Anonymous Tip: Papers, Please!

A review series of Anonymous Tip, by Michael Farris

Pp. 148-155

Let’s see, where did we leave off? Oh yes, it’s the Tuesday hearing and it’s dashing lawyer Peter’s turn to question Dr. McGuire, the psychologist the CPS office hired to fake his report and say that Gwen is an unfit mother.

Let me start by noting something one of my readers pointed out last week. When Dr. McGuire used the existence of bruises as part of his reasoning for finding Gwen an unfit parent, Peter could have objected that Dr. McGuire was operating on hearsay, pointing out that McGuire hadn’t ever seen any bruises himself and arguing that McGuire ought to judge based only on what he had seen during his psychological evaluations—but Peter didn’t object. We’ll see this line of argument come up today, but by objecting during Gail’s questioning of McGuire, Peter could have hammered this point home one more time for the judge.

Okay, let’s get going! Peter questions as follows:

“What makes you think she [Gwen] was abused as a child?”

“She told me so.”

Peter paced across the courtroom with his hands clasped in front of him. “She told you so. Hmmm. What, precisely, did she say?”

“I don’t remember the exact words. I just remember making a note that she had also been abused by excessive spanking.”

“Do you have those notes with you?” Peter asked.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. They’re in my office.”

“Convenience, isn’t it? Dr. McGuire, do you have a fax machine in your office.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Your Honor,” Peter said, “I would like the good doctor here to be directed by the court to call his office and have these notes faxed here to the juvenile clerk at once. Can we have a five-minute recess for this purpose?”

Gail objects, calling this a “fishing expedition.” Peter responds, explaining that it is his position that Gwen never told Dr. McGuire that she was abused as a child. Judge Romer asks Dr. McGuire to step into his chambers and use his phone to call his office and ask them to fax the notes.

My secretary will just have to ‘discover’ the fax machine is broken, [McGuire] told himself while making his way to the judge’s chambers.

The judge himself takes McGuire back and hands him the phone.

McGuire paused, hoping the judge would leave so he could make the call in privacy. Romer just stood there, looking at McGuire, waiting for him to place his call.

With Judge Romer looking over his shoulder, McGuire asks his secretary (Nancy, in case you’re curious) to fax a copy of his notes from “the Gwen Landis interview.” Judge Romer interrupts, saying that he doesn’t want any more interruptions and asking McGuire to simply have the whole file faxed. McGuire tells the judge that that will be a lot of pages, but the judge tells him to fax the whole thing anyway.

“Nancy, fax the whole file,” McGuire said, rapidly trying to remember if he wrote anything in the file that would reveal the exact nature of his actions. “Fax it as soon as you can; I know how busy you are.”

“Tell her to fax it immediately,” Romer commanded with obvious irritation.

“Uh . . . Nancy, we’re going to need that immediately . . . Uh . . . 555-3458 . . . Yeah. Thanks. Bye.”

Well now that was awkward.

At ten minutes after ten, the court reconvened with Randall McGuire perched nervously on the edge of his chair.

In case anyone’s still curious about the timing here, that means we’re an hour and ten minutes into a hearing that Farris told us multiple times would begin at 10:00 but actually (and inexplicably) began at 9:00 when the day itself arrived.

So basically, to recap, Peter is trying to get McGuire to admit to the court that Gwen never told him she was abused as a child. If you remember, the reason McGuire put down that Gwen was abused is that Gwen said her parents spanked her in the same manner she spanks Casey. The entire premise of this rests on the assumption that Gwen spanks Casey in an abusive way, which Farris as author insists is not the case. (Some of my readers have disagreed, given that Gwen uses a ruler as an implement to spank Casey.) I’m not sure whether this sort of note-faxing ordinarily happens in the middle of hearings like this, but it does make for good drama!

