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Family Law in the Funhouse Mirror



 
 
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Old October 27th 05, 05:32 AM
Dusty
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Default Family Law in the Funhouse Mirror

PBS' Breaking the Silence: Family Law in the Funhouse Mirror

October 26, 2005
by Jeffrey Leving and Glenn Sacks

http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive...acks102605.htm

The controversial new documentary Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories
airs Thursday on Public Broadcasting Service stations across the country. In
the film, co-producers Catherine Tatge and Dominique Lasseur sound the alarm
over an alleged crisis of fit mothers losing custody of their children to
abusive husbands.

The documentary centers around Karen, who lost custody of her three children
to her husband after a court-appointed evaluator found that she had falsely
accused him of sexually abusing them. As the film notes, mothers like Karen
are increasingly vocal and visible. Their cause célèbre is Manhattan, New
York ex-model Bridget Marks, who appeared on Dr. Phil, Larry King Live, and
The O'Reilly Factor after she briefly lost custody of her twin 4-year-old
girls under similar circumstances last year.

Despite the film's claims, such custody transfers are very rare, and usually
happen for a good reason. In Marks' case, for example, the trial court judge
and all four New York appellate court judges who heard the case concluded
that Marks had coached her girls to believe that they had been sexually
molested by their father.

Breaking the Silence ignores a far more common phenomenon--divorcing
mothers' tactical use of false allegations of sexual abuse. When a father
who has daughters seeks joint custody over the objections of a recalcitrant
mother, it is standard legal practice to advise the father that a charge of
sexual abuse may be coming. According to a study published in Social Science
and Modern Society, the vast majority of accusations of child sexual abuse
made during custody battles are false, unfounded or unsubstantiated.

False domestic violence allegations are an even greater problem. The
filmmakers portray abused women as the victims of sexist judges who refuse
to believe them, and who punish them for claiming abuse. In reality, courts
are often very tolerant towards false allegations of domestic violence, and
divorcing mothers frequently use domestic violence restraining orders as
tactical weapons to secure custody.

Many courts grant restraining orders to practically any woman who applies,
and research shows that these orders often do not even involve an allegation
of violence. Once the order is issued, the father is booted out of his
marital home and can even be jailed if he tries to contact his own children.

By the time the court decides custody, a firm precedent has already been set
that mom is the primary caretaker, and she will likely get sole (or de facto
sole) custody. The father is pushed to the margins of his own children's
lives even though he has never been found guilty of any wrongdoing or
criminal offense. Nevertheless the filmmakers advocate that domestic
violence policies be made even more draconian. This amounts to a doctrine of
"moms never lie," giving mothers veto power over fathers' fatherhood.

The filmmakers also contend that abusive fathers use claims of Parental
Alienation Syndrome--the phenomenon of a custodial parent turning his or her
children against the noncustodial parent after divorce or separation--to get
courts to secure them sole custody of their children.

To be fair, it is true that there are fathers who have alienated their own
children through their abuse or personality defects, and who unfairly blame
their children's mothers by claiming PAS. Yet parental alienation is a
common, well-documented phenomenon. For example, a longitudinal study
published by the American Bar Association in 2003 followed 700 "high
conflict" divorce cases over a 12 year period, and found that elements of
PAS were present in the vast majority of them.

The cruelty PAS visits upon children and the fathers they love and need
would be hard to overstate. One prominent example is the LaMusga case
decided by the California Supreme Court last year. In that case Gary LaMusga
's son's kindergarten teacher testified that LaMusga's ex-wife asked her to
keep track of the time Gary spent volunteering in his little son's
kindergarten classroom so it could be deducted from his visitation time with
his son.

According to the teacher, the kindergarten boy told her "my dad lies in
court," and said that his mom had told him this. The teacher testified:

"I finally sat down with him and told him that it was OK for him to love his
daddy. I basically gave him permission to love his father. And he seemed
brightened by that.I'm not sure that he was aware that he could do that."

While one can always find an unusual case or ruling, as Tatge and Lasseur
have, fit mothers rarely lose custody of their children. The view of family
law propounded in Breaking the Silence is not accurate, but is instead
reflective of the grave distortions put forth by misguided women's
advocates. It is family law in the funhouse mirror.

This column was first published in the Albany Times Union (10/20/05).

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Liberalism: that haunting fear that someone,
somewhere, can help themselves without
Government intervention.


 




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