The Hidden Legal Mistakes in Domestic Violence Cases

Everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Dominate Law Podcast, where we empower attorneys as entrepreneurs. I'm your host Donisha, and today's conversation is one, every family lawyer, custody advocate, and domestic violence attorney needs to sit with. We are asking a hard question, why are so many domestic violence cases still lost, weakened, or misunderstood, even when the truth is on the survivor side? Before we dive in, a big shout out to our sponsor and growth partner, equi Marketing. Here's what runs underneath this entire conversation. Survivors of domestic violence are searching for lawyers who truly understand what they have lived through protective mothers movements, exchange names of good attorneys constantly. And the single most common question in those circles is, where can I find a good lawyer? If your firm does this work with the depth and expertise it deserves, the families who need you have to be able to find you.

Equa builds exactly that kind of visibility. For nearly 20 years, they have helped law firms across six countries become the trusted choice. When the right clients search online, they are offering listeners a complimentary marketing strategy session worth $900, where a senior strategist audits your online presence, your competition, and your local SEO. Before the call, go to www.dominatelaw.com/msm to book it. Now into today's conversation, we are exploring how attorneys can use domestic violence expertise to build stronger cases, better support their clients, and position their firm as the trusted legal team survivors need. When the stakes are deeply personal, to guide us one of the most respected voices in the field, Barry Goldstein has worked in the domestic violence movement for more than four decades. He is a domestic violence author, speaker advocate, and expert witness who has written extensively on domestic violence and child custody. He has served on the board of a battered women's shelter, taught in a batterer program for over two decades, and now works as a partner in Goldstein and York DV experts. Let's get into it.

Very outdated practices. We are using the practices from the 1970s. There is a lot of really good scientific research that DV experts can share that courts will listen to if you present it, but otherwise are totally unfamiliar with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court. Judges seeks to train other judges about the two most important studies, ACE adverse childhood experiences and the Saunders study. And fundamentally, without ACE courts are very much minimizing the harm from domestic violence and, and childhood abuse. ACE tells us that the harm is much greater, much longer lasting, and is caused by the fear and stress that abusers cause. So without a, the courts are minimizing the harm that they should be considering. The Saunders study found that most court professionals do not have the specific domestic violence knowledge that they need. They rely on the wrong professionals, and so very typically, they don't know how to screen for domestic violence.

They routinely disbelief true reports of domestic violence. So if you are an attorney representing a victim of domestic violence, um, you desperately want the court to consider Ace and Saunders. As a matter of fact, it really should be considered malpractice to try a case on behalf of a protective parent without the benefit of Ace and Saunders. That's really basic. If you think about it, ACE and Saunders go to the essence of the wellbeing of children, and there's something very wrong that courts aren't using this all the time. The only time they get to hear it is if you bring in a domestic violence expert. Mm-hmm

<affirmative>. Let's talk a little bit since being courts really disregard

Aspect. So if you think about it, what I was just mentioning with Ace and Saunders, that helps abusive fathers and it harms children. But tho and those are the two most important issues, but there are several other standard court practices that all move the courts in the same way. So, for instance, courts use unscientific alienation theories. When it's unscientific, that means that it's not reliable. But what's also wrong with those theories, uh, is that they're biased. They're designed to help abusive fathers take custody from good mothers. So again, pushing the court in the wrong direction. Then you have the fact that in the United States, 41 state court systems have had gender bias committees. They found widespread gender bias against women litigants, but nothing is really being done to overcome that. So the courts are allowing gender bias, and very commonly, the abuser does something to upset the mother.

The court focuses on her response to his abuse instead of his abuse. That's blaming the victim for the actions of the abuser. Another important example is the financial issue. Domestic violence is about control, including financial control, and that means in most domestic violence custody cases, most of the money is on the side of abusive fathers, which gives them a huge advantage. Now, courts could level the playing field. They could make the father return some of the money paying for the mother's legal fees, so that both sides can be equally presented, which is really, think about it from a legal profession, the assumption is that if both parties present their both case, their best case, you'll get a good result. But if one side is all the resources and the other doesn't, you're not doing that. Another big problem is that the courts are using high, high conflict approaches and shared parenting in domestic violence cases, which had never happened.

