In this episode, Andrew and Barbara talk with author and forensic trial consultant Dean Tong about how to respond to false allegations in family court.
Note: This podcast was originally hosted on Barbara La Pointe’s website, which has since gone offline. I’ve reposted the episodes here so people still have access to the materials.
Transcript
Andrew Folkler: Welcome everyone to another episode of Broken Families, where we host conversations on divorce, parental alienation, and high-conflict relationships. My name is Andrew Folkler.
Barbara La Pointe: And I’m Barbara La Pointe. Today we are going to discuss false allegations in high-conflict court cases, and that is why we have brought on a very special guest to dive deep into this important topic.
Barbara La Pointe: Dean Tong is an internationally recognized author, expert witness, and forensic trial consultant with a focus on divorce, child custody, parental alienation, child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual allegations in divorce. Dean has consulted on protracted divorce, custody, and abuse-related cases since 1995, and has been involved in the field of child sexual abuse allegations since 1984.
Barbara La Pointe: Dean has authored powerful books like Don’t Blame Me, Daddy, Elusive Innocence: A Survival Guide for the Falsely Accused, Pitfalls for Divorcing a BPD Spouse, and several other books. So without further ado, welcome Dean.
Dean Tong: Thank you for having me today. Appreciate it.
Barbara La Pointe: Thanks for joining us, and thanks for being here today. Dean, this is a very specialized field, correct?
Dean Tong: Yes. It is a very niche subject matter, and with that in mind, people should be very careful when surfing the internet for just any attorney.
Barbara La Pointe: I agree with you on that point, and I’ve noticed through looking through the material that your life’s work is to help the falsely accused men, women, and especially children.
Barbara La Pointe: Family court cases are highly volatile cases, and some might say it’s even like walking on a landmine. I’ve heard you say that you’ve noticed a dramatic increase in child sexual allegations being used as weapons or strategies in high-conflict divorce. Is that accurate?
Dean Tong: Yeah. It first started, Barbara, probably in 1987.
Dean Tong: A psychologist, Gordon Blush, Carol Ross out of Michigan authored a paper which was basically excerpted in the New York Times. And these were parents who were wielding their kids as pawns, weapons, or tools in the midst of a visitation dispute, custody battle, divorce situation where they could basically use that kid as a messenger, as a tool, as a weapon, ‘cause kids are very suggestible, very impressionable.
Dean Tong: And so we started seeing a lot of increased numbers of divorce-related allegations, he said, she said, they said allegations. These allegations meet what’s called the hearsay rule exception in law, meaning that a judge has the discretion to admit the allegations from children in court with no medical proof or evidence to support those allegations.
Dean Tong: So, I basically piggybacked the Blush and Ross study from ‘87, excerpted the same in my book, in ‘92, Don’t Blame Me, Daddy. A psychologist, there was Trocmé and Nicholas Bala from Canada in 2005 came on with a study that replicated the data from Blush and Ross. And then psychologist McKay from the UK in 2014 also achieved clinical and statistical significance in his data studies.
Dean Tong: So we have seen an increase. I mean, these allegations can be made in any dynamic, but certainly when the accusing parent or guardian has something to gain, whether it’s child custody, child support, social status as the most fit parent. Kids are easy weapons to use to achieve that agenda.
Dean Tong: We know young children are very suggestible, very impressionable. If they can talk about the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, they can talk about how Daddy touched my peepee. And so, I am nationally certified as a child forensic interviewer. I go across America, and Canada, when called upon to impeach the credibility of child forensic interviewers who may use leading, suggestive, closed-ended, direct, or repeated questions to get kids to say things that they’re desired, hopeful that they will say.
Dean Tong: I mean, they’re there to extract an outcry or disclosure. They’re not there to conduct a witch hunt or fishing expedition. But unfortunately, and we’ll get into this later in the interview, they do not use the evidence-based best practices methodology. Most child forensic interview child advocacy centers do not use best practice methodology where they’re asking kids open-ended questions, free recall, trying to trigger their autobiographical free recall, implicit memory, unconscious memory.
Dean Tong: So they tap into their amygdala or hippocampus, which controls their explicit memory, which is their...
Andrew Folkler: So I guess in that direction then, how does the court determine if an allegation of abuse is true or false?
Dean Tong: Yeah, so that, Andrew, incorporates many different pieces of data.
Dean Tong: Obviously the child forensic interview is gonna be number one for the state, okay? The kid is interviewed in a child-friendly room. That interview is observed by a police detective and a child protective investigator by a one-way mirror in a separate room. That police detective will judge the credibility of the kid’s disclosures during that interview, whether the child implicates the accused in a bad private part touch or a physical abuse hit or a smack or whatever the case may be.
Dean Tong: Whatever the index allegation is. And that police detective, basically will go back to the district attorney’s office to refer for prosecution or not. It’s up to the prosecutor to obviously prefer charges against the accused. But on a lesser basis, on a civil basis, which can affect the accused in family court, in juvenile court, where ultimately your parental rights could be terminated if CPS goes after you in Canada it’s called the Children’s Aid Society, CAS.
Dean Tong: So if the attorney for CAS goes after the accused, you have to hire a juvenile dependency defense attorney to litigate against that lawyer’s case to try to impeach their case to be able to sustain your parental rights, ‘cause you can lose your kid in a New York minute. They can also place you on what’s called a child abuse registry, which is an internal finding by CPS.
