“I wanted there to be less of me”

November 1, 2022 7:33 AM

[Trigger warning: child abuse, domestic violence and systemic failures to protect kids.] In the state of colorado, court appointed investigators act as “parental responsibility evaluator” in custody cases, making recommendations to judges for the custody of children, some of whom have been abused by their parents. There is little to no oversight over these investigators, not all of whom believe most abuse victims. E.g.: “The #MeToo movement informs us that, you know, about 90% of all allegations are true, or something around there,” he said. “In my forensic work, that’s completely flipped on its head: About 90% of the allegations I hear are false.” Kilmer emphasized the estimates are based on his “own experience,” not scientific research.

It is only since 2021 that these investigators even are required to have ongoing training in domestic violence and abuse, so they are sometimes unaware of modern understandings of trauma. The result is that trauma victims are sometimes blamed for their own experiences. An initial review of investigators is finally underway.

Trauma-informed training is one of many changes broadly recommended by advocates of children’s safety.

posted by lab.beetle (23 comments total)

“The court shouldn’t be involved in managing us. They’re good people, but they have no idea what we do or how we do it,” he said.

Ah, the war cry of self-policing advocates everywhere - "you just can't understand!"
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:42 AM on November 1, 2022 [12 favorites]

What a monstrous piece of shit. The West is hell on women and horses, as they used to say.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:46 AM on November 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

Jesus.

There is some truth to "no idea what we do or how we do it," but that's not an argument for the court giving so much power to these folks with minimal oversight. But it's true that the courts are not well prepared for abuse cases or particularly good at handling them.

I'm so sorry for all the kids who end up a Kilmer as their evaluator / case worker / whatever. Abuse on top of abuse. More trauma from a broken system on top of the trauma of abuse in your home. What a fucked up thing to have to live through before you're even 18.
posted by jzb at 7:55 AM on November 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

Somehow I guessed before I even finished reading the FPP intro blurb that this would be a ProPublica piece.

They do amazing, incredibly valuable, often very difficult work.

This is a heartbreaking read about an outrageous practice. Knowing that ProPublica's reporting often results in effective change is encouraging.

I'm so glad ProPublica does the hard work they do, and I appreciate you sharing this article with us, lab.beetle. Here's hoping for quick and effective change in Colorado.
posted by kristi at 8:22 AM on November 1, 2022 [19 favorites]

Kilmer said he was attracted to PRE work because “it’s lucrative — as far as things go in psychology.” His fee averages $14,000 per court-ordered report, but his charges can rise to more than $30,000, he said. “People have a lot of money, and they just keep sending stuff to me.”

Indeed.
posted by Frowner at 8:33 AM on November 1, 2022 [9 favorites]

Wow, the Gazette piece did Horning-Rieder no favors with the quotes that they included.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:33 AM on November 1, 2022

Something I didn't see mentioned might be of particular interest in this case: the Kilmers are Christian Scientists. In this case, there was specifically vaccine refusal, and generally he basically said he doesn't trust medical documentation. No sir not a conflict of interest.
posted by cobaltnine at 8:43 AM on November 1, 2022 [18 favorites]

Christ, what an asshole.
posted by kokaku at 9:17 AM on November 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

You About To Lose Yo Job dot gif
posted by schoolgirl report at 10:50 AM on November 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

Q: So.. what do you do for a living?

A: I mess up already-traumatized kids by denying the reality of their lived experience and causing the courts to mandate that their abusers continue to have access to them. Initially I got into it for the money, which is great, but it also gives me a deep personal satisfaction because of that one time things got out of hand, my bitch of an ex over-reacted, and I had to plead guilty because my loser lawyer couldn't just make it go away..

Not an actual quote from the article, but.. fucking hell.
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:59 PM on November 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

I had more to add, but the more I read of the article the more enraged I was getting so.. I've edited to delete the original text of this response and am just going to step away.

Powerful journalism, I guess, but what an amazingly awful system..
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:07 PM on November 1, 2022

Doing some further reading, a piece posted yesterday (31 Oct 2022) updates the story in the main link (from 30 Sep 2022) by reporting that:

Colorado Suspends One Family Court Custody Expert, Reviews All Custody Evaluators Following ProPublica Investigation

Kilmer is the suspended evaluator named in the second article.
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:22 PM on November 1, 2022 [12 favorites]

Shame on them all! Going through all that seriously angers me. Kilmer has a serious conflict of interest. One day someone will see to it he gets what he deserves. As for Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy actually was one of the first American women to obtain custody after a divorce. She’s probably spinning in her grave.
Shame on the judges.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 4:38 PM on November 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Val should pay his brother $326/hour to stay the fuck home and keep his mouth shut.
posted by bendy at 9:50 PM on November 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

What a horrendous asshole. But I'm not sure what mentioning who his brother is ads to the article.
posted by Pendragon at 2:32 AM on November 2, 2022

It depresses me so much how unsurprised I was by most of this. One of our psychology professors was sexually harassing graduate students; when the students called the state licensing board they were told that the complaint wasn't appropriate for their office because the victims were not clients. They suggested the students contact the state professional association... which no one is required to be a part of to practice as a psychologist.

