Heartbreaking Stories in Bend and Corvallis, Oregon

After driving around the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway, my son and I stopped by a Mexican restaurant for dinner. We were wearing pink sweatshirts that read, "High Conflict Divorce is Child Abuse."

A man, a woman, and a five or six-year-old girl sat down at the next table, and, after reading our shirts, the man said, "I like your shirts.

He then proceeded to tell us that his wife and stepdaughter had been put through lots of trauma by his wife's first husband. The situation had been so difficult that the little girl's older sister had committed suicide.

The family was on their way to an evening church service and invited us to come along because they found so much healing in their religion.

I respect their choices, but I have a strong science background and don't feel comfortable in fundamentalist or evangelical churches. I fit in better at Catholic or mainline protestant churches, but I understand that this family's church supported them through a difficult situation.

The following Thursday in Corvallis, Oregon, my son and I stood with our sign that reads, "Emotional Abuse (Coercive Control) Damages Children and Loved Ones. We Need Laws to Protect Victims."

A man and a woman who appeared to be his intimate partner soon came out and made a beeline to my son and me. The man was wiping tears from his face as he told us his story. He had lost a court room battle for custody of his son to his ex-wife. Once again, I don't know the details of the case in either how much contact the man had with his son or why his ex-wife won the case. I don't know if he had done something to justify him having less time with his child. I only know his heartbreak, and I think therapy should be a part of the divorce and child custody battle process. If people can't afford good lawyers, they may not know how to best present their cases in court. And, while children need loving relationships with their parents, they also need to be safe from abuse. I feel that a therapist working with this family might have been able to help the situation.

What I Learned From Coercive Control Victims in Eugene, Oregon

My son and I first went to stand in front of the Lane County Courthouse in Eugene, Oregon around lunchtime one day in October with our sign that reads:

Emotional Abuse

(Coercive Control)

Damages Children
And Loved Ones.

We Need Laws

To Protect Victims

I realize many would say the person who uses coercive control on "loved ones" does not love them, but I was trying to write something people would understand that would also fit on a poster.

Please also understand that I am not able to verify any of the stories people told me

We were first approached by a woman accompanied by a friend and her older parents. She was found in contempt of court because she wrote a letter to her daughter, who was living in her father's care. The court had ordered that she have "no contact" with the daughter. Maybe if I knew the details of this case, I would agree with the no-contact order, but I don't know why there was a no-contact order. What I do know is how painful it is to be unable to see or even contact a child. My ex-husband kept me away from my daughter for most of a year and a half. The day I lost my daughter, I went to bed and cried for a week. What had this mother, who came out of the courthouse in Eugene, done that was so wrong that she couldn't even see her daughter in visitation supervised by a therapist?

Next, a woman who was on jury duty told my son and me a horror story. After her 15-year-old son finished taking a shower, but while he was still in his underpants, his father began shouting at him and forced him to go outside in freezing weather and stand while holding onto a pole. Mother and father divorced. She took two children and moved to Oregon. Her ex-husband stayed in the state of Virginia with their other two children.

Then a father and daughter came out. The father had two partially healed black eyes. The daughter appeared to be a young adult. The father's ex-wife had taken their minor children from him, and he is unable to see them. Next, she hired a man to beat him, giving him two black eyes and breaking one eye socket, so that the socket now needs surgical repair. The prosecutor reduced charges against the ex-wife from a felony to 4th degree assault, which is a misdemeanor in the state of Oregon. The man felt that the attack was worthy of a felony. Since I don't know all the facts in this case, it is possible that the man did something that caused him to lose his children. Still, his ex-wife hiring a hit man to give her ex-husband two black eyes does not speak well of her character. Should such a person have exclusive custody of minor children, or should her parenting be observed and supervised by a therapist?

I must again emphasize that I do not know most of the facts in these three cases. What I do know is that I was unfairly kept away from my child, but although I won my legal case to be able to see her so thoroughly that the judge ordered my ex-husband to pay 90 percent of my attorney's fees, the process of going to court to regain contact with my daughter took a year and a half.

The legal system operates slowly, but children grow up quickly. We need legal protocols requiring families to work with specially trained therapists who can advise judges on family mental health and conflict-related issues without requiring parents to spend months or years navigating our court system.

Children need to be safe from abuse, but false accusations of abuse happen much more often in high-conflict child custody situations. Falsely accusing a co-parent of abuse is the easiest way to take a child away from a loving parent. At the same time, children need to be safe from abuse. All therapists are mandatory reporters. Moreover, parents who use coercive control on children and co-parents don't like taking orders from a therapist. They reveal themselves by their behavior.

