S's Story

May 17, 2005
BEGINNINGS

    When my parents separated in June 1993, I was almost four years old. Prior to the divorce, my mom accepted a residential fellowship at Stanford University, which required that she move there from Berkeley, where we lived. So for the first year of the divorce I was separated from her for the duration of the week, because the court's recommended psychologist felt it would be better for me to stay with my dad, son to a very rich black family, brother of a well-known Proffessor at Princeton university, so that I don't move away from our rented apartment in Berkeley and the nearby kindergarten, since I was used to it. The psychologist thought that my room and kindergarten were more important than being with my mother, who was my main caregiver. So I saw my mom only on weekends. My dad was so busy working that the babysitter did his parenting work for him. I fell apart. I didn't behave well in kindergarten and would wet my pants. So my mom drove everyday from Stanford, spent the day with me since the kindergarteners could not deal with my behavior and happily handed me to my mom, and then my mom handed me to the babysitter my father hired, who handed me back to my father when I was already asleep. When he discovered this my dad filed in court blaming my mom of "daily kidnap." His lawyer specialized in fathers fight for custody in order to avoid paying child support. As a result my mom shortened her sabbatical, returned to Berkeley, and rented an apartment there. The custody changed to way more elaborate swaps of my residence between my mom and dad. By court order, I had been assigned a custody and visitation schedule I was unable to comprehend. I was to sleep over at my Dad's every Thursday. Every other week I would continue to sleep over at his place until Monday. This order was decreed in the summer of 1994. When I look at this today it's really easy to understand, but eleven and a half years ago my time concepts were not as developed, and I really could not figure the schedule. I lived in constant fear of when's the residence change from mom to dad was to occur in the week. As numbers go, the court divided me 40% with my dad and 60% with my mom, even though in reality, I was at least 68% of the time with my mom. The difference between the percentages was due to the child support my father didn't exactly want to pay.

I preferred being with my mother. She was the one who did the actual parenting of me. My father dialogued with me either through violence or through neglect. Along the way my father became increasingly violent. Not that he wasn't violent before. While married to my mom, she used to be the main target for his wrath and frustrations. After she was gone, I became the main target for his physical violence. After my parents separated, his violence toward my mom was enacted through his attorney and the court system. He used to hit me for every thing I did which he didn't like. In particular this would happen after I'd speak on the phone with my mom. I felt really threatened when at his place. He sullied my mother, and kept wondering why did I want any contact with her. In November 1995, when I was six years old he demanded that the court cuts off all of my communication with my mother while I'm at my father's custody. Our Oakland Court judge, who was later forced to leave the bench since he ran the court like a family business - he did the judging and his wife, with a different last name, the custody evaluations. A month after these restrictions were enacted I had my first nervous breakdown. I had gigantic stomachaches that prevented me from moving. My custody arrangements were to be evaluated in 1994, but my dad used all sorts of backing and filling tactics to delay it. Finally the evaluation took place in Spring 1997. Needless to say that the evaluator, a member of the American Psychoanalytical Society, was a PAS practitioner.


THE REQUEST FOR MOVE AWAY

My mother was quite helpless at the face of a court that treated me as if I were a sack of potatoes to be divided. Her attorney refused to bring up the abuse and domestic violence issue because it would have hiked up the legal fees that at any rate she was barely able to pay and only with the help of friends and family. The going back and forth between two homes was unavoidable, given the judge's PAS philosophy. When she complained to the judge about the restraining order he threatened to throw her to the Santa Rita jail. That's when her friends started believing her that something very wrong was going on at the Halls of Justice. My Mom knew that the only way to break the circle of violence and the court violence that backed it up was to move away from California. So in 1996, after the Burgess precedent, which released women out of the joint custody geographic prison, her friends in Israel and the US raised the necessary money and she filed a move away request for us to leave for Israel, her homeland. They also found an attorney who was willing to represent us even when the funds would run out. Our new attorney recommended that we change the judge, since he had had many complaints, and he always made violent threats towards my mom. We decided to move to a new judge in the Hayward court, who just was seated at the bench. We assumed that since he was new, he would not have any prejudices regarding divorces. Little did we know... I wanted us to move to Israel because when my father was rarely forced by the court to permit us to visit Israel, I felt very safe there, among family and friends, and away from my father. Yet a variety of expensive court appointed professionals prevented us from moving out of the circle of violence. Even though they all treated us as if we were inflicted by the now defunct PAS, when finally the custody evaluation took place in 1997, the evaluator had no choice but to recommend that I move with my mom to Israel. Yet his expert opinion was cunningly phrased. Making his living out of PAS, he stated that even though I was not PAS-ed at the time of the evaluation, in the future I might suffer from it. His assumption stemmed out of his character assassination of my mother. Instead of understanding her trauma as a survivor of domestic violence, he thought that her protection of me was the result of her being on the "border of a borderline personality" disorder. So at the bottom line, his psycho-analysis implied that I actually ought to stay with my father, whom he defined as normal, despite the fact that he could not but acknowledge that my father admitted to him that he used to hit my mother. In an act of reversed racism the court overlooked my father's violence. Yet when the evaluator stated that my mother was "on the border of borderline", the court didn't accept that its personality tests weren't designated for non-Americans. The test included questions like "who do you prefer: Lincoln or Washington" to decide on my Israeli Mom's personality. As someone who studied history in Israel, my mom could not tell the difference between the two.

