“Therapeutic Jurisprudence - The sociological and psychological research on families and child well-being impacts public policy and the issues of child custody in family law. The research frequently is misrepresented, and mis-cited by mental health professionals, lawyers, forensic psychologists and others, as well as interest groups lobbying for laws. http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/child-custody-evaluations.html
Case Managers, Guardians ad Litem; Parenting Coordinators; Custody Evaluators, etc. the various forms of so-called ADR (alternate dispute resolution) practitioners, such as GALs, parenting coordinators, parenting evaluators, forensic psychologists, recommending mediators, special masters, court-ordered therapists, other court-appointed mental health professionals, supervised visitation centers, and other profiteers of "therapeutic jurisprudence", whose methods involve -- intrusion and coercion under the threat of court sanctions, and actual or de facto extra-judicial decision-making, which have multiple things wrong with them, not the least of which is denigration of due process, and the diminution of a publicly observable, regulated, and appealable "rule by law" by substituting the caprice of men and women.
These practices have been promoted as "cures" for ailings of the court system and the litigants in it by self-serving persons who apparently are ignorant, or else just do not care about the harms they cause to children and their parents because they make money from the ideas they promote, churning profit in proceedings that fly in the face of the foundations of our justice system. http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/child-custody-evaluations.html
Also; the majority of 'high conflict' divorce case's are Domestic Violence and or Abusive. Good parents 90% of them never have to go through the above, it is the 10 % the abusive ones or aka "High Conflict" that the above make their living on. Return the Judge back to the Court room, get rid of the non factual 'opinion and belief' of third party $ hand outs who block access to Justice/ e.g. the Judge.”
TOPEKA — The Kansas Court of Appeals is set to hear a child custody case next month that addresses the role of case managers in custody matters in the state.
The case, which is scheduled for a May 15 hearing before the appeals court, involves Karen Williams, who lost full custody of her child in March 2011 after a case manager recommended to the judge that custody go to the child's father. Williams said the decision to separate her from her daughter was made based on confidential conversations between the judge and the case manager.
Williams and her attorney argue that she has a constitutional right to a hearing in which the case manager must present the evidence to back up her custody recommendation and allow Williams to respond to it, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported Monday.
"I've not been allowed due process, and I want a day in court," Williams said.
In Kansas, case managers, who work with parents in "high-conflict" relationships on their visitation schedules and custody, are appointed by judges and aren't required to have a professional license.
"The only qualification currently is that a judge appoints them," said Ron Nelson, a Lenexa lawyer who specializes in family law.
Nelson said the use of case managers has been authorized for about 10 years, and concerns about them overstepping their bounds have mounted due to a lack of clear guidelines about their responsibilities and authority. He said the case management concerns are about non-judicial officers making custody decisions that should be the purview of the courts. .
The Legislature is also considering a bill requiring specific qualifications for case managers. It would restrict judges to appointing only licensed psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors, therapists, social workers or lawyers.
Rep. Joe Patton, R-Topeka, a lawyer who serves on the judiciary conference committee, said he has "mixed feelings" about the bill.
"It's certainly very important to have someone qualified," he said. "It's very possible someone can be qualified without a particular license, but as a general rule we want someone qualified."
Cheryl Powers, the case manager on Williams' case, declined to comment on the Williams brief with the hearing pending. But she said she believes the backlash against case managers is coming from a group of disgruntled lawyers.
"There are certain attorneys that are less than happy with the fact that some of us have quasi-judicial powers without a license," she said. "They're attorneys and don't have that much power. They are not happy with that."
Entire article follows below the excerpts or read here
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
High rates of domestic violence exist in families referred for child custody evaluations. These evaluations can produce potentially harmful outcomes, including the custody of children being awarded to a violent parent, unsupervised or poorly supervised visitation between violent parents and their children, and mediation sessions that increase danger to domestic violence victims. Past research shows that domestic violence is frequently undetected in custody cases or ignored as a significant factor in custody-visitation determinations. Previous research also indicates that violence—and its harmful effects on victims and children—often continues or increases after separation.
Today the family law arena is increasingly identified as needing reform to protect battered women and their children (Goodmark, 2011). Research has documented the ongoing and sometimes escalating dangers faced by victims and their children after they leave violent relationships. Homicidal threats, stalking, and harassment affect as many as 25 to 35 percent of survivors who have left a violent relationship (e.g., Bachman & Saltzman, 1995; Hardesty & Chung, 2006; Tjaden & Thoennes,2000a). In addition, as many as one fourth of battered women report their ex-partners threatened to hurt or kidnap their children (e.g., Liss & Stahly, 1993). Many abusers also use the legal system to maintain contact with and harass their ex-partners (Bancroft & Silverman, 2002).