Coercive Control Law Proposal

Coercive Control is Damaging Emotional Abuse; It Should Be Illegal

by Virginia Jones

See my blog at compassionategathering.blogspot.com

Contact me at compassion500@gmail.com

10/22/25

Virginia’s story and why we need laws outlawing coercive control emotional abuse: 

This document contains two parts. First is the story of what happened in my family. The second part is about the legal remedies my son and I have come up with based on other coercive control law proposals, modified by what worked and did not work in our family. In other words, I won a high-conflict child custody battle so thoroughly that the judge in my family’s case ordered my ex-husband to pay 90 percent of my attorney’s fees, but my children and I had to wait years for the case to wind its way through the legal system. This meant that my children were subject to years of coercive control and emotional abuse. I was, too, but I never had to live with my abusive co-parent and his even more abusive second wife. My children did. I won my courtroom battle because I had previously obtained court orders for our family to work with specialized therapists and did what they told me to do. By doing what the therapists told me to do, I healed decades of chronic depression I suffered as a result of my own severe childhood trauma, including generational child sex abuse. Spending money on therapy is much more beneficial than spending money on lawyers. Moreover, not everyone has the money for either lawyers or therapists. We can still promote family and individual well-being and mental health.

People know that military combat leads to trauma, which we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I am old, so I remember the delayed reckoning with the damage the Vietnam War inflicted on so many young American men, but my parents talked about the shell-shocked soldiers who came back from the front line of World War I and World War II. These men struggled to cope with normal lives after the war and became alcoholics or committed suicide.

Since the reckoning with Vietnam soldiers coming home with PTSD, our society has come to recognize that trauma is also caused by rape and child sex abuse. I know about child sex abuse. When I was four years old, I was sexually abused in a neighbor's basement by two teenage neighbor boys while my mother was so depressed she did not know or care where I was. A few weeks later, she spent a couple of months in a psychiatric hospital. I perceived this loss as her not wanting me as a child. She died of cirrhosis of the liver, emphysema, and congestive heart failure when I was 28. When I was 43, my cousin revealed to me that both our mothers had been sexually abused by our grandfather. 

What I went through is now called generational trauma. I lived the consequences. For decades, I struggled with chronic depression, low self-esteem, and anxiety. Fortunately, I learned how to heal trauma by going through more trauma, but this time with the help of therapists…except they were mostly therapists for my children. I followed the therapist’s advice for me as a mother on how to support my children, and ultimately healed myself. Therapy is valuable because therapists learn how to help people struggling with their mental health. Unfortunately, many people can’t afford the therapy they need. Fortunately, you can follow what therapists would advise you to do, such as meditating mindfully and learning a health communication skill called Nonviolent Communication.

I learned about these skills while going through more trauma—my children and I went through an eight-year-long, high-conflict child custody battle between their father and his second wife against me.

The incident that sparked this battle occurred when my son was 10 years old. My children stayed with their father one week in January 2007, when I was on retreat with The Compassionate Listening Project to learn Compassionate Listening. When I arrived home, my son, who is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, told me what happened while I was gone. One day, his stepmother ordered him to look her in the eyes and repeat her criticism of me, his mother, back to her.

“Your mother is nothing but a leech on your father,” she said.

“Stop criticizing my mother,” my son said.

“I have a right to criticize your mother,” she said.

Since asking his stepmother to stop criticizing his mother wasn’t working, my son tried another way to get away from her.

“I’m tired; I need to take a nap,” he said.

“Come sleep on my bed,” said his stepmother, and she made him move to her bed while she continued criticizing me.

Many years later, when my daughter was an adult, she told me about the time her stepmother called her father “stupid” and spent several minutes berating him for missing a turn they needed to take while walking through Montreal, Canada.

Then Stepmom turned to my daughter and said, “Isn’t your father stupid?”

My daughter confided to me that she was afraid her stepmother would start criticizing her if she did not say that her father was stupid, so she said, “Yes, my father is stupid.

If these two incidents were isolated, maybe they would not be so bad, but both my children and I had to endure years of such incidents nearly every week for almost ten years.

Because emotional abuse, now called coercive control, is legal.

My son, who chose to stay with me and was allowed by his therapists to stop visiting his father at age 16, was eventually diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

My daughter, who chose to live with her father and whom I rarely saw for 18 months until I won a child custody battle to be able to see her, was eventually diagnosed by three different therapists with Borderline Personality Disorder, which is a serious mental health disorder commonly experienced by survivors of long-term child sex abuse. If serious and prolonged emotional abuse can cause the same mental health problems as serious and prolonged child sex abuse, why is it legal?

If you want to know more about my family’s story and how I won my child custody battle so you can win your battle too, you can buy my book, Losing My Daughter, Finding Myself: A Memoir and Workbook About Healing Childhood Trauma While Winning a Child Custody Battle by V. Jones on Amazon.com.

About fifteen years ago, I founded a very small non-profit called Compassionate Gathering to train Catholics to listen compassionately to clergy abuse survivors. That worked very well with the very few Catholics and clergy abuse survivors who participated. Soon, ordinary child sex abuse survivors came to me for help. Among these survivors, I met three women who lost their children to the men who abused them. They did not have my resources for therapy and lawyers. I know that these women were not alone, so I have been traveling around Oregon giving Domestic Violence agencies copies of my book, as well as visiting county fairs and farmers’ markets while wearing a t-shirt that reads Emotional Abuse (coercive control) is Very Damaging. 

