Following is the complaint sent to the appropriate authorities against a licensed therapist regarding the illegitimate so-called “therapy” to “reunify” children with an alleged abuser.
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To: Indiana Behavioral Health and Human Services Licensing Board
Cindy Vaught, Board Director
Indiana Professional Licensing Agency
402 W Washington St Rm W072
Indianapolis, Indiana 46204-2298
(317) 234-2054
cvaught@pla.in.gov
CC: Federal Bureau of Investigation
8825 Nelson B Klein Pkwy
Indianapolis, IN 46250
(317) 595-4000
Special Agent in Charge (Acting),
Gregory Nelsen
Assistant Special Agents in Charge:
Nathan Husak (Acting)
Robert “Alex” Middleton
Danny Youmara
From: Jill Jones Soderman, Executive Director, FCVFC
Re: Complaints against Angeline Schuller, MSW, LCSW, NCCE, NCPC
Reunification Therapy Evaluator
Schuller & LeBlanc
2608 West Lincoln Highway
Merrillville, IN 46410
(219) 484-2143 ext. 700
aschuller@newvistanwi.com
Please be advised that in reflecting on the venal actions of the orders and directions of this court, we believe it to be necessary to address the composite issues driving the engagement of the services of Ms. Angeline Schuller and her New Vista Behavioral Health organization.
Our fundamental hope is that the orders of this court have been taken as a result of ignorance regarding the nature of so-called “reunification therapy” and the practitioners engaged in the cottage industry that have been spawned by “parental alienation,” as articulated by Richard Gardner, MD. The Gardner theory of “parental alienation” has been corruptly used to transfer children into custody of abusers and to defend men who have been accused of heinous sexual crimes against their children.
The “parental alienation” theory, which had at its core a denial of crimes against children, has been extremely successful in creating reasonable doubt on behalf of culprits of terrible abuses against children.
“Reunification therapy” is an intervention that has absolutely no legitimate practice. The application of the practices engaged in have been documented to be used to force children to submit to their abusers and to accommodate to verbal, physical, sexual behaviors, defined as torture by mental health authorities and the United Nations. The original model as developed by Family Bridges was used by their founders to deal with children who have been the subject of years of brutal torture by family members.
The FCVFC has first-hand experience with successfully litigating against other “family reunification” cases, and we are now prepared to weaponize the information we have gathered, especially over recent years, to move forward with complaints to the FBI and states attorneys’ offices to develop claims against witness threats and intimidation, as well as heinous acts of child abuse.
We can only imagine that this court has been ill-informed and misled into propagating the practices that have continued a pattern of behavior that supports domestic violence and child abuse, placing innocent parties in acute danger.
No properly trained and licensed mental health practitioner would ever allow their clients to be subject to practices that allow mentally ill, characterologically depraved, or criminally deranged individuals to set the standard of care for those citizens, adults and children, placing them in a position of being subject to crippling abuse. The intellectually dishonest, baseless/ self-serving theories advanced and promoted by purveyors of what can only be categorized as profit motive driven pundits engaged in nothing less than child trafficking using the authority of the family courts across the country have created a public health crisis.
At this moment in time three generations of children who have been subject to the severely destructive practices of family court ill conceived, unscientific theories have been severely damaged or destroyed. Because charges of abuse are suppressed / denied / buried along with the victims, statistics around child suicides, parent murder suicides are not properly recorded or documented. The explosion of child and adolescent suicides as well as multiple murder suicides involving occurring in custody transfer cases have forced attention to be paid to what can correctly be called an epidemic of ignorance, arrogance driven corruption by family court actors responsible for transferring children into the custody of abusers.
In the service of transparency the FCVFC was established directly in response to the suicide death of a twelve-year-old child (Oct. 25,2005 ) transferred into the custody of a brutal abuser. The case written about extensively in the annals of the history of the FCVFC traces one court decision to allow the mother and her three sons to reunite with her family in Kansas. Two days before the family was to board a plane from New Jersey a corrupt evaluator by the name of Paul Dasher paid by the father to file a “Parental Alienation” claim enjoined their departure. Though the mother and children were clearly and fully medically and psychiatrically documented to have been brutalized they were enjoined from seeking safety and protection. Advocacy for the family promoted mobilization for health and healing. The lies and larceny of corruption cordoned off the family from rescue.
