Anonymous Tip: The Smoking Gun(s)?

A Review Series of Anonymous Tip, by Michael Farris

Pp. 155-159

It’s the Tuesday hearing—where the judge will decide whether four-year-old Casey should be returned to her mother, Gwen—and it is now Peter’s turn to call witnesses. He starts by calling Rita Coballo, the second social worker present during Casey’s strip search. Peter asks Rita whether she saw the bruises mentioned in Donna’s report, and Rita says she did.

“Ms. Coballo, can you describe the location, color, and nature of these ‘fading bruises’?”

Coballo froze. “They were on the lower back, just above the buttocks, and on the buttocks themselves.”

“Was there a greater prominence on one side or the other?”

“No, not really.”

“Ms. Coballo, are you sure of your description of these bruises?”

“Yes, I am virtually certain, but I do see a lot of bruises.”

This is a problem, because it contradicts what Donna said at the original hearing:

“Where were they located?”

“On her buttocks.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“On the lower half of the buttocks, with a prominence of greater bruising on the left-hand side.”

“Are you sure you are not mixing this up with some other case?”

“I am absolutely certain of what I have told you.”

On some level this seems like a smoking gun. However, Donna and Rita do see a lot of bruises, and when caught in their lie (which is what it is) they could always claim they got mixed up. Would a judge go for that? How much leeway would he give for that sort of thing? Either way, Donna is a really lousy schemer if she didn’t even think of making sure Rita’s testimony regarding the bruises would line up with hers the previous week.

Peter does not point out the inconsistency here at this point (I’m honestly not sure why), but we can only imagine that he will do so later in the hearing. Of course the real problem here is that there were no pictures (which isn’t surprising, given that neither Donna nor Rita actually saw bruises). So let’s return to the hearing:

“Speaking of seeing a lot of bruises, isn’t it your policy at CPS to take photographs of bruises?”

“Yes. We usually do.”

“Was that done in this case?”

“No, I don’t believe so.”

“Why not?” Peter asked.

“I believe we simply forgot the camera. Human error.”

“Human error, huh? I see. How often does that happen?”

“Not often. ‘We’re careful to follow policies and regulations.”

I looked back to the first hearing the previous week and didn’t find any mention of pictures or the camera, so I don’t think anything is being contradicted here. I really wish I had this book as an ebook and could just search the text for the word to be sure. Still, this may be a setup for future discussion of the absent camera—I’ve read this book before, but that was over ten years ago, so my memory is a bit fragmentary here. I’m not sure what Peter gained with this line of questioning except to remind the judge that regular protocol was not followed during the investigation.

And with that, Peter is done questioning Rita. Gail declines her right to ask questions of Rita too, and Peter calls Officer Donahue. Judge Romer expresses gratitude that things are moving a bit faster now, and Peter assures him that his questioning of Officer Donahue will be just as quick.

“[D]id you see any bruises on Casey?”

“No, I did not. I saw the little girl. But she was fully clothed when I saw her.”

“Did you hear the CPS workers say anything about bruises?”

“Objection. Mr. Barron is asking for obvious hearsay,” Willet said.

“Your honor, I am not seeking the information for the truth of the statement.”

“The objection is overruled.”

“Let me restate the question. Did you hear the CPS workers say anything about bruises?”

“No, not directly.”

“Did they say anything indirectly related to the subject of bruises?”

Donahue remembered his earlier discussion with Peter. “Oh, yeah. At the time, I didn’t think they found any bruises, because the lead worker, this lady here—” Donahue said, pointing at Donna Corliss, “she told Mrs. Landis she would close the case if she would answer some questions.”

“I object,” Willet cried out. “The officer can testify to what he heard. The inferences he draws from that are pure speculation.”

“Overruled,” the judge said, not because of any particular rule of evidence but because he was interested in the testimony.

Peter goes on:

“Corporal Donahue, have you accompanied CPS workers on other such occasions?”

“Yes, many, many times,” Donahue said, shaking his head.

“Have you ever heard a CPS worker say anything about dismissing a case when they had found bruises?”

“No. And That’s the reason I didn’t think they had found any bruises. I they had found bruises, it would be very strange for them to say anything about closing the case.”

Farris tells us that “Willet knew she had been wounded.” This is one point where I wish I knew more about both CPS procedure and legal procedure. For example, are CPS workers allowed to lie to the parents they are investigating? I know that police officers lie to people all the time in crime shows on TV, and I believe (though again, I wish I knew more) that they are allowed to do so in the real world as well. What about CPS workers? Can they lie to a parent if they think it will make them more cooperative?

