Family Courts: Highlighting the Voices of Abused Mothers

Part 1 of a new 2-part series on mothers' experiences in the family courts

Welcome

First of all, thank you so much for your positive response to my most recent blog on my New Year’s reflections for 2024. (You can read it again here). I was delighted to receive so many kind comments about the work that goes into this blog.

Quite apart from developing Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz, 2023 was a busy year. In the latter months I was fortunate to be one of the named authors on an important new academic study led by my colleague Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno, which focuses on the family court experiences of Brazilian mothers.

New research: what the study does

The purpose of the study was to show the serious negative health consequences for domestic violence victim-survivor mothers involved in the family courts.

This focus on health is new. There are many academic studies about the harms caused in family courts, but this new study by me and my colleagues is among the first to focus on the health-related harms.

I have spoken to many victims-survivors who have been through the family courts, and negative health consequences are constantly described by family court mothers.

Each mother who is suffering with their health while in family court might think they are the only one suffering those health problems. But this isn’t the case.

In fact, it seems to be unlikely that a domestic violence victim-survivor mother could be in family court without it affecting her health.

The study’s results emphasize how these negative health consequences result from fundamental problems in how family courts work. The study is available free to read for everyone here.

Hearing and honoring an international community of mothers

Very importantly, the study takes care to listen to mothers’ voices, and puts across their feelings – their anger, and also their tiredness, frustration and exhaustion – about the consequences caused by the family courts.

Importantly, also, the mothers’ statements are also very familiar, showing the widespread nature of the problems.

If you are mother reading what follows, this is the key message:

You are not alone. You are part of an international community of mothers all feeling the same hurts at the hands of the family courts and their often patriarchal practices.

Communicating the findings to a wider audience

Academic articles do not necessarily reach a wide audience of readers.

They are not necessarily written or structured in a straightforward way — indeed, they are not always the most easy to read documents, given that they are designed to be read by academic specialists, not necessarily practitioners and public readers.

My purpose

To bring this study and its findings to a wider audience, what I want to do is carefully unpack it in a step-by-step way and help readers to fully access the key material and the issues it addresses.

I am therefore going to produce a two-part series here on my Substack on the study’s findings.

The purpose of the series will be to select the key points from the information presented in the article, and “unlock” the evidence the article presents.

The study starts with a particular piece of terminology that provides a shorthand for what the mothers had gone through. The term is: “family court and perpetrator induced trauma”; or CPIT.

What is Family Court and Perpetrator Induced Trauma (CPIT)?

Family Court and Perpetrator Induced Trauma (CPIT) describes the negative actions of family courts, and the numerous negative health impacts caused by these actions to female domestic violence victims-survivors.

The negative actions of family courts include:

• family courts supporting perpetrators’ allegations of ‘parental alienation’ (PA), a widely discredited concept often used by perpetrators against victims-survivors;

• measures that family courts impose when they support this widely discredited concept

• (Please note: Although “parental alienation” is a discredited concept, coercively controlling fathers do often try to manipulate children into thinking badly of their mothers. See my post on this here).

What negative health impacts can result from these negative actions?

The negative health impacts caused by the family courts to female domestic violence victims-survivors are very serious. They can include bone and muscle conditions, auto-immune conditions, and cancers.

Furthermore, some female victims-survivors have been driven to suicide as a result of their experiences of family courts.

What are the actions, behaviors and circumstances that cause Family Court and Perpetrator Induced Trauma (CPIT)?

CPIT happens because of the trauma-causing “ABCs” – Actions, Behaviors and Circumstances – that family courts, together with perpetrators, create.

Actions:

The actions of family courts in removing children from their mothers or failing to keep children safe from abusers.

Behaviors:

Behaviors by fathers, lawyers, police and other court actors, which include disguised attacks and also openly threatening and aggressive conduct towards mothers.

Circumstances:

The wider circumstances of gender inequality and sexism in societies that impacts on the behaviors used towards mothers by fathers, lawyers, police and other court actors.

What harms are caused by these “ABCs” in the family courts?

The mothers in the study described family courts and family court processes as being characterized by oppression, injustice, extortion and hatred of women, and as a form of torture.

