"And Lauren would lose it. She'd be crying, castigating the court for its failure to hear the child or her. Poor Lauren was not treated very nicely, and she did not treat the court very nicely, either. She was contentious, emotional. The little girl was caught in the fray. The whole system seemed to be saying, 'Here's the former president of the Marin County Bar Association, who had worked at the ACLU, a prominent attorney. Why should we believe this kid?'"
Alanna told Edward Oklan about her father's behavior and about how much she wanted to live with her mother, but his August 1994 recommendation to Shapiro focused primarily on Simone-Smith's mental health history as evidence that she was an unfit parent. Some of the information for the report came from Lana Clark, Alanna's family therapist, whom, Alanna says, her father was dating.
Courtesy of Alanna Krause
Alanna (center, as a toddler) became "property to be
divided" during her parents' contentious child custody
battle in 1993.
Robert Davis
Alanna believes her $135 million lawsuit will send the
message that children need a voice in family courts.
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Los Angeles court papers say that Krause and Clark had a "seemingly intimate relationship" and refer the court to "the enclosed documents by Dr. Clark, particularly the ones signed "fondly' and the ones with little hearts." Krause denies a romantic relationship with Clark, and says she is an "outgoing, loving person," the type who closes all of her letters by writing "Love, Lana." (Lana Clark declined to comment for this article because she said she had not yet been served with Alanna's lawsuit.)
From his own interviews and information from Clark, Oklan produced a report that stated: "It is my medical opinion that [Simone-Smith] clearly has a biological mental illness, which I would diagnose as bi-polar affective disorder, mixed mania and depression, subacute, untreated for many months." He reported that Simone-Smith's supposed illness and her denigration of Krause had led Alanna to develop "Parental Alienation Syndrome," a controversial diagnosis not recognized by the American Psychological Association, in which one parent is assumed to have brainwashed the child against the other parent. Oklan based his decision to recommend awarding sole custody to Krause on his diagnosis of PAS, and says that he did not find Alanna's allegations of abuse by Krause credible.
"I do not believe [Krause] is either physically or emotionally abusive to Alanna and do believe that [Simone-Smith's] interactions with Alanna foster regression, alienation toward her father, and disruption of her independent functioning at school ...," Oklan wrote in his report.
Controversy around the legal application of PAS has arisen precisely because numerous cases presented by the media -- and acknowledged by the courts themselves -- document horror stories of the diagnosis being used to award sole custody to an abusive parent. (New Times L.A., for example, published "A Little Girl's Hell" by Sandra Goldsmith, which told the story of Ovando Cowles, to whom the L.A. Department of Children and Family Services awarded custody of his daughter based on a diagnosis of PAS, despite the fact that the court believed he was molesting her.)
About three months before Oklan filed his report with the court, Alanna's attorney, Sandra Acevedo, also used PAS to recommend that Krause receive sole custody of Alanna. Acevedo, too, found no credible reports of abuse by Krause, and stated in her May 1994 declaration to the court that she believed it was Simone-Smith who was emotionally abusing Alanna through "intentional campaigns to demean and disparage Father."
In her declaration, Acevedo wrote, "In closing, it is my sincere belief that Mother has alienated Alanna from her father, from her therapist, her attorney. ... Alanna has grown toxic toward any person other than her mother."
Simone-Smith denies Acevedo's allegations, and says she has never tried to alienate Alanna from anyone.
Alanna, too, was frustrated with her attorney. "Sandra Acevedo spent her allotted time with me parroting my father's words, attempting to convince me that I really wanted to live with him. She ignored my reports of abuse," Alanna wrote in her article for the legal newspaper.
Indeed, the role of the court-appointed attorney for children in family court cases has generated discussion among legal professionals, and most everyone agrees that such attorneys are rarely offered enough training. Family law cases are often complex, and the role of minor's counsel varies from case to case according to the judge's orders. Though the attorney is ultimately charged with looking out for the "best interest of the child" -- and "as appropriate, to communicate the child's wishes to the court" -- the role can be interpreted differently.
Sandra Acevedo says she felt she did everything she could to properly represent Alanna. "[Minor's counsels] are a group of hard-working, committed attorneys," she says. "There is a lot of misperception that we are somehow favored by the courts, and in reality, we are doing our very, very best to represent kids in some of the worst family law cases."
Outside the courtroom, the physical fights between Alanna and her father continued. In a February 1994 incident that required medical attention, Alanna hurt her back as a result of an altercation with her father. Alanna says she was talking on the phone with her mother when her father got angry. According to an affidavit filed with the L.A. Juvenile Courts, Krause "picked me up ... flat, horizontal, at about the height of his shoulders. ... He was still so mad, that he threw me down, flat on my back. ... I was scared. ... He pinned me down on the floor and yelled at me with his face in my face. I don't remember what he was screaming, but it was something about the phone. I hurt a lot."
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