When the evaluation process finally occurred, I was so afraid of the evaluator, and tried to avoid telling him I want to live with my mom in Israel. My father always told me that if I would tell any psychologist I wanted to be with my mom he would beat me like he never did before. So instead of Israel I told him I'd like to live in the Middle East. He could not read my fear into my humor. He thought that since all the Arab nations are against Israel I supposedly implied that I wished to live with my dad. The outcome of his flip-flop testimony was that in his convoluted way, he made the judge realize that his ambivalent recommendation for the move away was actually meant to keep me in the U.S with my father.


PSYCHOLOGIST I SAW BEFORE THE EVALUATION

Before the evaluation, the court appointed a PAS psychologist to treat me. He evaded speaking with me about my parents by playing with me board games, and army games. Throughout a year and a half of treatment we hadn't spoken a word about my parents. I have never seen him take any session notes. He didn't write any formal evaluation, either. Though the court's formal evaluator interviewed him for the custody evaluation.


WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN THE EVALUATION AND THE VERDICT

At the age of nine, while waiting for the moveaway verdict, my maternal grandmother had a heart attack. My mother and me flew to Israel and stayed with her until she became a bit healthier. On our return, the court decided that I should stay with my father the same amount of time. While with my father I became extremely depressed and suicidal. My father would take me every day from school at six p.m., and would hit me almost on a daily basis. He even made my launder my wet bed sheets every morning. I had no contact what so ever with my mother or anyone of my family because of the 1995 court order. The school had to go against it and allow my mother to phone me 2-3 times a week during the short class intermission time. That's all.


There were some teachers who tried to help me but they were powerless against the court and my father. The counselor at my school knew my situation and he called the Child Protecting Services. But still, he could not help me. They closed the file because my bruises weren't blue enough, as they said. My father was even more aggressive towards me after that. He took me to another therapist for treatment. Now the therapist would tell me once a week that my mother is against me, since the U.S is a better place to be. He said that my father's violence was for good purposes of education, and that his violence was a mute problem when compared to my mother's wanting me to reside in Israel. He said that my mother is alienating me from my father and that her will to separate us was the main problem I was facing. Needless to say that he didn't conceive my mom as someone who tried her best to protect me not only from my father, but also from the violent PAS court.


THE JUDGE'S DECISION

My mom returned to the Bay Area in the beginning of January 1999. Together, we waited for the verdict of a motion filed in 1996 as a part of divorce proceedings that started in 1993. Well, the status quo was good for my father. After 6 years at the wrenches of the family court, with no stable home, my emotional situation deterriorated. Yet Despite my emotional deterioration, and contrary to the psychological evaluation, on February 9, 1999, the court decided to give my father full custody, granting no visitation rights for my mother, until a hearing in April 1999. Although it didn't mention PAS, the court was acting per Gardner's directives in transferring me to the full custody of my father.. I was determined to do away with my life at my father's custody. To save my life, my mother fled with me to Israel. It was several days before my father knew where I was, after my mom called my U.S school to tell them of my whereabouts. Nevertheless, my father waited three full months until he started the legal process of trying to get me back. I really don't know why my father wanted full custody over me. I guess he wanted to use me to take revenge of my mother and not to pay any child support.


WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL

Luckily the courts in Israel realized that I would commit suicide if I were to return to my father. My mom and me had won on all courts the Hague proceedings, regarding the return of me. However, the Israeli court system is a great supporter of PAS today than the American one. PAS fits right into the manner in which Israeli gender relations are built from the point of view of the aggressors, i.e., the courts. My father's lawyer is using this to continue his violent control of us via legal means. Since the Israeli litigation started in June 1999, my father was in Israel only twice, once for 48 hours and the other for a week. Nevertheless, my father has spent the last 6 years fighting my mom and me with the Israeli courts' blessing in order to force me to return back to US and to his custody. He refuses to support me economically, and thinks that imposing poverty on me will bring me back to him.


THE HAGUE PROCESS

The Hague process, defined as a quickened process, took way over the normal amount of time it should in our case. While regular Hague cases are about 3 months for each litigation level, our three court levels took 2 years of proceedings. The judge in the Israeli family court, a very wealthy lady, wrote in her verdict explicitly that she is taking her time to decide our fate in order to harm us. She has done so in the last six years by forcing us to stay in Israel, unable to leave, and with no means of economic existence, just so that I'm punished because I don't want to meet with my violent father. The judges here, and especially our Family Court judge, whom we can't change, pretty much do all in their means to gag us through forcing poverty upon us, so that we're busy with daily economic survival, on the one hand. On the other hand, they continue the California court abuse via forcing on us the Gardner ideologies and practices. In addition my mother has volunteered her time and knowledge to assist many Israeli women and children hurt by PAS in court, and the judges don't like it. As a result, even though the courts decided not to ship me back to the US, the proceedings always take too much time, and the verdicts have nothing to do with the reality of our case.

In the family court, I was sent to two different psychological evaluations. Since the first week I was in Israel I saw a children psychiatrist. She was the first humanistic shrink I've ever met my whole life. Needless to say that the judge didn't like her evaluation, since it said I should stay with my mom and in Israel. As a matter of fact, in the first court session the judge offered my mother a "deal": to ship me back to the U.S without trial, and in exchange, the judge would be kind enough not to order my mom to pay all the legal expenses of my dad. After the report, the judge sent me to be evaluated with a psychoanalyst who worked for the courts, but wasn't one of their regulars. She too decided I should stay with my mother and in Israel. Again, she did not shy away from facing the domestic violence issue. I was lucky that it was the summer vacation, and the wealthy PAS psychiatrists the judge tried to send me to for evaluation were vacationing abroad. The judge was so angry with the therapist when she gave her testimony that she forced her to stand on her feet for 8 full hours, even though she has one leg shorter than the other and asked several times to be able to testify while sitting down. Since then no other judge has asked her to evaluate any case, since in my case she was honest and didn't deliver the PAS theories they expected her to deliver. I guess if you believe children's experiences as retold in your clinic, your court credibility is hurt.

After the whole hearing process my father decided to come to Israel for 48 hours. During the whole trial before he was absent, to avoid a cross-examination. The judge forced me to meet with him, and I disagreed. She didn't ask him to take the witness stand, however. During the first few minutes of our meeting I managed to run away. So the judge interpreted my fear as a severe case of PAS, even though all the experts, including the Family Court Services Personnel, who were trained by Gardner during his visit to Israel, said just the opposite.

After we won, and the judge let me stay here with my mom, my father appealed the verdict, and we won. He appealed again, and we won again. The problem though is that this whole thing took two nerve wrecking years, in which I lived under the constant fear of being forced to go back to live with my dad. The court delays have taken away from us our rights to live a normal life. Another problem is that the court didn't decide to let me stay in Israel with my mother on the merit of our case, i.e., the psychological evaluations. The opposite is the case. The judge wrote that I was PASed beyond repair, to the point of suicide, and therefore had to stay in Israel, be declared a "minor in need" - a legal category that allows the welfare services to uproot you from a protective parent and put you in forced boarding in order to de-PAS you. How lucky I was that in my case, the social worker of the welfare services refused to cooperate with her, even though she was obliged to do it by the law.


THE CUSTODY AND CHILD SUPPORT TRIAL

The courts refused to give custody over me to my mother. While after regular Hague cases the abducting parent is granted temporary custody, we got it at the 6th year of being in Israel, and the court custody order was written in a form worthless outside Israel. The judge wrote in her verdict that since my mom was so successful in PASing me, she reluctantly gives her custody over me. This order will still not allow neither to my mother or me to travel out of Israel. Now you've got to understand that Israel is the size of the SF Bay Area, and that because of my mother's political activism on behalf of women and children, on the one hand, and her scholarly writings which do not exactly support Israel's treatment of non-European Jews, and the close connection between Israeli courts and universities my mom was and still is blocked from any academic job, and from all other jobs she's been defined either unqualified or too old. This is not the case abroad, were she is a well-known and very respected anthropologist. While the detention is not hurting me on the employment level, in the last six years I missed so many opportunities to enjoy scholarships and travel abroad, either for cello and chamber music camps, for debating matches or to participate in school delegations. In addition my mother and me cannot visit the Bedouin she studied in Egypt, whom I spent a lot of amazing time with (I'm named after a mountain in the Sinai that I'd climb pilgrimage at least once a year until all the mess happened in my life). For the last 6 years I've been disconnected from my adoptive Bedouin family just because the PAS court punishes me for not wanting to see my father.

