LIVE FROM THE HILL...
Voices for a Cause
Join vocalists Donna Bailey, Tania Grubbs, Kenia and SPanly Wilson as they sing to help raise funds for the PA Breast Cancer Coalition!
6:00PM - TuesDAY, October 29 Small Plates & Beverages will be available General Admission: $20 at the door, $5 of every Ticket goes to PABCC For more info visit www.kaufmanncenter.org
Kaufmann Center
ELSIE H. HILLMAN AUDITORIUM, 1825 CENTRE AVENUE, PITTSBURGH
The 5th Judicial District of Pennsylvania and Allegheny County Pretrial Services urges you to enjoy your weekend out in Pittsburgh but
make the right choice,
don’t drink & drive.
BLEAK HOUSE, CONTINUED FROM PG. 14
siblings.” At Kevin Clark’s request, she had already imposed a gag order and sealed the family-court case. In an October 2004 order, Mulligan sealed the court record, barred the public from courtroom proceedings, and prohibited Val Clark from “discussing with the media or any third party, any allegation of sexual abuse of the children.” (The criminal case remained open.) Val Clark, whom Mulligan has found in contempt for not doing more to encourage the children to visit with their father, has posted court documents online. She also began speaking to City Paper before the gag order was lifted this summer. “What was happening to my children wasn’t fair,” she says. “And if it was happening to me, maybe it was happening to other people. I didn’t feel like I could stay quiet any longer.” DECIDING WHAT’S in a
younger two children, and the pending criminal case. Rather than face a trial on the sexabuse charges, in December 2006 Kevin Clark pleaded “no contest” to three lesser counts of endangering the welfare of a child. In a “no contest” plea, a defendant accepts a sentence without asserting guilt or innocence. Judge Gerard Bigley sentenced Kevin Clark to one year of probation for each count, running concurrently. State law defines “endangering the welfare of a child” as taking place when a parent or guardian “violat[es] a duty of care, protection or support.” Kevin Clark’s lawyers say the offenses refer to the incidents in which he held his children out from the balcony (the very behavior the district judge had called “not the best type of playing”). Val Clark had another interpretation. Based on her understanding of what prosecutors had told her, she says, “I believed this could be used in any civil case and that he was convicted of sexual abuse.” But the definition of endangerment does not mention sexual abuse. And a no-contest plea can’t be used against a defendant in a related civil trial. “This was supposed to be our closure, but apparently there have been no consequences for him,” says Val Clark. “It’s like the Twilight Zone,” Michael Clark says. “There have been so many times when we have been told that we would be protected, but it’s never happened.” And so they have turned to the civil suits, which allege a range of physical and psychological abuse in 2001 or before, which contributed to long-lasting psychological and physical trauma. But the Clark children’s first order of business was trying to get Mulligan removed from the case — and again they have been frustrated.
“KEEPING BOTH PARENTS INVOLVED IN A CHILD’S LIFE ISN’T ALWAYS THE BEST THING. BUT WE SEE JUDGES TRYING TO FORCE IT EVERY DAY.”
child’s best interest, especially in families with troubled histories, is rarely easy, experts say. Engle, the Penn State professor, says judges have “a ton of discretion” in family disputes. “The best interest of the child” is a broad standard, she says — one that “leaves a judge sometimes to struggle with making value judgments.” Mulligan’s decision to maintain unsupervised visitation, Bancroft says, is “not an unusual thing to happen.” In general, he says, judges put too much emphasis on “trying to maintain two-parent households even when … one of the parents is abusive. “Keeping both parents involved in a child’s life isn’t always the best thing,” he adds. “But we see judges trying to force it every day.” Sal Frasca, executive director of the Children’s Rights Council — a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that seeks to maintain “meaningful contact” with both parents — disagrees. Even where there are allegations of abuse or dysfunction, he says, “The best parent for a child is both parents,” Frasca says. “Both parents contribute particular things to a child’s growth, so the child should have the opportunity to be exposed to that.” By 2005, though, Michael and his older sister — the siblings who best remembered their parents being together — were not seeing their father at all. Disputes over visitation focused on the
FLYNN, WHO requested Mulligan take the
case, says he did so because she is “very familiar with the parties, the issues and the allegations, so it made absolute sense to have the case assigned to her. Besides, she will not be the ultimate decider of the facts; the jury will be.” Mulligan is up for retention on this November’s ballot, and her return to the bench is recommended by the Allegheny County Bar Association. Her reputation CONTINUES ON PG. 18
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 10.23/10.30.2013