One and all want to defend children from abuse. Occasionally the family court system fails our children despondently in this regard.

California Protective Parents Association (CPPA), in Sacramento, California. Karen Anderson its director and in her editorial, “Judgment Pronounced – Sentenced to Life – With an Incest Offender” she describes case after case of judgments by the family courts in California where judgments were rendered that favored fathers to an unconceivable level. Fathers who have abused their children, who have battered their children’s mothers, get custody.

Karen Anderson in one case describes that a mother was beaten and her child was sexually abused, but after a divorce the father obtained custody and the mother was vilified and controlled to limited supervised visitation and told her protective behavior was damaging her child. When she went public with her pain, the result was that all her contact with the child was cut off.

“These cases are examples that show a cultural shift in attitude toward incest and maternal protective behavior. How did we go, in such a short time, from punishing perpetrators of incest, to re-uniting children with their known offenders, to punishing parents who attempt to protect their children from incest?”

Karen Anderson answers this question with a history of the family court system in California. It reflects a cultural move in approach, a dysfunctional overemphasis on “the fatherhood initiative”, and many other factors in society at large and within the court system that militate against mothers in their desperate efforts to protect their children. In succeeding articles of this series, Karen Anderson will examine these factors and provide suggested solutions. She leaves us with a vitally important question: