Organization Actions:
PAST ACTIONS
1) Data Collection
Examples:
Case A)
Healthy male child in Florida. At age 18, when he was considering college, the child was told by his mother explicitly:
“Get out of my house, your father is not paying child support any more.”
The mother is a First assist surgical nurse with college and nursing degrees, earning in excess of $75,000/year.
The young man was shocked and sought his father’s support.
The father accepted him in his family and provided him with substantial support (car, college tuition).
However the young man never fully recovered from the shock, his college performance was far below his high school record, he dropped out of college, took various jobs that he could not keep, changed residence multiple times. Currently he is 24. He has not graduated college yet. He does not have a permanent residence yet.
Case B)
Male child afflicted with Cystic Fibrosis in New York. Mother refused to let him try to live in warmer weather. He missed 99 days of school in 11th grade and 155 days of school in 12th grade due to severe disease. During that time, the mother coerced him to commit fraud. He left the mother’s home at age 19. Since then, he was never hospitalized. The Court assigned to his case suppressed all evidence of fraud and then ruled that he had no legal reason to leave his mother’s home.
Case C)
Female child in Texas afflicted with Asthma. She lives with her mother who receives $700/month child support. The father refused to share her medical bills. A Court ruled any attempt to have the father share into the medical bills frivolous. This father has NO other children and earns in excess of $200,000/yr. In other words, he refuses to help with his only daughter’s asthma.
PRESENT ACTIONS
1) Flyer / Pamphlet Distribution
Custodial Abuse.org flyer distributed in New York, Connecticut, and Texas.
2) Contacting other possible organizatons and realizing that there seems to be no organization interested in dealing with either abuses by custodial or non-custodial parents.
Examples:
Case A)
Neither children advocates, nor CPS institutions, nor mediation organizations felt that anything could be done concerning the long term harm that the custodial mother had inflicted on her son.
Case B)
No organization accepted to even study the case in detail. Specifically the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation declined any interest in taking any action to defend the interest of the male child described in the case.
Case C)
Similarly to case B, no organization accepted to even study the case in detail. Specifically, Asthma and Lung Disease Foundations declined any interest in taking any action to defend the interest of the female child described in the case.
CONCLUSION OF PAST ACTIVITIES
Other than physical abuse (rape, beating) which appear to be well identified, our society appears to lack any ability to even recognize white collar abuse, financial abuse, and psychological abuse directed against children, to mention just a few possible forms of abuse. Prevention of, or remedial actions for white collar, financial, and psychological abuse perpetrated against children are utterly nonexistent.
NEED and PURPOSE
As the three examples described above show, children may be profoundly hurt in many ways that do NOT involve direct physical abuse.
None of the children described in the three cases (A, B, and C) above was physically beaten or raped. However, all three children exhibit symptoms of depression and distress similar to those exhibited by physically abused children.
Since no organization appears to address this problem, we believe that there is a NEED to raise awareness of, to improve recognition of, to improve prevention of, and to provide remedies for CUSTODIAL ABUSE. Our PURPOSE is to fill this void and provide steps towards fulfilling these NEEDS.
FUTURE ACTIONS
1) We intend to continue and expand all past activities (data collection, dissemination by all possible means in all US states, creation of databases)
2) This website CUSTODIALABUSE.ORG should provide a forum for discussion, information, exchange of ideas, documentation and action.
Actions
The following Actions are the first steps that our organization has taken to better define and raise awareness about Custodial Abuse.
