False Allegations & Rare Accountability

Newsflash: People lie! Men and women in divorce, and especially in contested custody cases, LIE. They lie for money, control, power, and because they hate.  They lie because they are narcissists and have no fear of consequences. Men and women in custody cases lie.

Moms and dads lie to CPS and family court because they can and know there is no accountability for doing so. They are villains masquerading as victims because lying works.

False allegations of child physical abuse, child sexual abuse, and domestic violence is standard operating procedure because the damage is done simply by making the allegation. It doesn’t matter if an allegation is later proven to be false; all it has to do is to create bias. Bias against the accused. A presumption of guilt, so when a judge ultimately rules, they err on the side of caution, devoid of any evidence, to deny a child a healthy, safe, and loving parent.

There are two reasons why people are rarely held accountable for making false allegations or making knowingly false reports.

  1. The accused rarely have enough money to pursue defamation or outrageous conduct.
  2. The false reporter (aka liar) rarely has enough money to make it worth pursing. If it’s going to cost more to pursue than can possibly be won, it won’t be pursued.

Cindy Hayek and her fiancé, Kenny Hamp, had enough money to pursue, and Cindy’s ex, Steven Herron, had enough to make it worth it to pursue. Steven has been held accountable to the tune of $21M and counting. Counting because the judge left it open to add interest, which is accruing.

The civil suit was filed in 2020, and a Routt County, CO jury awarded it in February 2024 after 4 years of expensive litigation. On July 1, 2024, District Court Judge Michael A. O’Hara issued his written order upholding the judgment.

In it, Judge O’Hara wrote.

“In this case, the jury sent a clear message to Mr. Herron and to others that the conduct at issue—so outrageous in character and so extreme in degree that a reasonable member of the community would find it atrocious and beyond all possible bounds of decency and utterly intolerable; having an ulterior purpose for causing criminal charges to be filed; for filing a motion to suspend unsupervised parenting time and willfully using criminal proceedings and the domestic relations case in an improper manner to cause harm; making statements motivated by malice and without probable cause; making defamatory statements alleging sexual assault on a child or similar conduct; agreeing by words or conduct to gain sole parenting time or limit or control another’s parenting time through unlawful means–is unacceptable and subject to punishment. The fact that Mr. Herron successfully convinced (really lied to and tricked) RCDHS employees and even a judge into believing his calculated false claims does not justify his conduct. It exacerbates the damage by demonstrating the extreme length to which he was willing to take his “false narrative”. As judges and practitioners know very well, “pushing the nuclear button” by making sexual assault allegations in a domestic relations proceeding against a parental figure always has a significant impact. Here, it had the most unimaginable and awful impact of preventing contact between a mother and her children with no basis at all.”

For now, the $21M judgment is just a procedural win. Undoubtedly, Steve Herron will appeal and try to draw it out until he exhausts all his legal options. It won’t be a financial win for Cindy and Kenny until it is paid.

But for Cindy and Kenny, this was never about the money. It was about the kids—a teenage daughter and twin boys—children who had been alienated from their mother and a stepdad who loved them as his own. Children who were emotionally and psychologically abused by their narcissistic father.

Judge Mary Hoak, the judge presiding over this custody battle, still has not corrected and updated her orders to give Cindy custody and allow her children to start the healing process and be reunited with their mother. Instead, Judge Hoak allows the abuse to continue and fails to hold their dad accountable for poisoning their relationship with their mother.  It’s just another day in a broken family court system where families, lives, and dreams are destroyed for profit.

A system where no one is held accountable, not judges, lawyers, or abusive parents. Well, not unless you are one of the few with the financial resources to do it.