Sex for custody in Orange County

Lucy Vellema, left, holds her grandchild next to her son.Photo byLucy Vellema

“As long as I had sex with my ex-husband, I was allowed to see my son unsupervised in my home and the community,” Lucy Vellema said.

Vellema, an educator in Orange County, has not had custody of her now 16-year-old son since 2019 when custody was flipped by an Orange County judge to her ex-husband.

Except for six months in 2021 while she agreed to have sex with her ex-husband, he allowed Lucy to see their son.

“I asked him if there was any way that we could reconcile and that was his only offer,” Vellema told this reporter. “I realized this was the only way to see my son since the court refused to let me have custody again of my son.”

Vellema has credentials to teach children with special needs, has taught for over 20 years and as a mandated reporter, is trusted every day with other people’s children, but not her son.

Vellema and her ex-husband were married in 1997 and separated in 2017. In 2018 Vellama was granted primary physical custody of their son.

In 2019 minor’s counsel Diane Vargas, told the court that the child “is at risk” and “I think that the court should grant the father sole legal custody for him controlling any therapy, the choice of therapist and how often the therapy is to be done,” court documents show.

Minor’s counsel is a court-appointed attorney given to minors in high-conflict custody battles.

The judge flipped custody and awarded sole custody to the father and only allowed Vellema supervised visits for four hours each week even though there were no findings that Lucy was unfit.

“I was a competent parent,” Vellema said. “However, when I stopped having sex with my ex-husband, I was denied custody and forced into supervised visits because I was now somehow incompetent.”

The father, David Vellema, when reached out to for comment said sex in exchange for custody never happened and claimed he was contacting an attorney for defamation.

Text messages provided by Lucy during the time David allowed her to see their son show they were having a relationship.

“I love you, I love you. Do you love me? You didn’t want your family back. You only wanted [our son]. I knew this was just about the kids. I want to marry you. You don't love me. You love the kids,” David Vallema said in the text messages.

Vellema’s attorney, Christian Conrad, confirmed the sex for custody exchange did occur.

“I am very aware and I argued that in court. Yes, it happened. No one forced her. I told her not to do it,” Conrad told this reporter. “I understood why she did that. It paid off in a way.”

Conrad said there is somewhat of an order restraining Lucy from contacting the child.

“The kid is 16, the court is not going to force this kid,” Conrad said referring to the child’s current desire to not see his mother.

After Lucy stopped seeing David for custody, she then only saw her son during monitored visitations.

Those visits were pleasant at the beginning of June 2021 between Lucy and her son, according to visitation reports provided by Lucy. By the end of June, the son’s demeanor changed toward his mother. This was shortly after Lucy stopped seeing David.

During one of those visits, Lucy told her son that she was concerned that his father was lying to him.

Lucy’s son was not receptive to his mother at that visitation, according to reports provided by Lucy.

"That is a lie, you would show up on your own time. If your side is true then everyone else is wrong," Lucy’s son told her.

Lucy was also ordered to reunification therapy with her son under reunification therapist Jessica St. Clair in 2022, according to court records.

Jessica St. Clair stated Lucy was “irresponsible” for having sex with her ex-husband in exchange for seeing their son.

St. Clair has not responded to several attempts for comment.

“She had repeated herself frequently and it was only creating more conflict between her and [her son]. If she wanted this reunification to be successful, she had to bond with him and right now she was alienating herself from [her son],” St. Clair wrote in April of 2022, documents show.

“I do not think his mother is ready for any such meetings judging by the way she treats him in my office. So, my answer is no. We are going to stay the course and meet in my office for reunification sessions,” St. Clair told Vargas.

St. Clair claimed Vellema’s son did not want to meet with his mother at all but was complying with the weekly sessions.

Lucy is adamant that St. Clair’s reports are full of inaccuracies, notably after four sessions that St. Clair claimed she is "an unempathetic mother who doesn't deserve to see her son.”

Vellema believes that the reunification therapy with St. Clair was not something that her son enjoyed, required or needed.

“I believe that the reunification therapy process itself was burdensome to my son and therefore counterproductive in assisting us to re-establish our mother-son relationship,” Vellema said. “I am not now and have never been a danger to my son.”

Sources confirmed that St. Clair has been involved in a great number of family law cases in Orange County family court facilitating flipping custody from the protective parent to the alleged or documented abuser and cutting off contact with the protective parent, in this case the mother.

This is similar to the Maya and Sebastian Laing case out of the Santa Cruz Family Court when transporters physically removed the two children, then 12 and 15, from their grandmother’s home in 2022 and took them to reunification therapist, Lynne Steinberg.

Public outrage helped fuel the movement to pass Piquis Law which banned the practice of reunification therapy in California as of 2023.

Vellema believes her son will have life-long emotional, psychological, and medical ramifications as a result of the trauma he’s endured these past few years.

“He was a happy, healthy, and loving child for the 12 years that I raised him as documented in his school and medical records. Now, he is a depressed, angry, and frustrated young man,” Vellema said.

It has been over a year since the court ordered that there be "a break" from reunification therapy between Vellema and her son, and she has not seen him since.

Lucy misses her son very much and wishes to reestablish a relationship with her son and to consist of unsupervised contact and communication with him as soon as possible.

The Vellemas are due back in court in June.