Domestic Violence Custody Cases – Mental Health Professionals vs. Domestic Violence Experts

Domestic Violence Custody Cases – Mental Health Professionals vs. Domestic Violence Experts

By Barry Goldstein

Most custody cases do not involve domestic violence (DV) or child abuse so if courts need assistance, mental health professionals would be an appropriate choice. Family courts are used to relying on mental health professionals for all cases, but this is based on a long history rather than good research. What works best for children in cases where there are reports or evidence of possible DV or child abuse?

Present court responses to possible DV were developed in the 1970s when DV first became a public issue and there was little research. Popular assumptions at the time suggested DV was caused by mental illness or substance abuse, and this led courts to turn to mental health professionals as if they were the experts in DV. Mental illness and substance abuse reduce inhibitions. This means DV abusers influenced by mental illness or substance abuse commit more severe and thus more memorable incidents of abuse. This is where the mistaken assumptions came from. We now know that people will not engage in behavior that they wouldn’t ordinarily consider just because of the reduced inhibitions. In other words, only people who believe they have a right to use abusive tactics to control their intimate partners are a risk to commit DV. DV is not caused by mental illness or substance abuse. Parents can certainly benefit from treatment for mental illness or substance abuse, but these problems do not cause domestic violence behavior.

The Saunders Study found most court professionals, including evaluators, do not have the DV knowledge that courts need. This does not mean mental health professionals cannot contribute to the court’s understanding of a case. Saunders recommends a multi-disciplinary approach that includes DV experts when DV may be an issue. Their expertise is needed to help the court determine if one of the parents committed DV. This means it is a mistake to wait until a finding of DV is made before seeking the benefit of DV expertise.

Unfortunately, a cottage industry of lawyers and mental health professionals has developed to provide approaches that favor abusive fathers. This works for the professionals because DV is about control, including financial control. Most of the financial resources in DV custody cases are controlled by abusive fathers. Parental Alienation Syndrome and other unscientific theories were created and promoted to help abusive fathers take custody from good mothers and help unethical professionals make large incomes. The worst thing a court can do is appoint cottage industry professionals to neutral positions like evaluator or GAL. They do not have the knowledge about abuse that Saunders says is needed and they are biased to help abusers and promote discredited alienation theories.

There are a few wonderful mental health professionals who also have the necessary expertise to help courts understand abuse issues. Psychologists like Dr. Mo Therese Hannah, Dr. Joy Silberg, and Dr. Robin Lynch are examples of psychologists who also have the needed DV expertise. I am generalizing, based on the findings in Saunders and my experience, but most mental health professionals relied on by the courts do not have the necessary DV expertise. Most mental health professionals are not part of the cottage industry and so are trying to be fair to both parents. Inevitably, the mistakes they make favor abusers when they don’t know how to screen for DV and fail to consult with a DV expert.

The purpose of this article is to review the benefits and problems associated with courts relying on just mental health professionals or DV experts. Hopefully we can reduce the present bias for using only mental health professionals and move to the best practices found in Saunders, which requires a multi-disciplinary approach.

Mental Health Professionals Benefits and Risks in DV Cases

Mental health professionals know how to diagnose mental illness. Courts need to know if the parents or children have mental health problems. Courts would need recommendations for how mentally ill children need to be treated. Their condition might suggest custody for one parent over the other. It would emphasize the question of which parent is more familiar with the child’s providers. There might be behavior from one or both parents that exacerbates the child’s condition. The child’s condition might also explain current problems or the child’s response to particular situations.

Courts also need to know if one of the parents has a mental health condition, whether it would prevent them from being a safe parent, and how it might impact their parenting. The other parent might need to adjust their behavior, such as to avoid causing unnecessary stress to help a parent cope with their condition. DV is not caused by mental illness, but it is common for abusers to also have a mental health problem. It is critical that courts understand these are separate problems requiring separate responses. An abuser might need therapy and/or medicine for his mental health condition, but also require accountability for his domestic violence. The common present reliance on mental health professionals often results in an abuser receiving treatment for the mental illness or substance abuse, but nothing is done to respond to his history of DV or child abuse.

Mental health professionals are used to speaking to a variety of people connected to the family, reviewing documents, and organizing the facts, circumstances, and history of the family. I often find this information is helpful in understanding the case even when the professional did not have the DV expertise necessary to recognize the abuse issues in the family.

