Note: Cross posted from [wp angelfury] A Human Rights Issue-Custodial Justice.

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by Randi James

Psychological Theories on Why Mothers Are Alienating Kids from Fathers

Dear Reader,
If you're seeking a psychological theory, you may be better off asking Sylvia Browne (better yet, try this one) or your local astrologist. Psychology is NOT a science...it only has "ideas" about things. Richard Gardner, pro-pedophilic founder of parental alienation syndrome, wrote it best (emphasis mine):

"Psychodynamic psychiatry, to an even greater extent, psychoanalysis, is probably the most speculative of all the alleged scientific disciplines. In fact, it is reasonable to say that it is much more an artthan a science. We spin off the most fantastic explanations for human behavior and often come to believe our own delusions.
Although the concept of scientific proof may be of importance in such fields as chemistry, physics, and biology, the concept is not as applicable in the field of psychology; especially with regard to issues being dealt with in such areas as child-custody disputes, and sex-abuse accusations."Id. at 12.

Related Posts :

protective mothers

• Imminent Danger Protective Measures Denied by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jose Padilla, in Arizona
• DHHS, Responsible Fatherhood, the Family Court: Your Tax Dollars Being Wasted On an Illegal Hype
• What's Happening in Our Family Court System and What Should Be Done?
• There WILL Be a Family Court System Audit in California
• Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The System Sends Mixed Messages to Abuse Victims
• Scott Roeder's Ex-Wife Insisted on Custody of Their Son

abusers

• Ms Hyde Gives Her Opinion of Me Based on One Post
• Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The System Sends Mixed Messages to Abuse Victims
• Male Caretakers are at Greater Risk to Cause Abusive Head Trauma
• An Abuser's Tactic: How One Father Used A Child Custody Dispute to Discredit Sexual Abuse
• Joint Custody and Parental Cooperation
• Suffering Suffragettes

psychological fraud

• What's Happening in Our Family Court System and What Should Be Done?
• I Love It When Muthafuckers Google Their Names...
• Failing to Report and Reporting to Fail
• Mothers Can't Win in a Patriarchal System--filled with "Custody Evaluators"
• Vicki Plant Was Appointed Guardian Ad Litem for My Child Sexual Abuse Case
• What the Mother's Act Really Means

parental alienation fraud

• Father's Rights and the War on Women and Children: They Can't Handle the Truth
• Survivors of Abuse React to Their Abusers in a Myriad of Ways
• Fighting PAS In California's Family Court: AB 612
• The DSM: A Sick Joke. How Far Will It Go?
• PAS is Real: Targeting NonCustodial Mothers
• The Infamous Pigg

Sphere: Related Content

on 9/24/2009

Labels: abusers, parental alienation fraud, protective mothers, psychological fraud

Note: Cross posted from [wp angelfury] Battered Mothers Rights - A Human Rights Issue.

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MEDIA MISSES

REFRAMING THE MEDIA’S COVERAGE OF WOMEN

The Mismeasure of Woman

Great op-ed in the New York Times in regard to measuring the status of women in light of the recent Shriver Report. Here’s an excerpt on a topic that really riles me up:

The mismeasure of woman

…The Internet gave everyone a soapbox. The louder, the more offensive, the better.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that exactly at this moment, women began losing ground — and not just in measurable ways, like how many women make partner or get jobs as chief executives.

I’m referring to how we are perceived. The conversation online about women, as about so many other topics, degenerated from silly and snarky to just plain ugly — and it seeped into the mainstream.

Recently, before a TV appearance, I did an Internet search on one of the interviewers so I could learn more about her — and got a full page of results about her breasts.

This was hardly an isolated incident. Whether it’s Keith Olbermann of MSNBC calling Michelle Malkin, the conservative blogger, “a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it,” or Glenn Beck of Fox News suggesting that “ugly women” are probably “progressive as well,” women these days are portrayed as either witches or bimbos, with pretty much no alternatives in between.

I’ve been puzzled by these screeds, which are so at odds with the real achievements documented in the Shriver Report and elsewhere. And then it struck me: Part of the reason we’ve lost our way, part of the reason my generation became complacent, is that many of us have been defining progress for women too narrowly. We’ve focused primarily on numbers at the expense of attitudes.

