Judge rejects dad's request to visit daughter he threatened to kill; dad had "shared" custody (Hartford, Connecticut)

Thank you, Judge Frank D'Addabbo Jr. for being a cool head of reason. Notice that he discounted the incompetent psychologists who turned this sicko daddy drama/near murder into just a mere "fishing trip." And notice that the family courts had previously set up a plan for this traumatized child to visit with her father in prison! Daddy exaltation/coddling at its finest....

Dad DANIEL SWOVERLAND, who had cooked up a plot to kill his daughter in a murder-suicide, served less than two years in prison. Notice at the time, Dad had shared custody with the mother.

http://articles.courant.com/2011-09-02/community/hc-swoverland-decision-20110902_1_visitation-request-child-protection-mother-and-daughter

Judge Rejects Father's Request To Visit Daughter He Plotted To Kill
September 02, 2011|By JOSH KOVNER, The Hartford Courant

A Superior Court judge has denied a request by a former state correction officer to regularly visit the daughter he was convicted of plotting to kill.

Judge Frank D'Addabbo Jr. ruled against Daniel Swoverland, who served just under two years for the plot to kill his daughter and himself. Swoverland had laid out funeral clothes, wrote a note saying where the bodies could be found, armed himself with a gun and took his daughter to Halls Pond in Ashford. State police found father and daughter, unharmed, in his car after the two had left the pond.

The judge's written ruling was released Friday.

D'Addabbo said that the two therapists who testified at a July hearing on Swoverland's visitation request "had a tendency to minimize the nature of the event that gave rise to the defendant's conviction."

The judge took pains in the 15-page ruling to emphasis that he considered all the evidence, including the views expressed by Swoverland; Elizabeth Luciano, his ex-wife and mother of the child; and Swoverland's current girlfriend, who said she trusts him unconditionally with her 9-year-old son.

Luciano strongly opposed the visitation.

The judge adopted the position of the sentencing judge, Superior Court Judge Joan Alexander, who held open the prospect of visitation at some future time, but only when the daughter, 8 at the time of the crime and now 12, was old enough to protect herself and seek help if she felt threatened or uncomfortable. D'Addabbo noted that Alexander envisioned that the child would be at least 18 before any visits occurred.

"Wow — relief,'' the child's mother said over the phone Friday after hearing the news. Mother and daughter live in Maryland.

"No more sleepless nights and feeling sick to my stomach," Luciano said. "My daughter will be protected until she's old enough to make the decision.''

Luciano said she would support her daughter if she decided at some point to see her father again.

"But as an adult, not a 12-year-old,'' Luciano said.

Swoverland, of New Britain, got out of prison last fall and will remain on probation for another four years. The crime occurred in 2007.

State police found Swoverland and the child unhurt in a car on Route 44. The car had crashed after they had left the pond. Swoverland, initially charged with attempted murder, pleaded guilty to risk of injury to a minor, a felony, and received 21 months in prison.

At a July 11 hearing, prosecutor Brian Preleski strongly opposed the visits, saying that he, too, believed that the child was too young and that there was no way to guarantee her safety even if the visits were supervised and held in a secure setting. He mentioned a case in which a father shot and killed his daughter and wounded a social worker in the parking lot outside the child protection council's office in Danielson in 1992.

Preleski said that when Alexander put Swoverland in prison and signed a protective order barring contact with his daughter, the judge contemplated a resumption of visits sometime in the future.

Swoverland's lawyer, T.R. Paulding, was careful to tell D'Addabbo that they were seeking only highly supervised, videotaped visits at the KidSafe facility in Rockville, and that Swoverland would be ultra-sensitive to his daughter's reactions. Paulding also noted that the family court had approved a plan for the girl to visit Swoverland in prison, but the protective order trumped that ruling.

D'Addabbo acknowledged in his ruling that Swoverland was willing to take "baby steps'' to start the reunification process.

But the judge said the therapists who supported Swoverland woefully underestimated the crime, with one saying that Swoverland had taken his daughter on a fishing trip. The judge also noted that the therapists tended to attribute Swoverland's actions to an ingestion of a mixture of steroids and anti-anxiety medicine, which the judge felt was an oversimplification.

Swoverland had testified that he took the medication because of a heart problem, stress at work and his perception that his daughter wasn't happy living part of the time with her mother. At the time, Swoverland and Luciano shared custody.

D'Addabbo said that Swoverland's plea for visits couldn't overcome the testimony of the mental health experts, or the sentencing judge's view, that the child should be older before she sees her father again.

"There is evidence that the defendant … loves his child and very much wishes to see here. … These occurrences do not establish good cause to modify the restraining order, when balanced against the facts of the serious underlying matter,'' the judge concluded.