Responding to a Higher Calling

            The American Judges Foundation reports that seventy percent of abusive fathers are the winners in custody fights. As children are handed to their molesters, protective mothers must watch helplessly—or respond to a higher calling than a judge’s order.
            Ms. Toni Schott’s oldest daughter was three-and-a-half years old when a caseworker from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare found that the child’s scarred vagina was the result of sexual abuse. The articulate child told two therapists that her father had done it, but the judge misinterpreted a physician’s testimony and gave the father overnight visitations. A higher court refused to reopen the case to hear the physician’s offer of clarification. Less than two years later, before age three, Toni’s younger daughter contracted vaginal herpes and, like her sister, told of her father’s abuse to a Department of Health and Welfare counselor.
            After a pediatrician discovered large fissures around two-and-a-half-year-old Anne D’Angelo’s son’s rectum, he concluded that the boy had been raped many times. The child pointed to his father as the perpetrator, and a therapist on behalf of the X State Department of Children and Families supported the pediatrician’s conclusion and determined that the boy’s father was raping both him and his older brother. Nevertheless, the judge gave the father joint custody.
            Although Bonita Shain’s three-year old son reported to a Kentucky Child Protective Services’ worker about his father and his father’s friend touching his private parts, the DA did not prosecute. When four years later the boy continued to report sexual abuse, which was substantiated by CPS, and refused to see his father—an alcoholic who had threatened to murder Bonita and other family members and admitted in court to drug dealing—a judge determined that Bonita had alienated her son. Although no evidence was heard to discredit Bonita’s mothering skills, the judge ruled that both her boys be transferred to the father’s sister’s custody, allowing Bonita only three hours a week supervised visits.
            Toni, Anne and Bonita—and countless protective mothers—stand bewildered and livid against a complex legal system that refuses to help their molested children. Instead, against all corroborating evidence of sexual abuse, that system holds the mothers accountable for their children’s reporting, on the rationale that the mothers must have coached their children.
            Experts such as Louisiana attorney Richard Ducote, who has tried such cases in over forty states, say that the culprit is a bogus theory, Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), which is unsupported by any sound research and unrecognized by any medical, academic or psychological organization. Coined by Dr. Richard Gardner, a psychiatrist who believed that “pedophilia is an accepted practice by billions of people” but our society’s response to it is “excessively moralistic and punitive,” PAS successfully places violent, abusive fathers as the victims of women’s presumed vindictiveness. “If someone punches you—or rapes you—you wouldn’t want to be around that person,” says Mr. Ducote. “Yet judges routinely assume that when a child refuses to be with his or her abusive father, it is the mother who must have alienated the child—not the violent father through his abusive ways.”
            Gardner, who committed suicide on May 25, 2003, stated that “there is a certain amount of pedophilia in all of us,” and wrote that in cases of child molestation, “a mother’s hysterics…will contribute to the child’s feeling that a heinous crime has been committed.” The mother “should be helped to understand” that her child possibly “enjoyed immensely the sexual activities.” If she persisted in her insistence to keep the child from his father, Gardner recommended a change of custody to the father. For over twenty years, Gardner was hailed by fathers’ groups and widely accepted as the “guru of child custody evaluation” by many judges. His unauthenticated theory and its derivations are taught in courses geared toward attorneys and judges.
            Toni Schott’s experience of the court’s indifference toward her older daughter taught her not to count on the court for help for her younger child. She hid in Texas under an alias for four and a half years until the FBI arrested her and the girls were returned to their abuser, now living in Pennsylvania. Even though the Idaho court dropped the parental kidnapping charges after reviewing the previously ignored medical testimony, the Pennsylvania judge dismissed the ruling without a further hearing. In spite of the fact that the younger girl’s case had never been heard in court, Toni lost custody of her daughters.

