Safeguarding Children’s Well-Being: Voices From Abused Mothers Navigating Their Relationships and the Civil Courts

Abstract

Battered mothers often go to great lengths to protect their children from abuse. Most of these efforts play out in private settings such as the home. After their relationships end, women’s actions shift to the public sphere for judgment by the courts. Abusers’ strategies utilize the courts as another tool with which to call into question and challenge their former partners’ parenting. Images of “good mothers” who behave passively are favored by officials who often have incomplete understandings of the dynamics of intimate partner violence and abuse. Existing studies about justice-involved mothers insufficiently portray women’s experiences managing both continued abuse from past partners as well as discriminating treatment by the courts. Semistructured interviews with 25 women in the United States who have terminated their abusive relationships reveal strategies of negotiation and resistance used to protect their children both during and after their relationships; the women also recount instances of paternalism and naïveté present in civil and criminal courts. While their male abusers seemed to receive leniency from court officials, despite, in some cases, violating judges’ direct orders, the women’s efforts were sometimes interpreted as recalcitrance and disobedience when they challenged unfair labels, visitation, and custody decisions. This qualitative study contextualizes women’s efforts and actions taken to safeguard their children during and after their relationships to highlight women’s experiences the courts overlook and misconstrue as well as what happens when women engage with the courts. Policy suggestions include ways to prevent the continued victimization of battered women by the courts, to challenge the pejorative assessment of mother’s protective behaviors, and to illuminate court officials’ malfeasance and toleration of fathers’ tactics.

Keywords

battered women children exposed to domestic violence legal intervention perceptions of domestic violence

Numerous studies explore justice-involved mothers’ experiences that highlight the intense regulation and surveillance of women’s bodies, reproductive choices, and maternal activities stemming from a court-centered paternalism (Flavin, 2008; Humphries, 1999; Spohn & Brennan, 2013). Battered women who pursue justice from abusers through civil courts, often contesting visitation and custody decisions, experience similar regulation and paternalism by judicial evaluators based on normative assumptions of what characterizes “a good mother” (Rivera, Sullivan, & Zeoli, 2012; Saunders, Faller, & Tolman, 2011). Much of the extant research focuses on the justice system and demonstrates how court-involved mothers are framed as morally problematic, whose behavior—or related experiences with the justice system—is reprehensible and used to castigate mothers for jeopardizing the safety and well-being of their children. Nowhere is this pathologizing more pronounced than in the discourse surrounding women’s substance abuse during pregnancy (Baker & Carson, 1999; Flavin, 2002; Flavin & Paltrow, 2010; Roberts, 1991), sex workers who are mothers (Maher & Curtis, 1992; Sloss & Harper, 2004), motherhood during incarceration (Flavin, 2008; McCorkel, 2013), and issues related to battered women and their children (Rivera et al., 2012; Saunders et al., 2011). This discourse positions mothers as “bad” and “undeserving parents” once they break the law, or by extension, are victimized in a justice context such as the case of abused mothers. Such approaches fail to acknowledge the strength and resilience that many women bring to mothering and protecting their children, despite their legal troubles.

This qualitative study focuses on battered heterosexual women’s accounts of their complicated negotiations with their male abusers during their relationships, after the termination of these relationships, as well as the ways expectations of shared parenting are used against women in court, including how fathers use their ongoing contact with the children to further perpetuate abuse of their former partners. Courts in the United States have become increasingly more persuaded by fathers’ attempts to cast women as “bad” mothers during custody hearings (Hannah & Goldstein, 2010), but court action often occurs after a long trajectory of father-initiated assertions of control over children to render their ex-partners, the mothers, powerless (Dragiewicz, 2008, 2011). However, research demonstrates that intimate partner violence and abuse (IPV/A¹) impacts children negatively. In relationships characterized by abuse, there is an increased risk of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse of children, and it can affect their social and academic development (Bancroft, Silverman, & Ritchie, 2012). Evidence is mounting that bias ensues when some judges strive to achieve equity and compromise among estranged or former couples, even when there is an indication or clear evidence of IPV/A, by ignoring IPV/A and its effects on children and imposing joint custody arrangements (Hannah & Goldstein, 2010; Haselschwerdt, Hardesty, & Hans, 2011; Saunders et al., 2011).

Using data collected from a larger study of long-term resiliency (see S. L. Miller, 2018), we analyze in-depth interviews with 25 abused mothers, exploring women’s strategies used to shield their children and promote well-being, the failure of institutions to respond to post-relationship abuse, and the prevalence and consequences of “mother policing” by abusers and court actors. “Mother policing” refers to the excessive supervision and regulation of women’s parenting, especially in contrast to fathers who, despite allegations of violence, typically receive minimally restricted access to their children.

Literature Review

IPV/A is defined as asserting control and gaining power over a former or current partner (Shipway, 2004; Watson & Ancis, 2013). A partner may employ coercive control, violence, threats, intimidation, weapons, and various types of abuse including emotional, psychological, economic, sexual, and physical (Haselschwerdt et al., 2011; Stark, 2007). Typically, women are the target of men’s IPV/A (Smith et al., 2017), though men could also be victims of IPV/A in addition to relationships within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) community (Murray, Mobley, Buford, & Seaman-Dejohn, 2007). Our sample is drawn from heterosexual women, focusing on the gendered power dynamics among parents most prevalent in IPV/A relationships where women are the victims of their male partners’ violence, coercive control, and abuse. Specific to this study, the women in our sample are mothers who became court-involved at the conclusion of their relationship.

IPV/A complicates custody rulings and co-parenting strategies. Although 25% to 50% of custody cases involve IPV/A, some states still mandate joint custody (Chandler, 1990; Keilitz, 1997; Morrill, Dai, Dunn, Sung, & Smith, 2005). Judges’ perceptions of IPV/A affect, in part, their custody rulings. A judge may decide that the reported violence is insufficient reasoning to deny a father at least partial custody. In a 2001 study evaluating child custody and visitation decisions, 40% of fathers who commit violence against the mothers were granted joint custody even when those states had statutes in place to protect children and victims (Morrill et al., 2005). Although the devastation this action causes for mothers is clear, what also emerges in the literature is the active strategizing women engage in to resist their abusers’ attempts to gain custody (Hardesty & Ganong, 2006; Harrison, 2008).

