Jury awards couple $21M for false allegations of child abuse during custody battle
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. (KDVR) — A Routt County jury awarded a Steamboat Springs couple more than $21 million after they found the couple had been dragged through the mud for years over false allegations of child abuse.
Cindy Hayek was awarded $7.6 million and her boyfriend Kenny Hamp was awarded nearly $13.68 million by a jury who determined Hayek’s ex-husband orchestrated a smear campaign to win full custody of the couple’s three children following a contentious divorce.
The ex-husband, Steven Herron, now lives in Maui, Hawaii, after moving to the island in the summer of 2021 with full custody of the kids, a 17-year-old girl and twin 13-year-old boys.
The verdict came down on Nov. 22, 2023, after a five-week trial, but the couple has just now decided to share their story with the Problem Solvers.
Mother’s boyfriend accused of child abuse
“I was asked to choose between my children and the truth. And for four years, I had to choose the truth,” Hayek said.
The 54-year-old told FOX31 Investigative Reporter Rob Low that she has spent nearly $8 million of her own money, both through her custody battle and in legal fees, to get a jury to hear her case.
“I felt listened to. I felt vindicated. I’ve been saying it for years — this never happened — and I just couldn’t get anybody to listen. I (finally) had seven people listen and agree that this never happened,” Hayek said.
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What the jury said never happened was the child abuse Hamp was arrested for in 2019. The charge was later upgraded from a misdemeanor to a felony.
“It’s the worst thing you could ever be accused of,” Hamp said. “It was humiliating, shaming, ruining my reputation.”
Hamp and Hayek told FOX31 they thought it was no coincidence that allegations of sexual abuse surfaced against Hamp one day after announcing their engagement.
Earlier that month, Hayek won a $10.5 million settlement after she sued her ex-husband on claims of fraud. Hayek claimed she was owed money from Herron’s sale of a fracking company. Hayek was an oil and gas geologist, who successfully argued she was entitled to some of the nearly $90 million in profits Herron made in the sale.
Ex-husband told police about abuse allegations
Herron told doctors one of his twin sons was complaining of a “wedgie” and soon went to police with allegations that only grew over time.
Hamp told FOX31 that Herron “was trying to throw me in jail for the rest of my life. Everybody knows what happens to pedophiles when they go to jail.”
The charge would later be dismissed in June 2020 after prosecutors filed a motion that stated, “The totality of evidence in this matter reveals there is no reasonable probability of conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.”
In 2021, the Colorado Department of Human Services signed a settlement agreement that stated “the finding was overturned” when it came to allegations Hamp committed child sex abuse.
“This all came from Steve Herron telling the children that I did these things to these children. And the children believed what the father said, but in forensic interviews, the children actually told the truth and said that the father told them that this happened and that I never did that,” Hamp said.
Interview shows child was unsure if he had been abused
The Problem Solvers obtained a videotaped interview conducted in May 2020 between one of the twin boys and a forensic child abuse expert.
Below is a portion of their exchange:
Forensic interviewer: And who told you that Kenny was-sexually assaulted you?
9-year-old boy: My Dad.
FI: Your dad told you? Tell me what your dad said.
Boy: He said, ‘You have been sexually assaulted.’ And then he took me into my room.
In another more graphic portion of the interview, the boy shared details about what his father had said happened.
Herron and his attorney have not responded to the Problem Solvers for comment.
But FOX31 obtained a videotaped copy of the interview Herron and his wife Christine gave to a Steamboat Springs police detective and a state child case worker in September 2019, when the allegation of a “wedgie” first surfaced.
Herron can be seen on camera saying he doesn’t think he’s a bad person: “I’m not like this (expletive), like trying to pull these kids away from Cindy. I don’t think they’re safe.”
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A state caseworker would soon ask Herron, “If you could wave a magic wand today, what would you want? As far as a parenting agreement plan?”
Herron would respond, “Full custody of the children. Full decision-making authority.”
Herron and Hayek were divorced in 2016 and granted equal parenting time.
That would change in November 2019 when a Routt County case worker sustained findings of abuse against Hamp, and a judge used those findings to restrict Hayek’s parenting time.