After the Hague case, my father and his attorney tried to stop my mother from getting custody, so the custody would remain my father's and I would have to return to the states. Although they didn't succeed, in the process which still goes on we suffer so much.

First the court forced me to see another psychologist in the hopes that he will deliver to the judge the PAS goods. The court sent me to the Gardner's internet site official English-Hebrew translator, a psychologist. When I met him, I told him that I saw enough psychologists and was still under the care of my therapist. I told him that he could speak with her, or if the court would not allow this, perhaps they could do a joint evaluation of me, so that she is there and I feel safe. My whole meeting with him lasted 3 full minutes. Yet, he conjured up 4 psychological evaluations of mine in which he concluded that I was alienated from my father. I don't know how did he get to this conclusion, since all of what I uttered to him were 3 sentences, that's that.

As for the child support, the judge decided this March to endow me with $550 a month, which we are not able to collect in California because of the worthless custody order the judge issued, let alone the fact that the attorney's costs to collect this amount will be way higher than the amount itself.

In the last six years my father was in Israel only twice - once for 48 hours, and the second time for about a week. He didn't try to contact me since I am here, except for two phone calls we received in the weird hours of 1:00 and 2:00 am about half a year after we first arrived in Israel and it's not because he doesn't know to calculate the time difference... Even when my therapist asked him to call me while I was in therapy, he just didn't call. In court he argues that I am not in contact with him, and uses the Jewish traditional law that states that a "rebelling child" be destined for extreme poverty. In Israel there are two family law systems: the Jewish religious family laws, which are used in the Rabinate court for family matters, and the secular family law, which is used in the civil Family Court. The Judge activated the Jewish law against us, even though my father is not Jewish, and she is a judge of the civil court. Yet she was acting within the venerable tradition of Israeli judgements per PAS. But even so, how can my father want me to be in contact with him after all he did and is doing to me? The second time he came here, last year, I was forced to have meetings with him, which I considered a complete sham. He promised he'd help me, and stop prosecuting my mother and me. But I knew it was just an act done in order to please the licensed social workers of the family courts services, whose official guidebook for divorced families relies on Gardner's theories. A year and a half later, he is still prosecuting us. He refuses to sign the papers that will make the custody orders the judge issued here recognized by the California courts, who won't recognize them otherwise because of the inadequate manner in which the judge wrote them. Back in 1999 he sued my mom to pay him $875 child support in the U.S since, on the paper, he has full custody over me there. So actually, we have a giant child support debt to him even though I live in Israel with my mother. Needless to mention the debt we have to him because in 1999 my mom was ordered to pay him all of his legal costs both in California and Israel.

As a result of my father's refusal and the judge's worthless custody order, we can't have the Israeli court orders mirrored in California, so even though the U.S federal courts don't see me any more as "missing", they have to obey the California D.A who still conceives of me as a "missing child". Locked in Israel, we live mainly on $500 welfare and temporary income a month in a country where the cost of living is a way higher than anywhere average in the U.S.

The court's purposeful delays, of dispensing "justice" to an extant of punishing me for refusing to meet with my abuser, are still causing my mother and me continued suffering. We cannot rehabilitate from the trauma my father caused us.

I'm writing all of this to you, and it's the very short version of my trauma of almost all my 16 years of life, not only as a form of therapy to me, but also as a form of healing to you, so we both see we're not alone. And despite all of what's above - I'm happy to be alive, with my mother, our old dog (whom we were lucky to be able to take here). I have great friends here, supportive teachers and many other wonderful people who helped my mother and me survive the court atrocities. While my legal situation prevents me from calling neither Israel nor the U.S "home", what I've learned through living my trauma for over a decade that my real home is my relationship with my mother. So let me conclude and say that through all these years of hardship what kept me alive is this strong sense of home that is entailed in this relationship.


--- S,
written at age 16

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