Experts Say Catherine Kassenoff's Family Court Case Should Alarm America
(This gets more horrifying and heartbreaking, and yet, completely unsurprising in the patriarchy)
Experts Say Catherine Kassenoff’s Family Court Case Should Alarm America
6/20/2023 by Amy Polacko
Dr. Bandy Lee—who warned the country about Donald Trump—calls the family court system another threat to our democracy.
Dr, Bandy Lee is the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. (Zach Gross)
Dr. Bandy Lee knows narcissists. And sociopaths. And psychopaths. In fact, she studies coercive controllers for a living. She made headlines—and published The New York Times bestselling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump—because she just couldn’t sit on the sidelines watching a clear and present danger to democracy. Now, this world-renowned forensic psychiatrist and violence expert, who has taught at Yale School of Medicine and Law School, feels the same way about America’s family court crisis.
“I hadn’t expected that I would write on this subject and have been working in courts for 25 years,” she said, “but what I have stumbled upon is so alarming, so egregious and so dangerous to women and children that I can’t remain silent about it.” It’s also personal. “If this could happen to Catherine Kassenoff and to my sister, who could escape this destructive machine?” Lee asked. “Family courts have abdicated their duties to bring justice and to curb violence—and have actually promoted it. This is a structural violence that goes way beyond individuals and has widespread social and cultural consequences.” Lee had been in touch with Catherine Kassenoff, the New York mother and accomplished attorney who said she was ending her life through an assisted suicide over Memorial Day Weekend because she couldn’t fight for custody of her daughters any longer. Kassenoff had been helping a fellow protective mom trying to get her children back, and Lee had consulted on the case.
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Lee said her sister experienced 15 years of coercive control, which included verbal, psychological, sexual, physical and financial abuse. When her husband, a Harvard Law School-trained corporate attorney, filed for divorce in 2020, he suddenly wanted custody of the children, even though Patricia had been the primary caregiver. A July 2021 incident, during which Lee said her then-brother-in-law caused his 7-year-old son’s head injury, was reported to Child Protective Services, but even still, the court mandated visits with their father. Lee said the judge ruled that the children be taken involuntarily by police if they resisted, and they were—even after trying to set their house on fire in protest.
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Bandy Lee’s sister Patricia has not been able to see her children for two years. (Bandy X. Lee)
Lee lived with the couple for an extended time and said she witnessed the abuse firsthand, but the court would not let her testify about what she saw—despite her credentials as an expert witness in criminal and civil courts for 25 years, plus her status as a mandated reporter (someone required to report suspected child abuse when they are presented with a reasonable cause to suspect it). “What family courts have enabled is the ability of abusers—through the accusation that the other parent is alienating them from their children—to reverse the victim and offender,” Lee said, referring to a strategy from the abusers’ playbook called DARVO (deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender). “It is an abuser’s dream come true to be labeled the good one and to accuse their victims of their own guilt and own crimes—and also to call the healthy person mentally ill.” Lee points to a study by George Washington University Law Professor Joan Meier that found that of the 1,077 cases where mothers alleged domestic violence, courts believed the women in only 459—less than half—of them. Of the 304 where mothers accused fathers of child sexual abuse, family courts sided with moms in only 19 percent of cases.
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What is the solution? Dr. Bandy Lee said two things: accountability and transparency—and thinks now, with cases like Catherine Kassenoff’s going viral, is the time. Her final warning: “This has been going on for so long and is so egregious, we are on the brink of an explosion.”
https://msmagazine.com/2023/06/20/catherine-kassenoff-family-court-divorce-bandy-lee/