The Saunders study said shared parenting is never appropriate in a domestic violence case. What the courts are doing is creating a false equivalency between protective mothers who are primary attachment figures in most cases, and abuse of fathers, and that, again, tilts the court in the same wrong direction. Another example of a problem is that because courts have so many cases, they often use shortcuts and they think that they're being fair because they limit the time of both parties. But the problem is that in domestic violence cases, context is important and it takes more time to explain the context. And the other problem is that we wanna explain the research because the research benefits protect the mothers and their children. Again, that takes more time, and courts don't realize that. So at the start of the case, when the courts are immediately trying to promote shared parenting, very often good mothers are punished because it's difficult for them to cooperate with someone who's abused them and abused their children. So what's important is all of these mistakes and everything I talked about is a mistake isn't supported by the research. All of them favor abusive fathers. And so the law firms need to let the court know that we need to use better practices so that we can do what's actually best for the children.

Appreciate that. Barry. Um, context is absolutely critical, and in this case, specialized context, right? So how does a domestic violence expert help an attorney build a stronger case theory? When the facts look messy, emotional, or even hard to organize?

I think you need to focus on the wellbeing of children. When we look at the ACE research, there are 10 ACEs In every case, the parties are separated. That's one ace. In all domestic violence cases, you have domestic violence, which is a second ace. And domestic violence against the mother is emotional abuse against the child. So the children start with an ACE score of three. You know, often you have issues like mental illness or substance abuse. Um, sometimes you have neglect or either emotional or physical neglect. So when a child has a ACE score of they are likely to lose 20 years from their life, well, no, no judge wants to, or children, what judge would risk taking 20 years from a child's life. And yet because they're not using ace, they reach, you know, routinely do that. And that's, that's really a concern that the court isn't addressing.

The, the problem is that ACE and Saunders should be standard. You know, courts should know about ACE and Saunders, even without an a domestic violence expert. But right now, the only way they hear about it is if the domestic violence expert testifies. And then sort of a typical tactic of the attorney for the abuser is to try to come up with some reason not to listen to the expert. And one of the problems we have is that warriors and judges are not used to domestic violence experts. They're used to mental health experts, but not domestic violence experts. And it's only the domestic violence experts that know how to screen for DV know the full harm from domestic violence. And so we need to consider all of these things when, you know, we put together a case.

Now, a couple of things there. I would like some clarity on Barry, you meant that, uh, if a child were to have an a score of six and above, let's just say six, that means 20 years of a child's life gone. What do you mean by that? Um,

When a child is exposed to ace, it increases their stress and their fear. It that stress is harmful to children in many ways. It increases the risk of cancer, of heart disease, of mental illness, of suicide, of, you know, use of drugs. So what we know is that when a child has a, has been exposed to multiple ACEs, those children, their life expectancy is reduced. And, you know, we don't know exactly what's gonna happen with each individual child. It's just like, you know, when you talk about smoking, somebody will tell you, well, I had some friend who smoked every day and they live to be 90. But yet we know that if you smoke, that's gonna reduce how long you live. And it would be foolish to smoke just as it's foolish to allow children to be exposed to domestic violence and child abuse for the same reasons. And by the way, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, they agree with us. They understand that exposure to domestic violence and child abuse increases children's risk of cancer and heart disease. But I bet you most judges and lawyers don't know that

They don't, or they either don't acknowledge it and, uh, it's expect case itself.

I, I think they really don't know that it hasn't gotten the attention that it really deserves. I know, you know, I often testify about this and very frequently it's the first time the judges ever heard that

Heart. So, uh, heart Society as well as the Cancer Society, um, back in the research of ACE and its effects on, uh, children, um,

I found it really exciting. We recently published a book Preventing Domestic Violence and Child Abuse, and we focus a lot on the ACE research. And the ACE research has often been compared with the 1964 Surgeon General's report linking cancer and heart disease. And you know, the idea is that just this, we use the Surgeon General's report to create a society wide campaign to discourage smoking. And that saved millions of lives and trillions of dollars. We have the same opportunity in terms of domestic violence and child abuse. We could, again, save millions of lives and children and trillions of dollars by using best practices to prevent domestic violence and child abuse. And you, I, I'll just tell you as an aside, when I was growing up, one of my heroes was President Kennedy. And I read dozens of books about him, and I never knew that in 1961, the American Cancer Society sent a letter to President Kennedy to tell him about the connection between smoking and cancer.

