Down the Abuse Rabbit Hole

How Focusing on Abuse Harms Efforts to End the Custody Crisis

Jan 23, 2024

The Abuse Rabbit Hole is by far the most populous of the Custody Crisis Rabbit Holes. But it is just one of many quagmires women get caught in when trying to make sense of why they lost custody or were unable to protect their children in Family Court. Other columns include the Parental Alienation, Gender Neutral, Money, and Rights & Laws Rabbit Holes. Upcoming are: Accountability & Transparency, Court-Appointee, and False Findings Rabbit Holes.

The “Custsody Crisis Rabbit Holes” series brings to light the most common ways women are diverted from understanding and fighting the real cause of the Crisis. The reason it is important to be able to recognize and avoid these diversions is because the only way to end the crisis is to attack the Source of the Nile, not the downstream effects.

The main feature of the Abuse Rabbit Hole is the misunderstanding of the Crisis as being essentially about abuse. Most contested custody cases involve abuse, so it is enticing to perceive abuse as the core issue. But it is not.

ABUSE GROUPS

One reason for this Rabbit Hole’s numerous inhabitants is that cases that involve abusive exes means children are being endangered, hence mothers fight harder and longer for custody. These mothers are more likely to seek information online, become activists, and join organizations and social media groups.

Most organizations and groups that support mothers in custody battles are abuse-focused and are actively leading women down this Rabbit Hole. These groups include protective parent, safe parent, domestic violence, child abuse, and family court reform organizations.

Most abuse groups and activists focus on children abused or murdered by “parents”. They identify the problem as judges routinely giving children to abusive “parents” rather than safe/protective “parents”.

However, there is no crisis of protective/safe parents being unable to protect their children, only protective/safe mothers.

Although some of these groups acknowledge mothers are more often wronged in Family Court, the underlying concept is gender neutral: abuse is bad and judges are unwittingly getting it wrong, whether it is the father or mother who is abusive. They do not acknowledge that the Crisis is being caused by judges deliberately empowering and entitling fathers.

ABUSE IS GENDER NEUTRAL; THE CRISIS IS NOT

The major problem with the Abuse Rabbit Hole, just as with the others, is that it is essentially gender neutral. Of course abuse is bad, regardless of whether women or men commit it. But the crisis is not about abuse in the general population or even in families. It is about the routine, unjust taking of children from loving mothers and giving them to abusive—and otherwise undeserving—fathers via Family Court.

The truth is, it is rare for judges to switch custody from good, loving fathers to abusive or otherwise undeserving mothers. That scenario doesn’t even amount to a social problem, much less a crisis. It’s even rarer for good fathers to lose unsupervised or all contact with their children, a frequent phenomenon with mothers.

In a recent survey, 35% of mothers reported being restricted to supervised visits and 34% losing all contact with their children. This simply does not happen to fathers.

In the extremely rare cases in which a judge takes custody away from a good father and gives children to an abusive mother, it happens for a different reason, perhaps general corruption, certainly not systemic female entitlement. When judges do restrict fathers’ visitation, it is usually when there is credible evidence they are truly abusive, although that is usually reserved for poor and powerless fathers.

Conflating cases involving mothers who lose custody due to male entitlement/female oppression with fathers who lose custody because of a corrupt judge leads to confusion and division.

The exception proves the rule. There is only one crisis. And It Is Gendered.

MISIDENTIFYING THE CRISIS

Abuse groups misidentify not only what the Crisis is but how and why the crisis is happening. They endorse the false narrative that judges believe fathers’ false accusations against the mother (like parental alienation) and disbelieve mothers’ reports of real abuse by the father.

In fact, judges don’t disbelieve mothers’ reports of abuse: they discredit them. And judges don’t believe fathers’ false accusations; they credit them. This is an important difference as it speaks to causation.

Judges are not stupid or unconsciously biased against women as many abuse groups portray them. Proof of that is the mountains of evidence of abuse and neglect by fathers that judges ignore and conceal, and the lies they fabricate that mothers are abusing children. Not to mention the lived experiences of thousands of mothers saying that judges are discrediting them and falsely finding them to be abusive.

The most common fabrication/lie by judges is that the mother is falsely accusing the father of abuse in order to alienate children from fathers (or interfere with their relationship) despite there being no credible evidence to support that finding and much to refute it. Not far behind that is mothers being mentally ill or liars.

It is important to keep in mind that approximately one quarter of cases do not involve reports of abuse, yet judges still switch custody to undeserving, neglectful, vindictive, greedy, controlling, and selfish fathers—certainly not in the “Best Interest of the Child”.

OFFSHOOTS

There are many offshoots within the abuse rabbit hole. Some “abuse groups” focus on child abuse, some on child sexual abuse, some spousal abuse, some narcissistic abuse, and some are inclusive of different forms of abuse. Some focus on the mishandling of abuse cases by CPS [Child Protective Services].

In a recent survey, 26% of mothers said they had reported sexual abuse and it was disregarded. Some identify the problem as “sex trafficking”, but this confuses the issue because the public thinks of sex trafficking as pimps who have a business selling children. Sex trafficking may be a terrible social problem, but it is not causing the Custody Crisis. Judges empowering fathers to take children and do what they want with them is.

The narcissistic abuse offshoot is also quite populous. It is safe to say that most men who launch custody battles and deprive children of a loving mother would have narcissistic traits if not the clinical disorder. So most mothers are up against narcissistic exes, hence, it’s a popular theme to vent and commiserate about on social media. But—two main problems: narcissist groups are fundamentally gender neutral and narcissistic abuse is not the core problem.

INEFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS

The biggest problem with the misidentification of the crisis as being about abuse is that it has led to women wasting their time and energy advocating for ineffective solutions. This misdirected activism is a major reason nothing has changed for a half century.

Solutions pursued by abuse groups include: training/educating judges and court-affiliated professionals; enactment of new child protection and domestic violence laws; better oversight; and banning parental alienation.

Training has never, and will not ever, lead to an end to the crisis, as evidenced by judges’ deliberate disregard and suppression of evidence of abuse by fathers and the fabrication of negative evidence about mothers. A high school dropout could do a better job deciding custody. Also, in jurisdictions where training has been implemented, it has made no difference.

New child protection/DV laws and stronger rights for women won’t help, because the Family Court system is designed so judges can violate laws (and rights) with impunity. See the “Down the Rights & Laws Rabbit Hole”. Legally prohibiting/abolishing parental alienation won’t help, because judges can—and do—just use other false findings. See “Down the Parental Alienation Rabbit Hole”.

None of these solutions that target the symptoms will work, because they do not attack the root cause. The Custody Crisis is not an abuse issue at its core. It is a power issue.

The system is designed specifically so judges have virtually absolute power and so can give custody to fathers whether they are abusive or not. And judges are expected, actually required, by the OBN [Old Boy Network] to use their power to keep men empowered in their family. The OBN uses carrots and sticks to keep judges in line: promotions and other kudos; and loss of job, no promotion, or ostracism.

The reality is, judges cannot be trusted to do the right thing for our children and us. The only effective solution is for divorce cases to be heard in a real court with a jury as the fact finder and other due process protections.

A final note: don’t worry if you’ve gone down one or more Rabbit Holes, most mothers do in their quest for answers as to why their children were taken from them or not protected. Hopefully, after reading this, mothers who’ve been drawn down the Abuse Rabbit Hole will come to realize that the Custody Crisis is not being caused by judges unwittingly giving custody to abusers, but by judges deliberately switching custody to fathers, abusive or not.