ConnecticutProtectiveMoms.org Providing Key Advocacy and Information at this Time in the US of All!
This post is copied from an email from ConnecticutProtectiveMoms.org and shares information about an important meeting on youtube.https://youtu.be/QIk601dl4qY The point that domestic abuse and violence can be perpetrated by a Mom or Dad or person of any caregiving capacity or orientation, economic or ethnic or cultural or faith group.
"There’s this place around the corner from you, seemingly insignificant, but it hosts a house of horrors. It’s a place where the same therapists, medical providers and teachers who are legally required to report suspected child abuse are not allowed to save a child before more abuse occurs. Where truth is obsolete, and right and wrong don’t matter. It’s called family court. And I’ve been trapped there for four years now."
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- Today a powerful new OpEd about family court written by National Safe Parents Coalition member Annie Kenny is published in the Washington Post.
- At 1pm ET today NSPC members Annie Kenny, Hera McLeod, and others will be testifying in support of HB561 - Training for Judges, the bill Annie which mentions in her OpEd. Annie and Hera have been advocating on this and other child safety bills over several legislative sessions in Maryland. Here is the YouTube link for the MD House Judiciary Committee if you would like to tune in today and see NSPC members being the change we want to see.
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Washington Post
February 17, 2022
Annie Kenny is a child safety advocate who serves on her local Family Violence Coordinating Council, as a panelist on the “Allen v Farrow” panel series, and is a member of the National Safe Parents Coalition. She has collaborated with Maryland state officials and policymakers regarding legislation reform and has provided written testimony to the U.S. Senate.
There’s this place around the corner from you, seemingly insignificant, but it hosts a house of horrors. It’s a place where the same therapists, medical providers and teachers who are legally required to report suspected child abuse are not allowed to save a child before more abuse occurs. Where truth is obsolete, and right and wrong don’t matter.
It’s called family court. And I’ve been trapped there for four years now.
Before I ever stepped foot into a family courtroom, my now ex-husband had already been convicted of sexually abusing a minor. He already was a Tier III registered sex offender for life. It was determined that for the safety of society as a whole, his photo, address and vehicle description needed to be posted publicly for all to see for the rest of his life. None of that outweighed his “parental rights.”
He was granted access to my children, under the presumption that although he had admittedly sexually abused one child, he was not necessarily a danger to all children. It was easier to get him convicted of his crime than it was to keep him away from my children afterward. His conviction happened quietly. Behind closed doors. Just a few months after he was indicted on felony child sex abuse charges.
But the family court battle? Years. Thousands of documents. Hours upon hours of testimony. Tens of thousands of dollars. Our lives picked apart. Privacy destroyed. Even though the Maryland State Police had identified me as being in such clear and present danger that they granted me a completely unrestricted concealed-carry gun permit. All the while, I’m court-ordered to meet the convicted abuser every Friday night for dinner so he can see “his” children.
It’s almost impossible to identify which players are the good guys and which are the bad guys. The same judge who smiles at me sympathetically is the same person who also keeps arguing that “these kids deserve to have a relationship with their father.” The lawyers taking every penny I’ve ever had and then some encourage me to negotiate with the abuser. I’m given a list of what to wear to court because the size of my earrings could speak louder than my ex-husband’s crimes. I’m told that I’m too traumatized to make appropriate decisions for my own children. That it can’t be up to me to decide what access to their father is appropriate.
People ask me how we are, and I say words such as “fine” and “okay.” Because at best, you simply won’t believe what I have to tell you, and, at worst, I’ll be punished in court for speaking the truth.
There’s no guide to follow, no map on how to escape these dark woods. I sink deeper and deeper each day into the quicksand, my body and mind aching more and more under the weight of each step, without even knowing if I’m walking toward anything. Do my daughters and I make it out of this?
My story isn’t extraordinary, as much as you’d like to think it is. I’m not some mythical creature that exists thousands of miles away. I am your neighbor. Your sister. Your co-worker. I’m the mom handing out the orange slices at the soccer game. I’m your daughter’s Girl Scout leader, the person volunteering next to you at church. I am everyone and no one at the same time. There are tens of thousands of stories like mine out there, but no one wants to look at them.
I hope things can change. There are advocacy groups such as Child Justice in Silver Spring taking on some of these cases and fighting for legislative change. There are multiple family court reform bills being considered this year in Maryland. In fact, S.B. 17/H.B. 561 on ″Child Custody — Cases Involving Child Abuse or Domestic Violence — Training for Judges” has just been introduced. I testified in the Senate this month and will at the House hearing Thursday.
Judicial training sounds like an easy ask: relevant training advised by folks in the fields of child abuse and domestic violence and updated every two years. It is not unreasonable that judges given the power to determine what happens to children and protective parents in cases involving violence be educated on what trauma looks like, the process involved in reporting sexual abuse, and the dynamics of domestic violence and child abuse. How can they be given the enormous task of protecting children in custody cases without training on the subject matter? There’s too much at stake here. No one hires a nanny without experience with children or takes a child to a doctor without medical training.
I’m semi-free from my ex-husband right now, but not because family court saved me. He was caught molesting more children and is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty. It’s hard for him to demand access to me and my children from prison. But I don’t know how long this breathing room will last. And I am angry that it has taken the physical and psychological harm of other innocent children to get us here. Beautiful little souls destroyed, their lives altered. And I think about the thousands of parents ordered to hand their children over to proven abusers again and again and being ordered to co-parent with individuals who later harm or even kill their own children. Even though my ex-husband is still legally my children’s father and has parental rights and his name is still on my babies’ birth certificates, I keep reminding myself that I am one of the lucky ones.
