From Madness to Mutiny
Why Mothers Are Running from the Family Courts -- and What Can Be Done about It
Neustein, Amy and Lesher, Michael; Raoul Felder, fwd.
"This book is a must read for every feminist, especially mothers." --Helen Grieco, Executive Director, California National Organization of Women
A powerful exposé of the family court system’s prejudice against mothers trying to protect their sexually abused children.
In this astonishing book, sociologist Amy Neustein and attorney Michael Lesher examine the serious dysfunction of the nation’s family courts -- a dysfunction that too often results in the courts’ failure to protect the people they were designed to help. Specifically, the authors chronicle cases in which mothers who believe their children have been sexually abused by their fathers are disbelieved, ridiculed or punished for trying to protect them. All too often the mother, in such a case, is deemed the unstable parent, and her children are removed from her care, to be placed in foster care or even with the father credibly accused of abusing them.
Employing a special form of sociological inquiry known as ethnomethodology, they show how judges, private attorneys, law guardians, child protective service caseworkers and court-appointed mental health experts on a day-to-day basis collaboratively produce a closed and claustrophobic family court setting that makes practical sense to the system’s practitioners -- but looks like madness to everyone else. They also describe the social interactive work of mothers trapped inside the system. Faced with judicial rulings that seem to violate their most basic parental values, these mothers litigate furiously, take their stories to the press, go on hunger strikes, or turn fugitive with their children through a modern-day “underground railroad.”
From Madness to Mutiny offers an overview of family court malfunction and the parental mutiny that results from it. The authors outline the new legal landscape that makes the madness possible and show how the system has failed to react to severe criticism from media and legislators. And they discuss ways to reform the family courts, with the goal of transforming them from instruments of punishment to true institutions of justice.
“A groundbreaking new book that is perhaps the most highly readable scholarly work I’ve encountered in my 14 years in academia . . . The very first to provide the historical and contextual chronology of this system’s steady decline into chaos and corruption over the past two decades. It is eminently accurate and rigorously documented -- a book that will hit scholars, professionals, and lay persons right between their eyes. This is the book that mothers have been waiting for . . . I consider this book among the most important of the decade.”--Maureen Therese Hannah, Siena College
"There's a marvelous groundswell of activism that I didn't see 20 years ago,' said Neustein, co-author of the forthcoming From Madness to Mutiny: Why Mothers Are Running From the Family Courts - and What Can Be Done About it. After more than 18 years of fighting her own battle, Neustein says she sees all the recent activity as a sign of hope that one day soon her work might be done and she will be vindicated. "I hope to make myself obsolete, " Neustein said. "I wish this had never happened. No one wants to go through this." --Forward
Neustein's Op-Ed in The Jewish Press
"I have devoted nearly twenty years of my life to reforming the family court system for all mothers who share my plight, and with the forthcoming publication of this book I hope my work is nearing fruition. Too many mothers and children have suffered from the abuses of the family courts, and from the ignorance and misinformation that has so far shielded them. My daughter and I are among those victims. To me, this book is a step toward liberation, for it will finally present the facts as they are. Truth will free the innocent just as it horrifies. the guilty."
“.. [Y]ou will find this a hard book to put down, because it is a book that matters.”--The Residential (Edgewater, NJ)
"Amy Neustein. . . said that mothers who raise allegations of sexual abuse are often punished with the loss of custody -- even when there is no proof that the abuse charges were fabricated or that they did anything to harm their children's welfare." --SuburbanChicagoNews.com
“There is extraordinary merit in the claims the authors make… [and] many of the reforms, suggested in the concluding three chapters, are worth consideration.” —Law and Politics Book Review
"The book could be read as an indictment of the system; and, in many ways, it is. Yet it carefully lays out positive opportunities for change.
Neustein says that she is appealing to all the Jewish mothers among us.
'I'm hoping that the Jewish community will (embrace this issue) and see it as tikkun olam, repairing the world,' says Neustein, who says that her daughter remained with her father until she was 18 and has had no contact with her mother. 'As Jews we always have hope,' she says, adding that her faith has not been compromised by her ordeal.' hope Jewish women will address this.'" —Jewish News of Greater Phoenix
"This book is essential reading for any health or mental health professional or legal advocate for children." —Family Violence and Sexual Assault Bulletin
"Amy Neustein's work helps to promote [a] promising future by teaching and training mothers to stand up to family court injustices in their fight to protect their children." —The Jewish Standard
“I thank . . . Neustein and Lesher for the courage and the skill to bring this problem to broader social attention . . . Theirs is a brave and much-needed effort.” —National Women's Studies Association Journal
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword - Raoul Felder • Acknowledgments • Part I. Family Courts: The Problem • An Oveview of Family Court Madness - and Mother's Mutiny • The New Legal Landscape • Part II. Observations in Depth • Research Methods • Robed Rage • Lawless Law Guardians • Anti-Social Services • Mental Health Quackery • Mothers and Madness: The "Aftershocks" of the System • Part III. Changes • "Rebirthing" the Family Court System • Reforming the Courts • Reforming the Court Auxiliaries • Notes • References • Index
AMY NEUSTEIN, Ph.D., is a sociologist, author, and lecturer. In 1986 she founded a legal research and advocacy center in New York City, Help Us Regain the Children, to study the plight of mothers who lost custody of children. The findings of her study were published in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, and have frequently been cited in the published work and lecture material of other researchers. In 1996, she received a Humanitarian Award from Mothers Against Sexual Abuse. Dr. Neustein has also published in a number of national journals, magazines, and newspapers, and has made appearances on radio and television.
