A grand jury has handed up a 15-count felony indictment against Shannon McShane, the former parental evaluator who last year relinquished her psychology license while dozens of custody cases in Colorado descended into chaos amid allegations that McShane falsified her credentials needed to accept court appointments.
An arrest warrant was issued for McShane’s arrest on August 29 for eight counts of attempting to influence a public servant, five counts of forgery, one count of perjury and one count of retaliating against a victim or witness.
The indictments stem from a nearly six-month investigation by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, launched in the wake of an investigative report on McShane by The Denver Gazette.
The grand jury indictment remains sealed for now, and prosecutors with the Attorney General’s Office did not immediately release details. The counts of attempting to influence a public servant appear related to allegations that McShane fraudulently claimed she had earned a doctoral degree in psychology. State regulators determined last year that McShane never had such a doctorate and therefore never should have received a license to practice psychology in Colorado.
In addition to using her state psychology license to qualify for court appointments on child custody matters, McShane also gained employment as a psychologist candidate at the Colorado Department of Corrections from January 2018 to February 2021, with a final annual salary there of $84,468. She also worked as a psychologist from January 2018 to June 2023 at the state hospital in Pueblo for the criminally insane, with a final annual salary there of $97,224.
Documents filed in her court case show the witnesses prosecutors expect to testify during a trial include at least 10 magistrates or judges in Colorado, including Colorado State Supreme Court Justice Brian Boatright. Parents and their lawyers involved in custody disputes McShane was court-appointed to provide recommendations for also are listed as potential witnesses along with corrections officials, state regulators and court administrators.
The attorney general’s investigation revolved around allegations that McShane falsely claimed she had a doctoral degree in psychology from the University of Hertfordshire in England to obtain her state psychology license in 2020 and then lied and provided false documents to cover up her deception, according to an affidavit previously filed in Denver District Court by an investigator.
One parent involved in a custody dispute that McShane was court-appointed as a parental evaluator told investigators that, after he reported McShane to regulators, she turned sharply critical of him, causing him to fear his parenting time was in jeopardy. That parent also said McShane impersonated a state regulator and then in communications tried to dissuade him from having regulators investigate his concerns.
McShane, 57, who last year relocated to Texas, could not be immediately reached for comment. The arrest warrant set a $50,000 cash surety bail upon her detention. In the past, she has claimed she has been unfairly targeted by disgruntled parents upset by her custody recommendations, which she contends are valid.
The Colorado attorney general’s investigation followed a series of investigative reports into Colorado’s parenting evaluation industry by The Denver Gazette. Evaluators and their custody recommendations, which often cost parents embroiled in custody disputes tens of thousands of dollars, can hold tremendous sway with judges overseeing court cases.
The Gazette found state and judicial officials have been slow to act against evaluators, including McShane, whose court-appointed custody recommendations have generated complaints of bias and accusations that children have been put in peril through inaccurate reports recommending custody go to abusive parents.
Court records show Magistrate Matthew Bradley, who presided over court cases in six counties in northeast Colorado, asked for a criminal investigation into McShane, which was referred to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, the same day that The Denver Gazette published an investigative report about McShane.
Bradley in November 2022 barred McShane from conducting custody evaluations in his judicial district because he had found her custody evaluation in one case so biased and deficient that he deemed her unfit to do such work.
Among the problems the magistrate detailed: McShane had obsessed that a father’s nickname of “Sleepy Melo” meant he was a dangerous gang member. The magistrate found that the mother was the one who was actually living with a violent felon in California who had been involved in a kidnapping that suggested “a high likelihood of gang involvement.”
Still, the father, Steven Ramirez, had to spend $20,000 on legal fees fighting to get his children returned to him, a situation the magistrate said stemmed from McShane’s initial false and flawed representations to another judge.
Despite Bradley in November 2022 warning state court administrators that he had found McShane unfit for court appointments, McShane would continue doing court-appointed parenting evaluations and child custody recommendations in other judicial districts throughout Colorado.
The state court administrator’s office did not bar McShane from accepting court appointments for more than four months after the magistrate flagged his concerns. State court officials finally removed McShane from the state list of parental evaluators eligible for court appointments on March 28, 2023.
In the interim, dozens of parents complained that McShane upended their custody cases through biased and shoddy court-appointed evaluation work.
McShane surrendered her state licenses required to work as a psychologist and an addiction counselor on July 20, 2023 after licensing boards from those professions suspended her licenses on June 9, 2023.
She relocated last year to Texas, returning to a state where she had past issues with state regulators on other matters. Records show authorities in Texas in 2018 revoked McShane’s real estate license and fined her $42,000 for pocketing rental money from properties instead of forwarding the rent on to property owners.
In Colorado, one parent, Chad Kullhem, a father in Aurora to children then aged 4 and 7, said he struggled to get McShane kicked off his divorce case in Arapahoe County District Court even after he reported that he had discovered that McShane had falsified documents showing she had received a doctorate in psychology from the University of Hertfordshire in England.
Records show McShane claimed in emails and statements that Kullhem was an unfit father who was worse than a murderer whom she claimed to have treated who put his enemies through a woodchipper.
Kullhem only succeeded in getting McShane removed from his case after the lawyers in his custody fight jointly filed a motion to do so because of alleged fraud and alleged falsification of her credentials.
“It really, truly feels like nobody wanted to believe or cared,” Kullhem previously told The Denver Gazette of the ordeal he faced in getting authorities to listen to his concerns over McShane.
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