The American
Judge's
Association reports that one of the most common reasons a woman will resume or
stay in an abusive
relationship is the fear that the abuser will make good on his threats to take the children.
Government-supported studies show that batterers have been able to convince authorities that the
mother is unfit or undeserving of sole custody in approximately 70% of
challenged custody cases.
Growing numbers of protective, non-offending, loving, fit mothers are losing
custody of their children to abusers every day, despite being good mothers,
despite the father's lack of past involvement with the children, and
regardless of the mother being the primary caregiver. Women who seek to exit
abusive, dangerous relationships and/or seek child support are met with retaliatory suits
for child custody. Many women who try to leave an abusive partner find that the
court system can become a place where the abuser is enabled, even facilitated,
in victimizing her and her children. Routinely, mothers are illegally
jailed for trying to protect their children from documented abusers.
Courts increasingly not only ignore, but even bar evidence of child abuse.
Amazingly, the perpetrators the women seek to leave or protect their children
from are increasingly awarded sole custody or
unsupervised visitation with the children they have harmed. This results in
ultimate control over the child victim, ultimate revenge against the child?s
mother, and an end to the father's child support obligations. The abuser is hence
provided further control of the mother by collecting support from her while she
is often denied contact with her children. In this way, both child and mother
are silenced.
This is one of America's
darkest, most shameful secrets. The problem has taken on epidemic proportions, and
we call upon our Senators and Representatives to act swiftly to ensure prompt
investigation. We want to be heard and to have these issues addressed openly.
Please make this your top priority for all the mothers and children in this
country and for generations to come.
Of great concern to us is a widely discredited "theory", "Parental Alienation Syndrome" or "PAS"
(and derivatives thereof), which is being
used as the primary courtroom tactic to silence abused children and mothers in
courts. Developed by Richard Gardner of Columbia University, this
"syndrome" is not based on systematic research, but instead was developed from
subjective ideology and prejudices. Gardner has never tested this
theory, nor is it contained within the DSM-IV;. In fact, most of Gardner's
foundational
assumptions have been disproved by legitimate researchers. Gardner's
writings also express disturbing ideas regarding incest and pedophilia,
including the idea
that such practices are not as traumatic as current social attitudes
suggest.
Integral to Gardner's
PAS theory is a "treatment" he calls "Threat Therapy".
This abusive and inhumane practice is used to send children to juvenile detention centers and
mothers to jail for reporting abuse. PAS is also routinely used in courts across the country to inappropriately
remove custody from loving, safe and fit mothers under a variety of scenarios:
domestic violence, child abuse of any sort, reluctance to support flip-flopping
shared custody schedules, or a reluctance to send children on unsupervised visitation
with fathers with anger-management problems, substance abuse problems, poor parenting, etc.
Congressional
findings in the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1999 specifically identify
the use of PAS as an act of violence toward women which endangers children. The
VAWA states that PAS is frequently and improperly used by courts and custody
evaluators to discount children?s reasonable fear and anger toward a violent
parent, and that this "syndrome" is used almost exclusively against
women. It further states that when domestic violence has been present in
the relationship, shared parenting arrangements, couples counseling, and custody
mediation arrangements all serve to place children and the
non-violent parents in danger, and certainly further the abuser's agenda. We call upon you to investigate why our state courts are
allowed to force mothers and children into such obviously dangerous practices on
a routine basis.
Abused and molested
children have lost their voices in court. There exists a pattern of court
rulings which clearly reflect that molestation or other abuse of one's own child can
earn a father sole custody, whereas if the same crime had been committed upon
the child who lives next door, the same perpetrator would be sentenced to a long
prison term. While re-victimized children lose their mothers, protracted
litigation pads the pockets of lawyers, mental health providers, custody
evaluators, and visitation monitors.
Examples of the devastation wrought by these practices can be found throughout
the country in print and television stories, special investigative reports,
studies by universities, reports by the APA, etc. The story of a 16 year old who hanged himself rather than
see his mom jailed for his refusal to visit his dad is detailed in a Pittsburgh
Post 3-part article, Custody Casualties; a medically fragile child
died from neglect less than 3 weeks after he was wrongfully removed from his
mother by the court; a member of our group stood criminal trial Georgia for "kidnapping
" our own children -- and the jury who acquitted her admonished the county
court
for her arrest and prosecution; one of us was jailed for refusing to turn her
children over to a convicted child molester. Some of us have had our
phones tapped; some of us have to pay monitors in order to even see our
children, and most of
us are impoverished by spending life savings and losing employment to keep up
with endless court proceedings, entirely impossible child support payments,
orders to pay the father's attorney fees, contempt charges, fines and sanctions
-- all intended and strategically ordered to lead to certain financial ruin of
mothers.
This is no longer a state issue. Federal funding to court systems for various unsound, discriminatory, and
unscientific programs which are ordered in many of these cases is of great concern.
As mothers who care about all children, we ask that our
government work to expose
the family court system, a system that
does not work. We further ask that you eliminate federal funding of
discriminatory groups and programs which enable continued harm to women and
children, as described above and in ample publications.
We desperately hope our
open public letter will be published and broadcast across the country, and that
it will cause readers to demand investigations and journalists to expose a
"system" which is seriously broken.
Sincerely,
United For Justice
