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Episode 801: Deceit and The Custody of Two Small Children with Vernon Baumrind · The Trauma Therapist

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Right. Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson.
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My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
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about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
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That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, all right,
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here we go, So five or three, two and one, our folks,
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welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have as Mike today.
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Vernon Barmbran Vernon welcome, Thank you very much, glad to be here.
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You're welcome so. Vernon is the father of two adult children and grandfather of
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four, living in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's the author of the book
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Deceit the Seat is a story of a loving father facing formidable legal odds to
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secure custody of his two small children. Using wiretop tap technology, he turns
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a tide in his favor in the case of achieving wife and a manipulative gynecologist,
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a lifelong central predator with power and authority, whose vile exploits have devastating
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effects on everyone in his sphere. These events happened forty five years ago,
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but due to the indecent content of the wiretap recordings, the explicit details of
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the story were kept under wraps, largely because of the tender ages of the
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two children involved, the content of which would have been detrimental to their formative
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years. Vernon, Welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you welcome.
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So before we go in here, share with our listeners, Vernon, where
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you're from originally and where you are currently. I'm from Marion Sethter, small
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town in South Carolina, about one hundred and twenty miles it would be southeast
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of Charlotte, North Carolina, not too far from Myrtle Beach. So I
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grew up there. I've been in Charlotte since nineteen eighty five. Okay,
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all right, we're gonna let's dive in here. What the hell happened?
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This sounds intense and just mind boggling, right. It was very intense.
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It was a very traumatic experience, and it's one that you know whether you
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think you can get beyond just something. At some point during your lifetime.
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You're wrong. It never goes away. There's always a lingering pain from the
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events that happened. In my instance, the wonderful thing is the two young
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children in this story. He turned out extraordinarily well, and for that I'm
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very grateful. So as far as what happened, it came to me as
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a total surprise. I'm totally unsuspecting. Now. I began to have I
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noticed that my wife had become cold calloused in different distant This would have been
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in the fall of nineteen seventy eight. And and you've been married. You
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were married. We had been married eleven years, okay, eleven and a
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half years to that point. The children were four and two years of age.
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My wife was her her gynecologist was this gynecologist. I won't use his
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name, although all of the you know, the name is well known throughout
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the litigation in the cases that took place. So he actually delivered the second
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child, not the first. He was a junior, I guess, an
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underlying a new pledgling position at the time our first child was born. But
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when it was time for the second child, when that time came around,
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he actually stepped in and was the delivering doctor and the doctor that she continued
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with afterwards. Very shortly after that time, he and his wife and his
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two children moved into the same neighborhood as we were in, which was in
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Florence, South Carolina, not too far from where I grew up. So
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they were neighbors of three doors down and across the street. And we were
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casual friends to begin with. I was because she knew him well, of
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course, and they began to we did. We did go out several times,
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socially, went to a movie, went out to eat several times.
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And then they started walking, going on nightly walks in the neighborhood, not
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every evening, but three or four times, or two or three times,
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I guess a week. And I didn't go along because our children were foreign
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too, and someone needed to stay home with the children. And mhm.
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That may have been where uh, the relation got started. The recent relationship
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got started because it got started in his office, but this was, you
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know, a further uh point of contact with these nightly walks in This sort
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of went on for a couple of months, and then then that's when I
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began to feel this distance from her, and it got intense enough that I
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suggested that we get marriage counseling, which we she wouldn't do it initially,
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Eventually she agreed to go. We went, I think it was twice together,
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and of course the marriage counselor met with us separately, and then I
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think on the uh probably that second meeting with him, he suggested to me
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that I seek legal h legal assistance, that there was no reason for us
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to continue, okay. That that she she didn't have an interest in continuing,
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which still I still didn't know about the relationship. I was, well,
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you knew about the nightly walks. I knew about the nightly walk,
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right, okay, I mean when you must have been suspecting something. Uhh,
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No, I didn't suspect him. I didn't. I didn't expect what
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had what was occurring. No, there was something wrong, okay, And
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I guess that went on. I was a little oblivious, of course,
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very much in love with her. Told the counselor that I was in love
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with her when I was asked, and apparently she was honest with him about
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the relationship. There wasn't but probably a day or two after the last meeting
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with the the counselor that she announced that she didn't love me any longer and
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she wanted us to separate, but it was Christmas time and she didn't want
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to disrupt the children's Christmas seven and asked me to move into the bedroom,
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the empty bedroom upstairs in the house, which I did. But of course,
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you know, there was some conversation about you know what, what's happened
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here. She basically wouldn't discuss it with me, and again I was oblivious.
