Counselors - Naperville, IL

"Whitney McDaniel was appointed to my husband's case in spring of 2023. My husband's first wife (who has a history of mental illness and who was knowingly abandoned by her own father) fired the "silver bullet" when she initiated the divorce. She falsely obtained an order of protection and tried to take their 2 children. He fought back and won joint custody and joint decision-making and worked hard to rebuild healthy, loving relationships with both kids. He met me a few years later when the kids were both teens. He thought his son would have a harder time with his remarriage, but actually his daughter did. Her mother unlawfully removed her from his home just before our wedding, and his daughter has been refusing to see him or speak to him since (outside of school events or a therapist's office). Whitney's role was "reunification therapist." She met with my husband and his alienated daughter (a young teen) for 9 months, achieving no progress in that time, setting up only one out-of-office visit toward the end of that time (at my husband's request to see his daughter on a special occasion), and ignoring all evidence we presented of the mother's alienating tactics. Whitney failed to provide a treatment plan or to require any specific action of any involved parties. She spent session time just listening to my stepdaughter's complaints about her father. She read a transcript we submitted to her of the judicial finding that my husband did nothing wrong the night the mother "protectively" abducted the daughter from her father's home (just before our wedding), and that the mother had violated the father's parenting time, and Whitney still blamed my husband for his daughter's refusal to see him or talk with him. She allowed the mother to continuously portray appropriate loving discipline as "abuse." She engaged in biased, unilateral, unethical communications with the mother. She smiled at us to our face and expressed willingness to provide the coaching my husband requested (for better interactions with his daughter), and then Whitney criticized us behind our backs to other parties. Finally, 9 months after the start of therapy, when we respectfully pointed out to her in an email that an accurate diagnosis informs proper treatment, she stopped reunification therapy altogether and told the court that my husband needed to see an individual therapist to understand what he had done to cause his daughter to feel unsafe and to shun a relationship with him. She never resumed efforts at reunification, even when my husband complied with the inappropriate recommendation for individual counseling. Instead, she told the mother that my husband and I should have to pay 100% the cost of a forensic custody evaluation (which the judge then ordered), and she told the evaluator my husband is a wife and child abuser. She recently rendered an opinion to the mother in writing that empowered her to violate joint decision-making. "This is not a dad issue," Whitney wrote, when the mother violated the parenting plan and arranged for non-emergent healthcare without informing the father, or considering his preference in provider, or respecting his Christian beliefs. Whitney McDaniel engaged in serious ethical breaches and deeply harmed our family (my stepdaughter has now been alienated for over 2 years). If Jesus could say from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," we choose to say that too of Whitney. May God humble her arrogance, open her eyes to truth, transform her heart, and gift her with a true ability to help troubled families."