Dean Tong: And that would require, if you’re a physician or a nurse or if you’re a therapist or police officer, it could basically kill your occupation, again, in a New York minute, unless you litigate what’s called an administrative appeals hearing to get that finding redacted. So, there’s a lot hanging in the balance based on hearsay and based on the efficacy of the interview that is conducted by the child forensic interviewer.
Dean Tong: The best practices method we have is called the NICHD. That was co-authored by, in part, Dr. Phil Esplin. Dr. Esplin was the number one expert for Michael Jackson at his trial in 2005. I worked many cases during Dr. Esplin’s tenure as an expert out of Arizona, is where he was based, out of Phoenix.
Dean Tong: He is retired now, but he co-authored that methodology in 2000, which stands for the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. So that’s a faction of the NIH, which is in Bethesda, Maryland. So that methodology would require the interviewer to ask the kid, who’s the child victim, the following type of question: “Can you tell me what happened?”
Dean Tong: And then the child answers. “Can you tell me more about that? Tell me about that.” So now you’re basically trying to trigger the implicit memory of the child, free recall, free account, free narrative, without putting words or thoughts or ideas into the mind of the kid. That is the very definition of suggestibility.
Dean Tong: You’re not supposed to do that, but a lot of interviewers do. Most interviewers will ask the question, “Did Daddy touch your pee pee?” So that’s a closed-ended question ‘cause it’s asking for a yes or no response. It’s leading and suggestive because it actually names the body part, pee pee, and it’s negative stereotype induction because it implicates the accused, Daddy.
Dean Tong: Okay, so the interviewer’s not doing what’s called memory source monitoring and challenging the source or origin in the child’s brain of who he or she thinks touched her pee pee or his pee pee. So you have to be open-minded when you’re investigating these cases.
Dean Tong: That includes interviewing these kids.
Barbara La Pointe: Are these videos, are these interviews recorded?
Dean Tong: Most are, Barbara. There are some jurisdictions across America that do not, and I may get only a transcript. There are jurisdictions where I don’t get any of that. I won’t get an audio, video, or transcript, or a DVD, and Mr.
Dean Tong: Tong will review basically what’s called a forensic interview summary report. Well, that’s no good to me because that’s not a verbatim interviewer/interviewee question/answer session. I don’t know what the questions asked were and how the kid answered them. Plus, I can’t see the affect, demeanor of the kid on tape.
Dean Tong: Does the child appear traumatized? Is the child fidgety? Maybe the child’s diagnosed with ADS, attention deficit spectrum. Maybe the child’s diagnosed with ADS and is taking Vyvanse, which can cause hallucinations, seeing or hearing things. So there’s a lot of factors involved here. And, unfortunately, as soon as the child tells mommy or the teacher, “My daddy touched me down there,” a call is made by the teacher, who’s a mandated reporter at the school.
Dean Tong: It goes to the government, CPS and/or the RCMP in your country, the authorities out for immediate investigation. So the accused hasn’t even been notified at this point, has no clue what’s going on. Totally one-sided. Kind of like an ex parte order for protection from abuse if you go down to the local courthouse or women’s shelter, and just give an affidavit.
Dean Tong: Accused doesn’t know what’s going on. So, they get the kid in and the child is supposed to be interviewed within 72 hours, three days, of making that outcry to mommy or the professional, who’s a mandated reporter who’s required by law to basically glean that any reasonable suspicion of child abuse, he or she has to call in.
Dean Tong: It’s mandated to call in. Failure to report is a misdemeanor crime. You can get arrested. You can lose your job as a teacher. All right, so the call gets made and the police show up, CPS shows up. The child is taken within three days to that child advocacy center, and that interview is conducted, and that interview is the smoking gun of the case because that interview is gonna set into motion, basically whether or not a prosecution’s gonna go forward, a CAS juvenile dependency litigation case is gonna go forward, whether mother’s gonna use the child’s outcry if it implicates the accused to her behest back in family court.
Dean Tong: Like I say in my book, Elusive Innocence, the three-ring circus juvenile family and criminal court. And try getting an attorney, a barrister or solicitor, who can competently litigate in all three of those jurisdictions at the same time. Good luck.
Barbara La Pointe: Well, I just wanna ask the most basic question.
Barbara La Pointe: Why would someone make false allegations against another person? Is it because it works in family court or...
Dean Tong: Most parents, Barbara, are protective. I mean, you want to believe most parents are protective, right? They wanna protect their offspring, their children. You have to do that as a parent, obviously.
Dean Tong: You wanna do that as a parent. You wanna think that most allegations that are made premeditated in bad faith maliciously to eradicate, if you will, the other parent are more the exception than the rule. Well, if you look at the studies, most allegations that are false, made in bad faith, are more the exception than the rule.
Dean Tong: Only about 5%, okay? But if you go to my website, which is abuse-excuse.com, it’s been on the internet for 25 years, since ‘96, Dr. David Finkelhor’s study is over there that he conducted. He is the director of the children’s crime lab out of Durham, New Hampshire. And he did a study, a 15-year study between 2002 and 2006 that saw the number of abuse allegation reports consistent at about 3 million a year in America.
Dean Tong: But out of those there was a substantial decrease in the incidents of abuse, and especially sexual abuse. The numbers decreased by 50%. Well, if you do the math on that, that means the number of unfounded reports, the number of reports that didn’t rise to a preponderance of evidence, 51%, more evidence than not, were huge.
