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Custody Disputes Often Bypass Abuse Assessments

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Womens eNews - Jun 6, 2007
http://www.womensenews.org

Custody Disputes Often Bypass Abuse Assessments

By Marie Tessier
WeNews correspondent

(WOMENSENEWS)--Numerous psychological assessments have been developed
to measure trauma in children, theoretically providing a tool for
family courts and child protective workers to help determine where
custody should be granted or where the child's best interests lay. But
advocates for mothers who lose custody to men they accuse of abuse say
courts and social workers often fail to use those tests, or ignore
results once they're complete.

"It's very common for people to make recommendations in child
protective cases and child custody litigation without ever looking at
clinical evidence of child abuse, spouse abuse or trauma," says Robert
A. Geffner, who directs the Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma in
San Diego's Alliant International University.

This reality, combined with the complex interplay of law, science and
culture, has led advocates for women and for abused children to call
for reforms in the nation's family courts in order to achieve justice
for victims involved in the most contentious custody fights. Advocates
for reform say it's the women involved who most often find themselves
on the losing end.

A landmark report from the Washington-based American Psychological
Association in 1996 showed that abusers seek sole custody more often
than nonviolent parents. And other research indicates that abusers
succeed in gaining custody about 70 percent of the time when they try,
according to judicial training materials from the National Center for
State Courts, a legal education and court service organization based in
Williamsburg, Va.

Psychologists and psychiatrists involved in case assessments say part
of the reason that trauma assessments are not used is because they are
costly and time-consuming, and they don't always come out with
conclusive results.

"You have to do interviews with all the parties, look at the medical
records and the criminal records, talk to the school therapists and
teachers. Look at all the data and then put together all the pieces of
the puzzle," says Geffner, who is a leader in the Leadership Council on
Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence. The group is a nonprofit with
an office in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., that promotes the ethical use of medical
and psychological science in policy debates on violence.

Disputed Sides, Dueling Experts

By the time a typical case comes before a judge, psychologists and
advocates for battered women say, both sides in a custody dispute have
developed a body of evidence--and have often engaged dueling teams of
experts--to support their claims.

If the family has already been involved with child protective services
or the police, routine investigative errors can complicate the picture
for a trial judge, says Frances S. Waters, an authority on child abuse
who practices in Marquette, Mich., and serves as an expert witness in
child custody proceedings.

"There are a lot of problems with procedures that have a profound
impact on the outcome of an investigation, and that often means that
truthful allegations of child abuse are not found to be credible," says
Waters, who is also involved with the Leadership Council. If the
perpetrator is the one who brings a child to an interview with an
investigator or an evaluator, she adds as an example, the child is not
going to feel safe to divulge her experience.

Among the perils facing protective mothers seeking custody is the
widely discredited--yet widely used--theory called the "parental
alienation syndrome."

It is heralded by some fathers' rights groups and used by alleged
abusers, as well as some custody evaluators and judges, to cast
battered women and protective parents as having "brainwashed" or
"alienated" a child from the parent accused of abuse. The concept
received a new public airing in April when actor Alec Baldwin accused
his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, of alienating him from his 11-year-old
daughter. The remark came to light after a taped phone call in which he
berated the girl as a "thoughtless little pig" was posted on the
Internet. Baldwin and Basinger have been involved in a contentious
custody dispute since 2002.

However, research published in several psychology journals indicates
that divorce or custody disputes do not give rise to an increased
number of false allegations and untrue claims most often come from
fathers, not mothers. The proposed syndrome is not a recognized
diagnosis by the American Psychological Association, which says the
theory lacks clinical data to support it and cautions against using the
term.

Tools to Assess Violence

One of the clinical measures that provide evidence when victim
statements and other evidence of abuse fail to persuade evaluators and
judges is the UCLA Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Index, developed at
the University of California, Los Angeles. It is a 48-item interview
about physical, sexual and emotional trauma that is used for adults and
children. It assesses 19 symptoms, such as whether someone
re-experiences a trauma, avoids talking or thinking about it, has
trouble concentrating or startles easily, according to the National
Child Traumatic Stress Network, a project of the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.

Other assessments include the Child Trauma Symptom Inventory,
evaluations for depression and anxiety, the Dissociative Experiences
Scale and the Child Sexual Behavior Inventory, according to scholars
who specialize in trauma.

Access to these tests is controlled to prevent cheating and coaching.
The results are just one piece of a full evaluation, according to test
distributors and scholars.

During the past 15 years, a number of legal and professional groups
seeking to prevent family violence have published guidelines and model
procedures for courts to use when evaluating and deciding custody cases.

Those include the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges,
based in Reno, Nev.; the American Psychological Association; the
American Law Institute, based in Philadelphia; and the National Center
for State Courts.

Domestic Violence Skeptics

On the other side of the issue, fathers' rights groups and advocates
for noncustodial parents are skeptical of the growing body of research
on domestic violence, much of which has provided the rationale seeking
to standardize the process for identifying abuse. They say that family
courts are often too quick to make findings of abuse.

The American Coalition for Fathers and Children, based in Washington,
D.C., says that a small portion of divorce and custody disputes are
driving false allegations and that too many fit parents are losing
custody of their children.

"When there's any allegation of domestic abuse in the context of a
custody proceeding, the accused should be afforded the same protections
of those who are accused in the criminal justice system," said Michael
McCormick, executive director of the American Coalition for Fathers and
Children.

That means all parents would be presumed innocent and entitled to
parental rights until abuse is proved beyond a reasonable doubt,
McCormick says.

Meanwhile, psychologists who advocate for battered women say their own
credentials, thorough adherence to protocol and solid evidence can
carry little weight in a courtroom, especially when they are hired by
one side in a dispute.

"In the end, if protective services doesn't find an allegation to be
credible, the court is going to make a finding and the defense is going
to have its own expert," Waters says. "It becomes a battle of the
experts."

[Marie Tessier writes frequently about violence against women and legal
affairs.]

For more information:

"N.Y. Bribery Case Casts Shadow on Divorce Court"
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3205/

"Women Push to Change Family Courts' Custody Rules": -
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2052/

American Psychological Association, Violence in the Family report: -
http://www.apa.org/pi/viol&fam.html

Copyright 2007 Women's eNews.

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