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The Custody Scam

Most scams, such as sub-prime mortgages and email scams, victimize adults. But custody scams victimize children. When government fails to protect children it throws open the doors to private contractors—lawyers and clinicians—who enrich themselves at the expense of children. (More about this child and the mother who tried to protect her appears below.)


Wednesday, December 2, 2009

City official kills wife and daughters, but not son



For the original link, click on the title above or go to this link:
http://www.fox4kc.com/wdaf-kahler-murders-lawyer-120109,0,7315787.story

Divorce Lawyer Not Surprised Man Killed Wife And Daughters, But Not Son
Stephanie Hockridge, FOX 4 NewsMeagan Kelleher, FOX 4 Web Producer

December 1, 2009

Ex-Mo. City Official Charged With Murder In Death of Wife, Teenage Daughters
COLUMBIA, Mo. - A former Columbia, Missouri city official has been charged with capital murder in the shootings of his wife and two teenage daughters in eastern Kansas. The divorce attorney for 46-year-old James Kraig Kahler's wife said the man had serious problems with women, going so far as to call him misogynistic.

While attorney Dan Pingelton admits Kahler has never been psychologically evaluated, he says all the signs were there.

"My first thoughts were, 'I hope that's not Karen and her children,'" Pingelton said. "Based on the case my second thought, because I heard there had been one survivor, I said, 'That survivor is going to be Sean.'"

Pingelton was representing Karen Kahler in her divorce when he learned of Saturday's shootings in Burlingame, Kansas. Police said Kahler shot and killed Karen and their two teenage girls, Emily and Lauren. Karen's grandmother was critically injured in the attack. The sole survivor was the couple's 10-year-old son, Sean, who was there but wasn't hurt.

"Ambushing your entire family, killing the three women and trying to kill the fourth woman and your son lives...he's a monster, an absolute monster," Pingelton said.

Pingelton said Kahler was a rigid and controlling individual, who emotionally abused the girls.

"We had a schedule set up for him to see the children, he declined to see his daughters," Pingelton said. "These were wonderful girls. I mean, wonderful people. And they did not take sides in this divorce."

Kahler was expected in court on Wednesday on a domestic assault charge stemming from an incident with his wife in March.

That case, along with the divorce, were warning signs to the Columbia city manager, who said he asked Kahler to resign from his position in September as director of Columbia's Water & Light Department because of his difficult family issues.

Still, Pingelton said Kahler knew it wasn't the end of the road and neither the assault charges nor the divorce needed to get ugly.

"He could have been an involved parent and moved on with his life," Pingelton said. "So, when you say, was the timing of it precipitous, no, it wasn't. He had been well counseled that this thing was going to work out all right."

Pingelton said the 10-year-old is staying with family in Kansas. In the meantime, Kahler is scheduled to be in court December 10 and bail has been set at $10 million.
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About the mother and child pictured at the top

On February 21, 1992, Rhode Island Family Court's Chief Judge Jeremiah Jeremiah gave this two-year-old to the sole custody and possession of her father despite his history of domestic violence and failure to pay child support. The father, a police officer, brought false charges against his ex-wife, first saying she was a drug addict. (Twenty-two random tests proved she was not.) Then he had her arrested for bank fraud, then for filing a false report, then for sexual abuse, then for kidnapping. None of his charges stuck.

The child remained with her father and stepmother until 2003, when, at 14, she finally realized that her mother had not been a drug addict. The teenager persuaded Judge Stephen Capineri to let her return to her mother. There she began working on the painful issues of lifelong coercion and deception--a tangled knot of guilt and rage. Most painful has been her father’s continuing refusal to let her visit two dearly loved half-sisters, whom she has not seen since 2003.

She is one of countless children in Rhode Island subjected to severe emotional and physical trauma by Family Court when it helps abusive parents to maintain control over their families after divorce. When she turned 18 in 2007, she gave the Parenting Project permission to publish her picture on behalf of all children who have been held hostage by Rhode Island custody scams.

We are using this blog to provide links to stories that will help concerned people, including government officials, become aware of this form of child abuse and legal abuse. We must work together to improve the courts' ability to recognize the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in victims of domestic abuse who are trying to protect their children.

PLEASE NOTE: If you are looking for the story of the removal of "Molly and Sara," please visit http://LittleHostages.blogspot.com


About the Author and the Cause

Parenting Project is a volunteer community service begun in 1996 at Mathewson Street United Methodist Church, Providence, RI, to focus on the needs of children at risk in Family Court custody cases. Our goal is to make Rhode Island's child protective system more effective, transparent, and accountable.

The Parenting Project coordinator, Anne Grant, a retired minister and former executive director of Rhode Island's largest shelter for battered women and their children, researches and writes about official actions that endanger children and the parents who try to protect them. She wrote a chapter on Rhode Island in Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody: Legal Strategies and Policy Issues, ed. Mo Therese Hannah, PhD, and Barry Goldstein, JD (Civic Research Institute, 2010).

Comments and corrections on anything written here may be sent in an email with no attachments to parentingproject@verizon.net

Find out more about the crisis in custody courts here:

www.centerforjudicialexcellence.org/PhotoExhibit.htm
www.child-justice.org
www.leadershipcouncil.org
www.evawintl.org provides forensic resources to end violence against women

about domestic violence in hague custody cases:
www.haguedv.org

more about domestic violence in law enforcement:
http://behindthebluewall.blogspot.com/



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