Ludwig

"This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

One more color line to cross

Will this be the year Georgians finally elect a black candidate to a statewide office?

Losing custody

Jeannie Wrightson's pain is shared by the many Georgians who lose their children in custody battles and now must struggle to be a factor in their children's lives

By Donna Freydkin

Jeannie Wrightson rides an escalator at Hartsfield International Airport. She is embarking on a voyage to Sacramento, Calif., where her former husband lives with her daughter. [Photo: Stawniak]

Jeannie Wrightson considers herself a good mother. A devoted, doting mother. And when she first began to suspect that her husband was sexually abusing their young daughter, she did all the right things.

She reported the abuse to the Department of Family and Children's Services. She cooperated with the ensuing investigation. She followed orders, believed in the system and ended up losing custody of her daughter, who now lives with her father some 2,500 miles away in California.

Wrightson, now 34, blames the situation on an "illogical court system, filled with judges creating laws as they go." And she is not alone. She is one of dozens, perhaps hundreds of Georgians, whose lives are consumed by lost custody battles and absentee children. Some are mothers, who believe well-connected husbands worked the system to gain custody of their children. Some are fathers, who believe the courts still rely on outmoded traditions to favor mothers in custody battles. For many, the battle over their own children and over the system in general has become an unavoidable obsession.

Wrightson's contentious battle has its roots in the years of physical abuse that she says she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband. After she filed for divorce in 1994, he decided he wanted custody of their only child, a daughter, who frequently visited with her father after the couple separated.

It was during this time, while the case was in the hands of DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Gail Flake, that Wrightson says her daughter started exhibiting "regressive behavior" which a therapist found to be indicative of sexual abuse and which Wrightson ultimately reported to the state. Wrightson's ex-husband, meanwhile, was under investigation in North Carolina, where he was suspected of molesting the young daughter of his new girlfriend.

But Flake refused to admit any evidence from the North Carolina case and ruled that Wrightson's ex-husband would provide their daughter with a more stable environment. In 1996, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the decision. The court rejected Wrightson's claims that her former husband sexually abused the child, finding instead that Wrightson had influenced the child to make false accusations against her father. The presiding justice argued, however, that the trial court abused its discretion in awarding custody to the father who was the subject of an ongoing, active investigation into allegations that he molested his daughter.

Flake declined to comment on the case.

"I was told by social services and the FBI not to get my daughter and that she would be returned to me," declares Wrightson fiercely, her voice quivering with fury. "I did everything that the authorities told me as a good mother and I lost custody of my daughter. I was so naïve and stupid."

Now, Wrightson is a mothers' rights advocate, battling to help disadvantaged women retain and regain custody of their children. She lobbies the state Legislature each winter for changes in the law to expedite custody hearings and to educate judges about abuse allegations. With a passion bordering on obsession, Wrightson and her cadre of activists -- mothers who consider themselves to have been wronged by a skewed legal system and brushed aside by uninformed judges -- have one common goal: The return of their children.

Last year, state Sens. Joe Burton and Mary Margaret Oliver sponsored five bills written by Wrightson and her appellate attorney that called for judges to consider child-abuse evidence in custody proceedings, authorized supervised visitation under certain circumstances, expedited custody appeals and required additional training for juvenile judges.

Only one of the bills came to the floor for a vote.

Now running a hair salon, Wrightson takes a few moments between appointments to level her ire squarely at Flake, the judge she accuses of ignoring her ex-husband's patterns of abuse and whom she holds responsible for wresting away her daughter. And state law is so constructed that one may easily imagine a frustrated mother's feeling that she didn't get a fair chance to keep her child.

In Georgia, custody disputes are decided by a single judge, without the input of a jury. The decision is almost always final.

"If the man has money and wants the child, he will get custody," says Wrightson, her voice tinged with acrimony and resignation. "The situation is appalling. I'm trying to survive it, but it doesn't make my situation hurt any less."

But Superior Court Judge Michael Clark, on the bench in Gwinnett County since 1992, bristles at the allegation that judges are allied with fathers seeking custody of their children.

"The fathers' groups are tired of being weekend dads, and the mother always feels like she lost if she loses custody -- the belief is that a mother always gets custody, so if she loses, she must be a terrible parent," says Clark, who hears about 1,000 divorce cases a year in his courtroom. "That's not an appropriate interpretation but, for many women, losing custody is a stigma."