I’ve “boycotted” radio stations for their lewd comments on breasts, been offended by commercials in their stereotypes of women, been outraged by movies for their sexual exploitation, and, more recently, been left incredulous at TV stations’ bashing of women.  It’s perfectly okay to call women hos, whores, skanks, baby mamas, bitches, etc. on TV. Why is this okay?! Moreover, it’s leeked into print media. My local paper recently referred to women as #@%#$#. WTF is up with that? It’s a newspaper, not a forum for female hatred. Attitudes need to change…and we all know how long that takes. So it’s time to get to work – for the sake of future generations if not our own.

Note: Cross posted from [wp angelfury] A Human Rights Issue-Custodial Justice.

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Most states fail to protect children’s rights

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 900,000 children are determined to have been abused and neglected each year. Most of them will go through court proceedings that will determine their lives and futures. Yet while the state and the allegedly abusive or neglectful parent stands in court with an attorney by their side, the child often stands alone and silent, or is excluded entirely from these critical hearings.

This Second Edition of our groundbreaking report evaluates whether and how each state’s laws provide for the legal representation of abused and neglected children.

Since the First Edition was published in 2007, 33% of states have adopted new legislation in the right to counsel arena.

In addition, many states have engaged in valiant efforts towards legislative reform, litigation, and other advocacy to ensure that these children’s voices are heard and their rights protected in court. The report also indicates that there are many states who have earned failing or near-failing grades that have a long distance to go in improving their representation of children.

This report aims to help present a snapshot of where we are as a nation in the fight to provide counsel to these most vulnerable of our citizens at one of the most frightening and threatening moments in their lives. We hope to promote public awareness of the movement towards right to counsel in this country,and to catalyze state and national legislative reform.

Source: First Star

Read the Report here: A Children’s Right to Counsel

Note: Cross posted from [wp angelfury] I will not SHUT UP , GIVE UP and I WONT go away!!.

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LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

October 26, 2009 in Child Custody Issues, Child Custody for fathers, Children's Rights,Family Courts, activism, child abuse, domestic violence | Tags: abused, abused children,abusers, abusive men, bad fathers, battered women, corruption, Court, court whores,CPS, custody, domestic abuse, family court, family court corruption, government corruption, incest, Judges, maternal deprivation, misogynists, pedophiles, protective parent, Rape, sexual abuse, women haters

F**** YOU CPS

EVEN IF CPS HASN’T PROTECTED YOU DEAR DAUGHTER….THERE IS HOPE

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2130034

B.C. incest victim awarded $600,000 judgment

Keith Fraser, Canwest News Service

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

A 19-year-old Victoria woman who suffered horrific sex assaults at the hands of her father has been awarded nearly $600,000 in damages.

The girl, identified only as C.C.B. in a B.C. Supreme Court ruling, sued her father, identified only as I.B., over sex assaults that occurred while she was between the ages of about five and nine years old.

The crimes were reported to police in 1999 and after a 19-day criminal trial, I.B. was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. He was released from prison in 2008, but for the civil lawsuit he chose not to appear or be represented by a lawyer.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Victoria Gray concluded that the victim suffers from an anxiety disorder, depression and intrusive thoughts about the abuse, lack of trust in others and low self-esteem and educational underachievement.

The judge said the plaintiff was entitled to a “significant” award of damages because of the severity of the abuse and the many aggravating factors.

“The defendant was the plaintiff’s natural father and sole custodial parent, and in a relationship of trust,” said the judge. “The plaintiff had little support from anyone else, because the defendant kept her from school and insisted that she spend time with him, and as a result the plaintiff was extremely vulnerable.”

The plaintiff was awarded $250,000 for pain and suffering, $300,000 for future earning capacity and $41,800 for cost of future care. Though the defendant did not appear at trial, his father recently passed away and the judge said the inheritance is available to be applied to the judgment.

Canwest News Service

Read more:http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2130034#ixzz0UzzwrNPU

Note: Cross posted from [wp angelfury] A Human Rights Issue-Custodial Justice.

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BELIEVE WOMEN

MEDIA MISSES

REFRAMING THE MEDIA’S COVERAGE OF WOMEN

When I attended John Jay College’s femicide conference last year, the presenters said we could prevent femicides by responding to women’s fear or threat levels. Great, I thought, now how do we get people to believe them?

Women’s claims of abuse and fear are often disbelieved or worse, perceived as acts of vengeance towards their partners.

Here’s one of many articles on a woman’s plea for protection. They were ignored. The result? She was trapped inside a geographical prison, disbelieved, forced to go into counseling with her aggressor, killed (along with her mother)…

Three people are now dead. The ex-husband killed himself and left their 2-year-old orphaned.

