Manipulating everyone, even "experts"

[bpdsurvivor]

I haven't posted in a while, because I didn't want to sound repetetive and the last couple of weeks especially have been very, very hard for me.



Almost I a year ago I took my ex to court and since we have been going through a nasty custody battle for my one year old daughter. My dBPD ex gf has denied me access and only via court order I was able to get limited access. She has made claims about MY mental instability, so the court was careful with granting me more time. While the court started to "get" what was going on, they granted me more time, which is 9 hours on a weekend day and 4 hours one afternoon during the week.



My ex asked for a forensic evaluation. I thought that was a good idea, because I thought the forensic evaluator, a trained psychologist, would finally figure out how messed up my ex was. The forensic evaluation took over 5 months. I had several sessions with the evaluator, so did my ex. We had one joint session and the evaluator had a session with each of us together with our daughter.

I was always mentioning my concerns about the wellbeing of my daughter and reported multiple instances of parent alienation that I have witnessed with her other child and her ex-husband. I mentioned the rages, the jealousy, the cheating and that I know she had been diagnosed with BPD. I even listed the doctor who had diagnosed her with BPD.

Now, about two weeks ago the forensic report came out. And it was devastating! The evaluator took everything that my ex said as the truth, and ignored everything that I said. The evaluator believed ALL claims of my ex, without even fact checking them or consulting with me. The evaluator has been completely manipulated by my ex, something she is REALLy good at, but I was shocked to realize that an EXPERT could be deceived so much.

We are due back in court soon to start the trial and my attorney is going to contest most of the report, but why isn't there ANYONE that can SEE what is GOING ON here? I talked to a friend who is also a psychologist and he told me to back off my accusation that she has BPD, because obviosuly she has not been found to be unfit by the evaluator and the BPD diagnosis has not been confirmed. I feel that even if we had a subpoena of her medical records and would indeed get proof of her BPD diagnosis, we would still need an expert witness to testify what this potentially means for the wellbeing of my child.

Also, so far I have spent almost $50k in legal fees and I am pretty much broke. Giving up now would mean I would have to settle to whatever my ex dictates and it wouldn't be much. But it's not me I am worried about, it's my daughter! And with this devastating report, which is completely to my ex' favor, I am afraid I won't get too far either.

Is there anyone in this forum who had a similar experience of a BPD parent who was able to win in court, because everybody believed them? What can I do now?

[BentNotBroken]

I am going through the same thing at the moment. Just waiting on the CE report from the psychologist.

Many people fell for the lies of my BPD ex GF. I did for 15+ years. Fortunately the court appointed GAL caught her in several lies, and has found no evidence to back up any of the false accusations that have been made against me. (there have been over 100 separate false accusations so far--I counted). Her expensive bulldog attorney finally dumped her, probably after realizing that she had been lying to him all along, and had committed perjury multiple times.

Did you have any objective testing done? (ie MMPI-2, MCMI, CPI)

And yes, you will need an expert to testify about her diagnosis and how children raised by a BPD parent have a much higher risk of developing their own mental illnesses.

Matt and Foreverdad can give you more info, they are much further down the road than I am with their disordered exes.

You can get the forensic evaluation thrown out, but you need to discuss with your atty where to go from there. If there was no objective testing, maybe you could get an order to add that, in the best interest of your daughter.

I have spent a fortune fighting for my son, and I am not a rich man. This fight may bankrupt me.

I have more love for my son than I do hatred of my ex. It has been an uphill battle the whole way. This is something I must do, because no one else will stand up for my son. If I can spare him the sheer terror of having to endure one of her rages, it will be worth it.

Even if I lose, I will not abandon him. When he is old enough to ask me what happened when he was a baby and did I fight to protect him, I want to be able to answer him honestly--I did everything I could legally do to protect him.

[ForeverDad]

Yes, sadly, a percentage of members here, hopefully a small percentage, have suffered with supposed professionals including custody evaluators who are conned, manipulated or have their own preconceived opinions and biases.  I'm sorry this happened to you.

Typically we encourage our members to be sure that the proposed pool of evaluators are ones the lawyer knows have done decent jobs before without overt bias or gullibility.  That's what my lawyer did.  He made sure a CE he knew would do a solid evaluation was selected.  Interestingly, that CE in the first session stated he would not make any diagnosis of either one of us.  He said he wasn't there to diagnose but simply to evaluate us for his expert custody recommendations.