Some of this judicial bias may stem from social assumptions of motherhood. Despite being an intimate and individual process, motherhood is in itself a part of the patriarchal family institution (Rothman, 1989). Male-dominated institutions, such as the courts, continue to assert and define normative mothering practices rooted in gendered, raced, and classed family roles (McCorkel, 2013; Rothman, 1989). As our sample indicates, batterers exploit the court system’s biased parenting norms by shifting blame for failed relationships or failed parenting to the mother (Bancroft et al., 2012; Rich, 1986). Paradoxically, judges who award shared custody or visitation to batterers were found to hold mothers more responsible for child well-being while simultaneously undermining women’s ability to raise their children in safe environments (Bancroft et al., 2012; Rich, 1986). Indeed, the patriarchal orientation of the court system may reproduce the very power asymmetries women experience in their abusive relationships—reframing abuse as the fault of the victim and having the power to punish the mother for it (Bemiller, 2008; S. L. Miller, 2018). Most notably, power imbalances between victims and the courts manifest themselves through court processes that mediate relationship termination through divorce and custody proceedings.

The proliferation of Fathers’ Rights Groups (FRG) may contribute to increases in joint custody rulings. In the first quantitative analysis on FRGs in the United States, researchers found that in areas with high FRG participation, divorced couples are more likely to encounter policies that favor joint custody (Rosen, Dragiewicz, & Gibbs, 2009). In addition to joint custody rulings, fathers may continue to exert control over mothers if awarded unrestricted visitation. In a 2005 study, 83.2% of fathers were allowed visitation despite a substantial history of IPV/A (Kernic, Monary-Ernsdorff, Koepsll, & Holt, 2005). In IPV/A cases, joint custody rulings and visitation sharing require continued contact between the parties whereby abusive fathers have the opportunity to continue the use of coercive control tactics against mothers. Mothers shift negotiation efforts post-separation as their relationship status changes—a shift that can be particularly exhausting not only because of how lengthy and resource-intensive this portion of the separation process can be, but also because of the emotional labor required to overcome the “bad mother” stigma and convince courts of their adequacy (see Bemiller, 2008; Renner, 2009; Watson & Ancis, 2013).

Victims who are forced to co-parent with their batterers are placed in precarious positions that not only place mothers at risk, but may also result in an increased risk of harm to their children (Hardesty & Ganong, 2006). Although separated or divorced, these mothers are exposed to continued coercive control from their abusers (Arendell, 1995; Hardesty & Ganong, 2006; Markham & Coleman, 2012). Some fathers pursue joint or full custody even though mothers report ex-partners’ minimal involvement in their children’s lives (Watson & Ancis, 2013). Fathers try to maintain control over mothers by threatening violence, kidnapping children, and fighting for custody (Hardesty & Ganong, 2006). Batterers also exert control through “paper abuse”—the filing of excessive or frivolous legal claims, forcing mothers to engage in long, drawn-out legal procedures that result in resource-intensive and emotionally draining court battles. For example, fathers manipulate the system by financially burdening the mothers and reporting false child abuse allegations (S. L. Miller & Smolter, 2011). Legal fees affect women disproportionately. Compared with men, women tend to be more impoverished, especially battered mothers and women of color (Hannah & Goldstein, 2010).

Mothers experience other pragmatic fears. They may question their ability to balance the responsibilities of single motherhood and full-time employment. Women of color, in particular, may be hesitant to report violence to support systems and police or engage the courts for fear of racial bias or community pressure, worried that accusations of violence may result in child welfare involvement or incarceration (Richie, 2012). In addition, although mothers employ some resistance strategies, including limiting communication, these attempts are challenged by the nature of their custody arrangements (Hardesty & Ganong, 2006).Some boundary-drawing may even be misconstrued as attempts by the mother to alienate the children from their father and result in additional court scrutiny (Hannah & Goldstein, 2010).

Whereas previous research has examined child custody evaluators (Ackerman & Pritzl, 2011; Haselschwerdt et al., 2011), judges (Bow & Quinnell, 2004; Morrill et al., 2005), mediators (Johnson, Saccuzzo, & Koen, 2005), and attorneys (Bow & Quinnell, 2004) about the court process, less attention has been given to battered mothers and the actions they take during and after their abusive relationship to safeguard their children’s well-being, especially through in-depth interviews (Hardesty & Ganong, 2006; Watson & Ancis, 2013). This present study helps to fill in these gaps by illuminating the themes that emerged in women’s narratives about parenting their children, the constraints they faced after their abusive relationships ended, and elucidating their personal stories of persistence and resilience in spite of it all.

Method

In-depth interviews were conducted over a 3-year period with 31 women who participated in a larger study that explored the factors contributing to the long-term resilience of IPV/A survivors (see S. L. Miller, 2018, for additional methodological details)²; we use the narratives from 25 of the women who had children. The sample inclusion criteria were that the women had to be out of their abusive relationships for at least 5 years; the women did not know this particular study’s objective. They were asked a series of open-ended questions during an in-depth interview about their experiences during and after their relationship (including demographics, help-seeking behavior, informal and formal support from faith-based, social service, and justice institutions).³ Women were free to skip answering any questions whenever they felt uncomfortable, confidentiality was assured, and all work followed university Institutional Review Board (IRB) requirements. These women identified as heterosexual at the time of their abusive relationship, and the length of their abusive relationships lasted from 2 to 21 years (M = 9.25). All of the women experienced significant IPV/A from their male partners/ex-partners. The women’s education levels ranged from General Equivalency Diploma (GED) to doctoral degrees—though all of the degrees beyond the BA were achieved following relationship termination, and their ages ranged from mid-20s to early 70s. The racial breakdown included 17 White women, six Black women, one Latina woman, and one Asian woman. Interviews lasted between 1 hr and 45 min to 5 hr. They were tape-recorded and later transcribed verbatim. Both inductive and deductive themes were identified within a grounded-theory analytic scheme (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). For this article, we identify two prominent themes involving children that emerged for a majority of the women: first, women’s efforts used to parent and protect their children both throughout and after relationship termination; and second, the failure of the courts to understand and respond to IPV/A cases in a way that protects children.

Findings

Survivors enduring IPV/A are by no means passive victims; rather, as illustrated in the women’s narratives, despite much emotional difficulty and physical risk, the mothers continuously make deliberate choices in their use of strategies and negotiations to safeguard the health and well-being of their children. For instance, while still in the relationship, the women employed creative and even unconventional tactics such as sexual bargaining and negotiated ceasefires to ward off abuse. Leaving the relationship did not end the abuse; rather, in addition to more traditional forms of emotional and physical abuse, the women reported that the majority of the fathers engaged in paper abuse and hired private attorneys to draw out legal proceedings, often using children as a tool in their machinations. Throughout the women’s narratives, the courts emerged as both a potential ally and obstacle for women as they sought legal remedies both during their relationships and after separation. The women reported many times where they felt court actors used biased parenting expectations against them in court, reflecting asymmetrical gender norms that positioned mothers as “bad” despite their best efforts to protect their children. Although the women could not always resist their abuser’s tactics, they described their strategies and negotiations used to make the children safer. Yet, their efforts were often thwarted, with men able to draw on gendered systems of oppression to gain advantages and further concentrate their power over the women. We next provide contextual examples from the women’s words to illustrate two central themes that emerged from the analysis—women’s efforts, negotiations, and strategies in response to their abusers’ tactics and to the failures of the courts.

