Most, if not all of you, know that I write under a
pseudonym. In fact, this is my second
pseudonym, adopted after my ex-husband topped off 30 years of abuse with a $2
million defamation suit against me. He’s
not rich or famous. He lost nothing
because of my writing. In fact, he
didn’t even lose any social standing because, as it turned out in our defense
investigation, he has left a trail of other victims…romantic, social, and work…since
my escape with my kids in November, 2009.
I have been working on rebuilding my platform under this name after
shutting down a thriving set of sites with 6,000 hits a week in over 40
countries.
For the last 3 years, I have been an advocate for survivors
of primarily non-physical abuse. This is
the abuse that finds its power in terror without crossing into physical
beating. None of his punches landed on
me. The table saw he threw missed
me. The various threats to leave me
penniless with my children…HIS children…and the manipulatively-applied labels
of “crazy” and “mentally unstable” were part of his scheme that kept me
entrapped for a quarter century. This is
the abuse that Dr. Evan Stark aptly described in his book, Coercive Control,
and frequently results in what Dr. Karin Huffer first identified as a PTSD
sub-category, Legal Abuse Syndrome.
As I watch the Kelly Rutherford case take another direction,
I have something to add: as crazy,
unlawful, mind-boggling, and utterly unthinkable as Kelly’s case is, she is one
of many. Tens of thousands, in fact. I thank God that she is brave enough to keep
this fight in the public eye. I also know that for every person in the news who
has the fortitude to continue to battle Napoleonic judges with too much power
and no oversight, there are hundreds of thousands who never make the news. Until it’s too late.
In my journey, I have had the good fortune to meet some
pretty incredible, high-profile people.
I am so blessed by their presence in my life and our shared purpose in
attempting, in whatever way we can, to keep people talking about the
egregiousness and randomness of the courts.
It isn’t just the family courts, either.
Abusers are known for their penchant to involve as many facets of the
legal system as possible to continue to abuse.
As I understand Kelly’s case, she ended her marriage over
infidelity (and there were zero claims of her being a bad parent). Kelly also recounts very specific and
horrific things her ex-husband said to her.
That, my friends, is abuse. Study
after study shows the devastating impact on the psyche of being belittled,
verbally assaulted, demeaned, degraded, and even ignored. The chemical impacts on the brain are real
and proven. Nonetheless, in Kelly’s case
and in many others, judges are neither trauma-informed nor looking for signs of
fear or abuse in a party to a divorce.
Make no mistake, I have had male clients, as well as female. They are verbally emasculated, dodge a flying
lamp or vase, even experience the threats of “you’ll never see your children
again”. But let me tell you about just a
few cases I have personally worked on.
In Orange County, California, one client’s ex-husband is an
attorney. He and his father colluded to
claim that the father had loaned the son and my client $300,000 and thus,
$150,000 of it was her responsibility as “marital debt”. She is a teacher who had been home raising
their children. Neither the father nor
son could produce any proof whatsoever of this money changing hands. No receipts, bank statements, loan agreement,
cancelled checks…nothing. Yet my client
is now taking care of 3 children while her ex-husband refuses to pay his
ordered support and she is expected to pay her ex-father-in-law $150,000 in
addition to everything else she was stuck with.
In Virginia, one client has been repeatedly arrested and
subsequently convicted for physical attacks against her ex-husband. There was zero proof provided. None.
In fact, the first time he claims she attacked him, she was at the
emergency room and produced the discharge papers to prove it. He has never demonstrated any injury. Her crime?
Giving up her career as a nurse anesthetist to take care of two special
needs children, and then divorcing an abusive cardiac surgeon. She has now lost her clinical license after
being convicted with no proof.
In New Jersey, a client’s ex-husband is the leader of a
large company. After she divorced him,
he physically attacked her and broke her wrist.
She was awarded a large sum in a personal injury suit against him, which
he then answered with a massive suit for defamation of character because she
dared make him accountable for his physical attack. Meanwhile, he continues to attack their
children during visitations.
The list I have amassed is enough to make any rational
person lose hope. But the bottom line
is, we must make judges and court systems accountable. In the National Association of Family Court
Judges’ Bench Book on Safety in Child Custody Cases, judges are specifically
instructed to ignore any claims of Parental Alienation Syndrome (junk science,
debunked about 30 different ways), to carefully assess claims of abuse, and to
never, ever assume that an accusation of mental illness by the custody-seeking
party is accurate.
Yet this is exactly what goes on in courts all over the
United States, every day.
And children die.
I am in awe of Kelly Rutherford and her continuing to pursue
every possible avenue to get her children back.
I hope she will keep going. I
hope that everyone who watches her will remember that for every Kelly, there
are thousands of others. For every
Hermes and Helena, there are tens of thousands more being kept from having a
healthy and loving parent.
I’ll keep talking. I
hope Kelly and all of her friends will, too.
AC
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