In yet another case in which the child was giving to the alleged abuser, the following complaint was written by one of our colleagues.

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Dear Grievance Committee Member:

I am writing to support a formal complaint against Mental Health Counselor Brenda Nemitz.  I myself am a forensic psychiatrist, and a brief summary of my credentials is attached.

By a preponderance of evidence, Ms. Nemitz appears to have produced a fraudulent evaluation in order to facilitate the transfer a child rape victim to her rapist.  The reasons I say so are multifold:

1. A now six-year-old child has made serious, credible, articulate, and diagram-based sexual abuse and rape allegations, including one as recently as August 23, 2023, and Ms. Nemitz’s letter dated September 5, 2023, mentions none of this.
2. Ms. Nemitz, despite claiming to be conducting “co-parenting counseling,” describes the two parents in highly biased and polarizing language that appears deliberately to stigmatize one parent: “Joshua has been more than cooperative and open minded,” versus “Heather has outright refused … joint sessions.”
3. When a child has been raped, what Ms. Nemitz describes as “concerning behaviors” could actually be caring behavior that is normal and healthy for a mother and critically-needed for the protection of the child victim—but she takes none of this critical possibility into consideration.
4. Ms. Nemitz makes serious and highly-consequential conclusions such as, “Heather has a very unhealthy attachment to her daughter,” citing almost no evidence and seemingly based on her biased view of statements made in the couple’s counseling sessions alone.
5. Ms. Nemitz mentions she has “met briefly with the child” but gives no mention of the most critical and basic safety concerns, and appears not even to have discussed the sexual abuse allegations with the mother, either in the couple’s session or alone.
6. Ms. Nemitz states, without citing any evidence, that she is “very concerned about emotional abuse” from the mother and shows no differential reasoning as to why she may have withheld her child from school (leaving out the child’s allegations of sexual abuse, the mother’s awaiting a court date while fearing that the father, who comes from a family with a criminal history and exhibits considerable psychopathic traits, may abduct the child).
7. Clear bias and incompetence are shown at the end when Ms. Nemitz is “requesting a referral” for psychological testing only for [the mother] and not for [the father], when she should have by then received my urgently-written, mandated-reporting letter, dated September 1, 2023, warning of dangerous personality traits in [the father] that require further evaluation, and at least a notification that I had completed a full psychiatric evaluation of [the mother] and was in the process of writing up my report.

Therefore, on the face of it, Ms. Nemitz appears to have deliberately made conclusions that are not supported by evidence or clinically highly distorted, in order to abuse her title as “Mental Health Counselor” to produce a fraudulent report that has, indeed, facilitated [the father]’s “legal” abduction of his child victim.  The fact that the court, on September 22, 2023, allowed for this total custody switch, seemingly based on Ms. Nemitz’s letter alone and without any sign of [the mother]’s unfitness, corroborates this assertion.

[The mother] has also noted a number of inconsistencies, if not mendacity, in Ms. Nemitz’s report, as follows:

1. [The mother] cannot identify which recommendations Ms. Nemitz claims [the father] implemented, especially as he has proceeded to slander and character assassinate [the mother] on GoFundMe and Facebook.
2. [The mother] claims to have met with Ms. Nemitz alone twice, and the next two joint sessions with [the father], in which [the father] did not speak about coparenting but rather the fact that he has made friends with her ex-husband and her biological father (who gave up his parental rights of [the mother] when she was five years old). Seeing that Ms. Nemitz allowed his tangential provocations to continue, [the mother] stated that she would like to continue coparenting sessions with Ms. Nemitz but not jointly with [the father].  These sessions never transpired because of Ms. Nemitz’s failure to reschedule, and thus [the mother] took it upon herself to do an online coparenting course, on her own initiative.
3. [The mother] objects to Ms. Nemitz’s statement that she has a “very unhealthy attachment” to her daughter, based on seeing them together only briefly.
4. [The mother] denies ever having stated: “the child is mine and I shouldn’t have to share.” She is the one who, after the relationship broke up many months before the child was born, announced the pregnancy to both families, never denied visitations to [the father] even before the paternity test, and continued to comply for years despite allegations from the child of [the father]’s inappropriately touching and “hurting” her. [the father] allegedly stated to his cousin or aunt that he had the paternity test because he had suspicion of [the mother]’s dad being the father.  As a matter of fact we have a picture of him holding Makenzie in the NICU along with his mother the day after she was born.
5. [The mother] adamantly denies ever having stated that she doesn’t care what the court says.
6. [The mother] adamantly denies ever having told [the father] that she knows what is best for the child and his opinion does not matter!
7. [The mother] and her parents have done lots of painting and crafting projects with the child, and she has never been observed to worry about getting paint on her hands.
8. [The mother] adamantly denies ever having come to Ms. Nemitz’s office angry and grabbing the child, and in fact she was the one who told the child to give her dad a hug goodbye!
9. [The mother] cannot identify how Ms. Nemitz could state concerns about emotional abuse from herself, when Ms. Nemitz has only seen her with the child rarely.
10. [The mother] denies that Ms. Nemitz has ever offered to do roleplay on responses to negative remarks, nor does she have any proof of negative remarks from [the mother], except for what [the father] probably told Ms. Nemitz.
11. [The mother] objects to Ms. Nemitz’s assessment that she has mental health issues that she refuses to address, and she wonders how Ms. Nemitz can know this after just four one-hour sessions with her. She suspects that Ms. Nemitz is going purely by [the father]’s narrative, despite his preliminary diagnosis of psychopathy—which makes him prone to being a pathological liar.