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But I think it was maybe the next day. You know, I'm
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cogitating all this stuff. The next day is a Wednesday, and she had
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several weeks before this had asked me if I would come home early from work
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and keep the children for her, babysit for her so she could go out
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shopping on Wednesday afternoons. So on this Wednesday, I think it was December
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the sixth, I'm pushing the children in the swings in the backyard. I
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mean, I'm with them all afternoon. I'm pushing them in the swings in
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the backyard. I'm just miserable. You know, she's years to go back
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to marriage counseling. I know that she doesn't love me anymore. That after
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some time, probably after New Year's I'm going to be booted out of the
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house. I'm going to lose my children. I've already obviously, I've already
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lost her, and I'm going to lose my children, when my children were
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nothing more important to me than her and my children, if I may,
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why are you thinking at that time you're going to lose your children and you're
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going to be booted out of the house, as opposed to thinking or maybe
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we can get fifty to fifty custody or why was that your or was that
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your go to thinking? Well, I was not even enough not to be
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aware of what was happening, you know, earlier on, But I wasn't
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naive enough to think that this was going to be anything more than a tragedy
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by way of her getting a divorce, keeping the children and I together with
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this doctor, which of course he would have to get a divorce as well,
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which ultimately is what happened. So I'm not going to put anything at
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that point. I'm not putting anything at chance. I'm thinking, well,
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actually, what happened. I'm so I'm swinging the children in the swings,
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I'm pushing them in the swings, and all of a sudden. It's like
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the pieces of the puzzle come together for me. It's like somebody handed me
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a note or whisper it in my ear, and I knew exactly what's going
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on. I don't know why. It was just all of a sudden,
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but everything came together. And I knew that his office was closed on Wednesday
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afternoons, so I put the children in the car and drove to his office.
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WHOA, this was late when the afternoon, December sixth, so you
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know, the sky is darkening. This is like four forty five in the
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afternoon. We pull up, we pull into the Holiday Inn. This is
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in downtown Florence, which is right behind his office building. And we didn't
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wait very long. I've got two little children in the back seat and you
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know, car seats, and here's their mother coming down the fire escape at
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the back of his building. And watch her go to her car and drive
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off. And I think, you know, at a time like that,
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you're thinking everything within the whole spectrum of human emotions, from self pity to
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being angry and wanting to resort to violence. But I you know, I
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realized my children are at stake here, and I've lost her and this might
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answer your earlier question, Uh, why would I not think about shared custody?
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I could tell from her demeanor and the way she was treating me that
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that was not in the cards. It was going to be everything in her
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favor. And so I realized that I've got to control my emotions. I've
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got to contain my impulse, my wor my worst impulses, and I got
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to be smart about this. I got to I've got to beat them at
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this thing. And that's what I determined. And so I I knew I
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would have to get home before her, because otherwise she'd come home and where
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we and I knew that she would probably go out shopping, you know,
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go buy a few groceries as a as her excuse, which is exactly what
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happened. But the children and I got home prior to her getting home,
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and she comes in with a one little bag of groceries, and you know,
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we were going to put the Christmas tree up that night. And that
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was sort of a traumatic situation too, with all these revelations, and of
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course I'm having to contain myself, which I did. I just I just
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determined that, and I didn't know what it was ahead at this point,
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But there was a lot that unraveled. I I knew about the relationship,
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then I wanted to know what they were talking about. I remembered now that
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there are times I'd come home and she'd be quickly hanging up the telephone.