Domestic abuse survivors and their children may experience serious harm as a result of family court decisions. Offenders may be able to continue their abuse of their ex-partners and children due to unsupervised or poorly supervised visitation arrangements (Neustein & Lesher, 2005; Radford & Hester, 2006); sole or joint custody of children may be awarded to a violent or potentially violent parent rather than a non-violent one; and mediation may be recommended or mandated in a way that compromises victims’ rights or places them in more danger. Tragically, in some cases post-separation contacts end in the homicide of a mother and/or her children.(Saunders, 2009; Sheeran & Hampton, 1999). Ironically, battered mothers’ attempts to protect their children may be used against them in custody and visitation decisions.
One widely cited educational booklet from the American Judges Association states that, “studies show that batterers have been able to convince authorities that the victim is unfit or undeserving of sole custody in approximately 70% of challenged cases” (American Judges Association, n.d., p. 5)
Gender Bias in the Courts
Battered women are at higher risk of negative custody-visitation outcomes due to gender bias by courts, as documented by many federal, state, and local commissions that have studied such bias since the 1980s (e.g., Abrams & Greaney, 1989; Czapanskiy, 1993; Danforth & Welling, 1996; Dragiewicz, 2010; Meier, 2003; Zorza, 1996)4. Negative stereotypes about women seem to encourage judges to disbelieve women’s allegations about child abuse (Danforth & Welling, 1996; Zorza, 1996). A lack of understanding about domestic violence also leads judges to accuse victims of lying, blaming victims for the violence, and trivializing the violence (Abrams & Greaney, 1989;Maryland Special Joint Committee on Gender Bias, 1989).
Gender bias is frequently uncovered in custody disputes (Rosen & Etlin, 1996) and often leads to mistrust of women—in particular to the belief that they make false allegations of child abuse and domestic violence. Dragiewicz (2010) provides a comprehensive summary of gender bias reports pertaining to custody decisions. In addition to the tendency to disbelieve or minimize women’s reports of abuse, or to disregard evidence for it, Dragiewicz also describes other problems uncovered during investigations. These include mothers being punished for reporting abuse.
Half of men who batter also physically abuse their children (Straus, 1983.
Beliefs About False Allegations of Domestic Violence in Relation to Other Beliefs and Recommendations
Among evaluators, the belief that allegations of domestic violence are usually false was part of a constellation of beliefs, including beliefs that false allegations of child abuse and parental alienation by DV survivors are common. DV educators need to provide accurate information on: the rates and nature of false allegations and alienation; the ways in which survivors are reluctant to co-parent out of fear of future harm; the mental health consequences of DV; and the importance of understanding coercive-controlling forms of violence. In addition, the significant relationships between beliefs about custody and broader beliefs about patriarchal norms, justice, and social dominance suggest links to deeper values. Professional educators can use value awareness exercises that may help change beliefs and behavior. These recommendations apply to judges as well, since their beliefs about DV and custody were significantly related to the outcomes recommended in the case vignette.
Friendly Parent Statutes
The friendly-parent standard works against survivors because any concerns they voice about father-child contact or safety for themselves are usually interpreted as a lack of cooperation (Zorza, 1996).
Survivors are therefore placed in a no-win situation: If they do not report abuse, then protections for them and solid grounds for custody are not available; yet reporting the abuse may be viewed as raising false allegations in order to gain advantage in divorce proceedings (Dore, 2004). Research shows that parents who raise concerns about child sexual abuse can be severely sanctioned for doing so (Faller & DeVoe, 1995). The sanctions include loss of custody to the alleged offender, restricted visitation, and court orders not to report further abuse or take the child to a therapist (Faller & DeVoe, 1995; Neustein & Goetting, 1999; Neustein & Lesher, 2005; Voices of Women, 2008). In practice, friendly-parent provisions, together with statutes presuming joint custody, tend to override presumptions against awarding joint legal custody with the abuser (Morrill, Dai, Dunn, Sung, & Smith, 2005).
