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part 2 of 2
“Clare’s book is poorly named,” says Mark Everson, director of the Program on Childhood Trauma and Maltreatment at the University of North Carolina. “She calls it Children Speak for Themselves. But her approach is [actually] not to put any weight on what the child has to say.”
Haynes-Seman wrote her book with a Gunnison County attorney named David Baumgarten (who, other than to say, “It’s Clare’s method, but I co-wrote the book,” declines comment.) Along with describing the principles behind her method, the book provides several case studies that Haynes-Seman says illustrate how she can “accurately and effectively…uncover covert information and verify whether abuse has occurred and by whom.” It’s a claim that has made Haynes-Seman increasingly unpopular with some of her professional colleagues.
David Korwin, a clinical psychologist and child-abuse expert at the University of Cincinnati, says such “over-reliance on tiny pieces of observation in play therapy…is very dangerous, from the standpoint of making an error in either direction.”
Barbara Boat, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati, says she reviewed a set of Haynes-Seman videotapes about five years ago and “came to the exact opposite impression as the people at the Kempe Center.” Boat says the experience was “quite astonishing” and impressed on her how “dangerous it is to become wedded to a certain technique at the expense of all others.” And she, like Faller, is concerned about Haynes-Seman’s insistence that children be interviewed in the presence of the alleged perpetrator.
Ralph Underwager, a clinical psychologist from Minnesota who has been testifying in child sexual-abuse cases since 1953 (generally for the defense), is less diplomatic. “Frankly, that kind of symbolic interpretation of play behavior or drawings is pure, unadulterated balderdash,” he says. “And unfortunately, it has served to put hundreds, if not thousands, of people in prison.”
Kathleen Faller–who says she’s diametrically opposed to Underwager in most court cases–agrees. “Even if I believed it was a good strategy, and I don’t, I would moderate my assertions and say, `This is one approach you can use,'” Faller says. “[Haynes-Seman] doesn’t even do that. She just says, `This is the way you do it.'”
Faller says she’s especially troubled by Haynes-Seman’s book, since she served as a consultant in a case used as an example in one chapter. That case, she says, had a “tragic outcome” due to the testimony of Haynes-Seman. In the book, Haynes-Seman calls it simply “Joey’s Drawings.”
“Joey” was a five-year-old boy who drew pictures specifically detailing his sexual abuse. The pictures, which are included in Haynes-Seman’s book, depict a smaller figure bending over, pants down, with a larger figure standing behind him. A thick black line is scribbled in between the groin area of the standing figure and the buttocks of the smaller figure. According to Haynes-Seman, “Joey” described the picture as “Dad hurting me.” Faller says she and a number of other clinicians took the picture at face value. “He disclosed,” says Faller. “He named his abuser.”
But Haynes-Seman chose to discount the picture, calling it “stereotypical” and “suggestive of tracing.” Instead, she analyzed a new set of drawings–stick figures Joey drew during the evaluation sessions–and interpreted them as demonstrating the absence of sexual abuse.
“At the end of the session Joey was asked to draw whatever he liked,” Haynes-Seman wrote. “He drew a picture of a cowboy with a horse.” Features missing from the picture were “instructive,” she added. “The cowboy has no ears, although ears are present in other pictures of Joey in the series. The airplane and horse have no bottoms (the part of himself that caused the trouble), and there are no feet to the cactus, the cowboy or the horse. The themes in Joey’s pictures show that his trauma related to his parents’ divorce, and that Father offered him safety, security and nurturance, which was not currently available from Mother.”
With that, says Faller, custody of the real-life “Joey” was awarded to his father–who to this day Faller believes was the abuser.
Haynes-Seman wasn’t as successful in convincing a judge in another case detailed in her book. She titles it, “A Grandmother’s Sexual Involvement With Her Granddaughter.” But Haynes-Seman was the only person working on the case who concluded that the grandmother was the guilty party. Her recommendation that the father be given custody was rejected by an Arapahoe County District Court judge and county social workers. The little girl’s therapist, her pediatrician and her mother also were shocked by the Kempe Center evaluation. Haynes-Seman, however, remained convinced that she was right.
In her book, the little girl is called Becky. Becky’s grandmother, Haynes-Seman notes, started to suspect the little girl’s father of having sexually abused her after the four-year-old started asking the grandmother about “hiney games.” The 65-year-old grandmother reported her suspicions to Arapahoe County Social Services, but a resulting investigation was inconclusive. Still, Becky’s mother, Leanne, remembers now, the Arapahoe County social worker told her to be “guarded.”
Becky’s mother and father divorced shortly thereafter. According to Leanne, following the first weekend visitation with her father, Becky came home with blood in her underwear and complaining of pain when she urinated. Leanne says she thought it was a bladder infection and brought her daughter to the pediatrician. The pediatrician found physical evidence that Becky had been vaginally penetrated and called Social Services. That agency then recommended a Kempe Center evaluation. What happened next constitutes a chapter in Haynes-Seman’s book–and a nightmare for an Englewood family.
