Jennifer Collins Responds to the (Glenn) Sacks Attacks

I was the little girl who screamed out for help when my father beat me. My mother believed me!

My name is Jennifer Collins. When I was a little girl, I screamed out for help when my father beat me. My mother believed me, tried to get help and when no one would, rescued me from harm. Now over a decade later, there is another abusive man pushing his way into my life, Glenn Sacks, a man who is eerily a lot like my father. Mr. Sacks, who doesn’t even know me or my mother is trying to dominate us, convince his followers and even me that the abuse we endured never happened.

Glenn Sacks recently published another article about us: The Feminist Family Law Movement Fires Back over Holly Collins Case. He begins with “Jennifer Collins, Holly’s 24-year-old daughter who supports her mother’s version of events...” This is a follow up to his previous article full of libelous accusations where Mr. Sacks states that my mother was another woman who used "false claims to drive their ex-husbands out of their children's lives." I don’t understand how Mr. Sacks can keep getting away with such outright lies! Now Glenn Sacks purports that my mother invented my father’s abuse and tried to convince me that it happened! Mr. Sacks deliberately manipulates the events from my past to try to make them conform to HIS twisted delusions of PAS-I refuse to allow Glenn Sacks or anyone else to try to rewrite the history in my life!

When I was a little girl I watched my father beat my mother up on a regular basis. I used to hide in the closet with the door cracked where I witnessed him pounding my mother’s face with his fists. I used to have to go with this monster and he would beat my brother and me as well as commit other horrendous acts of abuse against us which is still too traumatizing for me to talk about. When I returned from visitation with my father I came forward and told my mom that my father hurt me. My mother listened to me, believed me, responded to my pleas and tried to protect me.

Everyone knew that my father beat my mom. The judge entered into record that my father committed domestic violence against my mom. The Family Court Services evaluator even agreed that my father was abusive. The problem was that they thought that our mother was too traumatized from the abuse from either my father or her parents to be able to distinguish which was subsequent abuse or mere “bullying.” This is the root of what went wrong in our case.

The main problem I have with Glenn Sacks is that he is saying that these events which have been documented in court didn’t happen at all. The court found that our father was abusive. The court found that our father beat our mother. The court found that our father “strangled us, hit us, kicked us, threatened to kill us, etc…” The court found that due to our mother's past abuse from our father, she might have been ‘over reacting’ to subsequent incidents. That is the way it happened. That is acknowledged by everyone involved in our case- it had nothing to do with false allegations!

The Key Point is that after abusing my mother for years it didn’t take much for my father to get my mother to do exactly what he wanted. He didn’t have to beat her in public. All he had to do was give her a look, a tap on the head or threaten her with “wait until we get home.” That was enough for her to succumb to his demands and expectations. When she left our father and he couldn’t get at her anymore, he tried to get to her by abusing her children– me and my brother. Even the family court services evaluator Susan de Vries testified “I believe that what happened here is that Ms. Collins, because of her anxieties, perhaps because of her abuse from Mr. Collins has over responded to remarks the children have made about Mr. Collins or things she may have observed.” De Vries further testifies “I think there were probably times when he grabbed the children and perhaps even shook them. These are very sensitive youngsters and I think probably were frightened by that.”

“Sensitive youngsters”? Duh! We watched our father beat our mother. We felt our father’s fists against our little bodies. During visitation my father beat us and there were also times when he only ‘slapped us around a little.’ The family court evaluator admitted that “Mr. Collins did shake his children as a mode of discipline” and “that he did shake them by holding their necks.” But then she accused us of over reacting to our father’s “physical harshness.”

My mother was never accused of fabricating abuse by the courts! Glenn Sacks concocted that himself. He is so desperate to be a celebrity that he even resorted to name calling labeling my mom a “false accuser.”(What’s a “false accuser” anyway? Did he just make that up too?) Glenn Sacks keeps trying to muddy the water and blame my mother because he can’t get away with erasing the truth or burying the facts.

Perhaps the debate should be “What is ‘normal neck shaking?’” or “What constitutes abuse and ‘normal post traumatic’ responses to abuse?” not an unprofessional musing about whether the abuse happened or not. Glenn Sacks should stop going after battered women who are too traumatized to stand up for them selves. You know what it comes down to is that Mr. Sacks is actually questioning:

Was Jennifer Collins guilty of overreacting to her father’s “normal beatings” and “normal neck shaking” when she was a little girl?

Shame on you Mr. Sacks!