A powerful new PBS documentary, Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories, premiers on October 20, 2005.  This long-awaited film chronicles the impact of domestic violence on children and the systemic failure of family courts across the country to protect them from their abusers.  Airing times and dates vary—please check your local PBS listings.

Growing numbers of protective, non-offending, loving, and fit mothers are losing custody of their children to their or their children’s abusers. Women who seek to exit bad or even dangerous relationships are often met with retaliatory suits for child custody. Many women who try to leave an abusive partner find that the family court system can become a place where the abuser is enabled and even facilitated in further victimizing her and her children.

The American Judges Association reports that one of the most common reasons for resuming a relationship with an abusive partner is the fear that the abuser will act on threats of taking the children. In fact, studies show that batterers have been able to convince authorities that the victim is unfit or undeserving of sole custody in approximately 70% of challenged cases.

Little known among the general public is the fact that, for almost two decades now, a controversial theory called " Parental Alienation Syndrome" (PAS) has been used as a courtroom tactic to silence abused children and their mothers. This so-called syndrome is not based on systematic research, is not recognized by mental health professionals, is not viewed as a psychiatric diagnosis, and has been rejected by valid scientists and ethical practitioners. Nevertheless, PAS continues to be routinely used in courts across the country, resulting in the removal of children from loving, safe, and fit mothers to fathers who batter the mother, abuse the child, and/or have a substance abuse or criminal history. Often, the mother is given only supervised visitation; in many cases, she loses all contact with her child.

Although this travesty has been occurring with greater and greater frequency, the average person believes that when such cases do occur, there must be something terribly with the mother to cause such a tragic result.  A standard tactic used by abusers is to demonize the victim; all too often, the legal system inadvertently assists the abusers by punishing the mother--labeling her as "hysterical" or an "alienator"-- for seeking legal protection for her children. 

Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories  reflects the thousands of cases in which this has occurred across the country, and amply demonstrates the pattern of mistakes the court system has made to create these tragedies.    

Battered Women, Abused Children, and Child Custody: A National Crisis, III: Unity--and Action!