Rethinking Child Custody, Domestic Violence - Rutgers NJAES ...

ecomes the primary focus of their assessment, and is even less often included incustodial recommendations to the court even when a history of abuse is well documentedin a man’s criminal records. One consequence is that, in a disturbing proportion of cases,abusive husbands are given sole custody, joint custody, or unsupervised access tochildren. There is some research evidence and a good deal of anecdotal evidence that,against the prevailing pressure to cooperate for the sake of the children, a significantproportion of abuse victims and their children may actually fare worse if they identifydomestic violence than if they do not, as was the case in California and New York, anoutcome which is contrary to not only the laws governing custody dispositions in moststates, but arguably violates women’s constitutional right to equal protection.Gould et al. and Johnston and Campbell are not alone in downplaying thecriminal, malevolent and intentional elements of abuse in family proceedings in the nameof preventing the risks attendant on the most severe cases from trumping the interests ofchildren in parental cooperation in the vast majority of cases. Evidence shows that theproblems caused when evaluators, mediators and range of other professionals respondinappropriately to victims of coercion and control and their children far outweigh the riskthat nonabusive behaviors will be mislabeled or that “a shadow” will be cast over somenon-abusive men. The proportion of cases where abuse allegations are falsely denied faroutweigh the tiny proportion in which such allegations are fabricated.Evaluators are arguably well-suited to assess abuse by their training, experiences,mandate to prioritize safety in the child’s best interest and by the aura of neutrality thatallows them to be confrontational and objective. So is it likely that the current situationcan be easily remedied by reforming the professional curriculum or by the sort of spot