Stoufflet v. Stoufflet, No. 03-08-00003-CV (Tex. App. 3/20/2009)
| Decision Date | 20 March 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-08-00003-CV.,03-08-00003-CV. |
| Parties | ANNA STOUFFLET, Appellant, v. PAUL E. STOUFFLET, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Appeal from the District Court of Travis County, 250th Judicial District, No. D-1-FM-06-003429, Honorable Jon N. Wisser, Judge Presiding.
Affirmed.
Before Justices PATTERSON, WALDROP and HENSON.
Appellant Anna Stoufflet appeals from the trial court's final divorce decree. The appellant challenges those portions of the divorce decree regarding custody and control of the couple's three children, control of the children's custodial investment accounts, the use of certain reunification services, child support, health insurance costs, division of the marital estate, spousal maintenance, and access to the children's medical records. She also argues that the court erred in appointing and relying on the testimony of the guardian ad litem. Because we hold that there is no error in the divorce decree and that the trial court did not err in appointing and relying on the testimony of the guardian ad litem, we affirm the trial court's judgment.
Anna Stoufflet and Appellee Paul Stoufflet were married for seventeen years. They have three minor children—a daughter, N.S., now age 15, and two sons, D.S., now age 12, and A.S., now age 9. Anna and Paul separated on July 12, 2006.1 The circumstances surrounding their separation are largely disputed. Anna accuses Paul of repeatedly abusing the children for several years and claims that the children told her of this abuse immediately prior to the separation and that they continued to recover memories of abuse in the weeks and months following the separation. Paul argues that Anna suffers from paranoid delusions that led her to falsely believe he abused the children and to plant false memories of this abuse in the children.
According to Anna, she left Paul after discovering that D.S., then age 9, had viewed sadomasochistic pornography on a laptop given to him by Paul. Anna testified that she believes that Paul showed the pornography to D.S. Anna also claims to have found sadomasochistic pornography and pornography involving bestiality on the family's desktop computer. Paul admits to viewing sadomasochistic pornography himself, but denies deliberately showing pornography of any kind to his son and denies seeking out any pornography involving bestiality. Paul testified that while he viewed pornography online from his laptop, he never knowingly saved any of it to his computer and never viewed pornography on the family desktop. According to Paul, when he purchased a new laptop in June 2006, he gave the old laptop to D.S. Paul testified that before doing so, he created a new profile for D.S. and archived his own profile in a deleted user's folder. Paul admitted that D.S. must have found pornographic images in this archived folder and testified, "In retrospect, I believe there were files stored in caches deep and I did not know about them, and I'm eternally regretful of that." After discovering the pornography, Anna took D.S.'s laptop to a data recovery specialist who testified to finding 22,000 hits for the words "torture" or "bondage" and finding several sadomasochistic images in the deleted user folder. The data recovery specialist testified that, based on where the files were located, it is conceivable that an ordinary computer user would have believed that all of the images he found were deleted or never stored in the computer's memory.
Anna and Paul separated soon after she discovered the pornography. In the weeks and months following the separation, the children and Anna made several allegations of prior physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by Paul. The allegations are many and varied, including that Paul choked N.S. several times; pushed, hit, and kicked all three of the children regularly; sexually abused D.S. and A.S.; physically and sexually abused family pets in front of the children; drugged and sexually abused Anna while she was unconscious; and tortured and killed two young boys in front of D.S., N.S., and their paternal grandmother.2 Paul denies all of the allegations of abuse.
Because of the serious nature of the allegations, each of the children, as well as Anna and Paul, have undergone psychological and psychiatric testing. Each child saw separate psychotherapists and they shared a single psychiatrist who prescribed and monitored their psychiatric medications.3 Anna and Paul also participated in psychotherapy. In addition, the family members were examined by a forensic psychiatrist, a psychologist specializing in conservatorship evaluations (hereinafter "the conservatorship psychologist"), and a psychologist specializing in family reunification (hereinafter "the reunification psychologist").