Leanne says she asked her mother to come with her to the Kempe Center for the evaluation because she was so upset. The grandmother did, and Clare invited her to join the evaluation session. According to Leanne, a week after the interview, before either Leanne or her mother had seen a copy of the evaluation, police officers and Social Services workers accompanied by Haynes-Seman herself showed up at the door of the grandmother’s house, where Becky was spending the night. “Late on Saturday morning, I get a call from my mom saying, `They’ve taken Becky,'” recalls Leanne.
Becky was removed from her grandmother’s house and placed with her father, Leanne’s husband. Just months before, the same man had pleaded “no contest” to a criminal charge of sexual exploitation of children relating to his possession of child pornography. But Haynes-Seman’s evaluation determined that the grandmother was the one who was abusing the child–and that the elderly woman had crafted a scheme to lead “others to focus on [the father] as perpetrator.” Concluding that the father did not sexually molest Becky, Haynes-Seman went on to recommend that a dependency-and-neglect petition be filed against Leanne for, among other things, failing to protect her children “from abuse by her mother.”
Just how Haynes-Seman came to that conclusion is hard to tell from her evaluation. At one point she determines that Becky’s memory of spitting out beets that her mother was feeding her while her father was watching demonstrated a “concern that her mother was not recognizing her limitations as a child.” Haynes-Seman also concluded from her interviews and observations that the grandmother herself had been abused as a child and hated men–and that, since Becky had allegedly expressed a desire not to go to her grandmother’s house again, the grandmother was the perpetrator. At one point Haynes-Seman cited an apparently joking statement by Leanne (“That’s what mothers are here for, to make their daughters crazy”) as evidence of the “pathological influence” the grandmother had had on her.
It took an Arapahoe County district court just two days to reject Haynes-Seman’s version of events and return custody to Leanne. During cross examination at the custody hearing, it became evident that Haynes-Seman had come to her conclusions without speaking to a number of other outside experts who had had years of contact with the family, including a speech therapist, a psychiatrist and a pediatrician. None of those professionals believed that Leanne or her mother were guilty of abuse.
Haynes-Seman defended herself at the court hearing by explaining, “None of those people you’ve described were in the process of evaluating this whole family and trying to figure out what has been going on within this family.” But a licensed clinical psychologist from Englewood who reviewed the videotapes and the records at the request of the grandmother concluded that Haynes-Seman’s evaluation wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. “I found this evaluation to be incompetently conducted and the report to be of exceedingly poor quality,” Kathryn Jens wrote in a report submitted to the court. “This evaluation and report do not meet current professional standards for evaluations of sexual abuse allegations.”
Today Becky’s grandmother is suing Haynes-Seman, just as Bert Mason is preparing to do. But both face an uphill battle. Ever since the Drew Kerin case, no one’s been able touch the Kempe Center.
Back in 1992, Drew Kerin also attempted to sue Haynes-Seman. Kerin, a city councilman in Lamar who served as district manager for Gale Norton’s 1990 campaign for attorney general, had been a fourth-grade teacher. He also, apparently, had a heart of gold. That’s what got him into trouble.
When the mother of one of his fourth-grade pupils had to move unexpectedly, Kerin offered to let the boy live with him. The boy’s mother agreed to the arrangement. But after the boy had lived with him for twenty months, Kerin filed for custody and the mother fought back. That’s when the allegations of sexual abuse arose. The boy–twelve years old at the time–denied that any abuse had occurred. But Social Services workers, this time in Prowers County, once again called in Haynes-Seman to do the evaluation.
Using her method, Haynes-Seman determined that Kerin had not only abused the boy who lived with him, but that he had also molested four other schoolchildren in the farm town. In open court, Haynes-Seman actually named Kerin’s supposed victims, sure of herself even though she had interviewed none of them.
The jury was unimpressed and exonerated Kerin, who proceeded to file a civil suit against Haynes-Seman and the Kempe Center. But attorneys for Haynes-Seman and her employer countered that they were immune from such legal actions. The Kempe Center, they noted, is affiliated with the pediatrics department at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Therefore, the lawyers argued, the state’s “governmental immunity” barred any civil action.
Denver District Court Judge Nancy E. Rice agreed that the Kempe Center was a state organization and found for the defendants. Drew Kerin went home battered and empty-handed.
Colorado’s governmental-immunity law bars lawsuits against state employees who, through negligence, cause harm to others on the job. An employee can be held liable for damages if it’s determined that he acted in a “willful or wanton” manner. In layman’s terms, that usually means proving that the person knew their conduct would cause harm. Mere carelessness, no matter how gross, isn’t enough.
Proving that someone intentionally caused harm is a difficult legal standard to meet, and Becky’s grandmother has already lost the first battle. In December 1994, Denver District Court Judge Federico C. Alvarez ruled that the initial evidence presented in the case failed to meet the “willful and wanton” standard. The grandmother is appealing.
