December 31 2008 - My Response to Mr. Sacks

Dear Mr. Sacks,

Are you forgetting that I am a 23 year old abuse victim?

We were on a television show together. You could have asked me yourself to see the documentation. (I had it all with me.) Instead you sent a request to over 50,000 readers to investigate me.

Why did you choose this forum? Now I have received intimidating, even abusive emails from abusive men. It is very frightening, especially since I have a history of being abused.

Do you forget that I was a kid in the middle of this? Either way, I am the victim. Why are you so insensitive to what I experienced as a child?

You appear to be so wrapped up in this “Father’s Rights Crusade” that you have lost touch with the most important issue – "Protecting Children!"

This shouldn’t be about "Father’s Rights" or "Mother’s Rights!" It should be about children being protected from abuse from either parent!

Let’s get back to the root of the problem… kids are being abused and “PAS” is being manipulated by abusers to conceal their own abuse to their child.

We all know that Parental Alienation exists. (Shoot my own father told us that our mother didn’t want us anymore.) It just doesn’t really qualify as a syndrome – does it? I don’t understand why there is so much animosity between you and the battered women organizations.

Maybe I should just ask you directly…

Mr. Sacks, do you think it is okay for a man to beat his wife and children?
If a man beats his wife and children and they are all afraid of him, does that constitute as PAS?

I have to believe that there has to be a way for everyone to come together and find a way to protect children.

Since you have asked for volunteers to dig up details about my life story, I shall give it to you myself.

- My mom married my father when she was 17 years old to try to escape the abuse from her parents.
- During the first month they were married my father beat up my mom severe enough to send her to the hospital 3 times. (She was 5 months pregnant.)
- My father continued to beat my mom for years.
- My father also abused me and my brother.
- My father fractured the bones my brother’s skull by slamming him into the wall one night when my brother tried to stop him from beating our mom.
- Child protection became involved and threatened my mom that if she did not leave my father(and get an Order for Protection) she would be charged with “failure to protect.”
- As soon as my mom applied for the order, the case was remanded to family court.
- My mom attained an Order for Protection, but my father was immediately granted(unsupervised) visitation 2x per week.
- During visitation he abused us even more.
- We told our mom that he was hurting us and we showed her the bruises. My father even beat up my mother regularly when he picked us up for visitation. (One of these visits she was hospitalized for a concussion.)
- We begged our mom not to send us on visitation. I was so scared that I would cry so hard that I would throw up.
- Eventually it got so bad that my mother couldn’t bear to send us on visitation against our will.
- My father called the police. The police would pull us out from hiding underneath our beds and hand us over to our abuser.
- My father used the police reports to launch his own “Parental Alienation Syndrome” campaign. - The family court found that there was domestic violence but concluded that my mother’s fear of my father was interfering with his relationship with his children.
- The judge ordered a custody reversal and we weren’t allowed to have any contact with our mom at all with us for a few months so we could “adjust” to the change.
- Eventually we were allowed to see our mom 2 hours a week during supervised visitation.
- During visitation I lifted my shirt to show my mom the strap marks, welts and bruises on my back. I said to my mom “He’s still hurting us.” The visitation supervisor yelled at me “You know you are not allowed to talk about those kinds of things anymore.”
- My brother and I started writing notes to our mom at our father’s house begging her to help us. We would slip the notes into her pockets during visitation.
- After 18 months and 8 days of us living in hell and our mother trying every legal possibility to protect us, our mother ‘kidnapped’ us back. It was the happiest day of my life!
- We fled the United States and were apprehended in the Netherlands. My mother didn’t know what else to do so she asked for asylum.
- We lived in refugee camps while the Dutch government carried out an extensive investigation.(They were against giving asylum to an American.)
- After 3 years of a scrutiny, the Netherlands Ministries of Justice granted us asylum based on humanitarian grounds. We were the first Americans to be granted asylum in Holland, perhaps the whole European Union!
- After 12 years of living in secrecy in the Netherlands we were found by the FBI, who demanded our deportation.
- The Dutch government asked the FBI to do an investigation to determine 1.) If there was abuse to us from our father in the United States. 2.) If we were telling the truth about the severity of the abuse. 3.) If there was an indication that my mother reasonably believed that this was honestly her only option to protect her children.
- The American authorities concluded that all 3 questions were true. (Of course they said that wasn’t reason enough to break the law.)
- The Dutch government decided to stand behind their decision and granted us “Asylum
Indefinitely!”
- The United States eventually dropped all federal kidnapping charges against our mother.
- The State of Minnesota also dropped all custodial interference charges against our mother. My mother was instructed to apologize to the judge for defying his order. She refused. Eventually my mother pleaded guilty to ‘contempt of court.” My mother said defiantly “I admit to having contempt for the court which failed to protect my children!”
- During the court hearing my mother was allowed to make a closing statement. All she said was “I just want to say something to my children. Zachary and Jennifer I still, to this day, believe you!”

Isn’t that what it is all about? Believing kids! Protecting kids! We should all on the same side!

Please ask your followers to refrain from harassing me and threatening me and my mother. If you want more details, ask me yourself.

Sincerely,
Jennifer