These senseless deaths could have been prevented.

Woman wanted to flee with son before apparent murder-suicide

A Peoria mother whose body was found Friday had recently tried to leave Arizona after receiving threats from her apparent slayer, but a judge denied her request, court records show. Two weeks before she was killed, Dawn Axsom pleaded with Judge Jose Padilla of Maricopa County Superior Court to let her leave Arizona with her son because she feared Gabriel Schwartz, the toddler’s father, would harm her or their boy. Padilla denied the 26-year-old’s request and ordered the pair to attend parental counseling together. Axsom’s body was found in her Peoria residence Friday. Police also found the bodies of Schwartz, 28, and Lisa Braden, 56, Axsom’s mother. Schwartz is suspected of shooting and killing both women before turning the gun on himself, Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef said Monday. Tellef said the violence likely began in the downstairs kitchen, where Schwartz shot Braden. Then, Schwartz went upstairs, shooting Axsom in the master bathroom and killing himself in a bedroom. Police discovered the grisly scene at about 10 a.m. Friday after Axsom didn’t show up for work and a friend and the friend’s mother went to the home, located in the 7400 block of West Sierra Street, to check on her. When the friend knocked on the door, she heard Axsom and Schwartz’s nearly 2-year-old boy crying upstairs. The woman called police, who arrived and found the child unharmed inside his crib. “When the officer took the baby outside, he covered (the child’s) eyes so he couldn’t see anything,” Tellef said, recounting the scene. Friends and co-workers who gathered outside Axsom’s residence Friday said she was having ongoing custody problems with Schwartz and expressed frustration that the court system wouldn’t let her leave Arizona when she knew Schwartz might harm her. Court records show Padilla granted Axsom a protective order against Schwartz four days before the Oct. 6 hearing where he ordered her to attend parental counseling with him and denied her request to relocate to Maryland with the pair’s son. Axsom’s son was placed into the custody of state Child Protective Services.

PUBLISHED IN:

CUSTODY ISSUES FALSE ALLEGATIONS FAMILY COURT FEMICIDE MURDER-SUICIDE UNCATEGORIZED DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Note: Cross posted from [wp angelfury] A Human Rights Issue-Custodial Justice.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/28/2669245.htm

To politicise it further:

• When John Howard was Prime Minister, a presumption was added to Australia’s Family Law Act as to equal shared parental responsibility- which in turn led to a consideration of shared care. The friendly parent concept was also adopted. There was a perception that John Howard was sympathetic to some conservative men.
• Since the election of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, there has been an increase in funding (and public statements from Rudd down) for domestic violence initiatives.
• Rudd’s government has announced several reviews of family law and domestic violence, in part prompted by 3 year old Darcey Freeman being thrown to her death by her father within a day or two of orders being made in the Family Court.
• One of those reviews is being undertaken by Richard Chisholm, an academic and former Family Court judge who wrote a seminal judgment about power and control and how DV can impact on kids even when it does not occur in their presence. Chisholm was the co-author with McIntosh of research here about why generally shared care does not work. The men rights movement here is furious about his appointment.

Shared parenting 'hurting children'

By Ticky Fullerton for Lateline

New research claims children in high-conflict families are suffering under shared care arrangements (Reuters: John Kolesidis, file photo)

• Video: Shared care system under family law spotlight (Lateline)

The Federal Government is under growing pressure to change its shared parenting legislation, with a former judge criticising the laws for not working in the interests of the child.

Three years ago the Howard government re-wrote Australia's family laws. The reforms championed shared care for children in separated families, based on the idea that most were better off spending as much time with each parent as possible.

But new research commissioned by the federal Attorney-General's office has found that children in high-conflict families do not like shared care.

The children also had higher rates of hyperactivity than children who had a stable home base with one of their parents.

Researcher, Doctor Jennifer McIntosh from Family Transitions, looked at children's development in 130 high-conflict families, some of whom went to court.

Dr McIntosh says children in shared care are more troubled, distressed and anxious than children who have more flexible arrangements.

"The children in rigid arrangements - that tended to be court ordered - weren't doing very well four years ago. However, what we've been able to demonstrate is that the care arrangement hasn't helped," Dr McIntosh said.

"In fact these children have become more distressed over time."

The most controversial finding of the research questions a cornerstone of the shared parenting laws - more time for fathers with their kids.

