Seattle evaluator is disciplined

A Seattle paper reports:

Last January, we wrote about the anti-male bias many people perceive in family court. Part of the story dealt with a veteran mental health counselor named Douglas Bartholomew, who provided a damning court-ordered assessment of a man accused of abusing his wife--an assessment one judge said was the worst he had seen in his 22 years on the bench.

Thanks to a Department of Health action just made public, Bartholomew will no longer conduct such assessments in domestic violence cases, once a mainstay of his practice. The assessments are key to family court cases because they often determine whether someone (usually a man) accused of domestic violence can see his children and under what conditions. And as we we reported last year, allegations of abuse are common, and sometimes used strategically, in contentious divorce cases. ...

The DOH statement also noted that the counselor spent much more time interviewing Richard than his wife, something that you might suppose would lead to a favorable outcome for Richard. But the husband's point of view did not exactly come across in Bartholomew's report, in part because the counselor misquoted Richard, according to the statement. Richard described his wife as exhibiting various controlling behaviors, but in Bartholomew's assessment, the behaviors were mysteriously attributed to Richard. ...

Bartholomew can continue to practice as a counselor, but he must be monitored for at least two years, according to the stipulation. He is also obligated to refund Bartholomew the money he charged Richard when assessing him.

Bartholomew has not yet responded to a request for comment. But in an interview last year, he painted himself as a victim of a "homegrown hate group of men ...whose stated intention is to destroy the [domestic-violence] intervention system."

I am glad to see an incompetent and biased court evaluator get disciplined, but I don't see how he is any worse than the evaluators used by local family court here, such as Kenneth Barry Perlmutter PSY 7053, Faren Ray Akins PSY 7110, Bret Kale Johnson PSY 10630. Their bad practices have been documented over and over again, and yet they are still used.

The article drew comments like these:

THIS is just the TIP of the iceberg. 99% of the people involved in the family court industry are unqualified, sociopaths and/or perverts....GALs, DV evaluators, parenting evaluators, family court services, etc. See my website for the most perverted, psycho and craziest attorneys and judges in Washington.

PRIME EXAMPLE: Stuart Greenberg was the #1 parenting evaluator in King & Snoho counties. The courts believed his recommendations AT HIS WORD. Greenberg used to secretly videotape women and children in his office bathroom. He videotaped himself masturbating to the videos. Police confiscated the camera and videos and charged him with VOYEURISM. When he got out on bail, he KILLED HIMSELF.

And this:

Doug is not the only unscrupulous one out there. I was falsely accused of child molestation and domestic violence by my former spouse which resulted in my going from being my daughter's primary caretaker to having very limited time with her which was strictly supervised by third parties. I then requested an investigation into the false charges which never took place. The parenting evaluator found that even though the allegations were false, I could not take adequate care of my daughter because I was obsessed with the allegations. She stated that my request for an investigation into the child molestation accusations was proof that I put my own needs before my daughter's needs.

And this:

i have personal experience with Doug Bartholomew. How is it that a man this crooked, deceitful and self absorbed and money hungry can operate in full view of our court system with impunity for 30 years? Must be that the family law / DV / VAWA machine was cut from the same cloth. Doug Bartholomew simply ignores the law, ignores the legal definition of domestic violence, ignores any form of professional propriety and does what he wants...not dissimilar to Napoleon. If ever there was a man with power and control issues and unresolved mommy issues it is this man.