DV and Custody Evaluations

The Huffington Post has an article that looks at the differing beliefs about domestic violence held by custody evaluators based on whether the individual evaluator has ever had DV training. Really, this could describe anyone:

The custody evaluators whose views tended towards viewing aggression as situational violence reported less training in domestic violence. This group generally viewed domestic violence as stress induced, normative and mutual. As a result, these evaluators minimized spouse abuse as relevant to child custody decisions. They also thought that false allegations of violence were common. In terms of custody and parenting plans, they prioritized coparenting and father-child relationships.

On the other hand, custody evaluators who characterized domestic violence as intimate terrorism took a different view of custody. They were more likely to report extensive training in domestic violence. These evaluators viewed spouse abuse as a significant factor in determining child custody. They thought that false allegations of abuse were rare. This group of evaluators distinguished between types of violence and expressed strong views that custody and parenting plans should be different for each of these types of violence. In the case of intimate terrorism, they prioritized victim safety over ongoing contact with fathers.

The summary really is this: people who know a lot about domestic violence take it more seriously. People who don't really know much about it think DV isn't much of a problem.

This is especially scary when it comes to the courts. These evaluators make decisions about custody that can put both child and adult victims at risk. Many abusers use custody exchanges (the meeting of the two parents to physically pass the children back and forth) as a guaranteed opportunity to continue harassing or abusing their former partner. Abuser parents can also bring the children back late, insist on rearrangements to the schedule, refuse to bring the children back at all, etc. as a way to continue exerting control over their former partner's life. If the parent with a history of using violence has unsupervised access to the children, they also have additional opportunities to harm their former partner by threatening to harm or actually harming the children. In addition, men who batter pass on their beliefs about women to their children and model abusive and disrespectful behavior for their children that the kids often pick up.

If custody evaluators and others with the power to make custody decisions for a family do not take domestic violence seriously, they won't understand any of these things. If they do not consider the effects and dynamics of domestic violence when making custody decisions, they are opening that family to a continuation of the behavior instead of communicating to the batterer that his controlling tactics should end. Custody evaluators have a unique opportunity to make families safer by ordering supervised exchanges, supervised visits, or no custody or visitation, but most don't do so. Keep that in mind when you hear men's groups lamenting how judges are keeping good fathers away from their children. It actually takes quite a lot for an evaluator or judge to get to that point. More often, women and children who have experienced domestic violence cannot truly end their relationship with a batterer until the children are grown.

Rash of DV Murders in Atlanta

This weekend was a tragic one in Georgia with 4 domestic violence homicides in less than that many days.

Police say a Roswell man killed his elderly mother and then himself.

Daughter and abusive boyfriend planned Clayton mom's killing, officials say. [update] Later reports expand on the probability that the victim's daughter was compelled to keep quite and assist in the cover up after her boyfriend killed her mother.

Police: Fulton Man shot ex-girlfriend in front of couple's two children.

North of Atlanta, a Jackson County man is also accused of killing his estranged wife before killing himself after police located him in Clarke County.

It is unfortunate that it takes many women being killed by abusive men in a short amount of time for many in our community to recognize that domestic violence is an epidemic that claims the lives of thousands of women every year. Even then, most are looking for an easy answer as to what causes domestic violence or what might have caused the rise in numbers of homicides. AJC reporter Marcus Garner did a fantastic job of reaching out to the experts here in Atlanta for an explanation, but he didn't get an easy answer, because there isn't one to give.

It's true that during poor economies, incidents of domestic violence often rise, as Allison Smith of the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence pointed out. Lack of control in other areas of your life, such as losing your job or not being able to find work when you want it, often inspires those with a predisposition toward violence to seek that control over their family or loved ones. Thus, the root could also be control, as mentioned by Sulaiman Nurridin of Men Stopping Violence. Finally, it could be a criminal justice system that does not take domestic violence seriously enough. As our own ED commented, in the case of the man who killed his children's mother during a custody exchange, there was a protective order in place. The judge clearly felt that it wasn't safe for him to have access to his victim, yet it was OK for him to have access to his children? If the judge in the case had taken the level of risk seriously, he or she could have ordered supervised exchanges or supervised visits and it is possible that this murder could have been prevented.

Domestic violence is a complex issue and, like all complex issues, it requires many solutions. Until our community begins taking domestic violence seriously, working to understand its motivation, and holding men who use violence accountable, this won't be the last tragic weekend we have in Georgia.

Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the families who lost loved ones this weekend.

Double Murder and Suicide in Suwanee

Suwanee police said Wednesday that the fatal shootings of three people at an apartment on McGinnis Ferry Road were a double murder and suicide.

Officers responding to a shots fired call just before 8:30 p.m. Tuesday found two women and a man dead in a unit at the Amli at McGinnis Ferry complex, according to Suwanee police Capt. Clyde Byers.

Byers told the AJC that Suwanee police investigators, assisted by the Duluth police crime scene unit, had determined that Michael Kenneth Turner, 40 of Lawrenceville, forced his way into the apartment of his estranged girlfriend, 24-year-old Tiffany Hulsey, and her roommate, 36-year-old Deanna Griffin.

