The Colorado State Court Administrator’s Office has suspended a high-profile custody evaluator from continuing to receive court appointments following controversy over his parenting recommendations amid recent media scrutiny of the parenting evaluation industry.

Jaime Watman, an official in the State Court Administrator’s Office, in a statement confirmed last week’s suspension of Mark Kilmer from ongoing court-appointed custody evaluation work. She could not be reached for comment, but in an automatic email she said a comprehensive review of whether evaluators have completed state-required training also is underway.

Colorado’s parenting evaluation industry profits as bitter child custody cases thrown into chaos

In her statement, Watman said Kilmer had been suspended while “we investigate his continued suitability for the rosters” of parental responsibility evaluators and child and family investigators eligible for court appointments.

“The completion of any current appointments as a CFI and a PRE will be dependent on the judicial officer presiding over the case,” Watman said in the statement.

She added that the State Court Administrator’s Office has “no authority to terminate an appointment.” Watman said in the statement that she does not know when the investigation into Kilmer will be completed.

Kilmer’s suspension last week from eligibility rosters for CFI and PRE appointments follows an investigation by The Gazette into the custody evaluation industry and a separate investigative report of Kilmer’s court appointments by ProPublica. In an interview with ProPublica, Kilmer said he disbelieves 90% of the abuse allegations he hears during his evaluation work.

The Gazette investigation found Colorado’s system of deciding contentious child custody cases is fraught with problems. Dozens of cases of incompetent, inaccurate and biased custody evaluations, several of which put children at serious, even life-threatening risk, were discovered by The Gazette.

Further, The Gazette found that the State Court Administrator’s office has just one person to administer the statewide parental evaluator and child and family investigator program. A spokesperson for that office said the office “does not have adequate staff to investigate complaints.”

Parental evaluator’s 40-year career brought to end after complaints about sex videos, price gouging

The Gazette found state and judicial officials have moved slowly to act against custody evaluators even when their work has been discredited in court. In one case, Wilbert Mills, a parental evaluator, continued making custody recommendations for nearly three years despite a complaint that one of his recommendations occurred without him ever meeting the parents – a violation of state law.

By the time he had agreed to stop doing custody evaluations, Mills had generated controversy again in another case when he said a father posed no threat to his five children – even though the father had nearly choked his pregnant wife to death, court records show. The father in that case, records show, would go on to abuse the children.

Kilmer, who is the brother of the actor Val Kilmer, declined comment.

This is the second time the court administrator’s office has acted against Mark Kilmer.

In July 2019, the State Court Administrator’s Office removed Kilmer for 60 days from the eligibility roster for court appointment as a child and family investigator.

Details of the reasons for his 2019 removal from the CFI roster aren’t public, though a roster list states his temporary removal stemmed from violations of standards requiring professionalism, sufficiency in investigation and sufficient collection of appropriate data.

A licensed psychologist, Kilmer pleaded guilty of a misdemeanor domestic assault charge and a misdemeanor harassment charge in 2007 after his then-wife said he pushed her to the bathroom floor, according to police reports. The charges were dismissed after Kilmer successfully completed domestic violence training and 24 months of probation.

Two mothers share a mutual ex-partner and, now, a close friendship due to encounters with parental evaluation industry

In the past, he has denied the domestic-violence allegations. In 2008, the state board that licenses psychologists placed his practice under clinical supervision for one year after a patient complained Kilmer breached patient confidentiality. The patient said he had been in couples therapy with Kilmer with his partner. He said he and his partner had been working on their relationship, but Kilmer jeopardized any progress by putting his partner in touch with another person Kilmer suggested she date.

In February 2021, Kilmer testified in one contentious divorce case that he had been appointed in thousands of cases to do child custody evaluations.

In that Denver case, Kilmer testified that the interaction between a child and father was “one of the best I have ever seen,” despite the father having perpetrated domestic violence against the mother in front of the child, court records show. He recommended that custody be increased to 50/50 in two years, a recommendation adopted by the judge.

In another 2021 custody case in Jefferson County, District Court Judge Randall Arp relied on Kilmer’s parenting evaluation and declined to restrict a father’s parenting time despite the mother claiming her 3-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy were endangered when under the care of the father.

The mother in that case contended that she had been subjected to ongoing domestic violence, and that the father of the children had been so neglectful that whenever she picked the children up from him, she found the children wearing diapers soaked with feces and urine.

Oversight of parental evaluators has been lacking for decades

The mother also claimed in that case that the father’s mental illness issues had grown debilitating due to extreme instances of depression that left him at times incapable of movement.

Kilmer said in his evaluation that the father’s mental health issues had been addressed and treated, though the judge noted that Kilmer’s recommendation was based on letters from the father’s therapist. The judge said Kilmer “apparently did not follow up with or ask for additional documentation that could have been relevant from the father’s therapist or psychiatric nurse.”

A witness for the mother testified that she was present when Kilmer visited the mother’s home to evaluate her parenting skills. That witness, the maternal grandmother, said Kilmer spent more time talking to her than observing the mother interacting with the children.

The grandmother further testified that when she told Kilmer she feared she was monopolizing his time, Kilmer continued to want to remain talking to her while the children played inside and had breakfast with their mother.