Ohio junior judge grants man suspected of rape sole custody
Magistrate Caitlin Nevin handed down the troubling ruling in December 2022.
{Magistrate Caitlin Nevin from a December 2022 hearing}
In Ohio, junior judges are given enormous power to affect people’s lives.
One case in point is Magistrate- junior judge- Caitlin Nevin.
Technically, Judge Michael Ryan- who is full judge who recently was elected to the Appeals Court- was presiding over the child custody matter between David Kaschalk and Amanda Morris.
In critical hearings, the magistrate- Caitlin Nevin- presided and made decisions turning this case upside down.
The custody fight- the two were never married- started in early 2022, after Amanda left their residence. She told me it was after a lot of abuse, culminating with David raping her in front of their son who is now almost four.
In August, a court order by Magistrate Nevin granted Amanda physical custody while David only got supervised visits.
“In order to ease the child into parenting time, Father shall have parenting time on September 7, 2022, at Father’s residence,” the order signed by Magistrate Nevin stated, “Beginning at 6:30PM and ending at 8:30PM. Mother shall arrange transportation. The parenting time shall be supervised by the guardian ad litem David Bartos.”
James McGovern is Amanda’s attorney; he told me that Ohio law only states that the court shall decide on the best interest of the child.
Because the court is not specified, magistrates have the power to issue these rulings and take control of cases.
I reached out to Bartos but received no response.
The court order Magistrate Nevin signed also gave Bartos the discretion to change the supervised visits into unsupervised visits.
McGowan told me that after two unsupervised visits- of two hours each- Bartos was satisfied that Kaschalk was ready for unsupervised visits.
Remarkably, Bartos made this recommendation just as two jurisdictions were investigating Kaschalk for raping Amanda.
He is currently under investigation in Cleveland and Portage County. Cleveland did not immediately respond to my request, while Portage County confirmed an open investigation while providing a bare bones police report.
“On 10/12/2022, I was dispatched to take a report for a suspicious call.” The report stated.
Once unsupervised visits were ordered, Amanda became concerned and refused to provide their son.
This violated the court order, and the parties were back in front of Magistrate Nevin on December 2, 2022.
On December 14, Judge Ryan upheld this order; I reached out to Judge Ryan but received no response.
The court order reads like something from half a century ago, when domestic violence generally blamed the victim, excused the abuse, and minimized all the evidence.
There is no evidence of abuse- except two open police investigations- and even if there was, dad merely raped mom: there’s no evidence he has harmed their son.
I have seen this kind of excuse making; one example involves the federal judge, Ann Donnelly, who made a similar determination against Narkis Golan. Narkis was also raped by her husband, Isaaco Saada, but in the same manner, Donnelly had the temerity to claim this in no way makes him a danger to their son.
“The grave risk of harm to B.A.S. is exposure to violence between the petitioner and the respondent. The record is clear that ‘Mr. Saada was violent—physically, psychologically, emotionally, and verbally—to Ms. Golan,’ and ‘that B.A.S. was present for much of it.’ (ECF No. 64 at 32.).” Donnelly said in her decision. “While B.A.S. was not the target of abuse himself, ‘a child who is exposed to domestic violence . . . could face a grave risk of harm.’ (Id.) That risk is greatly reduced when the parties are not together.”
In another extreme case, Chuck Haynes was convicted of raping one of his stepchildren. Even after one child committed suicide, the court continued to push for him to have access, from jail to his other children.
In this case, the allegation is that the rape happened in front of their son, but even if it didn’t, the idea that someone who abuses the parent won’t abuse the child is based entirely on an antiquated understanding of domestic abuse.
Furthermore, Magistrate Nevin claimed that Amanda did not file a protective order, and this was evidence that the allegations weren’t serious.
McGowan told me that this reading is not in a statute. As such, this is entirely her view of the world.
Amanda said she thought filing a protective order would do nothing; also, she had kept her address hidden and filing the order would require her to provide her address to David.
Finally, Magistrate Nevin argued that her violation of court orders amounted to an emergency.
This too is not consistent. In November, I interviewed Scott Segal; he was kept away from his children by his ex-wife, and he noted that this alone did not rise to an emergency.
He was forced to wait in regular order for a hearing.
Ohio law also indicates that Magistrate Nevin abused her discretion. Below is part of Ohio law.
This should have been done in regular order; it was turned into an emergency by a junior judge who dismissed two open rape investigations.
I reached out to David Anthony, who represents Mr. Kaschalk. He did not respond to my query.