"DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, ABUSE, and CHILD CUSTODY:
Legal Strategies and Policy Issues
Co-edited by Mo Therese Hannah and Barry Goldstein ©2010"
"For more than two decades, protective mothers from every state in the country (as well as overseas) have been ordered to turn their children over into the care, and even the custody, of the children's abusive fathers. This occurs even when there is adequate evidence of child abuse, domestic violence, and other harmful behaviors on the part of the father. Courts claim to be doing this to ensure that both parents remain involved in their children’s lives after divorce or separation, but in fact, in most of these cases, precisely the opposite happens: mothers are denied any meaningful relationship, or even contact, with their children. In the meantime, male supremacist groups claim unfair treatment in the family courts, seeking shared or total custody in order to avoid paying child support and to maintain men’s traditional control over their partner and their children. "
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"One of the findings you'll learn about in this book is that, of the small fraction (5%) of child custody cases that are contested to trial and often beyond, perhaps 90% involve abuse allegations against the father. These are not good guys sincerely wanting to raise their children—these are, for the most part, batterers who want to punish, hurt, and control their exes. Another factor contributing to the surge in men’s filing for custody of their children was the federal child support enforcement law that was put into place in 1993. In the decade prior to that, male supremacist groups had begun to encourage abusers who had little involvement with the children during the relationship to seek custody as a vindictive tactic against their partner. (We cannot count how many women have told us that their abuser had threatened them with some version of, “If you leave, you’ll never get the kids!”) Courts who are certain that children do better with both parents in their lives (regardless, apparently, of how sociopathic, addicted, or mentally deranged the parent may be), are delighted to see fathers who appear to be so devoted to their children that they will fight for them in court."
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