By Andrew Gorosko

Dodgingtown physician Stephen P. Herman has taken his deep interest in human behavior into the legal realm as a certified forensic psychiatrist, serving as an expert for the courts in performing psychiatric evaluations in criminal and civil cases.

Dr Herman, 53, who has worked as a psychiatrist for the past two decades, received full credentials in forensic psychiatry from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology last April. He also has certifications in child/adolescent psychiatry, adult psychiatry, and pediatrics.

The doctor works in forensic psychiatry in Connecticut and New York. He also has private practices in Danbury and Manhattan.

Most of his work in Connecticut involves forensic psychiatry. It involves children, adolescents and adults. Forensic psychiatry as practiced by Dr Herman involves the application of psychiatric knowledge to legal matters, both criminal and civil.

Judges most often request the forensic work Dr Herman produces, with some of it sought by social service agencies and private parties.

“It’s still a relatively uncharted field, particularly as it relates to children,” Dr Herman said of forensic psychiatry. The field of forensic psychiatry is still relatively new, offering a huge area of endeavor for its practitioners, Dr Herman said, noting there are only about a dozen forensic psychiatrists working in Connecticut.

Forensic psychiatrists who specialize in child/adolescent cases typically conduct medico-legal evaluations concerning child custody and other child placement cases; criminal matters, and allegations of physical and sexual abuse. They also analyze the competence of child witnesses; analyze the damage arising from psychological and physical trauma, and handle school-related cases.

 “Most doctors want to go the other way when there are lawyers involved,” Dr Herman said of the many physicians who lack interest in practicing their profession in a legal arena.

 But “there are vast opportunities to be original and creative” in forensic psychiatry, Dr Herman said. “It is extremely intellectually challenging. Every case is new,” he said.

 Beyond the intellectual satisfaction inherent in the work, it is challenging to explain psychiatric principles to an audience of judges, lawyers and social service workers, he said. “A forensic psychiatrist has to be an outstanding communicator and a good writer,” he noted.

An important aspect of writing psychiatric reports for a legal audience is being understood, he said. “It’s always ‘plain talk,’ but from a professional perspective,” he said, stressing the need to make complex topics understandable to a non-medical audience.

  “I’m always operating as a doctor. I’m trained as a physician. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t want to be a lawyer, although I find law tremendously exciting,” he said.

Dr Herman often testifies in family court and in criminal court on topics including child abuse, divorce and parental custody. In most cases in which children are involved, the doctor testifies for the court at the request of a judge.

The state Department of Children and Families (DCF) is often involved in the cases in which Dr Herman testifies. In some cases, the DCF concurs with his psychiatric analyses; it other cases it does not, Dr Herman said.

“Every evaluation I do is independent,” he noted.

The role of forensic psychiatrists in court cases is an important one, Dr Herman said.

“We provide a ‘psychological window’ into a family that the court does not have time or expertise to do itself,” he said. Such evaluations illuminate the dynamics of a family and provide the court with therapeutic opinions and recommendations, he said.

Dr Herman stresses that while working as a forensic psychiatrist, he is not working as a “patient’s doctor,” but as an independent expert on psychiatric matters. Everything he is told by people he interviews is ‘on the record’ and the psychiatrist’s privilege of not testifying against a person is waived, he said.

Dr Herman provided an example of work he does in a child custody case.

 In a custody case involving a mother, father, son and daughter, the doctor would see each parent five times in 45-minute sessions, and also see each child several times, plus see different combinations of the parents and children in sessions. The work may involve 20 45-minute sessions overall. The interviews and report writing required may involve 40 to 50 hours of work across a three-month period.

The report which Dr Herman formulates is therapeutic in nature and is intended to essentially settle the case, he said.

The doctor recalls a New York case in which a mother had purposely starved to death one of her seven children. The six remaining children needed a new home. A grandparent wanted custody of the six children. The doctor interviewed all those involved and recommended that placing the six children with the grandparent was the best move for the children. The court concurred.

The recommendations made in such a forensic psychiatry report do not concern the ideal solution to a problem, but concern what actions would be in the best interests of the children, he said. Such recommendations weigh heavily in the resolution of a case, Dr Herman said.

Child custody cases can be complex, especially when the parents fighting over a child’s custody are affluent and have the wherewithal to continue spending money on lawyers in seeking a court victory, Dr Herman said.  “The ‘curse of custody’ occurs when parents just keep pouring in money,” he notes, pointing out that such cases can run for years.

 Dr Herman said he was in Germany recently in connection with the court martial of a US Army serviceman in which the solider was charged with the sexual abuse of children. Acting as an expert for the defense, Dr Herman found flaws in a psychiatric evaluation performed in the case. After reviewing court documents, he explained to the court the proper way to conduct such a psychiatric evaluation. The serviceman being court martialled was acquitted, Dr Herman said.

Dr Herman said he was fortunate in his medical training to have had good teachers who clearly impressed upon him the biological aspects of medicine, as well as the psychodynamic aspects of human behavior. “I was very lucky. I had fantastic teachers. Some of my teachers are now my closest friends,” he said.

The doctor started work as a pediatrician, becoming interested in talking to children. But he soon realized it was not possible to talk to children at any length when he saw 50 children daily in his medical practice.

Dr Herman said he experienced an early “mid-life crisis” in his early 30s, when he decided that the better field for him to pursue was psychiatry, rather than pediatrics. He said his three years as a pediatrician proved to be a good grounding for child psychiatry. “It brings you close to children,” he said.

Dr Herman received medical training at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, the Mayo Clinic, the Montefiore Medical Center in New York City and the Yale Child Study Center. He has taught at Yale, the Payne Whitney Clinic, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Cornell College of Medicine.

An avid racquetball player, Dr Herman collects fountain pens. He enjoys reading fiction and history. Dr Herman is married to former actress Joan Grant. They live in a house, built in 1691, in the Dodgingtown section of Newtown.