Connecticut Family Court

 

Protective Parent Law in Some States, But Not in Connecticut…

 

January 22, 2011 

 by Julia Fletcher 

Legislators in Alaska, Tennessee and Wisconsin had the good sense to sign into law their own versions of the Protective Parent Reform Act. Click here to see the bill that was discussed at a Judiciary Committee hearing in Connecticut in March 2005. 

March 2005 was three months before a mother in Connecticut temporarily lost custody of her child for believing her child’s disclosures of abuse. The family court judge who eventually ruled in that case – after the case was transferred from the Bridgeport family court to the Middletown family court to the Middletown Regional Family Trial docket back to Bridgeport and then to the New Haven family court - wrote that she believed that the child believed the abuse occurred. The family court judge in New Haven also believed that the mother believed the abuse occurred and ordered the mother to receive “therapy” to prevent her concerns about her child’s disclosures of abuse from influencing her child.

How do family law attorneys, “therapists” and judges convince and/or force protective mothers to convince and/or force their children to be alone with child abusers? How do family law attorneys, “therapists” and judges force and/or convince abused children to spend time with their alleged abusers? 

“Threat therapy” is a nightmare of an oxymoron that’s used in child abuse cases in our nation’s family courts today. Our family courts also use “deprogramming“ and “reunification“. 

Wait, that’s not all. That family court case in Connecticut and subsequent civil lawsuits filed by the alleged abuser which were based on that family court case eventually served to establish case law in Connecticut which may now be used to punish any parent who believes and reports their child’s disclosure of abuse in Connecticut.

Twisted? Yes. And criminal too. Why would any judge punish any parent who believes and reports their child’s disclosure of abuse? Click here to learn more about the many unscientific theories used by custody evaluators, attorneys and judges to take abused children from their protective parents in our nation’s family courts today.

Why aren’t abused children protected in our family courts? In Connecticut, the only individuals showing up to offer their opinions about the Protective Parent Reform Act in March 2005 were critical of the bill. They weren’t inclined to suggest amendments which could have resulted in a law on the books to protect parents who report their children’s disclosures of abuse. According to the transcript,  a Ms. Pristein spoke first to tell the Committee, “It’s the solution that works and is terrible for a problem that doesn’t exist.”  A problem that doesn’t exist? The Connecticut mother who was ordered to pay $3.5 million dollars for believing her child would probably disagree. So would others who might now be less prone to report abuse in order to avoid such harsh punishment. So would the children of Connecticut who are now in danger because of case law established with the mishandling of that case.

With the increasing media coverage of the family court crisis, let’s hope that more people show up in Connecticut’s state capitol to voice their opinions the next time the Protective Parent Reform Act is introduced. Let’s also hope that people showing up at the offices of those who worked behind the scenes to defeat that legislation will have warrants and handcuffs with them.

From The Connecticut Law Tribune:

Shooting the Messenger In Child Abuse Cases

by Joan Meier, Esq.

In a story headlined “Mom Gets Daughter, Dad Gets $3.5 Million” (July 14, 2008), the Connecticut Law Tribune reported on the “malicious prosecution” case brought by a father against his child’s mother, seeking damages for what he claims was her malicious allegation that he sexually abused his daughter. The story quoted the father’s lawyer, as saying: “It’s one of the saddest cases I’ve ever seen. A father robbed of his daughter.” That would be sad, if it were accurate. In fact, the father voluntarily terminated his parental rights – after the court repeatedly provided him with opportunities to cultivate a relationship with his daughter.

But here’s something sadder: Mothers “robbed” of their children, and children penalized for reporting parental abuse, by family courts that prefer to shoot the messengers than believe the bad news.

All over the country, and with stunning regularity, family courts are rejecting mothers’ allegations of abuse or risk to their children. Instead, courts give credence to custody evaluators  who rely on the scientifically unfounded theory of “parental alienation syndrome” (PAS). Rather than seriously investigating the abuse, PAS professionals often encourage courts to disbelieve such claims and to remedy the purported “alienation” by delivering the children to the alleged abusers.

Take the Georgia case of Wendy Titelman, whose two daughters were awarded to their father even though multiple experts in child sexual abuse were convinced that the children were being sexually abused. Or the California case of Karen Anderson, whose daughters and son were awarded to their abusive father. The son ultimately escaped — he reported that his father had repeatedly entered the girls’ bedrooms late at night and stayed for long periods. The youngest daughter still lives with her father.

Stories like these are rampant; many can be found at www.CourageousKids.net, the web site that children abused through court processes have founded to provide each other mutual support.

Professionals Concurred

In the Connecticut case, rather than awarding custody to the alleged abuser, Connecticut’s civil courts awarded him $3.5 million for “malicious prosecution.” Yet the mother  only did what any mother would (and should) do when her young child describes a sexual touching that makes her uncomfortable. She called counseling professionals for help and did what they told her, including calling the police.

A state Department of Children and Families social worker, a police officer, and experts from the Yale- New Haven Hospital Sexual Abuse Clinic all either interviewed the child or observed an interview and believed her, concluding that she had probably been sexually abused. On the strength of those assessments, the state’s attorney’s office decided to prosecute the father. That case resulted, not in a “clearing” of his name, contrary to the Law Tribune’s description, but in a hung jury on one count and acquittal on the other.

Whatever the actual truth of the abuse allegations, the fact that a national expert in the field, a social worker at DCF, and the police believed the child should have been more than sufficient to defeat a malicious prosecution claim against the mother. Indeed, the family court had previously found that the mother “profoundly believes” the abuse allegation.

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court said that the mother had “persuaded herself that what she knew to be false was true.” Even though our brief hammered on this point, the court was silent about the other experts who believed — not the mother— but the child. If the mother was malicious, then so were a national sexual abuse expert, the police and prosecutors. The court declined to address this inconvenient truth, underscoring the invisibility of the very child whose well-being should have been the central issue.

Judicial debacles like this one are fed in part by the myth that mothers who raise child sexual abuse allegations in family courts are doing so out of malice — or pathology — rather than valid concern for their children. But the empirical research shows both that only 12 percent of child maltreatment allegations in custody cases are intentionally false. Notably, custodial parents (usually mothers) and children are the least likely to fabricate such reports. Non-custodial fathers commit more false accusations.

No Ballet

Here’s a question: If you were a falsely accused father, how would you feel and behave? Even if you were outraged, would you seek to use money damages to hurt the mother and not care if she — and necessarily, your daughter — becomes homeless, as the father has suggested to India New England news? Would you terminate all contact with the child, or would you do everything you could to maintain a loving connection with the child who surely would need you all the more, with such a sick mother?

The one silver lining to this case is that the child is back in the loving care of her mother and is no longer forced to see her father. Hopefully that will comfort her when she can no longer have ballet lessons or a working refrigerator, because her mother’s meager income is being paid to the man she is certain abused her.

Joan Meier, professor of clinical law at George Washington University Law School, co-counseled the mother’s  appeal on behalf of the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project.