A Colorado custody evaluator who admits to dismissing more than 90 percent of abuse claims as untrue has been suspended following an investigation that revealed he was convicted of domestic violence in 2007.
The charges against Kilmer came to light in an investigation of child evaluators in Colorado, called guardian ad litems (GALs). He was placed under suspension last week pending an audit being conducted by the State Court Administrator’s office into all of the state’s custody evaluators.
The audit was initiated by an investigative story by ProPublica that reported that four other evaluators appointed by the court to evaluate domestic abuse claims in private custody disputes in Colorado had been charged with domestic violence or harassment.
The media report also showed that, like Kilmer, several custody evaluators, officially called Parent Responsibility Evaluators or PREs in Colorado, had their license renewed in spite of repeated complaints against them.
A national expansion of that investigation by The Epoch Times, shows that the problem is widespread across the United States, with overwhelming evidence that court-appointed evaluators are often recommending the very children they are supposed to be protecting to instead be handed over to an abusive parent, even in cases when the parent had been admitted and/or convicted of the abuse.
The investigation also showed that, like Colorado, many states continued to renew the licenses and appoint child evaluators to cases despite findings of ethical violations against them.
In New Hampshire, a GAL who was found to be guilty of perjury and other conflicts of interest by a legislative grievance committee in 2012 continued to be appointed by family court judges in dozens of private custody cases involving allegations of child abuse.
According to the ProPublic piece, Kilmer told them “at this point in my career, sometimes the judge just cuts and pastes all my recommendations and puts it into the court order.”
The consequences have proved lethal for some of the children who were sent to live with an abusive parent, based on a custody evaluator’s recommendation.
In 2018 in Missouri, 14-year old Mikaela Haynes killed herself after a child evaluator recommended putting her in her father’s custody in spite of substantial evidence he was molesting her and had admitted to raping Mikaela’s older sister.
As shown by court records and chronicled on the website Mikaelaslaw.com, after Charles Haynes confessed to sexually assaulting Mikaela’s older sister and was about to serve out his jail sentence, Missouri Family Court Judge John Shock ruled he should have custody of Mikaela, based on the recommendation of Jennifer Williams, the court appointed GAL for the teen.
Williams, an attorney, did not return repeated phone calls from The Epoch Times. Neither Charles Haynes nor his attorney returned phone calls from The Epoch Times.
Evita Tolu, a St. Louis immigration attorney who took on Mikaela’s mother Cynthia Haynes’ wrongful death lawsuit against Williams, provided The Epoch Times with dozens of court records and transcripts that show Williams was well aware that Haynes was molesting his daughters.
She even recommended that Mikaela’s younger 12-year old sister be compelled to have visitation with Charles Haynes after Mikaela’s suicide.
“The real pandemic in this country is what these court appointees and family court judges are doing to abused children,” said Tolu, who said she took on the case because no other lawyer would help Cynthia Haynes. Tolu has since been fined by family court judges and even threatened with jail time for what she called “perfectly legal court filings.”
In August, Tolu won a ruling from a federal judge that she could proceed with the lawsuit against Williams as well as others who conspired to what Tolu calls “trafficking” the girls to their abusive father.
Richard Ducote, a nationally known family law attorney who has represented many parents—all mothers—in private custody cases across the United States, told The Epoch Times, that “family court trafficking of abused kids” is so common that lawyers and therapists often go along with the corruption so they can continue to garner, and profit from, court appointments from judges.
Ducote, who has appeared on TV and at press conferences around the United States about the issue, said that child evaluators really operate as “henchmen” and work to stifle evidence of abuse to pave the way for judges to strip custody from the protective parent and pass it onto the abusive parent.
“Along the way, the protective parent spends every dime she has to protect her kids,” said Ducote. “By putting kids back in the hands of the abuser, they need all sorts of government support. Basically, the courts are turning innocent, well grounded kids into messed up, and thus lifelong, clients of the system.”
For a story on a similar subject, Cindy Dumas, Executive Director at The Women’s Coalition, told The Epoch Times, that there is overwhelming evidence child evaluators, along with judges, are deliberately and chronically dismissing claims of abuse—but only when, she says, it is raised by mothers.
“This is purely all about patriarchal privilege,” said Dumas. “The money that comes with that is just a side benefit. Father rights groups disagree, saying that men have also experienced corrupt custody evaluators.
The Coalition has posted on its website what seems to be an exhaustive number of stories of mothers who have lost custody after alleging abuse as well as tragic stories of children who have died after a judge switched custody to an abusive father.
Ducote agreed that mothers seem to be the primary target of child evaluators like Kilmer.
The suspension of Kilmer set off a storm on social media among parents who give detailed accounts of nightmarish experiences with child evaluators like Kilmer.
Many of the parents also ridiculed Kilmer for telling ProPublica that the only reason he pleaded guilty to domestic violence was because “he had a bad lawyer.”
