Protective parents from across the country have rallied behind Pickrel-Hawkins—on social media and in person at a rally on the steps of the Colorado Supreme Court building last week.
Family court is a place that defies logic and has been called, even by attorneys, “an abuser’s playground,” an “upside down world” and “The Twilight Zone.” Abusers routinely weaponize our legal system to exact revenge on their spouse. Court professionals often accuse women of fabricating abuse. Protective parents spend every last dime on legal and court-ordered expert fees—even forsaking their homes—and can still lose custody.
“Rachel is just one of many mothers across the U.S. who have undergone this punishing, traumatizing experience, due to family courts’ routine mishandling and minimizing of abuse claims and evidence,” Danielle Pollack, policy manager for the National Family Violence Law Center, told us.
Stories of mothers who have been murdered, or have taken their own lives, in the middle of family court cases circulate on social media regularly—and are chronicled by WeSpoke, a group focusing on sex discrimination against women and their safety. Last year, in a much publicized case, one of WeSpoke’s founders New York attorney Catherine Kassenoff chose an assisted suicide in Switzerland after losing custody of her daughters.
Men can also suffer family court injustice, but research shows that the system is especially discriminatory toward women. In George Washington University Law professor Joan Meier’s 2019 study “U.S. child custody outcomes in cases involving parental alienation and abuse allegations: what do the data show?” she found that less than half of women’s abuse claims are credited. Child sexual abuse was rarely accepted by the courts, at 15 percent, and mothers reporting a father’s abuse (of various kinds) lost custody in 26 percent of cases. Much is done in the “best interest of the children,” which presupposes that parents should share custody no matter what.
Even when a history of violence is acknowledged by the court system, children are not protected from an abusive parent. This is Pickrel-Hawkins’ story and the story of many protective parents. Add to that the fact that some abuse is not as obvious.
There are now seven states that have codified coercive control as a form of domestic abuse. This leaves 43 states dismissing the experiences of victims who do not present with a bruise. We must look beyond the violent incident model and see coercive control as the foundation of all domestic abuse. Abusers may use physical violence—however they also use psychological tactics such as gaslighting, manipulation, intimidation, isolation and sexual violence, plus legal and financial abuse. The most heartbreaking is when the abuser weaponizes the children.
We’re on a mission to educate—and hopefully anger the masses—in the hope that moms (and dads) across our country join the movement demanding family court reform.
The Violence Against Women Act with Kayden’s Law, passed federally in 2022 in honor of Kayden Mancuso, a Pennsylvania girl who was killed by her father during an unsupervised visit. Ironically, Colorado was the first to pass a version on the state level, which includes considering evidence of past abuse, including child abuse, and limits to reunification therapies.
We can all work to help get a version of this law enacted in our state. We can also push for domestic abuse education for judges and other family court actors so they’re aware of the tactics that abusers use to wield control. Lastly, we can open up these secret courtrooms to more oversight and public scrutiny.
Twenty-two brave women from around the world contributed their stories to our book FRAMED: Women in the Family Court Underworld, which dedicated to protective parents like Pickrel-Hawkins. They are cautionary tales, that we never received, about what to expect in family court. American society is quick to label divorces “messy” or “he said-she said” dramas. We urge you to think of them as situations involving real people, where there could be an abuser and a victim.
We need to acknowledge abuse within the family system, physical and non-physical, and see coercive control as the underpinning of it all. Domestic abuse and child abuse are not siloed issues. Whether physical violence occurs or psychological tactics of oppression, everyone within the family system suffers.
It’s time that the very institutions that are intended to protect victims are held to account and acknowledge the intergenerational trauma that is preventable.