Claiming spousal/child abuse might make it MORE likely that a mother will lose a custody dispute.

[Sneezyone]

Intersting article in today's WaPost. I'll be interested to see if this receives further study. I don't have much experience with custody issues. Does this jive with what those in the trenches have seen?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/a-gendered-trap-when-mothers-allege-child-abuse-by-fathers-the-mothers-often-lose-custody-study-shows/2019/07/28/8f811220-af1d-11e9-bc5c-e73b603e7f38_story.html?fbclid=IwAR172FsSfgOdWKC1ne3kKm--Ke_ulel2wHoCimH-_Hl1GsDMjhj4F4ViRdY&utm_term=.0b4366729661

 

ETA: First three paragraphs...

"Hera McLeod pleaded with the family court judge to keep her 15-month-old son, Prince, away from her abusive ex-boyfriend. The mother, along with many other witnesses, told the court about the man’s fits of rage, the night he threatened to kill her at gunpoint, the times he allegedly abused his older son and allegedly raped McLeod’s sister.

But the judge said there was insufficient evidence of the alleged abuse by the father, Joaquin Rams. “There’s a lot of smoke,” said the family court judge in Montgomery County, Md. “With all that smoke, I can’t see clearly.”

The court initially ordered supervised visits with the baby’s father, but just months later allowed Rams to keep Prince for unsupervised, all-day visits. Then on the fourth visit, on Oct. 20, 2012, Rams drowned the toddler at a friend’s home in Manassas, Va. He was found guilty of capital murder in 2017."

Edited July 29, 2019 by Sneezyone

[QueenCat]

I can't access the article. I wonder if it has to do with so many claiming abuse when it's really not the case? And then all are put under more scrutiny and not believed when it's real? 

[Sneezyone]

6 minutes ago, QueenCat said:

I can't access the article. I wonder if it has to do with so many claiming abuse when it's really not the case? And then all are put under more scrutiny and not believed when it's real? 

 

I'm not sure. The article cites preliminary research of custody litigation outcomes showing fathers who allege abuse are more likely to be believed and their claims are discounted/dismissed less often. They looked at 4,388 cases that were published/available online between 2005 and 2015. This is obv. a limited data set. Still one of the alleged findings... "Even when the father’s abuse is proved in the court, mothers alleging the abuse lost custody 13 percent of the time. But when a mother’s abuse was proved, fathers lost custody only 4 percent of the time — and only in cases where she had abused the father, never where she had abused the child." is disturbing.

Edited July 29, 2019 by Sneezyone

[Tanaqui]

Quote

But the judge said there was insufficient evidence of the alleged abuse by the father, Joaquin Rams. “There’s a lot of smoke,” said the family court judge in Montgomery County, Md. “With all that smoke, I can’t see clearly.”

 

Geez, Your Honor, haven't you ever heard that where there's smoke, there's fire? (Not that this phrase is correct in many of the places where it's most often deployed, but boy howdy I don't know how nobody responded to that this way.)

[Carrie12345]

Pulling a theory from my rear...

I wonder if two big factors might be

• low reporting of abuse in actual abuse cases
• explosive personalities (often mutually abusive) being more likely to report in anger

Neither of which excuses the statistics, of course.  My own experience is in seeing child neglect (maternal) go unchecked and seeing extended family members use law enforcement in their mutually toxic situations.

[Rosie_0801]

1 hour ago, QueenCat said:

I can't access the article. I wonder if it has to do with so many claiming abuse when it's really not the case? And then all are put under more scrutiny and not believed when it's real? 

 

People do make false claims, but I can't imagine how that makes it harder for victims because the false claimants aka abusers win anyway. Most abuse doesn't count as abuse in the legal system, which makes justice difficult when law and justice are not synonyms, and the report writers are often abusers themselves.


I was told not to claim abuse in court, so I didn't because I had also been told off for not trusting experts enough, so it wasn't taken into account because I didn't ask the court to take it into account. I would have lost anyway because I did not have a narrative that the people in power wanted to hear from me. They may have taken it from my brother, who the experts said mustn't testify, and after handing down orders, the judge said he would have liked to hear from my brother and implied it might have gone the other way if he had.
 

Tanaqui said:
 

1 hour ago, Tanaqui said:

Geez, Your Honor, haven't you ever heard that where there's smoke, there's fire? (Not that this phrase is correct in many of the places where it's most often deployed, but boy howdy I don't know how nobody responded to that this way.)

Well, it might be a dry ice machine, mightn't it? 

 

Sadie said:

Quote

Justice, in my country at least, is stacked against mothers.

I think it is stacked against victims, whoever they are. I know the courts are based on logical fallacies.

[sweet2ndchance]

Yes, family courts in this country are broken.

