In December, the CA Board of Psychology re-opened settlement negotiations with me. This is my Settlement Counter-Proposal:

• • Settlement Counter-Proposal from Dr. Childress

Settlement Counter-Proposal

To: California Board of Psychology / Deputy Attorney General
From: Craig A. Childress, Psy.D. (Pro Se)
Re: Settlement Counter-Proposal — Case No. 600-2022-000419

As a clinical psychologist who has worked in the family court environment for fifteen years, I have carried a continuous duty to protect a vulnerable population—the parents and children in the family courts—from undiagnosed child psychological abuse and related spousal psychological abuse. This duty has persisted without an institutional mechanism through which it could be formally discharged.

In response to the Board’s settlement offer of December 2, 2025 (proposing four years of probation, monitoring, and specific coursework requirements), and pursuant to my mandatory obligations under APA Standard 1.05 (Taking Further Action Appropriate to the Situation) and my clinical duty to protect (APA Standard 3.04: Avoiding Harm), I submit the following single, non-negotiable condition as my Formal Counter-Offer for the resolution of this matter.

Condition of Resolution

Dismissal of all charges currently pending against me.

Effect of Dismissal

Dismissal of the charges constitutes the California Board of Psychology’s receipt and acceptance of Exhibit A — Discharge of Duty to Protect, attached and incorporated by reference. Exhibit A documents the protections I have carried and the implementable solutions I transmit in discharge of my APA 1.05 and clinical duty-to-protect obligations. Dismissal is the administrative act that completes my ethical discharge: by dismissing the charges, the Board accepts the discharge documented in Exhibit A.

If the Board Does Not Dismiss

If the Board instead seeks to impose any punitive disposition — including, without limitation, probation, public censure, monitoring, mandated evaluation or therapy as a disciplinary condition, cost recovery, or any other disciplinary sanction — I will interpret such a disposition as a statement that the Board has not accepted the discharge described in Exhibit A. In that event, my APA 1.05 and clinical duty to protect will remain active, and I will be professionally compelled to proceed to the scheduled hearing and thereafter as necessary to complete the discharge in the public record and by other appropriate actions.

Clarifying Statement

This counter-proposal does not require the Board to implement the reforms described in Exhibit A. Exhibit A is provided as the formal record of my duty-to-protect discharge and as a documented set of solutions for protecting children and parents in family courts. What the Board does with this information is a matter for the Board’s institutional responsibility once the discharge is complete. The sole administrative act required for completion is dismissal of the pending charges.

Respectfully submitted,
Craig A. Childress, Psy.D. (Pro Se)
Enclosure: Exhibit A — Discharge of Duty to Protect

Exhibit A: Discharge of Duty to Protect

INTRODUCTION — Professional Mandate and Institutional Failure

For fifteen years, I have carried two distinct professional obligations regarding parents and children in family courts:

First, a clinical duty to protect children from child psychological abuse and parents from related spousal psychological abuse. This duty arises from my documented expertise in child abuse assessment, complex trauma, attachment pathology, delusional thought disorders, and family systems, and requires affirmative protective action when abuse is identified.

Second, mandatory ethical obligations under APA Standards 1.04 and 1.05 triggered by identifying ethical violations by forensic custody evaluators—specifically, violations of Standards 2.01 (Boundaries of Competence), 2.04 (Bases for Scientific and Professional Judgments), 9.01 (Bases for Assessments), and 3.04 (Avoiding Harm)—that cause ongoing, foreseeable harm. These ethical violations directly contribute to the failure to diagnose and treat the abuse pathology, creating a situation in which both obligation pathways converge.

Until now, no institutional mechanism has existed through which I could formally discharge these duties. Professional duties under Standards 1.05 and 3.04 remain active until received by an appropriate regulatory authority. This institutional void exists because of regulatory capture (Stigler, 1971) within the family court system: the forensic custody evaluation specialty has assumed an experimental quasi-judicial role without appropriate oversight, disabling the enforcement of professional standards and public protection mechanisms that should govern psychological practice in this context.

My obligations are heightened by my documented expertise in the precise clinical domains required for competent assessment in these cases: attachment pathology (early childhood mental health), delusional thought disorder assessment, complex trauma and child abuse, and human subjects research ethics (IRB/Belmont Report). This specialized background positions me to recognize both the clinical pathology being missed and the ethical violations causing that failure. (See Section I: Domains of Expertise and Heightened Obligation.)

This document represents my formal discharge of these obligations to the California Board of Psychology. It provides the clinical findings, institutional analysis, and implementable solutions necessary to protect children and parents from ongoing harm in family court contexts.

SECTION I — DOMAINS OF EXPERTISE AND HEIGHTENED OBLIGATION

My duty to protect and APA 1.05 obligations are heightened by my specialized expertise in the domains directly relevant to the pathology occurring in family courts:

Attachment Pathology, Child Abuse, and Complex Trauma
Clinical Director of a multidisciplinary assessment and treatment program serving children ages zero to five referred by Child Protective Services; specialized training in Early Childhood Mental Health (DC:0-3/DMIC), a restricted subspecialty focused on parent-child attachment bonding and disruptions; direct clinical experience assessing and treating all forms of child abuse including psychological abuse.

Assessment of Delusional Thought Disorders
Over twelve years of NIMH-funded research training and diagnostic reliability achievement (r ≥ .90) on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) for assessment of psychotic-spectrum symptomatology, including persecutory delusions, under principal investigators Drs. Keith Nuechterlein, Joseph Ventura, and David Lukoff at UCLA.

Human Subjects Research Ethics (IRB/Belmont Report)
Invited consultation to the Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR) and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on ethical frameworks for human subjects research and IRB review requirements for emerging research contexts (Conference on Ethical and Legal Aspects of Human Subjects Research in Cyberspace, Washington, D.C., June 1999).

This combination of expertise is exceptionally rare. Attachment specialization requires early childhood focus; delusional assessment expertise requires psychotic-spectrum diagnostic background; these domains rarely overlap in typical training pathways. When combined with IRB/Belmont expertise and complex trauma competence, this background uniquely positions me to recognize:

• • When child psychological abuse is present but undiagnosed

• • When persecutory or shared delusional content requires Mental Status Examination

• • When evaluators are practicing outside documented competence (2.01 violations)

• • When assessments lack adequate scientific foundation (2.04 and 9.01 violations)

• • When forensic procedures constitute unregulated experiments on vulnerable populations without IRB protections

My expertise creates heightened obligation: I cannot claim ignorance of the pathology, the ethical violations, or the Belmont Report violations. Standards 1.04, 1.05, and 3.04 become mandatory, not discretionary.

SOLUTION 1: IMMEDIATE MORATORIUM ON FORENSIC CUSTODY EVALUATIONS PENDING IRB REVIEW

The California Board of Psychology should initiate an immediate moratorium on forensic custody evaluations in California pending completion of the following:

Necessary Actions:

• • Formal Institutional Review Board (IRB) review pursuant to APA Standard 8.01 (Institutional Approval), including comprehensive risk-benefit analysis of forensic custody evaluation practice

• • Belmont Report compliance assessment addressing violations of all three ethical principles:

• • • Respect for Persons: Families subjected to evaluations without properly informed consent regarding potential risks and benefits, and under coercive court authority

• • • Beneficence: No demonstrated benefits to families, substantial documented harms (NY Blue-Ribbon Commission on Forensic Custody Evaluations, 2021)

• • • Justice: Unfair distribution of burdens (families) and benefits (evaluators), evaluators receive financial and career benefits while children and parents bear all risks

• • Development and implementation of enforceable protections for the vulnerable population of children and parents subjected to court-ordered psychological interventions

Rationale:

Forensic custody evaluations constitute experimental quasi-judicial interventions conducted on vulnerable populations. The traditional role of psychologists is diagnosis and treatment in clinical or academic settings, which have IRB oversight mechanisms. FCEs represent an experimental expansion into a quasi-judicial advisory role, using an experimental assessment approach, conducted through the legal system which lacks IRB review mechanisms.

This practice has operated for 40 years:

• • Without IRB review (Standard 8.01 violation)

• • Without risk-benefit analysis

• • Without protections for vulnerable populations

• • Without inter-rater reliability (i.e., lacking validity; an assessment procedure cannot be valid if it is not reliable)

• • Without outcome validation studies

• • With evaluators receiving substantial financial compensation and professional status while families bear all psychological, relational, and developmental risks

These conditions violate the Belmont Report principles governing all research and experimental procedures involving human subjects.

Independent Expert Consensus:

The New York Blue Ribbon Commission on Forensic Custody Evaluations, after comprehensive review, found that forensic custody evaluations are “dangerous” and “harmful to children, and lack scientific or legal value.” By an 11-9 margin, a majority of Commission members recommended “elimination of forensic custody evaluations entirely.”

