California Transgender Parent Claims He is Parental Alienation Victim

The accusation is not new: the accuser is. Is this a harbinger of things to come in American family courts?

San Francisco County Courthouse

Kristin Haynes has not seen her daughter, now thirteen, since March 2022.

Her ex, Kara Mikale Bendian, has accused her of parental alienation. Kristin tells me that she’s being kept away from her daughter because Bendian claims that her daughter doesn’t want to go back to Kristin.

Here is part of an affidavit in which Bendian accuses Kristin of parental alienation.

“Since {their daughter} was 7 years old, Kristin has been the alienating parent and now that {their daughter} is older, she is no longer letting the alienation affect her like when she was a young child and is not easily manipulated. {Their daughter} is estranged from Kristin due to Kristin involving {their daughter} for six years in severe parental alienation.” Bendian said in an affidavit dated June 2, 2022.

The court, as is their wont, sees this is a problem to be solved by the appointment of a court professional.

On June 7, 2022, the court ordered the appointment of a reunification therapist.

This is similar to the scheme I described in Orange County.

This report for the Orange County BAR is a manual for maximizing appointments. For each court professional- minor’s counsel, co-parent therapist, reunification therapist, special master, and custody evaluator- the report provides situations when it should be used, should not be used and says what each court professional can and cannot do.

In fact, while Orange County is in Southern California, Kristin’s case is largely playing out in San Francisco County in northern California.

In that way, Kristin’s story is quite similar to many stories I’ve done: particularly the inclusion of a false allegation of parental alienation.

The court sees a problem and the solution is to appoint someone.

What makes Kristin’s story unique and potentially explosive is that Kara Mikale Bendian was born a female, identifies as a male, and while he was on the birth certificate as the father, he is obviously not the biological father: since he has no male reproductive parts.

Kristin told me that Mikale, as she called him, uses a prosthetic.

Kristin said she and Mikale had a brief relationship more than a decade ago; she gave birth to her now thirteen year old daughter through artificial means.

For about six years, Kristin told me, she and Mikale had an informal agreement whereby she raised her daughter and Mikale saw her when he wanted and she was available.

Then, in 2015, Mikale asked and was granted a default judgment: something that Kristin insisted to me she did not know about until over a year later.

While Kristin maintained physical custody with this 2015 order, she told me it started the ball rolling toward Mikale getting more and more legal rights.

By 2018, the court adopted joint legal and physical custody, though Kristin says her daughter lived primarily with her throughout.

Mikale, Kristin told me, has been going to court throughout the last seven years- since the initial dissolution- to try and increase parenting time and access.

Kristin was helped by a 2019 evaluation which recommended she maintain custody.

“Primary residential custody to remain with Kristin, with the caveat that she accepts the appointment of a Special Master or Parent Coordinator with quasi judicial authority. If she refuses such an appointment, {their daughter} should be relocated to father’s care and he should be designated the primary residential parent.” The evaluation written on July 10, 2019, stated.

While that appeared promising to Kristin, the recommendation included the appointment of a special master which helped massage the case to where it is today, Kirstin told me.

This case, like many child custody cases, has had several court appointees.

In that way, it is similar to the case I covered in Kane County- where two young children going through gender dysphoria already have a guardian ad litem and two therapists appointed and yet in the last hearing they pushed to appoint a custody evaluator to “tie it in a bow,” according to a lawyer.

As I’ve already warned, the transgender issue may soon hit family court and the court will use it in the same way as it uses everything else: an excuse to appoint more people.

With numerous appointments of evaluators, special masters, and others, the court reached its most recent decision on March 29, 2022.

Despite that order, Mikale refused to bring their daughter back, as I showed earlier, arguing that the effects of parental alienation were such that the thirteen year old now refused to see her mom.

The court’s response, despite this clear court order, was the appointment of a reunification therapist.

Can you see where this is going? The damage done to Kristin’s daughter by this racketeering scheme is monumental: she joins millions like her all over the globe whose childhoods are destroyed so that court actors can make obscene amounts of money.

Remarkably, Mikale is currently representing himself. I reached out to him and an attorney who previously represented him.

The attorney did not respond back while Mikale sent this response back.

“Hello, there would you mind telling me how you got my contact and case information?” Mikale wrote in an email on June 8, 2022.

Mikale questioned me about how I found his story again before refusing further responses.