Her toddler comes home from visits with dad and every time there are new symptoms. Anal fissures, a child screaming in pain during diaper changes, even on rare occasions disclosures of what daddy did. Along with evidence of coercion like, “daddy said say nobody and nothing. Nobody and nothing.” But this falls on deaf ears. When a mother speaks up and says this is what my child did or said, she is viciously attacked, sometimes even by her own lawyer.
Child sexual abuse is one of the worst things I can imagine happening. The victim is defenseless, has no power, and the tiny voice they do have is not listened to by those who should protect her. She pleads at times, “Mommy, help me!” But her mother is just as defenseless. Subjugated to a system where money is power, maleness is power, whiteness is power. Without these, she is reduced to depending on those in power and if they refuse to help, she has few options. Many lawyers even counsel their female clients to be quiet about abuse. The message mothers keep getting is, “Stop talking. Be quiet. Don’t bring it up.”
Some mothers flee. Ireland has a no extradition policy. As does the Netherlands. One adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse described her terror and pain during childhood and praised her valiant mother for fleeing with her and her brother overseas to the Netherlands. She’s come through it well, thanks to the healing balm of being in her mother’s safe care, and now speaks up on behalf of the thousands of child victims still in this plight.
It’s easy to think: this can’t really be accurate. This doesn’t happen. Not in America. Stop and think: where do you think all the child porn comes from? Certainly not from families where good parents are protecting their kids. Statistics of adults reveal that up to 1/3 have been sexually abused, most as children. Yes, these things are happening. Many child sexual abuse allegations are substantiated, to the tune of one every 11 minutes, with 80% of perpetrators being a parent (Children and teens, n.d.).
The disconnect comes in when there is also domestic abuse. Going through family court and custody litigation with an abusive partner has proven devastating and even fatal to many mothers and children. Most divorces end up with a couple agreeing on terms including custody. A small percentage end up litigating and most of those are called High Conflict Divorces. But research has shown that 75% of high conflict divorce cases are of marriages in which there was abuse. Which makes sense. Separating from an abusive spouse does not make the abuse stop. Abuse can be simply reactive, in which a spouse explodes in seemingly uncontrollable anger. The question is, do they control that anger outside the home? Does the abusive person go around exploding in anger at other people? If not then he is actually very much in control of his anger; he chooses when and where to use it. And it is frequently used in his home to control others. The basis of domestic abuse or domestic violence or intimate partner violence, all synonyms, is power and control. One spouse learned as a child that the way to treat people, especially women, is through domination and control tactics. These tactics continue in court, and lead to a minority of men in custody disputes using the system to hurt the mother by hurting the children. A sense of entitlement causes him to view his wife and children as his property. Combine this with a man who is molesting his children and what you have is an entitled child molester who is very good at presenting a rational demeanor to a court that does not want to believe he is hurting children. The saying goes like this: a woman can have 1000 pieces of evidence and all a man has to do is say “I didn’t do it” and the court says “ok then.”
There are two camps when it comes to child sexual abuse allegations in family court. One group says we must investigate abuse claims and protect children. The other camp says these claims are being fabricated in order to remove one parent’s rights to see the children. Each of these stances has a different primary goal.
Child protection as the goal
If child protection and safety is the primary goal, then any claims of abuse from either parent will be taken seriously. The court or child protection services will do an investigation into the abuse claims. This investigation will be done in a manner consistent with current psychological standards and be done by experts in the field of abuse. For example, in the case of claims of child sexual abuse or molestation, the standard best practice is to evaluate evidence including a history of any abuse toward the child or mother, a history of sexualized behaviors by child, alterations in other behaviors of child as well as physical evidence. Forensic interviewing can be used with children over the age of three. Children do not always disclose in the interviews but this does not mean that there was no abuse. Children are more likely to disclose if they feel safe, which would include keeping them in the custody of the non-alleged abusive parent (the safe parent) and repeating interviews with the same interviewer so that the child feels safe with them. If child abuse claims are validated, the court has a responsibility to keep the children safe. One form of safety is supervised visitation to ensure safety while still allowing parental access.
Parental rights as the goal
If parental rights and parental access is the primary goal, then abuse claims tend to be minimized so that parents will continue to have access to their children. In order to avoid investigating claims, many courts and many judges go the route of focusing on the accuser, typically the mother. Several methods are routinely used to discredit a mother’s allegations of abuse, so that the claims are not fully investigated and the children can continue to see the father unsupervised. Munchausen by proxy is used to claim that the mother is making up allegations because of her own traumatic past and projecting this on the child. Mothers are said to be coaching the child to disclose abuse. The most frequently used way to discredit abuse allegations is by using the term alienation. Parental alienation syndrome was a term coined by Richard Gardner to describe a scenario in which one parent deliberately tries to turn a child against the other parent usually by using false abuse allegations. This has become a standard argument to combat abuse allegations, effectually dismissing them without investigation (Meier & Dickson, 2017). However, research shows that less than 4% of abuse claims are actually fabricated and when they are, it is usually by fathers (Trocmé & Bala, 2005).
Joan Meier, professor of law at George Washington University in Virginia ran an extensive study that researched thousands of child custody disputes. They evaluated what happened when either gender parent brought up concerns of abuse as well as alienation. Findings show a clear gender bias in courts. Evidence overwhelmingly showed that when mothers brought up any abuse claims, a high percentage ended up losing custody completely. Contrarily when fathers made abuse allegations, they tended to win custody. Additionally, when mothers, but not fathers, claimed child sexual abuse (beyond physical abuse), they lost custody even more frequently. On the other hand, fathers frequently brought up claims of alienation to combat abuse allegations and were overwhelmingly successful in winning custody (Meier & Dickson, 2017). It seems courts would rather believe that a mother is making up abuse allegations than believe that a father could do those things. It’s as though the judgment call is one of what a judge thinks rather than one of evaluating evidence.
Family courts are not set up to investigate criminal matters. When sexual abuse of children is alleged, that becomes a criminal matter and should really be examined by criminal investigators who have the resources to fully investigate. Forensic evidence such as DNA samples and systematic interrogations can be obtained by them in a way that the family court doesn’t have access to.
The adversarial model of court proceedings common in the United States is when there are two sets of lawyers arguing against each other and their clients (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). Contrarily the inquisitorial model is when the judge heads up an investigation by questioning all parties involved (Adversarial system, n.d.). This would be another option for courts to determine whether child sexual abuse is really taking place. Rather than allow high paid lawyers for one party (typically the father) to denigrate low paid lawyers for the other party (typically the mother), the entire court could work together to investigate whether the allegations are true. Either way, experts should be involved. Psychologists trained to recognize child sexual abuse should be consulted in the manner of how to investigate and what patterns constitute abuse. Our children depend on the voices and courage of the adults our system places in power.
References
Adversarial system. (n.d.). APA dictionary of psychology. Retrieved on Mar. 1, 2019 from: https://dictionary.apa.org/adversarial-system.
Children and teens: Statistics (n.d.). Rainn. Retrieved on Mar. 1, 2019 from: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens.
Meier, J. S., & Dickson, S. (2017). Mapping gender: Shedding empirical light on family courts’ treatment of cases involving abuse and alienation. Law & Inequality, 35(2), 311.
Schneider, F., Gruman, J., & Coutts, L. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Trocmé, N., & Bala, N. (2005). False allegations of abuse and neglect when parents separate. Child Abuse & Neglect, 29(12), 1333-1345.
