This is the last of a series of three reviews of forensic reports published in family law cases. In this third edition, the child "Sally Doe" is analyzed by a court appointed psychologist.

You will notice that canned statements appear throughout the following text. They are used over and over again in these evaluations. In many instances, the psychologist makes conclusions of historic events he played no part in and had no documentary knowledge of. Also important to realize that this psychologist carries the force of the court behind his various inquiries. This means if a professional refuses to respond, the psychologist can bring that professional to the court. Also, there is no audio/video made of any of these discussions so all we get is the psychologist's version of the discussions.

Additionally, many of these evaluators never leave their offices to conduct their evaluations. They rely on the telephone. When they choose to use psychological testing, the child must come to the psychologist's office to take the test and almost always the test is misused. In the following example, only one part of a multi-part test is used, but the psychologist misleads the reader by describing features of the test in such a way as to lead the reader to believe that the one component is sufficient to render useful output.

Watch how the question of better parental fit is never addressed.

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Sally Doe (DOB 1/1/06) is a six year old female youngster, who currently attends the first grade at ABC School. Pregnancy with Sally, as well as delivery, and neonatal history were unremarkable. She weighed in at seven pounds, eight ounces at birth. Initial developmental milestones occurred within expected limits. Sally took her first step at eleven months and began to walk, unassisted, at a year. She uttered her first word at fourteen months and began to string together words to form simple sentences at twenty months. Toilet training was successfully completed at two years of age.

When mother was asked about Sally’s friendships, she wrote, “She is very friendly and is very popular among her friends. In situations where she is in the park she befriends others easily.”

When asked to comment on Sally’s personality, mother wrote, “Loving, friendly and warm. She is very sweet and often makes cards for her loved ones. She likes to give. She’s so very smart. She picks up right away. She is incredibly caring and loving.”

Father described Sally as being a “very thoughtful” child. He added, “She’s very social, loves to be around other kids.” He added that Sally enjoys, “swimming, dancing, monkey bars, Barbie dolls, drawing and painting.”

Sally attended the kindergarten at the Nassau County Day School in Roslyn for the past school year. Her teacher, Mrs. Nancy Keating, wrote the following narrative this past June:

"She is willing and eager to participate in all activities. She is more confident as a reader and writer and is now able to communicate using words and pictures. She is well grounded in her understanding of number concepts and is ready for the academics of first grade. Sally is eager to participate during lessons and discussions. She has many friends at Nassau and is an enthusiastic member of the class. Sally is now more independent in her seatwork and works well with others. She does need reminders to stay focused and complete her work carefully, but when she puts forth her best effort, her pride is evident. Sally is a pleasure to have in our class."

Mrs. Keating also wrote: "Sally has shown much growth in her reading ability this year. She is now able to read a few familiar texts independently and new texts with some support. Sally is able to preview texts and gather information about the story from the pictures and introduction. When decoding unfamiliar words, Sally relies on sounding them out most of the time. While this is an excellent strategy, it should be used with other strategies, such as context and picture clues, so that Sally is making sense of what she is reading. Her comprehension skills are becoming stronger as well and she able to sequentially retell stories with support, although sometimes Sally needs to refer back into the text to remember specific details or events from the story. Most importantly, Sally sees herself as a reader and has demonstrated a love for reading."

Mrs. Keating also wrote, "Writing is an area in which Sally has made great progress. She is now better able to formulate a sentence in her mind and write it on paper independently. She writes from left to right consistently. However, she needs reminders to properly space her letters and words. She spells a few sight words correctly and is working at using phonetic spelling more easily. When reminded to sit properly and pay close attention to the lines on the paper, Sally is better able to control her fine motor skills. Sally sometimes needs encouragement to add details to her writing, but I am pleased that she is learning to do this on her own. The summer journal will give Sally opportunities to practice and refine her new skills and interests."

Mrs. Keating also wrote, "Sally is able to count by twos, fives and tens. She is beginning to recognize and write one and two-digit numbers with minimal difficulty. Sally understands the concepts of addition and subtraction. She identifies basic shapes and is able to extend patterns. Sally is also able to identify time to the hour and use a graph as a way to organize and interpret information."