For that reason, unless you can get her diagnosis mentioned, I would focus most on her behaviors and actions.  A diagnosis alone does not prove she will be an abusive, neglectful, uncooperative or obstructive parent.  So even if it does get mentioned, I would still stress that her behaviors and actions be emphasized.  As has been written often here, the best predictor of the future is the past.  If she has obstructed your parenting for a year now, why should the court expect it not to continue for the next 17 years?

The problem is that the CE was supposed to be an expert and usually the court is inclined to defer to the supposed expert.  However your lawyer needs to expose the poor job done by the CE.

":)id father tell you about this incident?  Did he give you this documentation supporting his account?  Why wasn't it mentioned or referenced in the report?"  (repeat for every incident not mentioned in report)

":)id mother tell you about this incident in the report?  Did she give you any documentation to support it?  Why was it mentioned or referenced in the report if there wasn't any substantiation of its validity?"  (repeat for every claim mentioned in report)

Finally, let me comment about the total lack of overnights.  I view this as a huge issue.  While I understand that the non-primary parent usually gets few overnights while the baby is young, the non-primary parent still get at least SOME overnights, generally at least a couple overnights on alternate weekends!  This concerns me.  She's a toddler now, soon she will be a preschooler.  Generally overnights are restricted only if the other parent is seen as unable or unwise to parent overnight for some reason.  I can't imagine any basis to block you from at least some overnights.  At the very least your lawyer should be pressing vociferously for you to move up to whatever the standard schedule is in your county or area.  Even a non-primary parent in that schedule would have it better than you and daughter have experienced for the past year.  Unless there is documented abuse, neglect or imminent risk, there is no reason you can't at least have that minimal schedule as a bare minimum.

I suspect the bf/gf lack of a marital status has left you at a disadvantage and you've had to claw your way up from being a non-person parentwise.  I understand.  But still, by now, the court should have seen you're a reasonably normal person and ought to be allowed and even encouraged to at least minimally parent.  Your daughter needs her father and especially so if there aren't any huge reasons for you not to parent!

[bpdsurvivor]

Thanks BentNotBroken and ForeverDad for your reponse. I really appreciate it!

There was no testing like MMPI-2 or equivalent done. Our CE had mentioned to my ex that I think she is mentally unstable and that she wanted to request psychological testing, but my ex then asked that we both should get tested and the CE then decided against it, because she was already late with her report.

I went through the report and pointed out every item that's based on a lie or distorted truth. We are going to subpoena the CE records to see what she has written down and what made it actually into the report. We have a "pre-trial" court date coming up by the end of this month, where we are going to contest the most important points and ask for overnights again. Then, sometime later we will have the CE testify in court and then cross-examined. And that's when we are going to point out all issues in the report.

Regarding my (lacking) overnights, my ex has successfully made the court suspicious about my own mental stability and the court wanted to wait until the CE report is out to decide on overnights. My daughter is 14 months old now and she hasn't stayed overnight ONCE (Well, actually she did, but only when my ex was there too, but that's a different story).

Luckily the CE assessed that I am NOT mentally unstable and that I am also a "loving and devoted father", so I guess the question of overnights will be solved soon. However, there are other hardcore (new) claims in this report that could make the court suspicious, even when the judge herself has already realized what kind of person my ex is. Even for extended time (=8 hours each) for Christmas and New Year's I had to get a court order.

Of course the "expensive bulldog lawyer" of my ex will try to use the negative claims in the report about me to their advantage, this stuff is hardcore! I can't really disclose too much detail, because it's quite complex and hard to understand out of context.

The fact alone that people in this forum are concerned about the fact that I have not gotten any overnights with my daughter yet - and other people telling me that "there MUST be something wrong with you then" - shows me how far-reaching the manipulations of my ex really are.

[BentNotBroken]

I was not allowed to even take my son out of the house without my ex being present until his 1st birthday. She tried to make us miss the birthday party I had arranged for him. We were over an hour late due to her stalling and delays. She even tried to start a discussion about shared parenting as we were heading out the door. She had refused to discuss it for months prior to this. I refused to discuss it then, telling her it was our son's birthday, we were going to his party, and she was welcome to attend if she chose to, but it was not the time to start a discussion about shared parenting.

She did not attend, instead she took the time to smear me to the neighbors behind my back.

What makes it so hard for anyone to see how ill they actually are is that they are masters of manipulation and deceit. My ex is at the level of Ted Bundy when it comes to manipulation and deceit. Everyone believes she is an innocent, harmless victim. The truth is that she is a true monster. She is willing to sacrifice our son to keep her facade intact. Mentally ill or not, her behavior is inexcusable.

