Restricted Visitation

My client's ex-husband had abused her child, Adele, from a first marrige continuously throughout their marriage.  It was one of the prime reasons for the divorce.   At the time of the divorce, my client, Barbara Mandell and her ex-husband, David Duke Mandrell, had two children who were ages 3 and 4 at the time of the divorce. 

Mr. Mandrell would be transferred by his employer from time to time but always when he worked in the State of Illinois he ended up stalking Barbara.  She had to obtain 3 Orders of Protection against him to keep him away from herself.  Eight years later, Barbara remarried and is now known as Barbara Mandell Antonio Lopez de la Santa Ana.  David had decided that he could not reconcile with Barbara and decided to look for his own new wife. 

Unfortunately, David's choice in women and stepmothers was not very good.  The children immediately rebelled against the unfairness of their stepmother giving them chores while their stepbrothers and stepsisters sat around watching T.V., playing video games and working on the computer.  During visitation with their father, Barbara's children had to sweep the sidewalk, pick weeds and shovel snow in the winter time.  (It was almost something out of Charles Dickens how cruel this stepmother was.)  

At that point, Barbara came to me and decided that she wanted to do a Petition To Restrict Visitation to keep the children away from the stepmother.  Something about the Petition must have unhinged David's psyche and he actually chased the children out of the Lake Zurich library one night.  When the Lake Zurich police were called to assist, David was able to regale them with stories of the Gulf War (he was a Gulf War veteran) and the police thought they could not arrest such a macho warrior.  

Barbara then tried self help to keep her childen away from David and his new wife, Daisey Mae.  However, the Lake Zurich Police then charged her with visitation interference.  Additionally, and sort of unbelievable, the type of unbelievable that let you know that fact is stranger than fiction, the oldest daughter, who had been abused by David throughout the time of the marriage of her mother and David, went to live with David and Daisey Mae.  She was lured by Daisey Mae's oldest son, Clem, who was 27 years old and was a habitual drunk.  However, somehow being 18, means it is very cool to have a 27-year old drunk as your boyfriend.  

Shortly thereafter, David, filled with his new found confidence that he could do no wrong, came to pick up the children to take them to eat during his weekday visitation.  During this time, the children wanted to go to Subway's while David wanted to go to McDonald's.  He got mad when the children refused to give them their food orders from McDonald's and insisted on going to Subway.  He then took them to the Lake Zurich Police Department (his usual place for punishment during weekly midweek visitation in order to punish the kids so that they could not do their homework at the Library, nor eat).  

As his 12-year old daughter tried to get out of the pick-up truck, he jumped out of his pick-up truck, and slammed the door on her leg.  The 12-year old girl cried out. The 11-year old boy sitting in the backseat said "Dad, please don't."  Almost right after he said that David slammed the door a second time on his daughter's leg. Instinctively, David went into the Lake Zurich Police Station and told the Watch Commander that he had had some problems with his children and he had mistakenly closed the door on his daughter's leg.  When the children appeared, with the younger brother trying to hold up his sister as she limped to the station door, they tried to get someone to listen to their actual story.  However, they were told to calm down and that they would call their mother.  

The next day, Barbara filed for an Order of Protection on behalf of the children.  At the Plenary Hearing on the Order of Protection, the Judge became visibly angry when hearing the 12-year old's story of what happened on the fateful night.  As a result, he ordered supervised therapeutic visitation between the children and their father.  

During the course of therapeutic visitation, David tried to woo the children with presents, brought birthday cakes to the visitation and actually tried to get the children to stop talking about the two incidents (the library incident and the police station parking lot incident) at all.  It was also during this time that another aspect of the evil stepmother's life came to light.  Apparently, her own daughter, Ellie Mae had turned 18 and had graduated from high school.  As Daisey Mae was no longer able to get child support, she sent her daughter Ellie Mae to live with her father, Jedd Clampett. 

After approximately one year, the therapeutic supervisor then communicated with the childrens' therapists (who had been Court Ordered shortly after my office had filed a Petition For Restricted Visitation on behalf of the children).  The professionals came to a consensus that David's continuing visitation with the children, whether in a supervised therapeutic session, or supervised by someone else, or on a one-on-one basis, was not in the best interest of the children.  At that point, the therapeutic supervisor gave his opinion to the childrens' representative who presented this to the Court.  

The result was that David Duke Mandrell no longer has any visitation with his children other than the ability to write a letter to the children, from time to time, which will then be reviewed by the children along with their therapist and, at some point, in the future, there may be a continuation of the therapeutic visitation.