Quote From: momofdmjmIt is becoming more common knowledge that abusive men use this defense of PAS to fool the judges into giving them custody. I know numerous women whose children were being abused by their fathers, and the abusive fathers won custody because of this bogus allegation. I was trying to protect my kids from their father's abuse. I spent 7 miserable years sharing 50% custody of my kids with him. I was personally accused of Pas by my ex-husband. I had to go to criminal court and through that frustrating process when I was accused of PAS. The female district attorney told my attorney that they filed charges against me just to get my ex-husband to stop calling them every day! I had to be on probation for six months because of his accusation.
I finally won full custody of my kids 8 years ago. I told their father to call them directly whenever he wanted visitation. After 7 years of fighting to retain the 50% custody of our kids, once he lost custody, he stopped spending time with them. He lives 17 miles away, and sees them for dinner a few times a year. And when the kids called him to see him, he told them that he was "too busy". He filed three frivolous law suits against me this year- one of them was to gain custody of our son, who turned 18 the day after the hearing. If my ex truly wanted to be with the kids, he would have spent more time with them in the last 8 years. And to this day, he blames me for alienating the kids from him. What he doesn't realize is that he alienated the kids from him, without any help from me!
And the purpose of filing all thes frivolous lawsuits against me is to break me financially. I've spent almost $100,000 on attorneys in the past 15 years, fighting him in lawsuit after lawsuit. I think the legal system is in desperate need of educating judges about abusers, and how they use the legal system to continue the abuse.
and if there is a loving father out there who is wrongly accused of being abusive- I agree that you deserve custody of your kids. I applaud any father who is loving and still wants to spend time with his kids after a divorce.
I was in the same situation, including the efforts to break me financially. It was a nightmare. I went into credit card debt over $60,000 to pay attorneys fees and court costs and that's after going through my entire savings deferred comp funds (which the judge ordered me to dump...the same judge who is a member of a father's rights group). It turned out that the court ordered psychologist is close and personal friends with my son's bio father...sharing property in europe, etc. When my son's bio father won in court, he told me that I was a good mother and was going to allow me to keep physical custody for the sake of my son. Hmmm...
The good news is that my son has done very well...despite everything, he was an honor student all through high school and is now a freshman in college out-of-state. We have an excellent relationship and he and I both know that I never tried to alienate him from his father...to me, that's all that counts at this point. It was hell while I was going through it and I thought I was going to lose my mind. My heart goes out to those mothers who are being falsely accused.