During these travels, I asked the domestic violence agencies how many of their clients were involved in high-conflict child custody battles. The Executive Director of The Safe Project in Coos Bay told me she encountered such survivors at least once a week. In Florence, Oregon, at the Siuslaw Outreach Services, the advocates who worked directly with domestic violence survivors told me they encountered survivors struggling with child custody battles more than once a week. In Lake County, Oregon, the domestic violence agency advocates told me they see such cases only about once a month, but they serve a much smaller population. I have also learned that many agencies have been experiencing funding cuts, and some have closed permanently, including those in Curry County and Newport, Oregon.

I have some ideas to address both coercive control and family violence. My son, who works in horticulture but is interested in the legal issues related to child abuse and child custody, is working with me. We want to propose two laws to the Oregon State Legislature

Proposed Legal Definitions of Coercive Control:

Based on House Bill 3186 submitted by State Representative Courtney Neron in 2021, and the South Carolina Senate Bill 588, also named the Mica Miller Law, for the wife of a South Carolina Pastor who was subject to extremely controlling behavior by her husband and who died in April 2024 under suspicious circumstances.

A person exerting coercive control over another engages in a pattern of behaviors, including threatening, humiliating, criticizing, and intimidating actions, designed to exploit another person, including:

1. Isolating the other person (which includes spouses, former spouses, romantic partners,     care recipients, and children) from friends and family;
2. Controlling how much money is accessible to another person and how it is spent;
3. Excessively, harshly, or unreasonably criticizing a family member or care recipient.
4. Excessively, harshly, or unreasonably criticizing a family member to another family member or friend..
5. Monitoring the other person’s activities, communications, and movements.
6. Name-calling, degradation, and frequently demeaning the other person.
7. Forcing a child or adult to repeat exaggerated or untrue criticisms of another family member.
8. Repeatedly and frequently criticizing a co-parent or other family member to a child or other family member or friend.
9. Threatening to harm or kill another person.
10. (10)Damaging another person’s property.
11. (11)Threatening to publish information or make false reports to a law enforcement agency regarding the other person.
12. (12)Forcing a person to take part in criminal activity or child abuse.
13. (13)Depriving a child or adult of medical care.
14. (14)Depriving a child or an adult of sleep.
15. (15)Evidence that may be used includes, but is not limited to, text messages, emails, photographs, 911 tapes, bodycam footage, diaries, and bank records.
16. (16)Evidence may include testimony from family members and friends, but also testimony from therapists
17. (17)In the case of child custody issues, testimony from Court-ordered Parenting Time Coordinators and Family Systems Therapists is preferred to testimony from other therapists.
18. (18)In child custody cases, judges should automatically appoint Family Systems Therapists and Parenting Time Coordinators when one or both parents submit a request to court officials.
19. (19)Coercive Control can be punished similarly to a Class E Felony in South Carolina Law, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years of imprisonment.
20. (20)Coercive Control can also be addressed through civil lawsuits.
21. (21)This proposal adds elements for persons subject to parenting plans, such as divorced or never-married parents not living together. These elements are in addition to other elements describing coercive behavior and include activities that interfere with the other parent’s parenting time. Examples of behaviors that interfere with the other parent’s parenting time include arriving two hours late to pick up children for non-emergent or trivial circumstances, holding children inside a home for more than thirty minutes when another parent arrives to pick up children, requesting parenting time changes less than seven days in advance in non-emergent situations, and denying a parent a change in parenting schedule made at least 30 days in advance to take a vacation with children or requesting a vacation with the children, but not actually taking the children on a vacation.

You get the idea

Solutions:

1st Remedy: Lawsuits to Compensate Survivors of Coercive Control

Allow survivors of coercive control abuse experiencing serious mental health issues, and with good documentation, to sue their perpetrators for financial compensation, the way child sex abuse survivors are able to do. This includes any survivor of coercive control, family, or intimate partner violence, not just those who have gone through child custody battles. Then tax both the attorney’s fees and the financial settlements 5%. Use this money to help domestic violence agencies stay open.  Favor the rural counties with fewer resources.

2nd Remedy: Teach children, romantic partners, and family members communication skills, including Nonviolent Communication, Mindfulness, or similar skills, as well as listening skills, to help people know how to communicate in a way that promotes family and interpersonal well-being.

First Provision: Prevent Coercive Control/ Emotional Abuse

Our society is already immersed in coercive communications. Go to a political rally and you are likely to hear lots of criticism of a politician’s opponents. To some extent, this is understandable, but for a society and a family to work, there has to be the ability to hear each other and communicate in a way that helps people work together.

Teach Nonviolent Communication, listening skills, and self-calming skills such as mindfulness or nonreligious yoga in every year in school, beginning in kindergarten. A religious school can teach a spiritual practice that has been scientifically validated to heal trauma, rather than mindfulness, such as Centering Prayer or Native American practices, including traditional dancing and sweat lodges. Please note that teaching children these skills doubles as an anti-bullying program.

The goal of this provision is to give people skills so they will not traumatize their romantic partners or children. These skills will also help people perform better in the work world and in school.