MICHAEL LESHER is a lawyer and writer who has published in The Village Voice, The Jewish Week, Forward, Canadian Jewish News, and North Jersey Herald & News. He has contributed to legal publications such as Moore’s Federal Practice, Weinstein’s Evidence, and The Federal Litigation Guide Reporter.
1 comment:
Silent No Longer
The Other Side Of Abuse Allegations
By Sherry Orbach (Daughter of anti-father feminist Amy Neustein)
Editor's Note: In recent months The Jewish Press published two articles by Amy Neustein the first
a, feature piece in the Family Matters section, the second an op ed column in which she recounted
her longstanding allegations that her ex husband abused their daughter. Ms. Neustein's daughter,
Sherry Orbach, requested this opportunity to respond.
Although I have not seen my mother, Amy Neustein, in sixteen years, I remember her clearly. She
claims the reason she repeatedly accused my father in the media of sexually abusing me was to
gain custody rather than fame. Yet when she did have custody of me long before the legal battles
began I remember her voluntarily sending me off to live with my grandmother in upstate New York,
after which I rarely saw her.
I remember, on one of my rare visits to my mother's house in Brooklyn, watching her softly
stroking her hair with an antique silver brush as she gazed at herself in her bedroom mirror and
wondered out loud whether she was pretty enough to be famous.
I remember my mother sitting with me on the plastic covered couch in my grandmother's country
home at age five as if it were yesterday. We had been rehearsing for hours. She would begin by
telling me a sordid and false story about my father, such as a detailed account about how he had
molested me or about how he had thrown me violently against a wall. She then instructed me to
repeat the story word for word until she was satisfied with my rendition. At the time, my father had
indicated he would be filing for custody. My mother warned that if I did not tell these lies to the
judge, I would be taken from my grandmother.
After my mother lost legal custody, I visited her once a week. During these visits, my mother used
to tape record me and pose me for pictures in order to gain material for her next media
performance. I fought back in the only way I could. Once, I chased her around a table in an attempt
to snatch her tape recorder.
For eighteen years (I am now 24); I was silent as my mother spun lie upon lie about my father and
me. According to her story, she is the victim of a conspiracy involving my father, Brooklyn Family
Court, federal and state appellate courts, the Legal Aid Society, the Brooklyn Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Ohel family services, and several leaders of the Jewish
community. These co-conspirators, my mother insists, punished her for revealing that my father
had sexually abused me by taking me away from her.
The truth, however, is that my father never sexually abused me, and that reporters and alleged
victims' advocates who supported my mother chose to retell her lies without adequately checking
the facts.
The reason my family and I did not seek media attention to counter my mother's allegations is that
we wished to maintain our privacy. My family believed that my mother's publicity would fizzle out,
and that it was best to avoid the media spotlight as much as possible so that I could live a normal
life. But my mother has been relentless in her exploitation of me. Recently she embarked on
another media tirade, and has published her false allegations in this paper and others.
The worst article I have yet to see this year contains my full name as well as photos of me as a
child and as an adult, along with sickening and absurd lies about my father and me. Even if the
allegations were true (which they are not), it is a widely accepted principle of journalistic
responsibility and of everyday morality that it is wrong to invade the privacy of victims (alleged or
actual) by publishing their full names and photographs. Kalu 'chomer (how much more so) when
the allegations are false. Such deceptive reporting is so damaging and hurtful that I feel I no longer
have any choice but to break my silence.
I do not hate my mother; I see her as troubled. Nor do I seek revenge. I am only speaking out to
stop her, and her supporters who profess to care about me, from continuing to exploit and torment
me. With no other recourse, my mother has tried to counter my denial of her allegations by
claiming that I am being brainwashed and used by my father and other alleged members of
the so called conspiracy who "desperately fear public scrutiny and government inquiry"
Anyone who knows me well will vouch that I am independent minded and not the weak character
my mother makes me out to be. The only parent who tried to brainwash me is my mother. The only
people who are using me to advance their own careers are my mother and her allies. I vividly
remember my mother sitting me on the couch at age five and coaching me to lie about my
father. These are my memories and not anyone else's.
I do not profess to know how typical my story is. I hope it is the exception and not the rule.
However, the research involving allegations of child sexual abuse in court custody cases
indicates that false allegations can occur in anywhere from 2 percent to 60 percent of such cases,
and so it is far from an exact science. In these instances the accuser can often be the most vocal,
the most sympathetic, and thus the most believable: But sometimes the real victim is the accused.
And the one who pays the biggest price of all is the child. What I have learned from my case is that
you can find "experts" to say anything, and that journalists are sometimes more interested in a
good story and don't want to be confused by the facts.
The damage caused by the irresponsible reporting and advocacy of my mother and her
supporters extends beyond my family. Not only have they stained the credibility of the victims'
rights movement they claim to speak for, but they have diverted attention from the true needs of
children in the family court and child welfare systems by misrepresenting what I, and similar
children, required. What I did not require, contrary to my mother's claim, was for the family court to
be opened to the media.
I, for one, owe my existence as a normal young adult to the family judges, Ohel foster care, and the
Legal Aid Society attorney who helped me reunite with my father in the face of considerable
opposition in the media.
Most of all, I am grateful to my father for the sacrifices he has made for me over the years.
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