Last month, tragedy struck in the suburbs of New York City. The Friedlander family was in the middle of a divorce, and like many in these tough economic times, the couple was living together. Things took a turn for the worse, and the father, a respected attorney, is reported to have killed his wife and kids, before turning the gun on himself.
The Friedlander case is an example of what I call a "malignant divorce." In a malignant divorce, spouses do things to people who they once loved that no one would believe. Malignant divorces are the cancer of divorce, and like cancer, they can appear in many ways with a variety of outcomes. Some can be successfully dealt with, some can be managed and some are truly dangerous.
In the town of Cross River, New York, four lives tragically ended as the result of one such divorce. But this community is not alone, because such horrors are not dependent on economic status, race, religion or geography. Malignant divorces can and do happen everywhere.
Our society is not well prepared for the deceit and power of such disturbed personalities, and judges and law enforcement can miss the signs. Yet, like the Friedlander case, there are dangerous ex husbands and wives out there. So, how do you deal with an ex spouse if you think that he or she may truly be a threat?
Thankfully, there is a lot that you can do if you feel at risk. In my book, "The Intelligent Divorce: Taking Care of Yourself", I explore solutions to this problem. In my upcoming book, "The Intelligent Divorce: Dealing with Your (Impossible) Ex," I will be exploring The Malignant Divorce in even greater depth. Until then, here are some tips:
1. Take action. If you are the healthier spouse, your life is probably growing more unreal by the day, and it is not your fault. It may not be fair that you have to be the bigger person, but the situation will not improve if you rely on your spouse to stop his or her behavior.
2. Seek out therapy. The only thing you have control over is your sanity and your actions, particularly around your children. This will help you channel your grief, outrage and fear in a productive matter, with the best interests of you and your children in mind.
3. Put safety first. If living in the same house with your spouse (or ex spouse) is too dangerous, then something has to change. If you feel threatened when he or she drops off the children, then meet your ex in a public place -- and in broad daylight. Know that anticipating violence is not a perfect science; so if you think you got it wrong and need to move out, seriously consider it.
4. Remember that recurrent violence is exactly that: recurrent. There is usually warning in domestic violence; the problem is that many victims of abuse are habituated to this dehumanizing behavior -- after all, your spouse loves you, no? This doesn't make it right. If you have questions, consult a therapist or call one of many hotlines available for this purpose.
5. Act responsibly. The pressure in these situations is intense, so think twice before acting out if your negative behavior is serving as a model for your kids at school. For instance, some kids can become bullies if they witness aggression at home. Also, learn how to deal with your ex when he or she triggers you. If you get triggered and then badly lose control, you are the one who will be in trouble, no matter how provocative he or she may be.
6. Set limits, particularly when you're parenting. This is not easy. You will have to decide when to hang up the phone on your ex as things heat up, when to walk away from a toxic situation, and when it is time to call your lawyer or the police. You are not always going to get it right and under all this pressure, you're not always going to be a saint. This is when a good relationship with your therapist is crucial. No matter how angry or hurt you may be, your children will always come first. This will be your gift to them.
7. Send your kids to therapy as well. They need to have a safe place to deal with what they are going through with an adult ally. In addition, your child's therapist can help you understand how to be a better parent. On occasion, a talented therapist can counsel the self-serving ex spouse and may make some headway. And, if things get dangerous, some therapists find the wherewithal to hold an out of control parent accountable. It is not a perfect solution, but sometimes the cancer of divorce can only be managed, and not really treated. It is better than nothing.
The malignant divorce is alive and well in America. Like many cancers, often there are no easy answers, but there are effective approaches -- and that counts.
Wake up and take advantage of the help that is out there. And, in the end, believe in a better future. This often proves to be the greatest gift that you can give to your kids.
Follow Mark Banschick, MD on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MarkBanschickMD
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"The Battered Husband" is a myth put forth by “Suzanne Steinmetz in her 1977 study of 57 couples, in which four wives were seriously beaten but no husbands were beaten. By a convoluted thought process she concluded that her finding of zero battered husbands implied that men just don't report abuse and therefore 250,000 American husbands, are battered each year by their wives, a figure that exploded to 12 million in the subsequent media feeding frenzy.”
See “The Myth of the Battered Husband Syndrome” By Jack C. Straton, Ph.D.
FL Lawyers have latched on to this sketchy science and paired it with “Parental Alienation” another piece of discredited science put forth by a hired gun evaluator of custody cases, Richard Gardener. The theories of Gardener and Steinmetz are laughable, accept for the fact that those, who predictably come out of the woodwork every time divorce, DV and contested child custody are discussed, quote these ridiculous stats, and can actually fuel abusers, further endangering lives of victims of DV and their children pleading for protection in the Courts.
This has got to stop and lawyers need to devise safer ways of figuring out how to get their clients out of paying their fair share of child support.
These horrific murder/suicides came to my attention in February of 2010 with Stephen Garcia. Remember him? The guy that lied to the Court and accused the mother of his child of “Parental Alienation” as she pleaded for protection from the Court for her child. Stephen shot their baby son Wyatt through the chest with a high caliber bullet, and then turned the gun on himself. I have 59 names, now 60 and 61 with Dr. Banschick’s report of two more dead in addition to the Sam Friedlander murder (one of the subjects of this article) of his entire family and himself. Each time this happens people are shocked and horrified and say what a rare occurance it is, and then the next week it happens again to another family.
It may sound absurd, but one senses a political sensibility behind some of the debates on this page. It is almost as if we have a dark war of the sexes in divorce.
