The Family Court Crisis

by AnonymousLike you, my heart breaks for the innocent children being separated from their parents at the border. It is immoral and un-American.  By denying children the short and long-term security and protection they need, we are putting them at extreme risk. In the words of Dr. Lisa Fortuna, medical director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Boston Medical Center, “in situations of stress, the only way that children can cope is if they have a caregiver that is taking care of them and that’s there to protect them.”The distress that a child experiences when removed from their primary caregiver can harm their ability to self-soothe, which can lead to depression, anxiety and PTSD. In the developing brain, this is particularly damaging. Long-term studies show that these experiences can put a child at risk for developing ongoing anxiety, depression, PTSD as they get older. These in turn affect educational outcomes and sense of well-being and can cause behavioral problems.The immoral and abusive practice of removing children from their primary caregiver is happening in Texas. It’s happening all over the United States.Last month I met a mom who lost custody of her son to his father, who was sexually abusing the young boy.  All parental rights were taken away from her and she was ultimately jailed for trying to protect her child.I wish I could tell you this is an isolated case. It’s not.  I know of hundreds of stories like this, and they cut across race, socioeconomic status and just about every other demographic variable I can entertain.Society encourages mothers to leave abusive relationships, however society stays largely silent on what happens to the children following the separation.In fact, in the majority of the contested custody cases where a mother alleges abuse, custody is given to the abuser. There is a huge gap between what we know from the scientific literature about attachment theory and exposure to stress in early childhood, and the practices of family court, where protective mothers are regularly called “gatekeepers” or “parental alienators” when they express concern for their child’s well-being.We are left with a generation of young children cut off from their protective parent, and a generation of protective parents terrified to share their stories out of fear of worsening the nightmare they are forced to live day in and day out.  In fact, “Mothers of Lost Children,” an advocacy group based in California, estimates that an estimated 58,000 children per year are court-ordered into unsupervised care with an abusive parent every year.These stories typically have several common denominators: a history of drug or alcohol abuse or other mental illness among the abusive parent, family court professionals who either do not understand or do not care about child well-being or health, and a protective parent without the resources necessary to continue battling in court.I am encouraged to see so many professional societies and the news media report on the importance of attachment to a protective parent, the implications of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and what stress and trauma do to a developing brain.  This was most definitely not my experience in family court.My son was just a year old when began having regular, unsupervised visits with his father (despite serious concerns about his father’s mental well-being) including overnight visits. He had never been away from me and this was traumatizing for him. He would come back from these visits vomiting and/or banging his head and fists on the ground. He could not be consoled and was unable to eat or sleep. These behaviors were a sharp departure from his generally happy and content personality. I was told very sternly by my lawyer at the time to never bring this up in court, as it would result in him having to spend more time with his father. I stayed silent out of fear.As my son got older and more verbal, he would scream, "DADDY NO! NO DADDY!" at any  sign he was about to spend time with his father - whether it be a familiar road where the transitions happened or the sight of a car that looked like his father’s vehicle. He would shriek and kick and scream so badly that I feared he would injure himself in his car seat. I learned to stop wearing sleeveless shirts during our custody transitions, as my son would dig his fingers so hard into my shoulders that I would bleed. He would cry so hard that he vomited.Years later, I can tell you that things are largely the same in terms of his extreme anxiety and fear but developmentally, it gets expressed differently. He still cries hysterically during the transition and often will cling to me so tightly that he has to be physically removed from me by his father. More recently he has started to run away when his father tries to get him.The clinical term for my son's situation is severe separation anxiety and it is a direct result of the trauma he has endured. My son is now 5-years old and cannot separate from me to do simple, age-appropriate things such as go into his school each morning. This is a school which he loves. Last week, when we visited his new school, he was the only child out of over 100 children who could not separate from me to visit the classroom. The school psychologist explained that while kids his age understand that when their parent leaves, they come back, my son doesn’t as a result of the early, extended separations from me, his primary caregiver. My heart breaks as I repeatedly witness the effects of trauma on my young child.In addition to anxiety, there is PTSD. At a party a few weeks ago, something triggered my son and he spent 30 minutes screaming in my lap, "WHERE IS MY MOMMY, WHERE DID YOU PUT MY MOMMY?" After returning from extended periods with his father, he has nightmares where he wakes up screaming, "WHERE DID YOU PUT MY MOMMY?"Despite all of this, I am one of the lucky ones.  I get to see my son the majority of the time. My job provides health insurance which covers a therapist for him. I am not one of the mothers who have lost custody, or all visitation rights. I have a support group of women around me who understand what it’s like to parent under these circumstances.Regardless of the therapy and help that I seek for my son, I am unable to completely erase the damage that was done. The family courts do not recognize the severe impact of separating a child from his primary attachment figure and what this does to the developing brain. To be clear, I always wanted my son to have a strong and loving bond with his father despite his father’s limitations. I consulted with a child and developmental psychologist who confirmed that the best, healthiest way to achieve this was through frequent, short periods of contact with his father, and a gradual approach to longer periods. In court, this is seen as gate-keeping, or alienating the other parent and can result in losing all custody.I know many of you will think that sending a child to spend time or live with a parent (even an abusive one) is better than what is happening to these Central American immigrants. I do not disagree.  At the same time, I hope we can agree that issues around attachment and separation from primary caregivers should be taken into account when custody and visitation decisions are made, particularly in cases where one parent has a history of abuse, neglect or is otherwise unable to put the needs of their child first.No government and no judge should ever be allowed to take children away from their protective parent.  Professional organizations who are now speaking out- doctors, lawyers and others- need to stand up for the children who are not on the front pages of the New York Times.I stand in solidarity with the refugee parents whose children have been taken away, and I stand in solidarity with mothers and protective parents whose children are taken away from them- whether permanently or not- against the child’s will or well-being.“There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.”  – Nelson Mandela