Alabama
Family Rights Association |
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- FALSE ALLEGATIONS
OF ABUSE IN DIVORCE
There has been a dramatic increase in the number of divorces
over the last thirty years. Experts estimate that at least
half of all marriages will end in divorce. Divorce has
an effect on everyone involved, especially children if there are
children in the relationship. Many times divorces become very
hostile, which results in long courtroom battles. These battles
are over money, houses, land and cars, but the most sensitive,
traumatic and often the most cruel battle is the battle over the
custody of the children. Custody battles for children are often
long and heated debates over which parent is the better parent
for the child. In the past, custody was always awarded to the
mother because of the belief that children needed to be nurtured.
In recent years, there has been an upward trend to fathers
seeking custody rights to the children. Often times parenting
plans can be set up with mediation between the two parents but in
most cases, the court becomes involved. During custody battles,
there is a growing trend of one parent alleging abuse by the
other parent. Before 1973, child abuse was rarely reported to
authorities and often times it was covered up. In 1963, reports
of suspected child abuse was 160,000 but between 1976 and 1993,
the total yearly number of child abuse reports grew from 669,000
to over 2.9 million after the child abuse protection legislation
that Senator Mondale sponsored. The passing of this legislation
has also resulted in the increase of allegations of child abuse
in divorce battles. In 1975, thirty five percent of all
child abuse reports were unsubstantiated, but by 1993, that
percentage sky-rocketed to sixty six percent. In
divorce, when allegations are made and the police conduct
investigations, ninety seven percent of these claims are
unable to be substantiated. It is obvious that many
allegations of abuse which are reported in divorce situations are
false and ninety five percent of those accusers are women. With
the high amount of divorces, the percentage of those divorces
which abuse is reported, and the percentage of which are
unsubstantiated, it shows that children are being used as
pawns to hurt or destroy the other parent. These false
allegations of abuse, even if proven to be false, can
ruin someone's life and have a devastating effect on the
children. Two syndromes have been occurring in rapidly increasing
numbers since 1980. The first is called Parental Alienation
Syndrome (PAS). Douglas Darnall, PhD. States that, many women say
that PAS does not exist or it is simply a tool used by male
dominant courts to take the children from their mothers. They
also contend that fathers and attorneys use PAS as an aggressive
defense for physical and sexual abuse. There are three different
types of alienators. The first is the naïve alienator who
recognizes the importance of and encourages the relationship
between the children and the other parent and only occasionally
will do or say something that may alienate. This is not done to
try to destroy the relationship between the children and the
other parent. The second is the active alienator who alienates
the children from the other parent by lashing out at the other
parent in front of the children. They may even give the children
the choice of whether or not the child wants to visit with the
parent although the court has ordered rights to visitation. The
third type of alienator is the obsessed alienator who does
everything in their power to align the children to their side and
campaign to destroy their relationship with the targeted parent.
The obsessed parent is bitter and angry and tries to completely
remove the targeted parent from their lives by vilifying them and
set themselves up as a victim/hero. Some weapons that the
alienating parent uses are false allegations of domestic
violence, sexual or physical or emotional abuse of the child,
mental illness on the part of the target parent, or
alcoholism/drug abuse/homosexuality on the part of the target
parent. This is a form of parentectomy, or the removal or erasure
of a parent from the child's life. The second syndrome that is
occurring is called Sexual Allegations In Divorce (SAID). SAID is
a false accusation against one parent, usually the father, for
molesting the child. In the American society, there is such a
sensitivity or outrage about child abuse that when an allegation
is made, it is presumed to be true. Instead of being innocent
until proven guilty, the accused child molester, especially
fathers, are guilty until proven innocent. Upon allegation, the
courts generally order the removal of the child from the father
and at the very best, allows the father only limited supervised
visitation until the matter is completely settled. Frank
Zepezauer states that "in some jurisdictions, the accusation
can send a man to prison for life. In others, it can incarcerate
him for ten or twenty years or more and brand him, for the rest
of his life as a sex offender. At the very least, it can
immobilize him in custody proceedings by involving him in costly
litigation." SAID is often used by women to alienate the
father from his children. It is used more often than physical
abuse since there is often no physical signs from sexual abuse. A
defense attorney in San Jose, California states, "In one
fell swoop, she (the mother) can get her husband completely out
of her and her children's lives, and assure herself complete
custodial control. And in one fell swoop, she can completely
destroy the man's life, and any semblance of a normal
relationship between him and his children." One may wonder
what the alienator would have to gain in making such false
accusations or why one parent would try to erase the other parent
from the child's life. There are several reasons. Fear of losing
their parental identity, loss of family structure, envy, rage and
revenge are all viable bases for which one parent will alienate
