Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

A child witnessing abuse

Hello. I have an eight year old daughter who sometimes goes and visits her father. We have a parenting plan but he doesn't visit her nearly as often as it says. Maybe once a month. Anyways when she goes over there she tells me things that he does to his other two kids (they live with him full time). The last visit she had with him her half brother and sister got in trouble for having a water fight. The girl is 14 and the boy is 12 years old. He slapped both of them across the face and told them to go put on shorts. Then he made them kneel down on bricks for 45 minutes to two hours (that is what my 8 yr old said.) The bricks had sharp things on it so when they got up there knees were bleeding and they could hardly walk. He made them walk around the living room while they were in pain and crying. My daughter was sitting on the couch the whole time watching all this. He has never laid a hand on my daughter but am very afraid of when that time will come, but just that fact that she watches this really distrubs me and I think about those two kids too. I called CPS and made a report...not sure what happened after that. My question is should I allow her to keep seeing him? Is there something that I should do? Thanks


Asked on 8/31/06, 3:21 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Christopher Steuart IT Forensics, Inc.

Re: A child witnessing abuse

You could seek to modify the parenting plan based on a change of circumstances. If you did that you should also consider doing a temporary order modifying the parenting plan. Evidence as always becomes the issue, and I don't know what else you may have in terms of available witness testimony or other evidence.

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Answered on 8/31/06, 9:14 pm


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