"We believe that he shot both of the females and then turned the gun on himself," Byers said.

Police suspect that the killer was upset at being asked to pay child support.

An investigation is in preliminary stages, but evidence suggests that Kenneth Michael Turner may have spouted threats to co-workers at Wal-Mart in Suwanee hours before the killings, said Suwanee police spokesman Capt. Clyde Byers.

Byers said Turner worked part-time, possibly in a janitorial-type capacity. A Wal-Mart representative said Thursday that company policy prohibited her from verifying employment over the phone.

“I understood he was disgruntled about child support payments (but) it sounds like it may have been multiple things,” Byers said. “My guys are trying to look into those things.”

Investigators believe Turner fatally shot his estranged girlfriend and mother of their 8-month-old child, Tiffany Hulsey, 24, after kicking in the door of her AMLI at McGinnis Ferry apartment Tuesday night.

Turner also killed a Dacula woman police believe was staying at the apartment, Deanna Griffin, 36, before turning the gun on himself, police said.

Hulsey’s 5-year-old daughter and Griffin’s 7-year-old daughter witnessed the slayings, police said. All three children are in the custody of relatives.

No mention is made in the article of domestic violence, though most men who are asked to pay child support don't go on a killing rampage. One of the most dangerous times in an abusive relationship is after that relationship has ended. Men who are used to holding all of the power and control in a relationship begin to feel very threatened when that power is taken away. Many women we know never pursue child support, even though many really need it, because they fear their former partner's reaction to that request. They know that he could view child support payments as a further loss of power and seek to restore some of that power through tactics to invoke fear, such as stalking, violence, or homicide. Unfortunately, many women rely on child support to provide for their families and have no other choice than to remain connected to a man of whom they are desperately afraid.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Hulsey and Griffin families.

Commerce Man Kills Sons, Self

Two days ago, a Georgia man killed his young son and stepson before taking his own life.

Relatives of 36-year-old Keith Jermaine Gresham found the Commerce man dead Monday afternoon inside a car parked on a remote dirt road between Commerce and Jefferson, according to Chief Deputy David Cochran of the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.

The two boys, Keionte Gresham, 4, and Keion Gresham, 7, were found shot to death outside the vehicle.

Keith Gresham was Keion's natural father, according to Cochran.

Cochran told the AJC on Tuesday that Keith Gresham had been involved in an ongoing domestic dispute with the children's mother, who had custody of the boys.

She let the boys spend the weekend with Gresham, but he failed to return them.

On Monday morning, relatives got phone calls and text messages from Gresham, who threatened to harm himself, Cochran said. They went looking for Gresham and the boys, and found them dead on Old Woods Bridge Road.

OnlineAthens has more details:

Prosecutors were attempting to revoke his probation because he had been charged with aggravated stalking in Oglethorpe County and misdemeanor marijuana possession in Jackson County.

Gresham and the boys' mother, Catrina Doster, had been separated for at least a year.

A Jackson County judge granted Doster a 12-month restraining order against Gresham in 2008 and a second 12-month restraining order in October 2009 requiring him to stay 500 yards away from her and her children, according to documents filed in the Jackson County court clerk's office.

However, she allowed Gresham to visit with the children this weekend in advance of his probation revocation hearing, Cochran said.

But when he didn't return the children, Doster, who lives outside of Jackson County, filed an interference with custody complaint with the Commerce Police Department on Monday morning.

Some women want their children to continue a relationship with their father even after they have separated, while others fear harm or an expensive custody battle if the try to keep the kids away. Unfortunately, this case is indicative of a horrifying trend:

In the nine months between June 2009 and April 2010, 75 children have been killed by fathers involved in volatile custody battles with their former partners, according to the Center for Judicial Excellence, a court advocacy organization which has been tracking news articles of such deaths around the U.S. Based in San Rafael, California, the Center focuses on strengthening court integrity as well as improving public accountability of the judiciary.

Some recent examples from the dockets of Family Courts around the country:

» Teigan Peters Brown (3 years old), shot to death by his father during a court-ordered visit. (Arizona June 2009)
» Bekm Bacon (8 months), killed by father, who then killed himself during overnight visitation. (Idaho Feb 2010)
» Janiyah Nicole Hale (1 year), father is charged with her death during an overnight visitation. He is a registered sex offender. (Alabama July 2009)

Office judges do not give women a choice, and many don't take a history of domestic violence into consideration when awarding visitation or custody to violent man.

Experts say abusers use the court system to exercise control over their former partner’s lives, manipulating the players and risking the safety and well being of the children’s lives the courts are sworn to protect.

“Family courts are trained to look for cooperative behavior,” says Rob (Roberta) Valente, general counsel for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, which is based in Washington D.C. “When someone raises an abuse allegation, the court sees it as uncooperative behavior. The result, advocates say, is that the abuser is able to manipulate the court, while a child’s safety and well-being is placed at risk. Many judges are likely to view abuse complaints as a tactic to win custody battles. What the courts have failed to take into account but research has clearly shown time and time again, is that most of the cases that make it to trial in family court are high-risk abuse cases.