The lack of objective testing is a huge flaw in the evaluation. The tests take a few hours, and should not delay the report that much. I would push for their inclusion, because they provide a "scientific basis" for the recommendation. Without them, it is just a subjective opinion.

[bpdsurvivor]

What makes it so hard for anyone to see how ill they actually are is that they are masters of manipulation and deceit. My ex is at the level of Ted Bundy when it comes to manipulation and deceit. Everyone believes she is an innocent, harmless victim. The truth is that she is a true monster. She is willing to sacrifice our son to keep her facade intact. Mentally ill or not, her behavior is inexcusable.

Exactly! Everyone believes she is an innocent, harmless victim. EVERYONE! The whole CE report portrays my ex as poor victim that is now having to fight two custody battles (the other one with her ex husband), with evil men, and the only excuse is that she has "obviously made poor choices when picking mates".

The problem is, she has so much support. She has two lawyers, a bunch of "friends" that popped out of nowhere (she didn't have ANY friends when we were dating), that all see her as the poor woman that gets tortured by the two fathers of her children.

The lack of objective testing is a huge flaw in the evaluation. The tests take a few hours, and should not delay the report that much. I would push for their inclusion, because they provide a "scientific basis" for the recommendation. Without them, it is just a subjective opinion.

The report is done, we can't go back now and ask for a redo or add testing. I brought it up during my sessions, but the CE decided against it. It would also have added another $6000 to my bill (money I don't have).

[david]

We had a court ordered custody eval. The evaluator believed everything ex said. I had to find a private custody evaluator (more money) to testify in court that the recommendation was a piece of s***. Ex still got primary custody. I was an EOW dad. Staying focused on our two boys needs and learning with the help of a T (it took several to find a good fit) to detach emotionally from ex I was able to help both boys. Eventually, like many here, ex got tired of the reality of dealing with kids and offered me more and more time. Eventually went back to court and now have a 45/55 split. Even with that I am still getting more time with them because ex can't deal with normal kid stuff. The more detached I got the more time she offered me. My ex was very good at intial impressions but can not sustain it for long. Time tends to favor the stable person.

[scraps66]

You really need the MMPI-2.  Can't understand how it went this far along without that and with making conclusions.  The MMPI-2 is the accepted psychological testing used be courts all over the country and I don't understand how your attorney didn't stipulate this, maybe supsiciously.  My attorney missed requirring that in several Orders, and voila, I spent $5k in legal fees and another $2k for my evaluation.  In retrospect I now can see the pattern of Orders, many of which are drafted by attorneys for the judges, that were erroneous on a trivial degree, each of which requiring more time in court, AND more legal expense for me, and more profit for the attorneys.

Just for sanity, maybe look at the credentials of the evaluator to see if he/she even has expertise in this area.  This is so straightforward but it goes wrong so frequently in court.  You could also have a respected third party forensic psychologist review the information and comment, but that is added expense that will lead to what you already know, get the MMPI-2 done.   

[scraps66]

$6000 additional charges for an MMPI-2?  Now I'm really suspicious.  An MMPI-2, a good one should cost right around $2k and that is on the high side.  This is a forensic psychologists hourly rate for four hours of work, that's it, and that would also include three or four other tests to substantiate the MMPI-2 results.  This CE sounds like a joke, I've never heard of a CE report not including objective psycholgical evaluation.

[bpdsurvivor]

I requested the MMPI-2 and the CE rejected it. The evaluation is over. If we had to go back and ask specifically for a MMPI-2, we would have to pay for the full amount. And I am already on the edge of banktruptcy.

[scraps66]

Sorry, that sucks brother.  Disappointing to say the least.  Tough dealing with things, and having to "take it" all the time.  When does it end I ask myself. 

[sanemom]

Sorry, that sucks brother.  Disappointing to say the least.  Tough dealing with things, and having to "take it" all the time.  When does it end I ask myself. 

I hope it ends when the youngest is 18!

[scraps66]

I can assure you it doesn't end.  My ex is the product of a mother than is very much like my ex.  Five bad marriages betweenthe tow of them.  they just sweep the problems under the carpet.  My ex quickly moved onto the next guy - he is now "dad" to my kids.  Meaning this is the way she treats this guy, VERY different from how I was treated.  Lots wrong in the courthouses throughout the country to allow such behavior to persist.

[ForeverDad]

Our ex-spouses don't seem able to think kindly of their ex-spouses.  This new guy, if he leaves or gets dumped, too will be seen as a jerk, user or abuser, just like all the other ex's.  Just give it time.