One mother on Reddit is experiencing firsthand a state of affairs we hear about all too usually — the brokenness of the household legislation and authorized programs. She’s deeply apprehensive about how she and her ex’s visitation and custody battle are impacting her little one, and the way the authorized system is making it subsequent to unattainable for her to guard her daughter.
The mother writes that she ‘cannot stand the impact’ she and her ex’s visitation and custody battle is having on her daughter.
The household courts that referee visitation and custody battle proceedings have lengthy been referred to as out as one in every of our nation’s most egregiously backward and infrequently corrupt programs in our nation.
Because the video under explores, the harrowing latest story of Catherine Kassenoff, a mom who was repeatedly barred from seeing her youngsters by a courtroom system favoring her abusive ex-husband Allan Kassenoff, has change into a shining instance of how continuously these programs fail youngsters.
This mom appears to be one more instance of how these programs fall down on the job of defending youngsters.
In her Reddit put up, the girl writes that she and her nine-year-old daughter’s father as soon as had “a peaceable co-parenting” association for the primary 4 years after they cut up. That each one modified three years in the past when he started relationship the girl he is now married to.
“There may be fairly a little bit of neglect, emotional, and verbal abuse of their family,” she writes, “and I can’t stand the impact it’s having on my little one.”
Photograph: Reddit
She writes that she’s labored onerous to “create a steady and constant residence for her,” that she “maintains a impartial angle” towards her ex in entrance of her daughter, and that she’s had the little lady in remedy for over a yr, however the state of affairs at her father’s home has change into dangerously risky.
The issues her little one is seeing on her mandated visits throughout their custody proceedings are having a terrifying affect. I really feel like I’m shedding,” she writes, “it doesn’t matter what I do.”
Every time her daughter comes residence from her father’s, the mother has to ‘piece her again collectively’ from the abuse and neglect she endures and witnesses.
“This weekend, there was a [domestic violence] incident involving the cops, which [my daughter] witnessed,” she writes. On prime of that, her daughter “got here down with a 104-degree fever and had a febrile seizure” as a result of her father ignored her situation, which resulted in an emergency room go to.
Worse nonetheless, the kid’s father has been threatening her for telling her mom what’s occurring. “Two weeks in the past, he threatened to interrupt all of her electronics and throw them within the swimming pool if she continued to speak to me concerning the issues that go on at his home,” the mother says.
Photograph: Reddit
The expertise of being primarily powerless to maintain her daughter secure amid she and her ex’s visitation and custody battle has introduced the mother to a breaking level. “I can’t stand how shut down and withdrawn she was when she got here residence,” she writes. “Piecing her again collectively after these visitation weekends is a battle… I’m simply bodily and emotionally exhausted – to not point out the pressure that lawyer charges are placing on our finances. I can’t stop crying.”
The mother’s expertise with how her visitation and custody battle are devastating her little one is shockingly widespread.
The statistics on instances like this mother’s, in addition to individuals like Catherine Kassenoff’s, are infuriatingly grim. Household courts reject 81% of kid sexual abuse allegations introduced by moms and 79% of kid bodily abuse allegations.
Alleging abuse by a father is a surprisingly widespread means for a mother to lose custody altogether — particularly if the daddy counter-accuses the mom of “parental alienation.” As home violence and household courtroom knowledgeable Barry Goldstein places it, abusers usually “want solely deny their companions’ studies and permit the courtroom to make use of the flawed practices that tilt choices in opposition to defending youngsters” so as to win these instances.
On Reddit, a number of individuals had private expertise to bear out the methods our shockingly inept household courtroom programs so usually make the precise improper choices on the subject of defending youngsters.
After a Redditor urged this mother to file police studies and petition for emergency custody, different dad and mom rapidly got here ahead to elucidate how simply these strikes may backfire — together with a guardian who did exactly that after her ex kidnapped her little one and was practically arrested for doing so.
Photograph: Reddit
This mother’s valiant efforts to combat for her child give her daughter hope of at some point overcoming the trauma she’s enduring and thank goodness for that. As one Redditor put it, “it doesn’t matter what occurs you wont cease combating to your daughter, and she is going to without end keep in mind that.” If solely they did not need to combat this difficult within the first place.
John Sundholm is a information and leisure author who covers popular culture, social justice and human curiosity matters.
