SCARED TO LEAVE AFRAID TO STAY
Paths From Family Violence to Safety
Many of my clients have talked about writing a book about their experiences so that the public and particularly other victims of domestic violence could know what they had been through.. They believed this information would make it easier for women to leave their abusers. None of my clients ever wrote that book, but with their help, I have written the stories of ten women who went through the court system as part of their efforts to leave their abuser. I have changed the names of the women and others involved in order to protect their safety and privacy. I have selected a group of stories that demonstrate how the courts handle the common issues affecting abused women such as orders of protection, custody, visitation, support, marital property, sex abuse and criminal prosecution. This is one of the rare books to combine an understanding of domestic violence with a knowledge of the law. I believe these ten courageous women will inspire other women and show them the way to a better life. The book also includes my suggestions for improving the system. Among the stories in the book are:
A father admits kissing his daughters on the vagina, but the judge nevertheless gives the father unsupervised visitation during which the four-year-old is penetrated for the first time. The judge yells at me for filing a complaint with Child Protective Services, but a new investigation discovers the truth. The mother wins custody and the father never again has anything but supervised visitation. At a celebratory dinner the children have a name for me and the child protective caseworker. They call us "believers" because we believed them when the judge, their lawyer, court-appointed psychiatrist and first caseworker did not. These "professionals" thought the mother was brainwashing the children.
The first man in Westchester County, New York ever convicted of sexually abusing his wife makes a revealing admission when he tells the police, "I guess I went too far, but she is my wife." When this father later seeks custody while awaiting his jail sentence, the judge yells at the victim when she testifies about the attack and holds her in contempt when she objects to unsupervised visitation for the convicted sex abuser.
A girl is sexually and physically abused by her brother from the time she is three until she is seven. Her parents don't believe in therapy so she is forced to cope without any professional help. For years she feels guilty because some of the things her brother did were physically pleasurable. Finally as an adult she finds a good therapist. One day the therapist tells her to pretend the empty chair is the three-year-old girl. "Tell her what she did wrong, " the therapist says and in that instant she understands for the first time that she was not to blame for the abuse.
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To contact the author:
Barryg78@aol.com
