Protective mother faces arrest while court orders children into reunification therapy with accused father under active Utah investigation.
By Richard Luthmann
Judge Overrules Credible Abuse Allegations
An Alaska judge has ordered three children to reunite with their father – a man accused of brutally abusing them – in defiance of medical evidence and ongoing investigations. In the Bartholomew custody case (No. 3PA-14-01275CI), Judge Tom V. Jamgochian is compelling the children to attend “reunification therapy” sessions with their father, John P. Bartholomew, despite credible findings that he sexually and physically harmed them.
The children’s mother, Michelle Bartholomew, long the protective parent, is now facing a bench warrant for her arrest after refusing to deliver her kids to what she calls court-endorsed trauma. In an email on November 14, visitation supervisor Emily Foster wrote that a friend “advised [Michelle] to hire an attorney to deal with the arrest warrant and finish out this last little bit of her case.”
Family court observers say it’s a shocking scenario: a mother threatened with jail for shielding her children, and the alleged abuser empowered by the courts.
These developments unfolded after years of warnings. The children, now 9, 12, and 15, have repeatedly reported that their father molested and terrorized them. Multiple professionals found the abuse claims credible.
Yet Alaska’s Third Judicial District has steadily sided with John Bartholomew’s pleas for visitation. Judge Jamgochian even devised a plan for a “letter reading” – forcing the children to sit in court and hear their father’s written message – as a way to coerce contact.
Attorneys Nathan Henshaw and Jessica Burton of the Anchorage-based Henshaw Law represent John Bartholomew.
When Michelle did not produce the children for this event (she says she was complying with a Utah detective’s directive to have them interviewed first regarding the abuse), Jamgochian retaliated with contemptuous actions.
“She is being threatened with jail as a trap for this so-called letter reading. It is a court-sanctioned pretext to impose torturous reunification with a credibly identified abuser,” says national advocate Jill Jones-Soderman, describing the court’s punitive stance. Soderman is the Founder and Executive Director of the Foundation for Child Victims of the Family Courts (FCVFC).
By mid-November, the Alaska court had effectively criminalized the protective mother, prioritizing the father’s access over the children’s cries of fear.
Alaska Judge From Hell: Medical Evidence Ignored
The court’s push to reunify at all costs flies in the face of extensive medical and forensic evidence. Dr. S. Gregory Hipskind, a nuclear behavioral neurologist who evaluated the Bartholomew children, found clear signs of trauma.
In a July 24, 2025, letter, Dr. Hipskind reported abnormal neuropsychiatric evaluations and functional brain scans (SPECT) consistent with prolonged abuse. He noted the children suffered “documented emotional, physical, and sexual abuse while in the care of their father”, who medical records indicate may be psychotic.
Hipskind’s professional conclusion was unequivocal: Any contact with the father would be “irreparably harmful” to the kids’ developing brains, psyches, and mental well-being.
“It would go against my best medical and psychiatric advice at this time to expose [the children] to either their father or any court representative attempting to interview them,” Dr. Hipskind warned in writing.
This stark warning – essentially a do-not-return order from a brain trauma expert – has been utterly disregarded by the court.
Other experts and advocates echo Hipskind’s alarm. Jill Jones-Soderman blasted the forced reunification as a grave danger. She wrote that John Bartholomew “has been credibly established and documented in multiple medical, criminal, and legal forums as a serial, dangerous child abuser whose ongoing heinous acts have been and are being facilitated by the action of this court.”
The complaint details how the children themselves have pleaded for help: they have produced personal writings, audio, and video describing their trauma and specifically naming the court-appointed reunification therapist as an instrument of abuse.
Instead of heeding these red flags, the Alaska court’s machinery moved to silence the children and punish their protector.
The judge’s November orders did not mention the brain scan evidence or the Utah criminal probe into John’s behavior.
By all appearances, the court is barreling ahead to enforce visitation “therapy,” effectively overriding the medical facts as inconvenient obstacles.
Alaska Judge From Hell: “Reunification” Therapy Ordered
At the center of the storm is court-ordered reunification therapy – a controversial treatment typically used in high-conflict custody cases where a child resists a parent. Critics say it’s a misused practice that can retraumatize abuse survivors by coercing them to recant or bond with an abuser.
In the Bartholomew case, Judge Jamgochian appointed social worker Jaimie Browning as the “parenting coordinator” to facilitate reunification. Michelle Bartholomew and her advocates describe Browning as a paid agent of the father’s agenda. The children themselves have “documented clearly… their complaints” about Browning, calling her out for imposing “autocratic practices” that they feel endanger them.