They commented on how family court processes violated the human rights of mothers and children and deliberately aimed to protect abusive fathers.

The 4 reasons why ABCs in family court systems caused disempowerment, abuse and harm to health

Mothers noted how they felt disempowered, abused, and experienced repeated harms to health due to the family court systems.

Mothers noted four reasons for this:

1. Mothers’ lack of power in the courts.

• Mothers frequently, both implicitly and explicitly, said that family court proceedings reflected an “inequality of arms”;

• Mothers found that they, as mothers, had much less or no power in proceedings, in comparison to fathers and court professionals;

• The mothers who could afford to do so had hired private lawyers — but many of the mothers were not well-off, and so they used a legal aid service provided by the government for people with low incomes, this being a limited service that could not dedicate much time or resource to a single case.

2. The family courts’ bias towards fathers.

• Mothers identified that family court systems were not really institutions designed for the protection of children and adult DV victims-survivors;

• They understood family court systems to be systematically in favor of fathers and against mothers;

• They noted how family court systems sacrificed the safety and wellbeing of the mothers to protect the interests of the perpetrator fathers.

3. The courts’ corruption of purpose.

• Mothers identified how, aside from favoring fathers, family court systems functioned as businesses;

• They noted how, because of this, the courts were being run primarily for profit-making rather than true justice.

4. The way litigation was weaponized against mothers in the courts.

• Mothers saw litigation being used as a weapon by the abuser, and abusive behaviors and actions being enabled and carried out by the litigation processes of the courts.

Emotional CPIT consequences: How family courts’ ABCs made mothers feel

The data that we collected from mothers showed the range of negative consequences caused by the ABCs – Actions, Behaviors and Circumstances – of the family courts.

Helena

Helena, one of the mothers, commented on the traumatic impacts caused by the actions, behaviors and circumstances of the family courts. She noted how the courts were biased towards fathers, and how it was a foregone conclusion what the outcome would be, due to the family courts being rigged against mothers:

It is a feeling of injustice, helplessness … I understood that you get into that [court] to lose. We don’t have any chance, any chance. That’s just staging, you are going to lose it, you can be sure about it.

Helena also noted the intensity of how litigation was weaponized against her:

There were so many petitions accusing me of so many nonsense things. I was called a hooker, then a bad wife, then a murderer … there was no point in proving in the Family Court that that was not like that for they would just keep going “No, it is”. We become the dog that everybody kicks.

Helena also commented on the corruption of purpose in the family courts, noting this as a form of abuse and cruel optimism:

We are only used to fill the experts and the lawyers’ pockets, our own lawyers … we don’t have any chance.

In each of these ways, Helena felt betrayed and exploited by the family court system.

Vania

Another mother who commented on the traumatic impacts caused by the family courts’ actions, behaviors and circumstances was Vania. Vania commented on how the family court did not care that the perpetrating father had a criminal record. She noted how it was herself, not the perpetrating father, who the family court was treating as a criminal:

I think that what hurts me the most is the fact that, despite I knew I was a victim-survivor, just like my son was, I was feeling like a criminal. … On the other hand, the father already had criminal records, but they haven’t even taken that into consideration.

Vania also commented on the DARVO that was taking place, where any evidence she gave was twisted to reverse the understanding of who was the victim and who was the offender:

The more we report the more we are punished.

Vania saw how, as a patriarchal system, the family courts had a way of turning the truth upside down to fit their unfair bias. Far from rewarding the honesty of victims-survivors, the family court system seemed set up to reward the dishonesty of perpetrating fathers.

Dolores

A third mother who commented on the traumatic impacts caused by the family courts’ actions, behaviors and circumstances was Dolores.

Dolores commented on the weaponization of litigation by the perpetrating father. She commented on how the family court encouraged the perpetrating father’s use of lawsuits:

It gives room to the guy to demoralize you and we are revictimized the whole time, by the abuser and by their own judicial system, by maintaining this abusive litigation.

She noted the traumatic impact of the family court systems:

I think that … this torture system … It’s great suffering, it’s anguishing … each court hearing is revictimization.

