Teenager Now Wants To Live with Father She Accused of Molestation a Year Ago
Teenager Now Wants To Live with Father She Accused of Molestation a Year Ago
Angela Freiner's daughter accused her father of molestation in February 2021, but in November, she said she likes living with him
In February 2021, a leaked audio of a teenager from a St. Louis County courtroom made international headlines.
The then fourteen year old daughter secretly recorded her encounter with St. Louis County Judge Nicole Zellweger.
“This is what I’m telling you,” The child said while sobbing. “I have a personal experience,” she said, begging. “You don’t understand, you’re just going to force me to go with a child molester.”
The entire encounter is below.
Judge Zellweger was unfazed. Despite being confronted with this crime, she insisted the fourteen year old daughter of Angela Freiner go live with her father, who that girl had just accused of child molestation.
Judge Zellweger and Christina Bertelson, who is the St. Louis County Court’s public affairs officer, did not respond to emails for comment.
Zellweger ordered this girl to Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, where the girl stayed for approximately two and a half weeks. Shortly after the video leaked, Zellweger recused herself from the case.
Angela told me that the last communication she had with her daughter for months was when her daughter told her that she would be moving from the hospital.
According to further testimony in November 2021, Freiner’s daughter was diagnosed with anxiety, depression and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) while at the hospital.
Following her stay at the hospital she was moved to her uncle’s home in Arizona (on her father’s side). The girl stayed there for about three weeks before being moved to Trinity Teen Solutions where she stayed until early July 2021, according to the same testimony.
This facility was recently the subject of a scathing lawsuit, which Courthouse News covered.
A federal judge in Wyoming on Tuesday advanced labor claims against Trinity Teen Solutions, which is accused of tricking parents into sending their so-called “troubled teens” to ranches to receive advanced therapy and a quality education when in fact the kids were subject to harsh manual labor and inhumane conditions.
The dispute began in November 2020 when Carlie Sherman, Anna Gozim, Amanda Nash and an unnamed plaintiff filed a class action against Trinity Teen Solutions, a company whose website claims it offers a “Christian-based approach” for troubled teenagers in a “family-style atmosphere” where they can receive equine and other recreational therapies at the company's Wyoming ranches.
The teens claim their parents were lured to use the company’s services on the promise their teenage children would receive the therapy treatments and a continued education. The parents shelled out substantial fees and costs to get their kids into treatment facilities where their kids could grow “physically, academically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually” with treatment, according to the lawsuit.
She was then moved to Wyoming and now lives with her father, who has sole custody.
Angela Freiner has been accused of parental alienation.
The case now has a new judge, Judge Robert Heggie, and a remarkable hearing was held on November 5. Audio from the teenager’s testimony is below.
At the February hearing, the Guardian ad Litem on the case was Venus Jackson; Jackson participated in the notorious Zoom conference of nearly forty corrupt St. Louis GALs.
Jackson was removed from the case shortly after the February audio leaked and she did not respond to an email for comment; Judge Heggie also did not respond to two emails for comment.
At the November hearing, the teenager, now fifteen, was questioned only by the new GAL, Kimberly Whittle.
Whittle has a controversial past, having previously been removed as a municipal judge and prosecutor.
While Whittle repeatedly referred to the teenager’s February 2021 testimony, she did not ask her about her specific allegation- that her father had been molesting her.
Instead, the teenager said she was depressed at the time and suicidal and that her stay at Trinity straightened her out.
She claimed to have more self confidence.
Most remarkably, she no longer had any desire to see her mom.
Furthermore, while Judge Zellweger insisted over her vociferous objections in February.
“I don’t want to live with him.” The girl stated in February.
To which Judge Zellweger replied, “When your mom is taken to jail you will have no other parent to live with but dad…I understand you’re not happy with the court’s judgment.”
In the November hearing, Judge Heggie took the opposite tact.
“She lives there and she wants to stay there,” Judge Heggie told Freiner in November. “She doesn’t want to do that,” he said further about spending half her time with her mom.
Judge Heggie’s interaction with Angela is below.
“We never had a problem before,” she said referring to her relationship with her daughter.
The teenager said she wrote her mother a letter while at Trinity, but this letter took her two days to write and it was with the the help of a counselor.
Some of the letter is below.
”All my life I didn’t have healthy boundaries whenever I was being told thing(s) about my dad I never realized the emotional damage it had caused me. I’ve realized that I was in a dark place and you did support me just not in the healthiest way.” The girl said in July.
Angela told me that she reacted negatively because the letter asked Angela to be a different person and to stop advocating for her daughter.
Her teenage daughter said she smoked marijuana at her mother’s and the teenager said she tested positive for meth while at the hospital. The teenager claimed to not know how the meth got into her system.
The teenager said she saw meth in her mother’s possession while she lived with her.
Angela told me she tested clean and has a medical marijuana card; her marijuana consumption, she told me, is well-known. She provided a copy of her negative test, taken on February 14, 2021, and that is below.
“I think they’re setting it up for me to be responsible for the positive meth test,” Angela told me of her daughter now accusing her mother of having meth addiction.
The girl also claims she doesn’t like that her mom posts things about the case on social media but the recording from February was made by the girl; it was leaked to be shared globally as she feared terribly living with the man she claimed was molesting her.
She also questioned just how healthy- mentally- her daughter is.
Though she claimed to be confident, Angela told me that her daughter did cheerleading, choir and other activities while in her care.
In her father’s care, she only does make-up for a play.
“She was never afraid to get on stage,” Angela told me and could not understand why she wasn’t acting in a play, if she was as confident as she claims.
Angela told me that after her daughter called her from the hospital in late February, she lost all contact with her- except the bizarre letter which also failed to address the molestation accusation- and did not see her face to face until shortly before the hearing in November.
Judge Heggie said he wanted to start with some Zoom calls with mother and daughter before moving slowly to face-to-face meetings; this too is a much different tact from Judge Zellweger in February, who forced this same girl to live with the father, despite her molestation accusations.
Post Script: Find the Missouri fundraiser here to support more stories like this.
Update: Shortly after this article was published, YouTube received a complaint about the video of the teenager testifying; someone said it had a privacy rights violation. The video of the same teenager confronting Judge Zellweger also received a complaint but YouTube kept that up. We’ll see how they rule on this one.