Mind you, I am not making a judgement on whether CPS workers should be able to lie. The idea makes me pretty nervous (as does the police’ ability to lie) and I’d have to hear some pretty serious evidence in favor of it to be convinced that it’s worth allowing. I’m not making a value judgement, I’m simply curious whether Donna could just come back and say of course she told Gwen that, she had just seen some pretty serious bruises and was trying to make her cooperate with further questions in order to get an admission that she uses corporal punishment. As it is, everyone seems to think this is a slam dunk.

Judge Romer calls for a fifteen minute recess and says court will reconvene at 11:00.

Gwen reached over and squeezed Peter’s hand. It was obvious to her that he had scored well with Officer Donahue and she was greatly heartened. He smiled at her, stood and said, “He was great, wasn’t he? Couldn’t be better if I had written him a script. But it’s not over yet.

I want to mention two more things before I close this installment (we’ll turn to Dr. Schram’s testimony next week). These questions may speak to my limited knowledge of legal procedure and CPS policy, but I thought I’d bring them up anyway. If you’re not already reading the comments on the posts in this series, you should be, because a fair number of my readers are knowledgeable in one or both of these areas, and what they have to add is often very helpful to understanding both what is going on here and where this book fails to make sense.

Anyway, first, this happens when Peter starts questioning Rita:

“You accompanied Ms. Corliss here,” Peter said, gesturing toward her co-worker seated beside Ms. Willet, “on May 12, when the examination of Casey took place at the Landis home, didn’t you?”

“Objection. Leading question,” Willet called out.

“Overruled. Ms. Coballo works for the prosecuting agency; she is obviously called as an adverse witness, which entitles Mr. Barron to ask leading questions,” Romer said.

How is that a leading question? Peter simply asks Rita if she was there for Casey’s examination. In the previous hearing, lawyer Bill Walinski asked Donna what she saw after she “ripped the clothes off this terrified four-year-old girl,” and in that case I perfectly understand Gail’s objection. But here? I’m not seeing what is “leading” about Peter’s question. Can someone help me out? I am also interested in knowing more about the statement that lawyers are allowed to ask leading questions of adverse witnesses, but not (apparently) of their own witnesses. 

And here’s the second situation, which occurred while Peter was questioning Officer Donahue and asking specifically about the strip search:

“Where was Mrs. Landis?”

“She was in the living room with me.”

“Why was she there rather than in the bedroom with her daughter?”

“The CPS workers did not want her in there. My assignment was to keep her away from their investigation.”

What I’m not sure of here is why Peter feels the need to ask why Gwen was not right next to Casey while she is strip searched. Is this important? Is it customary for the parent to be in the room while a strip search takes place? I obviously have some very serious problems with the way Donna and Rita carried out their strip search—Casey was screaming and both social workers took a very negative and dehumanizing approach toward her, calling her things like a “little rat”—but I can see the value in things like questioning a child apart from their parents.

Seriously, outside of the fact that CPS is making things up and bribing people to testify their way, there were still some serious missteps here, the most prominent being the strip search. In an ideal world, Donna would never have faked her report, Casey would never have been removed from the home, and Gwen would use what happened to bring awareness to Donna and Rita’s damaging strip search practices; her efforts as a squeaky wheel would bring departmental change and result in new procedures and more accountability. But rather than seeing the issue in terms of harm done to Casey, Gwen sees it in terms of harm done to her.

Actually, this is fairly par for the course for the author, Michael Farris, and his organization, HSLDA. Farris routinely calls attention to cases where (he believes) CPS has overstepped, but he frames it in terms of parents’ rights, not children’s rights.

Edited to add a comment from a reader as follows:

Re lying to parents: IME outright lying is rare, but you might not tell the entire truth at all times. Social workers have ongoing involvement, so you don’t want to totally break trust. For safety, though, you might not mention that an apprehension is planned until the child is in a safe place. I remember one case (custody, not child protection) where the judge’s office called us and asked if the child was with my client, and said that the judgment wouldn’t be released until then. So yes, I knew that the judgment would be in my client’s favor, but I couldn’t let the other side know all the details about that call. I had to make up an excuse to get the child back and get everybody into court, and pretend that I didn’t know what the outcome was going to be. [The issue was that the judge was afraid of a murder-suicide scenario, and wanted mom to adjust to loss of custody and get a psychiatric evaluation before seeing the child again.] In this case, however, Donna wouldn’t need to lie if she had actually seen bruises, because they would have had grounds to take Casey into foster care, or at least to have her evaluated immediately by a child abuse team at the hospital. You don’t leave an abused child in the home with the abuser until a hearing.

Between the lack of photographs (why not send Rita to get the camera so they can take pictures) and the fact that Donna and Rita didn’t remove Casey that day (as would be typical in such a case) or take her to be evaluated by a medical professional (again, as is typical), the case against Gwen seems fairly weak. But Good Lawyer ™ Peter isn’t hammering on any of those points.