Battered senseless, choked into unconsciousness over and over again, bones broken repeatedly, American mother, Holly Collins, received no justice, no protection, in Minnesota. She lost custody of the two children she was trying so hard to protect from their father’s rages and beatings. When Collins believed that her children might not survive another week — or another day — she fled and received political asylum in Holland. A powerful documentary exists about her case.
Collins was the first and only such American mother to do so.
Other “protective” mothers, like Dr. Elizabeth Morgan, arranged for her parents to flee with her daughter to New Zealand, which had no jurisdictional reciprocity with the United States. Dr. Morgan sat in jail in Washington, D.C. for more than a year because she refused to disclose her daughter’s whereabouts. I personally talked to her daughter’s therapists who assured me that, in their view, her daughter was being sexually abused by her father.
These cases took place in the late 1980s and the mid-1990s. Can this still be happening?
According to “protective” mothers and their legal and psychological advocates, all of whom spoke at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany in May, this crisis has only deepened. If a battered mother is involved in a custody dispute, her lawyer must, in good conscience, advise her not to mention domestic violence; if she does, chances are she will lose custody. And, if she knows that her child is also being psychologically terrorized, beaten, and perhaps sexually abused, she will almost definitely lose custody if she dares mention this. She will be seen as a “parental alienator,” as a vindictive and crazy liar.
[For more of this story, written by Phyllis Chesler, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...royed_b_9995354.html]
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