New York Blue Ribbon Commission Findings (2021):

“In their analysis, evaluators may rely on principles and methodologies of dubious validity. In some custody cases, because of lack of evidence or the inability of parties to pay for expensive challenges of an evaluation, defective reports can thus escape meaningful scrutiny and are often accepted by the court, with potentially disastrous consequences for the parents and children… As it currently exists, the process is fraught with bias, inequity, and a statewide lack of standards, and allows for discrimination and violations of due process.”

“By an 11-9 margin, a majority of Commission members favor elimination of forensic custody evaluations entirely, arguing that these reports are biased and harmful to children and lack scientific or legal value. At worst, evaluations can be dangerous, particularly in situations of domestic violence or child abuse – there have been several cases of children in New York who were murdered by a parent who received custody following an evaluation. These members reached the conclusion that the practice is beyond reform and that no amount of training for courts, forensic evaluators and/or other court personnel will successfully fix the bias, inequity and conflict of interest issues that exist within the system.”

(New York Blue Ribbon Commission on Forensic Custody Evaluations, Final Report, 2021)

CRITICAL VIOLATION: WITHHOLDING STANDARD CLINICAL CARE

A particularly egregious aspect of current forensic custody evaluation practice is the systematic withholding of standard clinical diagnostic assessment from families and courts. Parents and courts are offered only the experimental forensic custody evaluation approach. Standard clinical care—DSM-5-based diagnostic assessment with proper differential diagnosis—is not made available.

The Required Differential Diagnosis:

Standard clinical assessment requires differential diagnosis between two distinct pathways:

Path A: Child psychological abuse by the targeted-rejected parent, creating an authentic self-protective response in the child requiring protective intervention

Path B: Child psychological abuse by the allied parent (typically involving narcissistic-borderline personality pathology) who induces a shared persecutory delusion and factitious attachment pathology in the child for primary and secondary gain (DSM-5: 297.1 Delusional Disorder, Shared; 300.19 Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another; V995.51 Child Psychological Abuse)

Clinical diagnosis using established DSM-5 criteria is the standard of care. This requires:

• • Mental Status Examination of thought and perception when persecutory content is present

• • Structured assessment of attachment pathology using validated approaches

• • Differential diagnosis of personality pathology in parents

• • Assessment for factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA)

• • Evaluation of family systems dynamics and triangulation patterns

Forensic custody evaluations systematically exclude this standard clinical diagnostic process. Instead, they:

• • Substitute non-scientific constructs (“parental alienation”; “Parent-Child Contact Problems”) for DSM-5 diagnosis

• • Omit Mental Status Examination despite presence of persecutory beliefs

• • Fail to assess for delusional disorders or FDIA

• • Provide custody recommendations without diagnostic foundation

• • Focus on quasi-judicial advisory role rather than clinical diagnosis and treatment planning

IRB Violation:

No Institutional Review Board would permit an experimental procedure to be offered as the exclusive option while withholding standard clinical care. IRB review mandates:

1) Standard care must remain available – Experimental procedures can be offered in addition to standard care, never instead of standard care

2) Informed consent required – Families must be informed that:

• • FCE is an experimental quasi-judicial intervention, not standard clinical practice

• • Standard diagnostic assessment using DSM-5 is the established clinical approach

• • FCE has unknown risks and no demonstrated benefits

• • Outcomes of FCE practice have never been systematically validated

3) Equipoise must exist – Researchers offering experimental procedures must genuinely not know whether the experimental approach is superior to standard care. FCE practitioners claim their experimental approach is superior to standard clinical diagnosis, violating equipoise requirements.

4) Right to decline experimental procedure – Families have the right to decline experimental procedures and receive standard clinical care. Current practice denies this right—families subjected to court-ordered FCE have no option to obtain standard clinical diagnostic assessment instead.

The Coercive Structure:

This violation is particularly severe because:

• • Families are court-ordered to undergo FCEs (coercive, not voluntary)

• • No alternative option for standard clinical diagnosis is provided

• • Courts rely exclusively on FCE reports, unaware these are experimental procedures

• • Standard care (diagnosis and treatment) has been displaced by experimental quasi-judicial role

• • Parents cannot obtain the clinical diagnostic information needed to protect their children

Harm to Children and Families:

By withholding standard clinical diagnostic assessment:

• • Child psychological abuse remains undiagnosed (V995.51 not identified)

• • Delusional pathology remains unrecognized (no MSE conducted)

• • FDIA dynamics remain concealed (no structured assessment)

• • Treatment planning cannot occur (no diagnosis established)

• • Courts make custody decisions without accurate clinical information

Children continue in abusive environments because the abuse was never properly diagnosed. Protective parents lose custody because the pathology inducing the child’s rejection was never identified.