Dean Tong: It was a huge number of unfounded reports, and that’s the sticky wicket in these cases. Most allegation reports are unfounded or unsubstantiated. They do not meet a preponderance of evidence, 51%. But the government will tell you and the judge might even tell you, “That doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.” Okay?
Dean Tong: So there’s a gray area there and of course, in family court, where a judge only has to rule by 51% preponderance of evidence, a judge can err on the side of caution on the side of the child against you. And oftentimes that’s what happens.
Barbara La Pointe: So okay, so that’s very interesting. So let’s back up a little bit.
Barbara La Pointe: What happens if you’re on the wrong side of an allegation?
Dean Tong: But...
Barbara La Pointe: Rather, what should you do if you’re on the wrong side of an allegation?
Dean Tong: Well, I think the immediate reaction of the accused, once the accused is privy to being accused, is to seek out counsel, seek out an attorney.
Dean Tong: And there’s a section in my book, Elusive Innocence, there’s a section on my website, abuse-excuse.com, how to choose your attorney. They’re not all created equal, and they don’t get this stuff in law school. So, you start going to lawyers.com and clicking around for, “Gee, I need a father’s rights attorney in Wilmington, Delaware.
Dean Tong: Well, there’s a list. Maybe I’ll call that guy. Maybe I’ll call her.” But they all come with different levels of experience. And, unfortunately, the accused doesn’t have a set of questions to pose to that attorney in real time when the attorney’s thinking about one thing only, and that’s money, and a retainer check.
Dean Tong: “And as soon as you pay me, we’ll talk about the details of your case, and you can give me your timeline and the facts as you know it.” So, you could go through four or five lawyers and now you don’t have any resources left and, “Oh, I just stumbled across Dean Tong.” And maybe Mr.
Dean Tong: Tong could’ve helped me find the right lawyer. I don’t charge people for finding the right lawyer, because in order for me to do my job, I have to work with competent counsel. Counsel puts me through what’s called voir dire, which is an interrogation of my credentials and qualifications. Counsel puts me through direct and redirect on the witness stand under oath.
Dean Tong: So we have to work as the Three Musketeers when I get involved as the consulting expert and/or testimonial expert. And of course the Three Musketeers are myself, the client, and the lawyer. My job is to help the attorney intersect the facts, the science, and the law in court.
Dean Tong: That’s my job, hoping that we will get the best result possible. So when you go onto my website, Bob, abuse-excuse.com, you’ll find out that in these cases you are presumed guilty. The constitutional maxim of innocence until proven guilty is out the window in these cases. It’s automatically the opposite.
Dean Tong: You are presumed guilty. Why would the child say you touched her peepee unless it happened, okay? So you have to answer that $64,000 question correctly. “Well, gee, I didn’t do it.” Well, I’m sorry, sir, your word is not going to outweigh the word of that kid. And the reason for that is we believe that children don’t lie, children are not mistaken, they must be believed and protected at all costs.
Dean Tong: That is the operating maxim pretty much all across this world, not just America, right. So with that said, you have to prove your innocence by proving a negative, and the way you do that is you go through testing. You may have to go through a polygraph. You may have to go through psychosexual risk assessment testing.
Dean Tong: And one of our smoking gun gold standard tests is called the ABLE Assessment for Sexual Interest, also known as the ABLE screen. The website for that is ablescreening.com, A-B-E-L screening.com. Methodology, legal admissibility is all published at the website. This test has been around as long as my website has, 25 years.
Andrew Folkler: Right on. So the men’s groups especially a lot of them, they speak a lot of fear on having their entire reputation destroyed by a false allegation. Some of these people, they’ve worked hard their entire life to get to a position at work or just social standing altogether, and they’re absolutely terrified of having this happen.
Andrew Folkler: What kind of things could they do to doctor their reputation, presuming that the allegation is false?
Dean Tong: Yeah. That’s a good question, Andrew. So in today’s world and today’s climate with the Me Too movement and it’s just so easy to ruin somebody’s reputation based on an allegation, whether you’re a college kid at a campus or you’re a young priest who’s going in to the Catholic Church.
Dean Tong: We know about the issue there over the last 20 years approximately. So in today’s world, you really need a body cam. You really need a body cam on your person for accountability purposes, video and audio. And if you don’t have a body cam, well, I guess you better have another person strapped to your shoulder at all times, because it’s just all too easy to be accused.
Dean Tong: I mean, I think Sheryl Crow just came out nationally and made allegations during her time with Michael Jackson. So I happened to be at Michael’s trial in 2005. I was there on behalf of Court TV. My colleague, Dr. Ruslander was his number one expert. So, yeah, I mean, and certainly, you need to construct a timeline in your computer, a chronology or journal by dates and events.
Dean Tong: You need to compile a list of fact witnesses, okay? So you have three types of witnesses. You have lay, fact, and experts. Most cases are only gonna have lay and fact witnesses. Experts, you have to hire. If you cannot afford experts, if you cannot afford counsel, the court may appoint both for you if you are indigent, which means in law in forma pauperis, which means basically you’re poor, okay?
Dean Tong: That only happens in criminal court or juvenile dependency court, where CPS takes your kids and then maybe 12 months later files a petition for TPR, which is termination of your parental rights. So in either of those situations where you’re under arrest, you’re facing the loss of your freedom, incarceration in prison, you’re facing sex offender registration, you’re facing loss of your kids, you can get counsel and experts at no cost to you or your family.
