Child Custody Evaluators in Domestic Violence Cases

Several years ago, when I was working in a national legal services office that did research, consultations, and training in family law, it came to my attention that in custody cases involving domestic violence, custody was often being awarded to the abuser. Then, when I started actually representing low-income individuals in divorce and other family law cases, I got several battered women clients who had lost custody to their abusers. After investigation, it became apparent that the reason they lost custody was that the court-appointed child custody evaluators had recommended custody to the abusers, and the courts followed the recommendations. The forensic evaluators seemed to know little about domestic violence, and they paid virtually no attention to it when they conducted their evaluations. For example, some evaluators held joint meetings with the battered woman and her abuser, which further traumatized the woman. Many evaluators misdiagnosed battered women as having serious psychopathology, when the women were simply showing symptoms of the trauma they suffered at the hands of their abusers.