“The Shit We Do”: Women’s Parenting in Response to IPV/A

Women manage abuser tactics with an array of strategies in their attempts to shield children from violence and promote children’s well-being. This theme encompasses examples of how women responded to the abusive fathers during and after their relationships. At least one third of the mothers negotiated with fathers using incentives, others shielded and protected children from the men’s abuse with their bodies, and still other women found ways to gain economic advantages and use them as leverage in the relationship. Roxanne⁴ summarizes the women’s efforts when she reflected on “. . . the shit we do within the relationship that keeps them [children] as safe, or more safe and more whole than they would be otherwise, including putting our bodies between the abuser and them.” Such acknowledgments not only reflect women’s agency despite and within their abusive relationships but also reveal the harm endured by battered women and their children both during and after the termination of their relationships.

Women offered multiple examples of—as one woman characterized it—“deals with the devil”—throughout their relationship to keep the children safe or to direct the men’s abuse solely to them, rather than putting their children in harm’s way. One woman made an explicit deal with her husband when she was pregnant with their second child:

“You can’t hit me, you can’t physically wound me at all, until after this baby, while I’m pregnant.” I should have said never, but that wouldn’t have worked anyways, so I negotiated for no hitting while I was pregnant, or at least not until 2 days after the baby was born.

Women found that these strategies worked to placate the abuser and give him an illusion of control. Moreover, the majority of women interviewed discussed how they would sleep on the floor in their children’s bedrooms for years to try to deflect his abuse away from the children because he would reach her first. These examples illustrate women’s decisions to sacrifice their own health for their children’s well-being, sometimes even expressing pride in having thwarted their abusers and redirected their husbands’ anger away from the children.

Women also negotiated safety and peace for their children with sexual bargaining. For instance, Terry believes,

They are more manageable when they’ve had sex, and less likely to go after the kids. So I initially thought I was able to manage him [by acquiescing to his sexual demands], but what I didn’t realize was that he was managing me.

Several women described giving “a blow job in exchange for a few hours out of the house” as a respite for the children away from their abusive father. Some women set boundaries around what their abuser was allowed to do to them to protect their children. One woman describes, “I would negotiate with him. ‘If [I] let [you] fuck me from behind, [you] won’t pick [our son] up by the foot.’” Although unwanted or coercive sex was problematic in itself, the women felt their “surrender” was a way to assert some limited control over a difficult situation and a necessary trade-off to keep their children protected.

Batterers are savvy and know that mothers can be easily manipulated when children are involved (Stark, 2007). Women often found themselves in a difficult position when their children hoped to salvage some connection with their fathers, or when the fathers withheld necessities; they spoke about how the fathers had little to do with the children until the relationship ended, and then an interest in the children emerged, placing children as pawns the fathers hoped to use in retaliation against the mothers. Some of these complications revolved around fathers’ financial contributions to the children. The majority of the batterers wielded greater economic power. Several women described how their abusive partners withheld money to pay for child-related expenses such as diapers or formula, placing women in untenable bargaining positions. Yet, in response, the women found creative ways to get money for their children. Ann Marie, for instance, used part of her own Pell grant that was funding her college coursework to provide food for her children. Another woman kept out part of their weekly church collection contribution so she would have cash on hand if her children needed school supplies or over-the-counter medications that her husband refused to buy.

The decision of whether to stay in or leave the relationship was a continuous process for the women. In the face of violence and chaos at home, the majority of the women sought to minimize their children’s emotional disruptions and based their decisions on what they perceived to be in the children’s best interest. The women described how their homes, neighborhoods, and schools improved their children’s well-being. So much so, women strategically continued their abusive relationships to mitigate the emotional disruption to their children by maintaining stable institutional supports. In this way, mothers weighed the risks and rewards of innumerable strategies, prioritizing those that protected their children emotionally and physically. Mothers may calculate—using an informal cost-benefit analysis of sorts—that the child’s routine and stability justify staying in the relationship. Abusers, meanwhile, attempt to undermine these supports, maneuvering within the community to project a specific image of the family and to control who is allowed to have contact with the family. For instance, several women’s husbands sought pastoral help to remind their wives that families should stay together and work things out, and the women felt even more betrayal when they neither received support nor a condemnation of abuse from their religious leaders and communities. In another instance, Gayle’s husband portrayed her as violent to neighbors. She explains,

It was really embarrassing because he went around to our neighbors. He went knocking on people’s doors and telling them that I had assaulted him and that I had been arrested . . . I didn’t know who he had told, but I had run into a neighbor in the grocery store at some point after that and she knew.

Following relationship termination, women continued to shield the children from ongoing abusers’ tactics and their residual effects. One woman intercepted letters that her incarcerated ex-husband had a third party deliver from prison to her son’s high school. The letters somehow got through despite the son having a no-contact order against his father who physically assaulted him at a medical appointment. To counter potential harassment, many women chose to live in reduced economic conditions rather than request child support, fearing continued harassment by their abuser. Leslie’s ex-husband threatened, “I’ll take her [the child] from you because I’m not going to pay for a kid that I don’t see.” His threat is particularly common and reflects the severity of harassment women receive post-separation. Although the financial contribution was important, Leslie worried about the damage already caused by his abuse and feared it would continue or even escalate if he should get joint custody because during their relationship, “[h]e would take her from me, put her on his hip and try to strangle me with his hand. She was right there, seeing it all . . .” Another woman said, “I’ll work two, three, four jobs as long as I have to so I don’t have to worry about getting money from him.” Women’s own internalized norms about the “ideal” childhood may factor into decisions. After her relationship ended, Jan wanted her children to continue attending their school because it was located in an exceptionally good school district; however, after the divorce, she could no longer afford a house in that district. She was forced to move and split the proceeds from the sale with her abuser, though she retained full custody, and moved the children from their amply sized, upper-middle class home they shared during the marriage into a mobile-home park.