While they’re waiting for the pages to be faxed in, Peter takes up another line of questioning. In short, he wants to get Dr. McGuire to admit that he sees spanking itself as abusive, or at least bad parenting. Peter thinks that if he can do this, he can invalidate McGuire’s testimony because, in the state of Washington, spanking is perfectly legal, and McGuire’s opposition to spanking as a practice would predispose him to approach Gwen negatively for using parenting practices that are perfectly legal. Gail objects to the line of questioning—after all, Peter flat out asks McGuire if he spanks his own children—but Judge Romer allows it.

I’m not going to transcribe the whole line of questioning. Here’s a sample:

“And isn’t it true that your decision to not spank your son reflects your own philosophy of what is right and what is wrong in parenting?”

“It’s not that simple,” McGuire countered. “I don’t believe that discipline is one-size-fits-all. What is good for my family might not be good for others and vice versa.”

At this point McGuire interrupts to tell Peter the fax is in. Peter says they’ll look at those in a moment.

“My question right now concerns the families coming to you for counsel. Is it true that you counsel families who come to you with concerns about discipline?”

“That is true. Hundreds of such families.”

“Fine,” Peter said, stopping behind his chair and grabbing the top with both hands. “Dr. McGuire, in these hundreds of cases have you ever counseled any family to begin spanking their children as the most effective means of solving their discipline problem?

“I’m not sure,” McGuire lied. “But it would be rare,” he said, getting a little bit closer to the truth.

“Dr. McGuire, when we strip it down to its bare essentials, you believe that all spanking of children is inappropriate, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say it that way,” McGuire said, trying to hedge his answer as best as possible.

“All right, doctor. How would you say it?”

McGuire stared straight ahead. Gathering his composure, he said in a warm self-assured voice, “Mr. Barron, I would put it this way: I simply believe there are better ways to achieve proper behavior in children than spanking them in most cases.”

At this point Peter stopped, “satisfied that he had made as many infest on the subject as possible.” I probably don’t know enough about how courts work to know whether Peter did indeed make any headway with this line of questioning, but I would point out that McGuire never said he considered spanking abusive, just that it is less effective than other methods of parenting.

Now we turn to the faxed files. The courtroom clerk labels the file “Respondent’s Exhibit 1” and hands it to Peter. Peter gives the file to “the increasingly nervous psychologist,” aka McGuire. Remember that McGuire is worried not about what he wrote about Gwen’s background but rather that the file may mention that he took a bribe from CPS to make Gwen look as bad as possible. McGuire “took a great deal of time looking through the document,” ostensibly to make sure everything was there but in reality to check for mentions of the secret arrangements. Satisfied at last that there was no mention of the deal, McGuire told Peter the file was complete.

“Dr. McGuire, you told us earlier that you could not remember the exact words Gwen Landis used to lead you to your conclusion that she had been abused as a child. Having looked at your notes, can you now tell us more precisely what she said on this subject?”

“Yes, what I wrote was this: ‘Dad spanked G in similar manner.'”

“I see—a similar manner. Why did this statement make you think that Gwen had been abused by her parents—or more precisely, by her father?”

“I was, of course, working with the history of events supplied to me by Child Protective Services. CPS revealed a history of Gwen spanking Casey in a manner that left bruises. . . . ”

“I see,” Peter said. “Let me see if I understand you correctly. CPS told you that Gwen bruised Case. Gwen told you that she spanked Casey in a manner similar to the manner she had been spanked by her father in childhood. You added those two things together and reached your conclusion about a cycle of abuse. Is that right?”

McGuire brightened. “That’s pretty close to my process of reasoning.”

“Dr. McGuire, what happens to your analysis if you remove the bruises CPS claims they saw. If there were no bruises, doesn’t your entire analysis about the cycle of abuse crumble? Without verification of the bruises, your theory of abuse simply vanishes, doesn’t it?”

McGuire was scrambling.