And President Kennedy responded by asking his surgeon General to investigate and to figure out how society could respond. And that's what led to the 1964 Surgeon General's report and our campaign to prevent smoking and all the benefits that that occurred. But it's probably one of the greatest things he did, and I never heard that he had done that. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so my point is now what excites me is we can do the same thing. We can save millions of lives, trillions of dollars by preventing domestic violence. And what we found out in our book is that the ability of abusive fathers to use custody courts to regain power and control has had a devastating effect on domestic violence, particularly domestic violence homicide. There's a huge increase in DV homicide because the custody courts are allowing abusers to manipulate the courts to regain control. But if the courts knew that, if society knew, knew that we could prevent that from happening, and the benefit to our society would be huge,

Absolutely. Um, I can't even imagine the, uh, amazing benefits it would really give to the society, because if, if anything, if we do compare it to the 1964 Surgeon General's report and how big of an impact that had on the livelihood of everyone involved, that's just for people who are smoking, right? I mean, at that time it was a whole different culture. Uh, they were smoking, like they were drinking water, but right now, you know, this is about all the children that are involved in DV and, um, the lasting effects that it can have on their whole life and the society that they interact with. So my next question to you, Barry, is what should lawyers do before involving a domestic violence expert so that the expert's work actually strengthens the legal strategy? What's the homework we need to do beforehand?

Well, they certainly should get their client on board in the idea of hiring a DV expert. And you want to know what you can prove in terms of domestic violence, what incidents, what events, but keep in mind that when you have a DV expert, we're gonna find a lot of additional information that will help prove the case. And what I think is important to understand is most domestic violence is committed and private for obvious reasons. And when I say this known would disagree, that seems obvious, but we're not sort of following through too often. What the courts do is they say, well, it's committed in private. He said this, she says that we can't tell, move on to other less important issues. What a domestic violence expert does is we look for other information that might make it more likely what he says or what she says is true.

So just as an example, if the mother told friends and family about his abuse, about her fear when she was still trying to maintain the relationship, doesn't guarantee that what she's saying is true, but it makes it a little bit more likely. Um, what's the pattern in almost all the cases we have is that during the relationship, the father either wanted or demanded the mother provide most of the childcare in any other court that would be understood as an admission by the father, that the mother's a good parent, or else she'd seek other arrangements. So then what happens is when she decides to try to escape his abuse and maybe report his abuse, the standard abuser response is to go after custody or maybe shared parenting as a first step and claim that she's suddenly unfit, usually that she's crazy or she's alienating. And the question that we would ask is, what are the chances that she suddenly, and we add the word suddenly, because a minute ago he wanted her doing all the childcare, what are the chances that she suddenly became unfit?

Because in the real world, the answer is very close to zero. But in a custody court that you know, favors the abusers for all the reasons we talked about before, courts very frequently make that mistake. They come up to that wrong conclusion, but that context and that history makes it more likely that what she's saying is true. Another very common example is if the mother or the children have PTSD caused by the f the father, then we know almost for certain that he's an abuser. Because you can only cause PTSD with horrific abuse. And the way they diagnose it, it's the involuntary actions of the victim. So we, if they have, we're pretty certain, you know, his abuse was really horrific. And another common example is if the mother is receiving services from a domestic violence shelter, because DV agencies are very much underfunded. So before they provide services, they will screen the woman, and that means that the expert in their community determines she's a victim of domestic violence. Again, it doesn't guarantee what each of these things makes it a bit more likely. And often in other parts of the information, we will find information that supports, you know, our conclusion about who to believe and you know, whether the father in fact is in abusive. Okay.

I would love to play a little bit of a devil's advocate here. Why not the mental health expert, can they not also screen for these particular things, or are they looking in a wrong place?

That's a really good question. That really goes to the start of the mistake. The modern domestic violence movement started in the mid to late 1970s, and at that time there was no research and there was a popular assumption that domestic violence was caused by mental illness or substance abuse. The reason for that is when someone has substance abuse or mental illness, it reduces inhibitions. So if someone is an abuser, that would make their abuse more severe, more memorable, and that's where that assumption came from. What we now know, however, is that if someone believes it's wrong to abuse their partner, they won't do it under the influence or even mentally ill. But the court didn't know that. So at that time, they turned to mental health professionals and they certainly contribute in other kinds of cases when there are issues of mental illness or, uh, psychology, they can be very helpful for the courts.

