Questions of divorce, child custody, and domestic violence effect a vast number of people in this country.  But within the realms of family courts and law there exists a great deal of misinformation, misunderstanding, practices and laws that easily allow for false allegations, lies and manipulations, violations of rights, and failure to uphold concepts such as justice, fairness, and what is is the best interests of our children.  This is not a gender issue as so many people try to make it.  Men and women alike are capable of being deceitful and manipulative.  And both can instigate aggressions.  This is true regardless of sexual orientation, age, or race as well.  And it takes far too long to wait for an appeal while our children are growing up without us.  And they are taken away without any burden of proof.

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Unfortunately statistics are likely to be skewed, because of things like people not reporting, and because of biases, and because of courts finding the wrong person guilty.  There is a lot of fear generated by people in this country that is used to further cloud perceptions.  And unfortunately because people do not want to face truths that go against the position they have chosen to stand for, they continue to perpetuate the abuse that they claim to be against.  Add to the problem, the lies that a perpetrator will tell to cover up their actions and the truths that the victims tell, can sound very similar, making it difficult for those outside to judge what really happened.  Furthermore, people in this country like to use emotionally charged rhetoric to get knee-jerk responses, and will use general terms that they don’t really understand the real definitions of, further incapacitating the chance for an honest discussion of the real issues.  People are kept separated, fighting amongst themselves, instead of solving the real issues.  We need to come together.

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We need to pull massive numbers of cases going back years.  We need to look at all the research that has been done over the past decades and that is on-going, that has been telling us our views and our system are in error.  We need to revise the laws so that lawyers and judges be held accountable, as well as witnesses who provide false testimony.  More into it we need to revise the ways that the cases are handled so that during the cases more evidence and witnesses are heard to better get a good picture so that a better decision can be made, not pushing things out.  Too often relevant evidence is being denied, and proffered evidence is being ignored by judges, in cases both of actual abuse and false allegations. Whenever there is a question of abuse then all parties involved need to undergo psychological evaluation, to determine things such as if the abuse is a false allegation, if either or both parties have a diagnosable psychological issue, to determine what is going to be the best way to handle both abusers and victims.  We look for repeat abusers, we also need to be looking for repeat victims, and in cases where the perceived victim turns out to be a repeat abuser.  And if children are involved and there are questions of their safety, then neither parent should be given sole unsupervised custody, for the very simple reason that many times someone who really is physically or psychologically abusive can be extremely adept at deception and there are many cases where they are also better at winning in a court room environment.  Also there is the question of parental alienation.

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We have universities that are great resources for research.  There are students of law and behavioral sciences that can work together to pull cases files from around the country, and research that has been done, and pull out the patterns and flaws and point to areas that can be shorn up.  We need a better way to put judges in place.  To make sure that they are capable of working in this particular kind of case environment.  They should have background in both law and behavioral science.  Trial transcripts need to be prepared for thousands of cases and gone over.  People who have been through the system over the past 20 years should be gotten in touch with and find out what actually happened in their lives as a result of their interaction with the courts, et al.  All hearings should be both audio and video-taped.  And other ideas welcome.

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