best interests, it has forgotten one of the most important interests these children have: to know their mother and develop a loving and caring relationship with her. The testimony of Dr. Rachel Moriarity, a licensed psychologist chosen and then rejected by the father, was quite telling in this regard:
Q. How would the children be affected if the visitation continued to be supervised?
A. Well, I think the underlying message if visits continue to be supervised, as well as phone calls be monitored, is that this mother is not safe or okay; and I think this has deleterious effect on the children and will over the long run have an even more deleterious effect.
Q. How would it affect the children if the visitations remain very limited, to six weekends a year?
A. I think the relationship will grow more strained.
Q. Will that harm the children?
A. Yes, I believe it will.
Q. Why?
A. I feel like they will have more abandonment issues to deal with, more mistrust issues to deal with. If, indeed, this mother is safe and okay to be with, as I have concluded from my criterium in reviewing all of this information, and they continue to be supervised and things being monitored, that continues to give them the message that this is not okay, or not a safe person, and that’s contrary to reality. That’s contrary, making statements to a child, and that has harmful psychological effects for children.
Q. You recommended that the phone calls no longer be monitored. You feel that the monitoring of phone calls puts the children in a bind, a psychological bind. Is that why you recommended that the monitoring of phone calls be ended completely?
*955A. Yes. As well as these children need private time with their mother to maintain a relationship.
Q. And you also recommended that Miss Peggy Keating be involved in the children’s visitation with their mother. Why did you recommend that?
A. I believe that Miss Keating is a co-parent for these children, and I saw evidence and heard evidence from other reports that the children are positively bonded to her, that she has good parenting capability also, and has a very strong relationship with the children.
Q. When you say co-parenting role, could you explain to us what you mean by that? A. In the household with the mother, her partner, Miss Keating, is another parent for these children.
Q. Do the children in your observations and in your opinion, do the children seem very confused by the relationship between Miss Keating and their mother?
A. No, they did not. As I reported, Miriam on one occasion said, “Pam and Peggy are married. They are ladies, and they are married.” Joshua on an occasion said — was talking about his mother and Peggy, and said they were kind of married. He was talking about Ohio and his friend there and the things they would do there, and he said they were kind of married.
Q. How would the children be affected if they are prevented from seeing Miss Keat-ing?
A. Well, I think whenever we have relationships that are positive in a child’s life that even, oftentimes that may be because of a person moving away or death or something like that, then we have to deal with the psychological effects of that. Certainly, we want to prevent those as much as possible because that’s grief for a child. I think if these children are not allowed to see this person that they are positively bonded to and seem to have a very strong relationship with, they will have grief, and I think there is anger and sadness and more mistrust; and the more relationships that a child loses, the more mistrust they will develop over time in relationships. That’s of concern.
Q. You have also recommended therapy, that therapy continue for the family. Could you explain your recommendation that the therapy be continued for the family in order to monitor alienation?
A. I think it would be very important for the father and the stepmother to be able to at the very least encourage a relationship for these children with their mother, and they may do that by doing very simple and short kind of things like it is good for you to have a relationship with your mom, or we want you to have a relationship with your mom, or this is good for you to have a relationship with your mom. That would be a step. There was no kind of initial steps like that taken in the therapy so far.
I think that it is imperative if the situation is to change that the father and the stepmother are able to encourage this kind of relationship with the children’s other parent, so that would be their goal in the therapy, and the goals for the children would be to positively affect changes in visitation.
Q. What goals would you have for the mother and her partner in therapy?
A. For them to continue to understand the process the children are in and their feelings and to be able to help the children with those.
Q. Is it your observation or conclusion that this alienation will continue without therapy?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. Why do you say that?
A. Because research shows in these kind of cases that at best therapy may make some impact. At the worst there will be no change, and that’s why research recommends changing of physical custody of the children in these kind of situations.
Q. I was just going to ask you your final recommendation was that if these didn’t change that there would be a change in custody. That’s a rather drastic measure. Did you consider that it may do more harm than good to have a change in custody for the children?
*956A. Well, the research shows that it is more deleterious for the children to lose a parent and go on in a process of alienation than it is for them to have a relationship with a parent that maybe can provide a more healthy attachment.
Enough said.