But the problem is they are not experts in domestic violence. And so when they do their superficial investigation, or a lot of times they're assuming that if the abuser isn't mentally ill, then he could be an abuser, or the children might on the surface appear to be doing okay, which many of them do. As a result, mental health evaluators frequently fail to recognize domestic violence and move on to other subjects that they're more comfortable with. And, you know, that's why it doesn't work. The Saunders study recommends a multidisciplinary approach, right? As we said, you mental health professionals have something to contribute when it's mental illness or psychology. Legal professionals have something to contribute. You know, they're knowledgeable of a law, they're trained in, uh, analytical thinking, but when we're dealing with domestic violence, that's a very specialized area of knowledge, and you need a DV expert to help with that. And that's what the research shows. It's just not what the courts are doing. I

Appreciate that. Now, before we go any further, this next part is especially important for any attorney who wants to build deeper trust with clients in high stakes, emotionally complex cases. If you own or lead a law firm and you are asking questions like, is my marketing attracting the right clients? Does my website communicate the depth of what we actually do? Are we positioned as the obvious choice in our market? What should our next two months of growth look like? Well, in collaboration with Echo Marketing, dominate law has opened a limited number of complimentary 60 minute marketing strategy meetings specifically for law firm owners. It's a one-on-one strategy conversation designed to help you look at your online visibility, your messaging, your intake opportunities, and whether your current marketing, helping the right clients trust your firm before they ever call. Now it say, sitting around clarity where your firm is at today, where the biggest growth gaps may be, and what a smarter 12 month marketing roadmap could look like. You can go ahead and grab your complimentary session right now@dominatelaw.com slash m. I'll repeat that one more time, dominate law.com/msm. All right, back to Barry. Now, Barry, how can attorneys use domestic violence expertise to build more trust with the clients who have been abused?

You know, I must start with a story. I may have told this before, but when I was a young attorney, I had a case in which the children told their mother that their father was physically and sexually abusing that, and the mother did everything right. She sought custody, she sought a protective order, and she filed a complaint with the Child Protective Agency. And initially, you know, they protected the children. The father was limited to supervised visits, and the children told the judge, the war guardian, the evaluator, and the caseworker, what the father had done. And as often happens in these cases, these professionals assume the mother was coaching the children didn't believe them. And so the court ordered a resumption in visit, visitation, unprotected, and the judge told the mother, if we hear any more, we're gonna switch custody. And they ordered the, like the next weekend, the visitation to take place.

And before that could happen, the father was confronted by the family babysitter in the presence of the law, guardian to the attorney for the children, and he admitted that he had kissed his daughters on their privates. The law guardian immediately made a motion to stop the visitation. The judge consulted with the evaluator, and the evaluator said that the father used bad judgment, but there was no reason to stop the visitation during that first visitation. The 4-year-old was penetrated for the first time. When I found out about this, I realized that the Child Protective Agency had not heard the father's admission when they first investigated. So I filed a new complaint this time. They selected a different, uh, caseworker. She did a thorough job, found out, you know, that things were much worse. When the judge heard that I had called Child Protective, he yelled and screamed at me, how dare you? They already investigated, they found nothing. But this time they found much worse. Child protective filed charges against the father. He never again had anything more than the supervised visitation. Eventually the mother was given custody and they decided to have a dinner to celebrate her getting custody and protecting the children. And she invited the caseworker when what they're doing is they're erring on the side of, of protecting the father instead of erring on the side, protecting the child.

I think that the end of their best to keep parents picture of the child. So I mean that case for you if such horrendous things are not happening behind closed doors. But, um, thank you very much Barry for sharing that, and that's really a powerful story, believers. Alright, so how can lawyers position this deeper level of domestic violence understanding as a reason that clients choose their firm?

Don, one of the things that I've never understood is that attorneys very often will spend dozens of hours learning technical details of their case in a variety of areas, but where there's medical or scientific issues, and they'll do that so they can do their proper job, even though that might be their only case with that kind of information, it's part of being an attorney. But with domestic violence where they're likely to have many, many cases involving domestic violence, they never take the time to understand it. It's like they don't understand that domestic violence is a very specialized area of knowledge and that there is really important research that would make the work of the attorney the work of the judge so much easier. And for some reason, they're not using this knowledge and this expertise. And it's so much worse because in the typical case that an attorney is arguing, they're fighting over money, but in domestic violence cases, they're ruining the lives of children.

