Judge Heather Iverson: When the Courtroom Stopped enforcing the Law.
By the time I walked into Judge Heather Iverson’s courtroom, I had already experienced a substantial amount of trauma, hardship, and pain from being stripped away from my children under allegations I maintain were false. What made it worse was how quickly a narrative had been constructed before I ever believed anyone had genuinely analyzed the evidence behind it. Stephanie McIntosh, the guardian ad litem, had already embraced much of my ex-wife’s narrative and, in my view, latched onto a narrative that had also been built and reinforced by Hollie White. Before I felt that I had even been given a meaningful opportunity to tell my side of the story, that narrative was already moving through the court system as though it had become established fact. The transcripts tell that story. There were moments where I believe McIntosh was not investigating neutrally but was instead trying to force me into admitting wrongdoing. Meanwhile, evidence and information I believed directly challenged the accusations against me did not receive anything close to the same scrutiny. I was being pushed to confess to a narrative I did not accept.
Then I walked into the de novo hearing with my attorney, Mary Losey, and appeared before Judge Heather Iverson. A de novo hearing is supposed to be a new hearing. That distinction matters. But from the beginning, I did not experience it as a fresh hearing. I will also say this: during the commissioner proceedings, Attorney Thomas Anderson Jr., my ex-wife’s attorney, appeared to know that Judge Heather Iverson’s assignment had already been pulled. I have documentation concerning what occurred with the judicial assignment. I am not going to elaborate further here because portions of these events remain the subject of litigation. But I do not believe the process reflected the kind of neutral rotation I expected. There were also community relationships and proximity that caused me additional concern. When someone lives next door to a judge, people are naturally going to wonder about familiarity. Were they barbecuing together every weekend? I obviously do not know that, and I am intentionally being rhetorical when I say it. But that is precisely the point. When parties appearing before a court have relationships or proximity that create questions about familiarity, appearances begin to matter. And once I watched how this case unfolded, those questions did not disappear. They multiplied.
Judge Heather Iverson is well known in the community. Anyone can search her name and find information concerning her judicial career, elections, previous professional experiences, and public profile. She is also a mother. That is one reason I have struggled so profoundly to understand what occurred in her courtroom. Read the transcripts. Do not take my word for it. Read them from beginning to end. What I experienced was not simply a judge making decisions I disliked. I experienced hearing after hearing centered on scrutinizing me, criticizing me, humiliating me, belittling me, and reducing me as a father and as a human being. Anybody willing to read the transcripts can decide for themselves whether that courtroom reflected a neutral tribunal. I have listened back to the hearing audio, start to finish. Tone matters. Questions matter. Interruptions matter. What receives scrutiny matters. What does not receive scrutiny matters. And when I listened to those hearings again, I came away with the same conclusion: Judge Iverson did not approach that de novo hearing as though she were encountering this controversy for the first time. She knew the case. She knew the narrative. She knew what had already been alleged. And from my perspective, I walked into that courtroom already carrying a verdict that no one had formally announced. I did not stand a chance.
There are additional issues surrounding these proceedings that I am intentionally not discussing here because they are being litigated through other avenues. What I can discuss is what the docket and orders show. Over time, I watched order after order accumulate. And in my experience, those orders functioned overwhelmingly in one direction. Toward me. Restrictions for me. Conditions for me. Consequences for me. Control over me. Yet when I believed my ex-wife violated orders, withheld information, interfered with access, or failed to comply with obligations imposed by the court, I did not see comparable enforcement. That imbalance became impossible for me to ignore. The court did not simply reject arguments I made. In several critical areas, I believe it disregarded evidence that should have complicated the narrative against me. There was an unsubstantiated CPS report. That mattered. There was the absence of the criminal outcome that the original allegations might have suggested. That mattered. There were materials I believed contradicted the picture being painted of me. That mattered. There were positive facts concerning my relationship with my children. Those mattered too. Yet again and again, I watched evidence favorable to me receive less weight while accusations against me seemed to grow roots merely because they had been repeated enough times. At some point, repetition began functioning as proof. That is not how justice is supposed to work.
I also watched the court depart from recommendations, make decisions I believed were unsupported by the evidence before it, and exercise discretion in a manner that, from my perspective, had one consistent result: maintaining control over my relationship with my children while leaving the underlying accusations largely intact. I believe Judge Heather Iverson abused her discretion. I believe she abused the authority entrusted to her. And I believe she humiliated me in a courtroom where she knew there would be no jury watching how she treated a father standing before her. Family court does not give me a jury. There are no twelve citizens sitting in the box watching the tone of the proceedings. There is no jury watching one parent receive scrutiny while asking whether the same standard is being applied to the other. There is a judge. That makes judicial neutrality even more important, not less. I have often wondered whether the atmosphere in that courtroom would have been different if twelve ordinary people had been sitting there watching. I believe it would have been.
Then there was the treatment of evidence and witnesses. I sought testimony that I believed was important. My subpoena was denied. Meanwhile, Sarah and Attorney Anderson were permitted to present witnesses they wanted the court to hear. Do not believe me because I wrote it here. Look at the docket. Look at the transcript. Look at who was permitted to testify. Look at who was not. Look at the evidence the court considered. Then look at what it disregarded. That is why I keep returning to the record. Because eventually this stopped being about whether I liked Judge Heather Iverson’s decisions. I did not. But disagreement with a judge is not enough. What concerns me is the pattern. The tone. The unequal scrutiny. The enforcement. The evidentiary decisions. The restrictions. The language directed toward me. The evidence that received attention and the evidence that did not. Taken individually, someone can explain each one away. Taken together, they tell a different story.
That is why these issues did not end when I walked out of her courtroom. They continued into appellate proceedings. They continued into constitutional questions. And they have now reached federal litigation. I did not arrive there because Judge Heather Iverson ruled against me once. I arrived there because I believe the cumulative record shows an exercise of judicial power that crossed lines a judge should never cross. And after everything I have experienced, I will say exactly how I view her conduct. I believe what happened in that courtroom was cruel. I believe it was abusive. I believe it inflicted extraordinary damage on my relationship with my children. And from where I stand, after reading the orders, listening again to the hearings, living under the restrictions, and watching years with my children disappear, I consider her conduct toward me pure evil. Pure evil. That is my judgment of what I experienced.
But readers do not have to accept my judgment. They can examine the record. The transcripts exist. The docket exists. The orders exist. The appellate filings exist. And where litigation permits me to publish the supporting documents, I intend to place them beside the allegations so people can make their own determination. Because there is something more powerful than simply saying that a court treated you unfairly. Showing exactly how it happened.