Psychiatric Diagnosis and Custody Battle: Judge Grossman Suspected of Mental Illness as Battle Looms Over Forced Return of Teens to Ambrose

As FR reported, Chris Ambrose is trying to force his children to live with him. This week, he forced them out of their home with their mother.

He got Judge Thomas O’Neill to issue a restraining order, barring Karen Riordan from being within 100 yards of them.

Mia, 16, Mathew, 16, and Sawyer, 13, chose not to return to Ambrose, preferring to live with their maternal grandfather.

It was not the first time Ambrose forced his children out of their happy home with their mother.

Chris Ambrose’s rural home in Madison, CT.

Mental Health of the Mother

In addition to convincing Judge O’Neill that the teens’ wish to live with their mother is the result of her coercive control, Ambrose says Riordan is mentally ill.

This assessment is based on the opinion of psychologist Jessica Biren Caverly. Ambrose paid Caverly more than $12,000 to do a neutral custody evaluation report in 2020 to determine who should have custody. Caverly determined Riordan “appeared” to have a personality disorder, though she could not specify which type it was.

To be fair to Caverly, there was no way to know what Riordan’s mental illness was, or if she had any, since Caverly was not Riordan’s therapist, and therefore she could not obtain informed consent to diagnose her. 

Nevertheless, the appearance of a personality disorder observed by Caverely was sufficient for Family Court Judge Jane Grossman to diagnose from the bench that Riordan had bipolar disorder.

Ironically, bipolar disorder is the mental illness that many litigants who have come before her say is a condition Judge Grossman herself suffers from.

Judge Grossman, appearing also to suffer from anti-social disorder [sociopathic subtype, secondary psychopathy], ruthlessly ordered the immediate removal of the children – at that time 13, 13, and 9 – out of their home with their mother – their primary attachment figure their entire lives.

Imagine you are the children of Karen Riordan and absentee father Chris Ambrose. After living your life with your mother, some person in black robes, with schizoaffective disorder, who never met you, or your siblings, decides you are leaving your happy home and living with a mean and callous stranger named Ambrose – and what’s worse – you cannot even speak to your mother – the person who raised you all your life!  This kind of cruelty is par for the course in family court. 

The children woke up in their mother’s home on April 24, 2020. By evening, they were shockingly at their father’s home and told they could not speak to their mother.

In December 2020, after eight months with their father, a CT Family Court Family Relations Counselor, Allison Kaas Esq. determined that Ambrose was a high-risk abuser.

It took significant legal work from Ambrose’s attorney to get the dissocial Judge Grossman to ignore this dangerous finding. 

In January 2021, DCF took custody from Ambrose. 

Again, Ambrose’s attorney made strenuous efforts to defeat the children’s claims of abuse, and avoid forensic testing of the children, and Ambrose regained custody of his unhappy children.

The kids lost contact with their mother for three years, as Ambrose moved them to his rural house and kept them free of her and all her family and friends with whom the kids grew up – grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and lifelong friends.

Ambrose maintains that the brainwashing the mother did was so severe that even after three years of constant one-on-one control, he could not deprogram their minds.

On April 22, 2023, Mia ran from her father to her mother’s home. 

While Judge Thomas ‘Steal’ O’Neill claims Karen Riordan [r] coercively controls her son, Matthew, the 16-year-old is physically too big to be forced by Riordan to leave his father – or for that matter force him to return to him. 

Finally, Sawyer, 13, [above] left his father on July 4, fled to his mother, and rejoined his two siblings.  He had happiness for a little more than a month before Judge ‘Steal’ O’Neill ordered the mother out of their lives – without ever meeting the children. 

He depended on the good word of their father alone.

  Mental Health

Psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee MD evaluated Riordan for her mental health – with informed consent.

Dr. Lee wrote:

I have performed a full psychiatric evaluation of Ms. Karen Riordan and have been following her for almost four months.

This 56-year-old, white, special education teacher, and divorced mother of three children, ages 12 [now 13], 16 and 16, has been found to have good mental health, excellent psychological development, and no barriers to parenting, but only evidence of being an excellent mother, as confirmed by at least three other psychiatric experts.

Interviews, written statements, and voice recordings of her children consistently state that they prefer to live with their mother and are afraid of their father. Indeed, they have made disturbing, highly credible reports of severe emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual abuse and coercive control by their father, as well as a history of litigation abuse that has kept all three children from their mother for three years—until they ran away finally to be with her.

This length of separation for growing children, from the mother who raised them, is traumatic in itself and should never have happened.

This is not a difficult case. I can state by a preponderance of the evidence, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that Ms. Riordan is more than a competent mother. If it is their desire to do so, the children should be allowed to stay with her.

I have been investigating the allegations of child molestation by Christopher Ambrose against his three adopted children. This case has been going on for almost three years, and Mr. Ambrose and his lawyers have successfully prevented any evidence showing his molestation of the children from being entered into court evidence or even presented to the court.

I have a 35-minute video of my initial meeting with the children. The children describe in detail the molestation they endured by their father.

[Excerpt from the video:

Another video shows that Mr. Ambrose removed the doorknobs from his children’s room to provide easier access to his children. The children stated he would come into their rooms at night and that they could not lock the door.

Ambrose took the doorknobs off the children’s doors.

Hospital documents support that the children told the ER doctors and hospital psychiatrists of the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of their adoptive father.

The hospital determined that Mr. Ambrose was a threat to the children and recommended that the children go home with the mother.

Throughout my investigation, Mr. Ambrose has made numerous false statements to the court. Each time, he or his lawyers present his allegations without evidence to support the narrative he invents.

You must understand that Mr. Ambrose is a habitual liar. He was fired from his screenwriting position for plagiarism. The allegations of his plagiarism are well known, and reports are easily found on the internet.

Before being fired, Mr. Ambrose told stories for a living. He continues to spin stories to paint an untrue narrative. 

Mr. Ambrose let his 16-year-old daughter drive his car without a license or permit. 

You can see the speedometer in the car pointing at 45 mph. In court, Mr. Ambrose stated his daughter does not drive his car.

Mr. Ambrose’s eldest son, Matthew, missed 52 school days last year due to his depression and drug use. After returning to his mother, he no longer showed signs of depression and quit using drugs. 

The two 16-year-old children filed complaints against their father in juvenile court, and all three children ran away from him. They fled to the safety of their mother’s home.

Another investigator conducted a forensic analysis on Mr. Ambrose’s computer. The investigator found hundreds of photos of young boys and men having sex. 

The actual age of young men in the videos are unclear. They are posed to look underage, but whether the models are actually under age 18 is unknown.

Does Not Watch Child Porn Says Ambrose

Ambrose denied viewing any child porn to his custody evaluator, Dr. Caverly.

Caverly wrote in her report, “[Ambrose stated] ‘as an adult, [he is] allowed to look at porn.’ Mr. Ambrose stated that… a website called Latino Boiz… does not include children.”

In fairness to Caverly, she did not get a chance to determine if Ambrose visited child porn websites. It took work by his attorneys, but Ambrose obtained a court order that barred Caverly from reviewing evidence of child porn on his computers.