Dr. Mark Kilmer | BONUS | Season 3

Cindy hired Dr. Mark Kilmer to review her custody case. Two years later, Dr. Kilmer was under investigation. In this bonus episode, hear what happened and why some questioned Dr. Kilmer’s work. You can reach out to the Burden of Guilt team at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. For more Burden of Guilt, follow us on Instagram @glasspodcasts https://www.instagram.com/glasspodcasts/. Listen to the Betrayal Weekly https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chad-betrayal-weekly/id1615637724?i=1000787567644podcast about Shannon McShane. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 3:09Nancy Glass?

  During the nearly seven years Cyndi's been separated from her children, she hoped that another set of eyes and ears would help her case. That's why, back in the summer of 2020, right after the district attorney dropped the child's abuse charges against Kenny, Cindy hired a psychologist named Dr. Mark Kilmer. But Dr. Kilmer didn't help Cyndi's case, and his own words helped sink his career.

• 3:37Nancy Glass?

  I'm Nancy Glass, and this is a bonus episode of Burden of Guilt.

• 3:53Nancy Glass?

  When parents in Colorado are fighting over custody or, as the state calls it, parental responsibilities, some parents hire a parental responsibilities evaluator, or a PRE. Attorney Henry Baskerville explains.

• 4:08Speaker 08

  The idea was to have an expert tell a judge what the judge should do in relation to control over the children and so forth. Because judges, they don't have the time to figure that out.

• 4:20Nancy Glass?

  The PRE looks at the family dynamics and makes recommendations to the judge. The process usually takes a few months to complete.

• 4:29Speaker 08

  This PRE goes and interviews the children, interviews the parents who are in the midst of a divorce, and makes a recommendation to the court about, this person seems like a good parent. I'm getting vibes that this person might be an abuser. That sort of stuff.

• 4:48Nancy Glass?

  In 2020, Cindy hired Dr. Mark Kilmer to review her case. And if the last name Kilmer sounds familiar, it's because Mark is the brother of the late actor Val Kilmer. Just two years after Dr. Kilmer's work on Cyndi's case, he was the subject of an investigation by ProPublica.

• 5:08Speaker 08

  Well, come to find out that Kilmer was accused by his wife of being a domestic abuser. When I first read the article, I thought to myself, this can't possibly be true. Turns out, it is.

• 5:23Nancy Glass?

  According to ProPublica, Dr. Kilmer was arrested in 2006 and charged with assaulting his then-wife. After the incident, she obtained a restraining order against him. In a divorce proceeding the following year, Dr. Kilmer lost decision-making power over his children because of concerns about his parenting.

• 5:45Speaker 08

  I mean, it's terrible. And now he's the guy who's the referee for domestic abuse. I don't know how he got appointed to be part of this program with that kind of background. He should have never been acting on behalf of the state of Colorado. I mean, it's like taking Lance Armstrong and making him the guy who tests people for steroids.

• 6:09Nancy Glass?

  In 2007, Dr. Kilmer pleaded guilty to harassment. The court ultimately dismissed the assault charge after he successfully completed domestic violence counseling and 24 months of probation.

• 6:23Speaker 08

  He apparently had a very messy divorce, and he had claimed in his divorce that his wife had falsely accused him of being abusive.

• 6:32Nancy Glass?

  Dr. Kilmer told ProPublica his guilty plea was the result of poor legal representation, and he regrets not going to trial. But his story didn't end there.

• 6:44Speaker 08

  Yeah, so he had a number of other absolutely bonkers quotes in that article.

• 6:51Nancy Glass?

  A voice actor will read what Dr. Kilmer said.

• 6:55Speaker 10

  The Me Too movement informs us that, you know, about 90% of all allegations are true, or something around there. In my forensic work, that's completely flipped on its head. About 90% of the allegations I hear are false.

• 7:12Speaker 08

  Kilmer was quoted in the ProPublica interview, saying that he ignores abuse 90% of the time, almost bragging about it as if he thought it was funny.

• 7:23Nancy Glass?

  Dr. Kilmer told ProPublica he believes more often than not the accusers are exaggerating, quote, "to see what kind of legal advantage they can get," end quote.

• 7:34Speaker 08

  To me, this has got to be one of the most important decisions that a judge makes in terms of custody over children. And the fact that this guy was just putting his thumb on the scale for the men and ignoring the women, these things just shock the conscience.

