Subject: Re: Case Dismissed

From: [email-masked] (aaron.l.hoffmeyer)
Date: 24 Jun 92 21:50:14 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Eric Brunner) writes:
>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (aaron.l.hoffmeyer) writes:
>>The charge that my ex2b had filed against me for spanking my children
>>over 9 months ago was dismissed today.  The judge ruled that the law
>>under which I was charged was unconstitutional.
>
>Three million cheers! Now, what is the custody/visitation situation? 
>Do you have any? 

Yes.

>Is it supervised? 

For three months after she had the charges filed against me for child
endangerment for spanking my children, I had no visitation.  I did not
see my children for one minute, or even one second.  How did she get
away with this?  Well, she did.  Then, the court ordered that I have
supervised visitation - with anyone as a supervisor and if my ex2b would
not accept anyone I offered, she had to accept a supervising agency.
With the supervising agency, I paid $410 to see my children for 14 hours
over the next 4 months.  She would refuse to schedule any visitation
time longer than an hour and cancelled several visits claiming the
children were sick.  She would not allow me to see them anytme except
early Saturday mornings - claimed that it was too disruptive for me to
have visitation during the week.  The court backed her up on this and
supported her in all her efforts to deny me visitation.  I filed three
contempts during this time, they addressed none of them, although they
let me file all three.  I filed three and the rest of Frnaklin County
filed less than 50 contempts during this period.

Finally, we got a hearing to take place in March.  I had 9 witnesses
present to testify that my ex2b was scum, to describe what she had done
to thwart my visitation, I had two psychologists on call to testify
that I should have overnight visitations - unsupervised - starting
immediately.  The referee ended the supervised visitation, but would
not grant me overnights, nor weeknight visits.  At a hearing in April,
we requested a Guardian Ad Litem for the children.  One was appointed.
In May, he took charge of the case and set up mediation over custody.
He wanted me to have standard visitation and shared parenting starting
immediately.  My ex was able to slow him down with that and agreed that
it could start up three weeks after our initial session.  4 days before
we were to get together and set up a standard visitation schedule and
rules that we would both have to abide by, she alleged that I sexually
molested my sons on one of my unsupervised visits.

I filed for a change of custody based on her false allegations.

She stopped all visitation until we could get back into court.  The
referee set up supervised visitation again - this time naming a
supervising agency outright because she would not agree to any of my
people at the court (I have several people who have volunteered to
supervise visitation - a woman wth a MA in English with two sons a
little younger than my sons who lives in a $250,000 house, a man who
has an MS in CompSci who has two sons - one older and one younger than
my sons - his wife has multiple Masters degrees - Industrial
Engineering and CompSci, and several single men - all of whom have
Masters degrees).  The referee, of course, denied the change of custody
request, basically stating that we had to proved that the allegations
were false beyond a shadow of doubt AND that they were malicious.  The
referee made not of her refusal to allow someone who wasn't a
"professional" to supervise, and ordered her to split the cost of
visitation.

Several days before my first supervised visitation after this last set
of allegations, she contacted the woman who would supervise (an LISW)
and informed her that she refused to pay her half.  I had to pay 100% of
the first visit.  She also told this woman that this first visit would
be my last.  The Guardian has filed charges against my ex.

>How many and what ages are your children? 

I have two sons.  Their names are Alex (age 4) and Adam (age 3).  They
are "Irish twins" - meaning that they are only 10.5 months apart - they
get to be the same age every year for 6 weeks.  They're great kids, very
photogenic, very outgoing, and intelligent.  They love their dad a great
deal, and I, of course, love them a great deal.

>How far away does their mother live from you?

An incredibly vast three miles.

>Also, in what court (criminal, juvenile) was the spanking complaint heard?

The child endangerment charge (a misdemeanor) was in criminal court.
The judge had repeatedly stated that she didn't want a stupid
misdemeanor trial in her courtroom.  She thought this case sucked canal
water.  After six months of deliberation, she finally dismissed it,
without hearing any testimony or hearing anything from either side
except motions to dismiss and motions to not dismiss.  She dismissed on
the ground that the law under which I was charged was blatantly
unconstitutional.

>-- 
>#include <std/disclaimer.h>
>Eric Brunner, consulting at and not speaking for Adobe
>uucp: uunet!practic!brunner or uunet!adobe!brunner
>trying to understand multiprocessing is like having bees live inside your head.

Aaron L. Hoffmeyer
[email-masked]