Published November 30, 2005 Rates At Which Batterers Receive Custody by Joan Meier, Esq.

One statement in Breaking the Silence: Children’s Voices that has provoked controversy was my statement that “the studies are showing” that up to 2/3 of accused or adjudicated batterers receive joint or sole custody in court.  While no empirical study can definitively determine a universal statistical rate, the key point is that the research consistently shows that accused and adjudicated batterers receive joint or sole custody disturbingly often.  This confirms the anecdotal experience of domestic violence attorneys and victims around the country.  The following research supports this perspective.

. A History of Domestic Violence is Common among Contested Custody Cases.
II. Domestic Violence Perpetrators are More Likely to Contest Custody than Non- Abusers.
III. Accused and Adjudicated Batterers Receive Joint or Sole Custody Surprisingly  Often.  A. Multiple studies have documented gender bias against women in custody litigation.
B. Studies show Accused and Adjudicated Batterers Receiving Sole or Joint Custody  Surprisingly Often.
A study of 300 cases over a 10-year period in which the mother sought to protect the child from sexual abuse, found that 70% resulted in unsupervised visitation or shared custody; in 20% of the cases the mothers completely lost custody, and many of these lost all visitation rights.
 - Neustein & Goetting (1999), “Judicial Responses to the Protective Parent’s Complaint of Child  Sexual Abuse,” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 8 (4): 103-122.

These cases included a case in which the perpetrator had been repeatedly convicted of domestic assault;  in which a father was given sole custody of a16-month old despite his undisputed choking of the mother resulting in her hospitalization and his arrest;  in which the father had broken the mother’s collarbone;  had committed “occasional incidents of violence”;  and had committed two admitted assaults.   More such instances can be found in Meier, supra.
http://www.stopfamilyviolence.org/info/custody-abuse/statistics/rates-at-which-batterers-receive-custody

Published November 30, 2005

Rates At Which Batterers Receive Custody

by Joan Meier, Esq.