Dean Tong: The court will order the state to pay for the same. I belong to a organization called the Justice Administrative Commission in Florida, justiceadmin.org, and I’ve been with them over a decade, and they take care of fees on behalf of accused defendants and respondents in dependency cases, okay?
Dean Tong: But a judge has to order their intervention, so they need a court order, which means I need a court order. So if I don’t get a paycheck, I need a court order. Then I do the work first, and I get paid later. Make no mistake, these cases are marathons, not sprints.
Dean Tong: With that said, the accused better buckle up and tighten your seatbelt ‘cause this is gonna be a long ride. This is not gonna be something that’s over with in one week or one month or maybe six months or maybe even a year. Some of my cases have lasted five years. Make no mistake, and that’s with or without COVID.
Dean Tong: So, yeah, and there’s not a lot you can do to prevent an allegation other than that body cam or having your house hooked up with audio and video mini cams inside and outside your house. So let’s say you’re a Disneyland dad, you have every other weekend visitation with your kids.
Dean Tong: If the kid comes home to you on a weekend and said, “Hey, daddy, mommy called you a jerk,” okay, so you got evidence of parental alienation on your tape, from your home, from your home tape. “Judge, I didn’t install the tapes due to deliberately impeaching the credibility of my ex. I installed them for purposes of beefing up my security system.
Dean Tong: I live in a bad area.” Okay, I’ll accept that. Well, now you got evidence of possible impeachment against mom. And then if the next time the kid is saying, “You touched my pee pee,” well, now you got that on tape. Okay? So, other than that you really don’t know where this allegation, the source and origin of this allegation is emanating from.
Dean Tong: You really don’t until your lawyer and experts get involved to basically critique the investigation by the state. So the state comes in first. If I’m hired on a case, I come in second to critique and review what the state has done to see if they have basically dotted their I’s, crossed their T’s.
Dean Tong: Have they adhered to evidence-based best practices? Maybe they did not. And I’m looking at your own attorney. I’m looking at the attorney you hired, or maybe even the one that I chose for you to hire, and I’m looking for errors of commission, what that lawyer did wrong, or errors of omission, what that lawyer may not have done at all.
Dean Tong: So I’m basically vetting everybody in the case ‘cause I know sooner or later I’m gonna be vetted when I come under oath.
Andrew Folkler: And yeah, and sounds like it’s just a incredibly, highly stressful situation, and so people who don’t dot their I’s and cross their T’s, like you’re saying, can, just very quickly butterfly into a disaster.
Dean Tong: This can. And look, with all due respect to attorneys, and I have to work with attorneys 24/7, 365, they do not get this stuff in law school. This stuff is not taught in law school. My book, Elusive Innocence, has sold in like, 25 countries, but I bet you it’s at only very few law libraries across America.
Dean Tong: I bet you it’s in very few legal briefcases of attorneys across America. And my former associate, Dr. Stephen Ceci, that’s spelled C-E-C-I, and his best-selling book, Jeopardy in the Courtroom. Any attorney who’s accepting a retainer check in what I call a kiddie child sex case, which is ages three to six to seven, if you’re taking that case and you haven’t read Dr.
Dean Tong: Ceci’s book, you’re basically committing legal suicide not just for yourself, but for your client. So, I mean, look, there’s an area of mental health and psychology, behavioral science and social science that goes along with these allegations. Okay? So the kid goes to the advocacy center for an interview.
Dean Tong: That is a person usually with a master’s degree in social work who’s conducting that interview. Obviously, CPS are either bachelors or masters social workers that are doing the initial investigation. Police officers, the only difference is their degree is in criminal justice.
Dean Tong: Okay? So, they’re all about motive and method and means and opportunity, cops. That’s how they’re trained at the academy. Well, that’s how criminal defense attorneys are trained also. They’re trained in motive. As experts, we’re trying to go beyond that and look for what’s called sexual triggers. What could have triggered this kid to all of a sudden, at age eight, accuse her father, who’s only had a desire for sexual interest and relations with consenting adult females his entire life, to all of a sudden molest his own flesh and blood, his daughter?
Dean Tong: Okay, what could trigger that? Well, it could be a book, The Courage to Heal, The Devil Takes the Youngest. It could be a video online, Strong Kids, Safe Kids, with Henry Winkler and Mariette Hartley and John Ritter. Okay? That’s a stranger danger child molestation protection video that Fonzie participated in.
Dean Tong: It could be another kid at school who actually had a real situation and talked to that kid about her situation. Okay? That’s called cross-germination, contaminated hearsay. So Art Linkletter said it best in his book, Kids Say the Darndest Things. You’ll see that on Amazon, and they do.
Andrew Folkler: If we were to look at the inverse, say that a allegation is true, what should the parent of that child do to ensure that this is taken seriously and addressed accordingly?
Dean Tong: Yeah. So I get cases like that too, and I was hired by a mother down here in Florida in my state. My work is national, but I’m based out of Florida.
Dean Tong: Two years ago, I was hired by a mom down here in Daytona Beach who the state spent about $300,000 to try to terminate her parental rights because they believed that she falsely accused her four-year-old son to in turn falsely accuse his father of anal sodomy. So I got involved. The state paid my fees.
