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Attn: Anybody Involved In a Child Custody Case in Allegheny County
"Did You Know 4 Out of 5 Allegheny Forensics
Psychologists Have Been Found Guilty of Ethical Violations... ...and Why This Matters To You and Your Children? "I'll be the first to admit, we make some bad calls. -Mark King, Former Member of Allegheny Forensics You Need To Read This If You...
Dear Friend, You're about to learn about one of the best kept secrets in Allegheny County -a private company called Allegheny Forensics Association. Allegheny Forensics Association was set up at the urging of a few Family Court judges who wanted an outside company to perform all custody evaluations for Allegheny County. The reasoning was that it would be better if all custody evaluations were performed uniformly by one pre-determined group of professional custody evaluators. However, in practice, this system fails miserably to look out for
the best interest of the children. Here's why... How the System Was Set Up to NOT Serve the Best Interests of Your Children In or around 2002 or 2003, the Family Court of Allegheny County decided that it wanted to find a way to streamline, and make uniform, all child custody evaluations in Allegheny County. Without naming names, a small group of judges helped coordinate the formation of a private company, named Allegheny Forensics Association Custody Division. Some lawyers, who wish to remain anonymous, stated directly that the judges didn't want to hear evidence themselves in court, and would rather have an outside private company become the "finder of fact" for the judges. Of course this was already the way things were done before Allegheny Forensics was formed. However, there was no systematic way to choose which psychologist the Court would choose to do a custody evaluation. The solution was to form Allegheny
Forensics by having the most prominent, and politically connected,
custody evaluators join together and enter into an exclusive contract
with Allegheny County. Other child evaluators in Pittsburgh who weren't as well connected politically, or who dared question the ethics of this group, were NOT included. Some very prominent custody evaluators even decided not to become part of this group because they objected to the way in which this group planned on doing custody evaluations. In short, a single company contracted to do every custody evaluation in Allegheny County would never be able to properly handle the number of cases and still perform thorough evaluations. Plus, the number of conflicts of interest this created, and the number of ethical issues this setup raised are too numerous to mention here. visit PittsburghDivorce.org
A Monopoly Created by Allegheny County
 After months of negotiations and fine tuning of the contract, Allegheny County apparently entered into an exclusive contract
with Allegheny Forensics.
What
this meant to people involved in custody cases in Allegheny County was
that the evidence in their custody case would be presented to a psychologist from
this group, who would act as a "finder of fact" for the judge.
The court appointed psychologist was responsible for evaluating the
family situation, and for recommending to the judge which parent should
get primary physical and legal custody. Obviously, there are only so many hours in a week. The less time the custody evaluators spend on any one case, the more time they have to squeeze in other cases. In other words, if an evaluator spent 20 hours a week on one case, he could make $10,000 a week. If he spent only 10 hours per case, he could double his pay and make $20,000 a week. The less time evaluators
spent on cases, the richer they could become. Destined To Fail From The Start? Because Allegheny Forensics has an exclusive contract with Allegheny County, the system was destined from the start to fail. The sheer volume of cases that are assigned to Allegheny Forensics precludes the psychologists involved from properly discharging their duties in terms of the thoroughness of their evaluations.
Even if the evaluators
had the highest ethics, they wouldn't be able to discharge their duties
properly. The psychologists realized that the less time they spent on an evaluation, the more money they would make. Second, the psychologists knew that they had no competition, and nobody who would hold them accountable for their inept evaluations. Because they had a monopoly over custody evaluations in Allegheny County, the evaluators could spend less time on each case and make more money. There's definitely something wrong when the system is set up so
that a less competent job rewards the psychologists with more money.
Staffed by Unethical Doctors?  Another lawyer who wants to remain anonymous provided this information.
There are five principle founders of Allegheny Forensics.
