years ago my mother went to Gayle McElroy and Lowell Halvorson in a complex visitation issue and was given good advice. Subsequently, after paying Ms. McElroy a substantial retainer to continue after she left the Halvorson firm, Ms. McElroy backed out of the case (not a popular case as my mother had just divorced a WA attorney who is a pedophile, still happily practicing in Snohomish County) at the last minute. What was never revealed to my mother, until years later, was a family court services document in the possession of Alice Probert that was an assessment of my father for sexual deviancy which found him at high risk of offending, along with his own narrative in which he relayed all types of abuse of women and children. The many lawyers my mother sought assistance from never told her of the presence of the document and we spent the next fifteen years fleeing and hiding from this pedophile until a lawyer sent us a copy of the document. The following attorneys easily could have accessed and used the document to help my mother and me: Gayle McElroy, Leonid Ponomarchuk, Anderson & Fields, Michele Coad. Years later, my father sexually abused a client and was given 6 months suspension from practice (see WSBA site for attorney Robert Getz - remarried to family law attorney Karen Everitt Emery). I would not touch any of the above attorneys with a ten foot pole for family law and, frankly, my mother should take their licenses to practice for what we went through.
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