Mason’s Longmont attorney, Bob Hancock, says he will file his intent to sue this week. Hancock says he thinks he’s got a good chance, based on all the facts, to prove his “willful and wanton” case.
Hancock works to control his anger when speaking of Haynes-Seman and the Masons. “The evaluation she did directly resulted in the placing of [David] in a mental institution for a period of four months, and he was permanently damaged as a result of this separation from his family,” says the attorney. “And in defending themselves against her accusations, the Masons have bankrupted themselves.”
Hancock says Mason’s suit will seek “in the neighborhood of a million dollars” in damages from Haynes-Seman. Mason himself sounds more tired than angry. He says he’s not looking for revenge, just “enough money to make sure David can get the treatment he needs after what he’s been through.”
What upsets Hancock most, he says, is that other mental health professionals know of Haynes-Seman’s practices, disapprove of them, but continue to remain silent. “It’s up to the profession,” he says. “The therapists and psychiatrists and other mental-health-care providers [have] to police their professions.”
But the mental-health community has been slow in responding to the complaints against Haynes-Seman. That may be partly because Colorado law is wide open when it comes to the regulation of people who conduct child-abuse evaluations. According to the law, as long as Haynes-Seman doesn’t call herself a social worker, psychologist or family therapist, she doesn’t have to be licensed. (She’s not.) That means that, even if it wanted to, the state couldn’t prevent her from continuing to practice.
In addition, the grievance board for mental-health issues legally has no jurisdiction over the kind of evaluations Haynes-Seman does. Amos Martinez, program administrator for the Colorado Mental Health Licensing Board, says that at least one complaint has been filed against Haynes-Seman but that the board determined her evaluations were essentially custody evaluations. Custody evaluations, he says, are exempt from the board’s jurisdiction by law.
Doug Friednash would like to change that. The Democratic state representative from Denver is currently working with people like Becky’s grandmother to amend both the licensing requirements and the grievance-board exemption. He says he plans to introduce legislation in the coming session that will “ensure competence and accountability” by making sure child-custody evaluators are appropriately licensed and subject to a grievance procedure.
“There absolutely have to be some changes in the law,” Friednash says. “If you have an unchecked system, virtually anyone can put forth an opinion that the court relies on. If there’s no grievance procedure, the wronged parties have virtually no recourse.”
Friednash says he hasn’t explored going after the Kempe Center’s governmental immunity but adds that he hasn’t ruled it out as a possible legislative target. “We’re continuing our fact-finding,” he says.
Dr. Richard Krugman, dean of the CU School of Medicine and the director of the Kempe Center from 1981 to 1993, says he doesn’t have any “basis on which to base an opinion” of Haynes-Seman’s work–even though he worked with her at the Kempe Center for twelve years. And Krugman doesn’t seem particularly concerned by claims that her controversial method may be hurting the families and children she evaluates.
“I know generally what Clare does, [and] she and I have published a paper together, but in my opinion, the way these sorts of debates get sorted out in the professional community is through peer review,” says Krugman. “We debate. We publish.” Krugman says he doesn’t think it’s appropriate for other professionals to give their opinions of Haynes-Seman’s work outside of the academic arena of publishing. “It’s just not proper,” he adds.
When asked if he’s aware that Haynes-Seman and the Kempe Center have raised the immunity defense based on their association with the medical school, Krugman responds, “Of course. They’re part of the medical school. That’s wholly appropriate.”
The Kempe Center’s current director, Susan Hiatt, declines to comment on Haynes-Seman or her methodology. “Dick Krugman has already given a statement, and there isn’t any more information,” says Hiatt through her receptionist.
The “Victims of Clare Haynes-Seman” Club recently celebrated its first anniversary during a private meeting in a suburban Denver home. The members asked not to be named, and none of them will say exactly how many people belong to the club. Some of those in attendance have managed to retain custody of their children, some have not. Sometimes they talk about whether dredging up all the painful memories will really serve any purpose.
James Plunkett says he went to “a meeting or two” of the group but didn’t get very involved. “I stayed on the outside of things,” he says. He returns his attention to his tapes, rewinding and rewatching scene after scene as his daughter and son play seemingly harmless games with blocks, draw on construction paper and eat granola bars.
“She’s building my house, right there, see,” says Plunkett as the figure on the screen repositions solid wood blocks into a pointy roof.
Bruce LaBute, the man who confessed to sexually abusing Ciera, will be sentenced August 7 in Jefferson County District Court. Plunkett says he expects LaBute to get a lengthy sentence. But for a father who’s missing his kids, that’s little comfort. What matters to Plunkett is that Ciera and his son are still in foster care, 27 months after his ex-wife first made her allegations.
Plunkett says he’s hopeful that the children’s maternal grandmother will get custody of the kids so he can visit them more often–maybe someday without supervision.
“Somebody needs to investigate this,” he says, sorting through his box of tapes for another videocassette. “Someone needs to find out the truth.”
end of part 2