I was told to keep quiet about a lot of things because I couldn't afford a lawyer who would fight for me, just a pro bono lawyer that supposedly was there to help abused women get out of domestic violence situations. I was told the judge would be more willing to listen me if I didn't tell her about the rampant abuse and domestic violence that I had pages upon pages of proof to back it all up. I already had a restraining order against my ex granted by the same judge because he threatened to kill me in writing. According to my lawyer that was enough. Ex was still given standard unsupervised visitation because he only threatened to kill me, not the kids. That is just the tip of the iceberg of my trials and tribulations with the family courts.

My experience with family court worsened my PTSD, depression and anxiety that started with being married to an abuser. It is a huge part of the reason why I am still in weekly therapy (or I'm suppose to be if insurance will get their act together) almost 10 years after the initial divorce. My ex still to this day uses our children as ammunition in his war against me. The courts refused to see this because he could afford the best lawyers and ran me out of money dragging me to court again and again and again with lie upon lie upon lie. I still tell anyone who will listen that family court is no place for children.

 

[Rosie_0801]

12 minutes ago, sweet2ndchance said:

I still tell anyone who will listen that family court is no place for children.

 

And yet they are so easy to ignore because they are not present.

[Guest]

I have a friend who lost custody in this sort of situation (and the fact that she had sought counseling, and the therapist had encouraged her to leave him, was absolutely used against her), and she spent several years actively researching court records, and found exactly this. Basically, if a woman claims that she has reason to leave,  and expresses fear for leaving her child with her ex, that is seen as a sign that she is unstable, actively alienating the kids against her ex, and that she is at fault. 

[TechWife]

nm

 

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by TechWife

[Katy]

Young children don't have a right to not see a parent that repeatedly beat or raped them in this country. Children are property and legally parents have a constitutional right to parent, so in order to change that we'd have to be the last developed nation to grant children their own human rights.

Keep in mind in this country exposing your child to domestic violence IS abusive.  So in the law, if you were voluntarily in an abusive relationship you are just as guilty as the abuser.

I've been called DOZENS of times to asked to be an emergency placement for domestic violence foster care classes.  If it's bad enough that someone gets arrested the general policy is yank the kids first, ask questions later.  At least in the places we've lived.  They apparently think if you're so unhealthy you wouldn't call the police at the first sign of domestic violence you're also too unhealthy to be a parent until proven otherwise.

[Rosie_0801]

57 minutes ago, Katy said:

Young children don't have a right to not see a parent that repeatedly beat or raped them in this country. Children are property and legally parents have a constitutional right to parent, so in order to change that we'd have to be the last developed nation to grant children their own human rights.

 

Here children do (officially) have rights, but their right to access a parent is more important in law than the right to be free from abuse, so you end up with exactly the same outcomes.

They apparently think if you're so unhealthy you wouldn't call the police at the first sign of domestic violence you're also too unhealthy to be a parent until proven otherwise.

Ha. And the first sign of domestic violence might have been years ago. The first sign of domestic violence probably wasn't even abusive according to anyone's definition.

[umsami]

I used to work in domestic violence   Most of the actual court cases (not settled in mediation)  involve either Cluster B types (NPD, BPD) or abuse or both.  When a DV abuser fights for custody, he gets it something like 60% of the time. 

[sweet2ndchance]

18 minutes ago, Katy said:

Keep in mind in this country exposing your child to domestic violence IS abusive.  So in the law, if you were voluntarily in an abusive relationship you are just as guilty as the abuser.

And it is that mentality that keeps many people from seeking help to get out of an abusive relationship. My first marriage certainly didn't start off abusive though hindsight being 20/20 there were signs that I was dealing with a narcissist. I just couldn't see my ex for who he truly was until it was too late. When you are gaslighted by your abuser to the point that you don't even trust your own thoughts and feelings  and being threatened, berated and put down constantly is how they "love" you,  it is a situation that is hard to imagine from the outside looking in and even harder to escape from. Narcissists, and I mean true malignant narcissists not just selfish, self centered people, present one facade publicly and are completely different privately. I often described my ex as Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde. I tried many times to report things through out our marriage that didn't seem right but because he knew all the right things to say to make people think he was just an upstanding guy doing his best and I was just making it up because I was jealous and crazy, so he got away with more and more. And each time I tried to report it, the backlash from him behind closed doors got worse which just made it that much harder the next time to try and report it.

I got to the point that I was flat terrified that if I reported the abuse, mostly verbal/emotional and some physical, that it would be blamed on me. My ex constantly blamed me for his bad behavior and gaslit me to the point that I didn't trust my own judgement, so why would anyone believe me over him? Even when I did finally find my way out, I went straight to the police and wanted to make a report. You know what they told me? "Sorry, we can't do anything for you. We didn't actually see him hit you so we can't make a report." I was devastated. I had never made a police report before so it's not like they recognized me or remembered me. Yes, I know now they were being lazy and that is not actually how it is suppose to work. But at the time, I was scared and needed help and if I couldn't turn to the police, those who are suppose to serve and protect the public, then who could I turn to? I didn't know what to do or how to go about getting the help I needed, I just knew that if I went back home to my now-ex, he probably would have killed me for daring to be so bold as to leave him. So I wandered around, all my kids in tow, for a couple of hours absolutely terrified that my now-ex would find us. I just chanced to run into someone I had never met before with connections to the YWCA and she put me in contact with a SAFE house. The kids and I stayed there until I got my restraining order. Thankfully, they were kind and understanding that leaving an abuser is not an easy process and helped me in every way they could.