My psychiatric evaluation, after two hours of interview and twelve hours of objective record review, showed absolutely no concerns regarding [the mother]’s mental health.  Indeed, she shows only signs of sound mental health her entire life and exceptionally strong mother-child bonds when observed in interaction with her daughter.  Rather, credible allegations from the child of sexual abuse, penetration, and ejaculation in her by her father, which “hurt” her badly enough to make her recoil at the simple mentioning of him, led me to perform a Hare Psychopathy Checklist– Revised (PCL-R) on the father, as I am trained to do.  Of note, PCL-R’s rely more on collateral interviews and objective record reviews than on personal interview, because of the tendency for afflicted individuals to lie and mislead—nevertheless, I requested an interview of [the father] through his lawyer, and he refused.  [The father]’s score returned dangerously high—32/40 (30/40 is the cutoff for psychopathy)—a level where he should not have the child at all.

What accounts for this discrepancy?  Ms. Nemitz’s actions need to be viewed in the context of the international crisis of too many underqualified “experts” taking part in a global crisis of human rights violations and violence against women and children happening in family courts, through the refusal to acknowledge or even the deliberate coverup of child abuse, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council (the April 2023 report is here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic–reports/ahrc5336–custody–violence–againstwomen–and–violence–against–children).

In the United States, rigorous scientific studies have shown that, whereas false allegations of child abuse are exceedingly rare (0.1% to 2%)—and the problem of underreporting more serious— family courts dismiss a vast majority of allegations as false, even when there is credible evidence.  This has resulted in a conservative estimate of 58,000 child victims being transferred to their tormentors and rapists every year, resulting in hundreds of unnecessary deaths by suicide or murder every year.  The driver behind this is billions of dollars per year in profits for family courtconnected actors, contingent on transferring child victims to their perpetrators (misappropriation of public funds has also been implicated in the high levels of unreliable Child Protective Services “investigations”, with the involvement of family court).

In this context, the integrity and professionalism of mental health experts are all the more critical.  Yet, Ms. Nemitz, rather than acting as a neutral evaluator who should assess and respond to safety concerns first, she appears to have engaged in unethical, dangerous, and self-serving conduct, in breach of professional norms and in disturbing conformity with the patterns of the above abuses.  Her violations of the following Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA) Code of Ethics guidelines are of particular concern:

I. Commitment to Clients
A. 1. Primary Responsibility
A. 3. Dual/Multiple Relationships
A. 4. Exploitive Relationships

B. 1. Treatment Plans
B. 2. Informed Consent

B. 3. Multiple Clients
B. 4. Clients Served by Others
B. 7. Clients’ Rights

C. 1. Competence
C. 2. Non-Discrimination
C. 3. Conflict of Interest

D. 2. Interpretation and Reporting
D. 3. Competence
D. 4. Forensic Activity

E. 2. Fee Arrangements, Bartering, and Gifts (highly suspected)

F. 1. Consultant
F. 2. Advocate

II. Commitment to Other Professionals
A. Relationship with Colleagues
B. Clinical Consultation

Given the gravity and multitude of her ethical infractions, in direct and acute endangerment of a child, I urge the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services to conduct a detailed investigation into Ms. Brenda Nemitz’s practices.  Ensuring the health and safety of clients and minor children, while upholding the basic, essential ethical standards of the mental health field, should be of paramount importance for any mental health professional.