"We found that there isn't, in this group, a linear relationship between how much time children were spending with their fathers and the quality of that relationship according to the children," Dr McIntosh said.

"In fact, the thing that predicted good relationship with father four years down the track wasn't time, it was a good relationship four years ago."

The study did not look at the thousands of straightforward separations, where mediation ensures flexible shared care that may work for children.

Critics

Professor Alastair Nicholson, who spent 16 years as chief justice of the family court, is one of the critics of the current laws.

"The problem with it is it treats children as objects, rather than as people. What it's really saying is not much about the desires, the needs, the interests of the child," Professor Nicholson said.

"What it's talking about are the desires and the needs and the interests of the parents."

Last year 15 per cent of litigated cases and almost 20 per cent of settled cases awarded 50/50 equal time. Many more agreed to shared care at some level.

"I think it raised the expectation of fathers considerably and I think it also created an expectation amongst mothers that they should agree to equal sharing," Professor Nicholson said.

Tim Carmody QC spent two years as a Family Court judge under the new laws and found his discretion cut back by the presumption of shared care.

"What the 2006 reforms did was make a grey area, which was hard enough, into black and white. It was trying to make motherhood sentiments into legally enforceable rules and codify the behaviour of parents," he said.

"The best interests of the children became something different under the legislation because it started from the assumed fact, in most cases, that the more time children spend with both parents the better. That should have been a conclusion, not a beginning."

Mr Carmody resigned as a judge in 2008 and is now back at the bar.

"I can't deny that I found it difficult as a judge to apply the law, which is a judge's job, when to me it had so many deficits and the government or the Parliament wasn't really looking at its deficiencies," he said.

The current Chief Justice of the Family Court, The Honourable Diana Bryant, says everyone involved is criticised but it is a difficult job done under pressure.

"When something occasionally terrible happens to a child I can assure you that everybody feels it very much," she said.

"Children have very different needs at different ages and stages and I think that's pretty important. Fortunately, I think the people who are doing mediation and the family relationship centres have a reasonable understanding of that sort of research.

"I think that it's quality of the relationship that's important, not the quantity. And one of the unfortunate effects, I think, of the 2006 legislation has been that it's focused people very much on time. You know, they want equal time and it's taken the focus away, I think, from what's best for the child."

Dads the big winners

The 2006 shared parenting laws require judges to apply a presumption of shared parental responsibility, except where violence or abuse is an issue.

What is more, the court is obliged to consider parents also share equal time with their children if at all possible.

Intense lobbying from fathers' groups helped deliver the parenting laws.

But pressure for change has been building from women's groups and in the print media with tales of what appear to be harsh rulings against mothers. Some of the worst involve relocation of children.

In one case a mother was left little choice but to stay in a remote mining town in a caravan, or lose care of her daughter, despite her family support base being Sydney.

Media reports like that one have angered some academics and fathers' groups.

Shared Parenting Council president Michael Green QC says often people are not made aware of the full story.

"My concern with the stories is that most often it gives us only a disappointed or a very concerned mother's view, not the father's view, and more seriously, not the objective judgment of the magistrate or the judge who heard all the evidence and then made a decision, the decision which is now being criticised," he said.

"One of the most scurrilous things levelled against our judicial figures is that they are deliberately placing children in situations of violence or situations that are dangerous."

But former chief justice Professor Alastair Nicholson disagrees. He not only believes the media reports reflect a disturbing trend, but that the laws now put children at risk.

"I think there's a risk that violence may be overlooked in the quest for shared-parenting responsibility. I think that's one of the problems about the legislation, yes," he said.

"The case is really decided on the papers and I think there's a tendency there, not to ignore violence, but to be a little sceptical about it, particularly if there's no history or background that suggests the substance to it, such as Magistrates Court orders and so on."

Fathers' groups and womens' groups both claim the high ground on research to back their cause, but if Dr McIntosh's research is replicated in bigger numbers, it will be potent ammunition for those seeking change.

Expect resistance, though, from people like Michael Green, who worked so hard for the shared parenting laws.

"We'd lose, again, a whole generation of separated children, in terms of their really healthy relationships with not only their fathers but their mothers too," he said.

"And I know that separated groups, fathers' groups in particular, shared parenting groups, can conjure up over a million votes. And that's something that I think the Government will take into account."

Mr Green says the previous laws were harmful to the relationship between the children and their father because it was based on too little time.

