Father Wins Custody in Lapin Case; Judge Rejects Allegations

Ron Lapin won continued custody of his two young children Thursday, closing out the latest tumultuous chapter in the ongoing saga of the “bloodless surgeon” and his third ex-wife.

In refusing Orly Lapin’s demands for custody of her 2-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, Superior Court Judge Theodore E. Millard found the former Israeli beauty queen’s accusations of rape, child molesting and drug abuse against her former husband to be largely fabricated.

While siding with Ron Lapin, 48, at a hearing in Santa Ana, Millard voiced disillusionment with both father and mother as he wound up a 3-week custody trial that featured one bizarre volley of accusations after another.

“Obviously, both sides aren’t telling the whole truth in this case. That’s kind of an understatement,” Millard said. “A lot of people have axes to grind.”

Orly Lapin, 32, an actress and model, appeared stunned by the ruling. Minutes later, she broke into long, loud wails outside the courtroom, fell to the floor and was dragged back inside the courtroom by friends and court deputies trying to calm her.

“I’ve lost my children!” Orly Lapin screamed outside the courtroom as cameras snapped furiously and passers-by stopped to see what the commotion was. Just 3 months earlier, Orly Lapin had emerged victorious from the same courthouse, acquitted of charges that she had kidnaped the children from her former husband.

Ron Lapin, bitter but vindicated Thursday, said of the scene outside the courtroom: “You’re dealing with a typical actress, and this was one great performance, put on just for” the media.

“The nightmare is over,” he said. “The judge saw there was nothing to her allegations. And hopefully now I can go back to my children and to a normal home life.”

The Santa Ana physician said he hopes to piece back together his once-thriving surgical practice, which he said lost tens of thousands of dollars because of the time consumed by his prolonged legal difficulties.

He gained national attention in the early 1980s for his advocacy of a surgical technique that seeks to avoid blood transfusions. This so-called “bloodless surgery” won the endorsement of some groups that oppose transfusions on both religious and medical grounds.

But the doctor is being investigated by a state medical panel on allegations of improprieties. He says the investigation was spurred in part by Orly Lapin’s complaints against him.

As a result of Judge Millard’s decision in family law court Thursday, Ron Lapin will retain custody of the two children and his former wife will continue to have twice-weekly visits with them in a monitored setting.

Orly Lapin, who was divorced from Ron Lapin in 1987, was unavailable for comment after the ruling. Her attorney, John Bradley Horwitz, said she regained her composure later in the day but was still having difficulty accepting the decision.

“It’s just a bitter pill for her to swallow,” Horwitz said. “It’s hard for her to justify to herself that she could be

found innocent of the kidnaping charges (in the trial 3 months ago) but still has to continue with these monitored visits.”

But Judge Millard, in an interview after his ruling, said Orly Lapin’s credibility--or lack of it--cost her custody.

The unbelievability of her allegations against her former husband “had a tremendous impact in assessing her custodial parenting skills,” Millard said.

“That is not the type of person who, if given primary custody, would abide by a court’s visitation order (for the other spouse). In all probability, she would say things to poison the kids against their father,” the judge said.

He discounted allegations offered in court by Orly Lapin and her supporting witnesses that Ron Lapin had raped the children’s nanny several times at gunpoint, molested his daughter, was an abusive womanizer and suffered serious drug and alcohol problems.

$11,500 Offer to Nanny

The judge also gave credence to testimony asserting that Orly Lapin had offered an Israeli woman $11,500 to get herself hired by Ron Lapin as a nanny, with the intent of later testifying in court that her boss had raped her and abused the children. The alleged plan was never carried out.

Millard said he found that Orly Lapin would go to great lengths--to the point of “manufacturing” testimony--to “gain an advantage” in the courtroom.

Ron Lapin, lashing out at both his former wife and at news coverage in an interview after the ruling, went even further.

He alleged that Orly Lapin saw their children as “a meal ticket from Day 1.”

The surgeon asserted that she had fought for custody not out of love for the children but to gain publicity and bolster her faltering career as a TV, movie and modeling personality.

Trouble With Women, He Says

He said his only regret is his choice of female companions: “I don’t know which women to trust, and I think history will verify that. That is the only thing I’ll plead guilty to.”

Indeed, even as he was rebutting the allegations made against him by Orly Lapin, he encountered another intimate from the past. As the doctor began taking questions from reporters outside the courtroom after the ruling, he was cut off by his second former wife, Maureen Lapin.

“Baloney!” Maureen Lapin shouted at him as her former husband tried to reply to some of the allegations against him. “I have a lot of other things to say about that!”

She had sat in court for the decision but stormed out as Millard delivered his ruling. She later tried to help console Orly Lapin.