We Can Make Things Better

This newsletter shares strategies and resources for those navigating high conflict custody battles in an opaque family court system.

The start of this

While I was pursuing a master’s in journalism, I was exploring different topics to cover for my master’s thesis. For reasons I’ll elaborate upon later, I wanted to cover abuse [aka “coercive control,” aka “intimate partner abuse/ violence,” aka “domestic violence”].

A professor recommended I look into post-separation abuse. Many people mistakenly believe that, once a woman (statistically speaking, the abused person is female) is divorced from the agressor, she’s in the clear. That is often not the case. Though it is a nice dream.

Later I’d connect with a woman— let’s call her Ruth— who shared her story. She had divorced an abusive partner years ago. She’d tried to present evidence to the court proving she had been abused but nothing stuck. Research has told us judges often do not believe women’s claims of abuse. Add this to the national standard or preference for 50/50 custody split and now Ruth’s son would be spending half his time with a man Ruth alleges raped her and tried to kill her.

From the start, the young boy would return from visits with the father with alarming injuries.

First it was neglect— wounds, infections, fevers that hadn’t been cared for like they should have been. Shortly thereafter there was the suspicious bruising.

The father’s explanations grated on common sense. [ I’m sharing my opinion, not a fact. But in a future article we will explore this topic— the peer-reviewed scientific method of discerning normal toddler-learning-to-walk / kid-growing-up bruising versus bruising that suggests abuse.]

Then the kid would come back from visits with his dad with large burn marks across his torso. Again, the father’s explanations sounded suspicious. They were counterintuitive, inconsistent, and contradicted the kid’s rendition of events.

The boy continued to rack up injuries while in the father’s care. Ruth flagged these concerns to child protective services and the police’s special victims unit. But investigations kept coming back as “inconclusive.” [Another future article— what are the respective processes for these entities to investigate allegations of child abuse, and what are some ways the methods could be improved.]

Once the boy could speak, he would say things that drain the blood out of your heart. He described events at his dad’s house in the sweet, sing-song tone of an innocent toddler. But what he describes sets the nerves on fire. There is a chasm between how this little person describes the event and what you, as the adult, understand to be happening. It wrenches the gut.

The boy talks about his father touching his privates, his father insisting on them both not wearing underwear to bed, and his father inserting things into the boy’s rectum. With the boy’s progressing expressive capabilities, he becomes increasingly articulate about events that happen “when I’m with dad.”

The father’s response to the kids’ disclosures is that they are fake. His son has been coached by Ruth to make these absurd allegations. The father claims the mom is “alienating” their son from him.

“Parental alienation syndrome,” (“PAS” for short) is a term first coined in the 1980’s by Richard Gardner. The simplified premise is that when a child says they’ve been abused by a parent it is not genuine. Rather, that child has been coached by the other parent. [This is a hotly debated topic and will also be a future article].

There are now years of photos and videos that document physical evidence which, at the very least, point to the kid being neglected while in father’s care.

Backing up Ruth’s concerns for her son are numerous disclosures from her son. [False disclosures from kids are exceedingly rare— another future article.]

Yet the court sides with the father’s claim. Ostensibly, the judge believes that Ruth is a malicious, manipulating mother. Perhaps in a bid to get full custody, or just to smear her ex.

The court grants full custody to the father. Ruth is restricted to a few hours of supervised visitation per week.

What do you suspect happens now?

The boy continues to be injured. More bruises, burns, lacerations; more disclosures. Ruth continues to make reports, hoping authorities will intervene. Investigations keep coming back as “inconclusive.” Ruth’s continued efforts to protect her son are interpreted as manifestations of her delusion. She can’t accept the facts that there are all reasonable, logical explanations for these “accidents.”

For years, Ruth is restricted to a couple hours per week with her son. All visits occur in the presence of a visitation supervisor whose services cost $60+ an hour. The courts also require Ruth to pay for a psych eval, and a “custody coordinator,” and a “therapeutic interventionist.” [These roles, how much they charge, and how they are licensed, is another future article.]

Ruth jumps through every hoop the court presents. She estimates she’s spent some $300,000.00 in efforts to maintain contact with her son. She continues to fight, to litigate, to try to regain custody of her son.

This is the experience of protective parents. They try to protect their kid from harm, but when they sound the alarm, the court claims they are crying wolf. Then the court sanctions to parent by reducing their custody and/or visitation, and charging the parent various, exorbitant fees to keep seeing their kid.

1. Why this + why now

It is one thing to know— in an abstract, aware-of-the-world way— that child abuse happens. That pedophilia happens.

It is another thing to know of one child in particular who has experienced these things. A kid who has been cut, bruised, burned… abused in all the ways possible by their own parent. And that the systems in place (the family court, child protective services, police) failed to protect him.

So, I want to help. I want to help equip protective parents with research, tactics, skills, resources that can help them navigate a high-conflict custody battle. At the same time, I hope writing on this topic will raise awareness amongst the general public.

2. This community

I hope you will join this community and help shape the dialogue. Perhaps you have resources and knowledge that you want others to know about. Perhaps you have a question that I can help research or investigate.

Perhaps you are a protective parent. Perhaps you have a family member or friend in this situation. Perhaps you have heard about this problem (maybe you watched HBO’s documentary “Allen V. Farrow,” or follow coverage of family courts/ PAS on ProPublica or The Guardian).

Everyone is welcome. We can all make a contribution to improving the family courts and helping to better protect society’s most vulnerable.

3. The specifics

While I’ve written for the web for the past decade, this is my first newsletter. I’ve been published in NYT, The Economist, The Guardian and many other publications— and learned a lot of skills I hope to leverage here. This will be a learning process for me and I appreciate your patience.

The plan is to send out an article at least once a week. I imagine the weekend is the best time to post so that readers have the time. I’ve got a stock of ideas of what to cover; I’ve mentioned several in this first post and will share more.

I’d love to hear from you about how this channel could serve you best. The primary goal of this channel is to help as many protective parents as possible, and help them as much as possible.

4. Please subscribe + share widely

Thank you for reading this far. I would love for you to subscribe, to recommend Protect the Parents to friends, family and colleagues.

Together, we can share resources and strategies that might help a parent or child going through an extremely difficult thing. Together, we can raise awareness of dangerous shortcomings in the family courts.

Together, we can make things better.

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash

---