Further compounding victims’ experiences are contradictory messages from criminal courts, family courts, child protection investigations, and visitation services (Hester, 2009). For example, criminal courts support victims’ testimony about the abuse, but in family court the same testimony might be interpreted as non-cooperation. To overcome these inconsistencies some states have introduced integrated DV courts (Aldrich & Kluger, 2010).
Labeling Survivors as “Alienating Parents”
Similar to the emphasis on cooperative parenting, use of the label “parent-alienation syndrome” (Gardner, 1998) or, more recently, “parental-alienation disorder” (Bernet, 2008; Bernet, von Boch-Galhau, Baker, & Morrison, 2010) can also place battered women in a no-win situation.
Battered mothers are vulnerable to these labels when they make formal child abuse allegations or raise concerns about the possible abuse of the children by an ex-partner. Many child abuse professionals believe that mothers coach their children to make false allegations in contested custody disputes (Faller, 2007).
Practitioners who apply parent-alienation syndrome (PAS) or parent-alienation disorder formulations tend to automatically label a parent as an “alienator” without a thorough investigation of the allegations (Brown, Frederico, Hewitt, & Sheehan, 2000; Brown, Frederico, Hewitt, & Sheehan, 2001; Meier, 2009). As a result, battered mothers may be viewed as both pathological and abusive.
Fathers’ Rights Groups
The influence of fathers’ rights groups on evaluators and judges is unclear outside of anecdotal accounts (Kurth, 2010). Some types of groups lobby for the presumption of joint custody and co-parenting and doubt the validity of most domestic violence allegations(Dragiewicz, 2008;Williams, Boggess, & Carter, 2004). For example, the National Fathers’ Resource Center (NFRC), along with Fathers for Equal Rights, “demands that society acknowledge that false claims of Domestic Violence are used to gain unfair advantages in custody and divorce cases” (NFRC, 2006). They further state:
Fathers’ organizations now estimate that up to 80% of domestic violence allegations against men are false allegations. Since society offers women so many perks for claiming that they are victims of DV (we call these perks “warm milk and cookies”), false or staged DV allegations now appear to be even more frequent in family court cases than false sex abuse allegations. . . . Simply stated, women know, and are often advised by their attorneys, that if they want to get custody of the children, they had better try to nail dad with some sort of domestic violence accusation (NFRC, 2006).
Underlying the patriarchal beliefs and victim blaming are likely to be deeper, “core” beliefs (i.e. general, value-laden beliefs) about justice and equality. For example, the belief that the world is basically a just place has been related to various forms of victim blaming or denigration. It asserts that good things can happen only to good people and bad things can happen only to bad people (Rubin & Peplau, 1975). Likewise, holding a basic belief that hierarchies are an inherent part of society (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) and having inequality as a core value (Ball-Rokeach, 1976) are related to beliefs supporting gender inequality.
Reevaluating the Evaluators: Rethinking the Assumptions of Therapeutic Jurisprudence in the Family Courts
There is an evolving and worsening mess in the systems and procedures currently in place to determine child custody and perform child custody evaluations when parents disagree.
This article discusses the minimum disclosures every child custody evaluator (also known as "parenting evaluator" or "best interests" guardian ad litem or GAL) [1], or parenting coordinator (herein called a "mental health professional" or "MHP") [2a] should be required to make, responding satisfactorily and in full, before being appointed in any family law case to do a child custody evaluation -- in fact before doing anything beyond answering a list of limited, detailed, specific, and narrowly-crafted questions the answers to which are directly within the MHP's field of proved expertise. This format is being used to help illustrate a problem, and with another purpose in mind. That purpose is to call for a revolt altogether against the notion of "therapeutic jurisprudence" -- which has been proved to do little to benefit children, much to benefit the divorce industry, much to complicate and pervert our family laws, much to erode fundamental rights and liberties, and much to harm the families who become trapped in the system. There are many problems, of course. But they are symptoms. Step one is to get the agent of most of them out of our family courts. The Emperor has no clothes.
There have been many calls for reform [2b], but for the most part, while they are admirable and well-documented intentions, they miss the boat; while they identify various problems and propose fixes in the system, they fail to identify and address the core reason the system is sick. Thus the proposals seek to treat only symptoms while failing to apply a cure to eliminate the disease.