Court systems across the country have been overtaken by criminal corruption that has allowed practitioners to financially benefit from defending depraved abusers, allowing them to have access to children and to gain an advantage over sane, well-socialized protective parents. This does not mean that those of us who recognize the alarming state of affairs do not sound the alarm to cease and desist.
We hope that pointing out the errors inadvertently wandered into by this court can help these errors be corrected before further harm is done. The state of affairs that we call “the inmates taking over the asylum” must end.
Prior counsel has been discharged. All others who have prevented due process from being followed must also be removed. These individuals have no right to harm innocent parties and exert their will seeking profit from their ill deeds.
The children and the protective parent in this proceeding have tried to raise the consciousness of the court to allow them to move forward. They were allowed to move to another state to escape the abuser and his lack of responsibility to deal with his own mental health issues. This individual has chosen to exert authority, continue to abuse and terrorize, “dealing” with his mental health challenges through a repeated compulsion satisfying to him and detrimental to the parties who have a right to live free of abuse, to pursue lives absent from his control and abuse.
We can only hope that inadequate communication has led to the unjust perverted rulings of this court. We pray that the litigants seeking to bring light, logic, and learning to this court will prevail in their efforts to seek liberation.
Please be advised that complaints are being filed against the above-named practitioner and her business for her heavy-handed autocratic, illiterate, unethical, illegal, and untruthful communications, part of her efforts to force vulnerable subjects to return to a situation they fled.
Ms. Schuller and her staff—who are unlicensed or with licenses pending, or who have had their licenses removed for problematic behavior—have joined forces with court actors who are themselves being charged with multiple due process and civil rights violations and child endangerment issues. These charges are being filed under Federal Criminal Statute 18USC1512, which deals with witness intimidation, threats against witnesses, and multiple violations of civil rights.
Extensive legal and historical material related to the years of intense, withering emotional and psychological abuse—reported to have led the protective mother and children to seek separation, divorce, and a peaceful resolution of the marriage—provide a picture of survival in the midst of this abuse, which has been described as infiltrating and destroying the lives of this family. The husband/father is reported to have regaled the family members over the years with horrendous depictions of the abuse to which he was subject as a child. He now lauds his own superiority by continually seeking sympathy and praise for not being as brutal to his wife and children as his parents were to each other and to him.
The relentless terror, humiliation, threats, and gaslighting to which each member of this family was subjected has been disregarded, along with the indications of extremely severe symptoms of volatile mental illness. Ms. Schuller does appear to have some concerns about the children’s safety as she refers incessantly to the “Safety Plans that are in effect if the children feel in Danger.” The children are not allowed to have phones and are not allowed to leave the house without the father’s permission. His modus operandi is to most frequently tell them that they cannot leave the house or the room until he is finished “screaming” at them. The children have each made it clear that their father’s physical presence, combined with his emotional volatility is overwhelming to them to the point of inducing symptoms of acute, ongoing trauma for which they have all been engaged in psychotherapy for years.
This court has failed to engage in any form of risk assessment, mental health assessment of the father who is described as having frequent violent rages; intensified by imbibing alcohol. He is also described as having been a heavy drinker over the years of the marriage .Indications of paranoia are described, as are indications of auditory and visual hallucinations. To the best of our knowledge the father has not sought personal treatment in the past or in more recent history and a thorough mental health paternal psychiatric history is to the best of our knowledge remains unknown.
The family moved, seeking protective orders and as much distance from the father as possible as a result of years of detailed complaints of incessant, unbearable psychological abuse that caused intense fear, depression, and anxiety. The mother and all four children live far from Indiana, and forced visitation with the father must be accomplished by exorbitantly expensive, exhausting air travel.