"It follows as night follows day that time is required for a good relationship. You can't do it in a weekend every fortnight," he said.

The Federal Government has commissioned another two reviews into shared parenting, which are due by the end of the year.

Tags: community-and-society, family-and-children, divorce, law-crime-and-justice, family-law,australia

Note: Cross posted from [wp angelfury] A Human Rights Issue-Custodial Justice.

Permalink

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/28/2669245.htm

To politicise it further:

• When John Howard was Prime Minister, a presumption was added to Australia’s Family Law Act as to equal shared parental responsibility- which in turn led to a consideration of shared care. The friendly parent concept was also adopted. There was a perception that John Howard was sympathetic to some conservative men.
• Since the election of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, there has been an increase in funding (and public statements from Rudd down) for domestic violence initiatives.
• Rudd’s government has announced several reviews of family law and domestic violence, in part prompted by 3 year old Darcey Freeman being thrown to her death by her father within a day or two of orders being made in the Family Court.
• One of those reviews is being undertaken by Richard Chisholm, an academic and former Family Court judge who wrote a seminal judgment about power and control and how DV can impact on kids even when it does not occur in their presence. Chisholm was the co-author with McIntosh of research here about why generally shared care does not work. The men rights movement here is furious about his appointment.

Shared parenting 'hurting children'

By Ticky Fullerton for Lateline

New research claims children in high-conflict families are suffering under shared care arrangements (Reuters: John Kolesidis, file photo)

• Video: Shared care system under family law spotlight (Lateline)

The Federal Government is under growing pressure to change its shared parenting legislation, with a former judge criticising the laws for not working in the interests of the child.

Three years ago the Howard government re-wrote Australia's family laws. The reforms championed shared care for children in separated families, based on the idea that most were better off spending as much time with each parent as possible.

But new research commissioned by the federal Attorney-General's office has found that children in high-conflict families do not like shared care.

The children also had higher rates of hyperactivity than children who had a stable home base with one of their parents.

Researcher, Doctor Jennifer McIntosh from Family Transitions, looked at children's development in 130 high-conflict families, some of whom went to court.

Dr McIntosh says children in shared care are more troubled, distressed and anxious than children who have more flexible arrangements.

"The children in rigid arrangements - that tended to be court ordered - weren't doing very well four years ago. However, what we've been able to demonstrate is that the care arrangement hasn't helped," Dr McIntosh said.

"In fact these children have become more distressed over time."

The most controversial finding of the research questions a cornerstone of the shared parenting laws - more time for fathers with their kids.

"We found that there isn't, in this group, a linear relationship between how much time children were spending with their fathers and the quality of that relationship according to the children," Dr McIntosh said.

"In fact, the thing that predicted good relationship with father four years down the track wasn't time, it was a good relationship four years ago."

The study did not look at the thousands of straightforward separations, where mediation ensures flexible shared care that may work for children.

Critics

Professor Alastair Nicholson, who spent 16 years as chief justice of the family court, is one of the critics of the current laws.

"The problem with it is it treats children as objects, rather than as people. What it's really saying is not much about the desires, the needs, the interests of the child," Professor Nicholson said.

"What it's talking about are the desires and the needs and the interests of the parents."

Last year 15 per cent of litigated cases and almost 20 per cent of settled cases awarded 50/50 equal time. Many more agreed to shared care at some level.

"I think it raised the expectation of fathers considerably and I think it also created an expectation amongst mothers that they should agree to equal sharing," Professor Nicholson said.

Tim Carmody QC spent two years as a Family Court judge under the new laws and found his discretion cut back by the presumption of shared care.

"What the 2006 reforms did was make a grey area, which was hard enough, into black and white. It was trying to make motherhood sentiments into legally enforceable rules and codify the behaviour of parents," he said.

"The best interests of the children became something different under the legislation because it started from the assumed fact, in most cases, that the more time children spend with both parents the better. That should have been a conclusion, not a beginning."

Mr Carmody resigned as a judge in 2008 and is now back at the bar.

"I can't deny that I found it difficult as a judge to apply the law, which is a judge's job, when to me it had so many deficits and the government or the Parliament wasn't really looking at its deficiencies," he said.

The current Chief Justice of the Family Court, The Honourable Diana Bryant, says everyone involved is criticised but it is a difficult job done under pressure.

"When something occasionally terrible happens to a child I can assure you that everybody feels it very much," she said.