Second Provision—Reinforcing skills in families to prevent coercive control/emotional abuse: 

All new parents, whether married or unmarried, to take more classes or workshops on Nonviolent communication, listening skills, and a scientifically validated practice to heal trauma

.

Third Provision: Reinforcing skills in separating and divorcing families to prevent coercive control/emotional abuse: 

All separating or divorcing parents are required to take more classes or workshops on Nonviolent communication, listening skills, and a scientifically validated practice to heal trauma.

Fourth Provision: Documenting coercive control/emotional abuse:

All separating or divorcing parents will be automatically required to communicate by parenting app or email to provide evidence of coercive control or emotional abuse that is readily observable by governmental or non-profit employees who work with child abuse and domestic violence victims.

Fifth Provision: Examples of Coercive Control

Not allowing a child, parent, other family member, or romantic partner to have contact with their parents, children, other family members, and friends.

Forcing a child, parent, other family member, or romantic partner to criticize someone they love, like, or respect, such as a child, parent, sibling, romantic partner, teacher, friend, or health care personnel

Forcing a child, parent, other family member, or romantic partner to cut off contact with someone they love, like, or respect, such as a parent, sibling, teacher, friend, neighbor, or healthcare personnel.

Isolating a child

Excessive or prolonged criticism or denigration of a child, romantic partner, or friend

Excessive or prolonged criticism or denigration of other family members, romantic partners.

Forcing a teenage girl, parent, other family member, or romantic partner to attend family events when she has menstrual cramps.

Forcing a teenage girl to bleed out when she has her period by not allowing her to have access to a bathroom and menstrual products.

Not allowing a child, parent, other family member, or romantic partner to sleep when they are tired.

Not allowing a child to sleep.

Not allowing a parent or grandparent to sleep.

Not allowing a romantic partner to sleep.

Prolonged and frequent yelling at a child, parent, romantic partner, or friend (More than a minute or two. We are human. On occasion, we slip up and do the wrong thing. Is this a rare slip-up, or is this behavior common or even frequent?

I need help because I am biased by my experiences. Please list examples of coercive control here.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Third Remedy: What to do when coercive control is reported in a family, especially separated and divorced family situations.

The court/county government must take action on these issues automatically, like it would with a case of child sex or physical abuse, or the physical abuse of a domestic or romantic partner. Requiring parents to battle out a problem in court is slow and expensive.  Moreover, money is spent on lawyers that would be better spent on therapists and learning therapeutic self-care, communication, and relationship skills.

Can reports be made to both governmental and non-profit agencies that work with domestic violence and child abuse survivors, who then report to a judge?

1st Report: If a parent, step-parent, or romantic partner of a parent forces a child to criticize another family member or do or say something inappropriate, or otherwise emotionally abuses or coercively controls a family member or friend, this can be reported to governmental or non-profit child abuse or domestic violence agencies.

1. Take workshops on at least one self-calming skill, including mindfulness, yoga, centering, or contemplative prayer. The agencies can be paid to teach these skills, although people can also choose an approved program from their religion of choice, whether it is a sacred Native American practice, Buddhist Meditation, Hindu yoga, or Christian Centering Prayer.
2. Take a workshop on Nonviolent Communication that may be provided by a school, domestic violence, or child abuse non-profit, or governmental agency.
3. Take a workshop on how to listen.
4. Parents will automatically be required to communicate through the parent app or email. These emails or app messages can be governmental or child abuse professions

Second Report in divorced or separated families: Family members and romantic partners should be required to attend family systems therapy with their children or other family members. The therapist will report to a court official, governmental, or non-profit agency what they observe.

Family systems therapy strongly supports family connections, but a parent or partner who is manipulative will eventually reveal themselves. My experience is that I differentiated myself from my ex-husband and his second wife by faithfully attending therapy, following the therapist’s advice, and being respectful of their knowledge and experience when I disagreed with them.

Third Report in divorced or separated families: If emotional abuse (coercive control) remains a problem in a family or domestic partner relationship involving coercive control of children and partners, the parent who engages most frequently will lose parenting time with children. Child support will be adjusted accordingly. Changes in parenting time may be from 50/50 shared parenting to every other weekend or three overnights and days every other week for the parent most responsible for problems. Child support will be adjusted accordingly.

Fourth Report in divorced or separated families: if emotional abuse (coercive control) remains a problem in a family or domestic partner relationship involving coercive control of children and partners, the parent who engages most frequently will lose parenting time with children. Child support will be adjusted accordingly. Changes in parenting time may be to two days every other week for the parent most responsible for problems. Child support will be adjusted accordingly.

Fifth Report in divorced or separated families: If coercive control continues, the abusive parent may have one day (no nights) of parenting time every other week.) Child support will be adjusted accordingly.

