Rabbi Tzadok has raised some important questions regarding this custody case. I asked Beth Alexander to respond to his questions as well as to clarify and explain the facts. Her response should correct a number of misunderstandings that have been expressed by some of her supporters and opponents.I still stand by my original proposal. If Dr. Schlesinger has a psychiatric evaluation by a neutral expert it would end the dispute. If he gets a clear bill of mental health then I think Beth should stop her campaign and accept the court ruling. On the other hand if the evaluation indicates significant problems then Beth should get full custody including the option of returning to England with her children.
Guest post by Beth Alexander Schlesinger
Any legal battle is difficult. Compounded with custody issues, the battle is all the more trying. Navigating your way through a custody battle in a foreign country, in a foreign language, grappling a legal system and its workings that are totally alien and baffling is like being lost in a maze blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back and your feet bound together.
Not being a lawyer and without always having legal consultation to explain the nuances of the court decisions to me, I have had to try and make sense of a process that has so far not made any sense to a single lawyer or professional that has been involved in the case. The oft repeated terms, 'Kafkaesque, and 'the Wild West' are perhaps the closest way of describing the bizarre chain of events stretching back to 2010.
Through my own experiences and conversations with countless other parents going though their own hellish custody battles here in Austria, I have gained a crash course in the standard procedures that judges should follow and know that my case has been highly irregular by any stretch of the imagination.
Custody decisions are almost always based on a court commissioned psychological assessments on all parties involved: father, mother and child/ children. As was to be expected, the judge commissioned such an assessment back in 2010 after we first separated.
This was carried out by Dr Ulrike Willinger in 2010, a psychologist I later discovered has a direct connection to Dr Schlesinger. Not only did Dr Schlesinger work in the same hospital as her, but it later emerged that she is a close colleague of Dr Thau, the husband of Konstanze Thau, the High Court judge who intervened in the case on Dr Schlesinger's behalf without having any legal standing on the case.
By the time I found that out, it was too late. Willinger had already fabricated a diagnosis on me, falsely labelled the children as 'retarded' for 'not speaking 200 words when the children when 2 years old' and recommended the father for full custody. Even though the children were only 14 months and 16 months when she saw them and even though the High Court denied Dr Schlesinger unsupervised access.The judge accepted the highly dubious report in its entirety and awarded the father sole custody in July 2011.
I appealed. The Appeal Court reduced the father's custody to interim custody and sent the case back to the Lower Court for 'further investigation.' They stated that the father would have to prove:
1) his cooperation over an extended period of time (he promised to allow me generous contact to the children whenever I wanted, including long holidays to England with the children should he be awarded custody)
2) that he really is the better parent to manage the daily needs of the children
The reality is:
1) The very first thing the father did after being awarded custody was to break off all contact between me and the children. It was 8 weeks before I saw them again. Since then he has repeatedly cancelled my visits on short notice and without valid reasons.
2) He immediately hired Filipinos to look after the children almost full time while he works. He still has the Filipinos to this day.
For the past 2 years I have repeatedly applied to the court for the judge to commission another psychological assessment on both the children and the father.
I have presented extremely worrying evidence both about the father's violence and erratic/ irregular behaviour that clearly points to some kind of personality disorder. I have also expressed strong concerns about the children's physical and psychological health, including concerns about their missing teeth which the father has, to date, failed to account for.
However, instead of commissioning a new assessment on all involved parties as is standard legal procedure in a custody trial, the judge relied on the same fabricated and outdated report by Willinger to award the father full and final custody 2 years later, in 2013. She only commissioned an assessment on me which proved I was 100% healthy.
The Willinger report has now been discredited by 3 experts, making her initial custody recommendation and the decision that was based on it, completely worthless.
Although strictly speaking a psychiatric assessment on the father was never specifically instructed by the Appeal and Supreme Court, it is incomprehensible why the father has not not been psychologically assessed since the judge commissioned an assessment on me!
It is a basic legal requirement to assess the parent who is to be awarded full custody by an independent expert, especially in light of the evidence we presented about him.
Yet, the judge claimed she had enough evidence without commissioning a psychiatric assessment on him.
Not only does this illustrate the clear one-sidedness of the process but also represents gross negligence by the judge to disregard his attempt to commit me to a mental hospital on a fabricated diagnosis and his lies to the police that he was a psychiatrist when he was a trainee doctor with no experience in psychiatry whatsoever.
None of the testimony of his violence and erratic/ irrational behaviour reported by myself and other witnesses has ever been investigated by the courts.
Dr Schlesinger has vehemently refused every suggestion of an independent psychological assessment on both the children and himself. I had no problem being investigated since I was confident of the results which proved beyond any doubt that there is no mental illness and neither has there ever been. I have never in my life taken medication other than paracetamol for an occasional headache which my medical records can also prove.
If Dr Schlesinger genuinely has nothing to hide, why is he so afraid of being assessed or having the children assessed? What does he fear an independent expert may uncover?
1) Rabbi Biderman has made voluntary statements to the court (most notably in May 2012) under his own name (not from the kindergarten office), in support of the father. Why would he do this? He clearly HAS involved himself so it is impossible for him now to claim he is impartial.
2) If Rabbi Biderman’s position is justifiable, why are you defending him under anonymous comments on a blog? Why doesn’t he speak for himself and write a statement explaining his position as a guest blog post. This case has reached a large enough audience around the world with enough people posing genuine questions, for ‘Rabbi’ Biderman to be a man and answer some of them. His silence raises even more questions than the one’s posed to him here.
Until these points are addressed, we all are entirely justifiable in being angry at Rabbi Biderman and his Chabad colleagues for being silent in the face of such an injustice.