From Dekarske v. Lopez, decided Dec. 28 by the Michigan Court of Appeals (Judges Redford, Shapiro, and Yates), which holds that the suspension of supervised parenting time on these grounds was improper:
In 2000, plaintiff was convicted, by a plea of no contest, of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct (CSC-IV), for which he served five years of probation and completed a sexual rehabilitation program. The parties met in 2016 through an online dating site. Plaintiff disclosed his prior conviction to defendant on their first date, but misrepresented the underlying circumstances. Plaintiff told defendant that, when he was 17 years old, he had sexually abused an 11-year-old girl. In fact, plaintiff sexually abused his half-sister, who was three years old at the time, approximately 30 times.
The parties moved in together in 2017. At that time, defendant had a nine-year-old son, BL, who also resided with the parties. The parties have one child together, CAD, who was born in 2019.
In 2022, defendant discovered the "presentencing report documents" describing the true nature of plaintiff's CSC-IV conviction, and also sexual assaults that he committed on two other children before his conviction in 2000. Defendant, who was concerned that plaintiff had sexually abused CAD and BL, took pictures of those documents and three USB thumb drives to the police, and also contacted Children's Protective Services. The parties' cohabitation and relationship ended around that time.
Detective Kelly Ebersole testified that she was told the drives were encrypted or password-protected, and she contacted plaintiff to obtain the passwords to ensure there was nothing illegal on them before returning them. Plaintiff made approximately 60 attempts to communicate with Ebersole, and, when they finally communicated, plaintiff "became very irate" and refused to provide any passwords, telling Ebersole that she needed to contact his lawyer and to get a search warrant.
