Welcome to America, the Land of the Free - Unless you are the Child of An Abuser
I knew you before you were born. I carried you in my belly. Did everything I could to keep you safe and ensure you grew healthy and strong. I spent hours in agony, my body ripping apart, to bring you into this world. I nurture you, hold you, comfort you. Day after day, our bodies are connected. You snuggle up under my chin as you nap. Your chubby little baby fingers wrap around mine. Our entire relationship is love and light. The trust and joy you have with me are like no other. Our little life together is perfect. You are safe. Happy. Loved. And then one day everything changes.
You see him hit me for the first time. Somehow, I thought I would be able to hide that side of him from you forever. I thought about leaving, but he tells me he’ll take you from me, and I believe him. So I stay. And keep doing my best to hide the darkness. Most of our days are filled with happiness. We laugh, play in the dirt, run around the yard, and bake cookies. But there is a burning rage brewing all around us. I know you feel it, but I still naively believe maybe it’ll go away someday.
As the days, months, and years go by, I see the light in your eyes start to dim. Your laughs come less easily. You, too, seem to have your own burning rage. Resistance to all of the beauty and light we usually share. One day you tell me something that makes my skin crawl. He's not just hurting me, he's hurting you. In horrifying and evil ways. I call all of the people and agencies that supposedly exist to protect children. All of them tell me I'm doing it all wrong. That someone else is supposed to be the first line of defense. But none of them give me a list of rules so that I know what to follow.
As the months and years go on, you are pulled further and further away from me. His charm and likeability outweigh your truth. The court decides you must spend half of your life with him. Half of your life with me. Your time with me is no longer filled with love and light. I work all the time and still have no money. I spend all day responding to his barrage of messages, ensuring I accommodate all his requests, and facilitating calls that you don't want to participate in.
Your rage has become big. Explosive. Meltdowns all day every day. You scream and kick and hit as I hand you back over to him each week, while I pretend to be calm and positive, lying to you and telling you everything will be ok and you’ll have such a fun week with him, because that is what the court demands of me.
I am forced to pay total strangers to decide what your life and future should look like. They have no specific license, board oversight, or even child psychological background. Some of them talk to you. Some of them don’t. They decide that your pain isn’t from physical or sexual abuse. It’s from a “vindictive and angry mother” attempting to rip you away from your poor father. He is the “real” victim. Because I won’t stop trying to protect you, they decide the half of your life that you had been spending with me is too much. Most days I don’t see you. Most days I don’t even talk to you, and on the days that I do, I have to follow every rule and stipulation he gives me, and it constantly changes.
Everything I do is wrong. I’m not allowed to go to your school anymore because my attempts to make sure you are supported are now called interference. Your therapist who tried so desperately to advocate for you has been removed from your life because the strangers taking all of my money think she isn't properly supporting your relationship with him. We are no longer allowed to talk about what he has done. Your new therapist works with just you and him, and tells you that your experiences and memories aren't real. You're told if you don't cooperate that you won't get to spend time with Mommy anymore. The reality that he has more rights to your own body than you do is reinforced everywhere you turn. There are no safe people for you left. You retreat further and further into yourself and so do I.
It's been months now since I've seen you. I'm not allowed to talk to you. I'm not allowed to file more court motions. I'm not allowed to speak openly about your terrifying new life. If I fight for you anymore, I'll go to jail. But it doesn't even matter because I have no money or people left anyway. Everyone and everything is gone. And as I lay here in your empty bed, wrapped around your well-loved teddy that he won't let you have with you, smelling your perfectly sweet scent, I realize that we were safer living with him, than we ever were having left him.
These stories aren’t rare. They are everywhere around you. Children being told that someone else’s right to them is more important than their own rights to themselves. Their own life. Home. Body. Family courts forcing abused children back to the abuser. Protective parents labeled as “alienating”.
There’s a rumbling across the nation right now. Protective parents and children desperate to matter. But the societal outrage that brings forth wide-ranging reform has yet to come quickly enough, as the public has no idea what is really happening inside family courts.
Kayden’s Law was passed on a Federal level under VAWA in 2022, allocating funding for individual states that meet criteria to ensure child safety is prioritized in family courts. It would have resulted in a flood of state-level legislative change. And yet what it primarily brings is resistance from those who don’t grasp just how unsafe it is inside family court and opposition from those who profit from the status quo. In Maryland this year there’s proposed bill SB13/HB285, which would require court-appointed custody evaluators, whose opinions weigh heavily in these cases, to complete 20 hours of initial training on child abuse and relevant subjects and 5 hours of continuing education every 2 years in order to be eligible to receive Title XV funding.
As a survivor, the negative conversation and pushback to child protective reform is infuriating. It makes you wonder: if the various paid professionals entrusted to make decisions about the safety and well-being of children don’t want to be educated about the safety and well-being of children, who are the real winners here?
Annie Kenny is a Certified High Conflict Divorce Coach and Victim/Child Safety Advocate. She is the Board President of Family Court Awareness Month and a co-author of Stop the Silence's new release, Stop the Silence: Thriving After Child Sexual Abuse. You can connect with Annie at www.bloomconsultingsolutions.com.