Standard 3.04 Violation:

Withholding standard clinical care while providing only experimental procedures with unknown risks constitutes a clear violation of APA Standard 3.04 (Avoiding Harm). Psychologists have an affirmative obligation to provide competent diagnostic services. Substituting experimental quasi-judicial evaluations for clinical diagnosis predictably causes harm to children and families.

Required Remedy:

The moratorium on forensic custody evaluations must remain in effect until:

• • Standard clinical diagnostic assessment using DSM-5 criteria is made available to all families

• • Courts are informed that FCE is experimental and standard clinical diagnosis is the established approach

• • Families are given the right to choose standard diagnostic assessment over experimental FCE

• • Proper informed consent procedures are established for any family subjected to FCE

• • IRB review is completed to determine whether FCE practice can ethically continue

Protective Urgency:

Children and families are being subjected to these experimental procedures daily. Each evaluation conducted without IRB oversight, risk-benefit analysis, or Belmont Report protections represents ongoing violation of APA Standard 8.01 and the ethical standards governing human subjects research. Children continue in abusive environments while their abuse remains undiagnosed. The moratorium protects this vulnerable population while proper review and safeguards are established.

Implementation:

The Board should issue immediate guidance to California courts that forensic custody evaluations are suspended pending completion of IRB review and establishment of human subjects protections required by the Belmont Report and APA Standard 8.01. This action is mandated by the Board’s statutory duty to protect the public and ensure ethical professional practice.

SOLUTION 2: PROFESSIONAL REMEDIATION — RE-ESTABLISHING COMPETENCE IN FAMILY COURT PRACTICE

(APA Standards 2.01, 2.04, 9.01, 3.04)

The Competence Crisis

State licensing boards and the American Psychological Association have an obligation to ensure the highest quality of mental health services for parents and children whose lives are determined by the court’s decisions. Courts must receive competent clinical guidance when making life-altering decisions about children and family relationships.

Current family court practice fails this standard. Evaluators routinely:

• • Apply pseudo-scientific, fabricated pathology labels (“parental alienation,” “parent-child contact problems”) instead of DSM-5 diagnoses

• • Practice outside documented areas of competence in attachment pathology, delusional disorders, personality pathology, complex trauma, and family systems

• • Require parents to educate the clinician about relevant clinical diagnoses and treatment approaches

• • Provide opinions to courts without adequate scientific or diagnostic foundation

The Predictable Cascade of Ethical Violations

This competence failure produces a predictable cascade:

APA 2.01 — Boundaries of Competence
Evaluators lack documented education, training, and supervised experience in the domains required to assess pathology in high-conflict custody cases: attachment disorders, delusional thought disorders, factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), complex trauma, personality pathology, and family systems dynamics.

APA 2.04 — Bases for Scientific and Professional Judgments
Without the necessary knowledge base, clinicians cannot apply established scientific and professional knowledge. Their judgments lack scientific foundation and rely instead on fabricated constructs that do not appear in DSM-5 or any recognized diagnostic system.

APA 9.01 — Bases for Assessments
Lacking applicable knowledge and methods (for example, Mental Status Examination of thought and perception when persecutory beliefs are present), evaluators’ conclusions are not based on information and techniques sufficient to substantiate their findings.

APA 3.04 — Avoiding Harm
The cascade from incompetence (2.01) through unsupported judgments (2.04) to inadequate assessment bases (9.01) produces foreseeable, avoidable harm: children remain in psychologically abusive environments while their abuse remains undiagnosed, and protective parents lose custody based on opinions lacking adequate foundation.

Required Remediation

The California Board of Psychology should require structured remediation and continuing education for all psychologists practicing in family court contexts. This remediation is required to correct widespread 2.01 violations that directly harm children and families.

Remediation Requirements:

Remediation programs must:

• • Be grounded in DSM-5/ICD diagnostic frameworks and peer-reviewed research

• • Include documented coursework, supervised clinical experience, and behavioral demonstration of competence

1. • Explicitly enforce compliance with APA Standards 2.04, 9.01, and 3.04

1. • Be verified through Board-approved certification prior to performing family court evaluations

Required Competence Domains:

All psychologists conducting family court assessments must demonstrate documented competence in the following domains:

1) Attachment Pathology
Assessment and treatment of attachment disorders including child rejection of a parent, disorganized attachment specific to one parent, role-reversal dynamics, and transgenerational transmission of attachment trauma.