Sixth Report in divorced or separated families: The abusive parent will not see children outside of family systems therapy. Child support will be adjusted accordingly

 What I Learned About Child Custody Issues, Domestic Violence, and Child Abuse by Meeting and Working With Survivors, by Being a Survivor Myself, and by Meeting With Professionals Who Work For Agencies That Work With Survivors

by

Virginia Jones

Story Number One: I had the police called on me after I handed out articles on the clergy abuse scandal in my Catholic Church in 2002. The priest who baptized my children and me Catholic the year before had a long history of sexually abusing boys. He had been removed during the 2002 clergy abuse scandal. He had also groomed my then 5-year-old son and me in the months before he was removed. Being thrown out of my Catholic Church only strengthened my desire to advocate for clergy sex abuse survivors. I learned the skill of Compassionate Listening, taught by The Compassionate Listening Project, and taught a small number of interested Catholics the skill. Then I scheduled a private showing of a film about clergy abuse, and contacted an attorney, Kelly Clark, who represented survivors of clergy abuse, and invited him to send his survivors to the showing along with my small group of interested Catholics. Several survivors came. I also managed to secure coverage of this event from the local NPR station, so other survivors attended the showing as well. But one survivor was too fragile to come. Instead, I went to him. He struggled with drug addiction, emotional outbursts, and deep depression. His father was also an addict, and his family was chaotic, so, within a few years, the survivor ended up homeless, too.

Lesson Number One: Addiction, child sex abuse, mental illness, family chaos, and homelessness all go together.

Story Number Two: At a farmer’s market in the Willamette Valley on August 16, 2025, I met a woman selling produce who was a big fan of President Trump—an opinion I don’t share. The reason she liked President Trump was his tough stands on drug use and crime. She had been a homeless drug user and a criminal, and being arrested and put in prison was the best thing that ever happened to her. In prison, she received Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which helped her heal. She had become a criminal to support her drug habit. The reason she had a drug habit was to dull her pain. She had left home without finishing high school and had become a homeless street kid because her home life was simply awful. Her parents were drug and/or alcohol addicts..I don’t know which. Their “home” was chaotic.

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy this woman received in prison healed her. After she was released from jail, she attended Clackamas Community College and graduated with a degree in horticulture. She now works two jobs and is saving to buy a house.

Lesson Number Two: Many people in prison suffer traumatic childhoods.

Lesson Number Three: When survivors of abuse and other forms of childhood trauma receive proper mental health care, such as a course of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, they can recover.

Lesson Number Three Update: I just watched a YouTube video made by a therapist who works with people who have Borderline Personality Disorder. I learned that the majority of people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder are actually people with chaotic childhoods that included instability, emotional abuse, neglect, parents with addictions, but not necessarily physical or sexual child abuse. So the experience of this woman is typical rather than unique. The best thing our society can do to prevent homelessness is to give everyone free or low-cost Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) or similar therapies, of which there are several, because good mental health prevents so many problems. The cost may be high initially, but in the long run, the problems of homelessness, addictions, abuse, divorce, and dysfunctional families will decrease.

Story Number Three: Also on August 16 at the Clackamas County Fair, my son and I met a teenage girl showing her sheep in a 4-H exhibition. She saw our t-shirts that read, “Coercive Control is Child Abuse,” on the front and, “It Should Be Illegal,” on the back, and told us her story. Her mother and stepfather not only smoked cigarettes and drank lots of alcohol, but they also tried to force her to smoke and drink too…after she complained about their bad habits. She asked her grandmother if she could live with her. The grandmother told her that she had to be a Christian. She decided that being Christian was healthier than being in a chaotic household. Her mother was reluctant to let her leave her household. I suspect there may have been a financial benefit to the mother for keeping her daughter in her household, but the girl did not disclose this information to me. The girl did disclose that she had to get Child Protective Services involved to get her mother to let her move to her grandmother's house.

Story Number Three: In Klamath Falls, I attended the Third Thursday event on August 21, 2025. I met with an advocate with the Klamath County CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates). She told me that only 10 to 20 percent of the children she worked with were victims of sexual or physical abuse. Most had parents who were drug and/or alcohol addicts and had other mental health issues. Their homes were chaotic.

Story Number Four: M was a child sex abuse survivor born to a child sex abuse survivor. Her mother struggled with addictions and abusive relationships, and although the two loved each other deeply, M's mother was often not there when she needed her. M married young and gave birth to four boys, whom she adored. Unfortunately, her husband was abusive. A neighbor called the police after her husband shot at M with his gun. During their divorce, she received custody of the four boys. They moved to the Oregon coast to be with M’s mother, and M went to work as a waitress while her sons attended the local school. This was around 25 years ago, when lawmakers were less aware of the effects of abuse and domestic violence. M’s ex-husband moved to a state less supportive of domestic violence victims than Oregon and filed for sole custody of his four boys. Then he went to the town where M lived, presented the court order for him to have custody of his four sons at the school, and returned to his new home state with them.

M did not have the resources to fight her ex-husband to have contact with her children. So she gave up and went into the dark hole of drug addiction. She ended up in prison for selling drugs. However, because M lived in NW Oregon, she received Dialectical Behavior Therapy in prison and recovered significantly from her traumatic childhood and adulthood. After prison, she married and gave birth to a little girl whom she doted on, making her tulle skirts and fairy princess dresses. As her sons turned 18, they started calling her. They did not understand why they had not seen her for so many years. When she told them what happened, they did not believe her. She later left her second husband because he, too, used drugs. She soon returned. She confided to me that she feared losing custody of her beloved young daughter. She struggled to support herself and her daughter without her husband’s construction worker income.

Story Number Six: On August 31, 2025, I went to the Lake County Fair in Lakeview, Oregon. I met a recruiter for the Oregon Department of Corrections. I congratulated him on the Oregon Department of Corrections' use of Dialectical Behavior Therapy because so many criminals suffered child abuse, and the therapy is able to heal the wounds of abuse and help the survivors become productive citizens. 

He replied, “I wish we had the resources to provide Dialectical Behavior Therapy. We don’t. Prisons on the western side of the state provide Dialectical Behavior Therapy with the help of university professors and their students.”

Story Number Seven: In Grants Pass on August 30th, I met a representative of an agency recruiting people to be foster parents. She confirmed what the CASA representative in Klamath Falls said—that only 10 to 20 percent of children removed from dysfunctional families are removed due to physical or sexual abuse. Most were removed due to parental drug and alcohol use, child emotional abuse, or other forms of parental dysfunction. She pleaded with parents to take mental health classes, but most declined. However, it is unclear to me if this was the foster parents or the biological parents of the children placed in foster care.

Story Number Eight—My Story: I am 66 years old as I write this. I was sexually abused by two teenage boys at age 4, while my mother sat on our living room couch, so depressed she did not know or care where I was. A few weeks later, she dropped my brother and me off at our day baby’s sitter's house with two paper bags of our clothes. She told us she was not coming back. That afternoon, I watched as all the other children’s parents came and picked them up, and my parents did not come.

I thought, “Other children have parents who want them. Why don’t my parents want me?”  

That night, I kept the babysitter’s family up, crying until she yelled at me to be quiet.

A couple of weeks later, my father’s aunt came to care for my brother and me, and we were able to come home. Unfortunately, my mother spent much of my early life in and out of psychiatric facilities. Later, after Governor Ronald Reagan closed down many psychiatric facilities, my mother stayed home and became an alcoholic. Fortunately for me, I was a good student, and my father paid for me to attend college. I initially worked in wildlife and fisheries, but permanent job opportunities were scarce, so I returned to college to become a registered nurse and worked as a psychiatric nurse. However, I struggled through many years of depression and anxiety. When I was 43, my cousin called me and told me that our aunt told her that our grandfather sexually abused all the girls in the family.

Later, I went through a child custody battle with my ex-husband. The incident that initiated the battle took place when my ex-husband’s girlfriend, who later became his second wife, forced our son, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, to lie on her bed and repeat her criticisms of me back to her. My son, who considers Asperger’s to be his superpower, because you can’t change his mind when he knows he’s right, refused.

Several years later, after doing this kind of thing to everyone around her, Dad’s second wife called my ex-husband stupid in front of our daughter and then said to her, “Isn’t your father stupid?”

My daughter replied, “Yes, my father is stupid.”

Later, when my daughter told me the story, she recalled that she repeated her stepmother’s criticisms partly because he father told her to do what her stepmother said and partly because she was afraid that her stepmother would start criticising her.

This form of abuse is now called coercive control.

My children and I went through almost a decade of coercive control by their dad and his second wife. They took my daughter from me and prevented me from seeing her. I had to go to court to see her, but the legal system operates very slowly, so 18 months passed before I regained regular contact with my daughter. By then, she had been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, which is a diagnosis common among survivors of chronic child sex abuse. The treatment of choice for Borderline Personality Disorder is Dialectical Behavior Therapy.

I won the child custody battle with my ex-husband to regain contact and partial custody of my daughter so thoroughly that our judge ordered my ex-husband to pay 90 percent of my attorney’s fees. I won because I had previously obtained court orders for our family to work with a therapist for our children and a parenting coordinator. The parenting coordinator testified for me in court. My daughter’s therapist was willing to testify for me, but after the coordinator's testimony, the judge's comments indicated that I had already won. I was the parent who usually escorted the children to therapy, and I was better at following their orders than my ex-husband. Unfortunately, this process took several years. During those years, my children were subjected to almost a decade of emotional abuse primarily by their stepmother. It also cost tens and tens of thousands of dollars, better spent on college educations for children than on lawyers for their parents. There are protocols for the physical and sexual abuse of children, but none for emotional abuse that often presents as coercive control.

Childhood trauma, whether it is physical or sexual abuse of children, coercive control, or simply parental addictions and dysfunction, can lead to serious mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, and criminal behavior in children, such as my daughter’s Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis. My son, who stayed with me, but who had to keep visiting his father and stepmother for many years, developed Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is a stress-related disorder. Why is Coercive Control legal? Why are there no medical and legal protocols for coercive control concerning child custody?

