Custody Disputes Often Ignore Evidence of Child Abuse

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.