Bailiff Makes It Her Business to Keep an Eye on Parents

Janine M. Thomas, at 26, is a full-time deputy marshal who serves as a bailiff in the family law section of Orange County Superior Court. What she really wants to do in life is to become a marriage, family and child counselor.

She’s off to a good start. When she is not in court or at home with her husband, John, she is a student at Pepperdine University, working on her master’s degree in counseling psychology. She is also a volunteer at the Orangewood, the county’s emergency shelter for abused and abandoned children.

But what really keeps her schedule hopping is a private business she has created. And judges and lawyers love her for it.

Thomas and the growing staff of the business she created three years ago--Visitation Monitoring and Protective Services--supervise separated or divorced parents’ visits with their children.

Sometimes Thomas’ services are sought because the court doesn’t trust a non-custodial parent to visit his or her child alone. Sometimes it is because the parent with custody of the child has made accusations against the other parent. So the judge orders that a neutral monitor go along on visits until the facts are sorted out.

“The parents we monitor usually don’t mind our presence,” Thomas said. “They know that if we’re there, the other parent can’t make any further accusations.”

Thomas created the business after hearing many courtroom squabbles over visitation rights.

“I’d hear lawyers complain that there were no objective monitors available; usually one parent would suggest someone the other parent would not agree to,” Thomas said. “I thought, ‘I can do that.’ ”

She accepted assignments on her own at first. But once word got around about her work, referrals became so numerous she had to take on other monitors.

Now she has 15 people--some of them other bailiffs, some of them graduate students in child psychology--who work on call for her.

“I look for people you can trust, who have a lot of common sense,” she said.

Thomas works most weekends. Her other monitors work one to four weekends a month. Her husband also helps her with the business now.

Superior Court Judge Ronald E. Owen, who presides over the family law panel of Orange County Superior Court, says she is highly respected by court officials. Philip G. Seastrom, a certified specialist in family law, calls Thomas’ service “wonderful.”

“She puts the child’s interest first,” Seastrom said. “And she is objective. She does not prejudge the parent she’s with.”

Thomas said there is good reason for that. “In about half the cases, the allegations of the other parent turn out to be false,” she said.

But the other side, Thomas added, is that when the accusations are true, “our presence gives the other parent peace of mind.”

The fee for Thomas’ services is $20 an hour--or $35 when two monitors are required, as they are for all-day trips to places such as Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm.

Thomas likes the extra money. She likes running her own business. She likes knowing that it’s something she created at such a young age. But she is motivated by more than that.

“My main interest is in the protection of the children,” Thomas said. “There is just so much child abuse in the world. And I’ve seen firsthand here in the courtroom how much the children suffer in divorce.”