Mother & Daughter Holly Collins & Jennifer Collins Speak Out Against Domestic Abuse

National Alliance to End Domestic Abuse
Domestic Violence, Abuse and Child Custody Webinar December 2, 2010

Join us as we hear Jennifer Collins, who at age 7, was abused by her father and ran away with her mother and siblings to the Netherlands to avoid being placed in the custody of her abusing father. Listen to her story and learn of the travails she and her family endured in order to escape the court ordered custody given to her father. Jennifer’s story does not seem real.

How could her visitation supervisors ignore her cries for help?
How could the courts give custody of her to the father that had kicked, strangled and beaten her repeatedly?
How could she and her mother and siblings be put in jail?

Listen as Jennifer tells us her story and learn how after 14 years of living abroad in anonymity, Jennifer and her family are now preparing to re-enter the United States. Jennifer’s story is one of many who show how our courts have failed battered children by returning them to their abusers.

Leading the discussion, Mo Therese Hannah, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Siena College in Loudonville, New York; Psychotherapist; Co-editor of Domestic Violence, Abuse and Child Custody: Legal Strategies and Policy Issues; Chair for 8 years of the annual Battered Mothers Custody Conference (BMCC) helps us understand how domestic violence professionals; advocates, attorneys and social workers can help battered women and their children as they face contested child custody cases in family court.

What you will learn?

What indicators of domestic violence and child abuse are common in contested child custody cases?
Why do abusive men seek custody of their children?
What does the research say about the effects on children of witnessing domestic violence?
Of being legally separated from a protective mother?
Why have accusations of “parental alienation” become so commonly used against protective mothers?
How should attorneys for battered mothers respond?

No comments:

Post a Comment