SEX-ABUSE CHARGES IN CUSTODY FIGHTS — FUZZY FINDINGS — LONG-DELAYED TRIALS WHILE CHILD AGES WITHOUT VISITATION. Affirming a custody award to the mother, the Court of Appeals holds that a trial judge who expressly based it on Factor Number 9 (“any history of family abuse … or sexual abuse”) was not required to make any specific finding about acts of inappropriate sexual contact with the child since the finding that there was “sexual conduct” was “unequivocal.” In fact, the trial court expressly declined to make any specific factual findings to support the conclusion of the inappropriate sexual contact. After all, the trial court had explained expressly that it found that “it was more likely than not” that the alleged “inappropriate act or series of acts occurred.” This is because it’s clear that the court considered all of the §20-124.3 factors. The trial court’s exact words regarding a finding: “The Court is not in a position to be able to articulate what specific inappropriate conduct in the form of an act, or series of acts, might have occurred between [child] and her father,” and “what the Court does find that it is more likely than not that this inappropriate act or series of acts occurred … .” The argument of the father’s counsel had been that the trial court ruling was based on speculation and conjecture, since nothing about any specific act was found nor was there a finding that the father had any sexual deviant or prurient interest in engaging in such acts. And now, the rest of the story. This all began with a near-simultaneous filing of the DSS Abuse/Neglect Petition against the father when the child was three, the mother’s request for a custody order, and the father’s cross-filing for a custody order, and the consolidation of all this for JDR court trial, which resulted in an award of sole legal and physical custody to the mother, an order that father have no contact with the child, and a protective order. The father appealed this decision and almost a year later the trial court entered a nonsuit in the abuse and neglect case and then an order dissolving the protective order. By the time of the trial de novo on appeal from JDR court, it had been two years since the child had seen the father. Flanagan v. Flanagan, unpublished, 25 VLW 470 (9/28/10).