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So you know, the pieces of that puzzle came together. And why,
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if I'm moving from an interrupt for a second, why didn't you just confront
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her? And so, yeah, okay, good, good question. And
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I've had that question posed many times because then the husband almost anywhere in the
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country, but especially in South Carolina, men don't didn't get custody back in
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the nineteen eighties, late eighties, that was just unheard of unless the woman
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was alcoholic, hardened, criminal abuse, and she was none of those.
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So I knew that this was going to be an all out battle, and
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it was. And so the purpose, the purpose of the wiretapping was what
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to catch her or free or to help you get custody. Let's talk about
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that. Yes, well, initially the purpose of the wiretap was to find
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out what they were saying, how involved was she, how how determined was
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she, what was going on, what was the plan? Where was this
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going? And so I secured what I needed to tap our telephone. We
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only had one phone, and of course, you know, this was in
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nineteen seventy nine. There were no cell phones, so there was telephone in
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the house. And so what I did is I bought an extension phone and
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the wiretapping device that I needed. I went to a store, an electronics
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store, radio chef, well something like that. Eventually, people I began
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to use this case because I won eventually in the courts and I was vindicated
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by from the charges of wiretapping, and a lot of people started going to
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radio shack and buying little devices to tap their telephone. And eventually the government
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stepped in and they reversed the case, which was my case. Was the
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present president set in case that attorneys began to use all over the country to
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justify, to justify wiretapping for their clients. And the government said, still,
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wait a minute, and asked, no, no, y'all can't do
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this. You all, I'm a Southerner, you all can't do this.
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This man was, it was he was. What he did was ruled to
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be legal because the wiretap was installed on a telephone within the confines of his
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home. It was on wires within the confines of his home. It was
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his only means of defense. And in fact, the doctor in this case
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was not entitled to privacy within the confines of his home. So they ruled
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him My favorite went all the way to this Federal Supreme Court. Okay,
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what's called a rit of sorgiary. The lower court ruled in my favor,
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and the doctor kept his attorneys, kept appealing, and eventually the appeal to
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the Federal Supreme Court through a rit of surchiary, which the Federal Supreme Court
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refused to hear. They remanded it back to the state and we went to
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trial. So you start tapping the phone and again the purpose is to find
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out what's going on. Are you thinking I'm going to need a defense for
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my help get my kids or what's the thought process going on here? Well,
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that is the that it was the objective. Okay, I'm going to
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fight with everything I've got to get custody of my children. I felt I
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was the better parent. That was proven to be the case. That's what
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the judge decided. I raised the children on my own there in their mid
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forties at this In fact, my oldest child have turned fifty. Oh boy,
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and they have children themselves at this point. So everything turned out ultimately,
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but coaks very traumatic all the way through. It sounds so your your
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your what did you find out during these wire taps? Well, uh,
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I've actually placed all of the essential conversations from that wiretap in this book.
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Wow, materials very salacious. The first thing that I hear when you know
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the results of the wire tap on the because I had been relegated to this
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room upstairs, I had a little privacy there, and so I'm to install
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this wiretap in the closet of the room to which I had been relegated because
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I concealed it where it wouldn't be found. And so the first day day's
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conversation I listened to that night after he get off the phone that evening,
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and the first thing I hear is Hello, Hello, where's dou Hickey?
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The doctor asked her where is due Hickey? And from there, very quickly,
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from there, this guy, this man has been because he's as old
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design and this you know, we're both seventy nine, but he had been
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addicted or pornography was his problem and he had become perverted with it. And
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their conversation immediately went to sex if he was out of the house, if
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he wasn't there, I could come over and check you out. And it
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just went down here very very quickly, and all the conversations were riffed with
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six sexual endo windows, not not only just in the windows, but granted
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discussions right. And this is exactly why I wrote the book, was because
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this doctor's behavior persists today in others who follow the same path that he did.