One of the most surprising findings in Saunders was that social workers tend to make better recommendations in DV custody cases than psychologists or psychiatrists. This was surprising because we usually expect professionals with more education and advanced degrees would understand cases better. One problem was that psychologists tend to rely more on psychological tests that tell us nothing about DV and were not meant for the populations seen in Family Courts. Even in 2023, we still see evaluators discount reports of abuse because the abuser is not mentally ill. Social workers have the advantage of using a more holistic approach. Evaluators often diagnose mothers who are successful in the other areas of their lives with mental health problems that really only reflect her difficulty dealing with her abuser and sometimes with court professionals she views as unwilling to protect her children. These evaluators went wrong because they missed the context.

Saunders found that most evaluators do not have the specific DV knowledge that is needed. They rarely know how to screen for DV, understand risk assessment, post-separation violence, or the impact of DV on children. They tend to provide the court with subjective opinions that fail to include important research like ACE (adverse childhood experiences) and Saunders.

ACE is peer-reviewed medical research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It found that children exposed to DV, child abuse and other trauma will live shorter lives and face a lifetime of health and social problems. Most of the harm from DV and child abuse is not caused by any immediate physical injuries, but from the fear and stress abusers cause. Saunders found that most court professionals do not know how to screen for DV and so make recommendations that harm children. This research goes to the essence of the best interests of children. This is why the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges seeks to train other judges about ACE and Saunders. It is really malpractice to try to respond to DV custody cases without ACE and Saunders.

Many standard beliefs and practices used in custody courts and encouraged by mental health professionals are proven wrong by ACE and Saunders. This includes failing to understand an abuser’s good public behavior is not probative of his private behavior, high conflict approaches, focusing only on physical abuse, asking children to just get over it, assuming older abuse doesn’t matter, the myth mothers frequently make false reports, the assumption children need both parents equally, the failure to focus on reducing the fear and stress abusers cause, and reliance on biased and unscientific alienation theories.

The mistakes that are routinely made because of the failure to integrate ACE and Saunders are not neutral in the sense they apply to both parents. All of the mistakes help abusers and place children at risk. They are exacerbated by the fact DV is about control, including financial control. This means in most cases, the abuser controls most of the family’s financial resources. As a result, courts have heard much more from the abuser’s side and this misinformation is used by judges and lawyers in other cases. Courts rarely use their authority to level the playing field or require abusers to pay costs, including legal fees made necessary by their abuse. It is a standard abuser legal tactic to use economic and litigation tactics to bankrupt their victim, but courts rarely recognize or counter these tactics. The problem is further exacerbated because attorneys for abusers are comfortable with aggressive tactics despite their harm to children but many attorneys for victims are afraid to present evidence of abuse. All of these factors prevent courts from receiving the evidence they need to make safe and healthy decisions.

Mental health professionals have the advantage of having worked with the present practices for years and are comfortable adhering to these practices. The negative is that courts have no effective way to integrate new practices and knowledge. Courts tend to use the same small group of evaluators and other professionals, and this encourages an insular atmosphere. If courts regularly relied on expert witnesses from a nearby college or university, they might hear more of the latest research and improved practices that are available. The first ACE Study was published in 1998 and Saunders was published in 2012. There is something wrong when an unscientific alienation theory, twice rejected by the American Psychiatric Association has more influence over the courts than peer-reviewed scientific research from the most credible sources like ACE and Saunders. ACE is used by medical doctors to diagnose and treat patients, it is used by therapists to treat patients, public health officials use ACE for a variety of public policy issues and schools use ACE to help traumatized students. The only purpose for alienation theories is to help abusers take custody from good mothers.

We often see confirmation bias in evaluations because evaluators are used to outdated practices and have expected findings that either promote shared parenting or punish mothers seeking to protect their children. There have been numerous court-sponsored studies that have found widespread gender bias against mothers. Gender bias is often found in evaluations and court decisions because it is so hard to have an open discussion about this critical issue without defensiveness or retaliation. The recent Meier Study confirmed courts have made little progress on this issue.