Anne D’Angelo fled with her children to Virginia, where she lived for five years until 1992, when the boys were captured and returned to live with their father. In a subsequent custody hearing—and in spite of the evidence collected before Anne’s hiding—the judge ruled that the father’s sexual abuse of the younger boy was “uncorroborated.”
            When Bonita Shain’s boys, ages four and seven, heard the judge’s verdict that would place them with their aunt, they begged their mother to hide them because their father had threatened to kill them if they told what he had done. In November 2002, Bonita Shain packed her car and left town with her children. 
            In these three cases, the judges applied PAS, ignoring the fact that each case of abuse was discovered or diagnosed and reported by ER physicians or child welfare professionals—not by the mothers. The physical evidence was supported by the each child pointing to his or her father as the abuser.
          Research has shown that children are reluctant to report abuse, often denying it against evidence, as they feel shame and guilt over it—if not outright fear of the abuser 1. Moreover, studies show that in 98.4 percent of the cases where very young children point to their molesters they tell the truth 2. However, in most states family court judges are not required to take certification courses in domestic violence and child abuse, nor are judges held accountable for ignoring or refusing to hear evidence. Instead, favoring the interests of the fathers—the presumed victims of the mothers’ vicious fabrications—over the safety of the children, judges employ the unsupported PAS theory or its derivations. They seek no evidence that indeed a mother has actively alienated her child as they sever this relationship.
          These past few years, across the nation, children have been encouraged to tell a trusted adult about abuse. Child-friendly websites have been established to help abused children. Mandatory reporting laws have been imposed on educational and medical institutions and their employees. Local police officers visit schools to talk to the children and encourage them to seek help from trusted adults.
          Yet, in “Small Justice,” an award-winning documentary by Boston University film professor Garland Waller, Dr. Richard Gardner suggested that a mother’s response to a child’s report of abuse should be, “I don’t believe you. I’m going to beat you for saying that. Don’t ever talk that way about your father.” Dr. Gardner added that mothers who allege sexual abuse of their children should be jailed.
          So much for asking children to report abuse. Those who report it soon learn that no one listens. A therapist at the not-for-profit North Shore Child and Family Guidance Association in Long Island, New York, who asked to remain anonymous, recently said, “I no longer see these kids. We promise them that if they tell, the abuse would stop. Instead, the opposite happens.”
          Child sexual abuse is a criminal matter, which family courts are not equipped to adjudicate. Yet, provided with broad judicial discretion, they stand powerfully protected from scrutiny—or appeal—when failing to apply standard principles of justice and constitutional rights of due process. In January 2003, in her investigative Boston Phoenix article, “Custodians Of Abuse,” Kristen Lombardi describes how, nationwide, three problems plague the system: First, criminal investigation has been replaced by evaluation provided by guardians ad litem (GAL), who are social workers, psychologists or lawyers, but not qualified forensic investigators. In many cases, GALs fail to represent their clients—the children. The GAL assigned to Bonita Shain’s son never met him. In Anne D’Angelo’s case, the GAL never spoke in court. Second, with no juries—and protected by a cloak of secrecy—family courts are bastions of extraordinary power where one person is judge, jury and executioner. Evidence of abuse is suppressed while, as in Toni, Anne and Bonita’s cases, no evidence of the mothers’ presumed role in alienation is sought. Third, bias and traditional stereotyping of women’s roles is heightened in high-conflict custody cases, where judges commonly scrutinize a mother’s parenting practices while viewing a father’s sole act of seeking custody as proof of parental commitment and skills.
          Although an Association of Family Conciliation Courts’ 1990 study shows child sexual abuse allegations are made in less than two percent of contested divorces involving child custody, that figure still represents thousands of molested children. They are protected by mothers like Toni, Anne and Bonita, who find themselves mired in years of expensive litigation in courts that show neither sympathy for them nor compassion for their children. Beyond losing custody, mothers are often stripped of their rights when the costly child support they are slapped with make it impossible for them to also pay the hourly fees of supervised visitation centers. In the process, children’s rights to fair treatment and justice as well as the preservation of the maternal-child bond are being violated.
          Toni’s daughters, now ages nine and ten, are prohibited any contact with their mother, but they also cannot have contact with any member of their maternal family.
          In hiding, Bonita Shain’s children missed holidays and birthdays with everyone they knew back home, while their father led a normal life and “went to ball games,” Bonita says. “This is not surprising since he was not asking for custody; he wanted his sister to have the children as long as they are not with me or my family.” The hope to one day restore her children’s stolen life was shattered in June 2003 when the boys were captured in Indiana and sent to live with their aunt. Fearing jail sentence, Bonita refused to sign extradition papers that would put her in the mercy of the Kentucky judge whose gavel of justice is all too familiar.
          Anne D.'s former husband was a Children's Rights Council official and now sits on a panel to "redesign divorce" in Ms. D's state with a Judge whom, Ms. D. claims, is aware of the rape evidence against Mr. D.. Furthermore, in 2002 he was appointed by that State Governor to a committee to recommend changes in laws regarding the courts' handling of custody cases.
          Says Anne D’Angelo, “I have met several mothers who lost custody to very abusive ex-husbands. Among them are a nurse, an engineer, a teacher, and an attorney. We are well educated and articulate. We are not on welfare. We are not alcoholics or drug users, and we do not have a history of physical or mental illness. We are good mothers.”
            These are good mothers whose only chance to save their children is to defy the court and run for their lives.