Four out of these five do not have clean disciplinary records
with the State of Pennsylvania Licensing Board. The fifth has a
complaint pending.Apparently the former leader of this group, Mark King, had ethical charges
filed against him by somebody who claimed some sort of sexual
misconduct against him. King was temporarily removed from
performing custody evaluations until these charges could be sorted
out. At this point, William Fischer took over as leader of the
group.
visit PittsburghDivorce.org
 Monopoly and Conflicts
of Interest Lead to Unfair, Unjust, and Unchallenged Evaluations Allegheny Forensics, and their evaluators who already have been disciplined by the State Licensing Board, have monopoly powers on custody evaluations in Allegheny County. Along with these powers comes a justified fear that they will abuse those powers. Even if an evaluator from Allegheny Forensics fails to discharge their duties properly, no lawyer in Allegheny County is going to feel comfortable burying the inept evaluator under cross-examination. Why? Because this same lawyer may require this same evaluator to testify on their client's behalf in another case. In other words, the custody lawyers in Pittsburgh
simply cannot aggressively confront bad evaluations because they may
need the psychologist to be on their side in the next case. If
they get on the bad side of an evaluator, they would lose their custody
practice because nobody would dare want the "black-listed" lawyer
representing them. The Less Time They Spend On a Case,
The More Money They Make Let's go back to the issue of money. Because of the sheer volume of cases, and because the evaluators know they are fairly safe from serious ridicule or questioning from any lawyer, the evaluators cut corners and do as many cases in as short amount of time as possible. Let's say the evaluators get paid $5000 up front before they begin an evaluation. They make more money based on doing more cases. Therefore, they have incentive to do as many cases in as little time as possible. And without being held accountable by the lawyers, they have no incentive to do a thorough job. This is exactly what Mark King has already been reprimanded for.
And many lawyers, who don't dare talk publicly about this, have
been involved with many similar cases. What happens is that
parents become so fearful of losing custody of their children, it
becomes easy for the lawyers to talk them into settling the custody
cases at some middle ground. The lawyers are doing the best they
can to represent their clients in light of the system that they're
forced to deal with.
Dr. Frankenstein Won't Kill
The Monster He Created Because Allegheny Forensics is the idea of a handful of Allegheny County family court judges, the judges are also reluctant to hold the evaluators accountable for poorly performed evaluations. In other words, it would only make the judges look bad if they criticized the very people that they hand-picked to do the evaluations. In fact,
in open court one particular judge threatened to throw a mother of a
14-year old girl out of the court room for even "suggesting that Dr.
Fischer did not discharge his duties properly." No wonder.
This judge was part of the group of judges that hand-picked Dr. Fischer
to perform the evaluations. With
such a incestuous system in place, there is almost no way that anybody
can be assured of a fair evaluation, especially with the amounts of
money involved, and especially since the ethics of the evaluators have
been called into question.  Success Through Intimidation And Politics Also, because of the monopolistic nature of the system, any psychologist who may want to earn a living performing custody evaluations in Allegheny County must kiss up to both the evaluators from Allegheny Forensics (since it's a private company), and to the judges who appointed Allegheny Forensics as the sole judge and jury to evaluate custody cases. In other words, other psychologists who may want
to be involved in doing evaluations wouldn't dare criticize the
evaluators from Allegheny Forensics, or the judges who appointed these
evaluators, or else they would risk be left out of the political loop.
What You Can Do To Get Help
And Make a Difference! Allegheny Forensics Association is a well-kept secret that very few people in Allegheny County are aware of... for now. The time is fast approaching where this arrangement, and the damage they have done, is going to be exposed. At some point Allegheny Forensics is going to be like a house of cards and will collapse on itself. That point will come when there are enough people who have been victimized by their incompetence, and who are willing to stand up and be heard. STEP 1: IMPORTANT! Email a link to this website to your lawyer right away. Your lawyer might not know the background of the people at Allegheny Forensics. Your lawyer can use this information to impeach their credibility in court. Here is the link to give your lawyer: http://www.alleghenyforensics.com STEP 2:
Click on this link PittsburghDivorce.org. |
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