Domestic Violence Experts Benefits and Risks in DV Custody Cases

The Saunders Study found that DV advocates have more of the specific knowledge courts need than judges, lawyers, or evaluators. This is especially important because this knowledge is needed for courts to recognize true reports of abuse and the Meier Study confirmed that custody courts disbelieve reports of domestic violence and child abuse far more often than the reports are untrue. Courts cannot protect precious children if they cannot recognize reported abuse.

DV experts know how to avoid discrediting true reports based on common situations that are not probative. We know to consider the alleged abuser’s motives, the pattern of abuse, and which parent is afraid of the other. I have read more than one thousand evaluations and have never seen an evaluator discuss the significance of abusive tactics that are associated with higher risk of lethality. How can we protect children without providing a risk assessment? Most DV experts are trauma informed and familiar with ACE and Saunders. It should be viewed as malpractice for courts to try to adjudicate DV custody cases without this vital information.

Fundamentally, without ACE, professionals inevitably minimize the harm from abuse and, without Saunders, they frequently disbelieve true reports of abuse. Most DV advocates can calculate the children’s ACE score. This tells the court the risk to the children if they are not protected. Abusers tend to be very manipulative and have great success fooling court professionals. A very common example is taking the abuser’s good public behavior and success in other parts of his life as if it were probative about abuse reports. DV experts are also aware that only accountability and monitoring have been shown to change abusers’ behavior. We often see mental health professionals recommend therapy or anger management that have no impact on DV in an attempt to respond to DV. This creates the illusion of responding without doing anything useful.

Mental health professionals often focus on an alleged abuser’s mental health and ability to control his behavior as if this were probative. DV experts understand DV is a gendered crime (even though there are rare cases where the woman assaults or mistreats the man). Evidence of the alleged abuser’s sense of entitlement, male privilege, and expectation to control women is important to understanding DV, but routinely missed by other professionals. Research about batterer narratives reveal that the use of offensive, sexist language gives abusers permission to hurt women. Non-abusers may have an interest in pornography, but it makes it more likely the man is an abuser.

Alleged victims often minimize the harm from their partner’s abuse and take some of the responsibility they don’t deserve. Many victims do not even realize that the father’s behavior constitutes abuse. DV experts understand the fear victims have is important to understanding the case. Victims are more likely to share information with DV experts who would be more likely to understand. This helps courts make more informed decisions because more information would be available.

Just as mental health professionals provide courts with valuable information they cannot receive elsewhere, but usually fail to provide needed DV information, DV experts also provide courts valuable information they are otherwise not receiving, but cannot provide information about psychology, mental illness, or from speaking to all the parties and collaterals. PTSD is a common mental health problem for victims of DV and child abuse. DV experts can recognize possible symptoms but cannot diagnose PTSD. DV experts can share the research about PTSD. Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder can only be caused by the most severe and horrific incident or a series of traumatic events such as occurs with DV or child abuse. If an alleged abuser caused PTSD, the court knows his denials and minimizations are false. A man whose abuse was so severe as to cause PTSD is an unfit parent. I have actually seen some evaluators fail to provide this information to the court or even claim the factor favors the abuser. This provides another example for the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach.

DV experts do not have the ability to require alleged abusers to speak with them. Attorneys for alleged abusers often try to use this to prevent courts from hearing the information DV experts can supply, and on rare occasions courts allow themselves to be manipulated by the attorneys. This is probably because courts are used to evaluators that claim to provide the full story. There are now three government-sponsored studies that have found serious problems with evaluations in DV custody cases because few evaluators have the necessary DV expertise.

Without speaking with the alleged abuser, DV advocates make judgments about whether someone is a victim of DV for purposes of providing shelter, advocates and law enforcement create a risk assessment, and advocates and medical professionals determine the ACE score for children. These findings tend to be far more accurate than court findings because they are performed by professionals with the needed DV expertise. A good argument could be made that avoiding the manipulation of abusers improves the accuracy of the findings. Fundamental fairness requires courts to hear the alleged abuser’s side of the case, and this is already done. Abusers usually have far more resources and more freedom to aggressively press their case than their victims do. Barring DV experts who could not speak with the alleged abuser does not provide a fairer balance for the court but rather prevents the court from hearing vital information and research the court will otherwise be missing.