the other parent from the child. This epidemic is not exclusively
seen in America but is wide spread throughout the world. In the
National Shared Parenting Association (Saskatchewan Chapter)
Press Release, it states that in Canada, a Children's Aid Society
study showed that of 1200 complaints of abuse, 900 involved
custody disputes. Of those 900 allegations, two-thirds (600) were
found to be false. Most people do not realize the effects of
parental alienation on children and the false allegations of
abuse. Many young children whose mothers have made false
allegations of abuse will develop false memories of abuse because
of leading questions or suggestive counseling. These children are
left fatherless. Parentectomy results in children becoming
depressed, sometimes reaching suicidal proportions. They often
lack self-esteem. Often they will turn against the alienator in
later adolescence when they realize they have been
"brainwashed" against the other parent. David
Blankenhorn gives statistics of fatherless children. He states
that forty percent of American children will live apart from
their fathers sometime before they are 18. He also says that
drugs, child and adult abuse, poverty, teen pregnancy, gangs,
crime and growing prison population are all driven by the
separation of fathers from their children. He states, "A man
can communicate to his son how to be a good man. The best mother
in the world can't do that." "Children who are deprived
of their natural fathers, compared to children in two-parent
families, are more likely to go to prison by eight times, to
commit suicide by 5 times, to have behavioral problems by 20
times, to become rapists by 20 times, to run away by 32 times to
abuse chemical substances by 10 times, to drop out of high school
by 9 times, to be seriously abused by 33 times, to be fatally
abused by 73 times and to have a 44 percent higher mortality
rate." These statistics are alarming and horrifying but what
is behind all the statistics are hurting children who long for a
normal life and was never given the chance to have that. They
long for a relationship, with both their parents, that is
healthy. Many times the mother has so convinced the children that
their father is worthless, that they have a bitter resentment
toward their father, which is solely based on the fabrications of
the mother. This can ruin the child emotionally. It is not only
boys that need their fathers in their lives to help them become
emotionally stable. "Adolescent girls whose parents divorced
during their oedipal years, we postulate that particular coping
patterns emerge in response to the absence of the father which
may complicate the consolidation of positive feminine
identification in many female children and is observable during
the latency years. We illustrate both the existence of these
phenomena and implication for treatment: 1) intensified
separation anxiety 2) denial and avoidance of feelings associated
with loss of father 3) identification with the lost object 4)
object hunger for males." This also shows the hurt and anger
that a child goes through with the loss of the father in their
lives. They repress their feelings and act out upon them trying
to make themselves whole again but without any hope of doing that
because the only way would to be able to undo the emotional abuse
that the alienating parent perpetrates on the child. The target
parent has literally lost their children. In essence, their
children have died. The target parent grieves but continues to
love their children from a distance. They are forced to live as
if their children are dead. The only hope that the target parent
has is that someone will be able to reach their children and
explain what has happened and the child will be willing to start
a relationship with their lost parent. This alienation from their
child can, as one can imagine, cause an increase in suicide rates
among fathers. It is financially devastating to those who choose
not to take their lives and result in poverty. They must fight
long legal battles to clear their names of the crime that they
have allegedly committed. This can take thousands upon thousands
of dollars as well as years of court proceedings. Many men lose
everything they own to fight the court system because not only
have they lost their rights as a parent, they have lost their
reputation as well but they are still required to pay child
support to those children. Even once a man has been cleared of
the charges of abuse, there will always be emotional scars from
the abuse that their ex-wife and the court system has ravaged
them with. As stated earlier, many are branded as child molesters
for the rest of their lives even with an acquittal. The
legislation that passed that began this massive surge of false
abuse allegations is called the Mondale Act of 1974 or the Child
Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA). This law was well
intentioned to stop child abuse, but it has created an epidemic
of false allegations of abuse. CAPTA matches monies to states
that comply with their provisions, which are to set up programs
which identify and prosecute child abusers. CAPTA created a vague
and ambiguous definition of child abuse which is left up to the
subjective discretion of the caller who reports the abuse or
investigator. CAPTA has been revisited many times and has had
minor amendments. President Clinton re-authorized the act in the
fall of 1996. Most states have what are called Child Protective
Service Workers (CPS). These workers, along with law enforcement
officers, investigate abuse reports. While the law enforcement
officers have been trained to be objective, the CPS have not been
and they even are called "validators" which raises a
question to their role in an investigation. The CPS have
authority to deny a parent the access to the children even if
there is a court order which allows them to have visitation with
the children. The CPS will send a child for an evaluation.