I wrote a book, Losing My Daughter, Finding Myself: A Memoir and Workbook About Healing Childhood Trauma While Winning a Child Custody Battle, to help other parents going through high-conflict child custody battles. My family's parenting coordinator and my children’s therapist introduced me to Nonviolent Communication, which I found easier than the Effective Communication module in Dialectical Behavior Therapy. I also learned Compassionate Listening to be able to better listen to child sex abuse survivors, and it helped me better cope with my daughter’s prolonged emotional outbursts that are so characteristic of Borderline Personality Disorder. When I wrote my book, I didn’t think I could tell domestic violence survivors to listen compassionately to their emotionally abusive co-parents, so I adapted it to be effective or appropriate listening.

Story Number Nine J was a graduate student studying a social work-related subject at a university in Portland, Oregon. She had given birth to a baby girl several months before I met her and just before my husband took my daughter from my care. The father of J’s daughter had also taken her daughter from her and would not let her see the child. We commiserated as mothers who couldn't see the daughters we loved and missed. We also commiserated because our cases to see our children moved slowly through the devastatingly slow legal system. J was very familiar with Dialectical Behavior Therapy and meditated mindfully regularly, so I suspected that she was a child sex abuse survivor. She denied this. Because J was a graduate student in a field related to mental health, there were other ways she could have known about Dialectical Behavior Therapy. 

J and I both wanted to teach homeless community members mental health skills, but they declined. J still accompanied me when I handed out food and clothes to homeless people. Eventually, she asked me to testify on her behalf in a court case for her to have unsupervised visitation with her daughter. By then, I had occasion to meet the father of her child at least once. I found him hostile and abusive. When I testified in court, I was questioned by the court-appointed attorney representing J’s child. She had obviously spent considerable time talking with the father. The attorney focused on the mother having Borderline Personality Disorder. Because I am a former psychiatric nurse and because my daughter was also diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, I was very familiar with the symptoms, which often include intense and prolonged emotional outbursts. I testified that I had only witnessed brief and mild emotional outbursts by the mother, after which she quickly reigned herself in. The child’s lawyer focused on the fact that she had outbursts at all, and the judge ruled against the mother having unsupervised contact with her child.

While I was waiting to testify at the trial, I met J’s mother, who told me what I had always suspected—that the father had sexually abused J when she was a minor. Unfortunately, she declined to press charges. My son later looked up the father online and found out that he had spent several years in prison for sexually abusing a different young girl after he sexually abused J. After he was released from prison, he went to stay with J and fathered their child. A few weeks after their baby was born, he left with the baby. He told the judge that J had thrown a book at him while he held the baby in his arms. J told me she threw a spiral-bound notebook at him, not a hardcover book. Apparently, the court-appointed lawyer for the child had not done as much research as my son and did not know the father had a record of sexually abusing minor girls. In France, judges investigate criminal cases. Perhaps we should adopt the French legal system. So why did J not tell the judge what the father of her daughter did to her and at least one other minor girl? Sometimes abuse victims develop paradoxical attachments to their abusers. Sexual abuse often includes acts of kindness, which are intended for seduction rather than as actual kindness. These acts are a form of coercive control.

Story Number Ten: I knew many domestic violence survivors were like the ones I had worked with and were often victims of some form of child abuse, AND did not have the resources for either lawyers or therapy, so I traveled the state giving copies of my book to domestic violence agencies in rural Oregon including Lakeview, Baker City, LaGrande, Hood River, Astoria, Tillamook, Dallas, Oregon City, and Florence. I asked some agencies how often they encountered survivors going through high-conflict child custody battles. In Coos Bay, they said it was once a week. The Florence agency said they encountered such survivors more than once a week. In Lakeview, which serves fewer survivors spread out over a much larger area, they reported encountering such survivors only about once a month. They added that survivors tended to be tight-lipped and usually made six or seven visits to the agency before leaving their abusive spouses.

Story Number Eleven: Newport, Oregon, doesn’t have a domestic violence agency anymore, so in May, I stood outside the county courthouse with signs saying, Coercive Control is Damaging Abuse, It Should Be Illegal. A young man approached me first and shared his story with me. He came from one of those chaotic homes with emotionally abusive parents absorbed in their own problems. He dropped out of school and became a homeless drug addict. I gave him a copy of my book and told him that I had a similar childhood, and that he could find healing. A deputy led him into court, but he never came out. My guess is that his judge sent him straight to jail. Then a man who was waiting for his wife, who was getting eviction papers for her dysfunctional tenants, told me his story. He and his wife lived in Portland, where his elderly father also lived in a separate house. When he found out that his father’s neighbor was a Registered Nurse, he encouraged her to look in on his father. Soon she took over his father’s life. She accused the son of abuse and took out a restraining order against him, preventing contact between father and son. The grey-haired son wept as he told me his story. How is this legal? After the man’s wife came out, she told me her story too. Her dysfunctional tenants were her adult children, who were using drugs and alcohol and neglecting their children. She had tried everything she knew to get them to be more responsible, but nothing worked. She was very worried about her teenage grandchildren, but did not know what to do.

Story Number Twelve: I was at a farmer’s market life event with my son in the Willamette Valley. I was wearing a blue t-shirt that read, “Emotional Abuse (Coercive Control) is Very Damaging,” and my son was wearing a pink sweatshirt that read, “High Conflict Divorce is Child Abuse.”

