"She was really smart, really bright, but she was very disruptive to my family," says Schneiderman. "She was so used to not living in what I consider to be a normal family, and Alanna would tell my children, 'You don't have to listen to [your parents], they just want to be in charge of you.' After three weeks, my husband and I were fighting and my kids were not listening to me."
Once Alanna had overstayed her welcome at the Schneidermans, she went to live with Lynne Geminder, yet another distant relative on her maternal side, and her family. Geminder says that the girl could be manipulative; it seems Alanna disrupted the Geminders' life, too.
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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"It's fair to say that it was not at no price that we kept her in our home," says Lynne Geminder. "She wreaked havoc in my house."
Though Geminder is wary of Alanna, she also sympathizes with her. "My recollection was that there were problems between the parents and neither one was a saint," she says. "Between the two of them, there was wildness, nothing a kid should have to endure or cope with."
Meanwhile, Krause had hired a private detective to stake out Simone-Smith's Ojai home because he was convinced that Simone-Smith had either kidnapped Alanna or encouraged her to run away. The detective never found evidence of kidnapping, though Krause is still certain that Simone-Smith planted the idea in Alanna's head, a charge she denies.
"I did not tell Alanna to run," Simone-Smith says. "What I told her was to find your own strength."
Through a series of soap opera-like coincidences involving a teacher, Alanna's stepbrother, and his mother, Krause discovered that Alanna was staying with the Geminders, who convinced Alanna to turn herself in by calling the Department of Children and Family Services.
Several months of interviews with social workers and therapists and attorneys ensued while Alanna continued to live with the Geminders. Krause pressed to have the case remanded to Marin County and asked that the court look at Marin County evaluator Oklan's recommendations. Instead, the L.A. Juvenile Courts took the case, because, as Commissioner Stanley Genser, who oversaw the proceedings, says, he "wanted the truth."
Genser ordered an independent psychological evaluation by Dr. Daniel Kramon. The file is confidential, but Genser says that after he read Kramon's report, he formed several opinions: "I didn't find the allegation that the mother alienated the child credible," he says. "It didn't fit the usual picture of parental alienation. [Alanna] didn't spend enough time with her mother. And there's child abuse and there's child abuse. It was he said, she said.
"Alanna was getting older, and she wanted to live with her mother, and I couldn't find anything saying that [the] mother was really a risk."
Krause has this to say about the Kramon report: "It was a cursory report, and Dr. Kramon said we were both fit to be parents."
The L.A. Department of Children's Services also submitted a report to Genser in January 1998, which stated, in part:
- "The department believes that the minor did suffer from physical abuse by her father on several occasions and this was substantiated from several sources."
- "The Marin County Child Protective Services was remiss in not responding to many of the referrals and simply dismissing them as "custody dispute' issues."
- "The department is disturbed that it discovered the father had made arrangements with the Island View Residential Treatment Center to have the minor Alanna admitted on the day of this hearing. Particularly as the minor does not exhibit any signs of psychotic behavior, is not presenting in a manner that is an [sic] danger to herself or others ...."
- "Although a lot of information has been submitted to the department with recommendations from the Marin County area, the department is inclined not to believe a great portion of that material. The department believes that the assertions of this [sic] Lana Clark, Ph.D., is biased information due to the seemingly intimate relationship which existed between Mr. Krause and Dr. Clark. In addition, Dr. Clark is the individual who provided Dr. Oklan with a majority of his information. ... [I]nformation fed to Dr. Oklan was therefore biased and likely not credible."
Krause says the latter report was biased, because the caseworker who prepared it "believed everything Alanna said" and failed to interview him. (The report shows that the social worker interviewed Krause twice by phone.) Edward Oklan says that his findings were "misconstrued" by L.A. County.
But the juvenile court case never got much further than a series of reports and court appearances. Genser says that after a few meetings, Krause simply gave up on the case, and in order to make Alanna a ward of the court, agreed to plead no contest to the use of "inappropriate discipline," among other things. Custody automatically went to Simone-Smith.
"The father just gave in, probably because he wanted to salvage his relationship with his daughter," Genser says.
Alanna was overjoyed with the results. After a few more months with the Geminders, she moved in with her mother and stepfather in Ojai in May 1998, at age 14, excited to establish a normal teenage life. In her mother's care, she finished high school as an honor student and was accepted to Northwestern University, where she decided to double major in Asian studies and art. Her contact with her father faded. "They were years I felt safe and not ripped up by the roots," Alanna says.
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