Parents who eagerly look forward to their next visit with a child who is known to be in the shared custody of a physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuser, when they are confronted with the knowledge that abuse has occurred, are faced with the overwhelmingly horrifying “Sophie’s Choice”-like dilemma of what to do.
Do nothing? Comfort, support, do not confront the child for more information?
Or seek means of confronting and ceasing custody with the abuser?
Not confronting the abuse means living in a state of ongoing uncertainty, fear of what is happening to the child, fear of not cooperating with the court – or cooperating with the court and not revealing any information whatsoever to the court, in order to retain the image of co-parenting cooperatively while the child continues to be abused.
Some parents choose to maintain the status of cooperating with the court, reassuring the court that there will be no breach of the covenant of silence made with the court by reporting . The parent will co-parent while watching the child’s behavior and overall functioning deteriorate. One such case in point was that of a young brother and sister who were clearly being trafficked by their abuser. The grooming process for engagement in sexual activity involved the abuser teaching the brother and sister to engage in sexual acts with each other. The very young children, having no prohibition against such acts, openly engaged in acts such as preparing for intercourse with each other, as well as openly masturbating and touching each other in the presence of others. As the children entered school and the open, increasingly aggressive acts of sexual assault against other children became a problem, the concerns about the home environment became public. With the support of the family court the children were allowed to be homeschooled.
The case noted was one that the FCVFC was intimately knowledgeable about, as one parent sought consultation with the FCVFC but decided not to move ahead with engagement with the FCVFC, as we would not cooperate with co-parenting.
The family kept in touch with us until we would no longer maintain contact with them, but we did report on the activity of the court and the judge involved under the title “Judges Who Are Family Annihilators.”
We have the full legal file documentation of the cases we report on but can do nothing with because of lack of cooperation with the parent involved, whether or not that parent has legal custody or has been deprived of legal custody, because of the abuses of court actors of the family courts.
Action to confront abuse in the family court system must include a protocol that involves intensive, urgent, rigorous legal and psychiatric forensic support in the form of expert diagnostic and reporting intervention steps. These actions are supported by confrontation of due process and abuse of process violations that confront irregularities.
All of these are part of the system to properly confront abuses in the family courts.