Conclusion

In the last 15 years, more than 950 children involved in contested custody cases have been murdered. In many of the cases, the court failed to recognize true reports of abuse and gave the killer the access he needed to murder the child. The Bartlow Study asked judges and court administrators in the communities where the murder occurred what reforms they created in response to the murder to make children safer. The shocking response was nothing because they all assumed the local tragedy was an exception.

The immediate murders are just a small part of the harm caused when courts minimize or deny true reports of abuse. Just yesterday, I learned about a boy a court failed to protect from an abusive father. He died at 25 of a drug overdose. His mother is a dear friend who has helped so many protective mothers but could not save her own son in a system that refuses to use available DV expertise. Another good mother with terminal cancer gave up and turned to assisted suicide because a court helped the abusive father punish her by denying contact with her daughters. In other cases, children the courts failed to protect committed suicide in their teens and twenties. ACE tells us that many other children will die early from cancer, heart attacks and other diseases caused or exacerbated by the fear and stress custody courts rarely consider. This is not a time to get defensive about practices that are harming so many children.

The original mistake was to turn to mental health professionals as if they were also experts in domestic violence. The mistake was understandable because no research was available. Now we have ACE and Saunders and the ability to safeguard precious children. Saunders recommends courts should use a multi-disciplinary approach that includes DV experts. Courts need to be open to better practices supported by scientific research that can help courts recognize and respond to abuse issues. “This is not the way we always responded” is not a proper justification for courts to deny themselves the needed expertise.

The rules to qualify as an expert witness set the bar very low. Typically, an expert witness by education, training or experience must have expertise in a relevant subject far superior to a layperson. Mechanics without a high school diploma would routinely qualify to testify about automotive issues. A therapist for one party would qualify even though she never met the other party or the children. Most witnesses provide the court with only part of the story, but that doesn’t prevent them from testifying.

Children are dying and court decisions are ruining other children’s lives. Mental health professionals have useful information that helps courts, but they usually do not have expertise in abuse issues or the knowledge of critical research like ACE and Saunders. This is the critical information courts need to protect children. No judge wants to hurt children but when courts find excuses to avoid the knowledge they need, innocent children inevitably pay the price.

Barry Goldstein is a domestic violence author, speaker, advocate and expert witness. He is the author of six books concerning domestic violence and child custody. Barry is the author of the Safe Child Act which is a comprehensive plan based on current scientific research that can fix the broken court system and make family courts safe for children.

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The FCVFC defends Constitutional due process rights of litigants whose children are being used to siphon federal funds to state programs via family court, manipulating Title IV aid to dependent children. Following is a newspaper article about the lawsuit being brought by a client working with the FCVFC. *** Resident suing Andover Public Schools for […]

The post Transparency, Truth, and Scholarly Legal Writing to Implement Laws that Confront Lies Based on the Debunked Gardner Concept of Parental Alienation first appeared on Foundation for Child Victims of the Family Courts.

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Anyone involved in a fight over children knows what parental alienation is. Sometimes it’s used falsely in custody fights but it’s a …

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California legislature passes bill aiming to protect children from abusers during custody disputes

Again and again, Ana Estevez warned officials that the man she was divorcing, Aramazd Andressian, was abusive and dangerous. Nevertheless, a Los Angeles County family court judge granted him shared custody of their 5-year-old son, Piqui.

One week later, on April 21, 2017, Andressian smothered the boy to death.

Engulfed by grief, Estevez, a former elementary-school principal, teamed up with her state senator, Susan Rubio, to craft legislation to prevent other children from being ordered into the custody of their abusers. This week, the California legislature passed that bill, known as “Piqui’s Law.”

After voting unanimously for passage on Wednesday, the state Assembly gave Estevez a standing ovation. Estevez also attended Thursday’s Senate vote, holding an urn containing Piqui’s ashes. That vote was unanimous, too.

The law, which will take effect unless it’s vetoed by the governor, establishes training on domestic and child abuse for custody judges and bars them from ordering children who resist contact with one of their parents into “reunification treatment” that cuts them off from the other parent.

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The court denies the existence of sexual abuse and all other forms of abuse, as children are transferred into the hands of predators, as per the Gardner mantra that child sexual abuse does not exist and parental alienation is the underpinning for allegations for sexual abuse to support custody transfer based on false allegations. The […]

The post Fear Of Fighting The Family Courts: Children Bruised, Beaten, F’d, Protective Parents Bankrupted, Jailed, Fighting Back Seems Incomprehensible first appeared on Foundation for Child Victims of the Family Courts.