Oh, and the trauma class was was only offered to every other cohort in my graduate program.

I have a lot of despair about my field but I got into this with the goal of making it better. I'm still fighting for it but by god is it exhausting.
posted by brook horse at 11:24 AM on November 2, 2022 [4 favorites]

>“People come in and say, ‘You know, this person has been terrible to me for 17 years.’ And you’ve just been hanging in there all that time and you had five kids? How was it really that bad all that time?” he said.

>Then, he said, he’ll meet the partner who’s been accused of the abuse, “I look at their information and I’m like, ‘Oh, these allegations are really not even possible.’”

Many abusers don’t have the emotional intelligence to understand what abuse is or what it looks like. Kilmer also clearly doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to understand what abuse is or what it looks like and seems to be easily persuaded by any charismatic abuser

Most of the awful things in our world are abusers protecting abusers and feeling righteous about it. The worst kind of Dunning-Kruger Effect

> “People often ask me, ‘How can you tell if people are lying?’ That’s where my own clinical experience comes in,” he told ProPublica. “I know what it looks like when somebody’s telling me the truth.”

Dunning-fucking-Kruger

I understand that a lot of dismissive reasoning in custody cases is supported by the scientifically dubious idea of “Parental Alienation Syndrome.” I struggle with that a bit because I have an activist friend who is deeply involved and personally committed to uncovering the harms created by this theory and in my own reading the theory truly does not have a good research background. My friend is devoted to this cause because they were the minor in a custody dispute very similar to Elina’s case in the article

But at the same time where PAS seems like bullshit it also seems at least a little intuitive to me that, especially in the case of young children, that some adults would try to manipulate the children into distrusting the other parent? Narcissists are especially gifted at recruiting adults to disregard their targets. Wouldn’t children be susceptible too? I follow at least one expert’s podcast where they reference PAS positively

I do think it’s incredibly outrageous that older teens like Elina aren’t allowed to speak for themselves. Hell, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is very clear that it is a human right to be heard at a custody trial for a child of any age in an age-apppropriate way. Of course, our incredibly backwards USA is the only country refusing to ratify the treaty

Which is all to say, I’m willing to bet that some of the more humane countries out there have a lot less dysfunctional family courts than we do and we would be very smart to copy such systems, but I also find in general that reform efforts are undermined by that same dynamic of abusers protecting abusers

And abusers are often charismatic and persuasive, just like I’m sure Mr. Kilmer is charismatic and persuasive in his court dealings
posted by Skwirl at 5:11 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I guess the difference between the late eighties and now is that the social worker doesn't tell you that "every kid deserves to be beaten like that every once in a while", but if it gets bad enough for a parent to leave, the state appoints someone to call you a liar.

Not better.
posted by Vigilant at 7:52 PM on November 2, 2022

This guy sounds like a bad apple, but I admit I'm conflicted. The reality is that there are physically abusive parents and there are psychologically abusive parents who make allegations of abuse as part of a process of alienating the children. It happens.

The only common denominator is inadequate transparency and skills, and a very dysfunctional family court system.
posted by Professor_Fancypants at 7:18 PM on November 3, 2022

The reality is that there are physically abusive parents and there are psychologically abusive parents who make allegations of abuse as part of a process of alienating the children. It happens.

There's a difference between "it happens" and "it is a regular occurrence". Parental Alienation Syndrome doesn't exist - either you're dealing with an abuser, or the parent has good reason to warn their child about their other parent.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:13 PM on November 3, 2022

You are completely wrong there, NoxAeternum. Factually wrong.
posted by Professor_Fancypants at 5:04 AM on November 4, 2022

You are completely wrong there, NoxAeternum. Factually wrong.

No medical, psychological, or legal organization recognizes parental alienation syndrome as a condition. It doesn't appear in the DSM. Claims for its validity are based on tenuous anecdotes, with no real research. And, of course, there's the fact that the claims in practice tend to be heavily gender-biased against mothers.

I don't think I'm the one that is "factually wrong" here.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:38 AM on November 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

More to the point, nobody is denying that there are abusers of all stripes who, when facing their victim taking control and ending that abuse, will weaponize any relationship that can hurt the victim - including their children. This is how abusers work.

What is being rejected is the concept that it is a common strategy in divorce proceedings by the woman (and let's not kid ourselves, "parental alienation syndrome" is predominantly "diagnosed" in women, which is a massive red flag about its legitimacy) to "poison" their children against their ex, whether to hurt their ex or to gain a leg up in the proceedings or some other petty reason. It's telling that the psychologist who coined the term shared the same mentality as the one profiled in the OP that most people are lying about abuse. (My feeling here is that such practicioners need to have their licences torn up and get told that they don't get to be psychologists anymore.)

But to your feeling conflicted - well that's because we live in a society built on structural misogyny, and the above is a textbook case of such. Our culture enshrines "bitches be lying" to such a degree that it comes across as a fundamental rule, like the sun rising in the east. And as a result, the idea that "yeah, women would of course lie about their ex to their kids to poison them against their ex" feels truthy even though there is there no proof that this happens barring the parent being an abuser. But the answer there is to realize that this is structural misogyny and to push back.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:27 PM on November 4, 2022 [1 favorite]