ON May 17, 2011, Dr. Ginger Calloway sent her final report to both attorneys as well as a sealed copy to the judge, which would not be opened until it was properly presented in the courtroom. Laura Ackerson met with attorney John Sargeant the next day to review the fifty-nine-page document.
In the report, Calloway noted that Grant Hayes and Laura both had chaotic personal histories. Both had had trouble with relationships, including the one with each other, which was volatile and destructive.
Calloway noted that she found no evidence that Laura was mentally ill, and no support of Grant’s claims that his ex was “sick” or that she “poisoned the children’s minds.” However, Calloway wrote, Laura “is defensive and comes across as tense and stiff during interviews. She has not learned to successfully balance appropriate self-disclosure and a need to be private. . . . Her tenseness, reserve and careful manner could lead others to mistrust her and to question the accuracy of her reports. Her uncertainty and lack of self-assurance caused her to appear to be vacillating or ‘flip-flopping’ as Grant describes her. This is an accurate and perceptive comment about her. . . . She is less mature than other adults and is easily overwhelmed, relative to other adults. She is a chronically vulnerable or fragile person with a poorly developed sense of self that she defends in impulsive emotional ways at times. . . . When she is overwhelmed she can and has shown poor judgment at times and she will act impulsively without consideration for consequences.”
About Grant, Calloway wrote: “His rambling and tangential thinking included excessive negative commenting about Laura” and noted that his anger toward Laura and his inappropriate “characterizations of her make him appear to have a determined agenda.”
Calloway continued: “It is concerning when Grant goes on the attack against Laura and portrays her in a highly negative and morally depraved ways. His upbringing in what he describes as fundamentalist family where guilt was used freely for control is likely the source of his rage at Laura.
“He also fails to understand the impact . . . of his angry rantings about Laura . . . in front of the children. This is very worrisome for parenting and for what he is willing to communicate. . . . It is disturbing that his intense rage serves as an anchor for his disturbed thinking.
“Grant and Amanda were unequivocal about wanting to leave the area while, at the same time, they said they planned to buy a house in Raleigh. Both have said repeatedly that they want to travel out of the country and to far-flung places like Hawaii, Europe, Sweden, India or China. Grant says he would like to get a boat and sail to Greece and ‘live before I get too old.’ He said he ‘wanted his kids to be citizens of the world and not just the U.S.’ Amanda reports they wanted to move to Nashville, Tennessee, because Grant is a songwriter . . . ‘As a family it is important for us to travel with him. It wouldn’t be fair if me and the baby get to travel and they don’t.’
“With these kinds of expressed wishes of Grant and Amanda to move away, it is obvious that they do not want Laura included in the children’s lives. This is very concerning because in essence, they want to obliterate her.”
In the analysis, Calloway stated: “There are several areas which are highly significant with regards to findings from this evaluation that are necessary for the court to have. These concern the disruption of the children’s relationship with their primary caregiver, their mother, an understanding of the parents’ separate pathology, the chaotic and destructive nature of their conflict. Grant’s misinterpretations that are passed on as totally accurate and factual to authority figures who can pass judgment on Laura and Laura’s underdevelopment that causes her to become defensive rather easily are significant findings. It is critical that the court be informed regarding the insensitivity of Grant and Amanda and the paternal grandparents regarding the children’s deep need for an unalterable bond with Laura . . . and Grant’s stated opinion that he should have total control through legal and physical custody of the children with supervised visitation only for Laura.”
She summed up: “The most significant finding to emerge from this evaluation is the description to the relationship with their primary caregiver, their mother. For a variety of reasons both children spent the majority of their time with their mother during the critical age periods for attachment formation . . . Laura was primarily the individual immediately available to both the children when they cried, to rock them or otherwise assist them to sleep and the parent most immediately available to meet the needs of hunger, discomfort, wet, dirty, upset, pain, pleasure, joy, light, competence.”
Calloway noted, “When taken to New York City in February 2010, Grant IV was abruptly removed from his primary caregiver at 21 months of age. . . . Gentle who was nursing at the time, was abruptly removed from Laura’s care at roughly ten months of age. About two weeks after the transition to Grant’s home, Gentle underwent surgery. The importance to Gentle of his father’s absence as a routine caregiver from roughly two months of age to roughly ten months of age is critical in terms of attachment relationships and in terms of his transition to his father’s home. His father simply was not present for the attachment process to occur. Hence, he was a virtual stranger to Gentle and therefore, not someone Gentle could rely on when he was transitioned to Grant, Amanda and Sha.”
