Thus, upon being released, I suffered the indignity of having supervised visits with my children. At least the final PFA order provided some guidance for how long I would need to have my time with my kids supervised, and I can understand Judge Ruest wanting to cover her ass by requiring me to get a psychological evaluation.
The visitations were in an old school in Bellefonte near the courthouse. Since there’s usually a PFA or some other issues between the parents, they stagger arrival times. I was asked to arrive no later than 15 minutes before the scheduled visits and waited in a small waiting room. The kids came in through some other entrance, and there was never any contact with Rita. The visits occurred primarily in what I suspect had once been the school cafeteria/gymnasium. There was a fully equipped kitchen that I’m guessing could be used to prepare meals during custodial times. I would usually stop by a nearby Subway and get the kids sandwiches to eat during the visits. They had done an excellent job outfitting the space with furniture, toys, games, puzzles, etc., so there were things to do. They also encouraged me to bring craft projects to do.
The orientation required filling out a lot of paperwork and having an interview with staff members. I’m not sure what they knew about the situation at the time of my consultation, but they seemed very skeptical of everything I told them. I, at least, felt it was a very antagonistic discussion with these women who seemed to have already formed an impression and had an opinion of me. I had not figured out how to handle situations in which others did not give me the benefit of any doubt of being a good person. I probably didn’t help their opinion by seeming very defensive. It seemed like I needed to convince them I was not just another terrible, abusive man, but that may have just been my impression. It was another step in my learning to deal with feeling like people were prejudiced against me.
I don’t recall all the rules, but they were essentially, “Don’t say bad things about the other parent” and “Don’t try to extract information about the other parent from the kids.” It was all pretty basic stuff. The one rule that got me admonished, and hence I recall it, was that there should be no whispering. I can completely understand this as the person supervising should hear all conversations. I got reprimanded because when Caleb touched something, he got shocked by static electricity. When he recoiled, I said, “Static?” and the supervisor didn’t catch what I said. I then was “talked to” about the whispering rule. I wanted to say, “If you were paying attention, you probably would have heard what I said.” Fortunately, I limited my response to an eye roll. I was also somewhat offended that the supervising person looked like a bouncer at a bar as if I needed to be intimidated to behave.
The visits generally went okay, but as I will discuss later, having a 14-year-old boy and 11- and 4-year-old girls makes it hard to find things to do that will keep them all engaged. As would usually happen over the next several years and still happens to this day, I spend most of my time doing things with Amelia simply because she’s the youngest and, for much of the time, not able to entertain herself. Plus, I hoped Caleb and Amanda understood better the predicament I was in trying to keep them all entertained in a place that wasn’t their home or had their individual “toys.”
This experience was also the first time I explicitly saw that, while the court would punish me severely for not strictly following a court order, Rita could do so with absolutely no penalty.
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