Dean Tong: Mom had no resources, and that was a war. Take no prisoners. That case lasted a year and a half in litigation, four months at trial. Four months at trial. I was there for one week, the expert week, if you will, for me to testify, but also to help the attorney impeach the credibility of the opposing expert.
Dean Tong: So in a case like that you have to first understand that physical proof, physical evidence of child molestation occurs about 5% of the time. Okay? One in 20 you’re gonna have physical evidence for sexual abuse. So 95% of the cases are hearsay, and that hearsay’s gonna be admissible, depending on the discretion of the judge.
Dean Tong: There may be a hearing on that. But so the mother, obviously, if the child tells the kid in out of the clear blue, “Daddy did this to me,” or whatever, is gonna report it. That’s the right thing to do. You have to do that, document that. You might even tape that. Be aware whether your state is a one-party or two-party state.
Dean Tong: My state of Florida’s a two-party state, meaning you really have to get permission from the party you’re taping. But you can, I’ve never seen a person arrested, and be prosecuted by a misdemeanor for illegal taping. And so it might not be used for impeachment purposes back in court, but I would say go ahead and tape your own kid to have accountability.
Dean Tong: And then obviously, once CPS and the authorities show up, they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, take the child for the forensic interview, which has to be done within 72 hours. Sometimes it’s not. And then, eventually mom’s gonna give a statement to the police. Mom will give her own interview to CPS, and eventually a judge, as the trier and finder of fact, will decide truth from falsehood.
Dean Tong: Only the judge can rule on credibility of witnesses, including the child. Only the judge can say whether a child’s been molested. I can’t say that. No expert can. Now, there was a case in Alabama four years ago where the judge allowed me to give that opinion, but Rule 704 in the Federal Rules, says you’re not supposed to be able to invade the province of the fact finder, which is the judge or the jury, depending on whether it’s a civil or criminal case.
Dean Tong: So only the judge or the jury can say whether you molested or raped that kid.
Andrew Folkler: So earlier in the interview, you were mentioning how suggestive interviewing was a poor practice and it could lead to propagating the kid to going into more detail and taking on those suggestions. How exactly should the interview process go in order to distinguish truth?
Dean Tong: Yes, you wanna try to stay away from naming the body parts during your interview question. Try to stay away from asking the kid a direct question, close-ended question, which is asking for a yes/no response. Stay away from naming the accused, okay? You have to be as open-ended as possible to tap into the implicit memory of the child, which is controlled by the child’s prefrontal cortex.
Dean Tong: So, let’s say the child’s name is Stacy. “Okay, Stacy, can you tell me what happened?” Well maybe the child’s too young to tell you what happened, to give contextual details of the graphic details of the inappropriate touching or penetration, whatever the index allegation may be to be able to do that.
Dean Tong: You might have her write it down, if she’s four or five. Four is three and a half or four is about the youngest age at which a child could give salient details of molestation or cognitively lie, okay? The next developmental milestone would be the age of reason, which is seven or eight, where the child’s supposed to understand truth from lie, right from wrong, good touch and bad touch, from secret touch.
Dean Tong: But you gotta be very careful the way you quiz the kid. Most kids that I have found, I’ve been doing this now for what? Quarter century, and I think in all my cases I’ve had three that did not implicate the accused. In other words, they were resistant to suggestibility. Three out of hundreds.
Dean Tong: I mean, if I did a study, a peer-reviewed study, sample size is huge on my study, I would achieve clinical and statistical significance. That study would be published. So it’s a very large number who are going to implicate the accused, and with all due respect to the system, who’s well-meaning and well-intentioned but sometimes misguided. They will stray away from using best practices methodology, ‘cause they are so strung up on obtaining that outcry.
Dean Tong: They want that disclosure ‘cause they want a prosecution. They have to get something for their time invested, for the resources invested. I mean, you look at a juvenile dependency case, you have the CPS worker, and you have the CPS attorney, guardian ad litem. In California it’s called minor’s counsel.
Dean Tong: In New York and New Jersey it’s called law guardian. You have the therapist. You have an advocate. I mean, there’s just a plethora of people that come to the aid and support of the child and the accusing parent, and the accused is left over there with his lawyer. That’s it. That’s it. The accused and the accused attorney.
Barbara La Pointe: Do you ever have accused men that feel they might wanna self-represent in this system, and would you advise that?
Dean Tong: Yeah, I actually helped a guy down here in Florida, Barbara, a little over five years ago win a case against a licensed attorney and a licensed PhD. I think we were more lucky than competent, but we did get a good result, so he did have his name cleared and he was reunified with his child.
Dean Tong: But look, I do not recommend going pro se, in pro per. With all due respect, I don’t care how much of a good jailhouse lawyer you think you are, you’re not a licensed attorney, so you don’t know the rules of court, you don’t know the rules of procedure, and you don’t know the rules of evidence. And that’s right out of the gate, before we get into the nitty-gritty of trying to do voir dire on Dean Tong.
Dean Tong: Yeah, that could take an hour, in and of itself. So, again, these cases are marathons, not sprints. Get ready to buckle up. It’s not just what you know, it’s who you know. So if you plan on employing a dream team, I suggest you put on one side of your sheet of paper certain names, and on the other side other names, and then start crossing off those names.
Andrew Folkler: So I know we’re in the process of coming out of COVID, at least that’s what it seems like right now, but at least one among my community and just in general that what we’ve seen a lot of people have been talking about how the pandemic was used as a means of extending that alienation from their kids.