2) Delusional and Psychotic-Spectrum Disorders
Diagnostic assessment of persecutory delusions, shared/induced delusional systems (folie à deux, DSM-5 297.1), and capacity to conduct developmentally appropriate Mental Status Examination of thought content and perception. Requires documented training in assessment of psychotic-spectrum symptomatology.

3) Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA)
Identification, differential diagnosis, and clinical management when a parent fabricates or induces psychological symptoms in a child for primary or secondary gain (DSM-5 300.19). Requires understanding of medical/psychological fabrication patterns and safe intervention protocols.

4) Complex Trauma and Child Abuse
Assessment of all forms of child abuse including psychological abuse (V995.51), behavior-chain reconstructions for sentinel events, cross-context consistency analysis, and implementation of child-protection procedures. Requires documented clinical experience in child abuse assessment and treatment.

5) Personality Pathology
Assessment of narcissistic, borderline, and Dark Triad/Tetrad/Vulnerable Dark Triad personality presentations and their implications for psychological control, coalition-forming, role-reversal dynamics, and coercive family patterns. Requires graduate-level training in personality assessment and supervised clinical experience.

6) Family Systems Theory
Identification and intervention for triangulation, cross-generational coalitions, role confusion, parentification, and system-level pathology. Understanding of how family systems either support or undermine healthy parent-child attachment. Requires graduate-level coursework and supervised family therapy experience.

Certification and Enforcement

The Board should establish a certification process requiring psychologists to demonstrate documented competence in required domains before conducting family court assessments. This certification should include:

• • Verified transcripts showing graduate-level coursework in required domains

• • Documentation of supervised clinical experience (minimum hours to be established)

• • Case-based competence demonstration reviewed by Board-approved supervisors

• • Continuing education requirements to maintain current knowledge

Psychologists currently practicing in family courts without documented competence in these domains should complete Board-approved remediation before continuing to perform forensic work. Failure to obtain required competence within a specified timeframe (recommend 18 months) results in prohibition from family court practice until remediation is complete.

Immediate Implementation

The Board should establish a Competence Review Panel within 90 days to:

• • Design remediation curriculum based on current scientific literature

• • Establish certification standards and procedures

• • Review vitae of current family court practitioners for 2.01 compliance

• • Develop timeline for mandatory remediation completion

• • Create enforcement mechanisms for psychologists practicing outside documented competence

This ensures that courts receive high quality professional-level diagnostic and clinical guidance, children receive accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment, and the profession upholds its commitment to competent practice.

SOLUTION 3: AI-AUGMENTED COMPETENCE ASSESSMENT

The Board would benefit in its decision-making from empirical data on the scope of 2.01 violations among current family court evaluators. AI-augmented analysis of professional vitae provides rapid, systematic assessment against established competence criteria (documented education, training, and experience in attachment pathology and the diagnostic assessment of delusional thought disorders, child abuse and complex trauma, etc.).

The Board can implement this vitae analysis immediately using existing regulatory authority. The Board can request CVs from court-involved psychologists identified through court appointment lists, AFCC membership rosters, licensee records, and professional websites, then subject these vitae to AI-augmented analysis identifying which evaluators meet 2.01 thresholds and which lack documented competence in required domains.

This provides direct empirical data on: (1) the percentage of evaluators practicing outside documented competence, (2) which competence domains show greatest deficiency, and (3) the magnitude of the 2.01 violation problem. Results enable targeted implementation of Solution 2 remediation requirements and document the Board’s regulatory obligation to act to remediate competence deficits.

SOLUTION 4: Four Decades of Experimental Harm — Institutional Betrayal, Survivors, and the Duty to Repair

For roughly forty years the family-court system has cultivated a quasi-judicial role for clinicians and an experimental assessment procedure — the forensic custody evaluation (FCE). Performed without IRB review, without formal risk–benefit analysis, and without protections for a clearly vulnerable population, FCEs have functioned in practice as an unregulated human-subjects experiment. The predictable result has been catastrophic: hundreds of thousands — and by some estimates, on the order of millions — of now-adult children and their parents whose lives were devastated by undiagnosed and untreated child-psychological abuse and related spousal psychological abuse. Many now-adult survivors were severed from attachment to a normal-range and loving parent and remained caught in the dynamics of psychological child abuse; while protective parents lost bonded relationships with their children and now live with enduring, unresolved traumatic grief.