The movie Tangled came out on DVD about the time I was going through my divorce. Rapunzel's reaction to leaving the tower for the first time probably seems silly and over dramatic to those who have never experienced a true narcissist first hand but I could totally relate to how she felt, feeling free and happy one minute to finally be out of that abusive relationship to being terrified and self-blaming the next. Leaving an abuser is rarely as simple as just walking away. 

 

[PeterPan]

nm

Edited July 30, 2019 by PeterPan

[Rosie_0801]

1 hour ago, umsami said:

I used to work in domestic violence   Most of the actual court cases (not settled in mediation)  involve either Cluster B types (NPD, BPD) or abuse or both.  When a DV abuser fights for custody, he gets it something like 60% of the time. 

 Over here, if there's DV involved, the mediators won't touch you with a ten foot pole. 

I'm surprised it's only 60%. Maybe the other 40% only wanted to fight, not to win.

[umsami]

6 hours ago, Rosie_0801 said:

 Over here, if there's DV involved, the mediators won't touch you with a ten foot pole. 

I'm surprised it's only 60%. Maybe the other 40% only wanted to fight, not to win.

They're not supposed to here, but with going to court being so expensive.... may DV survivors try mediation anyways.  Then, of course, their abuser comes back and sues for full custody, after she's already given up significant rights in terms of spousal support and child support.  

[TheReader]

I only have experience/knowledge of one case, but that's how it went down. Definitely in that case the victim's lack of money was a huge factor, and then the abuser used past history and embellished (lied about) other past history items, and still the victim spouse kept fighting as best she could. Then the abuser began making up rather horrific lies about the older children (who were his stepchildren and not up for custody debate, just their younger brother that he/victim had adopted together), accusing the older children of doing horrific things. 

At that point, the victim parent chose to stop fighting for her youngest in order to protect her older two from yet even more abuse by their stepdad. So the abuser won by doing exactly what he was being accused of......verbal & emotional abuse that just continued and continued and continued, and escalated and escalated and escalated, until his victim was worn down and beaten into submission, once again. 

She ended up fully relinquishing her parental rights to the youngest, b/c the abuser threatened to keep escalating indefinitely until she did so, and by this point, she did not have the strength to keep fighting, nor the money to outlast him anyway. 

I'm not sure how it would have ended up if she hadn't had the older 2 children, from her 1st marriage, to consider/for the abuser to attack & threaten in order to get what he wanted. She put up with and fought through all of his attacks on *her* but once he started going after her girls, in court, he knew she'd back down (and she did). 

I'm not sure if it would have helped if the victim's lawyer would have let the teen girls testify to the abuse in court, or if it would have hurt. (I mean, it couldn't have ended up any worse, so....). The victim's lawyer would not allow it b/c neither teen was 18 yet, and so the girls weren't allowed to tell what the stepdad had done to them. And since they weren't part of the custody dispute, the guardian ad litem who talked to the younger brother (a 4 yr old....) didn't talk to the teen girls in the home, either. No idea if that would have helped, to hear in detail how his abuse had impacted the teen girls. Not sure if it would have been taken into consideration anyway, since they weren't "his" kids (and none of the abuse had ever been directed at the child in question, so......). 

But, anyway, in this case the victim was further and mercilessly victimized in court (and the abuser was found in contempt more than once during the battle for not bringing back the disputed child on time, etc; his bad behavior during the dispute mattered not at all, apparently; his willingness to defy court order in order to keep the child away from the victim/who he alleged was the real abuser, was apparently interpreted as evidence that what he said about her was true.....), and yes, the abuser won, fully & completely. The victimized spouse & her daughters have not seen the 4 yr old in question since then........he's 30 yrs old now. 

[QueenCat]

13 hours ago, Rosie_0801 said:

 

People do make false claims, but I can't imagine how that makes it harder for victims because the false claimants aka abusers win anyway. Most abuse doesn't count as abuse in the legal system, which makes justice difficult when law and justice are not synonyms, and the report writers are often abusers themselves.

 

 

In the cases I'm familiar, those making false claims usually didn't succeed. In the one case that I'm intimately familiar with because I testified as a character witness for the accused. He was acquitted, as it should have been. It could have been worse for her, as the judge to told the father, after the verdict was read, that he thought there was enough evidence for him to charge the mom with domestic violence. I was in the courtroom at the time of the verdict and heard the judge tell the man this, and also heard his lecture to the woman. He didn't want that, all he wanted was joint custody, which he got shortly after the dv case was over. 

 

I think it makes it harder for real victims because more people question if they're telling the truth. 

Edited July 30, 2019 by QueenCat