Mediators working with clients are proscribed from engaging in mediation services where one parent has been the subject of domestic violence. But Ms. Schuller seems to have no compunction about ordering a parent who has gone to great lengths to move herself and her four children from a relationship that she and the children have described in great detail over the years of life as a living hell of control, intimidation, manipulation, terror. Ms. Schuller and her organization have demonstrated a propensity for “teaming up” with those with the power to fraudulently, illegitimately, illegally force innocent children and vulnerable family members / Protective Parents into the domination, isolation, and abuse of those who are obsessed with obtaining power and control for purposes of exploitation. Ms. Schuller recognizes that our client is a ” Domestic Violence Survivor” as she referred her to the St. Jude House” Domestic Violence Center and Shelter.
In her justification for destructive demands for obedience from vulnerable abuse victims unaccustomed to defending themselves, Ms. Schuller states, as per the email authored by her dated Jan. 14, 2022 (attached ) “I started a private practice devoted to parent-child contact issues and high-conflict divorce. Often we are blamed when a parent does not receive a desired outcome in a custody case. Over the past three years, I have had professional complaints filed against me; I had to obtain a no contact order against a patient, and I have had multiple death threats from patients and two family members. If we backed down every time someone threatened us, the attorneys would advise their clients to file complaints, and we would be out of business. Therefore, we do not back down or change our approach in light of complaints. I have spoken with Jeff Vollmer, Dorian Laumann, and James Houpt, and they are all ready, willing and able to continue to work with this family.”
Ms. Schuller refers to herself as having been trained by the AFCC, a nonprofit that puts together conferences and books speakers. The AFCC – Association Of Family And Conciliation Courts is a non-profit that books speakers. The AFCC is not a school, institute, or training center. The AFCC books speakers and presents Conferences. Those practitioners involved in training to develop expertise are expected to be engaged in their own supervision, with specific training, personal training analysis, course work to develop an intellectual / scientific basis for treatment interventions and practices.
It is critical to note that Ms. Schuller holds herself out as a “Reunification Therapy Behavioral Counselor”. Reunification Therapy is not a “Buzzword” or “Pop Culture” term. This form of intervention created as a behavioral form of negative reinforcement and operant conditioning based on the military tactics of MKULTRA. The intervention is very clear, specific, followed by particular outlier practitioners, in line with “parental alienation ” theory associated with child trafficking and injecting a probable cause defense for what were originally a group of men who were criminally charged with sexual abuse of their children. Ms. Schuller, as will be documented in the lawsuits being filed against her and the parent she advocates so aggressively for, knows exactly what she means when she refers to her protocols for “Family Reunification” and “Safety Plans”.
Ms. Schuller’s training and experience and supervision remain a mystery. What is not a mystery is that Ms. Schuller makes ludicrous assertions such as those statements related to her work with “strengthening subsystems”, “family members do not exist in a vacuum” and “children are programmed to love their parents/primary attachment figures”. We are not certain as to what “programmer” Ms. Schuller gained her programming from as they seemed to have left out the “programming instructions to identify for parents who murder their spouses/ their children or engage in incest behavior, impregnate their children so that the mother is a brother/sister/mother…… Further, Ms. Schuller states “It has been our experience that Once Mother is on-board with encouraging a relationship with Father, the children will fall into line rather quickly”. I am not sure of the sources for the “falling into line” theory of parenting. We are clear as to the sources of Ms. Schuller’s clients antipathy toward her as she has been clear on that front as is our client/Protective Parent mother of four and her “unprogrammable” children.
As to the licenses of those referred to as working with Ms. Schuller as of 1/18/2022 Mr. Houpt is accredited as having a Volunteer employee permit which is expired (SEE ATTACHED FORM). Mr. Vollmer is noted as having a pending application as a Mental Health Counselor, degree unknown. Dorian Laumann appears to have an active mental health counselor license but we have no idea as to the license title, degree or training of this person or any of the other practitioners Ms. Schuller plans to subject the unwilling clients. The Father, accused abuser in this situation has been “working with Dr. Nick Constantine, Parenting Coach, Co-Parenting Educator – License Revoked “. Dorian Laumann also is said to work with the Father and he has an active license as a Mental Health Counselor.
