Understanding the Batterer in Visitation and Custody Disputes

Understanding the Batterer in Visitation & Custody Disputes

This link has taken me hours to get through.  I’ll start to read and something will hit to close, so I’ll end up going back to something else.  There are a couple quotes I wanted to specifically share here, but I would like to encourage my readers to please visit the link.  (Bolding is editorial – pav)

A significant proportion of batterers required to attend counseling because of a criminal conviction have been violent only one to five times in the history of their relationship, even by the victim’s account. Nonetheless, the victims in these cases report that the violence has had serious effects on them and on their children, and that the accompanying pattern of controlling and disrespectful behaviors are serving to deny the rights of family members and are causing trauma.

 Because of the distorted perceptions that the abuser has of rights and responsibilities in relationships, he considers himself to be the victim. Acts of self-defense on the part of the battered woman or the children, or efforts they make to stand up for their rights, he defines as aggression against him.

 

 

Those abusers who accept the end of the relationship can still be dangerous to their victims and children, because of their determination to maintain control over their children and to punish their victims for perceived transgressions.

 

After a break-up, the abuser sometimes becomes quickly involved with a new partner whom he treats relatively well. Abusers are not out of control, and therefore can be on “good” behavior for extended periods of time – even a year or two – if they consider it in their best interest to do so. The new partner may insist, based on her experience with him, that the man is wonderful to her, and that any problems reported from the previous relationship must have been fabricated, or must result from bad relationship dynamics for which the two parents are mutually responsible. The abuser can thus use his new partner to create the impression that he is not a risk.

 

He will often admit to some milder acts of violence, such as shoving or throwing things, in order to increase his own credibility and create the impression that the victim is exaggerating. He may discuss errors he has made in the past and emphasize the efforts he is making to change, in order to make his partner seem vindictive and unwilling to let go of the past.

 

He commonly accuses her of having mental health problems, and may state that her family and friends agree with him. (I got this only a few weeks ago, in an email my ex sent to my current boyfriend.  Quoted: “Nobody that meets me hates me and my whole family is dying for a shot to testify about Toni. She wants me to take drug tests and stuff? How about she takes some pysch evals? I mean really. She has many people on this side who will testify to behavior that calls into question her stability.” ) The two most common negative characterizations he will use are that she is hysterical and that she is promiscuous. The abuser tends to be comfortable lying, having years of practice, and so can sound believable when making baseless statements.

 

Mediators and GAL’s tend to have a bias in favor of communication, believing that the more the two parents speak to each other, the better things will go for the children. In domestic violence cases the truth is often the opposite, as the abuser uses communication to intimidate or psychologically abuse, and to keep pressuring the victim for a reunion. Victims who refuse to have any contact with their abusers may be doing the best thing both for themselves and for their children, but the evaluator may then characterize her as being the one who won’t let go of the past or who can’t focus on what is good for the children. This superficial analysis works to the batterers advantage.

 

Where persuasive evidence of a history of domestic abuse is present, risk to the children from unsupervised visitation can be best assessed by examining:

• the abuser’s history of directly abusive or irresponsible behavior towards the children
• his level of psychological cruelty towards the victim
• his level of willingness to hurt the children as a deliberate or incidental aspect of hurting the mother (such as throwing things at her with the children nearby, being mean or deliberately risk-taking to the children when angry at her, failing to pay child support that he has resources for)
• his level of manipulativeness towards family members
• his level of selfishness and self-centeredness towards family members, including expectations that the children should meet his needs
• whether he has been violent or physically frightening in front of the children
• whether he has been verbally degrading to his partner in front of the children
• the severity or frequency of his physical violence and threats, including threats to hurt himself
• his history of sexual assaults against the mother, which are linked to increased risk of sexual abuse of the children and increased physical danger
• his history of boundary violations towards the children
• his substance abuse history
• the level of coercive control he exercises over his partner and children
• his level of entitlement (attitude that his violence was justified, expectation that his needs should always be catered to, seeing the children as personal possessions)
• the extent of his past under-involvement with the children (e.g. failing to know basic information such as the child’s birth date, names of pediatricians or school teachers, or basic routines of the children’s daily care)
• his level of refusal to accept the end of the relationship
• his level of refusal to accept mother’s new partner being in the children’s lives
• his level of refusal to accept responsibility for past abusive actions (including continued insistence that relationship was more or less equally and mutually destructive, continued insistence that his violence was provoked, continued minimization)
• his level of escalation
• his level of inability to put the children’s needs ahead of his own and to leave them out of conflicts with his partner
• the ages and genders of the children (younger children may be more vulnerable to physical or psychological abuse, female children are at somewhat higher risk for sexual abuse)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recognizing Common Batterers Behaviors In Supervised Visitation Settings