All of this is pretty predictable. McGuire says he’s worked with CPS many times and they have always been very reliable. He says he feels he is “on solid ground” to accept their word that there were bruises. Peter keeps pushing for an admission, but McGuire keeps hedging. “I refuse to make an assumption that CPS professionals would make an error of that magnitude,” he says, and by now even Judge Romer is getting annoyed. Romer interrupts, saying that Peter has made his point. Peter says he is finished with questioning, and judge Romer asks Gail if there will be any redirect.

“Just one question,” Willet said. “Dr. McGuire, were there any other findings in your reports that support your conclusion Mrs. Landis abuses her daughter?”

“Yes, indeed. Her anger, her frustrations, and Casey’s extreme fears all add up to support this theory. Indeed it is a perfect match.”

“That’s all, Your Honor,” Willet said.

Judge Romer looked at Peter. “Any brief recross, Mr. Barron?”

“Just one question. Dr. McGuire, all these symptoms are also consistent with a family that has been severely traumatized by the separation of a mother from her daughter, aren’t they?”

“There certainly could be some trauma associated with such a separation, but I don’t believe that the degree of emotional response can be adequately explained by a few days of separation.”

“Dr. McGuire, how would you feel if a court took your child away from you for a few days and falsely accused you of child abuse?”

“Objection,” Willet said loudly.

“Sustained.”

But Peter had made his point. The judge, who was also a father, understood completely.

The judge excuses the witness and Peter asks the court to retain the file faxed from McGuire’s office. The judge agrees, and McGuire glares at Peter as he hands over the file. Peter, in contrast, smiles. Of course.

Gail tells the judge that she has no more witnesses to call, and reminds him that they rely on their affidavits and testimony from the previous hearing. In other words, Gail opts not to ask Donna to testify again, given that she testified at length the previous week and they have decided to keep that as part of the record (or however the legal terminology works—that was several pages ago and I’ve forgotten).

I just flipped ahead. We have either two or three more weeks on the trial, and then the next week I’ll cover the outcome. Peter is going to question Rita (the second social worker), Officer Donahue, Dr. Schram, and Gordon. He’s going to look for inconsistencies between what Rita says and what Donna said in the hearing the previous week and get Officer Donahue to report what he said earlier about thinking there were no bruises based on how the social workers acted, he’s going to rely on Dr. Schram to find other ways to explain away Gwen’s anger and Casey’s fear, and he’s going to rely on Gordon to argue that Gwen is a good mother.

I know some readers have asked me if I can make these segments longer, but writing all this up takes time, and time is a bit of a precious commodity in my life right now. Sorry!

I feel like this week’s segment has been heavy on the quoting and description and low on the analysis. But this week’s section is one where where a lot happened, but in very predictable ways. Peter got McGuire to admit that much of his analysis rests on the assumption of bruises, and he gets him to admit that he doesn’t think spanking is optimal parenting across the board. But I actually don’t think he gains as much here as he thinks he does.

Farris tells us that when Romer got annoyed, he was annoyed at McGuire’s evasiveness even as he was “sympathetic with the doctor’s reliance on the veracity of CPS workers.” Romer does not have any reason to suspect that Donna is lying, and Peter’s success in this line of questioning with McGuire relies on him convincing the judge of just that. In some sense, this line of questioning is simply setup that will bear fruit later, but only if Peter is successful in other lines of questioning (most notably, in his questioning of Rita and Officer Donahue).

I really want to know why Farris chose the premise for this book that he did. I feel that this book would have been a more effective piece of propaganda if he could have pitted a good parent against a well-meaning social worker, showing how honest misunderstandings or simple mistakes can lead to serious consequences. That would have been a frightening message. This isn’t, because the entire premise, from initiating “Code B” to bribing the psychologist, comes across not as feasible but as cartoonish.

Also, for those who are curious, I flipped back to McGuire’s meting with Blackburn, and no, McGuire does not know that there are no bruises. Blackburn told him that CPS had seen bruises but that Gwen denied it, and that’s it. McGuire was asked to “spin” his report, but that’s it.