FACTS

According to a recent report published by the American Judges Foundation, studies show that in approximately70 percent of challenged cases, battering parents have been able to convince authorities during custody battles that their victim is unfit or undeserving of sole custody.

Behind closed doors of the family court system each year, thousands of women each year lose child custody to violent men who beat and abuse mothers and children.

A 1990s study found that custody evaluators did not consider domestic violence to be a major factor in their recommendations, yet they often considered parental alienation to be crucial.

Research findings to date underscore that

domestic violence occurs in large numbers

of households with children.

If you are a domestic violence survivor and are being threatened with losing custody of your children and the credibility of your mental health status and mothering skills are being challenged seek to understand how batterers manipulate judges, attorneys and healthcare providers to establish false claims. You must become proactive in preventing the establishment of false claims to prevent the abuser from defining your life and limiting your liberties.

By establishing  “on the record” that the domestic violence survivor is “crazy,” “on drugs” or “unfit”, the abuser leverages their ability to regain and maintain control over the entire family…and most importantly, control over themselves, or at least control over their public image. Many people will tell you that the legal psychiatrics of a case are nothing more than to save face for the batterer.

The abuser seeks to walk away looking like the “good person” and/or “super parent,” but certainly not an abuser. To this end, they must portray the victim  “bad” “wrong” or “crazy.” Essentially, the abuser enlists their attorney, healthcare providers and friends as to discredit the victim in order to invalidate who they are and what they stand for with respect to being a domestic abuse survivor.

By focusing on parental rights rather than on the best interests of the child, courts frequently fail to limit child visitation by a parent who has abused the other parent. The substantial body of research showing the impact of domestic violence on children suggests that judges should take spousal abuse into account when making custody and visitation decisions. Children suffer emotional and psychological harm not only when they are victims of abuse, but also when they witness the abuse of one parent by another even and when they live in a violent home without witnessing abuse.

A pilot study in the early 1990s by the California Protective Parent Association and Mothers of Lost Children found that 91 percent of fathers who were identified by their children as perpetrators of sexual abuse received full or partial unsupervised custody of the children and that in 54 percent of cases the non-abusing mother was placed on supervised visitation.

Ten myths about custody and domestic violence and how to counter them click here

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