During the time following my petition for custody modification, Stephanie's emotional health began to degenerate at a pace I haven't seen in years. It became apparent to me that my modification petition served to infuriate my wife's wrath even more. CYS was taking advantage of every opportunity. They were now trying to lay the blame on me for causing my daughter's mental regression because I resurrected the custody litigation. During a conversation with Shannon Kelly in October, she confirmed Stephanie was told by her mother that I never wanted her as a baby and wanted to adopt her out. Ms. Kelly discounted this emotional abuse of Stephanie by telling me and my brother that she couldn't believe Stephanie's mother was capable of making a comment like that. Ms. Kelly said Stephanie's mother loved her too much. The truth of the matter was CYS employees' were ignoring anything Ms. Frederick did to Stephanie and in reality was feeding my wife's abusive nature. Adding to Stephanie's problems, CYS was encouraging Ms. Frederick to institutionalize Stephanie to control her emotional outbursts that historically and predominantly were taking place at the mother's residence during her periods of custody.

The catalyst to Stephanie's mental regression manifested itself through CYS caseworkers. CYS caseworker, Shannon Kelly, began a bombardment of intrusions into Stephanie's life. At one point Stephanie had a scratch on her hand made by her cat's claw. My wife told Shannon Kelly it was a knife cut. Ms. Kelly went to the Baker school and pursued Stephanie to admit the scratch was actually a knife wound self inflicted at her father's home. CYS wouldn't let her alone at school and they began to make frequent visits to my home. Stephanie said Ms. Kelly constantly questioned her about Grandma Kearns&rsquo health who was suffering with cancer, with a follow up of how is your dad treating you. Steph became so upset with these questions that she wouldn't answer them anymore. Pretending to be concerned for Stephanie, Ms. Kelly introduced her into a 4H horse program to enhance her social life. While this program did nothing to help her emotions, it turned Stephanie's every waking and sleeping thoughts towards owning horses and building barns. Since I and my family had the acreage to accommodate this vision, I became the targeted parent to disappoint Stephanie and fend off her CYS inspired whims.

Around late November or early December 1999, it was brought to my attention that Ms. Zimmerman held an ex parte meeting with my wife and daughter together. It was revealed to me that in the presence of my wife she asked Stephanie to which parent she preferred to live with full time. When my attorney asked Ms. Zimmerman why I was not included in that meeting, she lied and said she telephoned my residence but I failed to respond to her telephone call. Infuriating me again with her deception, I filed a revised pro se petition to have Ms. Zimmerman removed as guardian ad litem and place her under investigation for emotionally abusing her client. At a January 6, 2000 conference, Judge Carpenter agreed to voluntarily dismiss Zimmerman from her duties and claimed he would enter an order as such. He also dismissed my petition without prejudice.

By the end of December 1999, Stephanie's emotional condition had sank to its lowest point since being abducted from our residence in 1996. The Baker school personnel was concerned for her behavioral decline as Stephanie began pulling out her hair again. Out of fear that Dr. Baker was going to pull off another emergency trip for Stephanie to the Meadows Psychiatric Center, I filed a pro se petition for injunctive relief against CYS and Dr. Baker. My intention was to have a psychiatric reevaluation of Stephanie done by an independent psychologist without the input or influence of CYS and Dr. Baker. The petition also made reference and passed blame to the Blair County Court for negligently allowing Stephanie to emotionally deteriorate under its directives. Again Judge Carpenter dismissed my petition citing council of record.

In March 2000, allegations emerged that Stephanie had threatened to kill people in her school and burn down the building. Rising to the occasion was CYS. However, Ms. Kelly said CYS did not know what to do to help Stephanie. Accordingly, Dr. Nancy Baker's counseling services were going to be utilized and CYS was now making emergency appointments for Stephanie with Dr.Baker. They alluded that Dr. Baker would get to the bottom of Stephanie's regressive emotions and aggressive behavior and institutionalize her if she deemed it appropriate.

Because I couldn't bear to see Stephanie suffer any longer, I filed a special relief petition pro se based on allegations that my wife was deliberately abusing Stephanie emotionally to force CYS or Dr. Baker to take emergency medical actions against her. I laid on the court that Stephanie was about to have a nervous breakdown. From my experience my wife had taken a similar course of action back in July 1997 that resulted in Stephanie being institutionalized by Dr. Baker and CYS at the Meadows Psychiatric Center. As I had mentioned earlier, this action resulted in Stephanie being heavily medicated and being restricted to certain paternal family members on my every other weekend visits. CYS, Dr. Baker, and Ms. Frederick were still not satisfied with that arrangement and pushed the court hard to remove me from Stephanie's life.

Ms. Frederick responded to my petition with a pro se answer that I was not qualified to determine Stephanie was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and passed blame on me for Stephanie's degenerating mental health. Judge Carpenter dismissed my petition citing attorney of record.

It was around mid March 2000 that my attorney and I were not seeing eye to eye in his handling of my case and started to distance himself from me. Stephanie's condition and situation seemed to be of no concern to him. What I hadn't realized at the time, he was deliberately upsetting me so I would dismiss him. Taking the bait, I asked that he no longer represent me in further custody proceedings and I requested that he turn over the entire case file to me.

I began to mentally review and piece together Ms. Frederick's pattern of behavior and control she had over the professionals involved with Stephanie's treatment. It was then I realized Ms. Frederick's behavior went beyond the revengeful scorn of a disgruntled woman going through a bitter divorce. My wife was displaying characteristics of mother's suffering with Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. She was deliberately causing Stephanie to act out emotionally and then run to the professionals with her conclusions and observations that Stephanie was mentally ill from birth. Most of these episodes were either induced or feigned. The gratification my wife received from this was the attention, camaraderie, and support she was receiving from the court, the doctors, and other professionals she forced into Stephanie's life.

This theory added new light to why Stephanie's mental health had been deteriorating at such a rapid pace. Fearing for the direction my wife was taking Stephanie, I filed a pro se petition for emergency relief. The crux of my petition alleged that Ms. Frederick was a Munchausen by Proxy mother who was inflicting severe emotional abuse on her daughter.

This time Judge Carpenter reacted by rescheduling the May 9, 2000 pre-hearing conference up to March 31, 2000. He also required that pre-hearing statements be filed 10 days prior to the hearing.

At the March 31 pre-hearing conference, we were advised by hearing officer Michael Reighard that Judge Carpenter wanted this custody issue ended and therefore scheduled hearings beginning April 5, 2000. We were both urged to get busy since we had numerous professional witnesses to be subpoenaed within 5 days.

Reacting to the alleged school threats by Stephanie, CYS entered my parents home on March 31, 2000, where Steph and I resided and asked to see the whereabouts of our guns and ammunition as Stephanie watched. When we had showed them our guns were stored in a closet and our ammunition was in my dresser drawer, they demanded that the ammunition be locked away from Stephanie's access.

On April 3, 2000, CYS returned to double check that the shells were locked away. Ms. Kelly was inquisitive as to what I planned to ask her on the witness stand during the upcoming hearings.

Because Judge Carpenter gave such short notice to prepare a case of this magnitude, I asked Attorney Speice if he would be willing to get involved with the case again. Seeming to of had first hand information or perhaps he was a mind reader, he quipped that he thinks Judge Carpenter wanted me and my wife without legal counsel.

On April 5, 2000, we had our first hearing of what became a series of six hearings. Before the hearing began, a lawyer by the name of Beverly Mears approached us. Ms. Mears conveyed that Judge Carpenter just appointed her this morning as Stephanie's guardian ad litem to assure that Stephanie's interests in the matter were adequately

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