Contrary to the public perception, and the perception that those seeking lucrative appointments in the court system wish to convey, a degree in some field of mental health does not qualify the individual to perform work that consists of open-ended investigating, evaluating, recommending, or decision-making about other persons' families and children. [3] What originally commenced, and was thought to be a good idea as a judge's assigment of fairly narrow tasks designed to streamline fact-finding and protect individuals' therapy records [4] (e.g. asking a social worker to do a home study, e.g. asking a psychologist to opine on the possible effects on functioning of a party's known or suspected personality disorder or state of depression when mental health already is at issue) has burgeoned into a free-for-all in which a panoply of MHPs make work and involve themselves in the family court system at enormous cost and detriment to the parties with expensive litigation-exacerbating processes, trials-within-trials, experts and counter-experts, and inevitable referrals to additional MHPs (often cronies) for all manner of alternate dispute resolutions and sometimes endless (and often utterly unproven) therapies. [5]
(1) Do you have a law degree or previous extensive experience as a law enforcement officer doing investigations, and if not, what qualifies you to do this work?
The milieu in which the MHP will be working is the justice system, in which litigants have certain rights of due process [6] and in which decisions made in connection with one issue can materially affect a litigant's position as to seemingly unrelated issues in the same case, and in which milieu, inter alia, centuries of jurisprudence have honed certain concepts involving what constitutes reliable evidence, burdens of proof, and other legal aspects bearing on the ultimate resolution of a case. [7] Sociologists, psychologists, and even real scientists by reason of their formal training tend to have little understanding of or appreciation for these legal concepts. [8]
The sociological and psychological research on families and child well-being impacts public policy and the issues of child custody in family law. The research frequently is misrepresented, and mis-cited by mental health professionals, lawyers, forensic psychologists and others, as well as interest groups lobbying for laws. Also review the sections pertaining to the issues impacted by the "therapeutic jurisprudence", such as child custody, parental alienation theory, research pertaining to child development, the subsection for research Myths and Facts in FAMILY LAW, and other family law issues. Also see the subsection on Child Custody in FAMILY LAW.The Therapeutic Jurisprudence index page contains links to recommended off-site locations as well as the on-site articles
Index: Therapeutic Jurisprudence This section of the website contains current public material from on-going research being conducted around the United States and in Canada by various scholars and organizations who are sharing findings, as well as links to articles and off-site locations on the issue of the harmful use of psychology and psychological theories in the family court systems. Therapeutic jurisprudence in the family courts, i.e. a "mental health approach to the law" substitutes the opinions of mental health practitioners for traditional evidence and decision-making procedures. Because these persons actually do not have any kind of "expertise" to opine this way, what originally was thought to be a helpful idea (in this medicalized and psychologized world) has become merely economic opportunism, harming not only the litigants and children in the system as well as the court system itself, but also perverting substantive and procedural law. It is not science, but compensated yenta-ism that has permeated the courts under the pretexts that engineering family affectional relationships is within the ability of mental health "science" practitioners to accomplish, and that this is an appropriate goal of the government, court system, and state police power because children "need" something it has to offer. See additional comments on this index page here. If you are interested in activism, helping with research in your state, or contributing articles or materials on "therapeutic jurisprudence" contact cce-research@argate.net
Social Workers, Visiting programs, batterer so called treatment bullshit TREC --- Safe Visit, Connie Sanchez and all those others who have created job security by protecting bad dad, hating women, and getting kick backs perks and pay offs for spilling the blood of mothers and their children. Horizons Bud Dale, Sherri Keller Shawnee County Courthouse…… and many more.
This category includes the various forms of so-called ADR (alternate dispute resolution) practitioners, such as GALs, parenting coordinators, parenting evaluators, forensic psychologists, recommending mediators, special masters, court-ordered therapists, other court-appointed mental health professionals, supervised visitation centers, and other profiteers of "therapeutic jurisprudence", whose methods involve -- in non-criminal cases -- intrusion and coercion under the threat of court sanctions, and actual or de facto extra-judicial decision-making. This website heavily criticizes all of these practices, which have multiple things wrong with them, not the least of which is denigration of due process, and the diminution of a publicly observable, regulated, and appealable "rule by law" by substituting the caprice of men and women. These practices have been promoted as "cures" for ailings of the court system and the litigants in it by self-serving persons who apparently are ignorant, or else just do not care about the harms they cause to children and their parents because they make money from the ideas they promote, churning profit in proceedings that fly in the face of the foundations of our justice system.
The bulk of these materials are listed in the section on PSYCHOLOGY. Also see the sections on the specific substantive issues, such as child development or parental alienation.
