7 chapters
All chapters tagged with Institutional
Sixteen visits. Six supervisors. Every observer reports the same thing: Steve is attentive, Evie is happy. The supervisors keep changing. The court declines to read a favorable report. The visits stop for five months. The court grants sole custody anyway.
Steve files a detailed memorandum describing the ambush, the supervision manipulation, and the historical abuse inside the Walsh household. The court destabilizes. The judge recuses. The case is reassigned.
Steve seeks recognition in New York of the protection he won against Tara after a San Francisco hearing. Humphrey warns Steve about nonappearance, but gives him no ruling after Tara misses two hearings. Humphrey then recuses. Aunt K investigates the court's evaluator.
The case passes to a fourth judge. At a twenty-three-minute video appearance Schauer vacates the Horowitz default on consent and issues mirroring stay-away orders — one against each party — rather than address the California restraining order against Tara. The poisoner and the poisoned are treated as symmetrical threats, and neither petition is heard. Steve tells the court a permanent temporary order does not give him a chance to face his accuser. The court tells him he is muddying the record.
Jennifer Jackman resigns as Attorney for the Child without explanation. Her replacement files a motion to suppress all blog content. A visitation conference is converted into a gag order hearing. Steve is declared in default. Judge Schauer orders the blog removed — every post, every photograph, every grandmother's letter. The words are precise. Erase. Deactivate. Delete.
His attorney was in the courtroom. He was not. The phone rang after. The voice on the other end sounded beaten. 'Well, that didn't go well.' The orders were final.
The court orders leave the courthouse. Tara and the Walsh family circulate them to employers, friends, and journalists — presenting them as proof Steve is dangerous. Reporter Michaelanne Petrella receives a direct threat seventeen days before the gag order exists. Walsh Sr. threatens Steve's attorney by voicemail. The SFPD detective investigating the poisoning is neutralized by a court order hand-delivered by a party to the case.