The abusive relationships took their toll on the women’s health. Indeed, the cumulative effect of always being watchful about all the new ways abusers use to continue their control is psychologically costly, creating serious mental and physical health impacts on mothers (Stark, 2007). By prioritizing minimal damage to their children, at least a third of the mothers described sacrificing their own health. Neva describes, “There were lots of things that I did just to make things better for [the children]. Not for me. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t taking care of myself. I started [having] . . . stress [-related] fevers. . . .” Recent research in the area of reproductive coercion reveals the connection between IPV/A and reproductive health, with abuse often a factor in negative outcomes for victims and their unborn children (E. Miller et al., 2010). Here, two women thought their miscarriages were caused by the stress of their abusive relationships. One woman had two miscarriages, and one of her older children is severely disabled. She still wonders if it was a result of the marital discord and the physical beatings she endured while pregnant. With her second miscarriage, the pregnancy was far enough along that they had to make arrangements to bury the baby. She wanted a funeral but her husband—without her knowledge or consent—signed papers for the hospital to remove the baby and forego a funeral; he spoke for her, blocking her from saying a final good-bye to her baby. At no point did anyone at the hospital question why she was not asked or present when he made these final decisions about the baby, demonstrating the paternalism of believing the father’s words as representing both of them. The examples described in the women’s narratives portray their determination and stamina in trying to limit the abuser’s damage to their children, even at the expense of harming their own psychological and physical health. In the next section, we move from the private arena to see what transpires in the public arena when the courts respond to women’s efforts to protect their children.

“They Rake These Women Over the Coals”: Failure of the Courts and the Mothers’ Responses

Both parents can utilize the courts to seek legal remedies regarding relationship issues. However, the women in the sample describe instances in which the court appeared to favor their abuser, lacked a general knowledge of IPV/A, and minimized risks to themselves and their children. Often, court actors such as judges, mediators, and law enforcement are comfortably removed from observing the persistent abuse endured by survivors as well as their protective parenting strategies. Consequently, court actors may more readily view reports of violence as compartmentalized, seeing them as singular incidences whose effects are felt momentarily rather than cumulatively, often unaware of enduring and potentially dangerous patterns of abuse.

Although judicial professionals assert their procedural objectivity, when overseeing cases with IPV/A, strict adherence to neutral jurisprudence is ineffective and dangerous for children and victims. Morrill et al. (2005) found that judges who received IPV/A training still failed to adequately account for child and maternal safety in their rulings despite evidence of abuse. Moreover, consistent with extant literature, the women here described numerous situations where they felt court actors and processes were not neutral, especially when settling cases related to shared parenting expectations. The women perceived these outcomes as highly gendered with power dynamics that favored male abusers throughout child custody, child protection, visitation, and divorce cases. Although, for many women, racial identity may shape their justice system experiences, the women of color in this sample felt their overall lack of financial resources played a more significant role in shaping their court outcomes.

In a number of cases, judges possessed past court or police reports that recorded evidence of IPV/A, which the women felt they routinely ignored or downplayed. For example, as stated in the police report, Gayle’s ex-husband had chased her around the house with a gun, causing Gayle extreme terror and later posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, but the judge minimized his stalking behavior exhibited after they separated. Gayle had come back to court for an extension of her protection order because he had slashed her tires in her driveway, leaving behind distinctive-looking family objects as a calling card. He also called her almost every night at 2 A.M. His efforts to intimidate her caused much anxiety and sleep deprivation, which took a toll on her ability to parent well. Gayle felt the judge believed that the ex-husband’s rehabilitative efforts unrelated to the violence were working, which included—following a suicide attempt—attending Narcotics Anonymous (NA) and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 2 times a week for a year. On this basis, the judge denied the protection order extension, suggesting a naïveté about IPV/A dynamics.

In yet another case, Leslie sought to extend her Projection from Abuse Order (PFA) when her abuser continued to harass and threaten her. Leslie explained,

I tried to get my Protection from Abuse Order [PFA] extended since he was calling, texting from other people’s phone numbers, still driving by and I couldn’t prove any of it with him . . . This is what ticks me off. The judge’s words to me were, “let’s hope he doesn’t do anything.”

Leslie clarified that had she known about the option to obtain a 2-year PFA, she would have chosen that option. Instead, she requested a single year of protection that did not get extended. Leslie felt she had no recourse but to obtain a weapon when the PFA was not extended, convinced her life and her children’s lives were in danger. Although Leslie’s decision to obtain a weapon raises other concerns, it highlights the fear involved when the court system fails to adequately notify women of their rights to protection as well as the limitation of the instruments available to women.

In another court proceeding with a different woman, although she had received sole custody of their children (the father told her that he did not challenge it because he did not want shared caretaking responsibilities), the father continued to file Emergency Petitions against her annual family trips out-of-the-country to visit the children’s grandmother. She remembers,

And this was a guy who . . . flipped a table over in the courtroom once . . . They would have two city cops in the courtroom because he was so crazy. At one point he wasn’t getting whatever it was he wanted and he flipped the table, walked out, told the bailiff that the judge was nothing but a flaming faggot in a black dress.

Despite these public displays of anger in the courtroom, her ex-husband had no difficulty in receiving visitation privileges.

Gendered notions of “ideal” mothers played out in the ways that the women felt judges held them to a higher standard of parenting than their male ex-partners, exacerbating the limited power already present in their abusive relationships. For instance, Ann Marie’s ex-husband was granted numerous opportunities to demonstrate appropriate parenting skills in supervised visitation settings where he was observed by the worker to either be yelling at the kids or wholly ignoring them as he focused on his cell phone. Yet, despite documented parenting inadequacies, he was offered more chances. Subsequently, Ann Marie felt the judge ignored her assertions that the children did not want to see him voluntarily; her experience may underscore the depth of ignorance of IPV/A among some court actors. Ann Marie shares,

The judge wanted to see if their father could become less dependent on the system and become more independent with having a parent aide with him to teach him how to parent. The parent aide shows up for the children. He’s about 25 [childless] and hasn’t graduated from college . . . what experience does he have?

Ann Marie’s dismay revolved around the aide’s lack of interactions with the children or with “guiding” the father’s parenting, and that the aide only helped with transportation, rather than having any knowledge about IPV/A dynamics and its effect on children. Ann Marie remained skeptical of the judicial process, convinced her ex-husband was a threat to her children despite her concerns being trivialized by the courts. Eventually, Ann Marie’s concerns were validated when it was later discovered that her ex-husband had been molesting her daughter. Throughout the process, Ann Marie described being berated by the courts for her accusations rather than commended for her attempts to protect her children from their father’s sexual abuse, which was eventually substantiated. It also reveals how fathers have a much lower bar to meet to be considered “good enough” and how many more chances they are given, relative to women, to prove themselves.

