The family court nightmare leading up to my exile has lots
of people scratching their heads wondering what actually
happened. I detail all of it in All But My Soul: Abuse
Beyond Control, but the whole story is so heart-wrenching
that many people are blown away before they fully digest
the final ploy.
And knowing this final ploy is an important piece that
could best benefit you if you are headed to family court
with domestic violence in your relationship. There's a lot
you can learn from this story to hold your own and save
your own.
After 11 years of family violence, I was in family court
wherein I received four Orders of Protection for my
children and me over four solid years. However, all awhile
we lived under the blanket of "protection" my then-husband
was granted permission to destroy our contact with one
another.
Here's What Happened in a Nutshell.
He got a civil finding of abuse because of the
court-documented abuse to our three minor children and to
myself. He was removed from the marital residence and given
supervised visitation. But that didn't stop the domestic
abuse. No, that just made for a different avenue to
prevail...to save face and to regain control over the
family.
There was no custody battle as he was not a candidate for
custody because of the court- documented abuse. There were
no findings of my being unfit because none of the
psychiatrists could or would label me with any
psychopathology. My ex was the one blessed with the
psychiatric diagnosis.
So how the hell did they pull it off? Grab a cup of coffee.
Hold onto your chair and learn this classic ploy.
To "prepare" for a so-called custody battle, the court
removed the children from both parents to take them out of
the "stress of the litigation." That meant that the
children were removed from my custody, as I was the
custodial parent during the entire four years of the
proceedings (in which nothing was actually litigated).
Then, when my counsel pointed out that you cannot legally
remove children from a parent NOT found to be unfit, the
judge consented to reverse his ruling. But the "reversal"
was another ploy.
Now a true reversal of a ruling would be to give them back
to me as they were taken from me, but instead they were
simply handed over to my ex. Thus, they were essentially
removed from my custody WITHOUT a hearing.
Then to add insult to injury, I was repeatedly denied
access to my children as prescribed by our visitation
schedule. Upon my showing up to visit with my children
(with a supervisor mind you), my kids where nowhere to be
found.
With each of these interferences of my visitation, I filed
a complaint and the police where in shock...mainly because
I was being treated like the criminal, yet had all of the
official court documentation of victimization to my
children and to me.
Technically, the third compliant of interference of
visitation, is met with a six-month prison sentence. But
the police were given word from the divorce court to NOT
interfere. You see the civil proceeding PREVENTED any
criminal protection of my boys and me.
Now you might wonder why this was done. The Judge's wife
was a physician at the same hospital as my ex-husband,
which was the hospital where I was bringing my children and
myself for physical injuries resulting from family violence
by their father/my ex.
So from the get go, I was on the wrong side of the politics
in this case. However, we were not successful in getting
this judge to recuse' himself from the case due to this
obvious conflict of interest. And compounding this was the
fact that there were no checks and balances to employ, as
he was also the presiding judge in the district.
Now Here's the Climax of the Ploy.
After fully denying my access to my children and legal
remedy for this violation, I fled the state at the
recommendation of the domestic violence shelter. They
obviously saw the next ploy coming.
My final exit was met with the court placing a body
attachment on me for not showing up in court to fight over
the marital residence where I had been residing. Now
normally this would result in a default judgment giving the
house to my ex, which at that point I was fine with.
Instead, I'm told, after the fact, that an officer was sent
out to fetch Jeanne. You know what I mean. Fortunately for
me, I was already gone.
Then there was the luring back period. I was told I could
have "consideration" for contact with my children if I
yielded to my ex's desire that I be placed in a psychiatric
hospital for a minimum of a 30-day psychiatric evaluation.
But my belief about this is that you never surrender your
mental health to someone who is threatening to take it away
all under the guise of bargaining especially when your kids
are a few years from being of age. My oldest was months
from turning 16. And my ex's promise was to "___ ____" me
using my own profession, as he would routinely threaten.
This was to be my punishment for coming out with the abuse
in our family.
And, most importantly, I believe you never surrender your
mental health to someone's whim when you are the one with
the clean bill of mental health by all the evaluating
psychiatrists, psychologists and custody evaluators over
the last four years. Especially in light of the fact that
the custody evaluator has declared you to be the
psychological parent of the children and your soon-to-be ex
is "using the system to batter you and your children."
Now with my unwillingness to allow my soon-to-be ex to
compromise my mental health, he then has a way to say to my
kids... if she really loved you, she would simply cooperate
and allow me to hospitalize her. Needless to say, I'm sure
you can imagine what this did to my kids.
The blessing here is that I had the cogency (as one
attorney noted after the fact) to recognize the ploy that
leaves women destroyed on psychotropic medications for
life. I managed to keep my sanity and rise above to
re-unite with my kids after they became 18. However, the
downside is the pollution to them in the interim. The
upside is our love is a testament to the power of a
parent-child connection.
If you are in family court, learn to spot the politics and
block the legal psychiatric ploys before they spiral out of
control as they did in our case. When you can rise above
the tide, you can prevent much of the legal domestic abuse
and you can prevail.
If you play your hand right you can walk away from this
nightmare with your kids in your arms (without missing a
soccer game) and your sanity still intact.
----------------------------------------------------
For more information about the domestic violence and family
court, see Legal Domestic Abuse: How to Successfully
Navigate the System. Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D. helps people
recognize, end and heal from domestic abuse at home and in
court. Copyright 2009 Jeanne King, Ph.D.
http://www.preventabusiverelationships.com/legal_domestic_ab
use.php
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