Despite pending abuse charges, a no-contact order and nearly 2,000 miles of separation, Dr. Kenneth Yaw still is trying to assert control over his children.
The former UPMC orthopedic surgeon, arrested in August and charged with abusing four of his daughters, is fighting to have them moved from the care of relatives in upstate New York to the home of family friends in Cincinnati.
Yaw and his second wife, Rita Starceski, are bound by a court order to have no contact with the girls -- 15-year-old twins Kelly and Colleen, Michaela, 13, and Bridget, 11. But Yaw has retained his parental rights and still has a say in where his children live, as long as it's not with him.
A judge in Las Cruces issued a court order approving Yaw's request. But a family court judge in New York ruled to keep the children in their current home -- for now.
In the eyes of older sister Kate Yaw, 26, of Washington, D.C., the court fight to move the girls is not surprising behavior for the man she refers to as "Ken."
"Just because you take them out of the environment doesn't mean that having the father decide on a whim to move them here or move them there is keeping them away from that abuse," said Ms. Yaw. She is the oldest of 10 children of Yaw and his first wife, Maureen, who died in September 2001, after a three-year battle with breast cancer.
Ms. Yaw said her father refused to tell her why he was seeking to move the girls.
The abuse allegations shocked friends and others who knew the family in Fox Chapel. Friends remember the large Yaw brood as a friendly and well-behaved group, led by the decorated surgeon father and cheerful mother.
That all changed, friends said, when Maureen Yaw died.
Yaw and Ms. Starceski married in 2003 after they met online. Yaw withdrew the children from activities and frequently changed homes and schools, alienating many friends. A few of the older children left home before they turned 18 and were cut off from financial support.
Yaw left UPMC for Mercy Hospital in 2004. When UPMC acquired Mercy in 2007, the family moved to New Mexico.
In Las Cruces, the children were schooled at home and isolated. Last summer, according to a criminal complaint, the twins and Michaela were forced to live in a ramshackle trailer on the other side of town from the family's $600,000 house on a golf course.
Yaw got into an argument with a neighbor in the trailer park and called police, who discovered the girls' living situation and arrested the doctor and his wife. Ms. Starceski, police said, was culpable because she was aware of the abuses and did not stop them.
The girls were taken into custody by New Mexico's Children, Youth and Families Department. They later moved to the home of their stepmother's brother and his wife, Paul and Robin Starceski, in Findley Lake, N.Y.
Kate Yaw said the girls quickly blended into their new community. At Thanksgiving, all of Maureen Yaw's children gathered together for the first time in years.
But in December, Yaw and Ms. Starceski nominated Jim and Angie Louis of Cincinnati, Ohio, to be temporary guardians of the girls.
The Louises have nine grown children and have kept in touch with Dr. Yaw since the early 1990s, when he operated on one of their children.
The Louises said they knew little about the court case and were just trying to do a favor for a friend.
Family and friends said they had no problem with the Louises, but said they think Yaw is trying to exert power over his children from afar by housing the girls with people who see him in a better light.
The girls' supporters criticized New Mexico authorities for not moving to terminate Dr. Yaw's parental rights after he was arrested.
A spokeswoman for the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department said it acts to terminate parental rights when parents don't follow a prescribed plan, not just because criminal charges are pending.
Records show Yaw and Ms. Starceski completed a court-ordered parenting class in November.
Though they have moved around the country over the past couple years -- and the legal wrangling has drained almost all of the $13,500 in donations raised and placed in a fund for the children -- Ms. Yaw said her sisters have been resilient.
"Because they know that people didn't just abandon them," she said.