Domestic Violence victims are not to be forced into the presence of their abuser for counseling or mediation. While Ms. Schuller has denied that the children have been abused and has denied Domestic Violence status to the mother, she in fact referred the Mother and children to St. Jude House “Family Violence Prevention Center and Shelter.” The mother and her three underage children were given leave to move from Indiana upon separation from the children’s father. The twenty-year-old sister has reported in some considerable detail the experience of her siblings as well as her own interactions with Ms. Schuller. Notes of these interactions have been preserved and will be transmitted as affidavit testimony, relating, among other things, Ms. Schuller’s wry comment stating that she, Ms. Schuller, would be “torturing” the siblings when she began work with them in family counseling.
Ms. Schuller states, “It is my understanding that Mother cannot unilaterally withdraw the court-ordered services. As long as the court-ordered services are in place, we will continue to offer and provide services . . . ” which is code for “we will continue to bill unconscionable amounts of money,” to this family that wants no part of her.
Ms. Schuller has found a means of bypassing a usual requirement for a therapeutic process, namely client cooperation and a therapeutic relationship. Ms. Schuller continues to bill the cornered court-ordered client for services, over the resounding protests of the victims of abuse / domestic violence and false allegations of the unscientific, unethical, perverse fabricated construct of “parental alienation.”
Ms. Schuller whose insistence on “compliance with rules does not consider herself required to comply with licensing compliance. The court order of August 30,2021 ordered an evaluation to see if reunification therapy was indicated. Ms. Schuller made it clear from the beginning that reunification was going to take place as she informed the children as she met with them that reunification with the father they fled was going to move forward. Angeline Schuller Completed her evaluations in October and November 2021 with each member of the family.
Telehealth Zoom laws do expect counselors to be licensed in the state that they are providing services. Ms. Schuller is located in Indiana as is the father contesting custody. The children’s mother completed sessions by Zoom as did the oldest daughter as all children live with their mother across the country. Two children have Zoom Reunification Therapy” meetings with their father and Ms. Schuller every Sun. 5 – 6:30. During these meetings the clients’ have noted multiple HIPAA violations which are being filed on the part of each client and will be forwarded to the licensing Board as HIPAA violations are founded.
Another aspect of Ms. Schuller’s demand for control, obedience, and submission involves the demands that come up frequently for independent therapists: compliance, cooperation or approval of Ms. Schuller’s form of therapy. For example, Ms. Schuller has been demanding release of information forms signed by each of the children so that Ms. Schuller can contact their therapists who have refused to speak with Ms. Schuller. Ms. Schuller has stated that if the ROI’S are not signed and compliance by the children’s trusted therapists is not secured, Ms. Schuller has indicated that new therapists in the children’s residential state will be appointed.
Multiple emotional challenges have been dealt with by the Mother and children through years of treatment with deft, experienced, deeply trusted psychiatric providers. The records of these psychiatric therapists provide the material that will be used to file malpractice actions against Ms. Schuller, her business, her contracted providers, and each and every lawyer associated with viciously pressing these children and their mother into the hands of the abuser they wished to escape.
Ms. Schuller’s challenged relationship with the truth is also found in her factually incorrect statements that relate to myself and the Foundation for Child Victims of the Family Courts.
The FCVFC has been a 501(c)3 nonprofit since February 2008. We are listed in Guide Star and all oversight organizations that recognize and review 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations as well as organizations that have adopted us for special appreciation for our work, such as the Network For Good.
In her email Ms. Schuller states that “it appears” that I have had multiple lawsuits against me over the past few years, “at least two of which are still pending.”
To correct the record, there have been, surprisingly, exactly two lawsuits filed against the FCVFC over fourteen years of the most high-conflict whistleblower civil rights advocacy and confrontation with corrupt judges, some of whom have been removed from the bench and some who have gone to jail.
The two lawsuits, which I am proud to acknowledge, include the Powell Case in Connecticut. This federal case was initiated because the only way I could protect these children was to write about the Father’s horrendous abuse of his little girls, now young women who have survived and found their place in the world. I have attached the writeups on the Powell case as well as the Court Citation which can be viewed on Case Text. The Financial Award is a paper fiction that the abuser may use.
The other case to which Ms. Schuller refers is Reeves v FCVFC. This is a case in which complaints were lodged about a Judge and the attorney for the child via the Legal Aid Society. The Father’s name was not mentioned in the complaints filed, and the frivolous, vengeful claim by the litigant has not yet come to fruition.
