“Therapeutic Jurisprudence - The sociological and psychological research on families and child well-being impacts public policy and the issues of child custody in family law. The research frequently is misrepresented, and mis-cited by mental health professionals, lawyers, forensic psychologists and others, as well as interest groups lobbying for laws. http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/child-custody-evaluations.html
Case Managers, Guardians ad Litem; Parenting Coordinators; Custody Evaluators, etc. the various forms of so-called ADR (alternate dispute resolution) practitioners, such as GALs, parenting coordinators, parenting evaluators, forensic psychologists, recommending mediators, special masters, court-ordered therapists, other court-appointed mental health professionals, supervised visitation centers, and other profiteers of "therapeutic jurisprudence", whose methods involve -- intrusion and coercion under the threat of court sanctions, and actual or de facto extra-judicial decision-making, which have multiple things wrong with them, not the least of which is denigration of due process, and the diminution of a publicly observable, regulated, and appealable "rule by law" by substituting the caprice of men and women.
These practices have been promoted as "cures" for ailings of the court system and the litigants in it by self-serving persons who apparently are ignorant, or else just do not care about the harms they cause to children and their parents because they make money from the ideas they promote, churning profit in proceedings that fly in the face of the foundations of our justice system. http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/child-custody-evaluations.html
Also; the majority of 'high conflict' divorce case's are Domestic Violence and or Abusive. Good parents 90% of them never have to go through the above, it is the 10 % the abusive ones or aka "High Conflict" that the above make their living on. Return the Judge back to the Court room, get rid of the non factual 'opinion and belief' of third party $ hand outs who block access to Justice/ e.g. the Judge.”
TOPEKA — The Kansas Court of Appeals is set to hear a child custody case next month that addresses the role of case managers in custody matters in the state.
The case, which is scheduled for a May 15 hearing before the appeals court, involves Karen Williams, who lost full custody of her child in March 2011 after a case manager recommended to the judge that custody go to the child's father. Williams said the decision to separate her from her daughter was made based on confidential conversations between the judge and the case manager.
Williams and her attorney argue that she has a constitutional right to a hearing in which the case manager must present the evidence to back up her custody recommendation and allow Williams to respond to it, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported Monday.
"I've not been allowed due process, and I want a day in court," Williams said.
In Kansas, case managers, who work with parents in "high-conflict" relationships on their visitation schedules and custody, are appointed by judges and aren't required to have a professional license.
"The only qualification currently is that a judge appoints them," said Ron Nelson, a Lenexa lawyer who specializes in family law.
Nelson said the use of case managers has been authorized for about 10 years, and concerns about them overstepping their bounds have mounted due to a lack of clear guidelines about their responsibilities and authority. He said the case management concerns are about non-judicial officers making custody decisions that should be the purview of the courts. .
The Legislature is also considering a bill requiring specific qualifications for case managers. It would restrict judges to appointing only licensed psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors, therapists, social workers or lawyers.
Rep. Joe Patton, R-Topeka, a lawyer who serves on the judiciary conference committee, said he has "mixed feelings" about the bill.
"It's certainly very important to have someone qualified," he said. "It's very possible someone can be qualified without a particular license, but as a general rule we want someone qualified."
Cheryl Powers, the case manager on Williams' case, declined to comment on the Williams brief with the hearing pending. But she said she believes the backlash against case managers is coming from a group of disgruntled lawyers.
"There are certain attorneys that are less than happy with the fact that some of us have quasi-judicial powers without a license," she said. "They're attorneys and don't have that much power. They are not happy with that."
Entire article follows below the excerpts or read here
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
High rates of domestic violence exist in families referred for child custody evaluations. These evaluations can produce potentially harmful outcomes, including the custody of children being awarded to a violent parent, unsupervised or poorly supervised visitation between violent parents and their children, and mediation sessions that increase danger to domestic violence victims. Past research shows that domestic violence is frequently undetected in custody cases or ignored as a significant factor in custody-visitation determinations. Previous research also indicates that violence—and its harmful effects on victims and children—often continues or increases after separation.
Today the family law arena is increasingly identified as needing reform to protect battered women and their children (Goodmark, 2011). Research has documented the ongoing and sometimes escalating dangers faced by victims and their children after they leave violent relationships. Homicidal threats, stalking, and harassment affect as many as 25 to 35 percent of survivors who have left a violent relationship (e.g., Bachman & Saltzman, 1995; Hardesty & Chung, 2006; Tjaden & Thoennes,2000a). In addition, as many as one fourth of battered women report their ex-partners threatened to hurt or kidnap their children (e.g., Liss & Stahly, 1993). Many abusers also use the legal system to maintain contact with and harass their ex-partners (Bancroft & Silverman, 2002).
Domestic abuse survivors and their children may experience serious harm as a result of family court decisions. Offenders may be able to continue their abuse of their ex-partners and children due to unsupervised or poorly supervised visitation arrangements (Neustein & Lesher, 2005; Radford & Hester, 2006); sole or joint custody of children may be awarded to a violent or potentially violent parent rather than a non-violent one; and mediation may be recommended or mandated in a way that compromises victims’ rights or places them in more danger. Tragically, in some cases post-separation contacts end in the homicide of a mother and/or her children.(Saunders, 2009; Sheeran & Hampton, 1999). Ironically, battered mothers’ attempts to protect their children may be used against them in custody and visitation decisions.
