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Title: Young Boys Allegedly Abused By Air Force Colonel Now In His Sole Custody

Tomorrow morning, two six-year old brothers will leave the sole custody of the mother they have lived with for the past five years to live in the sole custody of their father, an Air Force colonel alleged to have physically and sexually abused the boys for years.

The Air Force had deemed the abuse allegations against Colonel Eric Holt as lacking evidence, but as this reporter previously covered, an extraordinary amount of evidence from photographs, video, medical records and witnesses supports the allegations. This evidence includes five disclosures by the boys themselves to non-parental caregivers, medical authorities and child welfare authorities.

Yet in an August 15 Maryland Montgomery County family court decision, Judge Joan Ryon awarded sole custody of the boys to Col. Holt and ordered the boys’ mother, a Harvard-trained anesthesiologist, only to supervised visitation once every two weeks. Ryon did not require Col. Holt to pay any of the more than $100,000 he owed in back child support—despite a previous court order that he do so—but she ordered the boys’ mother, Dr. Holt*, to pay $5700 a month in child support to their father going forward.

Now, the mother, the boys’ babysitters, and multiple family friends worry for the boys’ safety.

“We are shocked. At worst, we thought Eric would get supervised visitation,” said retired Air Force Master Sgt. Robert Arrant, a member of Holt’s team during a tour in Afghanistan. Arrant was among the first on the scene when Col. Holt and others were blown up by an IED in their Humvee. Arrant has also described the impulse control and violent behavior he observed in Col. Holt after the colonel’s traumatic brain injury from the explosion.

Col. Holt himself has acknowledged those same impulse, anger and sexual problems in previous court proceedings, but he has not responded to multiple requests for comment for this and the previous story.

Montgomery County is the same court system that gave unsupervised visitation to the father of Prince McLeod Rams, whose father killed him on the fourth unsupervised visit the boy’s mother had fought to prevent. It was also in Montgomery County that Anthony, Austin and Athena Castillo (ages 6, 4 and 2) were drowned by their father after he was awarded unsupervised visitation despite multiple warnings from their mother, a pediatrician, that he would kill them.