Women’s negotiation strategies are heightened at the termination of abusive relationships to accommodate new demands from various and sometimes competing court systems. Court procedures require not only new strategies but also endurance and persistence. Fathers can utilize criminal and civil court procedures as new “tactics” with which to control their former partners. The abuser often simultaneously benefits from a judicial bias that tends to favor men as fathers despite poor behavior in the courtroom. Terry, for instance, experienced a range of post-separation challenges that required a variety of strategies to navigate. Terry was working full-time when her husband left, and he berated her in court, alleging her failings as a mother for not being “around” for her daughter. In response, Terry gave up her full-time job, but maintained part-time employment because her paycheck was needed. Undeterred, her ex-partner capitalized on a common judicial bias toward mothers regarding gendered parenting norms that see women as the natural and primary caregiver; he alleged that by working at all, Terry cared more about her job than her child. Meanwhile, Terry’s part-time employment paradoxically gave more time to her daughter but offered less by way of financial stability.

When men demonstrated strong emotions (other than anger) in court, women believed the judges often sympathized, particularly if the fathers expressed nurturing qualities and spoke about their love for their children. Fathers were observed as better able to reign in their emotions when necessary to convey rationality and reasonableness. Mothers, faced with losing their children to an abuser, found it difficult to express their concerns without their heightened frustrations, anger, and fear showing. For instance, in Jan’s case, her ex-husband’s attorney interrogated her about (unsubstantiated) devil worshipping, about her efforts to drug her ex-husband at a restaurant, and that she charged him US$20 every time he wanted to have sex with her. After the litany of fabricated allegations, the judge told Jan that she deserved what she got, without adequately understanding the dynamics of IPV/A and why her ex-husband would have made such claims (and, indeed, was in court because he had tried to kill her). Her ex-husband was college educated and flanked by a private attorney, whereas Jan did not have legal representation and only had a high school education. Jan was stoic in court, fearful that any emotion would be misinterpreted by the judge; in contrast, her ex-husband was, as Jan described, “fake-crying” on the stand. In this case, her attempt at stoicism backfired because the judge seemed to misinterpret her efforts as uncaring. Ultimately, her ex-husband was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced for 6 years in prison, but the judge released him for health reasons (that she maintains are false) after serving only 3 years.

The women in our sample felt their abusers were able to use the courts to restrict their choices and actions because court actors were insufficiently knowledgeable about IPV/A dynamics, patterns, and tactics. A number of the women knew how accusations of turning the children against their fathers, parental alienation syndrome,⁵ could backfire against them in court so they endeavored to be seen as not vengeful and to maintain a balance between agreeing to judges’ decisions and objecting when it was not in their children’s best interest. As described previously, Ann Marie felt her ex-husband benefited from judicial leniency despite sexually abusing their daughter. More than half of the sample discussed how they refrained from saying negative things about their children’s father out of fear that their words could be used against them during a custody proceeding. In retrospect, the mothers realized that this strategy often backfired because the children did not always understand the need for their parents’ separation, or, when their fathers were exerting unreasonable control or being abusive to them, the children felt they could not tell their mothers about their fears and concerns.

The women reported that their abusers commonly employed “mother policing”—excessive supervision and regulation of women’s parenting—and may rely on the court’s own “mother policing” tendencies against the victim. In Victoria’s case, her husband moved out while she was pregnant with one of several shared children to move in with his new girlfriend. Despite known domestic violence charges, the judge granted him sole custody of their children. The ruling was made on the grounds that he was gainfully employed (she was a stay-at-home mother when he moved out) and that she was alleged to have neglected their 9-year-old son because he left the house without a jacket on one winter day. Not only did she lose custody of their current children, but lost custody of the newborn. The judge ordered that she pump her breastmilk and deliver it to the father.

The women interviewed for this project responded to “mother policing” with strategies that may serve to reinforce negative interpretations and judgments of their parenting. For instance, in Victoria’s case above, the judge interpreted her apparent distress in the courtroom as instability, ruling that the abuser’s gainful employment was sufficient to restore his credibility as a stable parent. In another case, Jennifer’s ex-husband balked at a judge’s orders by showing up at his children’s sporting events and school band performances, even though he was not legally permitted to attend. When Jennifer began shouting at him, horrified that he violated the “no contact” order at a public venue, the ex-husband later described this in court as a “crazy public outburst that embarrassed his kids.” His portrayal of Jennifer as “crazy” overshadowed her ex-husband’s complete disregard for a judge’s order and successfully framed her as the deficient parent and facilitated an increase in his visitation privileges. Although judicial actors maintain that they are objective in their decisions, more than half of the women described numerous incidents in which the courts ruled in favor of the abuser despite clear evidence of past violence and a risk to the children. Some abusers strategically engage the court process and its actors as additional tools with which to control and abuse their victims.

Discussion

The women’s narratives revealed strategies used to resist the collateral effects of IPV/A, both throughout and after their relationships. Mothers and their children were put at risk for emotional and physical harm as a result of the abuse. Despite it all, mothers continuously regrouped, restrategized, and renegotiated, routinely citing the safety and welfare of their children as their motivation to persist (see also Hamby, 2014). Discovering women’s resilient and resistance strategies offers valuable insight through which to reinterpret their behaviors and understand their needs as they seek to end their relationships and move forward in their lives. These stories also reveal the meaningful role courts and helping institutions can play in support of mothers’ efforts to protect themselves and their children, or conversely, the situations in which they thwart women’s efforts. The findings elucidate opportunities through which institutions can overcome their ignorance of IPV/A and gendered parenting biases that, at present, undermine women’s parenting efforts and further subject them and their children to victimization and danger.

The court actors, as described by the women, often failed to fully understand the nature of IPV/A and respond effectively to women’s needs both during the relationship and after termination. Much of the frustration and danger women face stem from the courts’ lack of understanding and poor response to IPV/A (Hardesty & Ganong, 2006; Stark, 2009). Custody evaluators rarely recognize IPV/A in such cases despite police records and other documentation (Saunders, 2015; Stark, 2009). Abusers benefit from these failures and, in many ways, facilitate this failure by distorting mothers’ protective capacities and adept negotiating strategies to appear, instead, as bad parenting. At least a quarter of the women faced judicial reprimand when they, under duress, expressed fear and concern for their children’s safety in court. Yet, their abusers, who violated court orders and had criminal charges for IPV/A, received leniency from the judges. In some cases, the judges inexplicably circumvented the system’s own accountability measures when they elected not to punish the abusers for clearly violating their court orders.

In addition, IPV/A victims face ongoing coercion and control, which, despite having long-term and devastating impacts on victims, custody evaluators and other court actors often neglect to recognize it as a form of victimization (Saunders, 2015). Coercion and control tactics may not qualify as “criminal,” further limiting opportunities with which women can sufficiently document and authenticate the totality of their abuse and its effects. This is particularly concerning given that many states’ efforts to improve child and maternal safety via statutes that require judges consider past IPV/A in their rulings often rely on documented evidence of abuse (Morrill et al., 2005).