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Author Talia Carner's first novel, PUPPET CHILD, paved the way to her launching The Protective Parent Act. Please check www.TaliaCarner.com

The Scandal In Our Own Backyard

 (This article was adapted from a previously published one.)

      
     

o       “There is something bad happening to our children in family courts today that is causing them more harm than drugs, more harm than crime and even more harm than child molestation,” said Judge Watson L. White from Cobb County, Georgia, Superior Court.

       In researching for my book, Puppet Child, I discovered that “something bad” to be the judges, especially when it comes to adjudicating allegations of child sexual abuse.

       In Clarke v. Cowles in California, eight-year-old Loren (not her real name) told her caseworker and later her psychological evaluator, “Daddy licks his fingers before he puts them in my vagina.” The first report was suppressed by the judge, the latter was never presented at the trial. The father was awarded full custody while the mother received supervised visitations on the unproven assumption that she had brainwashed her daughter. Years later, after the girl wrote repeatedly to her caseworker about molestation, a judge refused to hear the evidence because the question of sexual abuse had been decided five years before.

       Loren is only one child out of thousands being handed to their abusers. According to The American Judges Foundation, in 70 percent of cases in which abusive men ask for custody, they succeed in gaining full or joint custody. This national scandal is made possible by the secrecy within the Family Court System and by public disbelief in the scope of the problem. The very system designed to safeguard helpless children has become a national disgrace as injustice has reached epidemic proportions. 

       Whatever you have ever known about democracy becomes irrelevant at the gate to family court. There, one person is judge, jury and executioner. Paradoxically, in most states, a family court judge is the one professional in the courtroom who is not required to be trained in domestic violence and child abuse. As a result, wrapped in their own mix of prejudices, religious beliefs, or misguided assumptions, all too many judges are ignorant about the dynamics of family abuse, ignorant about the nature of child molestation, and ignorant about the ways in which an abuser manipulates the courtroom as the arena where he can hand a woman the final blow by taking her children away.
       Although studies such as the one by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts Research in Denver—an organization which mothers’ groups claim is biased against women—shows that at least two thirds of sexual abuse allegations made by a child were proven to be substantiated (the one third unsubstantiated are not necessarily false.) Yet a study by the California Protective Parents Association found that 91 percent of fathers identified by their children as sexual predators received full or partial unsupervised custody—while in 54 percent of these same cases the non-abusing mother was placed on supervised visitations.