One widely cited educational booklet from the American Judges Association states that, “studies show that batterers have been able to convince authorities that the victim is unfit or undeserving of sole custody in approximately 70% of challenged cases” (American Judges Association, n.d., p. 5)
Gender Bias in the Courts
Battered women are at higher risk of negative custody-visitation outcomes due to gender bias by courts, as documented by many federal, state, and local commissions that have studied such bias since the 1980s (e.g., Abrams & Greaney, 1989; Czapanskiy, 1993; Danforth & Welling, 1996; Dragiewicz, 2010; Meier, 2003; Zorza, 1996)4. Negative stereotypes about women seem to encourage judges to disbelieve women’s allegations about child abuse (Danforth & Welling, 1996; Zorza, 1996). A lack of understanding about domestic violence also leads judges to accuse victims of lying, blaming victims for the violence, and trivializing the violence (Abrams & Greaney, 1989;Maryland Special Joint Committee on Gender Bias, 1989).
Gender bias is frequently uncovered in custody disputes (Rosen & Etlin, 1996) and often leads to mistrust of women—in particular to the belief that they make false allegations of child abuse and domestic violence. Dragiewicz (2010) provides a comprehensive summary of gender bias reports pertaining to custody decisions. In addition to the tendency to disbelieve or minimize women’s reports of abuse, or to disregard evidence for it, Dragiewicz also describes other problems uncovered during investigations. These include mothers being punished for reporting abuse.
Half of men who batter also physically abuse their children (Straus, 1983.
Beliefs About False Allegations of Domestic Violence in Relation to Other Beliefs and Recommendations
Among evaluators, the belief that allegations of domestic violence are usually false was part of a constellation of beliefs, including beliefs that false allegations of child abuse and parental alienation by DV survivors are common. DV educators need to provide accurate information on: the rates and nature of false allegations and alienation; the ways in which survivors are reluctant to co-parent out of fear of future harm; the mental health consequences of DV; and the importance of understanding coercive-controlling forms of violence. In addition, the significant relationships between beliefs about custody and broader beliefs about patriarchal norms, justice, and social dominance suggest links to deeper values. Professional educators can use value awareness exercises that may help change beliefs and behavior. These recommendations apply to judges as well, since their beliefs about DV and custody were significantly related to the outcomes recommended in the case vignette.
Friendly Parent Statutes
The friendly-parent standard works against survivors because any concerns they voice about father-child contact or safety for themselves are usually interpreted as a lack of cooperation (Zorza, 1996).
Survivors are therefore placed in a no-win situation: If they do not report abuse, then protections for them and solid grounds for custody are not available; yet reporting the abuse may be viewed as raising false allegations in order to gain advantage in divorce proceedings (Dore, 2004). Research shows that parents who raise concerns about child sexual abuse can be severely sanctioned for doing so (Faller & DeVoe, 1995). The sanctions include loss of custody to the alleged offender, restricted visitation, and court orders not to report further abuse or take the child to a therapist (Faller & DeVoe, 1995; Neustein & Goetting, 1999; Neustein & Lesher, 2005; Voices of Women, 2008). In practice, friendly-parent provisions, together with statutes presuming joint custody, tend to override presumptions against awarding joint legal custody with the abuser (Morrill, Dai, Dunn, Sung, & Smith, 2005).
Further compounding victims’ experiences are contradictory messages from criminal courts, family courts, child protection investigations, and visitation services (Hester, 2009). For example, criminal courts support victims’ testimony about the abuse, but in family court the same testimony might be interpreted as non-cooperation. To overcome these inconsistencies some states have introduced integrated DV courts (Aldrich & Kluger, 2010).
Labeling Survivors as “Alienating Parents”
Similar to the emphasis on cooperative parenting, use of the label “parent-alienation syndrome” (Gardner, 1998) or, more recently, “parental-alienation disorder” (Bernet, 2008; Bernet, von Boch-Galhau, Baker, & Morrison, 2010) can also place battered women in a no-win situation.
Battered mothers are vulnerable to these labels when they make formal child abuse allegations or raise concerns about the possible abuse of the children by an ex-partner. Many child abuse professionals believe that mothers coach their children to make false allegations in contested custody disputes (Faller, 2007).
Practitioners who apply parent-alienation syndrome (PAS) or parent-alienation disorder formulations tend to automatically label a parent as an “alienator” without a thorough investigation of the allegations (Brown, Frederico, Hewitt, & Sheehan, 2000; Brown, Frederico, Hewitt, & Sheehan, 2001; Meier, 2009). As a result, battered mothers may be viewed as both pathological and abusive.
Fathers’ Rights Groups
The influence of fathers’ rights groups on evaluators and judges is unclear outside of anecdotal accounts (Kurth, 2010). Some types of groups lobby for the presumption of joint custody and co-parenting and doubt the validity of most domestic violence allegations(Dragiewicz, 2008;Williams, Boggess, & Carter, 2004). For example, the National Fathers’ Resource Center (NFRC), along with Fathers for Equal Rights, “demands that society acknowledge that false claims of Domestic Violence are used to gain unfair advantages in custody and divorce cases” (NFRC, 2006). They further state:
Fathers’ organizations now estimate that up to 80% of domestic violence allegations against men are false allegations. Since society offers women so many perks for claiming that they are victims of DV (we call these perks “warm milk and cookies”), false or staged DV allegations now appear to be even more frequent in family court cases than false sex abuse allegations. . . . Simply stated, women know, and are often advised by their attorneys, that if they want to get custody of the children, they had better try to nail dad with some sort of domestic violence accusation (NFRC, 2006).
Underlying the patriarchal beliefs and victim blaming are likely to be deeper, “core” beliefs (i.e. general, value-laden beliefs) about justice and equality. For example, the belief that the world is basically a just place has been related to various forms of victim blaming or denigration. It asserts that good things can happen only to good people and bad things can happen only to bad people (Rubin & Peplau, 1975). Likewise, holding a basic belief that hierarchies are an inherent part of society (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) and having inequality as a core value (Ball-Rokeach, 1976) are related to beliefs supporting gender inequality.
