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Batterer Manipulation and Retaliation Denial and Complicity In the Family
Courts by Joan Zorza, Esq

Family Courts Excuse Male Misbehavior, But Blame Women Most family and divorce (hereinafter,
³family´) court judges insist that people going through custody and divorce cases are good people, but that
they often behave very badly because they are so stressed out by the pressures of the separation and court
dispute.

1i The reality, as Massachusetts has found, is that nothing could be further from the truth for the
men who abuse their female intimate partners and children (called either ³abusers´ or
³batterers´). Massachusetts, which has since 1978 allowed its criminal court judges to issue
restraining orders against abusers, and which now requires all judges±even the family ones, to
consult offender probation records whenever a petition for protection in an abuse case is filed,
keeps very careful records which it periodically analyses. It has found that almost 80% of the male
abusers have criminal records, 2 ii46% for violent offenses, and 39% have prior restraining orders
entered against them and 15% for violating of those orders within the first 6 months. The men
with prior orders are almost equally divided between those who have repeatedly abused one
victim and those who have abusing multiple victims.

3 Massachusetts also was the first state in the county to create a statewide registry for orders of
protection, and it also enters orders of protection onto the defendants¶ probation records, so that
judges automatically become aware of the defendants¶ prior record, even his juvenile one or cases
which were later continued without any finding. This is not to say that all abusive men have
records or are abnormal, 4 or that no female partners of abusers ever have records. However,
abusive men, although they tend to be considerably older, better educated and are more likely to
be white than other criminals, and hence to have been given far more breaks in the criminal
justice system, are simply not the stressed out good guys as the family courts assume.

Men who abuse do so as a matter of choice, as a way to assert power and control over their female
partners, punish them, to be sexually aroused, or less often because they enjoy causing pain.

5 In contrast, although the family courts assign at least equal blame to the men¶s victims, the
victims are generally no different than other women, except for having been abused and suffering
the effects of that abuse. Prior to being abused, battered women are no different from other
women.
6 It is the effects of the abuse makes them frightened and show other effects, often making them
appear less credible as witnesses.

7 Courts, police and prosecutors often refuse to help battered women and discourage them from
pursuing cases, but then blame them for dropping their cases. In fact, battered women are no
more likely to drop cases than are other victims of violent crimes who are being threatened by
their abusers. What is different is that most violent criminals never reassault or even contact their
victims, but the average battered woman is beaten up three times by her batterer during the
pendency of a criminal domestic violence case.

8 All victims threatened with further assault want to drop their cases; battered women are
actually more willing than other threatened victims to pursue their cases.

9 Batterers are believed in blaming victims. Men who batter are not only adept at minimizing and
denying their own abusive behaviors and their responsibility for it, they are also adept at blaming
circumstances or their victims, thereby shifting responsibility and projecting their own behavior
onto their victims.

10 Yet while alcohol,

11 poverty, and other circumstances may aggravate a situation, they do not cause violence, as
most people in such circumstances do not abuse. Similarly, victims are not to blame for the
violence. Unfortunately, abusive men have been very successful in convincing courts and juries
that their own behavior is their female victims¶ fault, or that their partners provoked them, or
wanted the abuse, or that bad circumstances caused the abuse. Mental health experts lack
expertise in family violence. Complicating the problem is that the courts often rely on mental
health experts to evaluate the parties, yet overwhelmingly those experts have never received
adequate training in domestic violence or child sexual abuse; indeed, their professional schools
seldom teach the subjects and 40% of those working in mental health fields in the U.S. admit they
have never received any training about intimate partner violence and even fewer received training
about child sexual abuse.

12 The content of what little training exists in schools in continuing education programs is often
questionable or outright misleading, or so short (one hour is not that uncommon over the course
of a career)

13 that is clearly inadequate. Guardians ad litem, who are supposed to represent the children¶s
best interests to the court, generally lack training in any aspects of family violence or even child
development.

14 Only 10% of custody evaluators know enough about incest to not be dangerous in these cases.

15 Without the training and sensitivity to abuse issues, few therapists and custody evaluators even
screen for it or follow up when told about it.
16 When they do follow up, batterers are adept at manipulating mental health professionals,
appearing very together and, if he admits the abuse, contrite and regretful, justifying his abuse or
making it appear part of a substance abuse or depression problem or caused by his partner.

17 All this convinces the professional that the abuse was an aberration that will be controlled in
the future, although this is most unlikely.

18 Mental health evaluators and guardians ad litem, having been trained in a system that blames
mothers for most problems that people have,

19 are particularly vulnerable to being persuaded by fathers who deny their abuse and blame their
partners, with the result being that they discredit the mother¶s accusations and fears, and
recommend that custody to go to fathers, even when the men are abusive. The result is that
domestic violence is seldom considered in the vast majority of child custody determinations,

20 particularly when there are allegations of physical or sexual abuse against a child.

21 This is an amazing omission, given that at least 47 states and the District of Columbia require
courts to consider domestic violence when making child custody determinations. (The three states
which do not are Connecticut, Mississippi and Utah.)

22 Judges, like mental health professionals, make the gender biased and inaccurate assumption
that most domestic violence or child abuse accusations made in custody cases are falsely made for
tactical gain, so take these cases far less seriously than they should.

23 In fact, incest allegations are only made in 2-3% of custody cases, and mothers make few false
accusations either of domestic violence

24 or of child sexual abuse.