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And I think it's important for you know, be able to see how
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this unscrupulous professional operated and to understand how the tragedy that resulted from his conduct
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was possible. He was very manipulative throughout. For about twenty five days,
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I had the wiretap intact, so it was capturing every conversation. At any
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point. Did you confront your wife at that time with us? I did
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not. No, I did not, but I couldn't confront her. That
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was something I could. I wanted to do that, but I couldn't because
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once once you do that, the cat's out of the bag. Now she's
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now she's got the upper hand. She can yeah, she can take the
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action. Right, So how does it unfold after you? At what point
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after you get these recordings What do you do with them? What do you
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do? That's the story unfold. Well, after I install a wiretap,
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I hired detectives, private detectors who were on on them full time throughout December
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in nineteen seventy nine, and I hired an attorney, a domestic attorney who
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was outstanding, and so we remained quiet as I could, as difficult as
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that was, or the balance of the month went through Christmas, and all
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these things happened that are in this book. There was some very interesting things
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that occurred. They met many times. All of it was documented on January,
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Yeah, I think it was December the thirty first. I called my
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attorney and I said, I can't contain myself any longer. I'm just about
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to explode. And he said, you don't have to. We have enough
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enough to what evidence. He said, We're going to file suit for divorce
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and custody of the children on Tuesday, which was January second, nineteen seventy
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nine, and we filed suit against the doctor for alienation of a actions,
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criminal conversation which is old English law, or intimacy with the spouse of another,
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and malpractice. When this went to court, the judicial the circuit court
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judge ruled that malpractice is the result of a negligent act, and this was
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not a negligent act. This was a outrageous act, a willful outrageous act.
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So he he's supplanted the third segment of a lawsuit with outrage and so
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we went through litigation on that basis. Was there, I mean, I
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just went through a divorce a year ago, just a year ago. We're
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I mean you must have been thinking or were you thinking, I don't want
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to presume about well, if I take the kids, I'm taking them away
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from their mom. What was your thought process around that? It was very
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painful. I knew how devastating that would be to her. But there were
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she was so over the hill with this guy that he was more important.
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He became more important than her children, and the family court judge pointed that
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out I had become a star to get mother. During the month of really
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leading up to it, the month of November and December, I was with
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the children all the time, and she was out doing her thing. And
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also in the conversations in the wiretap, there were some comments that were made.
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You know, what if you lose that? He asked the children what
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if you lose the children. This was kind of late in the process of
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late December, and they're beginning to get a sense that who are these people
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following us? And uh, we've got to be careful what we say.
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Oh they thought people were following them? Well yes, yeah, yeah,
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Look let me ask you something Vernon. You know we've talked about the story.
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The book is called The Seat sounds incredible. Uh, how did you
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do? You know? We haven't want to talked about. How how you
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dealt with this? I mean this sounds freaking traumatic? Yeap, How did
25:37
you manage? Did you have friends you talked to? Did you see it
25:41
there? What? How? What did you do? How did you manage?
25:44
This? A really hard to explain. I think I was able to
25:55
handle it because I was so so convinced that she was not going to reverse
25:57
herself, and there was no way for me, no direction for me to
26:03
go but to think of just me and my children, And it didn't necessarily
26:11
harden me. Where in fact, you'd be surprised to see in this story.
26:17
It's in the book the attempts that I made to get her to reverse
26:21
herself without revealing to her what I knew. There was some measures that I
26:29
took to show that I loved her, but I wasn't letting on that I
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knew what the issue was, because if I did that, she could sort
26:41
of take control of the situation and then it could take me to court.
