The Problem
A growing body of research describes custody courts across the country (and globe) refusing to take reports of fathers' abuse and dangerousness seriously and treating mothers who seek to protect their children as lying or pathological. Some courts lack expertise in family abuse, are misled by scientific-sounding labels and tend to focus on the rights of parents at the expense of the protection of children. These dynamics can lead to a punitive attitude toward mothers who report that a father is dangerous while requesting limits on or supervision of his access to a child. In a troubling number of cases, the disregard of such warnings has led to children being murdered by the parent who was alleged to be dangerous and who was given unprotected access to the child. In many other cases, court orders are unwittingly removing children from loving parents to give them to other parents who are subjecting them to ongoing abuse.
References:
Silberg & Dallam (2019). Abusers gaining custody in family courts: A case series of overturned decisions, J. Child Custody 16:2, 140-169
Winstock (2014). Safe Havens or Dangerous Waters? A Phenomenological Study of Abused Women's Experiences in the Family Courts of Ontario, PhD Dissertations. 36.
Jaffe, Crooks & Poisson (2003). Common Misconceptions in Addressing Domestic Violence in Child Custody Disputes, Juv. & Fam. Ct. Jnl, 57-67
Meier (2003). Domestic Violence, Child Custody, and Child Protection: Understanding Judicial Resistance and Imagining the Solutions, 11 Am. U. J. Gender Soc. Pol'y & L. 657-731
"I don’t want to be around my daddy when he’s mad." (child)
"Frankly, this child is afraid of Mr. H." (custody evaluator)
Why Our Work Matters
There was little doubt why the boys were afraid of their father. He had slapped and choked their mother in front of them, viciously sexually assaulted her while they were downstairs, hit his sons, and extensively humiliated his four-year-old son with autism in front of guests at a Christmas party because the boy had wet his pants. Yet, the trial court concluded that the boys were afraid of him because of their mother’s supposedly “alienating” conduct, not his violence and abuse.
Based in part on a conversation he had had with an expert in “parental alienation” at a conference, the judge accused the mother of creating a “revisionist history” about the father’s conduct with the children, found that any harm suffered by the boys was merely “collateral damage” from the wife-abuse, and concluded that their fear of their father was the product of her “conscious” or “unconscious” statements to the children. Accordingly, the court ruled that as soon as the father was released from prison (where he was serving six years for his felony sexual assault of the mother), he should have access to his children, without regard to either their feelings or his attitude. (This decision was reversed on appeal).
This story – without the appellate reversal - is emblematic of the sorts of rulings widely issued by family courts around the country, and indeed, the globe. However, this case was atypical in that the father was in prison, providing the boys with six safe and worry-free years. Most cases of this sort result in orders for immediate contact, or even primary custody, with the parent that children fear. While the majority of family abusers are men, a similar court dynamic has been seen in cases where children report their fear of and psychological abuse by a mother.
Numerous scholars, experts, and survivors have reported and surveyed family courts’ refusals to credit abuse claims by mothers against fathers, and prioritization of fathers’ rights over children’s safety (Conner 2009; Stark et al 2019). The Center’s Study provides empirical data reinforcing these reports of courts’ use of parental alienation to effectuate this denial and these unsafe orders.