J.N.M. v. D.L.M.

187 So. 3d 1156, 2015 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 172, 2015 WL 4506476
CourtCourt of Civil Appeals of Alabama
DecidedJuly 24, 2015
Docket2140719
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 187 So. 3d 1156 (J.N.M. v. D.L.M.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
J.N.M. v. D.L.M., 187 So. 3d 1156, 2015 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 172, 2015 WL 4506476 (Ala. Ct. App. 2015).

Opinion

MOORE, Judge.

J.N.M. (“the mother”) petitions this court for a writ of mandamus directing Judge Steven D. King of the Blount Circuit Court (“the trial court”) to vacate his June 9, 2015, order allowing for visitation between D.L.M. (“the father”) and the parties’ children and directing the parties “to find [a] counselor for family counseling.” We deny the mother’s petition.

The parties were divorced by a judgment of the trial court entered on April 19, 2010; that judgment awarded the mother and the father joint legal custody of their three minor children and awarded the mother physical custody of the children, subject to the father’s standard visitation. On April. 15, 2013, the mother served the father with a letter indicating her intent to relocate with the children to Huntsville on July 1, 2013, as a result of her remarriage.

On May 24, 2013, the father filed a petition for a modification of the parties’ divorce judgment. In that petition, the father asserted, among other things, that he objected to the mother’s proposed relocation with the children to Huntsville; he sought physical; custody of the children, reasonable visitation between the children and the mother, and an injunction restraining the mother from leaving the State of Alabama with the children.

’ According to the mother in her “motion for rehearing” filed with the trial court, the parties’ son revealed in' the summer of 2013 that he had been inappropriately touched by the father during a visit, and, as a result of that allegation, the mother had sought counseling for the son with a therapist at the Children’s Advocacy Center in Blount County. On July 10, 2013, the mother filed in the trial court a motion seeking to suspend the father’s visitation with the children, asserting, among other things, that the children’s pediatrician had recommended the suspension of the father’s visitation with the children. A July 22, 2013, handwritten entry on ' the trial court’s case-action-summary sheet- indicates that the trial court was informed that the mother’s motion to suspend the father’s visitation was moot' and that the case remained set for hearing on August 15, 2013. On September 17, 2013, the Blount County Department of Human Resources (“DHR”) sent the father a letter indicating that DHR had completed an assessment on the suspected child-abuse/neglect report' it- had received against the father On August 1, 2013, and that DHR had not found “sufficient evidence to support that [the father had] sexually molested [the] son.” Additionally, [1158]*1158both the father and Judge King state in their answers to ,the mother’s mandamus petition that the allegation of sexual molestation of the son by the father, had been presented to a Jefferson County grand jury, which “no billed” the case.

The children had not visited the father since the allegations of abuse occurred in 2013, and, on April 3, 2015, the trial- court entered a temporary order setting: a graduated visitation schedule for the father with the children and modifying the father’s child-support obligation. On May 12, 2015, the father filed a motion for contempt, asserting that the.mother had failed to comply with the trial court’s visitation order by refusing to deliver the children for visitation. The mother filed a response to the father’s contempt motion, asserting that she had taken the children to the appointed meeting place for each scheduled visitation but that the children had refused to leave her automobile when it was time to visit the father. She also asserted that the son feared the father and was unwilling to visit with the father without the older children, who, she said, refused to visit the father.

According to the mother’s mandamus petition, she testified during a hearing on June 5, 2015, that she had stopped taking the son to counseling at the Children’s Advocacy Center in Blount County following their move to Huntsville. She also asserts that she also testified that, in May 2015,- she had sought a therapist for the son at the National Children’s Advocacy Center in Huntsville because, after the trial court entered an order on April 2, 2015, ordering that the children were to begin visiting the father, the son had begun to exhibit behavioral changes, which she had attributed to.the son’s being told that he would be going to visit with the father. The mother’s petition indicates that the child’s therapist from the National Children’s Advocacy Center in Huntsville testified at the June 2015 hearing-that she was certain that the son had been traumatized by something that had occurred with the father and that she recommended that the son not visit the father until.trauma therapy with the son could be completed, which the therapist testified would take approximately six months. '

In response to the mother’s mandamus petition, the father asserts that, after the trial court had questioned whether the father would be included in the son’s therapy for the purpose of rebuilding the parent-child relationship, the mother had called the son’s therapist to testify. According to the father, at the hearing on June 5, 2015, the son’s therapist testified that her typical practice is to exclude the accused parent from therapy and to accept the allegations of abuse at face value. Furthermore, according to the father, the trial court questioned the therapist at length and the therapist had agreed that undergoing trauma therapy for abuse that had not actually occurred would be harmful to a child.

On June 9, 2015, the trial court entered the following order on the case-action-summary sheet:

“After conclusion of hearing,; Court orders that father shall have two hours visitation every weekend either on Saturday or Sunday to be at Jack’.s as previously ordered. Parties are ordered to find, counselor for family counseling within ten days. Case remains set for June 30, 2015.”

The father argues in his response to the mother’s mandamus petition that the trial court’s order reducing the father’s visitation time with the children was largely in response to the guardian ad litem’s opinion that the son was traumatized and that visitation with the father was not in the son’s best interest.

[1159]*1159The mother asserts, based on her attorney’s memory of the events of the June 5, 2015, hearing, that the trial court stated: “[W]hile the therapist was a nice person, a good therapist, the ‘National Children’s Advocacy Center is not to be believed, because they are only on one side, they are biased.’ ” The mother also asserts that Susan White, the children’s guardian ad li-tem, had also expressed concern in open court at the June 5, 2015, hearing that the son should not visit with the father and “that the [son] was clearly traumatized when he spoke to her.”

In his response to the mother’s mandamus petition, Judge King asserts that, during the June 5, 2015, hearing, the therapist from the Huntsville National Children’s Advocacy Center testified that the Center has a policy that it will not have any contact with an alleged perpetrator and that an alleged perpetrator is not allowed on the Center’s premises. Judge King further asserts that the therapist’s testimony revealed that the therapist takes what a child tells her as fact and that she does not question whether any abuse actually occurred. Judge King argues in his answer to the mother’s- petition that,

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Parks v. Ala. State Bd. of Pharmacy) (In re Ala. State Bd. of Pharmacy ()
240 So. 3d 594 (Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama, 2017)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
187 So. 3d 1156, 2015 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 172, 2015 WL 4506476, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jnm-v-dlm-alacivapp-2015.