Jury finds ex-husband manipulated law enforcement
The Routt County jury would determine Herron had manipulated law enforcement and the child welfare system to do his bidding. When a Steamboat Springs police detective told Herron he would try to get the child abuse charge upgraded to sex assault, Herron would be heard on camera saying, “I would (expletive) hug you right now.”
Later in the same interview, Herron would tell the detective, “You made my (expletive) day brother, like you’re on my Christmas card list right now.”
“This was the most obvious, malicious and calculated scenario of child weaponization that I’ve ever seen,” said Chris Decker, the attorney who represented Hamp in the civil defamation case and who is also a FOX31 legal analyst.
In June 2023, the medical director of the child protection team at Children’s Hospital Colorado wrote a report on the case that closed by saying, “In summary, neither the documentation from multiple medical examinations nor the images taken by Mr. Herron provide any evidence that can be attributed to or support the allegations of child sexual abuse/assault.”
“It was an important verdict, and a message I think that the jury wanted to send was, ‘Stop the lying. Stop doing this, Steve Herron,'” Decker said.
Terry Duffin was the court-appointed parenting supervisor for Hayek and was in charge of observing visits between the kids and their mother, who had lost custody of her three kids to Herron when she refused to acknowledge Hamp had abused any of the kids.
When FOX31 asked Duffin if she suspected any of the kids had been sexually abused, she responded, “I do not, I don’t. I’ve seen a lot of trauma, a lot of traumatized children over my career,” but said she never saw any evidence of that with the children in this case.
Instead, Duffin said her 30 years of experience in the field of childhood trauma convinced her the allegations of sex abuse were false.
“The boys could never tell me any details about what happened to them. I felt like they were being coached,” said Duffin, who suspected Herron was motivated by revenge.
“He for quite a while spoke angrily about how mom got money she didn’t deserve,” Duffin said. “Steve was very, very angry that mom was even still around, and he was trying to eliminate her from the children’s lives. That’s what it felt like.”
The Problem Solvers asked if it appeared to be a case of parental alienation.
“Absolutely parental alienation,” Duffin responded.
Hamp said he’s glad the kids are now able to have some agency.
“This story is about giving these children a chance in life to know the truth so they can make their own decisions in the future when they’re ready,” he told the Problem Solvers.
“I chose my family, and I’m going to put my family back together. It’s hard, but I’m going to do it. And I hope to one day see my children and tell them what happened, and I hope they don’t feel in any way that they’re responsible for this,” Hayek said.
Hayek said a Routt County domestic relations judge has not allowed her to speak to her kids since a Zoom visit in January 2021, because she refused to acknowledge her boyfriend’s sexual abuse.
Now that she has a favorable civil court ruling, in addition to the dismissal of the criminal charge and the reversal of findings from the Colorado Department of Human Services, she plans to file a motion asking the domestic relations judge to grant her re-integration therapy as a first step toward reuniting with her three children.
Breakdown of the millions awarded to couple
The jury award was broken down into several categories for Hamp and Hayek.
Hamp was awarded economic damages of $175,000 and non-economic damages of $3.5 million for defamation related to statements made by Herron to Steamboat Springs Detective Jordan Cyphers and then published in an application and affidavit for an arrest warrant.
Hamp was awarded an additional $10 million in punitive damages against Herron. His total award comes to $13.675 million.
Hayek’s total award was $7.6 million. She was awarded economic damages of $1.1 million and non-economic damages of $1.5 million for claims against Herron, which included outrageous conduct, abuse of process and conspiracy.
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Hayek also was awarded $4 million in punitive damages against Herron. She also received $1 million in non-economic damages against Herron’s wife, Christine, for claims of outrageous conduct and conspiracy.
Court records show Herron filed for divorce from Christine the night before the verdict.
A jury rejected all of Herron’s counterclaims of defamation against Hayek.
As for whether the couple will ever receive the money a jury says they deserve, Hamp said, “Will I see the $13 million? I don’t care. What it was about was to vindicate this, to tell the truth.”
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