Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a distinguished American psychiatrist renowned for her expertise in forensic psychiatry and violence studies, delves into the life of Christopher Ambrose, a man she suggests exhibits psychopathic tendencies. Her report aims to uncover how Ambrose allegedly manipulates the Connecticut Family Court system to devastate the lives of his teenage children and their mother. Dr. Lee’s analysis also explores the unsettling enjoyment such individuals derive from these destructive actions.
An ‘Alternative Court’ of Unspeakable Criminality, Violence, and Abuse
By Dr. Bandy X. Lee
Never in my 25 years of practice did I imagine there would be an “alternative court,” that deals in criminal child trafficking, where an alternative “law” reigns, and not even the rules of human decency apply.
Indeed, through family court, Christopher Ambrose, who would have been held accountable in any other setting, was able to devastate the life of a client I evaluated, Karen Riordan, and of her children and emerged as “the innocent one.”
The Loving and Empathic Mother
As a forensic psychiatrist and court expert witness, I usually do not write about clients. However, in this case, three reasons permit but also mandate me to speak up.
The Court refused my testimony for no rational reason,
The client gave me special permission
Her children are actively in danger.
As a fact finder on medical matters for the courts, I have special privy to what truly happened against the Family Court’s fabricated narratives.
The truth is that Karen Riordan is a psychologically well-developed, admirably accomplished, healthy, humane, and loving mother with absolutely no psychiatric concerns. She successfully and uneventfully adopted and raised her three children for the first thirteen years of their lives, surrounded by friends and extended family members in rustic Connecticut. She loves children, won awards as a special education teacher, and had a stable and secure career.
https://frankreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Karen-Riordan-Distinguished-Teacher-Award.mp4
Karen Riordan won Distinguished Teacher of the Year in the Greenwich School District with more than 700 teachers.
The absentee father seized the opportunity to marry her in the midst of suddenly losing her mother, in retrospect, as a predatory move to steal her inheritance and hide his homosexuality, among other things.
Karen Riordan and Chris Ambrose
Even though he abruptly stopped being intimate with her as soon as they married, Riordan tolerated his “quirks” — even though he immediately decided to leave for work in Hollywood and was hardly ever around.
Then, five years ago, Christopher Ambrose was fired for plagiarism and returned to Connecticut. He had been fired more than once and also lost his law license. As secretive and as controlling as he was, he was no longer able to keep up the facade after a couple days, and the nightmare began.
In a twisted game of manipulation, Ambrose disrupts the tranquility and joy of his teenage children. Does he take perverse pleasure in the turmoil he instigates?His abusive and exploitative personality emerged, and the children began screaming for help. Riordan initially tried to reconcile everyone, but his actions were outside the bounds of anything she had previously known or even imagined.
A Psychopathic ‘Father’
Being so caught off guard as the afflicted person wreaks havoc in your life is a common experience of those unfortunate enough to deal with a psychopathic personality.
Christopher Ambrose exhibited extremely characteristic patterns, and given that high levels of the disorder are strongly correlated with dangerousness, I interrupted my evaluation of Riordan to perform the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) on him.
As a physician, one of my responsibilities is to protect vulnerable lives, and the children’s lives appear to be in danger.
The highly-regarded and widely-used PCL-R requires doctorate-level education in psychology or psychiatry, forensic training and clinical experience with dangerous personalities, and additional instruction specific to administering the scale. Unlike most other diagnoses, the primary data source is not a personal interview but victim reports, collateral information, objective documentation, and actual behavior patterns. This is because psychopathic individuals’ pathological lying, conning, and superficial charm can “beguile” even the most seasoned clinicians into losing the accuracy of diagnosis during a personal interview.
For Ambrose, I had several victim reports, multiple collateral interviews, about four dozen objective documents, including audio recordings, video recordings, photographic evidence, and professional reports, and his copious writings, including veiled threats directly made to me.
AAlready, from what I had, he reached a full diagnosis of psychopathy — a score of 32/40 (at least 30/40 is required for “caseness”) — which should raise many alarms and possibly be a contraindication to parenting.
Psychopathy is a disorder of empathy and conscience, where an individual is incapable of loving emotions but is driven to harm living beings, including one’s own children. He already showed himself to be racist, taunting these children, the older two who are Guatemalan and the youngest half-Mexican, for their heritage. He also showed himself as a sadist, deliberately causing the family dog’s death and killing the children’s pet crabs.
In a chilling act, Ambrose orchestrated the demise of the children’s beloved dog, Cody. This cruel strategy not only deepened the children’s disdain for him, but also served his ulterior motive of demonstrating parental alienation.
I recommended the Court appoint its own expert with requisite training if it did not wish to heed my warnings, but of course, this never happened.
I also reported to Child Protective Services (CPS), advising that psychopaths are 2.5 times more likely to evade the criminal justice system in criminal courts than those without the diagnosis, despite their crimes being generally more serious and more likely to repeat.