Far from neutral, Browning has appeared openly sympathetic to John Bartholomew. In an August 5 hearing, Browning downplayed the abuse claims, suggesting Michelle was keeping “old allegations” alive and insisting the situation was only “traumatic for the kids, but not for the reasons that Michelle has given.”
She even told the court that the children’s reports of abuse “are not considered abuse” by the family therapist’s standards.
Armed with this narrative of “parental alienation,” the reunification team pushed to reverse custody if needed, with Browning admitting “no matter what we do, it’s going to be traumatizing” for the children.
To experts like Jones-Soderman, this amounts to sanctioned psychological torture. Her complaint compared the forced reunification tactics to practices condemned by the UN for inflicting trauma on children.
The FCVFC has gone so far as to label Browning’s actions “child endangerment” and put Alaska’s legal establishment on notice for “implementing acts of ‘torture’” under the guise of therapy.
Notably, such reunification programs have been deemed illegal in Utah, where the Bartholomew children’s abuse case is under investigation and where John Bartholomew is employed as the Principal System Administrator for Client Engineering at the University of Utah Health. A recently adopted Utah law bars courts from ordering reunification treatment unless it is proven safe, effective, and not harmful to the child. The statute explicitly forbids any reunification therapy predicated on cutting off a child from a parent who is not abusive.
In other words, if abuse is substantiated or even alleged as here, Utah would never compel the child to “reconcile” with the accused.
Yet in Alaska, Michelle Bartholomew watched in disbelief as Judge Jamgochian did precisely that. He ordered her kids into reunification sessions and overnight visits, even as Utah authorities were actively reviewing criminal charges against the father.
This jurisdictional clash means one state is trying to protect the children as victims, while another state’s court treats them as disobedient pawns to be behaviorally reprogrammed.
“On review of the history and unreasonable demands/threats in this case – I am deeply concerned that the court appearance is a setup to take the kids and turn them over to the father,” Jones-Soderman wrote, sounding the alarm ahead of a recent hearing.
She noted that Utah’s District Attorney is now examining the evidence of abuse, even as the Alaska judge presses forward as if none of it exists.
The concept of “reunification” in this context, critics say, is not therapy at all – it’s state-enforced Stockholm syndrome, inflicted on children who have already suffered enough.
Alaska Judge From Hell: Protective Mother Punished
Michelle Bartholomew, the mother who has fought to keep her children safe, now finds herself treated as a fugitive. Facing an arrest order, she temporarily left Alaska with her kids to seek refuge and “get the kids down to Utah” for forensic interviews.
In communications with supporters, Michelle expressed that the “letter reading” demand was nothing more than a trap to justify jailing her. Her concern was validated when Judge Jamgochian sanctioned her in absentia.
By November 15, a warrant was in effect, and Michelle was in hiding.
“Needless to say, she feels pretty beat down. She doesn’t know what to do,” Emily Foster wrote of Michelle’s ordeal, after helping fly the family to safety.
Foster, who supervised the attempted visitations, confirmed that everyone around Michelle urged her to comply with the judge’s order – but doing so would have meant handing the children to their alleged abuser before law enforcement could even complete its investigation. To protect her kids, Michelle risks being jailed and losing custody entirely.
“I fear that the judge will remove the minor children to the father and relieve Michelle of custody or contact with all of them,” Jones-Soderman warned.
That nightmare scenario is exactly what many see unfolding: the protective mother stripped of her rights, and the children delivered into the arms of the man they fear most.
Observers are calling the Bartholomew case a damning indictment of family court priorities. The court’s insistence on “family reunification” at gunpoint – ignoring medical experts, criminal investigators, and the children’s own voices – has drawn outrage from victim advocates nationwide.
The matter is further complicated by claims that John Batholomew, a cybersecurity specialist, launches web-based attacks to silence anyone he perceives as an obstacle.
“The fear is palpable. Legal options must be reached to engage federal constitutional protections… we do not give up,” Jones-Soderman urged, rallying support for Michelle’s cause.
She and others are preparing emergency legal filings and even potential damages claims in federal court, arguing that Alaska’s actions violate the children’s rights and safety. Meanwhile, in Utah, detectives continue to gather evidence on John Bartholomew’s alleged crimes.
The contrast is stark: one jurisdiction treating the children as crime victims, another treating them and their mother as criminals for resisting abuse.
As this case garners national attention, advocates hope public outrage and higher courts will intervene before it’s too late. The Bartholomew children have endured documented horrors – forcing them back into those horrors, critics say, isn’t justice or therapy, but an unconscionable betrayal.
How far will Alaska’s courts go to save face on a disastrous decision?
For now, a terrified mother waits in exile, her fate and her children’s hanging in the balance, as an American court orders family “reunification” at the point of a gun.
