It is Time to Protect Our Children “At Risk”

by

Elize T. St. Charles, MBA, CEO

Our Children Our Future Charitable Foundation

“Mommie, No! No! Please I don’t want to go!” wailed Sam as he huddled in the corner of his bedroom.  The blinds were half open and the morning sun was shining in.  His face was striped with terror. 

“I won’t go! You can’t make me!  Mommie, please.  Please tell him.  Tell him I don’t want to be with him.  No!”  Then Sam let out a blood-curdling screech that turned into convulsive sobbing.  He mumbled as he lay scattered on the floor, “No, no, noooooo.  He’s bad.  I hate him.  I want to stay here.  You won’t make me go.  Not this time.  Promise.  Promise.  You won’t make me go see him.  I don’t like his home.  It is yechy.  Please Mommie!  Please!”

How many scenes like this I have had to endure, I couldn’t begin to count.  Ever since Sam was three he would scream and yell, throw tantrums, cry for hours until he was exhausted and as limp as a rag.  That is how I have delivered him to his father – for the past five years.

The weekend is a living hell for me as I try unsuccessfully to block out the thoughts of Sam and Benny, his father.  I pray for hours that Benny won’t touch Sam this time.  I pray, “Please God, let my baby sleep peacefully tonight.”  My prayers drone on for hours.  Monday morning arrives and I go to work in a haze.  I can think of nothing except picking up Sam after school, making sure he is O.K.

A few streets over, Sharon and her teenage daughters, Elizabeth and Janie, are engaged in a heated conversation:

Elizabeth:                      No way, Mom.  Who does he think he is?

Sharon:                         He is your father.

Elizabeth:                      Who gives a shit!  He beat you to a pulp and now it’s my turn.

Janie:                            Mom, he does.  He swats her whenever she raises her head.  You wouldn’t believe it!  She doesn’t even need to say anything!

Sharon:                         What do you mean, I wouldn’t believe it!  You know full well I believe you, honey!

Elizabeth (yelling):         Then do something! 

Janie:                            Mom, you’ve got to do something!  When I go over there, I lock myself in my room.  I hate it!  I can’t go out! I can’t even talk with my friends.

Elizabeth:                      He won’t let us use the phone!

Sharon(voice softening):I know sweetie.

Elizabeth (crying):          Jamie tried to call 911 last time when he was shoving me and yelling at me, like calling me a slut.  He called me a bitch, just like you!

Sharon:                         Well, you know it isn’t true!  And, you know nothing he says is real!

Janie:                            But Mom, you’ve got to stop it!  We won’t go!  We won’t go over there anymore.  I can’t stand it!  I won’t go back!  I refuse!

Elizabeth (adamantly):    So do I!

Janie:                            You can’t force us to go back!

Elizabeth:                      We won’t!

Janie:                            Not anymore!

Elizabeth:                      No more!  No more, Mom!

Sharon (in tears, now):   Sweethearts, you know I understand.  Please listen to me.  You know I can’t do anything.  I keep trying!  It’s no use.  You heard the judge last time.  He won’t even let me into court again!

Elizabeth (pleading):       Can’t you talk with him?  Write him a letter.  Anything, Mom!  I can’t live at Dad’s anymore!

Mother:                         I’ll end up in jail.  You know the judge threatened to put me in jail if you and Janie were even 5 minutes late to return to your father’s house.

Janie (weeping):            I don’t want you to go to jail, Mom!  Mummy, what are we going to do?  But, I’m not going back over there!

Elizabeth (defiantly):      They won’t put you in jail.  You’ve done nothing!  I’m NOT going either!  I like living, thanks!  He’s not going to ruin my life!

And so the conversation went for another couple of hours.  Sharon ended up in jail for three months for contempt of court.  The judge held her responsible for her teenage daughters’ refusal to return to the custody of their father – a batterer.

            I am afraid you might find these scenes surreal.  Certainly not realistic.  Certainly not depictions of what is actually going on here in America!  Battered women, abused children….. there are laws in America which protect them, aren’t there?

            Well, indeed, there surely are.  But, the protection of victims of family violence and their children depends largely upon the discretion of a family court judge.  Does he or she understand the tactics of power and control used by batterers and child abusers? Will he or she allow evidence of abuse to be presented to the court?  Will he or she apply the laws to their fullest extent or at all?  Does he or she have the will to protect the victims of family violence?

            It is the opinion of some professionals that there are no laws in America’s family courts, only judicial discretion.

            To quote the renown Louisiana attorney, Richard Ducote, in Exposé: The Failure of Family Courts to Protect Children from Abuse in Custody Disputes:

“After twenty years in family law courtrooms throughout the country, I confidently say that no woman, despite very abundant evidence that her child has been sexually molested by her ex-husband or that she has been repeatedly pummeled by the violent father of her child, can safely walk into any family court in the country and not face a grave risk of losing custody to the abuser for the sole reason that she dared to present the evidence to the judge and ask that the child be protected.”

            What is going on, you ask? Much more than meets the eye.  And, it is a well-kept secret.  A disgraceful and dangerous secret, this little known fact that in 45 to 70% of all high conflict custody disputes, identified abusers are awarded full or joint unsupervised custody of the children. (1)  In 1996 the California Judicial Council reported that 53,000 mediated divorce cases involved a restraining order and 41,000 parents in mediation admitted that their children had witnessed domestic violence.  If we extrapolate from these statistics, the number of children nationwide who are the subject of custody decisions where family violence is an issue reaches into the hundreds of thousands every year. (2)

            At Our Children Our Future Charitable Foundation we are working to reverse this alarming trend whereby family courts are awarding custody to identified abusers.  Through advocacy and public and media education we work to influence the family court system to prioritize the safety and wellbeing of children “at risk”. 