Alienating and shaming experiences within these judicial processes may further erode mothers’ self-empowerment and result in or exacerbate existing mental health or substance abuse issues. Mothers experiencing IPV/A suffer higher rates of mental illness and substance abuse (Afifi et al., 2009; Smith et al., 2017; Zlotnick, Johnson, & Kohn, 2006). Unfortunately, women afflicted by such symptoms are easily portrayed as “crazy” or “unfit” by perpetrators and by extension, the courts (Durfee, 2009). Mediators and family therapists may also cite erratic behavior, mental health needs, or substance abuse as justification for shared custody, visitation, and custody relinquishment (Dalton, Drozd, & Wong, 2006; Saunders, 2015; Zlotnick et al., 2006). The women felt their emotional demeanors in court were seen as justification for ruling in favor of the abusers. Indeed, many women spoke of their bewilderment of the court’s actions, which suggested that the women’s consistent parenting was eclipsed by an abuser’s sporadic and indifferent engagement with parenting. They felt the judges displayed indifference to evidence of abuse though this evidence was obtained using the court’s own judicial mechanisms and suggest other factors such as gender may undergird disparities in court outcomes between victims and their abusers, in tandem with judicial failure to more fully respond to IPV/A issues.

The women’s narratives suggest that the judges in their cases may unintentionally reinforce gendered parenting expectations that embolden abusers when the judges offer fathers leniency, tolerate repeated false allegations of abuse, or ignore evidence of IPV/A. At present, courts and law enforcement continue to be male-dominated professions whereas women are disproportionately more likely to be victims of IPV/A. Subsequently, women have a stronger incentive to be concerned with violent and/or controlling behavior while males, who are disproportionately criminal justice professionals and who are less likely to be victims of IPV/A, may simply view the violence in a vacuum without full appreciation of the relationship dynamics, ongoing fear, and real threat to survivors. Court actors and survivors may also perceive events differently based on gender as well as race and class positionality. Women’s socioeconomic status (SES) was particularly poignant in the narratives where their abusers frequently employed economic abuse such as withholding funds. This further undermined women’s opportunities to acquire the economic capital needed to adequately engage with the courts. U.S. civil courts address noncriminal issues such as protection orders, child custody, and visitation. Because civil courts do not appoint attorneys in custody or divorce proceedings for defendants who cannot afford one, low SES women in this sample disproportionately struggled to respond to paper abuse. Where many women were unemployed or working part-time to care for their children or simply to regroup after the violence, the fathers typically had sufficient social and financial capital to hire private attorneys. As several of our examples reveal, private attorneys offered a level of eloquence and expertise the women did not have equal access to in the courtroom. Although some of the women had access to free legal representation via social services agencies, these instances were rare and limited. The majority of women interviewed did not have access to legal representation, receiving guidance from domestic violence advocates in lieu of attorneys.

The women’s narratives reveal the courts to be a much-needed, but unpredictable, ally often perceived to side with the abuser and be unsympathetic to survivors’ experiences. To counter perceived bias, women negotiate abuser’s contrived tactics, while simultaneously undertaking the emotionally daunting challenge of presenting their stories in a way that will not anger the judge nor provide an opportunity for judicial admonishments. Abusers utilize these willing court actors and processes to commit paper abuse against survivors in an effort to maintain control and test the women’s stamina (S. L. Miller & Smolter, 2011). This ongoing surveillance comes in many forms, but was referenced by the women as the use of frivolous accusations, criminal charges, or child abuse allegations. Paper abuse is a particularly effective form of “mother policing.” The women described ways this tactic exhausted their negotiation strategies, resources, and emotional reserves juggling the demands of parenting and emotional strain concomitant with the paper abuse. Each court appearance represented further insecurity because the women could not predict the outcome. This forced them to respond to potentially life-threatening circumstances, juggle competing demands, all with limited emotional reserves. Moreover, being repeatedly hauled back into court jeopardized women’s financial stability (e.g., obligating women to find costly childcare, navigate transportation, pay parking fees, and endangering employment due to time-off requests to attend court).

The extent to which childcare responsibilities are unevenly distributed by gender perhaps plays out most overtly in cases where mothers are alleged to have “failed to protect” their children from IPV/A (Stanziani & Cox, 2021). Women whose abusers accuse them of child abuse or whose children bear witness to fathers’ violence find themselves simultaneously positioned as both a victim of abuse and potential perpetrator of it. In mock cases, IPV/A victims were more likely to be found guilty of failure to protect than nonvictims, and these failures to protect laws were disproportionately used to prosecute mothers (Stanziani& Cox, 2021). In many states in the United States, women can be criminally charged if their children witness domestic violence in the home (Douglas & Walsh, 2010; Stanziani & Cox, 2021), suggesting a fundamental misunderstanding of IPV/A and asymmetrical power dynamics among service professionals and policy makers. In IPV/A relationships, abusers’ effectively shift blame for abuse to victims, reframing resiliency strategies as negligence.

Women balance competing expectations of adequate parenting such as those who give up full-time employment, rely on nontraditional caregivers, or swap multistory homes for mobile homes to better care for their children. Some strategies women employ to protect their children or enhance their children’s well-being, such as using federal student-aid money for family expenses, negotiating sexual favors, or forgoing prescribed medication, can be interpreted as unconventional or seen as hostile, thus, reinforcing negative interpretations and judgments of women’s parenting. The women face lose-lose situations that obligated constant reshuffling of resources, whether in time, money, or emotions. Staying in the relationship risked their safety and welfare, but leaving presented layers of challenges that may further risk their safety and welfare. For safety reasons, some of the mothers opt not to request child support, but risk inadequately providing for their children. Others work numerous jobs to provide financially for their children but ultimately sacrifice time with their children. Despite discouraging court outcomes or financial difficulties, the women displayed courage and resilience, continuously focusing on ways to improve their circumstances for the sake of their children.

Conclusion

Essentially, the women endure a “maternal sacrifice” penalty, occurring both during the abusive relationship when mothers absorb injury and deflect injuries from fathers designed to hurt their children and as women stay in relationships longer to facilitate stability for their children. This maternal sacrifice penalty is also assessed after relationship termination when mothers are penalized for failing to conform to “ideal” expectations of how plaintiffs should behave in court. Courts interpret survivors’ presentations of self through a gendered lens, with women viewed as being too emotional (i.e., “crazy” or “angry” or “vindictive”) or too unemotional (i.e., “detached”), whereas this mother’s penalty does not extend to the fathers who are lauded if they are emotional (i.e., “caring”) or unemotional in expression (i.e., “logical”). These interpretations reveal the failure of judicial professionals to understand and respond appropriately to IPV/A. More advanced training for court personnel, especially judges, on the dynamics and patterns of IPV/A and how they extend well past relationship termination would be efficacious.