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The post Too Little and 50 Years Too Late first appeared on Foundation for Child Victims of the Family Courts.

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The Court that Hurts Children

The Court that Hurts Children

By Barry Goldstein

Custody courts cannot protect children when they permit a biased theory, designed to help abusive fathers take custody from good mothers and twice rejected by the American Psychiatric Association because there is no research to support it, to have more influence over the courts than ACE (adverse childhood experiences) and Saunders that are peer-reviewed scientific studies that go to the essence of the well-being of children and come from highly credible sources.

The ACE Studies are peer-reviewed medical research sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The original ACE Study was released in 1998 and there have been at least five additional ACE Studies that confirm and expand the original findings. ACE is used by doctors to diagnose and treat patients, therapists for trauma-informed treatment of patients, public health officials use ACE to help traumatized survivors, and educators use ACE to help traumatized students. The only purpose of unscientific alienation theories is to help abusive fathers take custody from safe, protective mothers and help the cottage industry earn large incomes.

ACE would tell the court that children exposed to domestic violence, child abuse and other trauma will live shorter lives and face a lifetime of health and social problems. Most of the harm is not from any immediate physical injury, but from living with the fear and stress abusers cause. Doctors working with the ACE research can help courts understand that contested custody in DV cases is often the last chance to save children from a lifetime (often a shorter lifetime) of illness and pain. In order to save these children, they will need medical treatment and therapy to respond to health problems as they develop and reduce the stress which will cause most of the harm. The children also cannot be exposed to more abuse or frightening situations or else they cannot heal. When courts insist on giving an abuser shared decision-making, they prevent the children from receiving the treatment they need. Abusers particularly do not want the children in therapy where they might reveal his abuse. When courts assume keeping abusers in children’s lives is beneficial, they expose children to more abuse and stress. These standard court responses remove the last chance for children to have a full and successful life.

The Saunders Study was sponsored by the National Institute of Justice in the US Justice Department. The purpose was to determine the domestic violence knowledge of judges, lawyers, and evaluators. Saunders found court professionals need more than generalized training in DV. They need specific knowledge that includes screening for DV, risk assessment, post-separation violence, and the impact of DV on children. Professionals without this information tend to focus on the myth that mothers frequently make false reports and unscientific alienation theories. This leads to recommendations and decisions that harm children. Saunders found DV advocates have more of the DV knowledge courts need than court professionals and most judges, lawyers and especially evaluators who do not have the DV expertise they need. Saunders recommends a multi-disciplinary approach that in potential DV cases must include a DV expert.

Fundamentally, without ACE, courts routinely minimize the harm from DV and child abuse and without Saunders they rely on the wrong professionals and so disbelieve true reports of abuse. Many standard court assumptions and practices were proven wrong by ACE and Saunders but continue to be relied on by courts.

Domestic violence is about control, including financial control. This means that in most DV cases most of the family’s financial resources are controlled by the abusive father. This factor led to the creation of the cottage industry of legal and mental health professionals who promote bogus theories such as alienation to help abusers gain custody. This financial advantage is a huge legal advantage and courts have been reluctant to use their authority to level the playing field. Abusers routinely use economic and litigation abuse to bankrupt their victims so that many victims wind up representing themselves. Courts do not seem to notice the tactics, use the information to recognize abusers’ motives, or take action to guarantee a fair trial. The superior economic resources of abusers result in judges and other court professionals hearing far more misinformation than the actual research that courts badly need.

The tilt is further encouraged by the response of attorneys. Lawyers for abusers are comfortable acting aggressively even when it misleads the court and places children in jeopardy. At the same time, many attorneys for mothers refuse or discourage their clients from presenting evidence or research about DV. Many courts have failed to understand mothers’ attempts to protect their children and have responded by punishing protective mothers who are the primary attachment figures for the children. Judges rarely consider that aside from missing true reports of abuse, the retaliation discourages lawyers from providing courts with the information needed to protect children in other cases.

The Meier Study is an outcome study designed to measure how courts respond to alleged DV, child abuse, and alienation. In the context of other research, Meier supports the conclusion that custody courts support abusive fathers far more than the evidence would justify. This is to be expected given the information discussed earlier.