Andrew Folkler: And I was wondering if you could speak to that what they could do now, and what they also can do moving forward.
Dean Tong: Yeah, and I think I told you when we first communicated by email, Andrew, I testified seven times last year by Zoom cast, interactive video network in court cases across America.
Dean Tong: So, I don’t like it. I think it inhibits the right of due process for the accused because it takes away the affect, the demeanor, of the judge. I can’t see the judge. Judge may not be able to see me. I don’t know. Usually I can see the lawyer I’m talking to that’s about it. But there might be 10 or 30 or 50 other people in that courtroom.
Dean Tong: I’m not seeing everybody. I know not everybody’s seeing me. So there’s a lot hanging in the balance of these cases. So, look, the Supreme Court in every state gave rules on when this stuff was gonna get back to a regular state of litigation in court. We have open courtrooms again. But certainly, custodial parents who had custody of their kids when COVID broke 15 months ago could definitely wield COVID as an excuse in saying, “Well, I’m not gonna send Sally over to you this weekend because you were exposed to somebody with COVID, or you tested positive for COVID, or your grandmother tested positive for COVID, and I’m not gonna take the risk.
Dean Tong: So try to take me to court. Go ahead and file your petition for order to show cause for contempt. Good luck on that.”
Andrew Folkler: So I guess, what can they do then to try and fight against that now?
Dean Tong: Well now we’re getting back to the normal modus operandi, if you will, and to the way it was in the last time I was in a physical courtroom was February of last year, almost a year and a half ago. That was in northern Georgia. So you wanna get your case back on the right track. Obviously, justice delayed is justice denied, not just for you but for your children. Parental alienation is an emotional, mental, psychological form of child abuse.
Dean Tong: Obviously it’s controversial because it’s not published in the DSM-5. It’s not published in the ICD-10. But yet it does exist in subtypes. Child affected by parental relationship distress, child psychological abuse estrangement, and parent-child relational inventory. It’s gonna be published in the ICD-11, which is coming out in January of next year, as QE52.0, as caregiver-child relational disorder.
Dean Tong: So lawyers can get it in. That’s not really a huge problem. The problem is do you have the evidence to point to the judge to paint a nexus, a link between said alienation and the deleterious effects of that alienation to the child? Because that’s your real challenge. So you have to be able to articulate to that judge with proof, with evidence, either through medical notes, counseling notes, experts to back up those notes in court.
Dean Tong: Psychosomatic issues to the child, headaches, stomachaches, nausea, vomiting. Perhaps anxiety, depression. Or worse, cutting, self-mutilation, suicidal ideations based on the alienation. This is what you have to point to the judge. This is what you have to articulate to the judge through professionals.
Dean Tong: And obviously a lot of associates of mine have written on this. Dr. Jennifer Harman, Colorado. Dr. Richard Warshak, who’s known me for about 30 years. Dallas, Texas. Dr. William Bernet, who’s a psychiatrist who’s retired now, but he and I are working a case together. He’s been our number one advocate, if you will, to the DSM committee to try to get parental alienation published, in the DSM, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
Dean Tong: I think this has been more of a political process than anything else in trying to get experts and judges to be convinced that this is abuse. Because the word alienation in and of itself can be basically viewed as a premeditated weapon. Somebody is using this as a means to get custody. As a psychological body of authority, the APA, for example, the American Psychological Association, or the American Psychiatric Association, which actually publishes the DSM, we don’t wanna be viewed as a political body.
Dean Tong: We wanna be viewed as an empirical body, as a scientific body. So, we don’t want that word in there. That word stands for vindictiveness. That word stands for revenge. So look, I... Dr. Gardner, Richard Gardner, who created this, who authored this pathology, almost 40 years ago in 1983, was an associate of mine.
Dean Tong: He and I spoke in Washington, DC when he was alive, obviously, back in the ‘90s. And we had conversations about this. “Hey, doc, how do we get this in the DSM?” ‘Cause back then it was the DSM IV, back in the ‘90s, and then it became the DSM IV-TR, text revision. And I actually was one guy who contemplated, PAD, parental alienation disorder, PAD.
Dean Tong: He said, “I like it, Dean, but it’s not gonna work. There’s too many scientific nuances with that. It’s just not gonna come to fruition.” So I finally got the inkling from other associates as well as judges to find out they did not like the word syndrome.
Dean Tong: Judges do not like the word syndrome. So if you’re coming into court and you’re gonna testify to PAS, parental alienation syndrome, battered women syndrome, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, or any syndrome, you’re gonna be at an immediate disadvantage with that judge. Because judges think that’s not scientific.
Dean Tong: That’s anecdotal behavior. That’s an anecdotal pattern of behavior. So, whenever I come into court, it’s always just parental alienation, PA. That’s it.
Andrew Folkler: This might be a bit of a speculative statement, but it almost sounds like we need a newer, fresher word for this, for parental alienation.
Andrew Folkler: Like a newer term that’s a little bit more maybe empirical, like you were saying. Or even if we took the concept of parental alienation and broke it down into subsets with its own jargon.
Dean Tong: Yeah, absolutely, Andrew. And one of the subtypes, estrangement, I think, would be a good starting point.
Dean Tong: Parental estrangement. ‘Cause I mean, that’s what you’re doing, is you’re estranging the child, right? I say in chapter 14 of my book, Elusive Innocence, I call it a fatherectomy. I got that word from Dr. Warren Farrell. Dr. Warren Farrell is a psychologist who’s written many books on men’s issues.
