We Are Lions

Holly Collins can only be described as a "Lion" and she is my hero and the hero of many other mothers out here! She was able to protect herself and her children from her abuser. One of the saddest parts of Holly Collins story is that she is NOT alone! Women are being "stalked" in Family Court by their abusers and it's in part to blamed in the name of government funding called "Responsible Fatherhood Initiatives".

Literally thousands of mothers nationwide have lost custody to their abuser, in fact “the studies are showing” that up to 2/3 of accused or adjudicated batterers receive joint or sole custody in court. Joan Meier, Esq. http://www.stopfamilyviolence.org

We are a group of mothers that have joined together online in a "Sisterhood" of sharing or losing custody to our ex abuser's. We have blogged, put up websites, signed petitions, joined other groups and we keep trying to receive justice, not only in our own cases but for each other and future mothers.

Here are just 'some' of the nightmares our group has faced:

A mother loses custody to her ex abuser, an illegal immigrant who is facing deportation. How did this happen? Well, a Judge decided in another state that since the child had been visiting the father all summer that was his jurisdiction and overruled what the other state had decided, sole custody of the mother.
This is common ploy of these men to get some substantial "visitation" with the child(ren) and then claim abandonment, residency etc. This NEVER works the other way around for the non abusing parent, which is usually a woman.

Another mother has sole custody, leaves the state (legally), goes to a domestic violence shelter and the ex abuser/father claims "parental kidnapping". Another tactic used by abusers to "force" you to have to be in close proximity to keep trying to "control" you by way of 'forced' visitations of the children. This mother's children reside now in another state than her with her ex abuser. In fact, the ex abuser doesn't even live or care for the children, they reside with HIS parents.

Another mother had her signature forged on a court stipulation that gave her ex abuser "50/50" custody and ALL back child support dropped. One of the biggest reasons why the father wants "joint" custody is because of his child support obligation will be less or nil. The Family Court refused to look at the forgery evidence, the DA refused to file charges and the abuser gained more and more custody. This was even after the father was arrested for his second DUI in less than a year but this time he had the 7yr old child as his passenger. Not even CPS thought that was child abuse or neglect. A CPS worker told the mother that "just because he drove drunk with his child didn't make him a bad father, he made a bad choice". The same father had child sexual abuse allegations against him substantiated but it was reversed by the Family Court Judge that recused himself from the case previously.

The case of a mother who tries to protect her children from sexual abuse by the father and the mother gets supervised visits. That's called PAS, Parental Alienation Syndrome, a common label most of us mothers live with. It's junk "science" that was created by Richard Gardner.
http://www.ipce.info/library_3/files/pasyndrome.htm

The mother who was beaten to a pulp by her husband and the children witnessed it. They arrested the abuser and ordered him to stay away from the wife and children. Two days after the abuse CPS and the police came and took the children away from the mother because SHE had allowed them to see her being abused and had "endangered" them. With bruises on her face and cuts still healing she had to relinquish her children. She got supervised visits, to this day the abuser has sole custody.

Then the most horrific of the stories is one of Elsa Newman. Elsa Newman is a 54-year-old mother, unjustly imprisoned in Maryland Correctional Institution for Women at Jessup. She was charged with a crime committed by another person, family friend Margery Landry, who broke into the house of Newman's estranged husband, Arlen Slobodow, on a night when he had the couple's children for a visit. What she found there seems to have been a case of abuse in progress. Please see this article for more information: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/259162.

If you want more stories, we have them! Our Constitutional rights have been stomped all over by way of ex parte hearings and communications, falsifying court documents and the most horrendous fact that the Federal government funds in the name of "Responsible Fatherhood" are available to give our abusers an edge in court and counties more money.
The injustices that faces our group of mothers, Holly Collins and many others must be stopped. We have been ignored, chastised and been abused all over again by the agencies and governments that are in place to "protect" women and children from abuse and their abusers. Enough is enough and we are NOT going to take it anymore!
We need help to expose ALL of the corruption that exists in Family Courts.


The Mothers of:

Momentum Of Mothers M.O.M.

http://rights4mothers.org
http://justice4mothers.wordpress.com/justice-4-mothers/
http://www.randijames.com/
http://www.myspace.com/fightcps4victimsrights
http://www.stopfamilyviolence.org/ocean/host.php?page=0
http://elsanewmanisinnocent.blogspot.com/2008/09/this-woman-is-elsa-newman-why-why-why.html
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Free-Elsa-Newman
http://americanchildrenunderground.blogspot.com/