“Therapeutic Jurisprudence - The sociological and psychological research on families and child well-being impacts public policy and the issues of child custody in family law. The research frequently is misrepresented, and mis-cited by mental health professionals, lawyers, forensic psychologists and others, as well as interest groups lobbying for laws. http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/child-custody-evaluations.html
Case Managers, Guardians ad Litem; Parenting Coordinators; Custody Evaluators, etc. the various forms of so-called ADR (alternate dispute resolution) practitioners, such as GALs, parenting coordinators, parenting evaluators, forensic psychologists, recommending mediators, special masters, court-ordered therapists, other court-appointed mental health professionals, supervised visitation centers, and other profiteers of "therapeutic jurisprudence", whose methods involve -- intrusion and coercion under the threat of court sanctions, and actual or de facto extra-judicial decision-making, which have multiple things wrong with them, not the least of which is denigration of due process, and the diminution of a publicly observable, regulated, and appealable "rule by law" by substituting the caprice of men and women.
These practices have been promoted as "cures" for ailings of the court system and the litigants in it by self-serving persons who apparently are ignorant, or else just do not care about the harms they cause to children and their parents because they make money from the ideas they promote, churning profit in proceedings that fly in the face of the foundations of our justice system. http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/child-custody-evaluations.html
Also; the majority of 'high conflict' divorce case's are Domestic Violence and or Abusive. Good parents 90% of them never have to go through the above, it is the 10 % the abusive ones or aka "High Conflict" that the above make their living on. Return the Judge back to the Court room, get rid of the non factual 'opinion and belief' of third party $ hand outs who block access to Justice/ e.g. the Judge.”
TOPEKA — The Kansas Court of Appeals is set to hear a child custody case next month that addresses the role of case managers in custody matters in the state.
The case, which is scheduled for a May 15 hearing before the appeals court, involves Karen Williams, who lost full custody of her child in March 2011 after a case manager recommended to the judge that custody go to the child's father. Williams said the decision to separate her from her daughter was made based on confidential conversations between the judge and the case manager.
Williams and her attorney argue that she has a constitutional right to a hearing in which the case manager must present the evidence to back up her custody recommendation and allow Williams to respond to it, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported Monday.
"I've not been allowed due process, and I want a day in court," Williams said.
In Kansas, case managers, who work with parents in "high-conflict" relationships on their visitation schedules and custody, are appointed by judges and aren't required to have a professional license.
"The only qualification currently is that a judge appoints them," said Ron Nelson, a Lenexa lawyer who specializes in family law.
Nelson said the use of case managers has been authorized for about 10 years, and concerns about them overstepping their bounds have mounted due to a lack of clear guidelines about their responsibilities and authority. He said the case management concerns are about non-judicial officers making custody decisions that should be the purview of the courts. .
The Legislature is also considering a bill requiring specific qualifications for case managers. It would restrict judges to appointing only licensed psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors, therapists, social workers or lawyers.
Rep. Joe Patton, R-Topeka, a lawyer who serves on the judiciary conference committee, said he has "mixed feelings" about the bill.
"It's certainly very important to have someone qualified," he said. "It's very possible someone can be qualified without a particular license, but as a general rule we want someone qualified."
Cheryl Powers, the case manager on Williams' case, declined to comment on the Williams brief with the hearing pending. But she said she believes the backlash against case managers is coming from a group of disgruntled lawyers.
"There are certain attorneys that are less than happy with the fact that some of us have quasi-judicial powers without a license," she said. "They're attorneys and don't have that much power. They are not happy with that."
Entire article follows below the excerpts or read here
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
High rates of domestic violence exist in families referred for child custody evaluations. These evaluations can produce potentially harmful outcomes, including the custody of children being awarded to a violent parent, unsupervised or poorly supervised visitation between violent parents and their children, and mediation sessions that increase danger to domestic violence victims. Past research shows that domestic violence is frequently undetected in custody cases or ignored as a significant factor in custody-visitation determinations. Previous research also indicates that violence—and its harmful effects on victims and children—often continues or increases after separation.
Today the family law arena is increasingly identified as needing reform to protect battered women and their children (Goodmark, 2011). Research has documented the ongoing and sometimes escalating dangers faced by victims and their children after they leave violent relationships. Homicidal threats, stalking, and harassment affect as many as 25 to 35 percent of survivors who have left a violent relationship (e.g., Bachman & Saltzman, 1995; Hardesty & Chung, 2006; Tjaden & Thoennes,2000a). In addition, as many as one fourth of battered women report their ex-partners threatened to hurt or kidnap their children (e.g., Liss & Stahly, 1993). Many abusers also use the legal system to maintain contact with and harass their ex-partners (Bancroft & Silverman, 2002).
