Domestic Violence: Barring her from fleeing

What is well discussed in the public arena is child abduction and international custody disputes often in sympathy of the father.  What is not often discussed is that a lot of reasons why a mother may need to move .  It is natural for anyone to flee if their lives and their children's lives are in danger.  It is why we have shelters, asylum seeker provisions and safe houses.  It is a well known fact that not only do we unfortunately have human beings on this earth that terrorize children and women, but one third of women on this planet are affected by violence.  There is no argument that such atrocities occur.  There is no argument that some of these result in deaths that if it were not in the family home, it would be a genocide on women and children.  

What there has been an argument on is the family court population and whether that differs from the general population data.    The reason why there has been such an argument is that these courts are closed and there are strict laws and guidelines that refrain the media from reporting on the cases.  What is controversial is the cases that are released favor the court.  whatever appears to be politically attractive, is what makes it to the news.  What makes it to the news is often the fathers rights agenda.  

When I refer to fathers rights, I refer to the patriarchal intention.  This intention does not include equality, children's rights.  It is just about the mens rights above all others, the way things were in the eighteenth century.  It has been a revelation that was initially acknowledged  from domestic violence advocates, child abuse advocates and the women and children who were directly affected.  Men who did not conform to the eighteenth century father model were also affected.     

The people that promoted this model and imposed it on others were internal to the family courts.  They worked hand in hand with the shared parenting councils, children rights councils and fathers rights groups.  The external groups were sometimes operated by the same presidents and secretaries of each other.  Each had the same goal: Enforce Patriarchy above all other rights.  The strategies they used were brutal and some groups were classified as terrorists.  Children who spoke out against the abuse were portrayed as alienated and needed to be "cured" by being removed from the protective parent.  They were acts that sound so absurd to be occurring in democratic western countries.  Women's Rights in the public domain has become the norm as women work and achieve leadership positions and are heard regularly as an equal figure in the media. Fathers rights dominated the public domain to paint a view that the court was overly feministic and negative toward fathers.  After reviewing many cases dating back to the 1980s, it was clear that fathers were heard above mothers in most cases, even when there was more evidence presented from the mothers side.  

The reason for this was the use of Parent Alienation Syndrome, a theory coined by Dr Richard Gardner who successfully distributed self published books focusing on false allegations to begin with, recommending harmful therapies such as, "threat therapy" and "de - programming".  What is disturbing was that he was not just referring to false allegations, but promoted the idea that child sex abuse was normal and society had taken a negative view upon it.  The major problem in his books referred to "the accusing mother"  who was "sick" and hysterical.  


Why many therapists, counsellors and lawyers supported such a notorious theory is related to ruthless greed and lack of compassion for victims of such abuses.  His books did very well to comfort common ethical concerns with statements that conveyed that it was healing and therapeutical compared to the damage of false allegations.  Domestic violence victims were also targeted as alienators for their potential to hold resentment toward the perpetrator, also known as mostly the father.  

So began a great wall between victims and their freedom of these abuses.  Perpetrators had discovered the legal gateway to continuing the control and abuses toward their victims with many blanket labels to cover what they were truly doing.  Suddenly it became illegal to survive domestic violence and child abuse as the choices narrowed as resources diminished with the diversion of these movements.  Some survivors were painted as "abductors" of the children they endeavored to protect and murder suicides were blamed upon "fatherlessness" or mental health.  There was never any real responsibility towards the damage to survivors or concern for the children, just a tunnel view for the grab of control.  

Church leaders elevated their status, promoting every man as the head of the family, regardless of their criminal history.  They supported the new marriage contract renamed, "Shared Parenting" and thus promoted it regardless of the violence.  Counsellors cashed in with little obligation to the victims in offering to "cure" domestic violence in mediation settings whilst promoting it was somehow an "equal" situation and not something to separate over.  Degrading victims of violence became the trend.  We now have a generation of increasingly traumatized young people and adults of some who have gone on to continue the cycle whilst others have been dragged through it.  

Relocation in Family Court cases severely impairs the survivors to reach an adequate level of safety and distance to heal.  

The logic of fear is that naturally it is our alarm warning system, it alerts us to detect the danger and to either peacefully  remove oneself and the children from the danger or seek to eliminate the danger.  We see this in all animals as we do in the history of human behavior.  When the danger is present over a long period of time and the alarm warning system is overexerted, the cost of trauma begins to set in.  The mind and body is exhausted and translates into mental illnesses as a confused antidote for the trauma.  It may translate into an anxiety disorder(panic attacks for no reason), phobias(the fear is diverted towards other day to day surroundings),  depression(exhaustion of the system that the sense become dulled altogether) and psychosis(the escape that never happened becomes healing but not real and over a period of time fantasy becomes a habit and state of existence).  The effects of this are evidential in the growing population of mothers and children, but often perverted to again suit the needs of the perpetrator establishing a reason for yet more control over the child and mother.  Many labels have been accepted to describe these experiences, yet they are also mixed in with labels that encourage further damage to the victims, which is why I prefer to steer this to more experiential terms of human understanding and logic.  

Pharmaceutical companies would have you believe that some of these human conditions are irreparable.  From experience and knowledge, I can tell you that I disagree.  Being able to remove oneself from the life crisis and find ones own sense of healing, it can be done.  It cannot be done in an environment of fear and trying to parent under these circumstances is very difficult.  The freedom to move away from volatile situations like these is a very important antidote and one that needs to be granted.  If the true focus is on the best interests of the children, then there needs to be not only a culture of transparency, but also of genuine concern for the children and their mother.  In cases where the mother is the harmer, then other family members who can provide a secure home environment need to be taken into account before foster care is considered.  It is not always the case that foster care is the best option and sometimes has become a reason why members of the community have become hesitant at reporting.  Unfortunately, some carers have also been abusive and in many cases are not always accepting of the child as a family member is.  Attachment disorder, another pseudo scientific diagnosis that has little evidence base to credit the findings has been used to discredit abuses that occur in foster homes and institutionalized care.  Whilst there are many behaviors that are common with foster children that are not common with other children, it is more a reaction to the treatment and learned behaviors as a result of experience.  Most of these behaviors are trauma related and sometimes triggers from the prejudices of foster children in general.  Sadly some carers take on the responsibility to appear charitable, but are not emotionally intelligent enough to truly understand what it means to nurture a child that might have lacked that in the past.  We often see this in politicians biographies prior election and in business profiles.  What we don't see is what goes on behind closed doors and the experiences of children in care.  Sometimes it can be a treatment worst than the cure.