Dean Tong: Men and Boys. Father And Child Reunion perhaps is his greatest bestseller. And so fatherectomy’s a good word, because that’s what you’re doing when you’re alienating or estranging the kid from your life. You are eviscerating that child out of your life and vice versa. So it’s a double evisceration.
Dean Tong: And whether you’re doing this wittingly, whether you’re doing this unwittingly, whether you’re doing this premeditated, whether you’re doing this because you think it’s in the child’s best interest and you’re being a protective parent, I mean, I’m a proof guy. I’m a trial guy. So the proof is in the pudding, and I’m gonna want you as an expert to compile your emails, your text messages, your posts to social media, your messages at your parenting app, Our Family Wizard, or TalkingParents, or AppClose, whatever app you’re using.
Dean Tong: I’m gonna need all those messages to determine to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty of whether you are a victim of parental alienation by the opposing parent. And then I’m gonna need medical, psychological proof of whether said alienation has negatively affected that child, has harmed that child.
Barbara La Pointe: So sometimes I like to visit the shadow side of these issues, especially when we’re dealing with these big three-ring circuses, these systems. Now, can’t parental alienation sometimes be turned around as a silver bullet against a woman if they can, if a father wants custody?
Dean Tong: Yeah, well let’s eradicate the term silver bullet, Barbara.
Dean Tong: That does not exist. That is a anecdotal term which somehow that became jargon within the father’s rights movement, but there’s nothing scientific about the silver bullet. So if you’re gonna hire Dean Tong or some bonafide expert to come in to testify to the silver bullet, there is no empirical peer-reviewed science on the silver bullet.
Dean Tong: Doesn’t exist. There’s the SAID, okay, which is chapter eight of my book, Sexual Allegations in Divorce, but there’s no silver bullet. But certainly, women can be the recipient of false allegations. Obviously, I’ve had mothers hire me in cases. I’ve got a few on my plate right now, and I got a mother from Ohio who was in her mind anyway, falsely accused of coaching her kid, ‘cause her kid said, “Daddy touched my pee pee,” and the court threw it out.
Dean Tong: The court-appointed expert threw it out. The court-appointed guardian ad litem threw it out as junk. So you have to understand the training level of all these professionals is on a different level, okay? So you don’t know what the scientific psychological, psychiatric, educational level of that judge on the bench is.
Dean Tong: You have no idea. Same goes with the GAL, guardian ad litem. And if you don’t have the CV of the court-appointed expert, which you should, you won’t know that either. So mothers and women being accused of sexual abuse, that’s clearly the exception, not the rule. It’s unusual. I’ve had cases where grandmothers have been accused of sexual abuse.
Dean Tong: Physical abuse, more common. No. You went beyond corporal punishment, beyond spanking my butt with an open hand to the buttocks, and you left marks. You left hematomas. You left bruises. You left welts. There’s real no medical proof of that but that’s what the kids said. That’s another case for my involvement because it’s hearsay.
Dean Tong: It’s he said, she said, they said what a child said. Okay, it’s rule 803, which is the exception to the hearsay rule, and pretty much all 50 states allow for an exception to the hearsay rule.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s a very interesting point that you mentioned that judges, lawyers, all of the various professionals have different experience.
Barbara La Pointe: Like for example, we might conclude that they don’t have much training in trauma. But are you finding that judges are becoming more progressive in terms of knowing about abuse or knowing about parental alienation, for example?
Dean Tong: I am. I am, Barbara, and I applaud the courts for that. I think they’re taking more CLE, continuum of legal education credit courses on that.
Dean Tong: I think they are seeing more of that in their caseload. So, I applaud them for that. Kudos to them. We gotta keep going on that trend. We’ve gotta keep publishing studies on this. And I’ve had people reach out to me saying, “Shouldn’t this be a crime? Shouldn’t this be criminal?”
Dean Tong: Just like physical abuse or sexual abuse. To a point, you have a point, yeah. But until the DSM committee, until the ICD recognizes parental alienation, whatever you wanna call it, parental estrangement, parental child denial, in the psychology medical books, how can you raise that to a crime?
Dean Tong: How could you ever get if you can’t get to 51% preponderance of evidence in a civil case, family court or juvenile court, based on the psychiatric medical people, how are you ever gonna get to 95%, evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, in front of a judge or a jury in a criminal case? It’ll never happen.
Barbara La Pointe: Unrealistic.
Barbara La Pointe: I mean, you’re talking about parental alienation, but Dean, would you mind confirming and clarifying for me, is it a felony to make false allegations against.
Dean Tong: It is in my state. Yeah, it is in my state, Barbara. Florida Statute 39.205 subsection 9, you can land in prison for up to five years in Florida.
Dean Tong: But there’s only about four states that, maybe five or six at the most, in America that make it a felony. Most states it’s a slap in the wrist and a misdemeanor. And if you ask the police, ‘cause they’re the ones that arrest you for probable cause, right, for a crime, how come you didn’t arrest that false accuser who made seven false allegations against me in my child custody case?
Dean Tong: How come you didn’t arrest her? “Well, sir, we don’t wanna start creating a problem and instituting a chilling effect upon women and children who would disclose abuse in the future. So that’s why we don’t wanna set a bad example for those people. We wanna leave this to be an open book.”
