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GLENN SACKS ARCHIVE
Glenn writes a regular column for the Los Angeles Daily Journal and the San Francisco Daily Journal. His columns have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Salt Lake City Tribune, the Sacramento Business Journal, and others.
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Guest Article... |
Convicted Murderess Can Get Custody but Decent Fathers Can't
by
Glenn Sacks
Clara Harris, a Texas woman who was convicted of murdering her husband in
March, was just granted joint custody of her twin five year-old boys. The ruling
validates what fathers' and children's advocates have been saying for
years--when it comes to children, many courts believe that mothers can do no wrong.
While Clara Harris' murder conviction was not enough to deprive her of equal
rights to her children, hundreds of thousands of fathers have been thrown out
of their homes and driven out of their children's lives by unfounded
accusations of domestic violence. According to Washington family law attorney Lisa Scott, most courts grant restraining orders to practically any woman who applies, and domestic violence accusations are very effective at depriving fathers of custody and visitation rights after divorce. She says:
"Most restraining orders do not even involve an allegation of physical
violence. For most judges, the woman saying she ‘feels afraid' of her husband is
enough. Men have no way to defend themselves against these accusations. How do you argue against a feeling?"
While both the judge and the attorney appointed by the court to represent
Harris' two sons saw value in preserving the bond between the children and a
mother who is a convicted murderer, many courts are unable to see the value of the
bonds between children and decent, law-abiding fathers. Studies show that
visitation interference and move-aways are a major problem for divorced fathers, yet courts are indifferent at best to enforcing fathers' visitation rights,
and generally permit divorced mothers to move children hundreds or thousands of miles away from their fathers. This is despite the fact that the rates of
school dropouts, teenage pregnancy, juvenile crime, and teen drug abuse are more tightly correlated with fatherlessness than with any other major socioeconomic factor, including income and race.
While in the Harris case a mother was able to win joint custody from a prison
cell, decent fathers who have never had any brush with the law beyond a
traffic ticket often cannot. Studies show that in contested cases mothers are
granted sole custody over fathers by a margin of eight to one. According to
research conducted by Sanford Braver, author of Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths, divorced mothers are five times as likely to be satisfied with their
post-divorce child custody arrangements as divorced fathers are. In Braver's study, three-quarters of divorced men and one in four divorced women believed that the system is slanted in favor of mothers, while only one in 10 women and none of the men surveyed thought it favors fathers.
The "woman good/man bad" mentality of our family courts often hurts children
by blindly favoring mothers and placing barriers between fathers and the
children who love them and need them. The Harris ruling--where even a mother who is a convicted murderer is still not seen as being an unfit parent--demonstrates just how deep-seated and destructive this mentality is.
This article originally appeared on the Glenn J. Sacks Website
and appears here with the permission of the author.
Copyright 2001 Glenn Sacks, all rights reserved
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