• 7:50Nancy Glass?

  Dr. Kilmer told ProPublica he got into PRE work because it's lucrative.

• 7:56Speaker 08

  I mean, he was billing sometimes as high as $30,000 per case that he had, and he had hundreds of cases. And so it just seemed to me like this is something that somebody should do something about.

• 8:09Nancy Glass?

  In 2023, Henry, the lawyer you just heard from, filed a class action lawsuit against Dr. Kilmer, alleging fraud and breach of contract. Originally, the suit named six plaintiffs. All of them were women.

• 8:25Speaker 08

  I was getting inundated with calls from people who wanted to either participate in our lawsuit against Kilmer or wanted to hire me to bring other lawsuits against other PREs.

• 8:36Nancy Glass?

  The suit claimed that Dr. Kilmer repeatedly and deliberately omitted credible allegations of spousal abuse, child abuse, and child neglect in his reports and recommendations to Colorado courts. According to the complaint, the plaintiffs would not have hired Dr. Kilmer had they known his personal history and views about abuse allegations.

• 9:00Speaker 08

  It seemed like a slam dunk to me.

• 9:03Speaker 08

  But they filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that Mark Kilmer had something called quasi-judicial immunity. And basically what that is, is judges have immunity. You can't sue a judge if you don't like his decision in case. That's just not how it works. And they are granted broad immunity from civil lawsuits because otherwise, they would be fearful about making tough decisions. And once this case got in front of a judge... Because Kilmer was appointed by the court, the court's judicial immunity extended to him. And our case was dismissed. I just can't believe that a court would find that somebody could do what Mark Kilmer was doing

• 9:47Speaker 08

  and not have any real responsibility for it. And it still sort of irks me to this day. You know, you try to fight the system, and sometimes it doesn't work.

• 9:58Nancy Glass?

  For a while, the state of Colorado suspended Dr. Kilmer from taking on new court appointments for PRE work. Meanwhile, the work he did on Cyndi's case lived on.

• 10:10Speaker 04

  He says, "I don't believe most accusations about domestic violence and child abuse, especially in a high-custody court case. I don't believe them." Well, guess who was accused of domestic violence? Mark Kilmer. And the judge consistently went with Kilmer. That should have never happened. Judge Hoke found Dr. Kilmer's work on Cyndi's case to be solid.

• 10:32Nancy Glass?

  And according to a 2024 Denver Gazette article, Judge Hoke said in 2023, "Just because someone is suspended for work they did on one case doesn't mean they always did bad work." And once again, Cyndi found herself in an impossible position. If she challenged the evaluator, she risked appearing unwilling to accept the conclusions of a court-appointed professional. If she accepted the report, she was accepting the judgment of a man whose objectivity had been publicly questioned. Either way, the report became one more wrong Cyndi couldn't make right.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  I had a lot of hope. I really did. I had a lot of hope for the first couple of years. It's just, it's just not there anymore.

• 11:23Nancy Glass?

  At the time of this recording, Dr. Kilmer's license as a psychologist is active. However, he is no longer listed on Colorado's roster of P R Es. We contacted Dr. Kilmer. A voice actor will read from his email.

• 11:39Speaker 10

  I can't speak to any of your questions about professional psychology work. I wish you all the best of luck with your project.

• 11:50Nancy Glass?

  Dr. Kilmer wasn't the only P R E to be disciplined in Colorado. ProPublica found that he was one of four on the state roster who have been charged with harassment or domestic violence. Additionally, a woman named Shannon McShane used fake documents to pose as a licensed psychologist and P R E in Colorado.

• 12:11Speaker 08

  She had lied about her credentials. It seemed like she was kind of a, a pea in the same pot as Kilmer. And nobody caught that either.

• 12:21Nancy Glass?

  In 2025, Shannon McShane pleaded guilty to perjury and two other charges. She was sentenced to four years in prison. Her story, this story, was covered in an episode of Betrayal, the weekly podcast. It's incredible. We put a link to the episode in our show notes.

• 12:42Speaker 08

  I'm happy that someone's shining a light on this. Like, there were many, many people out there who had been affected by this program instituted by the state of Colorado. And it seemed like, frankly, again, what was a laudable program in theory had major systemic problems.

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