It sometimes feels like a losing battle convincing members of my ex’s family that what I experienced was/is real. When the judge asked me four and a half years ago if I thought there was a family member suitable to supervise his visitations with my daughter, I named his brother in Houston. At the time, my ex was listed as living with them, and my ILs were working out of the country. The stipulation in the orders says either his brother or a party I deem fit supervise his visitations at all times.  I was and still am willing to drive my children four hours away for a safe visit, but as I’ve stated in other entries, my ex hasn’t yet requested a visit.  And when his parents returned to the states, I believe I only told them no one time for a visit, and that was because we already had company in the house that weekend.  They will ask for the kids, and occasionally my ex will drop by while they are there. 

As we seem to get closer to actually going to court to get divorced, I realize it’s inevitable that visitation and support issues will be examined. It looks like he’s aware of that fact himself, because I recently started receiving a child support payment from him more months than not. And now that my daughter is a teenager, more aware of a dangerous situation, I’m more comfortable on her ability to call him out on his behavior as she’s done a few times recently, though not with good results.

What’s interesting is that I’ve haven’t met another woman in quite my situation before. Those I’ve met that have experience domestic abuse in the past seem to be far enough away from it and their abuser now that they can in fact tell me that it does get better. But I haven’t actually met anyone who’s abuser is still trying to reach out and control them. So I went a’searching to try to find others’ stories about supervised visitation, coming up with this gem I thought I would share.  I’ve seen and heard many of these examples for myself in dealing with my ex, up to the point that even now, in one of his latest emails and blog entries, he’s saying he is planning on moving to a tiny town a few miles from me to volunteer for their fire department,  despite the fact that he’s currently living in a nice house of his parents in Fort Worth and making decent money in the oil fields.  His reasoning being he would be closer to his daughter, even though he would still have to drive back that way to his parents home to actually see her. Just another example of his attempt to manipulate me, this time as stalking.

From The Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse:

While the assumption has been that the level of violence will be reduced or eliminated if supervised visitation is ordered in domestic violence cases, practitioners report that batterers exhibit similar behaviorial patterns while utilizing supervised visitation services.

Staff of the Clearinghouse on Supervised Visitation collected examples of behaviors commonly displayed by alleged batterers who were referred to supervised visitation programs in Florida in 2001. As the examples in the following table indicate, the same behaviors of batterers described in the literature, are observed in supervised visitation programs.