This pattern is a textbook case of institutional betrayal. Jennifer Freyd’s research shows that when institutions that should protect instead cause or conceal harm, the resulting trauma differs qualitatively and is far harder to heal: survivors exhibit betrayal-blindness, identity fragmentation, persistent mistrust of authorities, and difficulty integrating their experience even when they receive excellent individual therapy. For these survivors, individual therapy is necessary but not sufficient — institutional acknowledgment and remedial action are prerequisites for effective psychological repair.

The ethical frame is inescapable. FCEs conducted as de facto experiments — without IRB approval, adequate informed-consent procedures, vulnerable-population protections, or the Belmont Report’s risk–benefit safeguards (Respect for Persons; Beneficence; Justice) — violated the basic obligations that protect human subjects. Professionally, these practices produced a cascading set of violations of the APA Ethics Code: practitioners operated outside 2.01 (Boundaries of Competence), failed to apply 2.04 (Established Scientific and Professional Knowledge), issued assessments that lacked the evidentiary bases required by 9.01 (Bases for Assessment), and created foreseeable and avoidable harm in breach of 3.04 (Avoiding Harm).

Professional psychology therefore bears a direct clinical and ethical obligation to the now-adult children and parents harmed by this system. This obligation is not merely retrospective complaint; it is an active duty to repair. Institutional courage — public admission of failure, transparent disclosure of what occurred, and funded remedial services — is the clinical intervention survivors require before individual psychotherapy can fully succeed. Without institutional acknowledgment, survivors remain trapped in a cycle of shame, self-doubt, and retraumatization that individual treatment alone cannot resolve.

Accordingly, the California Board of Psychology and the American Psychological Association should commit to active outreach and programmatic healing for those harmed by four decades of unregulated FCE practice. At minimum this requires: (1) public institutional acknowledgment of the harm caused by the forensic FCE/PA system and the failure of protective institutions to prevent substantial harm; (2) funded, sustained outreach to identify and connect now-adult survivors and targeted parents to services; and (3) development and funding of specialized, evidence-based treatment and reunification programs tailored to institutional-betrayal trauma, restoration from induced/persecutory beliefs, and attachment repair. These measures are clinical necessities, ethical imperatives, and the only credible path to redeeming a profession that failed the vulnerable people it was meant to protect.

DISCHARGE STATEMENT — PROFESSIONAL TRANSITION FOLLOWING COMPLETION OF DUTY

For fifteen years, I have carried obligations I could not discharge. My specialized expertise in child abuse assessment, attachment pathology, and delusional thought disorders positioned me to recognize harm that others could not recognize. As Clinical Director of a treatment center serving children referred by Child Protective Services, with specialized training in Early Childhood Mental Health (attachment pathology) and twelve years of diagnostic reliability training in psychotic-spectrum assessment, this pathology, attachment trauma and child abuse, is my professional domain. When I identified undiagnosed child psychological abuse in family court contexts, I could not ethically abandon that vulnerable population until they were connected to appropriate protective systems.

The public criticisms that form the basis of this disciplinary proceeding were not discretionary professional choices. They were mandatory responses under APA Standards 1.04, 1.05, and 3.04. I did not enter family court practice by preference—I remained by obligation. Once this Discharge of Duty to Protect is accepted by the Board, those obligations are fulfilled. The families are connected to the regulatory authority responsible for their protection. I am released.

Upon completion of this discharge, I plan to transition away from family court consultation. My professional interests lie in Early Childhood Mental Health, where I developed specialized clinical expertise, and in the emerging field of AI safety and ethical AI deployment in clinical psychology. I have applied for a position at Anthropic focused on user well-being policy, drawing on both my early-career work on ethical frameworks for Internet Psychology and my clinical understanding of attachment bonding and delusional processes in humans, and with the developmental processes involved with emerging minds in children.

My professional history demonstrates that I represent no danger to the public or to the integrity of the profession: documented service as Clinical Director for multiple programs, medical staff psychologist at children’s hospitals, and fifteen years of ethical practice in family courts while fulfilling mandatory 1.04/1.05 and duty-to-protect obligations. Once the Board accepts this discharge of my duty to protect, my obligations are fulfilled. The Board’s dismissal of charges communicates that this discharge of duty is received, and it will release me from the family courts to pursue professional interests rather than professional duties, and ensures that no further public criticism arising from these obligations is ethically required or professionally necessary.