My cautioning fell on deaf ears, confirming my fears (since my experience with Family Courts) that the errors of CPS are not just from incompetence but an intentional subversion of their role.
Christopher Ambrose
Innocent Child Victims
In Family Courts, the first casualty of the war they stoke among adults is children — for they are the voice of truth.
Christopher Ambrose first attempted to cover up his emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual abuse of the children by counter-accusing the mother of abuse. But, when that did not work, he turned to the “parental alienation” theory.
“Parential alienation” is a buzz phrase, or formula, used only in Family Court to turn the tables on abuse victims. No doubt, as a former lawyer, he recognized that this was the key to his ability to continue his abuse with impunity and even to turn it into a money-making enterprise by holding the children hostage — the children Karen Riordan adopted without his help — and demanding child support.
Chris Ambrose won full custody of three very frightened children who missed their mother.
In 2020, Family Court transferred Riordan’s three children, ages 9 to 13, to their father with a “no contact” order against the mother, and what was supposed to be a week’s separation until trial extended into a month, a year, and eventually three years — the typical abuse of process by which Family Courts engage in the predatory alienation of children.
Mia began cutting after she was taken from her mother,
The oldest and youngest immediately started cutting themselves, and the middle child became suicidal and missed almost half a year of school.
Mia was a gymnast in the happy days of her life when she lived with her mother.
The oldest went from being an international gymnast and athlete to becoming morbidly obese. They ceased all activities and were confined in their rooms, if not constantly harassed, without privacy, even in the bathroom.
The father took the doorknobs off the doors to ensure the children could not bar him from their bedrooms.
When the children tried to report their sexual abuse to medical providers, Ambrose took away their phones and Internet access and constantly threatened them.
In my investigation, I heard recordings of Ambrose threatening the daughter with vaginal penetration as punishment for minor misbehavior.
The 12-year-old’s sexual assault was documented in a recording of his screams.
https://frankreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Sawyer-being-molested-1.mp4
Video Above: In this video captured by Mia, shows her reaction to the chilling screams of a child echoing in the background. Mia identifies the voice as her younger brother, Sawyer, then merely 11 years old, reacting to an undisclosed situation involving their father inside his room.
Audio Below: Listen closely to the ominous undertones in this audio clip. Here, we hear Ambrose threatening Mia, suggesting a harsh punishment for an unacceptable action. His parenting style leans towards aggression, possibly even crossing legal boundaries. The phrase ‘dig it in deep’ leaves us questioning its underlying meaning.
https://frankreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Mia-Chris-threats-dg-it-in-nice-and-deep.m4a
Adult men were invited to sleep in the 16-year-old daughter’s room, bringing drugs and engaging in intercourse with other underage girls.
All three children articulately and reliably reported this abuse to multiple adults, consistently including hospital personnel, school officials, and the police, but all eventually deferred to Family Court.
Several psychiatrists, child psychiatrists, and other medical professionals reported this case to numerous authorities, including the Department of Justice, but no one could touch Family Court “immunity”, buttressed by CPS and a corrupt guardian ad litem, Jocelyn Hurwitz, who is also cited in The Worst Interests of the Child: The Trafficking of Children and Parents through U.S. Family Courts.
Jocelyn Hurwitz, the GAL
These children thus had to endure a “living hell,” until the oldest could not take it anymore. She ran away to be with her mother. Still, Ambrose hunted her down over the Connecticut confidential address program Riordan enrolled in and stalked her with a car, almost getting her into a serious accident.
When the 16-year-old son and then the 13-year-old son joined her by running away, the police visited and assessed that the children were safe with their mother.
Sawyer escaped from his father, accused him of abuse, and sought refuge with his mother, enjoying a brief month of happiness. Yet, this joy was short-lived, as Ambrose persuaded Judge O’Neill to issue a restraining order against Sawyer’s mother, the person he wished to live with,
The peace and time for healing barely lasted a month before Ambrose petitioned Family Court again, and they found themselves back in fear and misery.
During a short respite between years of misery with their father, Matthew, 16, and his siblings ran to their mother this year. Their happiness was not to last long. Their father would not allow it.
Overriding the children’s juvenile court petitions for protection against their father and ignoring Connecticut’s statute permitting children of age 16 to choose the parent with whom they wish to live, Family Court Judge Thomas O’Neill — the one who refused to hear my testimony on the mother’s sound mental health — ruled without talking to a single child that they ran away because the mother was “coercively controlling” the children from afar (despite her having almost no contact for three years), and approved a restraining order against her for a year.
In CT, Ambrose tried to use the police to force Mia back to his home. She refused.
In NY, Ambrose threatened the teens with police.
(To be continued —Upcoming: The Fraudulent Psychological Report of Jessica Biren Caverly.)
Read more of Dr. Lee’s work on Medium.