It is very common that the failed practices that the courts are using today are destroying children's lives. In the last 16 years, over a thousand children involved in contested custody have been murdered. And in many of these cases, the judge gave the killer the access he needed to kill them. And that occurred because the court was not using best practices and there was this huge bias to keep even abusive fathers in children's lives. And that's a huge problem. And it, it's so frustrating that attorneys aren't doing that. So in, in our practice, we've had a few law firms that have used us like us and invited us back for other cases. And that makes sense. And it seems to me that if a law firm uses a domestic violence expert, they're gonna learn about domestic violence. They the attorney, they're gonna be better able to help their clients and their clients are going to recommend 'em. You know, there is very much a protective mothers movement and protective mothers speak with each other. So the most common question that we get is, where can I find a good attorney? Because very frankly, there aren't many attorneys that are good for domestic violence cases. So for a law firm that works with a domestic violence expert, they're gonna get a lot of extra business, even aside from the fact that they're doing a good deed in terms of protecting children,

Of course. And children are the future of the nation. And I really appreciate your work here, Barry, and, uh, all that you do and the insights that you shared with us here. Now for our attorneys listening who want to learn more about your work connecting, explore how <inaudible> where should go,

I work with my partner Veronica York and Goldstein in New York. Lawyers and clients can look up the information on, uh, our website barry goldstein.net. And we have a lot of articles that I think would be helpful both for the attorneys and for the clients. Um, and including we have an article about how attorneys can use DV experts to the subject of this show. So all that is available. We want to educate attorneys, we want to change the system to the more attorneys can advocate for best practices that's gonna help the children in their cases, it's gonna help their clients and it's also gonna help our society. We touched briefly about it before, that the ability of abusers to manipulate the courts is causing catastrophic harm to our society, including, you know, huge increase in DV homicide. It's responsible for a large percentage of the mass shootings in our country. So it's a huge difference to our country and it's expensive in the United States. We spend over $3.6 trillion a year, which is about $11,000 per capita. I'm sure we can all find better uses for that money than allowing abusers to mistreat their partners. And I just wish this was better known and that's why I appreciate being on your show and having a chance to share that information because it isn't as well known as it should be.

Exactly. And that is a wrap with, uh, Barry Goldstein. Now as we, uh, do wrap up, if you are looking for clarity on the digital side of your firm or practice, echo Marketing is offering our listeners a complimentary 60 minute strategy session, a one-on-one conversation to help you map out a realistic 12 month roadmap to attracting more of the right clients. You can go ahead and grab a time that works for you@dominatelaw.com slash msm. I'm your host for this session done deisha, and it has been my pleasure and privilege to host it on behalf of Dominate Law. Thanks for listening. Keep on leading.

Hey everybody,

Welcome back to another episode of the Dominate Law Podcast, where we empower attorneys as entrepreneurs. I'm your host Deisha and today's conversation is one, every family lawyer, custody advocate, and domestic violence attorney needs to sit with. We are asking a hard question, why are so many domestic violence cases still lost, weakened, or misunderstood even when the truth is on the survivor side? Before we dive in, a big shout out to our sponsor and growth partner, Equa Marketing. Here's what runs underneath this entire conversation. Survivors of domestic violence are searching for lawyers who truly understand what they have lived through protective mothers movements, exchange names of good attorneys constantly. And the single most common question in those circles is, where can I find a good lawyer? If your firm does this work with the depth and expertise it deserves, the families who need you have to be able to find you.

Qua builds exactly that kind of visibility. For nearly 20 years, they have helped law firms across six countries become the trusted choice. When the right clients search online, they are offering listeners a complimentary marketing strategy session worth $900, where a senior strategist audits your online presence, your competition, and your local SEO. Before the call, go to www.dominatelaw.com/msm to book it. Now into today's conversation, we are exploring how attorneys can use domestic violence expertise to build stronger cases, better support their clients, and position their firm as the trusted legal team survivors need. When the stakes are deeply personal to guide us one of the most respected voices in the field, Barry Goldstein has worked in the domestic violence movement for more than four decades. He is a domestic violence author, speaker advocate, and expert witness who has written extensively on domestic violence and child custody. He has served on the board of a battered women's shelter, taught in a batterer program for over two decades, and now works as a partner in Goldstein and York DV experts. Let's get into it.