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Name: Buttercup88 New Member   Title: emotional abuse

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get the court and judge to accept that emotional abuse is occurring? Basically my 4 yr old is being forced, against her will, to "visit" with her abusive dad one day every two weeks. She cries and screams not to go, and when she returns back to me she cries and snuggles and recently she has told me they yell alot at that house. She has now also told teachers at school that daddy tells her she will get in big trouble if she tells me what happens at daddy's house. (this comes after the teacher talking to FACS about my child telling her that she doesn't want to go to daddy's because it is scary there) All of a sudden now she is being threatened....but the court, FACS, will not get involved, FACS merely called him and told him to be more careful.

Any thoughts, suggestions, comments would be really appreciated. Has anyone gone through this and could share their story? My child is the most important thing in my life and I want to protect her, but I am finding the court system increasingly for the benefit of the dad, and not the best interest of the child.....very disappointed in the system.

Name: littlemoon New Member

I am sorry to hear this. I divorced when my youngest son was 4. Aside from hitting, my ex is very controlling and emotionally abusive. We went to a court appointed psychiatrist and were totally screwed. My son (after expressing fear of daddy finding out what he said) told him of daddy "being mean". (and no not eat your veggies mean) After interviewing all parties extensively, the dr. agreed it would be better off having limited visitations and assured my son that he would not reveal his statements UNLESS absolutley necessary for the judge. Having too many cases, he got our case mixed up with another and wrote EVERYTHING my son said in the report AND recommended he spend a little more time with dad. I called the office in a frantic and the dr. (ego in tact) covered saying he had reevaluated the case and decided it might help their relationship if they spent more time together. This is AFTER he had his finally visit with my son and reassured him of his first decision. How can it help their relationship especially after he included all of the details my son had confided about his dads behavior. (this is from a dr. that has been on 60 minutes several times!) Anyway my son is now 12 and to let you know how things never change, I found this site tonight while searching for information AFTER spending 3 hours trying to calm his nerves about this weekends upcoming visit. He gets sick at his stomach and can't sleep. When he is at dads, if he gets a nervous stomach, then he gets in trouble for "not liking it there". If he doesn't but goes to the bathroom more than once in a day, dad assumes he does and then he gets in trouble which in turn causes a nervous stomach. I could type forever listing the problems the poor kid has to deal with over there. All I can do is try to calm his fears. I try teaching him relaxation techniques and NO madalex I do not fill him full of fears. I DO encourage him DO NOT discuss any of my ill feelings towards my ex with him. It is obvious you are a bias father and it is a shame that you think anyone mother or father should encourage a 4 year old to excited about visiting a place where she returns with bruises from. Would you feel the same way if your child came to you and was afraid of her mother because her mother hit her hard enough to cause bruises.

Buttercup, all I can say is hang in there and show her unconditional love.

Name: cyn1 New Member

seriously "If she comes home again like that" then he will call FACS? OMG!!! It only takes one time for him to kill her. It shouldn't matter. I would call FACS myself. Or you are just as guilty as he is!

Name: Buttercup88 New Member

Thank you for your responses. My child was having supervised visits for over 9
months, and then a new judge granted the unsupervised visits. He did not know the
history of the case. He just heard the sob story of the ex, he is very good at acting.
Anyways, update: last visit she came home crying her legs were sore and hurting.
When she took her pants of for bath, they were full of bruises and welts. The Dr. said
I should be thankful that nothing was broken. He said if she comes home again
he will inform FACS, because something is not right there. Again thank you for your
postings.

Name: gwin New Member

Well, it is a far jump from the information you've provided to the response thus far (there is obviously a reason the dad has his child 1 day out of 2 weeks!). Abuse in any form, even if 2 days a month is too much. To a 4 year old, scary means scary and you should be concerned. So, if you feel that you are being supportive of her dad otherwise and deeply want to believe that they would be good parents to your child (and that you realize that your child knows the difference between someone telling her to eat her veges and someone being mean to her) then her telling her teacher that her daddy said not to tell is red flag. But in the end the advice is right - you should want to make the visits work and support them - to add though, to that end you are also morally required to make sure they are not abusing her so you CAN do just that. I hope this helps,

Name: madalex Member

The end of your post is very amusing. The father of your child gets to see his daughter on only one day out of every 14 and yet, somehow, this means the system is set up for the benefit of the father. Utterly ridiculous!

That being said, I imagine you force your 4 year old to do lots of things (like eat her vegtables and go to sleep at her bedtime), but that does not mean abuse is occurring.

I am sure that your child would prefer to be with you and not visit her father. And because of that (and because of your attitude towards her father), transitions are difficult. But, 4 year olds don't get to decide those things. They need to have relationships with both their parents, even when one of those parents yells occasionally.

What you can and should do is the best you can to encourage your child to spend time with her father and to minimize the disruption of the transitions when she is going to be with him. Instead of trying to find ways to put an end to the visits, you need to rise above your own feelings towards your ex and help your daughter be excited about visiting the only father that she will ever have.