More and more, advocates are using the term “at risk” custody disputes.  The common interpretation of “high conflict” custody disputes by those working in the family court arena is that there are two equally unreasonable and argumentative parties vying for the legal upper hand.  Dr. Geraldine Stahly, a social psychologist from the University of California, San Bernadino, who has been conducting nationwide research on family violence for more than twenty-five years, describes the situation differently:

“Courts are used by batterers with financial resources to assert their dominance and punish the women for leaving.  The power and control dynamics continue in the legal arena.  The focus of power and control simply shifts to the children, custody and support issues. My research indicates that batterers are twice as likely as non-violent fathers to seek sole custody.  They manipulate the system, including many court-appointed psychologists who don’t understand and/or deny the dynamics of domestic violence.  The focus on joint custody, as a one size fits all solution, has been devastating to women and children who are victims of family violence.  There is a significant body of research that supports the fact that joint custody arrangements in “at risk” custody disputes has proven to be a disaster for the children.”

            According to Katrina Ross-Scott of Moses Advocacy, an organization which assists victims of family violence to escape violent home environments and then helps them maneuver through the criminal and family court systems:

“The family court system operates according to its own policies.  The problem lies in that these policies continue to override legislation.  While laws are now in place in California which eliminate the obvious problem of placing children with abusive parents, judges are still exercising their discretion.  Judges, mediators, and court-appointed professionals continue to work, for the most part, under the premise that it takes two to tango.  But the people who are actually dancing together are the court system and the batterers.  As they join forces, family violence victims try desperately to side step the moves just to stay on their feet.  If the family law courts were to adopt a “zero tolerance” policy, and implement the protective laws as intended, this dance would stop.  Batterers would no longer have a dancefloor and victims would become survivors.  The conflict would end.  What is necessary for this to happen is to make court officials accountable.  The high conflict, as I see it, is between legislative policy and its application.”

            We ask you, our policy makers, our legislators – state and federal – Why are we allowing the family law courts to perpetuate family violence?  That is exactly what is going on.  The Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family states: “A child’s exposure to the father abusing the mother is the strongest risk factor for transmitting violent behavior from one generation to the next.” (3) Boys are at particular risk: “Boys who observe their fathers abusing their mothers seem to be at extreme risk of using violence in their own homes as adults.” (4)

            So we ask you, our policy makers, our legislators – How many more hundreds of thousands of lives will be destroyed before we discard the “business as usual,” “politics as usual” approach?   When will we put the children, our future, first?  Attorney Toby Kleinman, Esq. of New Jersey, a consulting expert in “at risk” cases describes the current trend: 

“I have been working in the family court system for more than 10 years.   The backlash against women, and in particular women and children who have been abused, has been gaining momentum and I don’t think it is reasonable to assume that we will see improvement in our ability to protect victims of family violence given the current system. When on the rare occasion we win a case and a child is protected, we know there are hundreds more cases for which we aren’t likely to duplicate that success.  We are left focusing on damage control.”

            How does “damage control” fit in with all the talk these days about families, children and improving education?  How do we propose to educate a child who shrinks away at the back of the class barely able to sit for the strap marks on her buttocks?  Or, maybe the child can’t stop thinking about his mother who is being crushed by a court system that won’t listen to her plight.  What are we teaching these children when we force them to live or visit with their abusers?  As we turn our heads and look the other way, what are we teaching these innocent children?

There are good people doing good work to increase the protection of women and children who are being abused.  We have legislative representatives, grassroots and private organizations, women’s shelters, state officials, district attorneys and many others who are proactive in supporting and enforcing legislation that protects victims of family violence.  But we need to work cooperatively.   It is time for us to all work together to build solutions that will reverse this judicial trend and protect our children, our future.  Family courts must join forces with policy makers, legislators, the criminal courts, and child and domestic violence advocates to implement the will of the people and to diligently address family violence as the crime it is.

If you would like to help us in our work at Our Children Our Future Charitable Foundation (OCOF) – perhaps you have resources to offer, solutions to be considered, or contacts to provide us – please contact us at:

 ocofcf@aol.com . 

We can also be reached at:     

OCOF

PO Box 1111

Los Gatos, CA 95031-1111.

To order Exposé: The Failure of Family Courts to Protect Children from Abuse in Custody Disputes and to learn more about other projects of Our Children Our Future Charitable Foundation, please visit our website at:  www.ocof.org

(1) see: R. Abrams & J. Greanley, Report of the Gender Bias Study of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, 1989, pp.62-3

see: N.D. Polikoff, Why are Mothers Losing: A Brief Analysis of Criteria Used in Child Custody Determinations, 14 Women's Rights Law Report, 1992, p.77

see: Liss and Stahley, Domestic Violence and Child Custody, Battering and Family Therapy, Hansen & Harway, Editors, Sage, 1993, p.181.

(2) Lynn Smith, Pawns in a Losing Game, Los Angeles Times, 1-31-00, Section E, pp. 1 and 3.

(3) American Psychological Association, Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family, 1996, p.53.

(4) American Psychological Association, Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family, 1996, p.22.