My own controversial practice, spanning more than 50 years and showing no intent of ending, deals with a population who have suffered unimaginable tragedy, trauma, illness, including psychiatric illness from catatonic schizophrenia, to acute, “untreatable” malignant depression. To date my clients have all survived treatment in my practice, and the work of the FCVFC is thriving.
The FCVFC is a Whistleblower organization that has never shrunk from filing complaints against judges, lawyers, or psychiatric providers who abuse their positions of trust as they engage in fraudulent, defamatory evaluations or “Reunification Therapy,” a vehicle for mind control, torture and alienation of children from their Protective Parents.
This family’s efforts for privacy, dignity, and peace have been undermined by what can best be described as the concatenation of the drive for omnipotent control, initiated by the father and agreed to by court minions, who apparently believe that however abusive and destructive one individual might be, that individual still has the “right” to demand the subjugation of all other family members. And this, in spite of evidence that the family members are suffering, for no other reason than that the person wants to continue to exert authority.
A theory has been generated within the family court system—magically, it seems—appearing to rise out of the primal battle of survival of the fittest. The “fittest” is whoever is willing to lie, cheat and steal, constructing a cause of action and a chorus of supporters to ally with a lie, simply denying facts. The “fittest” asserts a claim for possession that denies the rights of members of a family to stay safe from one who is charged with being an abuser.
The refrain of the abuser has become, “I am the victim. The claims asserted are false, and my right to demand possession over those who I want to control” becomes a battle overtaken by members of an entirely authoritarian family court legal process that can be shown to be driven by greed, “judicial discretion,” and a perverse appetite for propagating pain and suffering.
Ms. Schuller’s challenged relationship with the truth is shown in an email dated January 18, 2022, in which she lodges her arguments for drawing a Protective Parent and family back into her iron grip of court-ordered so-called “Reunification Counseling.”
Counseling suggests a cooperative, voluntary relationship with a professional chosen by the subjects to provide guidance, insight and support in resolving a variety of psychological/ interpersonal issues. But it is clear from Ms. Schuller’s testimony describing her experience with her “counseling practice,” as well as from her relationships with the Mother and children who have been forced to deal with her, that she would have no clients if the clients were not court ordered.
Please be advised that the attached Complaint against Angeline Schuller and her company addressed to the Social Work Licensing Board and other agencies that provide oversight of her clinical and business practice are based on the following issues:
- Ms. Schuller has lied about the actual services she provides and refers to as “reunification therapy.” (Document attached.)
- “Reunification Therapy” is referred to as a therapeutic process when in fact this is a most serious misrepresentation of the actual services provided.
This perceived need to keep the children in relationship with the abuser gave rise to the “reunification” model of responding to children who–with good cause and compelling evidence–are resisting the parent they fled.
After children have sought refuge from abusers—with statements and documentation of heinous physical and sexual abuse—this “reunification therapy” program uses tactics of coercive control to force children into the exclusive custody of those very abusers.
The conviction behind this program is that whatever the charges are against an accused parent, they’re not true. These accusations, according to the “reunification” model, simply come from a disgruntled (protective) parent who is jealous and competitive with the right of the other parent to exercise control, physical and psychological, which includes sexual access to the child.
The “reunification” is driven by a court order that empowers the program to authorize “transfer agents”—thugs with court authority—to pick up the children from whether they are: hospitals, mental institutions, correctional facilities, or custody of the other parent. They are then taken to a hotel room where they will be confronted alone, without an attorney, protective parent, other advocate. The only other people there besides the child will be the “reunification specialist” team and the accused parent, who has gained access through the court.
With the assistance of the reunification team, this parent can inform the children that the abuse they reported never existed, but rather is the product of the villainous scheme of the other parent (who they were “deceived into believing” was their protector), to interfere with the relationship of the parent who is now seeking access to and control over them. Children are told that if they don’t cooperate and conform to the program, then the parent who is opposing the program will go to jail for the rest of their lives, and the children will never see that parent again.
The MK ULTRA Military tactics used in dealing with military training and war prisoner tactics, these threats, intimidation, defamation of the protective parents, manipulation, lies, and gaslighting will be supplemented by several other tools, geared to breaking a child’s spirit, some of the tactics include:
- Children are to have no contact with the outside world, no electronics, no television, no other people in their lives, especially not those who believed their cries for help.