Domestic abuse survivors and their children may experience serious harm as a result of family court decisions. Offenders may be able to continue their abuse of their ex-partners and children due to unsupervised or poorly supervised visitation arrangements (Neustein & Lesher, 2005; Radford & Hester, 2006); sole or joint custody of children may be awarded to a violent or potentially violent parent rather than a non-violent one; and mediation may be recommended or mandated in a way that compromises victims’ rights or places them in more danger. Tragically, in some cases post-separation contacts end in the homicide of a mother and/or her children.(Saunders, 2009; Sheeran & Hampton, 1999). Ironically, battered mothers’ attempts to protect their children may be used against them in custody and visitation decisions.
One widely cited educational booklet from the American Judges Association states that, “studies show that batterers have been able to convince authorities that the victim is unfit or undeserving of sole custody in approximately 70% of challenged cases” (American Judges Association, n.d., p. 5)
Gender Bias in the Courts
Battered women are at higher risk of negative custody-visitation outcomes due to gender bias by courts, as documented by many federal, state, and local commissions that have studied such bias since the 1980s (e.g., Abrams & Greaney, 1989; Czapanskiy, 1993; Danforth & Welling, 1996; Dragiewicz, 2010; Meier, 2003; Zorza, 1996)4. Negative stereotypes about women seem to encourage judges to disbelieve women’s allegations about child abuse (Danforth & Welling, 1996; Zorza, 1996). A lack of understanding about domestic violence also leads judges to accuse victims of lying, blaming victims for the violence, and trivializing the violence (Abrams & Greaney, 1989;Maryland Special Joint Committee on Gender Bias, 1989).
Gender bias is frequently uncovered in custody disputes (Rosen & Etlin, 1996) and often leads to mistrust of women—in particular to the belief that they make false allegations of child abuse and domestic violence. Dragiewicz (2010) provides a comprehensive summary of gender bias reports pertaining to custody decisions. In addition to the tendency to disbelieve or minimize women’s reports of abuse, or to disregard evidence for it, Dragiewicz also describes other problems uncovered during investigations. These include mothers being punished for reporting abuse.
Half of men who batter also physically abuse their children (Straus, 1983.
Beliefs About False Allegations of Domestic Violence in Relation to Other Beliefs and Recommendations
Among evaluators, the belief that allegations of domestic violence are usually false was part of a constellation of beliefs, including beliefs that false allegations of child abuse and parental alienation by DV survivors are common. DV educators need to provide accurate information on: the rates and nature of false allegations and alienation; the ways in which survivors are reluctant to co-parent out of fear of future harm; the mental health consequences of DV; and the importance of understanding coercive-controlling forms of violence. In addition, the significant relationships between beliefs about custody and broader beliefs about patriarchal norms, justice, and social dominance suggest links to deeper values. Professional educators can use value awareness exercises that may help change beliefs and behavior. These recommendations apply to judges as well, since their beliefs about DV and custody were significantly related to the outcomes recommended in the case vignette.
Friendly Parent Statutes
The friendly-parent standard works against survivors because any concerns they voice about father-child contact or safety for themselves are usually interpreted as a lack of cooperation (Zorza, 1996).
Survivors are therefore placed in a no-win situation: If they do not report abuse, then protections for them and solid grounds for custody are not available; yet reporting the abuse may be viewed as raising false allegations in order to gain advantage in divorce proceedings (Dore, 2004). Research shows that parents who raise concerns about child sexual abuse can be severely sanctioned for doing so (Faller & DeVoe, 1995). The sanctions include loss of custody to the alleged offender, restricted visitation, and court orders not to report further abuse or take the child to a therapist (Faller & DeVoe, 1995; Neustein & Goetting, 1999; Neustein & Lesher, 2005; Voices of Women, 2008). In practice, friendly-parent provisions, together with statutes presuming joint custody, tend to override presumptions against awarding joint legal custody with the abuser (Morrill, Dai, Dunn, Sung, & Smith, 2005).
