July 13, 1996Ms. Claudine DombrowskiBox 304Lamed, Kansas 67550-0304To Whom It May Concern:
JU L 191996
I met with Ms. Claudine Dombrowski at her request for three hours on May 14th, 20th and 23rd.Ms. Dombrowski is a thirty-one-year old Licensed Practical Nurse. She specializes in psychiatry, andrecently finished a position at Topeka State Hospital which she held for three years. Her daughter, Rikki,was born on December 12, 1994. Ms. Dombrowski is in the process of seeking a divorce from Hal, hersecond husband, whom she marned in October 1995. They had seen each other for two years before that;during which time she was unaware that he was marned to another woman. She states that he divoreed hisfirst wife in September of 1995. Ms. Dombrowski consulted with me out of the concern that her husbandwas lr)ing to force a serious custody dispute by claiming that Ms. Dombrowski was emotionally unstable;she wanted to have a professional assessment by a neutral party "ith which to respond to that accusation.Ms. Dombrowski gives the following history. She was born in Beloit, Kansas, but her family soon movedfrom there. She has few early childhood memories. The first is of a Christmas time: she and her brotherwere chasing each other around the house. She was often ill and in the hospital as a child, and suffered somedamage to her right kidney due to ureteral reflux from her bladder. Eventually she had surgery for this, theureter was re-implanted and the kidney recovered.She was in foster care during many of her early years. She is not entirely sure why this was, but believes thatshe was caught in some sort of triangular issues betwccn her parents. She has a sense that some similarprocess is occurring now as she and her husband try to sort out their relationship as divorcing parents, and isdetermined that Rikki not be harmed by this.Ms. Dombrowski' s memories become clear and continuous at about the age of 12, when she was restored
10
her mother's care. She remembers starting to get interested in boys that year. Her mother wanted her to waituntil she was 16 before beginning any relationships. Indeed. she had her first boyfriend at 16; they wouldhold hands and he earned her books to and from school. She did well in school at all levels throughachieving her LPN. She often made grades of A "ithout opening her books simply by taking in theclassroom material.Ms. Dombrowski entered the United States Army National Guard in 1983 at the age of 18. She had a six-month training period followed by three years' active service. In 1992 she joined the army reserves, andserved one year of active duty, from January to December of 1994, to learn nursing. She enjoyed this untilher child was born. Shortly after this event she left the military because of their requirements that she comein on weekends and odd hours which were incompatible with earI)ing for a newborn child. lIn deed. this wasa child who had some early special needs. Rikki had been born at 36 weeks' gestation after a period of maternal hypertension and oligohydramnios. and was small for gestational age. She spent seven days in thenewborn ICU before going home.] Rikki is now doing very well, and Ms. Dombrowski, a proud motherindeed, showed me a number of photos of her daughter in robust health.It is worthy of note here that in addition to having spent many of her early childhood years in foster care, Ms.Dombrowski lost her first four pregnancies through spontaneous miscarnages. These events have madeissues of parenting and of the bond between mother and daughter more intensely loaded for her then mightothemise be the case.
EXHIBIT
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It should also probably be noted at this point that some circumstantial medical evidence recently came tolight which has led to questions whether Ms. Dombrowski might ha,'e been sexually abused during one of the foster periods. Ms. Dombrowski has no recollection of having been abused, and may well not ha,'e been;however, the possibility exists that something!!!ID: have happened to her which could have intensified herawareness of dangers a young daughter might face alone in the custody of a man: even her
O\m
father.We discussed the ,'ery bitter relationship with her estranged husband. She reports that he has a problemwith feelings of jealousy which she says are unfounded, and which scem to have come to a state of violentintensity during her pregnancy with Rikki. She states that she did not know that her estranged husband wasmarried until she was three months pregnant with Rikki. She further says that she had no notion of hispotential for violence until she was five months pregnant. This was when he struck her for the first time.She declined to call the police after \"iolent incidents until after Rikki was born, but reports that she had ablack eye from his abuse at the time she ga\"ebirth to Rikki. She also reports that in her pre\"ious marriage,which lasted seven years, there was no abuse or physical fighting whatsoe\"er. Thus, she has not had apattern of seeking out abusiv'e or physically contentious relationships. She readily volunteers that she diddefend herself physically from hcr husband's attacks. This was especially true ifshe felt that her husbandwas unaware of the proximity of thcir child to scenes of violence. At such times, she felt fearful that Hal wasso out of control that Rikki might be inad\"ertcntly harmed.Ms. Dombrowski recounts a number of ways in which shc came to be frightened of and by her husband'sbeha\"ior. I will leave it to Ms. Dombrowski to recount the details of these experiences, but the material iscertainly of the nature that would \"cryappropriately result in ajustified sense of personal danger,traumatization, and \"erypowerful emotional distress.Ultimately, Ms. Dombrowski mo\"ed out of the marital home and spent two weeks at the Battered Women'sShelter with her daughter. She found the program \"e!)'helpful, and misses it and the people she met there.Ms. Dombrowsk; has now taken ajob in Lamed with the Department of Corrections, working in YouthSer\"ices as a Court Sef\"ices Specialist. This allows her to be near her mother, who pro\"ides some help withchild care while Ms. Dombrowski is at work.Ms. Dombrowski is a well nourished, well developed woman who appears her stated age. Her positi\"e,energetic and engaging character came through strongly throughout these inter\"iews. She is well endowedintellectually, and her thoughts are well rooted in reality. She maintains a logical, lucid, undisturbed train of well-reasoned thought at all times. There is a tendency to experience frequent moments of anger at herhusband, and the first inter\"iew was focused on her feelings toward her husband, and the legal system'sparadoxes and una\'oidablc delays. Thesc frustrations secmed quite consistent with her situation. Despitetimes of anger and dismay about the events of the past few months, she maintains her good sense of humorthroughout and is altogether a \"e!)'pleasant and cordial person to interview. Her affects are appropriate tothe material undcr discussion. The inquiry into vegetative signs and s)mptoms such as sleep disturbance,appetite disturbance, difficulties with mood and affect and so on re\"eals only relati\"ely minor and transienteffects. These are more than adequately explained by residues of her traumatic experiences, as well as hercurrent task of extricating herself from a devastating marriage and putting her life back togethcr again. Shedenies any sort of\'isual or audito!)' hallucinations, delusions or unusual convictions. She has had noexperiences of "lost time," nor of rmding notes to herself in strange handwriting, or disco\"ering that thefurniture in the house has bcen rearranged without her being aware of it. She does not experience herself asde\"eloping intense positive and negati\"e splits betwcen different people into "good" and "bad" groups, andsays "I like people, and people like me." She has no significant histo!)' of head trauma except for her reportofha\"ing been struck by her husband with a crowbar during an argument. There was no loss of consciousness at that time, and she has no other history of loss of consciousness, seizure or
absence
attacks.She states that she ordinarily is a light user of alcohol, and describes her usual intake as one glass of winewith dinner, two to three times per week. She has discontinued this practice at the suggestion of herattorney, since her husband accuses her of being an alcoholic.
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