In 1996, the last year for which statistics are available, almost 38,000 Georgia couples called it quits. No one is exactly sure how many of those divorces involved disputed custody battles, but for one reason or another, half of all American children will live in a single-parent household at some point during childhood.

Yet groups representing fathers, who view themselves as endowed with the same parenting rights as their female counterparts, argue that divorcing dads should also be considered as viable, equal single parents. Many of those groups are an anathema to mothers' rights groups, who view them as representing the worst in courtroom cronyism and chicanery. Yet in the bitter battles to keep their children, both groups often go for broke.

For mothers' rights advocate Vicki Pierce, women like Wrightson are poster children for a legal system gone berserk. A petite homemaker who looks more like Mary Tyler Moore than a militant crusader, Pierce resonates with quiet rage. Her fury is focused on the Georgia justice system, certain family court judges, fathers' rights organizations and anything else deemed destructive to children. The root of her ire? Mistreated women like Wrightson who gather enough strength to leave their abusive husbands only to lose custody of their children to the fathers, who outmaneuver them with the help of fat bank accounts, wily lawyers and an intimate understanding of a justice system that doesn't give a damn.

The custody controversy often takes on the uncomfortable feel of a vicious war between the sexes. Both trumpet their own wildly varying figures on custody decisions. Naturally, figures from the fathers' rights groups indicate that mothers have the edge, while those from the mothers' groups point to the fathers as key winners in contested custody situations.

The few government studies that have been completed still indicate that, by and large, mothers really have a major edge. According to a 1990 National Center of Health Statistics study of parents awarded physical custody of children, the mother was awarded custody in 72 percent of the cases, joint custody was awarded in 16 percent, and the husband got custody only 9 percent of the time. The report states that wives are most often awarded custody because "of the strong legal presumptions and traditions that favor the mother as the custodial parent, especially when the children are young."

But fathers are catching up, especially as more women work full-time and as judges begin to view either parent as equally capable of raising children.

"There is still an inherent gender bias for moms, but some courts are very willing to look at fathers favorably," says attorney Kathy Portnoy, a partner at Atlanta law firm Alembik, Fine & Callner who focuses on family law issues.

Pierce concedes that in "standard" divorces, in which both parents cooperate and want what's best for the children, mothers generally do retain custody. But when a father wants custody -- and when spousal and child abuse becomes an issue -- she says that the dads win.

"In normal divorces, where two parents just can't live together anymore, the mother gets custody," says Pierce. "But these aren't normal divorces. These are domestic violence divorces."

Pierce works tirelessly to promote her two affiliated organizations, Give Us Back Our Children and the National Alliance for Family Court Justice. Both of the organizations arm abused, often destitute women with legal information, attorneys informed about abuse and custody issues and expert witnesses to testify on their behalf. Her goal: Expose how cronyism, cash and connections destroy the lives of countless children by wresting them away from their mothers and placing them with violent, unfit fathers. Fortified with thick notebooks of meticulously researched court cases, testimonials from mothers wronged by the legal system and her own absolute belief in her cause, Pierce makes a compelling case.

"Abusers are more likely to go through bitter custody disputes, forcing their families through all this turmoil just to maintain control of their lives," says Pierce. "They don't want their wives to leave them, so [the abusers] use the courts and all their financial resources."

"I'd like to see the need for this to dissipate rather quickly, because children's lives are being ruined," says Pierce, who says she has had her life threatened by opposing fathers' rights groups.

In truth, current Georgia custody laws are not exactly amenable to any parent who loses out, leaving little viable recourse in getting back their children. A judge is supposed to formulate a custody decision based on the best interests of the child, without any presumption for either parent or gender. However, once a judge has ruled on custody, parents have little standing in the courts. They lack the inherent right to appeal, instead having to ask to have their case reconsidered. A very high percentage of those requests are rejected.

"The appeals process is very limited and not much of a viable option," says Portnoy. "It's a judge-only decision without a jury."

Although they disagree on most issues, mothers' and fathers' rights groups are unified in the unwavering belief that the justice system is skewed in favor of the opposing side. Noncustodial moms say that fathers with the will and the means win in court, while divorced dads declare that the courts favor the mothers, regardless of the real family situation. And many fathers' rights groups believe that if for some reason the judge sides with the father, the mother introduces child abuse allegations, her trump card against her ex-husband, to keep the kids. Each side accuses the other of dirty tricks and dubious motives.