Beatriz

Beatriz spoke of how the family courts had dehumanized her. She described the family court as a predator attempting to kill her, as if she was a helpless zebra in a cage:

The fear all the time is, I’m going to lose my children, you’re going to die … it’s like you’re the prey for years … No animal could survive that, I think it would die of stress. If you put a zebra in a small cage, and a bunch of lions around about, what would happen to the zebra in the cage?

Beatriz’s wildlife comparison drives home the point that she felt incredibly unsafe in family court. Her message is that the family courts fail to care about basic human decency, and encourage fathers, lawyers, police and other court actors to attack the victim-survivor mother like “a bunch of lions”.

Health CPIT traumas: how ABCs impacted mothers’ health

The health impacts discussed by mothers were extensive.

These included impacts on psychological health, professional life, academic life, physical health, and on life quality as a whole. Mothers discussed how family court proceedings had led to them experiencing eating disorders, self-harm, suicidal ideation and attempted suicide.

Adrianna

One of the mothers who described health impacts was Adrianna. Adrianna discussed how multiple physical health problems had arisen as a result of the stress caused by family courts:

There is this impact on physical health. I’m always with rhinitis, sinus, these things. I would never get the flu before, but now I am always like that.

Adrianna specifically mentioned the fatigue resulting from the court proceedings:

I’m always tired, there is no way I could go running for I am constantly exhausted. I wake up tired. And that is not something that had started 10 years ago. It started during the proceedings.

For Adrianna, life quality as a whole had suffered. The court proceedings had robbed her of energy, as well as making her more vulnerable to viruses that seriously undermined her personal health on an ongoing basis.

Marcia

Marcia discussed how she knew another mother who had died by suicide as a result of the family court experience. Marcia explained how she felt that the judicial system was a remorseless attack on women:

The judicial system won’t stop until they end up with the physical and emotional health, and many times with the lives of these women, right. I was in touch and would talk every day to a mother who ended up seeking suicide … she committed suicide.

Marcia felt that the family court system seemed to have an unspoken aim to destroy the health of mothers and, ultimately, to kill them.

Vitoria

Finally, the statement of another mother, Vitoria, noted the way that trauma responses were weaponized against mothers. The perpetrator father had behaved in a deliberately upsetting way, and had then been able to use the court proceedings to weaponize the victim-survivor mother’s despair:

He was supposed to stay at the park, but he left with the child and I don’t know where he is, he doesn’t answer my calls, I’m in despair … the police went after him and blocked the ways out of the town … Then he went to the police station with his lawyer and she said, “she is crazy, she is disturbed, she is mad” …. The prosecutor then claimed that I was “crazy”, that my acts “were harming the development of the child”, then the prosecutor diagnosed symptoms of parental alienation syndrome in the child . . . the child was 9 months old.

So, in this instance, the mother’s trauma responses were being weaponized as “evidence” that mother were “crazy” and the child was “alienated”.

Institutional betrayal: A destroyed belief in a just world

Furthermore, and more broadly, mothers were aware of what the family court systems had done to them: They knew it was an act of institutionalized betrayal.

The institutional betrayal caused by the family courts resulted in a deep trauma for the mothers.

It had a fundamental impact because it damaged mothers’ beliefs in a just world. They no longer believed in such a world — a world that was fair, where good actions would lead to good outcomes.

Just let us recap some of the quotes above:

We become the dog that everybody kicks. — Helena

The more we report the more we are punished. — Vania

It’s like you’re the prey for years … No animal could survive that, I think it would die of stress. If you put a zebra in a small cage, and a bunch of lions around about, what would happen to the zebra in the cage? — Beatriz

Each court hearing is revictimization. — Dolores

Next time: The construction of PA and PAS by court actors: false memories, maintaining control

In the next post, I will turn to how the mothers in the study were falsely described as “alienators” in the family courts.

This was another especially important way in which mothers were disempowered in court proceedings, and the study gathered important evidence on how family courts presented mothers in this way.

Goodbye for now

Thank you for reading this post. As always, I hope you have found what I have said here to be illuminating and validating. Feel free to share this post far and wide so more victims and survivors and those who work with them can read it.

As you may know from my Notes it recently snowed where I am…

… so my doggies put on their jumpers for a lovely outing to the playing field!

I will be back soon with another post, as we begin the second full year of Decoding Coercive Control with Emma Katz.

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