"Children have very different needs at different ages and stages and I think that's pretty important. Fortunately, I think the people who are doing mediation and the family relationship centres have a reasonable understanding of that sort of research.

"I think that it's quality of the relationship that's important, not the quantity. And one of the unfortunate effects, I think, of the 2006 legislation has been that it's focused people very much on time. You know, they want equal time and it's taken the focus away, I think, from what's best for the child."

Dads the big winners

The 2006 shared parenting laws require judges to apply a presumption of shared parental responsibility, except where violence or abuse is an issue.

What is more, the court is obliged to consider parents also share equal time with their children if at all possible.

Intense lobbying from fathers' groups helped deliver the parenting laws.

But pressure for change has been building from women's groups and in the print media with tales of what appear to be harsh rulings against mothers. Some of the worst involve relocation of children.

In one case a mother was left little choice but to stay in a remote mining town in a caravan, or lose care of her daughter, despite her family support base being Sydney.

Media reports like that one have angered some academics and fathers' groups.

Shared Parenting Council president Michael Green QC says often people are not made aware of the full story.

"My concern with the stories is that most often it gives us only a disappointed or a very concerned mother's view, not the father's view, and more seriously, not the objective judgment of the magistrate or the judge who heard all the evidence and then made a decision, the decision which is now being criticised," he said.

"One of the most scurrilous things levelled against our judicial figures is that they are deliberately placing children in situations of violence or situations that are dangerous."

But former chief justice Professor Alastair Nicholson disagrees. He not only believes the media reports reflect a disturbing trend, but that the laws now put children at risk.

"I think there's a risk that violence may be overlooked in the quest for shared-parenting responsibility. I think that's one of the problems about the legislation, yes," he said.

"The case is really decided on the papers and I think there's a tendency there, not to ignore violence, but to be a little sceptical about it, particularly if there's no history or background that suggests the substance to it, such as Magistrates Court orders and so on."

Fathers' groups and womens' groups both claim the high ground on research to back their cause, but if Dr McIntosh's research is replicated in bigger numbers, it will be potent ammunition for those seeking change.

Expect resistance, though, from people like Michael Green, who worked so hard for the shared parenting laws.

"We'd lose, again, a whole generation of separated children, in terms of their really healthy relationships with not only their fathers but their mothers too," he said.

"And I know that separated groups, fathers' groups in particular, shared parenting groups, can conjure up over a million votes. And that's something that I think the Government will take into account."

Mr Green says the previous laws were harmful to the relationship between the children and their father because it was based on too little time.

"It follows as night follows day that time is required for a good relationship. You can't do it in a weekend every fortnight," he said.

The Federal Government has commissioned another two reviews into shared parenting, which are due by the end of the year.

Tags: community-and-society, family-and-children, divorce, law-crime-and-justice, family-law,australia

Note: Cross posted from [wp angelfury] A Human Rights Issue-Custodial Justice.

Permalink

Family Courts Betray “Best Interests of the Child” and Award Child Custody to Abusive Fathers

Filed under: Best interest of the child, Child Abuse, Child Custody, Child Custody Battle, Child Custody Issues, Child Custody Mediation, Child Custody for mothers, Child custody for fathers, Children and Domestic Violence, Children who witness abuse, Children's rights, Coparenting, Corrupt Judges, Corrupt Lawyers, Domestic Abuse, Domestic Violence, Dr. Richard Gardner, Family Court Reform, Family Courts, Family Rights, Fathers Rights, Getting screwed by the Family Courts, Legal abuse, Non-custodial Mothers, Noncustodial Mothers, Parental Alienation Syndrome, parental alienation — justice4mothers @ 8:16 pm

From Women’s enews:

Biased Family Court System Hurts Mothers

By Garland Waller

WEnews contributor

Behind closed doors of the family court system, thousands of women each year lose child custody to violent men who beat and abuse mothers and children. The writer says family courts are not family-friendly and betray the best interests of the child.

(WOMENSENEWS)–Studies show that in approximately 70 percent of challenged cases, battering parents have been able to convince authorities during custody battles that their victim is unfit or undeserving of sole custody, according to a recent report published by the American Judges Foundation.

