I wasn't able to find a single follow up on this case, which occurred years ago. Of course, without any follow up at all over the past what 3 years, the only thing we can say for sure is that ultimate results clearly didn't fit the media narrative and was thus not reported.
From what I gather from the assorted gossip articles and tabloids, it appears that the mother and father were going through a nasty divorce, the father, who had visitation, came and picked up the kids without mom's permission and [she alleges] moved with them. The mother then called CPS to get her kids back from father, and CPS basically said they couldn't do anything because the kids were not in danger. ~ Thus it wasn't really a case of CPS kidnapping, but rather parental kidnapping, and CPS saying they couldn't do anything about it. ~
It appears that at some point after that CPS ended up taking the kids - I suspect because the father was accused of kidnapping them and because she was accused of parental alienation. Therefore it was on the judge to decide which parent was acting in the best interest of the kids. Shortly before the judge made his decision, we're talking like 10 days before, the eldest son, 14 I believe it said, who lived with the mother, filed the sexual abuse claim against the father. It seems the judge decided that the father was being alienated against, and thus awarded the father full legal and physical custody of the three younger children, and legal custody of the eldest child, who remained in the physical custody of the mother (likely because the damage was already to great to repair.)
More information about Parental Alienation Syndrome -
Parental alienation - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
In cases where the alienation has already been implanted, as I suspect was the case here, it is absolutely not in the best interest of the child to go to the alienated child unfortunately - because they see that parent as the enemy. However, it /is/ appropriate to prevent the offending parent from alienating younger children - which would explain the "supervised" limited visitation the mother was given with the younger children. That is an opportunity, given by the judge, for the mother to fix her behavior and hopefully retain a relationship with the children - if she does /anything/ untoward at said visitations then she's not given visitation anymore.
I actually had to deal with parental alienation a bit in my husbands custody case, his ex accused him of it, but in court it came out that /she/ was the one doing it. My husband didn't push for her visitation to be removed or anything silly like that because of the kidos age and maturity level, (he had actually moved in with us years before the custody stuff, when he was 8 or 9 if I recall, so he could see with his own eyes that dad wasn't doing all the shit she tried to tell him,) but the judge ultimately stated that she was abusive and would not be allowed to have even shared legal custody anymore - my husband already had "legal" physical custody at the time, she'd given physical up in a settlement the first round, on her lawyers advice because the evidence of her neglect and abuse of the boy was overwhelming - was like 2 years later that she filed for physical custody, believing that because she'd gotten married that meant she was a good mom now - the reasoning was rather bizarre and the judge seemed to agree because all she managed to do was lose her legal custody and a pile of money...
It should be noted that my husband gave her the exact visitation she had requested in her settlement, plus an additional two weeks of "random" visitation time to go on vacation or w/e so it's not like he was being unfair or anything like that - the second child investigator folks basically decided that she just wanted custody so that she didn't have to pay child support and so that my husband would have to - she absolutely hated my husband and had for many, many years, to the point of doing community service for some of the stalker shit she'd done in the past. I'm happy to report, however, that the boys now 21 and quite well adjusted, he does still see his mother and they have an okay relationship, its not great, but its much better than it was before. He says she still tries to convince him that all his problems were his fathers fault, but he kind of writes it off to her "having a mental issue," which I personally don't think he should be saying about his mom, but he just tells me that he loves her, but she's got mental issues and laughs it off. I told him he's going to have to take care of her when she gets older and he's like nope, leaving that job for my brother. So yea, not great, but ya know he doesn't say he "hates" her anymore so its "improvement"...
Bottom line, it isn't pretty for the kidos when one, or both, of the parents is immature and doing bad shit to get "revenge" on the other parent. Bad shit, just don't do it, you'll not only run the risk of losing custody, but the kids eventually learn your game and end up resenting you and/or thinking your crazy for it. Our son blames a lot of stuff on his mom that I personally don't think was exactly her fault, or at least not her intention so much, but because of her alienation shit he doesn't trust her at all, even today.