- The accused parent—even one accused of sexual abuse—will be allowed physical contact, touching, rubbing, feeling the child who has rejected them, in order to desensitize the child to physical contact with the alleged abuser.
- The children will be subject to attempts at mind control through film, hypnotism, subliminal suggestion filtered through specialized films – “A Trip To Pluto”, and medication/drugs.
The goal of these “reunification programs” is for the children to see the protective parent as the new enemy. The internal strength of each individual child will determine the success or failure of this model of modern warfare, this heinous assault on the minds, bodies, and spirits of the most vulnerable. The actual number of suicides, psychiatric breakdowns are unknown as the courts do not record the outcomes of these so-called treatments but anecdotal outcomes reported are uniformly disastrous. The FCVFC will be reporting on cases that are works in progress, currently in various forms of civil litigation.
The twenty-year-old daughter, who was a victim herself of her father’s debilitating, horrifying, destructive abuse, as well as witness to the abuse of her mother and siblings, will be filing a lawsuit against her father detailing exactly what she witnessed and experienced. This lawsuit will be corroboration of the brutal, despicable, unconscionable acts of cruelty that Ms. Schuller and her staff are so eager to perpetuate. The malpractice actions will be part of a series of legal actions geared toward enjoining the Father from ever being able to threaten, harass, intimidate, control members of his family again. We have not as yet addressed the harm endured by his youngest child whose spectrum disorder places him in a position to not be able to even begin to address, understand or defend himself from the abuse that envelopes the relationship and places the child at profound risk. His oldest sibling and his younger siblings are victims and witnesses who have lived in fear and despair for protecting their vulnerable younger brother.
Further, malpractice actions are in progress and will be filed shortly against Ms. Schuller, her business and her employees, as will other actions in progress enjoining her from ever being able to harass the family who abhor and despise her.
Complaints to the Bar Associations associated with Ms. Tinder, Ms. Price, Ms. Swope, Ms. Otterbacher for engaging in multiple acts of child abuse, child endangerment, threats, intimidation and collusion to force children and a Protective Parent into relationships and circumstances described by Forensic Experts and the United Nations as acts of torture. The practices of these lawyers will be evaluated as to what further action will be taken against each of them
As the legal documentation / lawsuits are rolled out, we will be forwarding this documentation to this licensing board and all agencies that provide oversight and prosecution of out-of-control, perverse, lawless court actors who must be removed from the public arena as risks to the public welfare.
Jill Jones Soderman
Executive Director, FCVFC
Copies of this complaint were also sent to the following individuals:
Hon. Judge Thomas P Hallett
Lake County Sup. Court, Civil Div. 3
15 West Fourth Avenue
Gary, IN 46402
(219) 881-6157
Shaun T. Olsen, Magistrate
Lake County Sup. Court, Civil Div. 3
15 West Fourth Avenue
Gary, IN 46402
(219) 881-6157
Karyn J. Price, Guardian ad Litem
9800 Connecticut Drive
Crown Point, IN 46307
(219) 484-9100
kjp@karynpricelaw.com
Christine Otterbacher, Parenting Time Coordinator
Otterbacher, Norris & Eldred, LLC
1158 Lincoln Way, Suite One
Valparaiso, IN 56385
(219) 465-0001
chrisonelaw@gmail.com
Angeline Schuller, MSW, LCSW, NCCE, NCPC
New Vista Behavioral Health
Schuller & LeBlanc
2608 West Lincoln Highway
Merrillville, IN 46410
(219) 484-2143 ext. 700
aschuller@newvistanwi.com
James Houpt, Reunification Counselor
New Vista Behavioral Health, “Reunification Therapy” team
2612 W. Lincoln Highway
Merrillville, IN 46410
(219) 484-2143
jhoupt@newvistanwi.com
Jeff Vollmer, Reunification Counselor; High Conflict Educator & Counselor
(708) 781-3580
jvollmer@newvistanwi.com
Dorian Laumann, High-Conflict Educator and Counselor
(219) 781-5932
dlaumann@newvistanwi.com
