A growing body of research describes custody courts across the country (and globe) refusing to take reports of fathers' abuse and dangerousness seriously and treating mothers who seek to protect their children as lying or pathological.  Some courts lack expertise in family abuse, are misled by scientific-sounding labels and tend to focus on the rights of parents at the expense of the protection of children. These dynamics can lead to a punitive attitude toward mothers who report that a father is dangerous while requesting limits on or supervision of his access to a child. In a troubling number of cases, the disregard of such warnings has led to children being murdered by the parent who was alleged to be dangerous and who was given unprotected access to the child. In many other cases, court orders are unwittingly removing children from loving parents to give them to other parents who are subjecting them to ongoing abuse.

 

References:

Silberg & Dallam (2019). Abusers gaining custody in family courts: A case series of overturned decisions, J. Child Custody 16:2, 140-169

 

Winstock (2014). Safe Havens or Dangerous Waters? A Phenomenological Study of Abused Women's Experiences in the Family Courts of Ontario, PhD Dissertations. 36.

 

Jaffe, Crooks & Poisson (2003). Common Misconceptions in Addressing Domestic Violence in Child Custody Disputes, Juv. & Fam. Ct. Jnl, 57-67

 

Meier (2003). Domestic Violence, Child Custody, and Child Protection: Understanding Judicial Resistance and Imagining the Solutions, 11 Am. U. J. Gender Soc. Pol'y & L. 657-731

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