Maralee McLean, author of "Prosecuted but Not Silenced: Courtroom Reform for Sexually Abused Children", wrote this
for WomensEnews.
Not much has changed since my battles began, and the myth that mothers make more false allegations of abuse than fathers during divorce and custody battles still holds sway in too many courtrooms. This remains true even though the American Bar Association reports fathers are far more likely than mothers to make intentionally false accusations (21 percent compared to 1.3 percent). Change, dramatic change, is needed now, to end these tragic outcomes.
At the outset, I had full custody of my little girl and her father had limited visits twice a week.
But after raising sexual abuse allegations against her father, and spending three years in the family court trying to protect my daughter, I was reduced to one-hour-a-week supervised visits for eight years and treated as if I were a hardened criminal. This was all due to a custody evaluator's opinion through an "ex-parte" (a hearing without all the parties present). That evaluator cited Dr. Richard Gardner's debunked "parental alienation syndrome" and left out all medical reports, police reports and pre-school teacher reports.
The ordeal began the day I took my beautiful little girl Ami, freshly bathed, with her dark hair in a high ponytail and wearing a pink dress, to her day care center. On the way I imagined how her father would pick her up for his three-hour visitation that afternoon.
That evening, I went to his house to pick up Ami. I knocked and waited until he finally came to the door. He waved me in and said he would get Ami. As I waited, I noticed that Ami's beautiful clothes were strewn about the living room floor.
When he brought her down, Ami was wet, nude and limp in his arms. Her arms dangled at her sides, her ponytail was out of its band and her hair was matted. She was soaked with sweat. My heart sank and my gut pulled tight. "What happened to her?" I asked him. He looked at me with a strange smirk. That may have been the first time he abused our daughter. And that terrible sight of him carrying her down the stairs limp in his arms would wake me out of sleep over and over, causing me to sit straight up in my bed shocked and horrified.
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