In the last 15 years, a study from the Center for Judicial Excellence found over 900 children involved in contested custody have been murdered mostly by abusive fathers. In many cases, judges disbelieved or minimized reports of abuse and gave the killers the access they needed. The Bartlow Study asked judges and court administrators in the communities that suffered these murders what the court had done to make children safer in response to the local tragedy. The shocking answer was nothing because they all assumed the murder was an exception. I find it distressing that even the murder of a child does not overcome the defensiveness and insularity that has prevented needed reforms including the use of ACE and Saunders.

Children who physically survive their time controlled by custody courts are not out of the woods. Many of these children die in their teens or twenties from suicide or a drug overdose. Other children will later die early from cancer, heart disease or other diseases that are caused or exacerbated by the stress ACE focuses on. People who were never in custody court die from similar tragedies so we cannot know if an individual death was caused by the poor practices courts use in responding to abuse cases. There is no doubt, however, that many children’s lives are being ruined because courts are more willing to maintain the status quo than introduce ACE and Saunders.

I wrote an article based on a true story of a mother who saved her son by punching a mountain lion who attacked him. She was viewed as a heroine because the danger was from a wild animal instead of a wild abuser. The story illustrates the maternal instinct to protect children. Only in the courts that hurt children is this instinct viewed as harmful and severely punished. Some of the most heart wrenching stories I hear involve extreme decisions separating mothers from children and children from mothers. Courts make this tragic mistake because they are relying on flawed and biased practices. The Saunders Study and Kayden’s Law would tell courts of their mistake if only courts would consider scientific research instead of subjective opinions. Many, if not most, children will never recover from these extreme and retaliatory decisions. No judge wants to hurt children, but without the research they will continue to do so.

One of the reasons DV experts understand abuse issues better than other professionals is that we look at the patterns. Judges and court administrators miss the patterns because they are handling all custody cases. Most cases involve two good and loving parents and the standard court practices work well in those cases. This makes it harder for courts to recognize the 3.8% of contested custody cases that require a very different response. 75-90% of these cases are really DV cases in which an abusive father who often had limited involvement with the children during the relationship seeks custody or shared parenting (as a first step) to regain control and punish the victim for leaving.

It is a mistake to treat cases with two safe parents the same as cases with an alleged abuser. High conflict approaches are biased in favor of abusers because they create a false equivalency between victim and abuser. There is now a specialized body of knowledge and research that is needed in abuse cases, including to determine if there is abuse. Any attempt to decide possible abuse cases without the benefit of ACE and Saunders is malpractice.

Any effort to reform court practices in order to protect children must include ACE and Saunders. Many court officials seek to block any legislation they view as limiting their discretion. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges seeks to train other judges about ACE and Saunders because it goes to the essence of the well-being of children. I have never heard a judge or court administrator explain the justification for failing to make sure the knowledge in ACE and Saunders is used to understand these cases and protect children.

I don’t write this article out of anger or to criticize anyone. I am writing out of profound pain and sadness. The worst part of this work is the constant stream of preventable tragedies that never stop. We fight on a case-by-case basis, but as long as courts maintain the ignorant and biased practices that err on the side of protecting abusers and ruining children’s lives, the unbearable tragedies will continue. Please tell me how courts that hurt children can continue to try to respond without the benefit ACE and Saunders.

Barry Goldstein is a domestic violence author, speaker, advocate and expert witness. He is the author of six books concerning domestic violence and child custody. Barry is the author of the Safe Child Act which is a comprehensive plan based on current scientific research that can fix the broken court system and make family courts safe for children.

(Thanks to Veronica York for her suggestions that improved this article).

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The post What to Do When Case Settlement is Not an Option, in Spite of Gaslighting and Intimidation first appeared on Foundation for Child Victims of the Family Courts.

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The post Practices Reputedly Followed For So-Called “Family Reunification” Therapy During And After Child Sexual Abuse Is Known To Have Occurred first appeared on Foundation for Child Victims of the Family Courts.

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Were there “red flags” in your family that you now recognize that fostered alienation?



GRANDPARENTS WHO CONTRIBUTE TO PARENTAL ALIENATION Grandparents play a significant role in a child’s life.

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