Here, aside from the possibility that Mrs. Keating may have produced none of these opinions at all, such a probing review of the child's academic development is clearly overly intrusive. The custodial evaluation is supposed to focus upon the fit between the child and the better parent. It is not supposed to be a probing review of personal details of a child's daily life.

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In a letter dated January 1, 2012, Lawrence Freitag, Ph.D., a domestic violence psychotherapist, wrote:

I am writing regarding Sally Doe, the daughter of [mother]. I saw Sally on a weekly basis in psychotherapy from February 2011, until January, 2012. The mother consulted with me regarding her daughter after an incident in which there was a physical altercation regarding Sally’s father. At the time I first saw Sally, she was anxious initially about the incident, but she was able to speak generally about having seen her father that day with blood on his hands. Sally was able to relate appropriately and openly with me about her relationships with family, friends and school. When her mother joined us for parts of her therapy sessions, she was open, warm and securely attached to her mother.

It is my impression during the course of Sally’s time in play therapy with me that she is an engaging and lively youngster who is developing psychologically in positive ways and is well related, with appropriate affect and mood. In addition, it was my impression that her relationship with her mother served her well in adjusting to the situation that first motivated Ms. Roe.

Here, the danger is that Dr. Freitag can divulge the child's privilege and reveal confidences said in a therapeutic setting. The custodial evaluator would be free to use these statements of the child against one or both parents.

For example, the child may say, "I heard daddy say to mommy I am going to poison you." The evaluator could use this information to malign the father without the father ever knowing this was said by his child. He could use this to malign the mother by accusing the mother of failing to shield the child from domestic violence.

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Sally was administered the Behavior Assessment System for Children Self-Report Interview-Second Edition by this evaluator. The BASC-2 is a standardized system that measures a variety of emotional and behavioral issues in children. The BASC-2 Scales at this age consists of sixty-five phrases describing positive and negative behaviors, feelings and actions, which yield comparisons to her same age peers in seven different categories. The seven areas are: attitude to school, attitude to teachers, atypicality, social stress, anxiety, depression, and interpersonal relations.

Here, the court's evaluator is misleading. The BASC-2 consists of a set of rating scales and forms including the Teacher Rating Scales (TRS), Parent Rating Scales (PRS), Self-Report of Personality (SRP), Student Observation System (SOS), and Structured Developmental History (SDH). So, to administer only one component of a multi-component test defeats the purposes of the test and allows the psychologist to craft any outcome he wants.

This means if the evaluator wants the mother to win custody, he reports facts disfavorable to the father and administers a psychological test to add some science to his intuition. If the evaluator wishes to discredit a parent, he merely administers one of these tests to that parent and opines that the parent failed the test. This means that the evaluator can use a test to discredit the statements made by a parent.

The psychologist writes: It is important to point out that this is a self-report scale. Thus, some children may either be less than forthcoming or in denial of ongoing problems that they experience. This can result in under reporting of pathology. Be that as it may, the BASC-2 is a standardized instrument that can open a window to the trained observer, both quantitatively and qualitatively, regarding a child’s ongoing functioning and recurring emotions.

None of the areas were clinically significant. One area, attitude to school, reached at-risk proportions. Scores in the at-risk range identify significant areas of concern that are not severe enough to require formal treatment. However, they do identify areas where there is the potential of developing a problem that needs careful monitoring.

Individual item analysis indicates that Sally feels that school is always boring and that she wishes that she did not have to go to school. She perceives that her teacher likes the other children in the class more than she likes Sally. She also endorses that sometimes her teacher causes her to feel badly. In general, Sally believes that other children are happier than she is. She also believes that other people always find things wrong with her.


Discussion and Forensic Recommendations:

Ultimately, the evaluator recommended custody to the mother. However, the basis for such a recommendation is steeped in intuition, manipulation and over reaching into the private life of the child. Conspicuous abuse of psychological testing has also taken place so the final product is inaccurate, unreliable, unfairly prejudicial and above all largely irrelevant.

It is irrelevant because the question this evaluation answer is not who is the better parent, but rather whether there are any psychological pathologies within the child. This approach by this evaluator shows he has no experience in families and children and determining which parent should be the residential custodial parent.



That's the fraud for May, 2012