July 13, 1996

JUL 191995

Ms. Claudine Dombrowski

Box 304
Larne~ Kansas 67550-0304

To Whom It May Concern:

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, and
recently fmishcd 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 diyorce from Hal, her
second husband. whom she married in October 1995. They had seen each other for two years before that;
during which tin1e she was unaware that he was married to another woman. She states that he divorced his
first \\ife in September of 1995. Ms. Dombrowski consulted with me out of the concern that her husband
was tr;.ing to force a serious custody dispute by claiming that Ms. Dombrowski was emotionally unstable;
she wanted to haye a professional assessment by a neutral party with which to respond to that accusation.

Ms. Dombrowski giyes the following history. She was born in Beloit, Kansas, but her family soon moved
from there. She has few early childhood memories. The first is of a Christmas time: she and her brother
were chasing each other around thc house. She was often ill and in the hospital as a child, and suffered some
damage to her right kidney due to ureteral reflux from her bladdcr. Eventually she had surgery for this, the
ureter was re-implanted and the kidney rccoyercd.

She was in foster care during many of her early years. She is not entirely sure why this was, but belieyes that
she was caught in some sort of triangular issues between her parents. She has a sense that some sinlliar
process is occurring now as she and her husband try to sort out their relationship as diyorcing parents, and is
determined that Rikki not be harmed bv this.

Ms. Dombrowski's memories become clear and continuous at about the age of 12, when she was restored to
her mother's care. She remembers starting to get interested in boys that year. Her mother wanted her to wait
until she was 16 before begirming any relationships. Indeed, she had her first boyfriend at 16: they would
hold hands and he carried her books to and from school. She did well in school at all levels through
achieYing her LPN. She often made grades of A without opening her books simply by taking in the
classroom 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 sen'ice. In 1992 she joined the army resen'es, and
sen'ed one year of actiye duty, from January to December of 1994, to learn nursing. She enjoyed this until
her child was bom. Shortly after this event she left the military because of their requirements that she come
in on weekends and odd hours which were incompatible with carrying for a newborn child. TIn deed, this was
a child who had some early special needs. Rikki had been born at 36 weeks' gestation after a period of
maternal hypertension and oligohydranmios, and was small for gestational age. She spent seyen days in the
ne\\'bornleu before going home.] Rikki is now doing very well, and Ms. Dombrowski, a proud mother
indeed, 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 miscarriages. These eyents have made
issues of parenting and of the bond between mother and daughter more intensely loaded for her then might
othemise be the case.

EXHIBIT

, /r2
It should also probably be noted at this point that some circumstantial medical evidence recently came to
light which has led to questions whether Ms. Dombrowski might have been sexually abused during one of
the foster periods. Ms. Dombrowski has no recollection of having been abused, and may well not have been;
ho\\'ever, the possibility exists that something mm: have happened to her which could have intensified her
awareness of dangers a young daughter might face alone in the custody of a man: even her mm father.

We discussed the very bitter relationship with her estranged husband. She reports that he has a problem
with feelings of jealousy which she says are unfounded, and which seem to have come to a state of violent
intensity during her pregnancy with Rikki. She states that she did not know that her estranged husband was
married until she was three months pregnant with Rikki. She further says that she had no notion of his
potential 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 violent incidents until after Rikki was born, but reports that she had a
black eye from his abuse at the time she gave birth to Rikki. She also reports that in her previous marriage,
which lasted seven years, there was no abuse or physical fighting whatsoever. Thus, she has not had a
pattern of seeking out abusive or physically contentious relationships. She readily volunteers that she did
defend herself physically from her husband's attacks. This was especially true if she felt that her husband
was unaware of the proximity of their child to scenes of violence. At such times, she felt fearful that Hal was
so out of control that Rikki might be inadvertently harmed.

Ms. Dombrowski recounts a number of ways in which she came to be frightened of and by her husband's
behavior. 1 will leave it to Ms. Dombrowski to recount the details of these experiences, but the material is
certainly of the nature that would very appropriately result in a justified sense of personal danger,
traumatization, and very powerful cmotional distress.

Ultimately, Ms. Dombrowski mm'ed out of the marital home and spent two weeks at the Battered Women's
Shelter with her daughter. She found the program very helpful, and misses it and the people she met there.
Ms. Dombrowski has now taken a job in Larned with thc Dcpartmcnt of Corrections, working in Youth
Services as a Court Services Specialist. This allows her to be near her mother, who provides some help with
child care while Ms. Dombro\vski is at ,,-ark.

Ms. Dombrowski is a well nourished, well dcveloped woman who appears her stated age. Her positive,
energetic and engaging character came through strongly throughout these interviews. She is well endowed
intellectually, and her thoughts are well rooted in reality. She maintains a logical, lucid, undisturbed train of
well-reasoncd thought at all times. There is a tendency to experience frequent moments of anger at her
husband, and the first interview \"as focused on her feelings toward her husband, and the legal system's
paradoxes and unavoidable delays. These frustrations seemed quite consistent \\ith her situation. Despite
times of anger and dismay about the events of the past few months, she maintains her good sense of humor
throughout and is altogether a very pleasant and cordial person to interview. Her affects are appropriate to
the material under discussion. The inquiry into vegetative signs and symptoms such as sleep disturbance,
appetite disturbance, difficulties "ith mood and affect and so on reveals only relatively minor and transient
effects. These are more than adequately explained by residues of her traumatic experiences, as well as her
current task of extricating herself from a devastating marriage and putting her life back together again. She
denies any sort of visual or auditory hallucinations, delusions or unusual col1\'ictions. She has had no
experiences of "lost time," nor of fmding notes to herself in strange handwriting, or discovering that the
furniture in the house has been rearranged \\ithout her being aware of it. She does not experience herself as
developing intense positive and negative splits between different people into "good" and "bad" groups, and
says "I like people, and people like me." She has no significant history of head trauma except for her report
of having 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 wine
\\ith dinner, two to three times per week. She has discontinued this practice at the suggestion of her
attorney, since her husband accuses her of being an alcoholic.
One area in which Ms. Dombrowski may not have served herself as well as she might was in the area of
working collaboratively with her previous attorney. She reports what to me seemed a sensible
recommendation from this attorney (not to move her residence from Topeka without fIrst seeking the court's
approval), which she did not follow. While the reasons for the action she took (to reduce the level of stress
on herself and her daughter) are clear she might have been better served had she worked more closely in
alliance with her attorney and found a way to tolerate this sort of minor delay, which is inevitable in any
legal undertaking. [I have subsequently learned that the Court had no problem with the move.] Another
issue which Ms. Dombrowski is working on is her tendency to be intensely focused on and extremely
protective of her daughter. This is an understandable tendency on her part given some of her own
experiences in childhood and her impression that her estranged husband has at times been oblivious to
potential harm to Rikki. It is an area of which she is perfectly well aware. She brings it up on her own
initiative as a working issue, and is addressing it actively to fInd a more comfortable balance. I do not
believe that the degree of invoh'emcnt and concern she describes raises any major or worrisome concerns
regarding her relationship with her daughter, or about her daughter's well-being. My impression overall is
that she is a fme, highly competent, deeply caring and attentive mother. From a psychiatric perspective, I
can see no basis on which Ms. Dombrowski's mental or emotiona.l competenceshould for any reason playa
part in any questions of custody that might arise in the course of her divorce from her husband.

I hope that this information is helpful in any area to which Ms. Dombrowski brings it for consideration.
Please feel free, with the appropriate release of information, to contact me for any further information you
should need or desire.

Sincerely,