We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense. – Andrew Lobaczewski
In the family courts of the US and Europe fathers and mothers are routinely set against each other with the children becoming emotionally crushed in the ensuing battle, should they have survived the initial abuse in the first place. As always, there appear to be valid cases on both sides of the male/female divide, though judging from the carnage that results, you would never know it. There are examples of mothers who have discovered that their spouse has been molesting their child and have taken the appropriate action through the courts to grant them sole legal and physical custody.
This has turned into a tragi-farce with the alleged abusers either getting unsupervised visitation rights and more frequently, full custody. Conversely, as a possible back-lash, we are seeing some fathers being denied access to their children based on out-of-date and unfair bureaucratic laws regardless of whether they have committed a crime. In effect, the laws are biased towards the mother in some courts and biased towards the father in others, according to the specifics of national law, cultural influences and widespread corruption. Indeed, family courts seem to be presenting the worst kinds of injustices in cases that are both complex and multifaceted.
This has turned into a tragi-farce with the alleged abusers either getting unsupervised visitation rights and more frequently, full custody. Conversely, as a possible back-lash, we are seeing some fathers being denied access to their children based on out-of-date and unfair bureaucratic laws regardless of whether they have committed a crime. In effect, the laws are biased towards the mother in some courts and biased towards the father in others, according to the specifics of national law, cultural influences and widespread corruption. Indeed, family courts seem to be presenting the worst kinds of injustices in cases that are both complex and multifaceted.
In the US, by far the most reliable source of litigation is the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, in Denver. A recent study surveyed 9000 custody disputes in 12 family courts across the country. Only two percent involved child-sex-abuse charges.
Although this is certainly small it is known that the psychological footprint is very large indeed from those that do. Domestic physical abuse is highly likely to involve a percentage of sexual sadism which is often mistaken for a purely violent and aggressive display of anger. We can also know that cases such as these, while physical abuse is still being reported in greater number of cases, sexual abuse has a taboo that naturally restricts the number of cases reported not withstanding the likelihood of the charges making it to court. Even before they get to the courts they must be taken seriously by doctors or paediatricians. Increasingly, many health professionals fear child abuse cases due to the complex nature of the abuse claims. In the UK, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Professor Sir David Hall, told the Royal Society of Medicine that “recent high-profile cases in which doctors had been censured had undermined confidence in the regulatory authorities.” He believed that signs of abuse might go unreported until the indications were ‘all too obvious.’ Careers are apparently coming first. 1
Although this is certainly small it is known that the psychological footprint is very large indeed from those that do. Domestic physical abuse is highly likely to involve a percentage of sexual sadism which is often mistaken for a purely violent and aggressive display of anger. We can also know that cases such as these, while physical abuse is still being reported in greater number of cases, sexual abuse has a taboo that naturally restricts the number of cases reported not withstanding the likelihood of the charges making it to court. Even before they get to the courts they must be taken seriously by doctors or paediatricians. Increasingly, many health professionals fear child abuse cases due to the complex nature of the abuse claims. In the UK, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Professor Sir David Hall, told the Royal Society of Medicine that “recent high-profile cases in which doctors had been censured had undermined confidence in the regulatory authorities.” He believed that signs of abuse might go unreported until the indications were ‘all too obvious.’ Careers are apparently coming first. 1
Allegations of sexual abuse, paedophilia and violence are more commonly made by mothers and can be voiced without challenge or a burden of proof. During the interim, access is denied and courts appear to accept accusations regardless of the possibility that this could be the product of hate and acrimony from an embattled relationship. If the father is innocent and when the claim is finally dropped, there is no penalty for making such a vindictive claim. By then the damage is done, which may partially account for the rise in father suicides relating to unfair agency payments and the ensuing custody battles. Though correlation does not immediately lead from causation, a divorced father is ten times more likely to commit suicide than a divorced mother and three times more likely to commit suicide than a married father.2 A divorce consultant stated: “It’s a little known fact that in the United States men initiate only a small number of the divorces involving children. Most of the men I deal with never saw their divorces coming, and they are often treated very unfairly by the family courts.”3
Though the cases are compelling it could also be suggestive of a range of societal factors as the broader statistical picture implies. America is not Britain (not quite yet anyway) and a different set of influences produce the overall data yet the dynamic remains the same. For instance, in the UK each year, some 85,000 families with children fewer than 16 undergo divorce. The standard aftermath includes disputes over how much the “non-resident parent” should see his children, which is generally the father. Children First, a 1998 Government paper, indicates that 40 percent of separated mothers admit to thwarting contact leaving fathers losing connection with their children within two years of separation or divorce.4 According to one reputable English solicitor I spoke to: “Some 80,000 parents issue proceedings a year, many of them fathers seeking reasonable contact with their children. A common outcome is permanent severance.”