Table 1. Common Behaviors of Batterers Seen at Supervised Visitation Programs

Behavior	Manifestation at Supervised Visitation Program
Denial of Abuse/ Minimizations	Children may ask parent, “why did you hit mommy?” Visiting parent may deny hitting child’s mother, say it was accident or minimize his action. Or he may say it’s the fault of mother he has to see child at visitation program. One program reports a 12 year old asked his father why he chased his mother with a knife. Father denied doing it saying the mother told him to say that. This occurred despite witnesses to the knife incident.
Blaming partner	Frequently supervised visitation staff report that a batterer will tell staff “this is all my wife’s fault,” “she’s the one who brought this on.”
Control/ Manipulation	Often batterers will question, or challenge program rules or suggest exceptions to rules should be made of them. This is seen in examples of refusing to arrive or depart per requirements, bringing unauthorized individuals to visits, bringing gifts or food to visits which may be disallowed, attempting to take videos or photographs. Tearing up rules or throwing intake forms across room.
Attacking Parenting Skills	Involving staff in apparent false allegations of child abuse against parent who has been abused, trying to use staff to call Abuse Registry. Makes disparaging remarks about mother, “you need to clean up better than mommy.”
Making Covert/ Overt Threats	Program staff report incidents of batterers showing a weapons permit when asked for identification, driving around visitation site at time of scheduled visits but not coming into program as well as verbally threatening to harm staff, volunteers, judge, partner, etc. during visits. Law enforcement officers referred to programs have come for scheduled visits in full uniform wearing their weapons despite instructions to the contrary.
Involving Children	During scheduled visitations, batterers may attempt to question children about their current living arrangements (particularly if they are staying at shelter or another undisclosed location); inquire about what their plans are, where they are attending school; or, may try and find out who the child’s mother is seeing. Additionally batterers may utilize visitation times as a vehicle to get children to convey messages back to other parent.
Stalking	Following a parent who is leaving a program, recording information about parents car. One program reports two examples of cases when the perpetrator had custody. In one case he left with the child prior to his wife (non-custodial) but waited for her in a nearby parking lot. In another, a non-custodial mother picked up her child for a monitored exchange and was followed to a neighboring city by her abuser. Perpetrators may reveal stalking incidents during conviction with their children during visit Questions such as Where were you all last night? or Why weren’t you in school yesterday?
Financial Abuse/ Manipulation	Refusing to pay for scheduled visits, not going to pay to see my kids. Paying in pennies or other small coins. Saying they will not bring food for visits because they’re paying child support to mother and she should make sure food is available for father’s visit.
Animal Abuse	Batterers may inform child during visit that a beloved pet has died or had to be given away since the child was not longer in the home. One program reported a father bringing the child’s pet rabbit to the program knowing the child would not be able to take it back to the shelter where he was staying.
Physical Violence	At least three murders of have occurred on-site or in parking lots of supervised visitation programs in recent years. Other programs report murders or physical assaults by non-custodial parents off site but while family was utilizing services.
Suicide	Visiting parent telling child and/or staff how depressed he is and how he might just end it all.

I do understand; I just don’t agree

I didn’t realize I had a right to my memories, to remember things from my point of view only.  I had been taught that things I thought to be true, such as abuse and what is normal, was always subject to scrutiny.  My opinion needed to match my family’s, and then later my husband’s.  He would get so angry that my views didn’t match his perfectly, and would tell me, “you don’t understand.”  I would respond, “I do understand; I just don’t agree.”

I teach my children to consider how their actions affect others, I believe, due to the fact that most of my life I had been surrounded by people that didn’t consider me when they acted.  I was a pawn to my mother, a non-entity most of the time to my ex.  I remember a time we were on our way somewhere and he saw an estate sale sign.  We were running behind, and didn’t have a lot of money, but he wanted to stop.  I stayed in the car with the kids and asked him to hurry, and not buy anything big without talking to me first, since I was the responsible one keeping up with our checkbook.  He came out to the car fifteen minutes later, and proudly announced he had purchased two dressers.  I stared at him with my mouth open, confused and hurt.  He said that he didn’t have time to check with me first because someone else was looking at them, but the truth was, my opinion didn’t matter.  I wasn’t a person to him – I was the babysitter.

Four and a half years ago, that man tried to kill me.  I will go on the assumption that he was high, because I can only remember a few times seeing him rage the way he did.  When my son got hurt in the middle, I made the decision that it was over.  Period.  No more breakups, backtogethers, honeymoonperiods, and continuing the cycle.  I had made the decision to be with this man, and I thought if I got hurt in the process it was a consequence of my poor judgement.  But my children had no obligation to witness or intercept any of the abuse.  My responsibility was to them, and then somewhat to myself, since I never realized I could put myself ahead of anyone else.

My ex spent nearly an hour on the phone with our daughter last night, talking almost non-stop.  She had him on speaker and told him plainly that I was listening.  He talked himself in circles a few time, but one thing he kept coming back to was that things probably wouldn’t change in their relationship because I wasn’t budging.  It’s his favorite excuse, but he’s right in a way.  I’m not.  I forgave him too many times before only to have him take advantage of it.  I put up the wall, the boundary over four years ago to protect me and my children, and I don’t intend to let him know where the secret entrance is to get inside.