Anonymous Tip: What’s in a Lie

A Review Series of Anonymous Tip, by Michael Farris

Pp. 145-148

Shall we return to the most confusing hearing ever included in a work of fiction? Here is where we left off:

Randall McGuire adjusted his tortoise-shell glasses as he walked to the witness stand.

Dr. McGuire is sworn in and Gail asks him to tell the court about his psychological examinations of Gwen and Casey. Dr. McGuire says he interviewed the individually and performed the Minnesota Multiphase Personality Inventory (MMPI) on both of them. Gail continues her line of questioning.

“What is this test designed to reveal?”

“The MMPI gives reliable insight into basic personality traits such as truthfulness, anxiety, self-confidence, and so on.”

“And what did the MMPI reveal about Gwen Landis?”

“Gwen is a sensitive, caring individual who has internalized a great deal of anxiety, frustration, and bitterness. These are the conclusions relative to my overall diagnosis.”

“What did the MMPI reveal as to her truthfulness?”

And then there’s this very odd paragraph:

“The results were inconclusive,” McGuire answered with a concerned expression. “Gwen’s original scores were quite clear as to her veracity.” But McGuire knew three answers to change on the test to change the results. Six changed answers would have made Gwen out to be a serious liar.

I’ve read and reread this bit and my conclusion is that the second set of quotation marks only makes sense as a typo. Still, at least we know that Dr. McGuire did more than trump up his written report—he also tampered with Gwen’s MMPI results.

Dr. McGuire tells Gail he performed the “draw-a-person test” on Casey and gave her the Piers-Harris Self-Concept assessment.

“What did these tests reveal?”

“Casey is quite a normal little girl in almost every aspect. Almost every aspect except one.”

“What is that one area of exception?” Willet asked.

“Fear. Casey exhibits an extraordinarily high level of fear.”

“Did your clinical interview corroborate these assessment results?”

“Absolutely. Casey is a wonderful little girl, but she is gripped in fear that is quite detrimental to her well-being.”

“Were you able to ascertain the cause of the fear?”

“Casey is afraid of her mother,” McGuire said.

Peter objects, calling McGuire’s answer “non-responsive” and Judge Romer asks Gail to rephrase the question. Gail does so and Dr. McGuire explains how he determined the cause of Casey’s fear—“I employed the standard I believe you lawyers call ‘reasonable medical certainty'”—and then goes into more detail about Casey’s fear.

“It is my professional opinion that the cause of Casey’s fear is her mother. Not her and her mother’s relationship in general. In general terms, their relationship is quite positive. But there is a pathological aspect to the relationship—the area of discipline.

“There are four critical facts which lead me to this conclusion. First, Casey’s interview revealed clear fear of discipline. Second, the CPS professional observed bruises. Third, Gwen admitted that her parents spanked her in a similar fashion. Fourth, Gwen revealed a great deal of bitterness and anger toward her ex-husband and frustration with her perception that he does not give her proper financial support. It appears that her frustrations, as well as her own experience as an abused child, lead Gwen to spank Casey in an improper fashion.”

Let’s look at Dr. McGuire’s reasons. The second one is, as we know, false—Donna and Rita did not observe any bruises. The third is not technically false, but its meaning changes when we take into account that there were no bruises. The fourth, that Gwen is angry with Gordon, relates less directly to the issue of Casey’s discipline. But now I want to consider the first item on Dr. McGuire’s list.

Farris has not taken time to set up any subterfuge on this first point—that Casey has a clear fear of discipline—and it is not something that would likely be caused by the CPS visit, like Casey’s nightmares (which Dr. McGuire does not appear to have any knowledge of). I would posit that Farris has not set up any subterfuge in this area because Farris does not actually see a problem with this item. I suspect, given what I have read of his writing on the topic of child discipline, that he thinks children should be afraid of being spanked. I don’t think he realizes the ways this fear can be transferred from the spanking itself onto the parent.

Anyway, we’ve got more testimony to get to, so we’d better keep going!

Gail asks Dr. McGuire what he recommends, and he responds as follows:

“Let me emphasize that I think their relationship is basically sound and I strongly recommend therapy that I believe will yield a very positive result. But it is simply far too dangerous for Casey to be in her mother’s care until this cycle of abuse that appears to have been going on, perhaps for generations, is arrested,” McGuire said.

. . .

“I believe that five to six months of foster care will be necessary to achieve the desired results. If she cooperates under my care, I believe that we can make the necessary gains on this timetable. If she doesn’t cooperate, then it may take a year or more.

Farris wants us to see McGuire’s recommendations as completely ridiculous. He wants us to see Gwen as a perfectly good mother caught up in a hellish court battle. But while I absolutely condemn Donna’s lies and the forgery of her report, and Blackburn’s bribing of Dr. McGuire, my views of Gwen are more complicated.

I do think Gwen spanks inappropriately. Now yes, I think all spanking is inappropriate, but I would point out that what Gwen does is far more than the “swat if she runs in the road” method many people think of when using the term “spanking.” Indeed, her method makes discipline punitive rather than a cooperative learning process and injects fear into the parent-child relationship in an extremely problematic way. But more concerning, honestly, is Gwen’s instability—she literally packed her bags, wrote letters to her parents and her lawyer, and staked out the foster parents’ home preparing to snatch Casey.

I don’t know that there is enough going on here to warrant removing Casey from the home, and I know that in many cases social services works with parents to help them improve their parenting and provide them with support services while the child remains in the home. My point, though, is that there are things going on here that I find concerning. Farris seems to think he has presented an open-and-shut case of a good parent caught up in a bad system, but the actual picture he has painted is not that simple.

And there I go getting on a tangent again. At this rate we’ll never finish Dr. McGuire’s testimony! Anyway, at this point Gail turns the witness over to Peter. Actually, hang on a sec. I just flipped ahead and this goes on for seven more pages. I’m going to call it a day and pick up with Peter questioning Dr. McGuire next week. I’ll close with this bit:

Willet had walked McGuire through a flawless performance. McGuire congratulated himself on mixing just a bare minimum number of lies with heavy doses of the truth to achieve the desired result.

I’m actually really curious what the lies are, outside of the MMPI results. After all, Gwen does spank Casey in a way that would create fear of discipline and Dr. McGuire doesn’t know that there weren’t bruises. This means that when Gwen said her parents spanked her in the same way she spanks Casey, Dr. McGuire had every reason to conclude that Gwen was abused. Finally, Gwen is frustrated with Gordon and upset with him for failing to pay child support. The only lie I see in the picture Dr. McGuire lays out here is that there were no bruises, and Dr. McGuire does not know that.

Peter stood and grasped the back of his chair.

I hope you’re all on the edge of your seats! To be continued next week . . .