With family Court welfare services providing under-trained personnel to evaluate and report on the welfare of children “Normal family men are routinely assessed as unfit to have significant contact with their children; normal children are routinely sentenced to years of ‘relationship-building programme[s]’ to condition them to withstand visits from ordinary Dads.”5
The patterns of bias vary from country to country with injustices on both sides, with judges, court procedures and their agencies predominantly to blame. Many fathers cry foul and highlight the shared parenting concept that is so lacking in family courts. Yet this shared parenting is of little value if one of those parents is a closet molester. What is without question, courts - throughout America in particular - are failing children and often needlessly breaking up families. The systems are not only ill-equipped to deal with the subtleties and nuances of lengthy child abuse cases but bureaucracy and delays mean that judges are often forced to speed up the process rather than let the case proceed in a measured way. In the words of one Colorado attorney: “If we ever sat down to design the worst possible system that protects the smallest number of children, it would look a lot like the family courts look today.” 6 But there is much more to this than just a back-log of paper work.
In Kristen Lombardi’s award-winning article “Custodians of Abuse”7 she researched the background behind family court custody battles, interviewing almost 25 experts in custody litigation. Lombardi offered some pertinent reasons as to why these courts are failing children and parents, contributing to a further layer of what amounts to long-term and state-sponsored emotional abuse. She found that family courts “...do not rely on criminal investigators to examine child-abuse claims. They rely on family advocates called guardians Ad Litem (GALs), whose charge is to investigate allegations of abuse, abandonment, and neglect and to represent the best interests of the children in disputed custody cases. More often than not, they are licensed psychologists or social workers. Sometimes, they are attorneys.”
Ad items they have their own individual areas of expertise which do not however qualify them to act as evaluators of the highly sensitive problem of child abuse. With the spread of Kinseyian sexology and Freudian psychoanalysis as the platform for most evaluations, the interviews, assessments and judgments are routinely carried out without the necessary qualifications. What is more they are taken as fact and relied on to the detriment of all child abuse victims.
Family courts are now a law unto themselves. Judges can operate as mini-dictators where their opinions, beliefs, stereotyping and gender bias take precedent over the evidence which has shown to be true in case after case, including “judges…hold [ing] hearings in which important rulings are made with only one party present (called ex parte hearings); such hearings can violate basic constitutional rights of due process.”8 The courts do not have juries nor a mandated legal representation, so that the well established law for the rich and the law for the poor is reinforced by the inner circle of Elite opinion that is routinely set up to serve itself. The result of all this appears to be the reverse of the popular belief that mothers are favoured and consistently obtain custody rights in abuse cases. An extensive 1996 report from the American Judges Association backed up these findings called “Domestic Violence and the Courtroom,” which showed that “wife batterers and child abusers convince family-court officials that their ex-wives are ‘unfit’ or ‘undeserving’ of sole custody in roughly 70 percent of contested custody battles.”910 Nevertheless, what is seldom mentioned is the fact that when there was a fight over the children, “…fathers won primary or joint custody more than 70 percent of the time — whether or not there was a history of spousal or child abuse…”
Little has changed in 13 years since the report. However, keeping track and sourcing reliable statistics regarding battery is fraught with difficulty. It is a high probability that this form of abuse is a significant factor in many cases. Another study by respected social scientist Murray A. Straus, appears to show that “Family conflict studies, without exception, show about equal rates of assault by men and women.” (Keep in mind that there is considerable discrepancy as to what constitutes “violence.”) Straus mentions that though women score highly on physical violence: “Crime studies, without exception, show much higher rates of assault by men, often by as much as 90 percent.”11 This may account for the quote that “every 15 seconds a woman is battered by their [intimate] partner in the United States.”12 The latter conclusion needs to be kept in mind that the crime of assault against women is overwhelmingly the province of the male.
