Quote:ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — They wrote their letters to the judge by hand, each explaining to him what they hoped he would decide about their future, and soon.

“There’s a lot of things I would like to happen for the outcome of this whole situation and by the looks of it, no one seems to care,” wrote one of the twin sisters, who turns 16 next month. “Who would, though? It’s just another case of a family with unsolvable conflicts, right?”

She continued.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about a lot of people in this world during my 15 years of living is that people only care about themselves and the money they earn. … I’ve just come to realize that almost everyone involved in this case is only here for the money. No one seems to be doing anything except to be carrying on the issue and avoiding to resolve it.”

She had reason to say that. She and her sister’s family exploded in September 2014 when their mother, Judy Holcomb, was seriously injured after tumbling or being tossed – depending on whose version you believe – down three flights of stairs in the family’s Magdalena home.

Initially, Albuquerque Family Court Judge Gerard Lavelle granted temporary custody of the six minor children, then ages 11 to 17, to Holcomb’s now-ex-husband Jim Stuteville and allowed him to remain in the Magdalena home while Holcomb recovered.

But in October 2016, court-appointed guardian ad litem Laura Cass issued an emergency recommendation urging the judge to remove the children from Stuteville’s custody, arguing that Stuteville had tried to “murder” their mother for financial gain, coerced the children to cover up and even assist in the incident and was using them to help find a new woman.

But Cass also recommended that the children not be returned to Holcomb over allegations that she had been so abusive to the children – five from Vietnam whom Holcomb adopted with her late husband, and two to whom Stuteville has a legal tie, either by biology or adoption – that they had formed a suicide pact to be enacted should they be forced to return to her.

Lavelle agreed, splitting up the kids and sending them to live with “third-party” local families in the Magdalena area. The children were not allowed contact with either Holcomb or Stuteville or each other, including Holcomb’s two adult children who are not party to the case.

Since then, three of the younger children have turned 18 and are no longer under the court’s rule. Two of them have reunited with Holcomb, denied any suicide pact or abuse and disclosed to law enforcement what they know about Stuteville’s actions the day Holcomb was injured, though no charges have ever been brought against him as a result. The whereabouts of the third grown child are undisclosed.

That leaves the youngest child – a boy, 12 – in one home and the twin girls in another. There has yet to be any movement toward reunification or, at a minimum, visitation nearly 3½ years later.

That’s a long time in kid years.

You met this family in a column published on Dec. 18, and you’re welcome to refresh your recollection of the bizarre details there. (http://www.abqjournal.com/1108002)

Clearly, though, many of you came away from that column with little sympathy for either adult.

“Yeah, the man is a cad,” one reader wrote. “That does not mean the woman is a victim.”

But let’s at least agree that the most concerning victims are the children, whose hopes and desires too easily get lost in the heat of a contentious custody battle.

GALs and court-appointed experts are paid at a hefty cost to the warring parties to be the voice of these children. But sometimes it’s unclear whose voices these experts are paying heed to.

During a hearing Friday, Lavelle declared that the Holcomb-Stuteville case should be considered the “most important” one by all parties, then refused to hear anything more than a few matters only tangentially dealing with the children.

That, even though GAL Cass broke down in tears and announced she was immediately resigning from what she termed the “most difficult” case she has ever had, asking the court to order that the parties pay her the $14,379.53 still owed her and alerting the judge that the family caring for the 12-year-old boy wanted out of the case “in the next few days.”

Outside the courtroom sat the woman in whose home the twin girls are residing. She was there, she said, because neither she nor the girls felt like the judge was receiving enough information through the GAL and that the girls were hurting and frustrated that no one seemed to be listening to them.

They wanted, she said, to return home to their mother and to visit Stuteville, though both said they believed he had tried to harm their mother.

She wanted to give the judge the letters the girls had written. They had asked for that much.

“I’m not asking for anyone’s pity or attention,” wrote one of them. “I’m simply asking for a life I can move on with. A life I don’t have to be ashamed to tell anyone. I want to be able to move on and continue to live it. … I’m simply asking you to actually read what I have to say and take it into consideration of your decision.”

After 1½ hours, the hearing concluded. The letters were never accepted.