Dean Tong: So that’s why the person facing, for example, under Florida Statute 800.04 in my state of Florida, lewd and lascivious child molestation, you’re facing life in prison without the possibility of parole. You’re done. You’re done. On a jury, conviction by a jury at trial, you’re never getting out.
Dean Tong: But yet your potential false accuser, even if she or he or whoever made the allegation was arrested, they’re only facing five years. So where’s the parity in that, right? There is none. Well, that’s the same thing here. I’m on the unpopular politically incorrect side of the fence here with these false allegations.
Dean Tong: Whether I’m representing as an expert a man, a father, a woman, a mother, a grandmother, I’m on the wrong side of that fence when I walk into a court of law.
Andrew Folkler: Well, Dean, it looks like we are coming up close to that hour mark for the episode. Were there anything, any last pearls of wisdom that you feel were left unsaid that you would like to either, speak to the audience about before we wrap up?
Dean Tong: Yeah, Andrew, don’t put your dirty laundry out on Facebook or any social media. So understand that any text messages, emails, posts at social media, that’s any social media, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, whatever, picture, meme, words can be used against you in a court of law.
Dean Tong: Understand that could come back to bite you. So think before you type, think before you copy and paste, and hit the send button. That could really hurt your case, and lawyers can use that as exhibits to support a pleading, a motion, a petition back in court against you.
Andrew Folkler: I think that’s highly relevant because, especially in Facebook parental alienation groups, you get a lot of people taking screenshots of their text conversations, posting it on these groups, and asking for advice on how to deal with it, how to respond...
Dean Tong: No, yeah. I’ve seen people scan in their documents, actually scanned in their court documents, and their case numbers, and the names of the litigants.
Dean Tong: Don’t do that. Please don’t do that. You’re not helping your case. You’re not helping your children. If you don’t think the government is watching you, think again.
Barbara La Pointe: Well, that’s very powerful advice. How else can you help your case?
Dean Tong: Well, I think I already mentioned that in part, Barbara.
Dean Tong: You gotta create that timeline. There’s a lot of work. You’ve gotta kinda play, quasi-lawyer, quasi-expert, quasi-private investigator, as the accused to build your own case. Nobody knows your case better than you, the accused. Okay? So you’re gonna be the one telling your attorney, “I didn’t do this and here’s why not.”
Dean Tong: I’m just gonna firm that up later on as your expert to run you through a psychosexual risk assessment, including that ABLE screen test, to get a clean bill of psychosexual health on you to show that you don’t show sexual interest in prepubescent female children, that you scored very low on your cognitive distortion scale score, so that I know you’re not trying to hoodwink me or the lawyer or yourself or the system.
Dean Tong: You’re being candid, you’re being frank, you’re being truthful. You’re not lying.
Barbara La Pointe: Dean, do you have any advice for men thinking about taking a plea bargain?
Dean Tong: Yeah, I’m a trial guy, Barbara. Certainly cases of mine go to plea bargains. They’re not within my realm of knowledge, because that’s attorney-client privilege between lawyer and client only. I work under what’s called attorney work product privilege with the attorney.
Dean Tong: So I don’t advocate it, because you still might lose your parental rights in juvenile court. You still might go to prison. You still might wind up on that sex offender registration registry list and online. So I’m a guy that goes to trial and tries to get you a not guilty at jury trial, or a finding of fact conclusion of law, you didn’t do this by a family or juvenile court judge.
Barbara La Pointe: And, just in closing, I’m just curious, are appeals ever possible in these type of cases, if you were.
Dean Tong: Convicted? They are, Barbara, but statistically speaking, you win about 2% of the time, two out of a hundred. They’re very expensive, because they’re very labor and time intensive for the appellate lawyer, okay?
Dean Tong: Who should be board certified in appellate law, if you’re choosing one. And, of course, if you think this is a marathon, wait for your appeal, which is gonna last at least six to nine months before you get a resolution in that.
Andrew Folkler: All righty, Dean. I know you’ve mentioned it a couple times, so just to close out, but what would be the best way for listeners to reach out to you if they wanted to contact you?
Dean Tong: Yeah. I’m very busy, Andrew, as you can well imagine. There aren’t a lot of people to do what I do, so the best way to get in contact with me is through my website, www.abuse-excuse.com.
Andrew Folkler: Right on. And that, everyone, is all we have time for today. Once again, thank you for taking the time to be with us.
Andrew Folkler: And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our channel either on YouTube or through our podcast through the various podcasting streams. Don’t forget, we summarize everything that we talked about in this episode in a downloadable document below, and there’s a lot of powerful links that Dean has shared with us.
Andrew Folkler: And so that will all help you dealing with any of these kinds of situations and preparing yourself for that worst case scenario. Barbara, if listeners wanted to reach out to you, what would be the best way to do so?
Barbara La Pointe: Barbara@barbaralapointe.com.
Andrew Folkler: Right on. And if you wanna reach me, you’re free to email me at startnow@andrewfolkler.com.
Andrew Folkler: And as always, thank you for taking the time to be with us at the Broken Families podcast where we discuss and help you find solutions to divorce, parental alienation, and high-conflict relationships. Have a wonderful day, everyone.
Dean Tong: Thank you, guys, for having me.
Andrew Folkler: Yeah, thanks for joining us, Dean.
Dean Tong: Thank you.
Barbara La Pointe: Thanks, Dean. That was a pleasure and very valuable.
Dean Tong: Thank you again. Appreciate it.