That statement would have once shocked me, but no more. Nor am I surprised when I read that a family court judge has awarded custody of a 3-year-old girl to the father who has violently beaten her mother. I do not even lift an eyebrow when a 2-year-old boy, who comes home from unsupervised visitation with his dad, has a diaper filled with his own rectal blood and that same child is later turned over to his father on a full-time basis. And when a mother is thrown into jail, denied the right to ever see her children again, because she brought up the issue of child abuse in a family court, I’m sickened, but not shocked.

These injustices are commonplace today in the closed-door family court system. These courts often claim to operate in a manner consistent with the “best interests of the child.” In practice this often means that a judge, often a male judge, biased and imperious, defines that phrase. These judges decide, time and time again, when a woman raises the allegation of sexual abuse in a custody dispute, that it is she who will lose her children forever.

I used to think that the family court system was basically fair. That was before my childhood friend, Diane Hofheimer, asked me to consider doing a documentary on the family courts. She had taught herself the law so that she could work with her attorney husband, Charlie Hofheimer, in their Virginia law practice.

Thousands of Mothers Lose Their Children to Abusive Fathers

Representing only women in divorce and custody cases, Diane and Charlie began my education with one grisly case. I thought it was a fluke, but I agreed to look at some of the legal documents. And so began my journey into the dark world of family courts.

What I learned was that thousands of women are losing custody of their children to men with histories of violence and sexual abuse. Sure, these cases are complicated, but it doesn’t take a legal genius to figure out that it’s not good for kids to watch daddy break mommy’s jaw. Research shows a high correlation between domestic violence and child sexual abuse.”We have created a system that purports to be a gatekeeper–keeping victims from victimizers–but the system is really the welcome mat for victimizers to have access to the victims,” says Richard Ducote, a nationally recognized child advocate and attorney. He adds that there has been virtually no change in the process during the past two decades.

In fact, a pilot study in the early 1990s by the California Protective Parent Association and Mothers of Lost Children found that 91 percent of fathers who were identified by their children as perpetrators of sexual abuse received full or partial unsupervised custody of the children and that in 54 percent of cases the non-abusing mother was placed on supervised visitation.

One primary reason for what many consider a disastrous outcome, Ducote and other experts say, is the popularity of the theories of Dr. Richard Gardner, whose ideas are apparently more persuasive to judges than the testimony of battered women and victimized children.

Gardner’s brainchild is Parental Alienation Syndrome. This is the name given for the practice of one parent saying disparaging things about the other parent in an attempt to alienate the child from the ex-spouse. This so-called syndrome is based on anecdotal evidence. Gardner’s books on the subject are self-published, something that should give judges and experts pause, even though he does look good on paper.

He’s a professor at Columbia Medical School and has been publishing papers for two decades. Fathers’ rights groups love him.

Not addressed by Dr. Gardner and his adherents are what a mother should say to a child raped by her father. They merely discount all such allegations as examples of parental alienation syndrome, or some variation of it under a different name such as SAID (Sexual Allegations in Divorce) Syndrome, Malicious Mother Syndrome or some other fabricated condition.

These experts are certainly free to believe whatever they wish to, but much to the harm of thousands of children and their caring, protective parents, these ideas have been accepted by personnel in most of the family courts in the country: the judges, court-appointed lawyers charged with protecting the child’s interests, and custody evaluators such as psychologists and social workers.

In essentially every case in which courts place children with abusers, despite substantial evidence of sexual abuse or domestic violence and no evidence of fabrication on the protecting parent’s part, it is the parental alienation syndrome that is used by the judge, the evaluator or the child’s lawyer to ignore and discount the abuse evidence and to wrongfully construe all of the child’s symptoms as evidence of alienation.
Parental Alienation Syndrome Used to Wrongly Blame Mothers

My colleague Hofheimer is convinced that the so-called syndrome is to psychology what voodoo is to surgery.

“What would a good mother do,” I asked Dr. Gardner two years ago when interviewing him for the documentary, “if her child told her of sexual abuse by his or her father.”

His answer: “What would she say? Don’t you say that about your father. If you do, I’ll beat you.”

That’s on tape and I have a signed release.

In researching my documentary, I have met many honest, caring and courageous mothers who, for speaking the truth, have been publicly called crazy, hysterical and delusional, and labeled with all kinds of pseudo-disorders for being strong and for fighting for the safety of their children.

Yet some of them have been nearly broken by the family court system, and the damage to their children is immeasurable. We must act now to begin reforming our family courts.

Garland Waller is an assistant professor in the Television Department at Boston University’s College of Communication. She has produced more than 10 award-winning documentaries.