"I do see a lot of false allegations of abuse and it has become a very powerful weapon. Sometimes it's legitimate and sometimes it's a weapon," says Portnoy. "Judges want to err on the side of the child, and if there's any potential that it's true, dads can sometimes lose out."

"Child abuse is very serious when it's real, but for the most part it's an exaggerated distraction to keep mothers in a superior custodial position," asserts Mark Rogers of Fathers Are Parents Too (FAPT), a Georgia fathers' rights group.

For divorced, noncustodial dad Rogers, "Being divorced meant that I was a second-class parent and that made no sense to me. I love my kids and it just didn't seem right." Rogers, the president of FAPT, says his group believes that children need both parents to lead emotionally healthy lives.

"We're not cheering for fathers to win sole custody. We're cheering for kids to have both parents," he says.

FAPT, some 400-500 members strong, fights to have current state laws changed so as to encourage both parents to stay involved in raising their children. It touts itself as a "coalition of mothers, fathers, grandparents and others, working to ensure the rights of children to have a loving nurturing relationship with both of their parents and their families." According to Rogers, courts need to focus on procedures where the custody hearing is not a win-lose situation and should instead reward an inclusive situation where both parents are involved.

But for the parents who lose out, inclusiveness is not the answer.

Having lost custody of her son after an ugly custody conflict, Give Us Back Our Children Director Kim Caspari has dedicated her life to helping other moms keep their kids. After surviving years of punches and slaps, black eyes and broken bones in Massachusetts at the hands of her husband, the diminutive Caspari, now 34, finally found the strength to get out with their young son. Her husband had a court record detailing her beatings, so Caspari had no reason to doubt that she would get custody of their only child.

Nevertheless, her ex-husband's parents first won custody of her son amid the couple's divorce battle. During an emergency hearing, a judge granted custody to the grandparents because, according to Caspari, "they were easily available."

The custody loss was the result of a probate judge's ruling that Caspari was an unfit parent because she did not leave her husband soon enough, thereby exposing her son to domestic violence. The petite, soft-spoken Caspari says she has not seen her son, who lives in Cobb County with his paternal grandparents, in almost six years.

"The court ordered my son to be away from me until he's 18 because he witnessed abuse," says Caspari, who has kept up with her son's progress through the proverbial grapevine. Now, she says, "he is violent, beats up other children, is not doing well in school and got suspended off the school bus."

Caspari says that after spending in excess of $250,000 to get her son back, she's made no progress and sees no other help available to her. Her goal now is to educate judges about child abuse and what she sees as the flawed judicial system.

But Clark, the Gwinnett County judge who deals with countless caustic custody battles each year, resents the accusation that judges don't understand enough about child abuse allegations.

"I don't think that sexual abuse allegations are as popular as they once were, because judges are being better trained to detect when child abuse or molestation is being used in custody cases," he notes, pointing to two thick official volumes packed with information on sexual abuse allegations in custody battles. "I think judges are trying to look for it as a weapon. It's extremely suspect when the first time the allegation is made is during a custody dispute. Those are more suspect than someone who has been arrested for molestation and then the divorce comes up."

Clark says he makes an effort to base his custody decisions on what would be best for children in the circumstances in which he finds them. But when the flaring tempers and irrational emotions of parents are involved, the decision is highly subjective and always debatable. And he accuses many parents of following a scorched-earth policy of winning at all costs.

"Losing custody is not necessarily a loss. It's the win-loss game that's the problem," says Clark. "Once the two egos of the parents start battling, it's very difficult for them to see what's best for the child."

According to Oliver, the outgoing chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the custody process is less biased than ever.

"More fathers are seeking custody today, and when fathers seek custody they have a fair chance of winning," observes Oliver, a private-practice lawyer for 25 years. "I think judges are far more reflective of society now, which is one where often both parents work."

"More often than not, it's a fairly fair fight," she adds. "But people who lose custody battles don't believe it's fair."

That perception certainly is true for Rogers, for whom being a weekend dad was neither equitable nor good enough, and for Caspari, who will not see her child until he is a full-grown man.

And it's also true for Wrightson, who boarded a plane last weekend to visit her daughter in Sacramento. Having worked closely with Oliver to try and change a system she calls irrational, she wants juries rather than "control-freak" judges to decide custody issues.

"This isn't justice," she says, " I just want my daughter back."

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Copyright 1998 by Creative Loafing | Published October 10, 1998 | mailto:webmaster@cln.com