Staff within the courts are often ill-prepared to work with battered women and are rarely (or sufficiently) trained on critical features of IPV/A despite 25% to 50% of custody cases qualifying as IPV/A (Morrill et al., 2005). Yet, these institutions exert tremendous influence and decision-making power in such cases—in many ways, mimicking and exerting similar levels of power and control as the abuser. FRGs and advocates make the claim that the abusers are discriminated against in family court, in custody rulings, or through child support obligations. The battered women’s accounts seen here offer an alternative picture that resonates with other research on court-related outcomes (see also Hannah & Goldstein, 2010). Women felt they had been held responsible for child well-being while experiencing a panoply of abuse from partners and the courts whenever they sought protection or responded to their abusers’ allegations of parenting flaws. The women also believed the fathers received undue credit and leniency from the courts as the mothers endured exhausting and unpredictable court battles. These interpretation issues could demonstrate a lack of training of personnel who handle IPV/A-related cases in family court that should be explicitly addressed in new or increased training, directing officials to include a set of questions that could reveal ongoing abuse.

The emotional, financial, and physical labor required to leave a relationship, negotiate, and sustain throughout court cases leads women to return to the abuser and even prevents some from leaving at all. The unique characteristics of each woman’s relationship individualize her strategies and suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach to IPV/A cases is not only ineffective, but potentially dangerous. Responding to and resisting the “bad mother” stigma portrayed by the abuser and often adopted by the courts further complicate women’s efforts to manage difficult circumstances (see Haselschwerdt et al., 2011). Training in trauma-informed approaches to understanding survivors’ presentation of self would assist judicial interpretation of women’s affect in court as well as offer an opportunity for judges to interpret court reports and relevant evidence more holistically. Economic resources that assist victims in retaining attorneys may significantly improve outcomes. Several examples above highlight ways the women’s abusers significantly benefited from an attorney, and we surmise that women would benefit equally if not more so from such resources, especially given the bias against mothers described within our findings.

This research has important implications for the understanding of women’s experiences navigating IPV/A throughout and after their relationships as well as during their engagement with the courts; but this qualitative sample does limit the generalizability of our findings and is relevant to the women’s perceptions and interpretations of events. While our sample speaks to the many challenges abused mothers experience, the women did not speak specifically to ways their social location may distinctly influence their efforts to protect their children while engaging with their abuser and the courts. Future research can more directly inquire about these distinctions.

Specialty courts, especially drug courts, are lauded as successes in part because of caring, well-informed judges who are instrumental in demanding and instituting top-down changes (Rossman & Zweig, 2012). Specialty courts tend to have personnel and judges who are well-versed in therapeutic options and follow a trauma-informed philosophy and approach (S. L. Miller & Hefner, 2015; Rossman & Zweig, 2012; Tyler & Huo, 2002). Indeed, Morrill et al. (2005) find the quality of the judge’s IPV/A education is critical to effective outcomes for survivors and their children. IPV/A-specific courts that purposely partner with victims’ organizations and prioritize victim safety may be an effective tool. The women in our study experienced anxiety and fear when attending court alongside their abuser. As they allude to, their heightened fears coupled with the unpredictable legal outcomes made them behave more erratically in court and exacerbated already inflamed emotional distress. Partnerships with each state’s domestic violence coalition and vast network of advocacy organizations trained to work with survivors can greatly assist court improvement projects related to IPV/A. Gaining a more complete understanding of women’s survival tactics and increasing professionals’ knowledge about abuse tactics that extend beyond the end of the relationship will greatly assist women’s resilience and efforts to build safer lives for their children.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Nafissatou Dicko and Brianna VanArsdale for their early contributions to this project.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Susan L. Miller is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. Her research interests include gender and criminal justice policy, gender-based violence and inequalities, and restorative justice. She has published in Violence Against Women, Justice Quarterly, and other journals; her most recent book examines resilience and growth of long-term survivors of intimate partner violence and abuse (IPV/A).

Jamie L. Manzer is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. Her research interests include gender andcivil courts, reproductive justice, health disparities, and gender-based violence. Previously, she worked in direct client services and nonprofit management, serving IPV/A survivors and their children.

References

Ackerman

M. J.

Pritzl

T. B.

(2011). Child custody evaluation practices: A 20-year follow-up. Family Court Review, 49, 618-628.

Afifi

T. O.

MacMillan

Cox

B. J.

Asmundson

G. J.

Stein

M. B.

Sareen

(2009). Mental health correlates of intimate partner violence in marital relationships in a nationally representative sample of males and females. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24, 1398-1417.

Arendell

(1995). Fathers and divorce. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Baker

P. L.

Carson

(1999). “I TAKE CARE OF MY KIDS”: Mothering practices of substance-abusing women. Gender & Society, 13, 347-363.

Bancroft

Silverman

J. G.

Ritchie

(2012). The batterer as parent: Addressing the impact of domestic violence on family dynamics. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Bemiller

(2008). When battered mothers lose custody: A qualitative study of abuse at home and in the courts. Journal of Child Custody, 5, 228-255.

Bow

J. N.

Quinnell

F. A.

(2004). Critique of child custody evaluations by the legal profession. Family Court Review, 42, 115-127.

Chandler

D. B.

(1990). Part 2. Research perspectives. Violence, fear, and communication: The variable impact of domestic violence on mediation. Mediation Quarterly, 7, 331-346.

Corbin

J. M.

Strauss

(1990). Grounded theory research: Procedures, canons, and evaluative criteria. Qualitative Sociology, 13, 3-21.

10.

Dalton

Drozd

Wong

(2006). Navigating custody and visitation evaluations in cases with domestic violence: A judge’s guide. Reno, NV: National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

11.

Douglas

Walsh

(2010). Mothers, domestic violence, and child protection. Violence Against Women, 16, 489-508.

12.

Dragiewicz

(2008). Patriarchy reasserted: Fathers’ rights and anti-VAWA activism. Feminist Criminology, 3, 121-144.

13.

Dragiewicz

(2011). Equality with a vengeance: Men’s rights groups, battered women, and antifeminist backlash. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.

14.

Durfee

(2009). Victim narratives, legal representation, and domestic violence civil protection orders. Feminist Criminology, 4, 7-31.

15.

Flavin

(2002). A glass half full? Harm reduction among pregnant women who use cocaine. Journal of Drug Issues, 32, 973-998.

16.

Flavin

(2008). Our bodies, our crimes: The policing of women’s reproduction in America. New York: New York University Press.

17.