We stopped by a table selling crafts oriented towards children. Behind the table sat a woman in her thirties, an older, grey-haired woman, and three children ranging in ages between 5 and 12. 

As we examined the crafts, the woman in her thirties said to my son, “I like your sweatshirt.”

I asked her, “Are you going through this?”

“Yes,” said the woman.

“I wrote a book that might help you,” I said.

I pulled a copy of my book and gave it to her. She rolled it up and gave it to the grey-haired woman, who put it in her bag.

I then selected three craft pieces to buy, paid for them, and then my son and I left without asking any more questions. We understood that the woman needed to be quiet about her situation in front of her children.

Lesson Number Two: Parents with drug and alcohol addictions traumatize their children and often cause them to develop drug and alcohol addictions. Child sex abuse is strongly correlated with parental drug and alcohol addiction, even when the parent isn’t the abuser.

Lesson Number Three: Parental child custody battles are devastating for both children and parents, and can also cause mental health problems in children that are as serious as those caused by child sex abuse. These battles are also correlated with parental mental health problems.

Lesson Number Four: Effective mental health treatments are available for serious mental illnesses caused by child physical, sexual, and coercive control abuse. One of the most scientifically studied and validated in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, but other therapies are very helpful too. These include Nonviolent Communication and listening skills.

Question Number One: If coercive control can cause the same mental health disorder as chronic child sex abuse, why is it legal?

Question Number Two: Why do we have to go to court to get parenting coordinators and family therapists if our abusive co-parents don’t want to work with parenting coordinators and family therapists? Going to court takes a lot of time, and hiring a lawyer, if a parent can afford one, is very expensive. Therapists are expensive too, but not as expensive as lawyers. I spent far more money hiring a lawyer to be able to see my daughter than I spent paying a parenting coordinator and a therapist to help me and my children cope with my ex-husband’s and his second wife’s harassment of us. Why did I have to go through a protracted legal battle to see my daughter? Couldn’t a judge just automatically consult with the mental health professionals who worked with our family and order one? Shouldn’t laws be written to be in the best interests of the children? 

Question Number Three: Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Nonviolent Communication (NVC) already have decades of scientific studies validating their efficacy. Numerous studies have validated the importance of listening skills for mental health practitioners and parents of children. Can court orders for parents struggling with parenting and/or divorce custody battles to study and learn NVC, listening skills, and the skills taught in Dialectical Behavior Therapy be automatic? Better yet, why can’t learning these skills be required for people getting married or becoming parents, and if these parents separate and divorce? Why don’t we teach these skills in school to reduce bullying and help children cope with complicated home lives?

Solutions:

1. We need laws requiring teachers, parents, healthcare professionals, and maybe lawyers too, to learn and use mental health and healthy communication skills, such as Nonviolent Communication, listening skills, and the skills taught in Dialectical Behavior Therapy. These skills can be taught in public schools, in college, before marriage, before and after the birth of children, and before and after divorce.
2. Can domestic violence agencies help teach parents these skills? Can we fund parenting and healing skills classes taught by domestic violence agencies by taxing family practice attorneys and their clients 5% of attorneys’ fees and awards for attorneys’ fees, like the monetary award I received from my ex-husband when he sued me for custody of our daughter? How about adding taxes to the lawyers' fees paid by parents who bring frivolous lawsuits like my ex-husband? This money needs to be spent each year to help struggling families, rather than politicians building up reserves before implementing a policy, the way our current governor has done.
3. Our public schools are overwhelmed with mandates, but I believe that teaching children Nonviolent Communication, listening skills, and self-care skills, such as Mindfulness Meditation, may reduce bullying and other mental health issues experienced by children attending public schools. 
4. Why can’t our society also encourage religious institutions to offer free classes of religious practices that also heal trauma from both combat and the various forms of abuse, including Centering Prayer which I relied on after I converted to Catholicism, Buddhist (mindfulness) meditation, Tai Chi, Native American practices such as sacred dancing and the sweat lodge, both the secular and religious Hindu practices of yoga. All these practices have been studied and scientifically validated as healing

I have been a registered Democrat most of my adult life. Sometimes I feel as though some Democrats have an allergy to religion. I think Democrats need to become more open-minded on the issue. We must not force anyone to practice a religion. That freedom of conscience is guaranteed to us by our constitution. It is a sacred right. When religion is forced on people, it often alienates them from that religion. At the same time, many religious practices heal trauma. I personally find centering prayer easier than mindfulness meditation and use centering prayer instead of mindfulness. If we encourage people to choose a religious practice that heals in line with their pre-existing religious faith, they might be better at maintaining the practice.

Lesson Number Eleven: I recovered from many years of episodic depression after I won my child custody battle with my ex-husband. I spent so much time praying and learning multiple mental health skills that I healed myself without a therapist. I couldn’t afford a therapist while paying for lawyers for myself and for therapists for my children. So I am proof you can heal from serious childhood trauma without a therapist if you work hard learning mental health skills.