The extent of husband battery is also underestimated. Men do not usually report their violent wives to police. Similarly, children do not report their violent mothers to police. Meantime, women are far more likely to report men to relevant authorities. Straus believes that: “…neither side can give up their position because it would be tantamount to giving up deeply held moral commitments and professional roles. I conclude that society needs both perspectives. Neither side should give up their perspective. Rather they should recognize the circumstances to which each applies.”13
Currently, this recognition is constantly buried by the very same systems which pretend to facilitate mediation and justice. The “circumstances” could be said to be the carefully prepared social petri-dish where malignant strains of ponerization causes fathers and mothers to be set against each other. At the moment, mothers and fathers in different ways are undoubtedly falling under the weight of the dominant male pathology which in turn, will always favour the system itself.
Lombardi’s research highlights the persistent patterns of family courts that seem to refuse to believe in the mothers’ claims that their children have been sexually or physically assaulted (keeping in mind that physical assault can be sadistic battery in disguise) despite enormous amounts of evidence from child protection workers. Like academic apologists for paedophile “rights” we have the same pattern appearing in the form of fathers rights. Many fathers unquestionably do have legitimate grievances to answer, but many of the cases thus far point to clear injustices being perpetrated in a systematic way against mothers and their children, where “Women are being routinely punished and abused if they bring up child-sexual-abuse allegations in the family courts.”14
Predators, PAS and “Medicalization”
Mothers are also forced to do battle with a spurious A new mental disorder called “Parental-Alienation Syndrome” (PAS) coined by Richard Gardner in 1987, a psychiatrist affiliated with Columbia University and which has made justice in family courts even harder to come by.15 PAS has increased the persecution of children and mothers by giving a get out clause to abusive fathers and stepfathers alike.
As with all good disinformation and para-logistical campaigns that are designed to subvert constructive pathways, PAS has elements of truth and cases to match. The theory works on the premise that vindictive mothers turn their children against their fathers and lie about abuse in order to exact revenge on the former partners and/or to obtain the upper hand in custody disputes. Though the late Gardner gave no scientific basis for his syndrome and was discredited by many mental health professionals, it remains a potent weapon for the abuser and those interested in speeding up legal back logs. That is not to say that such manipulative dynamics cannot take place, just as there are fathers who also victimized. We must also bear in mind Gardner’s belief that many different types of human sexual behavior, such as paedophilia, sexual sadism, necrophilia (sex with corpses), zoophilia (sex with animals), coprophilia (sex involving defecation) are seen as having species survival value and thus do “…not warrant being excluded from the list of the “so-called natural forms of human sexual behavior.” He also advocated that the removal of a paedophile parent from the home “should only be seriously considered after all attempts at treatment of the pedophilia and rapprochement with the family have proven futile” and that mothers do not choose litigation, that they stay with the boyfriend or husband who carried out the abuse. Gardner’s bias is clearly evident. Statistics and case studies suggest that rather than contributing to a constructive discourse, it is actively helping abusers remain free. The end result, in one victim’s words, is to “…pathologize the moms and turn attention away from the kids.”
A dangerous “medicalization” of the law can also be personified in the form of “interactional assessment” which uses intense observation by experts who are trained to look for signs of abuse. Advocates of this method believe: “validation of the abuse does not depend on the verbal disclosure of the child, confession of the perpetrator, or the conviction of the other parent that abuse has occurred. It depends on gathering and sifting through information from multiple sources.” 16 While working well in a classroom for a variety of different criteria, it is still an entirely unproven method of evaluation. Despite this, it is still widely used in the courts. This represents a massive oversimplification and assumption regarding assessments of this kind. There is no evidence that behaviour cues can be used to determine whether abuse happened.
Subtle signs of anxiety can be attributed to a host of different reasons, not least being present at the interview itself and most certainly being present in the courtroom. The existence of such psychiatric and legalistic onslaughts has caused countless children to become easy targets for further manipulations leading to further emotional trauma. Why would the child molester worry about going to court when he has so much confusion around him? In his domain, he is the master actor and manipulator, leading a double life and relying on the trauma-induced child he abused to complete the proceedings. After all, if he can be in the same courtroom as the victim – all the better. He can intimidate the child further and induce yet more traumas, causing the testimony to be less than believable. This is the psychology legacy of the last 50 years: children are simply fabricating, that they should indeed be “seen but not heard.”
