"CHILD'S BEST INTEREST" (????)

QUOTE:

The generalization is frightening, but like all broad statements there are many exceptions: After twenty years in family law courtrooms throughout the country, I confidently say that no woman, despite very abundant evidence that her child has been sexually molested by her ex-husband or that she has been repeatedly pummeled by the violent father of her child, can safely walk into any family court in the country and not face a grave risk of losing custody to the abuser for the sole reason that she dared to present the evidence to the judge and ask that the child be protected. Why is that? The fault does not lie with the "law" except to the extent that judges are granted discretion under the law. No statute, codal provision, or court rule was ever designed for the purpose of hurting kids. If the law fails kids, the judges are failing kids.

There are several paradoxes that terribly frustrate those in these trenches. First, criminal courts — with the heavy burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt–will convict people for crimes of abuse on the same evidence that family court judges deem to be no evidence at all. Second, normal reactions of mothers to abuse of themselves or their children are viewed by family court judges as evidence that the abuse never occurred. Third, mental health evaluations are considered more reliable and desirable "evidence" of whether or not an event occurred than eyewitnesses, physical evidence, or even admissions by the perpetrator. And fourth, the lack of eyewitnesses, physical evidence, or admissions is considered proof that the event did not happen, despite its rejection as meaningless when present.

We live in an era professing condemnation of child rape and wife beating. We spend countless advertising dollars seeking to persuade mothers to protect themselves and their children, and when they do not act quickly enough, they are found unfit for choosing the abuser over their own child. 

Yet, let them heed our advice, let them go to the courthouse — often for the first time in their lives, to ask the judicial branch to honor its end of the social contract- and request simple physical safety, and they face destruction in the backfire of a system beating its chest to the hollow chant of the "child’s best interest." The "child’s best interest," a phrase so insidiously potent that appellate courts are loathe to question some trial judge’s irrational, unsubstantiated, gender-biased, self-contradictory, absurd, off-the-wall interpretation of it. 

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