26:45
And we weren't really we didn't have enough evidence yet. I had to wait
26:49
the end of decent. I had to wait twenty five days for my attorney
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to tell me we have enough evidence that he was confident that we would succeed
27:02
in court. And so it was like I was holding my breath the whole
27:04
month, not knowing for the fact that I was going to get custody of
27:10
the children. And I was really determined to get custody of the children because
27:15
this doctor was a pervert and he did, as you learn in the book,
27:22
he did this with a lot of women, and eventually his license was
27:26
suspended. When it was all over and we got through all the litigations,
27:30
I actually furnished eleven witnesses to women who had contacted me. All this was
27:38
in the newspapers, aired on aired. The story aired on twenty twenty ABC's
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twenty twenty in nineteen eighty five. Oh wow, it was moderated by Barbara
27:48
Walters and Hugh Downs. They did a little story on it, and I
27:55
began to get calls from all over the country from people wanting to write this
28:00
story. At that time, my attorney said, Vernon, you had better
28:04
write the story and copyright it, or it might be your story, but
28:08
somebody else is going to do that and it they'll own it. So I
28:12
did that. I actually threw a get together a four hundred and eighty four
28:15
page manuscript that I copyrighted, and I sat on it all these years because
28:21
of the content of those conversations. But forty five years forty year why forty
28:30
five years? Well, I certainly needed to, you know, wait out,
28:40
wait until the children were well beyond that. And I think, you
28:47
know, probably twenty years ago I probably could have written this story, but
28:51
I was busy making a living getting over the five attempts to regain custody they
28:57
the two of them married. Oh wow, they initiated attempts to regain custody
29:03
five times. Every time that would happen, I'm looking at another thirty five
29:07
to fifty sixty thousand dollars. What yeah, So it kept me broke all
29:12
these years. Oh my god, And then two I became I was always
29:18
a little worried about the content of this, the wiretapping, and so I
29:26
was really concerned how that would even affect my adult children. Sure, and
29:33
so you know why I tell this story now? I have people say,
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well, why are you telling this story now? Why don't you tell it
29:38
earlier? Well, I'm nearly eighty years of age, and as indicated in
29:44
the book, for me to take this story to my grave would be derelict,
29:48
It'd be irresponsible, and it'd be an injustice to my fellow man.
29:53
I've waited too long for many people to be able to benefit, you know
29:57
by my having postponed the telling of the story. How so, what is
30:03
your feeling on that? Why why tell the story? Because people need to
30:15
see how people behave and how detrimental it can be. Uh. This doctor
30:22
was controlling, He was domineering, He was manipulative. He had an attitude
30:29
of entitlement. The most powerful element at play in this story was his overpowering
30:36
influence, which he used to advantage in himself. As I've already suggested,
30:42
he had a compulsion for pornography. This was revealed by patients and former employees.
30:52
He used his power to leverage himself with females for the purposes having nothing
31:00
to do with the reasons a woman visits her gnecologists. Uh. He prayed
31:04
on unsuspecting and vulnerable women, exploring his status as a doctor, uh,
31:11
in a highly unethical fashion. All of this was corroborated by witnesses, you
31:15
know, test witness witness testimony by the medical board. Eventually, when I
31:21
filed a complaint, all of it's been in the newspapers. You know,
31:29
people need to know this sort of thing happens. He needed to be exposed
31:33
for his behavior, and there are others that do this even to this day.
31:40
And so it's just I mean, as we kind of wind down here,
31:44
Vernon, how are you doing. I'm doing great? Yeah, okay,
31:52
got I mean yeah, the years. I mean, the name of
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the book is the Seat. How do people learn about this? How do
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people learn about you? Vernon? What's the best way they can? Actually,
32:10
you can google the Seat the book dot com, d C thebook dot
32:16
com. It'll take you right to well, the website for the book.
32:25
Go on that website and there's a button there that you can click. If
32:29
you are interested in acquiring the book, you can get an e book for
32:32
five dollars and ninety five cents. I think the paperback book is probably twelve
32:37
dollars and ninety five cents and Amazon will mail it to you. But yeah,
32:44
you go on the website, there's a button there that you can click
32:47
that will take you directly to the book on Amazon. Okay, we'll have
32:52
that link up here at the show notes page at the Traumatipis podcast dot com.
32:55
Vernon. Appreciate you being on here, uh and and and sharing this
33:01
and sharing your story and opening up about it. I mean, it is
33:08
just so intense and as you said, traumatic. But I'm glad you're here.
33:17
I'm glad you're on here, and looking forward to getting this book out
33:21
helping to get this book out there for you. Oh, thank you.
33:24
There are a lot of lessons to be learned in this book. This book
33:28
is just full of life's lessons, things like, you know, controlling your
33:37
impulses, containing your worst inclinations to be violent, right, give the situation
33:46
an opportunity to either work itself out or to protect yourself, which is what
33:54
I did. All right, Well, all right, all right, burning
34:00
thank you so much. We'll be in touch, all right, Bye,
34:01
bye very much, Bye bye