Subtle signs of anxiety can be attributed to a host of different reasons, not least being present at the interview itself and most certainly being present in the courtroom. The existence of such psychiatric and legalistic onslaughts has caused countless children to become easy targets for further manipulations leading to further emotional trauma. Why would the child molester worry about going to court when he has so much confusion around him? In his domain, he is the master actor and manipulator, leading a double life and relying on the trauma-induced child he abused to complete the proceedings. After all, if he can be in the same courtroom as the victim – all the better. He can intimidate the child further and induce yet more traumas, causing the testimony to be less than believable. This is the psychology legacy of the last 50 years: children are simply fabricating, that they should indeed be “seen but not heard.”
One specific book singing the praises of interactional assessment illustrates techniques including anatomical dolls and drawings to use as useful tools with no data or evidence to suggest that these techniques are even helpful. There are several drawings which the authors interpret as “signs,” of abuse such as missing ears, the absence of feet, and phallic shapes. References are sparse, case histories can be interpreted a multitude of ways and it serves as perfect example of how easily subjectivity – with the best of intentions – can lead to catastrophe. Meanwhile, the abuser, along with his lawyer is laughing all the way to freedom and the bank. With naive theories and Faustian bargains made by lawyers who pimp their principles for whoever pays the most, the attorney client privilege takes up the slack and banishes any other compelling evidence that may be offered. At the same time, psychotherapy - a useful tool in the hands of responsible professionals - is under attack from the US government. A colleague of psychiatrist Corey Hammond and co-author of Memory, Trauma Treatment and the Law Professor Alan Scheflin of Santa Clara University Law School, is an expert on clinical and experimental research on hypnosis, memory and trauma treatment and their applications to the law system. In a recent interview he talked about the changing climate of psychotherapy and trauma assessment, where therapists are being used as channels for corruption where the erosion of stringent ethics and codes of conduct are replaced by the dollar while “the accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference” which then allows it to continue unhindered. Third party liability suits brought against therapists and the invasion of privacy and the autonomy of the therapist-patient relationship are some of the changes imposed by business and government:
A scheme in which physicians exercise principal control over decisions about the use of facilities, choice of treatment and determining what information should be disseminated to patients, has given way to a system in which competition and cost containment have become dividing forces, driving forces. Insurers and other large business entities exert great impact over treatment choices and hospitalization as well as selection of providers. […]Unfortunately other professions and the uninformed have now stepped in to determine the standard of care. The standard of care being a legal standard is informed by good medical practice, but by being a legal standard, it can be manipulated by lawyers and propagandists and other people, and that is what has happened.
Therefore it is necessary for the mental health profession to wrest back control of the standard of care from the avaricious lawyers that are in the process of changing it.17
Psychoptherapy is either co-opted or the therapists themselves are seduced by prestige, payments and propaganda. The unpleasant law was never about who is innocent or guilty but the profits that can be extracted from the bloody battles that follow. On many occasions disbelief and denial from psychologists with poorly applied evaluation techniques are enough to allow children to go home with their abuser. The following true case study illustrates this point.
Picture a wealthy businessman, accused by his wife of committing sexual abuse against his four year old daughter. These become the grounds for the lengthy custody battle. Psychological evaluations of the man’s relationship towards his daughter show “…a very happy, spontaneous and positive relationship.” A history of sexual abuse is known by the psychologist but dismissed as irrelevant in court due to the man’s obvious disposition; his charm, amiability and more importantly - his status. While the court case is proceeding, the polygrapher with an excellent record is requested by the attorney defending the man, convinced as he is that his client is innocent. This highly professional and experienced polygrapher, describes the details of the accuser’s confessions during the test:
She grabs his penis while he washes her in the shower and he has explained to her what a man does with it. When questioned further about how often this happens, he said about three or four times a week. When asked to give a high figure regarding the number of times that Julie has touched his penis he said about twenty times… […] He also acknowledges erections and masturbations in the showers while Julie is in the shower with him….Her father stated that he sleeps nude and stated that Julie likes to cuddle. He stated he likes to run her foot up and down his penis until he gets an erection and sometimes ‘things happen.’ […] He stated that she ‘loves’ to orgasm. ‘I’ll get her a vibrator. She’ll hold the handle against her peepee and giggle until she climaxes.’ 18
Remember, this is a four year old girl.
