On February 1, 1999, the custody hearings again resumed with Dr. Nancy Baker, Psychologist Lynn Kagarise, and Psychiatrist Eugene Polmueller taking the witness stand on behalf of the plaintiff mother. On February 2, 1999, Lynn Kagarise, Eugena Barefoot, CYS caseworker Catherine Hoover, and Kay Engelbret of CYS took the stand on behalf of the plaintiff mother.

During the above hearings, Attorney Speice's cross examination of the witnesses brought forth and developed a pattern of conspiracy between Ms. Frederick, Children and Youth Services, Dr. Nancy Baker, Dr. Eugene Polmueller, and Judge Jolene Kopriva to have committed and/or ignored various incidences of judicial, medical, emotional, and physical abuses against my daughter Stephanie and me.

The hearings further revealed that CYS and Dr. Baker had made a conscious and blatantly obsessive effort to destroy my relationship with Stephanie. What appeared as insidious, CYS and Dr. Baker ignored my wife's hateful and abusive conduct towards Stephanie which included the knife point abduction. CYS was so incessant to place the blame of my daughter's emotional deterioration on me they changed allegations of abuse against me in the middle of an ongoing investigation without notification and falsified their reports. To cover it up, they lied on the witness stand. Kay Engelbret testified that in December 1998, CYS, Dr. Baker, and Ms. Frederick secretly had Stephanie medically examined by Dr. Marianne Hanlon to see if I had sexually molested her. Like Ms. Zimmerman and Dr. Baker, CYS was so mesmerized and aligned with my wife they were abetting the mother's abuse of my daughter. CYS testified that in July 1997, they had instructed Ms. Frederick two times to violate the custody order that granted me the extended court ordered visitation with Stephanie. CYS demonstrated through their criminal actions a frightening abuse of power

On February 3, 1999, the custody hearing was put on hold as the attorneys appeared to be negotiating some legal matters. Meanwhile, two witnesses (school teachers), subpoenaed by Ms. Zimmerman, were poised to testify.

By late afternoon, Attorney Speice came to me and offered an equal shared physical and legal custody agreement. Hoping to stop and turn back my daughter's emotional deterioration, I accepted Attorney Speice's proposal with some reservations that my wife (Ms. Frederick) would not stop her well established pattern of making false and frivolous complaints to CYS, Dr. Baker, and Ms. Zimmerman. My attorney assured me that my wife had requested counseling as a stipulation in accepting the agreement. He said, this would stop the complaints. In counter distinction, my wife had taken a couple hours to accept the custody agreement that her attorney believed would be in Stephanie's best interest. In my wife's own admittance she was convinced that she was unduly forced into the agreement. She was so angry with her attorney making the custody agreement, she refused to return to the courthouse on the evening of February 3rd, to consummate the agreement. On February 4th, my wife was still so embittered and discontented with the custody resolution she arrived late at the courthouse, only after the sheriff department was sent out to find her. The parties were then gathered together in Judge Carpenter's courtroom to be read the custody order and work out the visitation schedule.

As I had feared, it was only a matter of weeks following the custody agreement that my wife reinstituted her volley of attacks on me through CYS and Ms. Zimmerman. In spite of the mother's resistance to the shared custody, Stephanie's emotional health made a dramatic recovery for several months following the custody agreement. So much so, school personnel recognized and testified on April 5, 2000, that Stephanie was happy for the first time since entering the public school almost three years earlier. By July 1999, Ms. Frederick made no effort to cooperate in making the agreement work and escalated her attacks on me and Stephanie to the degree that it became intolerable to bear any longer. As far as the counseling went with Jack Murray, my wife ended that when she ran out the door after the fourth session.

A prelude that my wife was again reuniting her allies to destroy the custody agreement had manifested itself through an incident that had occurred in Dr. Marianne Hanlon's office involving Ms. Frederick and Stephanie. It was my custody day and I had taken Steph to a scheduled doctors appointment. Shortly after Ms. Frederick entered the office and had escorted Stephanie into the doctor's examining room as I waited in the lobby. About ten minutes had passed when an upset Stephanie came bursting into the lobby telling me that her mother told Dr. Hanlon she recently tried killing herself with a knife. Following that incident Ilissa Zimmerman wrote Dr. Hanlon a letter asking what my (Mr. Kearns) involvement was that caused the incident. Dr. Hanlon responded to Ms. Zimmerman with a list of Ms. Frederick's complaints against me that were totally unrelated to the office episode.

Realizing I had made a terrible mistake accepting the custody agreement, I believed my only relief and recourse was to revive the custody litigation and/or file civil suits against CYS and several of the doctors involved with Stephanie's mental health treatment. What had become a definable pattern over the last three years, my wife was instigating, promoting, and exaggerating Stephanie's behavioral outbursts toward her and other maternal family members. She would then report these alleged incidents to Dr. Baker, the psychiatrists, and CYS as being a recurrence or worsening of Stephanie's fabricated mental illness.

On or about March 19, 1999, Attorney Speice requested that the court reporters, Christa Miloro and Sally Zeek, produce the transcripts of the February 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, hearings. The court reporters notified my attorney that they could not produce those transcripts immediately because they were too busy and one reporter suffered an injured wrist.

In July 1999, my attorney received the transcripts of the February custody hearings. Upon my review of those transcripts, I discovered the February 2, 1999 transcript had numerous material errors in the transcribed testimony. Since these errors had mysteriously incorporated new dialogue into witnesses' testimony (particularly CYS) it was obvious the alterations were the act of deliberate tampering. From my recollection of the hearings I estimated these transcripts to be about 85% accurate. Accordingly, I brought these discrepancies to Attorney Speice's attention. He reacted by not denying or confirming any discrepancies.

I told my attorney that since the alterations were designed to cover for CYS employees outrageous conduct, it appeared Judge Carpenter was the saboteur. My personal feelings were the court reporters had nothing to gain by tampering with transcripts. Believing I could only get a raw deal by Judge Carpenter if he should he make any rulings of custody in my case, I asked Attorney Speice to reopen the custody hearings and request Mr. Carpenter recuse himself. Attorney Speice asked me what judge would we use as a replacement. I told him an out of county judge. At that point, he tried to make a convincing argument that there are two out of county judges that come to Blair County. One is old and falls asleep during testimony and the other is arrogant and indifferent. The latter demands the litigants to work out their own agreements. Given these options, Attorney Speice suggested that Judge Carpenter was my best chance to gain full custody of my daughter. He said he just couldn't envision Judge Carpenter tampering with testimony.

Because of my attorney's advice combined with hints from third party sources that Judge Jolene Kopriva was already under investigation for her unethical links to Dr. Nancy Baker, I warily proceeded on with my custody case with Judge Carpenter.

On October 18, 1999, I again became the subject of a CYS investigation for allegedly punching my daughter in the ribs. As usual, my wife spearheaded the charge. Again Stephanie was placed under severe emotional strain as CYS caseworkers prodded at her to implicate me (her father) of this phony allegation. This time CYS caseworker, Shannon Kelly, was overheard on October 19th, telling Stephanie that if she felt threatened by her father in any manner she should telephone CYS immediately. The 30 day investigation netted no abuse charges filed by CYS.

On or about October 26, 1999, Attorney Speice filed a petition to modify my custody order. Again my hopes was to gain full custody of my daughter to eradicate my wife's emotional and physical abuse of her. I further believed the constant intrusions by CYS and the regiment of psychologist's and psychiatrist's into my daughter's life was contributory to the absolute destruction of her mental health, childhood, and ultimately her life. In response, a conference was ordered for January 6, 1999. A pre-hearing conference was scheduled for May 9, 2000.

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