In the Gazette’s investigation of the broken system of child custody evaluations, one notorious case stood out. A mother said a Centennial counselor and long-time parental evaluator who worked as a court-appointed child’s therapist in a custody case was key in a systemwide failure that led to the death of her son. She said that while working as her son’s individual therapist, the counselor aligned himself with the father who engaged in child abuse and alienation and ultimately killed the 10-year-old in 2019.
Colorado’s system of deciding contentious child custody cases is fraught with such problems. An investigation by The Gazette found dozens of cases of incompetent, inaccurate and biased custody evaluations, several of which put children at serious, even life-threatening risk. But the case of Lon Kopit may have been the worse.
Jing Tesoriero plays with her daughters Chloe, 4, and Tylee Holberger, 2, last week at Highland Hollows Park in Aurora. Her 10-year-old son, Ty, was killed in 2019 by his abusive father after a contentious custody hearing. Jing has been outspoken about what she says was a systemic failure to protect her son from his father.
In 2009, Kopit, a longtime parental evaluator and licensed counselor in Centennial, was involved in a court battle that ended with him secretly settling a lawsuit alleging that he, at the age of 59, sexually harassed a 25-year-old female assistant at his parenting evaluation office.
Colorado's parenting evaluation industry profits as bitter child custody cases thrown into chaos
The assistant claimed the counselor repeatedly groped her, forcibly kissed her, suggested they go shopping together at Victoria’s Secret and had set up overnight seminar trips in which he booked a single hotel room for the two of them with one bed. Kopit declined comment, though in court documents, before the mediation settlement, he denied sexual harassment.
The grieving mother the Gazette interviewed, Jing Tesoriero, says Kopit was one of many fateful shortfalls in the case of her son Ty Tesoriero, a 10-year-old Douglas County boy killed in 2019 by his father, Anthony Tesoriero, the morning after a contentious custody hearing. The judge had indicated she would likely grant significantly more time to Ty’s mother, a change from their 50-50 arrangement. Anthony Tesoriero shot Ty in the early hours of Sept. 21 before turning the gun on himself.
Kopit took on a role as Ty’s therapist in August 2017. In his response to a DORA complaint filed against him after Ty’s death, Kopit repeatedly asserted he never saw signs of threats to Ty’s safety.
Jing said she objected to the court appointment of Kopit as Ty’s therapist because he had previously served as Ty’s father’s therapist, and she didn’t think Ty would be fully open with Kopit as a result. By that point, her ex-husband had a pattern of threatening professionals involved in the case, making other therapists hesitant to take the appointment.
Jing Tesoriero comforts her daughter this month at Highland Hollows Park in Aurora.
“With the pressure that Ty was getting from Anthony, I just felt like Ty thought Kopit was Anthony’s friend, or they’re on the same team, and Ty wouldn’t be honest with (Kopit) if there’s any kind of concern,” Jing said.
Jing felt Kopit didn’t take her seriously when she reported concerns to him on more than one occasion that Ty’s father was abusing him. Kopit ignored red flags and signs Ty was suffering while he was with his father, she said.
“Dr. Kopit should have been the one last person Ty could trust,” Jing wrote in a complaint she filed with the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies. “Dr. Kopit failed to save my child when he could have.”
The agency resolved the complaint, through the state board of licensing, by admonishing Kopit for “failing to comply with any requirements pertaining to mandatory disclosure of information to clients.”
There is seemingly no type of red flag the custody case for Ty didn’t raise. The Department of Human Services received numerous reports since 2016, including a document in which Ty said that his father choked him, statements that Tesoriero threatened to harm him if he didn’t say his mother had mistreated him. Jing filed similar assertions that she said Ty had relayed to her.
DHS frequently found there was not enough information from the reports for the agency to continue investigating, and Jing said she has had trouble understanding that decision.
The counselor’s professional liability insurance had been dropped in 2019 due to controversies. He is still practicing as an evaluator.
Jing filed for a protection order against Tesoriero in 2015 after they broke up, alleging among other abuse that Tesoriero threatened her with a gun, while Ty was in the house, and said he could become homicidal and suicidal. The night of Ty’s death, his father threatened that anyone who tried to take Ty from him — including DHS workers or law enforcement — would be killed, according to a fatality report done by DHS.
Jing has struggled to talk about Ty as she adjusts to life without him.
She’s kept a lot of his toys for her two toddler daughters. She told her 4-year-old that Ty is in heaven, but said the little girl has had trouble grasping that means her brother isn’t coming back.
And the seemingly casual question “How many kids do you have?” is no longer simple. A screensaver photo of Ty on Jing’s phone has drawn questions from acquaintances who know about her two toddler daughters but not about him. Sometimes Jing says she has three kids, other times two.
“It depends on who I talk to. I don’t want to talk to strangers a lot about that.”
Her family feared Tesoriero planned to kill all of them the night he murdered her son, and Jing believes Ty’s death — and his father’s subsequent suicide — might have saved their lives.
“To a point, I feel like Ty saved all of our lives,” she said. “Ty just took it for us.”