Something Ain’t Right Here | BONUS | Season 3

As the Children’s Legal Representative, Justin Bawden’s role was to represent the best interests of the children. But some questioned Bawden’s objectivity. 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/. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 05

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• 4:12Nancy Glass?

  In episode 10, you heard how Cyndi spent over $8 million to get her kids back. Most of that money has gone towards attorney's fees. There have been other expenses, including thousands of dollars to someone appointed by the court. And a closer look at this person's invoices raised a lot of questions.

• 4:35Nancy Glass?

  I'm Nancy Glass. In this bonus episode of Burden of Guilt, we'll talk about who this person is and why some question his objectivity.

• 4:56Nancy Glass?

  Judge Mary Hope presided over Cyndi and Steve's custody battle. After the allegation that Kenny abused one of Cyndi's boys, Judge Hope appointed what's known as a CLR, a child legal representative. The CLR was Justin Bawden.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Judge Hope assigned him to be the child legal representative for all the children.

• 5:20Nancy Glass?

  Bawden is a lawyer who has spent most of his career working with juvenile defendants in the public defender's office. In this case, his role was to represent the best interests of the children, meaning Judge Hope would rely on Bawden to help guide custody decisions. His recommendations never seemed to go Cyndi's way.

• 5:43Nancy Glass?

  Here's journalist Chris Osher.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Cyndi's complaint was he was biased against me, and he turned this into a cash cow.

• 5:50Nancy Glass?

  According to Chris's 2024 article in the Denver Gazette, for Justin Bawden's three years of work on the case, he billed Cyndi and Steve over $271,000.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  He was able to deem it a complex case and increase his fees.

• 6:09Nancy Glass?

  According to Chris's article, Bawden upped his hourly rate to $300.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  He decided for our special case, he gets to double his rates.

• 6:19Nancy Glass?

  But one of his bills stood out to Cyndi.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  If you look on his invoice, it says "travel," but it doesn't say "to where." And he's invoicing me for that? And like, what's going on here, Justin?

• 6:32Nancy Glass?

  That travel was a May 2022 trip to Steve's home in Hawaii. That trip cost about $2,000, which was split between Cyndi and Steve. But Cyndi found out about the trip after the fact and wasn't happy about it. Here's Chris Osher again.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  There were some allegations of favoritism, like he took a trip to Hawaii and brought his wife with him. And there were some indications of him talking about snorkeling.

• 7:08Nancy Glass?

  According to that same article by Chris, there was an email exchange between Justin Bawden and Steve about the Hawaii trip. In it, Steve let Bawden know where to find snorkeling equipment in his house.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  So here he is getting double the rate of what he normally gets. He hails with Steve and staying at his place and using his snorkeling gear. This feels really shady at this point.

• 7:33Nancy Glass?

  And in that article, Chris reported that Bawden said he needed to fly from Colorado to Steve's home in Hawaii to see for himself how the children were faring.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  He corresponded by email and said, hey, these are difficult cases, and I'm always working in the best interests of the children. I did the best I could. I make a judgment call, and one party's usually going to be upset with that. You know, I think Cyndi would pretty forcefully argue the best interests of the children were not represented here.

• 8:05Nancy Glass?

  Earlier, you heard me use the phrase "best interest of the children," and it is often used in cases like this. So as part of Justin Bawden's role as a CLR, he had to make parenting time recommendations to Judge Hope that are in the best interests of the children. In court documents, Bawden said that additional parenting time for Cyndi should be restored only if Cyndi would learn to place the needs of the children over continued focus on litigation and being right or vindicated.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  The leverage was always, stop your litigation, you get your kids back. So it was clear he was giving so much power to Steve.

• 8:50Nancy Glass?

  In one court filing, Bawden told the judge that Cyndi was emotionally harming the children by refusing to, quote, "set aside her strongly-held narrative," end quote, that no child sex abuse had occurred. But not everyone agreed with Bawden.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  My name is Teri Duffin. I am a supervisor for court orders.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Parenting time, and I've been doing that for well over 30 years.

• 9:18Nancy Glass?

  In 2020, Teri supervised Cindy's visits with her children, and she immediately questioned the sex abuse allegation.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  When there are sex abuse allegations, I'm expecting to see traumatized children, and it just wasn't there. The behaviors I'm seeing from the children are not typical, especially of a child who's been sexually abused. So my gut was telling me something ain't right here. Teri said she shared this with Justin Bawden. For a while, Justin would check in with me and ask me how visits were going. And when I was telling him, it's like, you know what? These visits are fine. They're like normal visits between Cindy and her children. And then I started telling him that I was really questioning

• 10:09Speaker 03

  the allegations because I was not seeing any corroborating behaviors coming from the children.

• 10:18Nancy Glass?

  What happened next surprised her.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  I was told my services were no longer needed and removed from the case.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Cindy just told me that Justin had found somebody he wants to do the visits. And I'm like going, OK. Sorry to hear that. I will say I wasn't surprised because by that time, Justin would question some of my notes, and I would tell him I'm not seeing any of the typical behaviors that I've seen in many a sex abuse case that I've worked on.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  When I started reiterating that to him, he stopped talking to me.

• 10:55Nancy Glass?

  Teri said she formed her own opinion of what happened.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  These kids have been coached. That's how I'm feeling right now, that these kids have been coached. And I've never lost that feeling.

• 11:06Nancy Glass?

  She later testified in Judge Hope's courtroom.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  I don't think she even listened to me, quite honestly. I felt like she completely dismissed anything I was saying. That's the sense I had. And her actions proved my feeling. Especially when that judge allowed Steve to take those kids to Hawaii. I just want to scream when I hear a judge say, oh, in the best interest of the child. It's like,

• 11:37Speaker 03

  OK. How is that in the best interest of the child? It's not. Any which way you look at it. I think it's been a raw deal for Cindy. But more importantly, the children, because they've been alienated from a perfectly good parent. Makes me very sad, and I'm very disillusioned with our system.

• 12:00Nancy Glass?

  One final note about Justin Bawden. In September of 2021, Bawden filed a motion to withdraw as the child legal representative, stating that he would write a memo to the children to explain his perspective of the events of the case. The children would get this memo when they're 18 years old, but only if they requested it. The purpose of the memo, Bawden said, was to give the children, quote, "access to further information about what happened during this period of their childhood," end quote. But here's the thing. Less than two weeks after Bawden said he'd write that memo, DHS overturned their findings. Two years after that,

• 12:43Nancy Glass?

  a jury awarded Kenny and Cindy over $20 million in claims against Steve for outrageous conduct, conspiracy, and abuse of process. That begs the question. Wasn't Justin's memo to the children? And given the DHS findings and civil verdict, has Justin changed or updated his memo? We reached out to Justin Bawden for an interview, but he declined to comment.

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• 14:43Speaker 05

  had medullary thyroid cancer or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lily.com.

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• 16:12Speaker 06

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