Sloan v. Christianson

• Decision Date: 31 May 2012
• Docket Number: Docket No. Cum–11–413.
• Citation: 2012 ME 72,43 A.3d 978
• Parties: George W. SLOAN III v. Erin M. CHRISTIANSON.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

43 A.3d 978

2012 ME 72

George W. SLOAN III

v.Erin M. CHRISTIANSON.

Docket No. Cum–11–413.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Submitted on Briefs: April 26, 2012.

Decided: May 31, 2012.

Erin M. Christianson, appellant pro se.

Ardith Keef, Esq., Falmouth, for appellee George Sloan.

Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, LEVY, SILVER, MEAD, and JABAR, JJ.

ALEXANDER, J.

[¶ 1] Erin M. Christianson appeals from a judgment entered in the District Court (Portland, Kelly, J.) granting George W. Sloan III's motion to modify the parties' 2008 divorce judgment by awarding sole parental rights and responsibilities and primary residence of the parties' now six-year-old son to Sloan. Christianson argues on appeal that the court erred in (1) finding that Christianson coached her son to say that he is afraid of and has been physically and emotionally abused by Sloan; (2) finding that Christianson's claims that Sloan had abused her were not proved and suggesting that they were in fact fabrications; (3) awarding sole parental rights and responsibilities and primary residence of the son to Sloan; (4) finding the reports and testimony of the guardian ad litem credible despite alleged inconsistencies and inaccuracies in that evidence; and (5) failing to make thorough and accurate findings in the court's twenty-six-page judgment. We affirm the judgment.

I. CASE HISTORY

[¶ 2] This statement of the case history is taken from evidence in the record and findings stated in the trial court's judgment that are fully supported by evidence in the record. When, as here, a party to an appeal asserts that the trial court's findings are not supported by evidence in the record, we review the record, and reasonable inferences that may be drawn from the record, in the light most favorable to the trial court's judgment to determine if the findings are supportable by competent evidence. See Pelletier v. Pelletier, 2012 ME 15, ¶ 13, 36 A.3d 903;Pratt v. Spaulding, 2003 ME 56, ¶ 10, 822 A.2d 1183.

[¶ 3] After close to three years of marriage, George W. Sloan III filed a complaint for divorce from Erin M. Christianson in May 2007. The parties have one son, who was a year and a half old when the complaint was filed.

[¶ 4] On April 27, 2007, approximately one week before Sloan filed for divorce, Christianson had filed a complaint for protection from abuse on behalf of herself and the son. Christianson alleged in that complaint that Sloan had been emotionally and verbally abusive to Christianson for over five years, up to and including the day before she filed the complaint. Christianson affirmatively stated in the complaint that Sloan had never threatened her with a firearm.¹

[¶ 5] The court (Biddeford, Foster, J.) issued a temporary protection from abuse order the same day, which precluded Sloan from seeing the son. After a final hearing a little over two weeks later, the court dismissed Christianson's complaint, finding that Christianson had failed to prove that Sloan had abused her or the son.

[¶ 6] On June 12, 2007, in the then-pending divorce proceeding, the court ( Kelly, M.) issued an interim parental rights and responsibilities order, directing that the parties share parental rights and responsibilities and that the father have supervised visits with the son or such other visits as agreed to by the parties. A guardian ad litem was appointed for the son on the same day (and reappointed on July 29, 2010).

[¶ 7] Beginning August 7, 2007, the court ( Kelly, M.; MG Kennedy, J.) entered orders providing for increasing amounts of unsupervised and, ultimately, overnight visitation between Sloan and the son. Soon thereafter, Sloan had two unsupervised visits with the son that began and ended at a visitation center. The trial court found, and the evidence supports the trial court's finding that, after these visits, Christianson

demanded that [the son] be strip searched by the personnel at the visitation center for evidence of bruising after each visit. When the center refused to do so, she took [the son] to the emergency room after both visits to have him checked for bruising, and reported to the emergency room staff that [Sloan] had been abusive to [the son] in the past.

No evidence of bruising was reportedly found on the son on either occasion. This behavior so troubled the guardian that, in her September 20, 2007, report “she recommended that there be an immediate transfer of primary residence from [Christianson] to [Sloan] if the pattern of unnecessary emergency room visits were to continue.”

