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.