Further compounding victims’ experiences are contradictory messages from criminal courts, family courts, child protection investigations, and visitation services (Hester, 2009). For example, criminal courts support victims’ testimony about the abuse, but in family court the same testimony might be interpreted as non-cooperation. To overcome these inconsistencies some states have introduced integrated DV courts (Aldrich & Kluger, 2010).
Labeling Survivors as “Alienating Parents”
Similar to the emphasis on cooperative parenting, use of the label “parent-alienation syndrome” (Gardner, 1998) or, more recently, “parental-alienation disorder” (Bernet, 2008; Bernet, von Boch-Galhau, Baker, & Morrison, 2010) can also place battered women in a no-win situation.
Battered mothers are vulnerable to these labels when they make formal child abuse allegations or raise concerns about the possible abuse of the children by an ex-partner. Many child abuse professionals believe that mothers coach their children to make false allegations in contested custody disputes (Faller, 2007).
Practitioners who apply parent-alienation syndrome (PAS) or parent-alienation disorder formulations tend to automatically label a parent as an “alienator” without a thorough investigation of the allegations (Brown, Frederico, Hewitt, & Sheehan, 2000; Brown, Frederico, Hewitt, & Sheehan, 2001; Meier, 2009). As a result, battered mothers may be viewed as both pathological and abusive.
Fathers’ Rights Groups
The influence of fathers’ rights groups on evaluators and judges is unclear outside of anecdotal accounts (Kurth, 2010). Some types of groups lobby for the presumption of joint custody and co-parenting and doubt the validity of most domestic violence allegations(Dragiewicz, 2008;Williams, Boggess, & Carter, 2004). For example, the National Fathers’ Resource Center (NFRC), along with Fathers for Equal Rights, “demands that society acknowledge that false claims of Domestic Violence are used to gain unfair advantages in custody and divorce cases” (NFRC, 2006). They further state:
Fathers’ organizations now estimate that up to 80% of domestic violence allegations against men are false allegations. Since society offers women so many perks for claiming that they are victims of DV (we call these perks “warm milk and cookies”), false or staged DV allegations now appear to be even more frequent in family court cases than false sex abuse allegations. . . . Simply stated, women know, and are often advised by their attorneys, that if they want to get custody of the children, they had better try to nail dad with some sort of domestic violence accusation (NFRC, 2006).
Underlying the patriarchal beliefs and victim blaming are likely to be deeper, “core” beliefs (i.e. general, value-laden beliefs) about justice and equality. For example, the belief that the world is basically a just place has been related to various forms of victim blaming or denigration. It asserts that good things can happen only to good people and bad things can happen only to bad people (Rubin & Peplau, 1975). Likewise, holding a basic belief that hierarchies are an inherent part of society (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) and having inequality as a core value (Ball-Rokeach, 1976) are related to beliefs supporting gender inequality.
Reevaluating the Evaluators: Rethinking the Assumptions of Therapeutic Jurisprudence in the Family Courts
There is an evolving and worsening mess in the systems and procedures currently in place to determine child custody and perform child custody evaluations when parents disagree.
This article discusses the minimum disclosures every child custody evaluator (also known as "parenting evaluator" or "best interests" guardian ad litem or GAL) [1], or parenting coordinator (herein called a "mental health professional" or "MHP") [2a] should be required to make, responding satisfactorily and in full, before being appointed in any family law case to do a child custody evaluation -- in fact before doing anything beyond answering a list of limited, detailed, specific, and narrowly-crafted questions the answers to which are directly within the MHP's field of proved expertise. This format is being used to help illustrate a problem, and with another purpose in mind. That purpose is to call for a revolt altogether against the notion of "therapeutic jurisprudence" -- which has been proved to do little to benefit children, much to benefit the divorce industry, much to complicate and pervert our family laws, much to erode fundamental rights and liberties, and much to harm the families who become trapped in the system. There are many problems, of course. But they are symptoms. Step one is to get the agent of most of them out of our family courts. The Emperor has no clothes.
There have been many calls for reform [2b], but for the most part, while they are admirable and well-documented intentions, they miss the boat; while they identify various problems and propose fixes in the system, they fail to identify and address the core reason the system is sick. Thus the proposals seek to treat only symptoms while failing to apply a cure to eliminate the disease.