Compounding the problem is that judges, attorneys and custody evaluators have little or no training in detecting signs of abuse.

Just 20 per cent of the almost one million divorces and separations registered every year in the U.S. actually land in court. Most are settled in the pre-trial phase, according to Prof. Janet Johnston of San Jose State University, in research studies written for the journal, The Family Court Review.

But of the few who make it to a judge, over 75 percent of these cases are victims of some form of domestic or sexual abuse, according to a 1995 paper by Prof. Peter Jaffe of the University of Western Ontario, who studies children and violence in U.S. and Canadian court systems.

Today’s family courts have also been affected by the rise of the Fathers Rights movement. During the 1950s, family courts almost exclusively awarded custody to mothers. But complaints by fathers that their rights were ignored in custody battles led to a shift in the 1970s to awarding shared custody, on the grounds that it was in the best interest of the child to maintain a relationship with both parents.

Nevertheless, only a small percentage of high-conflict cases require judges to act as conciliators between parties locked in otherwise endless litigation. The majority involve mothers and children that are suffering from serious sexual or domestic abuse.

The National Father Resource Center disputes this, claiming that its member organizations report that 80 percent of mothers’ abuse allegations are false. Although Canadian research from the University of Toronto studying false allegations in U.S. and Canadian custody cases has found that between one and two percent of mothers make false allegations, the fathers’ rights argument has had a powerful impact. As shown by the Tagle case, courts don’t want to hear the mothers’ allegations.

“Historically, allegations of abuse and incest are [met] with a great deal of suspicion, and there is a tremendous resistance to hearing these types of allegations,” said Eileen King, director of Justice for Children, a national non-profit that works to protect children involved in contested custody cases.

Even OnlineAthens felt the need to sneak this comment into their article:

Watson described her cousin as a devoted father who saw his children as often as he could.

"Keith has always been a good dad," she said. "Nobody could separate him from his children. Even when he and Catrina split up, he still went to see his kids."

You know what makes a man a good dad? Not beating up mom! Even after the couple separate, the father's attitudes toward women and violence continue to shape the children's worldview. Unless he is willing to attend counseling or an intervention program to address his abusive past, judges should seriously consider whether allowing the father to parent is really in the children's best interests.

For more information, read the whole article from The Crime Report.

Safety of Custody Exchanges Questioned

The AJC ran a fantastic follow-up article on their Monday story, which we posted about here. The article reiterates many of the points we made about the dangers of custody exchanges when the fathers have a history of domestic violence. Go read the whole thing!

Women Stabbed to Death During Custody Exchange

The man accused of stabbing his wife to death during a custody swap in a Walmart parking lot, then stabbing himself, has been released from the hospital and taken to jail on murder charges.

Phillip Chad Dunn, 28, of Lawrenceville was released from Gwinnett Medical Center on Sunday night. He is being held in the Gwinnett County Jail on charges of malice murder and felony murder.

The couple's daughters, ages 6 and 8, were present during the attack around 4 p.m. Sunday.

Suwanee Police responded to a call about an argument between a man and a woman in a Walmart parking lot. When police arrived, they found both had been stabbed, Capt. Cass Mooney, a Suwanee police spokesman, told the AJC.

Shelley Dyan Dunn, 27, of Buford, was pronounced dead at Gwinnett Medical Center.

“The meeting was a custody exchange between the husband and wife,” Mooney said. “At some point, the husband pulled out a knife, stabbing the wife and then himself.”

It is unclear if the girls witnessed the stabbing, Mooney said.

After reporting this story, the AJC immediately posted on their parenting blog, wondering why on earth these parents were meeting in a parking lot, as if meeting at one of their homes would somehow have made a stabbing less likely. The reality is that lots of custody exchanges happen in public places like fast food restaurants, stores like Walmart, even the local police station. If the parents have gone through a bad divorce they may not welcome their ex to their home and shouting matches are less likely to occur in public. Or the couple may have a history of domestic violence.

According to the American Bar Association's Commission on Domestic Violence, abusive parents are more likely than non-abusive parents to seek sole custody of children and abusive fathers win joint custody and unsupervised visitation at the same rate as non-abusive fathers. While non-abusive fathers may simply want to be with their children, abusive fathers are motivated by a desire to continue controlling and harassing their children's mother. If they are granted visitation or custody, they are guaranteed to see their victim regularly when they swap the children. In these cases, it is not safe for mom to allow dad to come to her home, or to go to his, because of the risk of further violence. Highly populated areas were once thought to provide some safety during exchanges but, as this tragic incident illustrates, safety is not assured.

If you are a woman who fears for her safety during the exchange of children for custody or visitation, please contact your attorney or your local domestic violence agency (1-800-799-SAFE) to discuss your options for supervised visitation or safe exchange. If you live in the Atlanta area, contact Nia's Place.

Update: Dunn had been arrested just two weeks before for choking his wife, but she was still under custody order to meet him to exchange the children.

Update: Another follow-up article detailing the couple's recent domestic violence history.