The report by the polygrapher continues to relay the man’s inability to contain his excitement to the extent that he finally admits to severe child abuse. In fact, he can’t stop relating his exploits, confirming the pattern of the psychopathic need for self-aggrandizement. He knows his money and influence will protect him, moreover, that his self-assurance regarding the mechanisms of the law allows him to get away with such audacious confessions as the following: “She has licked and sucked his penis no more than five times, has given him two full ‘blow jobs.’ He has ‘69ed’ her. He has licked her vagina and has performed oral sex on her not more than ten times.”19 The polygrapher faxes the report to the attorney acting for the father but to no avail. The attorney-client privilege is enacted and the report suppressed. The “audacity” is the utter self-confidence in the duplicity of the system. The custody battle ends in the man’s favour and an admitted child molester is recommended for full custody.
How could such a travesty take place? Easy: The man was a wealthy businessman who used the exact same skills of manipulation and ruthlessness to gain a substantial footing in the commercial world. This afforded him the best attorney in town, supplanting the mother’s meagre attempts to find a similar worthy opponent to defend her child’s interests. Coupled with biased psychological evaluations and the ignorance of the nature of the sociopath /psychopath, the child never hand a chance. The spellbinding technique of the man was so effective the whole courtroom was captured in its thrall. This man could never have abused the child! The attorney reminded the judge jury that there was a man of standing and impeccable character before them, and psychiatrists provided the pseudo-psychology for him to get away with it.
The possibilities for child rapists and paedophiles have never been easier in a legal system that is loaded towards the desires of the psychopath. Another way to look at it is like this:
Suppose that you are on a team that is engaged in a game and you discover that:
- The other team gets to make up the rules.
- The referee plays for the other team.
- One of the rules is that you are not allowed to score – the team is at no risk.
- Only you can be scored against.
Notes
1 ‘Doctors 'fear child abuse cases’ BBC News, 5 January 2006.
2 National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) - males actually commit suicide four times as often as females do, and have higher suicide rates in every age group, yet the statistics suggest that losing a job and divorce are the most frequent cause of suicides.
3 Quoted from ‘Distraught Father's Courthouse Suicide Highlights America's Male Suicide Epidemic’ By Glenn Sacks, San Diego Union-Tribune, 11 January 2002.
4 Children First Depart. of Social Security, UK Government, 1998.
5 Public Eye.Website of Political Research Associates June 1989.
6 ‘Deadbeat parents, system fail children’ Lansing State Journal, Michigan, April 13, 2003.
7 ‘Custodians of Abuse’ by Kristen Lombardi’s The Boston Phoenix, Jan.9-16, 2003. This is required reading for anyone wishing to gain an insight into the true nature of abuse of women and children in the courts. The article represents a landmark in journalism.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 ‘The Controversy Over Domestic Violence by Women: A Methodological Theoretical and Sociology of Science Analysis’ by Murray A. Straus. Family Research Laboratory, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH.,1998.
12 United Nations State of the World Report, 2000.
13Ibid. (Straus, 1998.)
14This conclusion is regarding fathers rights in the US alone. In the UK the court system is a little different as is British society. Though the cases involving the denial of fathers’ rights appear to be higher the statistics are inconclusive and often ambiguous. The cases of fathers being victimized in other countries may well be entirely different and I do not discount the fact that this conclusion could be reversed where the mothers become the perpetrators. As it stands, from the sociological and cultural data so far, patriarchal dominance is still as strong as it ever was.
15 ‘The Parental Alienation Syndrome: An Analysis of Sixteen Selected Cases’ by John Dunne & Marsha Hedrick. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, Vol. 21, p 21-38 1994.
16 Children Speak for Themselves: Using the Kempe Interactional Assessment to Evaluate Allegations of Parent-Child Sexual Abuse by Clare Haynes-Seman and David Baumgarten Published by Brunner/Mazel, Inc.,1994 (pp. 33-34) ISBN: 0876307454.
17 From the Presentation entitled: Risk Management in Dissociative Disorder and Trauma Therapy by Professor Alan Scheflin given at the International Society for the Study of Dissociation (ISSD) and International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) conferences at a joint session in Montreal on November 9, 1997.
18 p. 18-19 (Salter, 2003)
19Ibid.
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