[¶ 8] On January 22, 2008, the court ( Driscoll, M.) entered an agreed divorce judgment awarding shared parental rights and responsibilities of the son to Sloan and Christianson, primary residence of the son to Christianson, and unsupervised contact with the son to Sloan on days when Sloan was not working. This effectively allowed the son to spend almost half of his time with Sloan.

[¶ 9] Christianson filed a motion to modify Sloan's contact with the son in October 2009. This motion included no allegation that Sloan was abusive to her or to the son.

[¶ 10] On November 20, 2009, Sloan filed the motion to modify that is at issue in this appeal. Sloan moved to modify the divorce judgment to obtain sole parental rights and responsibilities and primary residence of the son, alleging that a substantial change in circumstances had occurred in that Christianson had taken numerous steps to alienate the son from Sloan since the divorce judgment had been entered.

[¶ 11] On April 20, 2010, two days after the evidence demonstrated and the court found that the son had a “happy and relaxed” day at Sloan's house, Christianson filed a second complaint for protection from abuse on behalf of herself and the son against Sloan. In this complaint she alleged that the son had reported that Sloan had physically abused him, and she realleged incidents addressed in the 2007 protection from abuse complaint that the court had found not proved. Christianson also alleged for the first time that Sloan had threatened her with a firearm before and during their separation in April 2007, events she had not alleged in her 2007 complaint for protection from abuse or on her guardian intake form.

[¶ 12] The court (Portland, Powers, J.) entered a temporary protection from abuse order against Sloan the same day, precluding contact between Sloan and the son. Thereafter, Sloan had no contact with the son from April 18, 2010, until early 2011. The evidence indicated that throughout this period of no contact, the son's therapist and daycare provider observed that the son's fears and stress related to his father continued, if not intensified; that he spoke of times when his father had said or done increasingly abusive things; and his daycare worker observed that incidents of the son's misbehavior escalated at the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011, all despite the complete lack of contact between Sloan and the son for more than eight months.

[¶ 13] The temporary order for protection from abuse was modified in November 2010 to allow professionally supervised visits to begin. In order to obtain visitation with the son, Sloan had to agree to attend anger management counseling. After four sessions, Sloan's counselor reported that Sloan did not present with anger management issues.

[¶ 14] In January 2011, Sloan attempted to have a supervised visit with the son—his first visit with the son since the previous April. The visit had to be cancelled because, even though the son had had no contact with Sloan for over eight months, the son was apparently terror-stricken at the idea of seeing Sloan and refused to visit with him. The court found that, given that the son had had “absolutelyno contact” with Sloan since April 18, 2010, when the son had a “happy and relaxed” visit with Sloan, “it is highly improbable that [the son's] terror of his dad [at the January 2011 visit] is attributable to anything that his dad said or did.”

[¶ 15] In February 2011, Sloan was able to have one ten-minute supervised visit with the son, the only actual visit Sloan had had between May 2010 and July 2011. At that visit, the son again demonstrated “intense stress.” Christianson made no attempts to reassure or comfort him. Nonetheless, the son eventually had a short visit, which went well. Sloan gave the son a toy, which pleased the son, who thanked and smiled at Sloan. When Christianson returned to pick the son up, however, she purposefully left the toy at the visitation center after complaining “so vociferously to the visit supervisor ... that she had to be told ... that she should not talk in that way in [the son's] presence.” Evidence before the court indicated that a psychologist later opined that Christianson's action in ensuring that the son could not keep the toy that Sloan had given him may suggest that Christianson “will go to any length to foil the relationship between” the son and Sloan, “even if the result is the emotional abuse of the child.”

[¶ 16] After that one, short supervised visit, the trial court found that Christianson had taken the son to a pediatric clinic “reporting symptoms of a child's heart attack as a result of [the son's] visit with his dad.” The court found, as supported by the evidence, that Christianson “exploited the trip to the clinic to create the impression that [the son's] health was put at risk by his visit with his father.” After that clinic visit, the examining physician reported to the guardian that, despite Christianson's reports, the son's “ ‘heart rate was normal and there was no apparent medical issue at that visit. [The doctor] also reported that Ms. Christianson asked her to look at bruises on [the son's] leg and asked if the bruises could be documented since he just had a visit with his father.’ ” The doctor, however, reported to the guardian that the faint bruising apparent on the son's shins were typical for a child that age and that “none of [the bruises] looked recent enough to...