Contrary to the public perception, and the perception that those seeking lucrative appointments in the court system wish to convey, a degree in some field of mental health does not qualify the individual to perform work that consists of open-ended investigating, evaluating, recommending, or decision-making about other persons' families and children. [3] What originally commenced, and was thought to be a good idea as a judge's assigment of fairly narrow tasks designed to streamline fact-finding and protect individuals' therapy records [4] (e.g. asking a social worker to do a home study, e.g. asking a psychologist to opine on the possible effects on functioning of a party's known or suspected personality disorder or state of depression when mental health already is at issue) has burgeoned into a free-for-all in which a panoply of MHPs make work and involve themselves in the family court system at enormous cost and detriment to the parties with expensive litigation-exacerbating processes, trials-within-trials, experts and counter-experts, and inevitable referrals to additional MHPs (often cronies) for all manner of alternate dispute resolutions and sometimes endless (and often utterly unproven) therapies. [5]
(1) Do you have a law degree or previous extensive experience as a law enforcement officer doing investigations, and if not, what qualifies you to do this work?
The milieu in which the MHP will be working is the justice system, in which litigants have certain rights of due process [6] and in which decisions made in connection with one issue can materially affect a litigant's position as to seemingly unrelated issues in the same case, and in which milieu, inter alia, centuries of jurisprudence have honed certain concepts involving what constitutes reliable evidence, burdens of proof, and other legal aspects bearing on the ultimate resolution of a case. [7] Sociologists, psychologists, and even real scientists by reason of their formal training tend to have little understanding of or appreciation for these legal concepts. [8]
The sociological and psychological research on families and child well-being impacts public policy and the issues of child custody in family law. The research frequently is misrepresented, and mis-cited by mental health professionals, lawyers, forensic psychologists and others, as well as interest groups lobbying for laws. Also review the sections pertaining to the issues impacted by the "therapeutic jurisprudence", such as child custody, parental alienation theory, research pertaining to child development, the subsection for research Myths and Facts in FAMILY LAW, and other family law issues. Also see the subsection on Child Custody in FAMILY LAW.The Therapeutic Jurisprudence index page contains links to recommended off-site locations as well as the on-site articles
Index: Therapeutic Jurisprudence This section of the website contains current public material from on-going research being conducted around the United States and in Canada by various scholars and organizations who are sharing findings, as well as links to articles and off-site locations on the issue of the harmful use of psychology and psychological theories in the family court systems. Therapeutic jurisprudence in the family courts, i.e. a "mental health approach to the law" substitutes the opinions of mental health practitioners for traditional evidence and decision-making procedures. Because these persons actually do not have any kind of "expertise" to opine this way, what originally was thought to be a helpful idea (in this medicalized and psychologized world) has become merely economic opportunism, harming not only the litigants and children in the system as well as the court system itself, but also perverting substantive and procedural law. It is not science, but compensated yenta-ism that has permeated the courts under the pretexts that engineering family affectional relationships is within the ability of mental health "science" practitioners to accomplish, and that this is an appropriate goal of the government, court system, and state police power because children "need" something it has to offer. See additional comments on this index page here. If you are interested in activism, helping with research in your state, or contributing articles or materials on "therapeutic jurisprudence" contact cce-research@argate.net
Social Workers, Visiting programs, batterer so called treatment bullshit TREC --- Safe Visit, Connie Sanchez and all those others who have created job security by protecting bad dad, hating women, and getting kick backs perks and pay offs for spilling the blood of mothers and their children. Horizons Bud Dale, Sherri Keller Shawnee County Courthouse…… and many more.
This category includes the various forms of so-called ADR (alternate dispute resolution) practitioners, such as GALs, parenting coordinators, parenting evaluators, forensic psychologists, recommending mediators, special masters, court-ordered therapists, other court-appointed mental health professionals, supervised visitation centers, and other profiteers of "therapeutic jurisprudence", whose methods involve -- in non-criminal cases -- intrusion and coercion under the threat of court sanctions, and actual or de facto extra-judicial decision-making. This website heavily criticizes all of these practices, which have multiple things wrong with them, not the least of which is denigration of due process, and the diminution of a publicly observable, regulated, and appealable "rule by law" by substituting the caprice of men and women. These practices have been promoted as "cures" for ailings of the court system and the litigants in it by self-serving persons who apparently are ignorant, or else just do not care about the harms they cause to children and their parents because they make money from the ideas they promote, churning profit in proceedings that fly in the face of the foundations of our justice system.
The bulk of these materials are listed in the section on PSYCHOLOGY. Also see the sections on the specific substantive issues, such as child development or parental alienation.