The bulk of the testimony at trial came from the various mental health professionals. The majority of the therapists came to the conclusion that the children were not abused and that they were coached by their mother to make the allegations, although the children's treating psychiatrist disagreed, concluding that the children had in fact been abused by their father.
N.S. made various outcries to her therapists alleging that her father had abused her and her siblings. Both the conservatorship psychologist and her treating psychotherapist noted that N.S. seemed more concerned about the alleged abuse of her siblings than herself. The conservatorship psychologist testified that N.S.'s emotional affect did not match the tenor of her allegations. He did, however, note that her story was consistent.
D.S. initially alleged physical abuse—that he was kicked, punched, and thrown down the stairs. The severity of his allegations increased over time, and he eventually alleged that he was sexually molested and that he witnessed his father torture and kill two young children. Both the conservatorship psychologist and his treating psychotherapist testified that D.S.'s stories of abuse were internally inconsistent and that his emotional affect was not congruent with his allegations. The conservatorship psychologist posited that D.S. might be having nightmares based on the sadomasochistic pornography he viewed, and that D.S. was confusing the nightmares with actual memories. His psychotherapist testified that most of the allegations of abuse came not during therapy, but during the evenings after therapy, when either D.S. or Anna would call and say that D.S. had remembered something new.
According to the conservatorship psychologist, A.S.'s stories were inconsistent, his emotional affect did not match his allegations, and he would often preface his statements with "Mom told me to say this" or something similar. A.S.'s therapist testified that A.S. had largely withdrawn from the original allegations and chose not to talk about them during therapy. His therapist testified that, when asked about the allegations, he would often say he could not remember. His therapist further testified that A.S. had not told her any of the later allegations of sexual abuse that were mentioned by the family's other therapists and that, during play therapy, A.S. did not exhibit any of the symptoms of a child who had been sexually abused. A.S.'s therapist had heard all of the children's initial outcries and she testified that, in her opinion, the older two children believed their own allegations, while A.S. was mainly feeling "reverberation from the two oldest."4
All three children were referred by their psychotherapists to the same psychiatrist for possible medication. Unlike the other mental health professionals, the children's psychiatrist testified that she did not see any evidence that Anna had coached the children or planted the allegations of abuse in their heads. Their psychiatrist further testified that the children's affect matched their allegations and that their allegations had remained consistent.5
Anna was diagnosed with paranoid delusions by her treating psychologist, the conservatorship psychologist, and the forensic psychiatrist.6 Her treating psychologist also diagnosed Anna with severe depression, which he noted can cause delusions. In addition to the allegations of abuse by Paul, which the forensic psychiatrist called "rather fantastical," over the course of the separation Anna recovered memories of sexual abuse by her own father and then recanted from those allegations. All three professionals noted that Anna's delusions would inhibit her ability to help the children reunify with their father. The children's psychiatrist again disagreed with the other mental health professionals. While she did not examine or treat Anna, she reviewed the forensic psychiatrist's report and testified that she believed that his diagnosis was not supported by Anna's test results, and was instead based solely on collateral evidence.7
Paul was diagnosed with low-level depression, for which he was being treated by a psychotherapist. All of the mental health professionals expressed concern about Paul's proclivity for viewing sadomasochistic pornography. The conservatorship psychologist noted that such a proclivity was "consistent with intrafamilial child sexual offenders," but that Paul "does not display the majority of the characteristics commonly observed in intrafamilial child sexual offenders or child abusers." Paul's psychotherapist testified that while they focused mainly on Paul's depression, he had spoken with Paul about the pornography and believed that Paul had stopped viewing pornography and that as long as Paul was able to refrain from viewing it, nothing more needed to be done.
The children's outcries to the mental health professionals were reported to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Child Protective Services Unit (CPS). CPS ruled out the allegations of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by Paul, finding that they were not supported by a preponderance of...
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