25 Although no psychological test can definitively prove that someone has battered or sexually
abused someone,

26 many family courts require women to conclusively prove the abuse±a virtually impossible
burden±or they refuse to believe that any abuse happened. Furthermore, because most
assessment tools used in custody evaluations were never developed to take into account the
effects of domestic violence on victims, the tools distort the results to incorrectly show that most
frightened victims are paranoid or have other psychiatric disorders, such as major depression,
paranoid schizophrenia, dependent personality disorder, or borderline personality disorder,

27diagnoses that will hurt her in any custody fight.

28 Without experts able to refute the faulty diagnoses (and few battered women have the money
to pay for such experts, even if any are available who are willing to criticize their colleagues),
battered women and mothers of children who have been abused risk being assessed as
incompetent mothers, and so lose custody. Despite myths put out by fathers that mothers always
win custody cases, fathers actually win custody in 70% of custody disputes,

29 and this is true even though most men who abuse women and children are far more likely than
other fathers to fight for custody and engage in prolonged litigation.

30 Batterers Retaliate Batterers do not only manipulate mental health professionals. When
batterers feel that their authority is being threatened, they escalate their violent and terroristic
tactics, often threatening to kill or seriously injure their victims,

31 their families, children or loved ones,

32 and even themselves.

33 After separation they often carry out these threats, hurting their partners 14 times as often
after separation as when they were together.

34 Most of these men also rape their female partners, and these rapes are more brutal than
stranger rapes, and 10% of the rapes occur in from of the children.

35 Batterers retaliate in many other ways as well, often being extremely imaginative and
unpredictable. They are notorious in fighting for custody,

36 even though most of them never paid much attention to the children while then they were
together with the children¶s mother.

37 Most batterers seek the children knowing that depriving the mother of custody is the best way
to punish and hurt her.

38 Batterers, who are notoriously poor at paying child support,

39 also know that winning custody not only absolves them from having to pay child support, it
may obligate the mothers to pay them child support, which they see as another way to hurt the
women. Batterers also retaliate by threatening their former partners and her children during
visitation, or by shifting their abuse onto the children. It is quite common for batterers to begin
abusing the child physically or sexually after the separation, or for such abuse to escalate, just as
their violence tends to escalate after separation against their former partners.

40 Many threaten to and actually abduct the children,

41 and these abductions are as harmful to the children as when strangers kidnap them.

42 Even when batterers have custody, they often refuse to make let the mothers to see their
children. The same courts that are outraged when a mother fails to make the children available to
the father seldom punish a father who denies visitation to the mother. Some of these problems
exist because of gender bias of individual judges, but other problems exist because the legislature
has enacted laws that favor men. While most states (Washington State is the exception)
encourage courts to consider in granting custody which parent will encourage a better
relationship and frequent contact between the children and the other parent, courts consider only
behaviors that mothers are more likely to do under this criteria, leaving out behaviors that men
primarily do. Thus failing to pay spousal or child support, or failing when one could do so to
legitimate the other parent¶s immigration status are not seen as hurtful. Yet what could be more
harmful to a relationship with the children than depriving the other parent of adequate support or
even the right to remain in the U.S. Indeed, changing custody because a parent has not paid child
support is illegal in most states, yet custody is changed all the time when mothers do not give
father access to their children. Another way that some men retaliate is by having their parents
join in the fight for custody or visitation (of course, some grandparents, often the ones from
whom their son learned to be abusive in the first place, do this spontaneously). Fortunately, this
was made much harder by Troxel v. Granville

43, the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision which struck down Washington State¶s grandparent
visitation statute that permitted visitation against the wishes of the parents. Both batterers and
paternal grandparents and batterers also often file false or trumped up charges against their
daughters-in-law or sons¶ girlfriends to get them in trouble and discredit them, most often with
child protection agencies, but also alleging welfare or immigration fraud or criminal activity, but
also in court.

44 Another reason that courts have not been quicker to catch on about men¶s projecting their own
behaviors onto their victims

45 and vindictiveness against their former female partners is that while they speak very negatively
about their former partners, they generally speak very positively about their current ones.

46 This is typical of men, but few courts or mental health practitioners are aware of it, and are
fooled into thinking the men must be objective, and thus what they say about their former
partners must be accurate. Yet once the men break up with their current partners they will start
publicly devaluing. Some courts are wising up to men¶s retaliatory tactics, because many involve
abusing the courts. Many abusers learn that cross or counterclaims often cancel out their victims;
prior claims, and that filing contempts shifts the focus to their victims.

47 Most batterers know they can bring criminal and contempt charges at no expense to the
abusers, but they take an enormous financial and emotional cost on their victims. The result is
that many abusive men drag on the litigation and file spurious claims openly acknowledging they
are trying to drive their victims onto welfare or into homelessness; half of all homeless women
and children in the U.S. are homeless because of domestic violence.

48 Occasionally it is only when the abuser accuses the judge or other court players of impropriety
or attacks them or those helping their partners, such as shelter workers,
 49 that the court catches on to their tactics. Unfortunately, some judges (and other court players,
including mental health experts) become too frightened

50 or vicariously traumatized

51 to act sufficiently to believe or act to protect battered women. However, most abusers are far
too savvy to make such accusations, attacking only their former partners. When courts blame
victims and fail to hold abusers accountable, they reinforce abuser behavior, subvert justice,
disempower the victims, teach children that abusive behavior is permissible and may even be
rewarded, and reinforce the cycle of violence.