In the next section, Dr. Calloway made a number of recommendations, starting with the need for a guardian ad litem for the boys and consultation with a therapist as a follow-up with them. She also wanted little Grant to start preschool immediately and Gentle as soon as possible. She asked the court to mandate drug screens for both parents to determine that the children were safe until the guardian ad litem deemed them unnecessary. In doing so, she validated a request Laura had made in her parenting-history document, where Laura stated, “Because Grant III has been regularly partaking of drugs over the last twelve years of his life, I believe that he will continue to after our court case is over. I request that we do any testing possible. I also request that there be a system for following up on these tests after the court date is over.”
The current visitation arrangement, Calloway wrote, was “totally inappropriate for the age of the children.” She recommended split custody, a two-three-two plan. The children would be with one party for two days, the other for three days, then they would return to the first party for two days. The pattern would then start again with the second parent going first, creating an alternating week scenario.
For Laura, Calloway believed she should obtain a coach or parent substitute as a sounding board to help her with her insecurity, her sense of inadequacy and her anxiety—someone who could help her learn how to develop social networks and help train her in assertiveness. Also recommended was that she interact with a group of other single moms.
For Grant, Calloway suggested the same, but in his case, a coach who was trained in attachment theory and how to provide a better sense of reassurance and comfort to his children. In addition, she noted that he needed education on the significance of different developmental points. Then she wrote: “It is recommended that Grant be referred to a psychiatrist for evaluation regarding the question of a mood disorder or other possible explanations for the illogical, disturbed thinking he exhibits.” She went on to say that Grant needed a psychiatrist “knowledgeable about addiction and poly-substance abuse” because it appeared that Grant had “used multiple illegal drugs to self-medicate for an underlying mood or thought disorder.”
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LAURA was ecstatic over the report. Sure, there were things she needed to address, but she had actually been hoping the evaluation would provide guidance on her most-needed areas for self-improvement. She took each point seriously and applied herself to reconciling her deficiencies as a parent. She felt the report vindicated a lot of things in her custody argument, and confirmed some of the allegations about Grant’s lack of parenting ability with the boys. As she told her friend and business partner, Chevon Mathes, “I got the psych eval back and I’m not the crazy one.”
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GRANT was still in Hawaii when Amanda first thought she was going into labor. Her Braxton Hicks contractions felt so much like the real thing that Sha rushed her mother to the hospital. They were there until two in the morning, when the doctor determined that it was all just a false alarm. That night, Amanda bought a plane ticket for Grant, and he flew back the next day.
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ON May 23, 2011, the custody attorneys had a conference with the judge and a trial date was set for August 15. Laura’s optimism rose even higher when John Sargeant assured her that the least the judge would do would be to comply with Dr. Calloway’s recommendation of shared custody, but that the court could take it further—the possibility that she would be awarded full custody of her sons was a realistic outcome.
Grant understood the tone of the report, too, and its consequences. He clearly knew he was going to have to give up at least some of his control over the boys, and thus, over Laura. His hostility about this new state of affairs seeped through his contacts with the mother of his children. The dark undertones of their interactions troubled her. Laura told her friend Heidi Schumacher, “If anything happens to me, even if I commit suicide or if I go missing or if I get into a car accident, know that Grant did it.”
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ON May 24, 2011, Grant wrote to a fellow musician, Ashton, telling him that he had a “baby girl coming in a week so I’ve decided to take some time off until late August.” He then pitched him on his portrait special for the month of June. All he needed was a photograph and he’d deliver an 18"×24" charcoal for $250. He referred him to his website for examples.
The performer congratulated him and said he had one coming, too, according to his ex.
Grant fired back, “What!!! Is she crazy?”
“What you mean by that?” Ashton asked.
“My x Laura was crazy and I didn’t know it until it was too late. . . . She’s still putting me through hell.”
In addition to the portraits, Grant was scrambling for money in every way he knew how. His latest scheme—creating art for iPhone covers—was in the prototype phase. He specialized in drawings of dead rap musicians. He desperately wanted to get his special designs into the Apple Store—anything to keep him and Amanda afloat now that her savings were gone.