According to the Mondale Act, if an evaluator does not report
suspected abuse and the child goes back to an abusive situation,
the evaluator can be imprisoned. These evaluators are often
either afraid of the consequences of imprisonment if they
mistakenly place a child back in the home of an abuser or they
may even be a validator as the CPS workers. The indicators that
these validators use to determine abuse are actually quite common
behavior which even normal children sometimes exhibit. Some of
these indicators include, bedwetting, acting out, nightmares,
whining, temper tantrums, thumb-sucking, and compliant and
fearful behavior. These validators often propitiate allegations
of abuse because it puts food on their tables. It is their career
and without such allegations, they could be without a job.
Although this is a horrifying thought, this is a reason to ignore
evidence that shows innocence and only present to the court
"evidence" that substantiate the client's claims of
abuse. In Armin A. Brott's article A SYSTEM OUT OF CONTROL: THE
EPIDEMIC OF FALSE ALLEGATIONS OF CHILD ABUSE, he states that,
"In California, for example, the Victim/Witness program will
pay directly to a licensed therapist up to $10,000 per child for
counseling as long as the child was alleged to have been
abused. An additional $10,000 is available to counsel the child's
mother. The only catch: to get their therapy paid for, the child
victim and her mother must see a therapist from an approved list.
Guess who directs the mother to a therapist who would be best for
her and her child? CPS, of course." These CPS workers often
ask leading questions which can distort the children's memories.
In their reports to the court, they often ignore evidences that
would clear the accused, such as lie detector tests and outside
therapist evaluations and rely solely on the child's evaluations
which have been skewed by the CPS and the therapists that they
recommend. In a report disseminated by the National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) Child Maltreatment 1995 Reports
From the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data
System depicts more than three million reports of alleged child
abuse and neglect in 1995 of which two million of those
complaints were without foundation. False allegations of abuse in
divorce is an epidemic that is sweeping the world. Children are
becoming the heirs to hatred passed down to them from their
parents and because this is all that they know, they in turn
foster this pain, hatred and deceptiveness in their own adult
relationships. The children are crushed under the weight of the
system and a parent that is only looking out for their own best
interests. Look at the rise in crime in recent years. There needs
to be an accountability set within the legislation that would
help to stop the false allegations of abuse and the propitiation
of such allegations by the judicial system through CPS. The
Mondale Act does not provide boundaries that would provide for
prosecution of those who make false accusations. Where is the
protection of the innocent in all of this? The CPS has become a
money making business and not a public service. Their theories
that children do not lie about such issues are false. Many times
children are coached into believing that something happened when
it really did not. It is important to have laws to protect the
innocent children from abuse but it is also equally important to
protect the innocent adult from a wrongful accusation that could
ruin them for the rest of their life. America's judicial system
was founded on the principal that the accused is innocent until
proven guilty. The CPS has changed the law in this issue to
guilty until proven innocent. Those who commit perjury are
indicted and imprisoned and there should also be the same
punishment for those who falsely allege abuse. This legislation
will never change until men and women come together and protest
the unjustness of this issue. Most people's attitudes are
"it is better to falsely convict than to allow a child to be
abused." There is no justice in this. The American
Constitution gives us the rights to justice. Only if we decide to
speak can our voices be heard. There needs to be an
accountability that the CPS has to answer to so that they cannot
simply ignore the truth. Therapists should not have to fear
making an honest evaluation. We cannot sit by and allow the
burden of proof to always be on the father. The burden of proof
must be placed once again on the courts and the person that makes
the allegations. Children and the target parent will never lead
normal, healthy lives until the abuse is stopped. Legislation
needs to be changed to protect all the innocent, not just one.
Let's be the voice of freedom and justice to change the
legislation on the abuse laws so that false allegations cannot be
made so easily, destroying the life of one of America's citizens
and hurting the most precious thing that God has given us, his
children.
- Written by: Reverend Dennis Austin
- Credits go to: PAS The effects of PAS on the child and
Target Parent
- Dean Tong on his Abuse Excuse Web Site www.abuse-excuse.com
- The Father's Manifesto Forum (statistics)
- National Shared Parenting Association's Press Release PAS
Directory
- Armin A. Brott A System Out of Control: The Epidemic of
False Allegations of Child Abuse http://www.vix.com/men/nofather/effects.html
Effects of Fatherless Studies and Citation
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Rights Association (AFRA).
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