Something Ain’t Right Here | BONUS | Season 3

0:01 In episode 10, you heard how Cindy spent over $ 8 million to get her kids back. Most of that money has gone towards attorney's fees. There have been other expenses, including thousands of dollars to someone appointed by the court. And a closer look at this person's invoices raised a lot of questions. I'm Nancy Glass. In this bonus episode of Burden of Guilt, we'll talk about who this person is and why some question his objectivity. Judge Mary Hoke presided over Cindy and Steve's custody battle. After the allegation that Kenny abused one of Cindy's boys, Judge Hoke appointed what's known as a CLR, a Child Legal Representative. The CLR was Justin Bodden.

1:03 Judge Hoke assigned him to be the Child Legal Representative for all the children.

1:09 Bodden is a lawyer who has spent most of his career working with juvenile defendants in the Public Defender's Office. In this case, his role was to represent the best interests of the children, meaning parents. Judge Hoke would rely on Bodden to help guide custody decisions. His recommendations never seemed to go Cindy's way. Here's journalist Chris Osher.

1:34 Cindy's complaint was he was biased against me and he turned this into a cash cow.

1:39 According to Chris's 2024 article in the Denver Gazette, for Justin Bodden's three years of work on the case, he billed Cindy and Steve over $ 271, 000.

1:49 He was able to deem it a complex case and increase his fees.

1:57 According to Chris's article, Bawden upped his hourly rate to $ 300.

2:02 He decided for our special case, he gets to double his rates.

2:08 But one of his bills stood out to Cindy.

2:11 If you look on his invoice, it says travel, but it doesn't say to where. And he's invoicing me for that. I'm like, What's going on here, Justin?

2:21 That travel was a May 2022 trip to Steve's home in Hawaii. That trip cost about $ 2, 000, which was split between Cindy and Steve. But Cindy found out about the trip after the fact and wasn't happy about it. Here's Chris Osher again.

2:41 There were some allegations of favoritism, like he took a trip to Hawaii and brought his wife with him. And there were some indications of him talking about snorkeling.

2:56 According to that same article by Chris, there was an email exchange between Justin Bodden and Steve about the Hawaii trip. In it, Steve let Bodden know where to find snorkeling equipment in his house.

3:12 So here he is getting double the rate of what he normally gets. He pals with Steve and staying at his place and using his snorkeling gear. This feels really shady at this point.

3:22 And in that article, Chris reported that Bodden said he needed to fly from Colorado to Steve's home in Hawaii to see for himself how the children were faring.

3:33 He corresponded by email and said, hey, these are difficult cases and I'm always working in the best interest of the children. I did the best I could. I make a judgment call and one party's usually going to be upset with that. You know, I think Cindy would pretty forcefully argue the best interests of the children were not represented here.

3:54 Earlier, you heard me use the phrase best interest of the children, and it is often used in cases like this. So as part of Justin Baudin's role as a CLR, he had to make parenting time recommendations to Judge Hoke that are in the best interest of the children. In court documents, Bodden said that additional parenting time for Cindy should be restored only if Cindy would learn to place the needs of the children over continued focus on litigation and being right or vindicated.

4:29 The leverage was always, stop your litigation, you get your kids back. So it was clear he was giving so much power to Steve.

4:39 In one court filing... Bawden told the judge that Cindy was emotionally harming the children by refusing to, quote, set aside her strongly held narrative, end quote, that no child sex abuse had occurred. But not everyone agreed with Bawden.

4:57 My name is Terry Duffin. I am a supervisor for court-ordered parenting time, and I've been doing that for well over 30 years.

5:07 In 2020, Terry supervised Cindy's visits with her children, and she immediately questioned the sex abuse allegation.

5:16 Whether it's sex abuse allegations, I'm expecting to see traumatized children, and it just wasn't there. The behaviors I'm seeing from the children are not typical, especially of a child who's been sexually abused. So my gut was telling me, something ain't right here.

5:36 Terry said she shared this with Justin Bodden.

5:40 For a while, Justin would check in with me and ask me how visits were going. And when I was telling him, it's like, you know what, these visits are fine. They're like normal visits between Cindy and her children. And then I started telling him that I was really questioning the allegations because I was not seeing any corroborating behaviors coming from the children.

6:07 What happened next surprised her.

6:10 I was told my services were no longer needed and removed from the case. Cindy just told me that Justin had found somebody he wants to do the visits. And I'm like going, okay, sorry to hear that. I will say I wasn't surprised because by that time, Justin would question some of my notes regularly. And I would tell him I'm not seeing any of the typical behaviors that I've seen in many a sex abuse case that I've worked on. When I started reiterating that to him, he stopped talking to me.

6:44 Terry said she formed her own opinion of what happened.

6:47 These kids have been coached. That's how I'm feeling right now, that these kids have been coached. And I've never lost that feeling.

6:55 She later testified in Judge Hope's courtroom.

6:58 I don't think she even listened to me, quite honestly. I felt like she completely dismissed anything I was saying. That's the sense I had. And her actions proved my feeling. Especially when that judge allowed Steve to take those kids to Hawaii. I just want to scream when I hear a judge say, oh, in the best interest of the child.

7:22 It's like, okay, how is that in the best interest of the child?

7:30 It's not.

7:32 Any which way you look at it. I think it's been a raw deal for Cindy, but more importantly, the children, because they've been alienated from a perfectly good parent. Makes me very sad, and I'm very disillusioned with our system.

7:49 One final note about Justin Borden. In September of 2021, Borden filed a motion to withdraw as the child legal representative, stating that he would write a memo to the children to explain his perspective of the events of the case. The children would get this memo when they're 18 years old, but only if they requested it. The purpose of the memo, Bodden said, was to give the children, quote, access to further information about what happened during this period of their childhood, end quote. But here's the thing. Less than two weeks after Bodden said he'd write that memo, DHS overturned their findings.

8:30 Two years after that, a jury awarded Kenny and Cindy over $ 20 million in claims against Steve for outrageous conduct, conspiracy, and abuse of process. That begs the question, what's in Justin's memo to the children? And given the DHS findings and civil verdict, has Justin changed or updated his memo?

8:52 We reached out to Justin Borden for an interview, but he declined to comment.

8:58 Thank you.