Flavin

Paltrow

L. M.

(2010). Punishing pregnant drug-using women: Defying law, medicine, and common sense. Journal of Addictive Diseases, 29, 231-244.

18.

Gay

L. R.

Airasian

(2003). Educational research: Competencies for analysis and applications. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

19.

Hamby

(2014). Battered women’s protective strategies: Stronger than you know. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

20.

Hannah

Goldstein

(2010). Domestic violence, abuse, and child custody: Legal strategies and policy issues. Kingston, NJ: Civic Research Institute.

21.

Hardesty

J. L.

Ganong

L. H.

(2006). How women make custody decisions and manage co-parenting with abusive former husbands. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 23, 543-563.

22.

Harrison

(2008). Implacably hostile or appropriately protective? Women managing child contact in the context of domestic violence. Violence Against Women, 14, 381-405.

23.

Haselschwerdt

M. L.

Hardesty

J. L.

Hans

J. D.

(2011). Custody evaluators’ beliefs about domestic violence allegations during divorce: Feminist and family violence perspectives. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 26, 1694-1719.

24.

Humphries

(1999). Crack mothers: Pregnancy, drugs, and the media. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

25.

Johnson

N. E.

Saccuzzo

D. P.

Koen

W. J.

(2005). Child custody mediation in cases of domestic violence: Empirical evidence of a failure to protect. Violence Against Women, 11, 1022-1053.

26.

Keilitz

S. L.

(1997). Domestic violence and child custody disputes: A resource handbook for judges and court managers. Alexandria, VA: National Center for State Courts.

27.

Kernic

M. A.

Monary-Ernsdorff

D. J.

Koepsll

J. K.

Holt

V. L.

(2005). Children in the crossfire: Child custody determinations among couples with a history of intimate partner violence. Violence Against Women, 11, 991-1021.

28.

Maher

Curtis

(1992). Women on the edge of crime: Crack cocaine and the changing contexts of street-level sex work in New York City. Crime, Law and Social Change: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 18, 221-258.

29.

Markham

M. S.

Coleman

(2012). The good, the bad, and the ugly: Divorced mothers’ experiences with coparenting. Family Relations, 61, 586-600.

30.

McCorkel

J. A.

(2013). Breaking women: Gender, race, and the new politics of imprisonment. New York: New York University Press.

31.

Miller

Decker

M. R.

McCauley

H. L.

Tancredi

D. J.

Levenson

R. R.

Waldman

. . . Silverman

J. G.

(2010). Pregnancy coercion, intimate partner violence and unintended pregnancy. Contraception, 81, 316-322.

32.

Miller

S. L.

(2018). Journeys: Resilience and growth for survivors of intimate partner abuse. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

33.

Miller

S. L.

Hefner

M. K.

(2015). Procedural justice for victims and offenders? Exploring restorative justice processes in Australia and the U.S. Justice Quarterly, 32, 142-167.

34.

Miller

S. L.

Smolter

N. L.

(2011). “Paper abuse”: When all else fails, batterers use procedural stalking. Violence Against Women, 17, 637-650.

35.

Morrill

A. C.

Dai

Dunn

Sung

Smith

(2005). Child custody and visitation decisions when the father has perpetrated violence against the mother. Violence Against Women, 11, 1076-1107.

36.

Murray

C. E.

Mobley

A. K.

Buford

A. P.

Seaman-Dejohn

M. M.

(2007). Same-sex intimate partner violence: Dynamics, social context, and counseling implications. Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling, 1(4), 7-30.

37.

Patton

M. Q.

(2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

38.

Renner

L. M.

(2009). Intimate partner violence victimization and parenting stress: Assessing the mediating role of depressive symptoms. Violence Against Women, 15, 1380-1401.

39.

Rich

(1986). Of woman born: Motherhood as experience and institution. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

40.

Richie

B. E.

(2012). Arrested justice: Black women, violence, and America’s prison nation. New York: New York University Press.

41.

Rivera

E. A.

Sullivan

C. M.

Zeoli

A. M.

(2012). Secondary victimization of abused mothers by family court mediators. Feminist Criminology, 7, 234-252.

42.

Roberts

D. E.

(1991). Punishing drug addicts who have babies: Women of color, equality, and the right of privacy. Harvard Law Review, 104, 1419-1482.

43.

Rosen

Dragiewicz

Gibbs

J. C.

(2009). Fathers’ rights groups: Demographic correlates and impact on custody policy. Violence Against Women, 15, 513-531.

44.

Rossman

S. B.

Zweig

J. M.

(2012). The multisite adult drug court evaluation. Alexandria, VA: National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

45.

Rothman

B. K.

(1989). Recreating motherhood: Ideology and technology in a patriarchal society. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

46.

Saunders

D. G.

(2015). Research based recommendations for child custody evaluation practices and policies in cases of intimate partner violence. Journal of Child Custody, 12, 71-92.

47.

Saunders

D. G.

Faller

K. C.

Tolman

R. M.

(2011). Custody evaluators’ beliefs about domestic abuse in relation to custody outcomes. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.

48.

Shipway

(2004). Domestic violence: A handbook for health professionals. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

49.

Sloss

C. M.

Harper

G. W.

(2004). When street sex workers are mothers. Archives of Sexual Behavior: The Official Publication of the International Academy of Sex Research, 33, 329-341.

50.

Smith

S. G.

Chen

Basile

K. C.

Gilbert

L. K.

Merrick

M. T.

Patel

. . . Jain

(2017). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS): 2010-2012 state report. Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

51.

Spohn

Brennan

(2013). Sentencing and punishment. In Renzetti

C. M.

Miller

S. L.

Gover

A. R.

(Eds.), Routledge international handbook of crime and gender studies (pp. 213-225). London, England: Routledge.

52.

Stanziani

Cox

(2021). The failure of all mothers or the mother of all failures? Juror perceptions of failure to protect laws. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(1-2), NP690-NP711.

53.

Stark

(2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

54.

Stark

(2009). Rethinking custody evaluation in cases involving domestic violence. Journal of Child Custody, 6, 287-321. doi:10.1080/15379410903084707

55.

Strauss

A. L.

(1987). Qualitative analysis for social scientists. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

56.

Tyler

T. R.

Huo

Y. J.

(2002). Trust in the law: Encouraging public cooperation with the police and courts. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

57.

Watson

L. B.

Ancis

J. R.

(2013). Power and control in the legal system: From marriage/relationship to divorce and custody. Violence Against Women, 19, 166-186.

58.

Zlotnick

Johnson

D. M.

Kohn

(2006). Intimate partner violence and long-term psychosocial functioning in a national sample of American women. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 21, 262-275. doi:10.1177/0886260505282564