       How is that possible? Here are some of the more glaring errors the courts perpetuate:

       * Viewing children as property. When the crime of sexual abuse is committed upon a child who lives next door, the perpetrator is subject to harsh jail punishment. The same abuse committed upon one's own child is likely to result in a father getting sole custody. Behind this unfair ruling is the lingering feudal tradition that regards children as the property of their fathers.

       * Mistaking controlling men for loving fathers. Used to getting their way and given to expressions of anger, controlling men fight hard in the court they regard as a boxing ring. Having seen too many men walk away from their children, judges often mistake for love a father’s unwillingness to let go of the child who has become both a sexual object and a weapon against a mother trying to get away from her husband’s control.

      * Favoring the Parental Alienation Syndrome theory. PAS maintains that a child has been brainwashed to give false testimony. Not listed in the American Psychiatric Association manual, PAS is refuted and considered bogus theory by nationally recognized academic and clinical institutions—and by a 1999 Congressional act (VAWA). In fact, the lone advocate who coined the term, Richard Gardner, has also written that “pedophilia is natural.” Nevertheless, increasingly, legions of children are removed from their mothers’ care under the PAS theory.  

     *  Tolerance of child sexual abuse. A Tennessee judge granted visitation rights to Ralph Gonnella two weeks after he had been arrested for taking sexually explicit photographs of his seven-year-old son. In California, Manuel Saavedra, a convicted sex offender who had pleaded guilty to lewd conduct with a child was awarded custody of his two daughters.  All across America, convicted pedophiles—a crime known for its high rate of recidivism —are given access to their children.

*  Refusing to stigmatize a man as a pedophile. A 1996 report by The American Psychological Association states, “women seldom make false reports of child abuse or battering.” Yet in case after case, when a father is found to be sexually abusive, judges suppress evidence. While many judges, many of whom are fathers, do not truly believe that sexual abuse exists, they also do not wish to venture into the criminal arena of pedophilia due to overlapping jurisdiction between civil and criminal courts.

 * Not following the law. In demanding burden of proof of sexual molestation that supercedes the required “preponderance of evidence” and instead seeking the criminal definition of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” judges often demand dates, times or witnesses that are impossible for a child to provide. Interestingly, the same judges demand no proof when speculating that at the roots of the sexual abuse complaint is the mother’s coaching the child.

 * Misogyny. In Virginia, Kathy Wade was told by the judge handing Kathy’s two-year-old daughter to the sexually abusive father, “This is what you get when you don’t have a lawyer.” In Florida, Judge Paul Marko told Marianne Price: "The singles' bars are full of guys… you go and find one.” In Michigan, Judge Gregory Pittman ordered a couple shackled together after the woman complained that her former husband had violated the order of protection. Routinely, American women are denied the right to due process, are subject to ex parte hearings, and are victims of perjury or illegal out-of-state jurisdictions.

Through it all, children are at a disadvantage because they are dependent upon mothers with no or poor legal representation and who are short on financial resources to wage protracted legal battles and appeals. (Professionals in the field report increasing support for men from well-financed fathers’ groups.) Moreover, men, poised and collected and surrounded by a legal team, “look good” in court when compared with frightened, distraught mothers, whom judges often view as hysterical, paranoid and vindictive. Yet all across the nation, behind every case in which a woman’s constitutional rights are being ignored in family court there are children needing protection. Instead, they receive a life sentence without parole.

Public disbelief guards the system from exposure. There are child services, therapists, and legal guardians who commit atrocious mistakes. But ultimately, the untrained judges are the ones responsible for saving the children. While I met compassionate family court judges, the shocking overall picture of injustice indicates that they are in the minority. Until the public grasps the scope of the scandal in our own backyard and holds judges accountable for the grand scale in which children are being removed from the custody of good mothers to be placed with pedophiles, we are facing a national shame of catastrophic proportions. 

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Novelist Talia Carner published her first novel, PUPPET CHILD in 2002, and became an advocate for children caught in the nightmarish legal system. Since then, she's published CHINA DOLL and JERUSALEM MAIDEN. For more resources, please check  www.TaliaCarner.com