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