The #MeToo movement may have shifted the balance of credibility on sexual abuse and harassment at work more toward victims and away from alleged perpetrators. But the same cannot be said regarding men’s violence and abuse at home: In fact, women’s reports of domestic violence are still widely rejected, especially in one critical setting: the family court.
When women, children or both report abuse by a father in a case concerning child custody or visitation, courts often refuse to believe them. Judges even sometimes “shoot the messenger” by removing custody from the mother and awarding it to the allegedly abusive father.
For instance, courts reject 81% of mothers’ allegations of child sexual abuse, 79% of their allegations of child physical abuse, and 57% of their allegations of partner abuse. Overall, 28% of mothers alleging a father is abusive lose custody to that father; this percentage rises to 50% when an allegedly abusive father accuses the mother of “parental alienation” (more on this below).
Family courts’ hostility – both in the U.S. and abroad – toward claims of paternal or spousal abuse has been widely reported by scholars and litigants. But it’s only recently that empirical data has been produced that validates the growing chorus of distress.
I am a scholar of domestic violence and the law. Working with four other researchers, I conducted a federally funded study that reviewed all electronically published family court cases between...
When asked to comment on recent claims by the head of Taiwan's regional foreign affairs department that the Taiwan authorities are conducting dialogues and consultations with politicians and socia...