Women and their advocates point out that the majority of spouse on spouse abuse comes from men. They are statistically correct. They further argue to protect at all costs, because the consequence of missing a perpetrator is too high. We have too many terrible stories to consider otherwise.
Yet men's advocates point to false claims of abuse and spurious orders of protection, which are so hurtful to men and their children. I have seen it and have contempt for it. And men's advocates will show cases of maternal Parental Alienation as a means to take revenge on a man. Of course, men can cause alienation as well, but we hear of support for the concept as potentially anti woman.
What's going on?
In my mind this all reflects a power struggle within the family and culture at large.
When a divorce goes wrong it unleashes primitive behavior unlike seen in other aspects of culture.
Maybe the battle field of war has a comparable sense of desperateness.
We will be exploring these issues in upcoming posts.
I suggest that we come to terms with the fact that life is not fair
Because, too much pain is delivered in the name of making things fair.
Enough.
The body count of domestic violence victims and their children mounts each week, in this country. These murders are urgent Federal crimes, requiring police intervention, not illnesses/family dysfunction to be sorted out by therapists.
The murders you have cited in your article Doctor have taken place in beautiful, peaceful, neighborhoods. People can walk the streets at night safely because these are low crime areas; accept for the population of DV victims living in those lovely towns, not safe in their own homes. There were 8 murdered here a few weeks ago in the beautiful Seal Beach community of California and 10 others a few weeks before in San Diego, whole families annihilated.
It is the DV victim population I address here that is vulnerable and these murders we are discussing are within that population. As Detective Deirdre Fishel says in, (Telling Amy’s Story):
“The ending of her life is the beginning, at that moment the process starts and we build backwards and we try to fill in what was happening right before that death and then what was happening right before that and right before that.” Detective Fishel teaches law enforcement officers to develop better systems to protect Domestic Violence victims and to spread awareness.
We need immediate, sharp analysis of this problem and immediate protection from police and the Courts.
Then she parked her father there for six weeks. She said she "didn't trust the situation." Not wanting to upset the kids, I left until she moved out.
My wife did not want me out because she was afraid of me. She wanted me out because she didn't want the kids to see me grieve the sudden and shocking loss of our family, and she wanted to justify the way she ended our marriage and was with someone else immediately.
The end effect of her actions is this: I deeply distrust her, and communicate only via email and through my lawyer. This makes co-parenting difficult, but I want everything on record, so she cannot claim I am threatening her.
If people in relationships truly feel threatened, they need to involve the proper authorities immediately. The proper authorities then need to remove that person, not the spouse, from the situation and work quickly to substantiate or dismiss the claim. That's justice.
A spouse never should be able to use a claim of violence as a tactic.
In January of 2010 a young mother, Katie Tagle went to the Family Law Court in San Bernardino County to plead for protection from Stephen Garcia, the father of her child. He was a known batterer with restraining orders against him for beating Katie unconscious, but the courts gave Garcia unmonitored visitation of their nine month old son, Wyatt any way.
Katie was receiving texts from Garcia threatening the baby's life and she presented evidence of those threats to Judge Lemkau. In court, Garcia convinced the Judge that Katie was lying, alienating and withholding their son from his father. Judge Lemkau sided with Garcia and also called Katie liar in open Court. Although Katie had evidence of threats to her baby by Garcia, Judge Lemkau denied her request for monitored visitation. Lemkau warned Katie of severe consequences to come, if he found that she had lied about Garcia at the next hearing in February of that year. As Garcia left Lemkau’s courtroom victorious, he flashed a smirking smile at Katie.
Next visitation Garcia took baby Wyatt and on February 3rd, 2010 shot him through his chest with a high caliber gun and then turned the gun on himself. Katie tried desperately to save her son but her pleas fell on deaf ears. There are countless cases like Katie's.
However, there also need to be severe consequences for anyone who, without the evidence you cite above, in fact with no evidence at all, claims to be threatened.
I have no doubt such false claims are made in the divorce process, and I would wonder if the false claims might outnumber the real ones.
http://www.sfweekly.com/2011-03-02/news/family-court-parental-alienation-syndrome-richard-gardner-pedophilia-domestic-violence-child-abuse-judges-divorce/
http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=13420
http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/tagle-garcia_1-21_transcript.pdf
If you bring hard evidence before the Court of physical/sexual abuse of you and or your children, you can be sure the Abuser will accuse you of lying to gain an upper hand in the proceedings and say that you are “alienating” the children. And, too often, true DV victims are automatically looked at with suspicion of ulterior motives by the Courts, as they plead for protection for themselves and their children.
This is happening every week in this Country and when Judges get it wrong, children and their parents, that try desperately to protect in the Courts, are murdered by their abusers.
The Katie Tagle/Stephen Garcia case in Feb. of 2010 is one of over 140 cases (I am aware of) in which “known abusive” father’s, involved in contested custody battles, murder their children, and or their ex spouse, and then may turn the gun on himself. It’s a big problem.
If you have a genuine fear for your safety, trust you intuition and leave the home.
But don't as part of a divorce strategy make false accusations against a divorcing spouse who has never been violent.
If you want to claim that you are "afraid" though you lack any actual evidence -- YOU be the one to leave the home.
The second point I would like to make is with regard to number 4...not only is violence recurrent-It is escalating. Once the taboo has been broken, The abuser will up the agression. They may apologize and even feel remorse, but until they receive help, know that this behavior will continue and it will get worse.
Be safe this holiday seaosn.
Donna F. Ferber. LPC, LADC. www.donnaferber.com
I can’t speak for others, but for me the answer has been, believing in, and having faith in a God that loves me, along with an understanding that we live in a fallen world, were we all fail, and all need grace. Out of my foundational relationship with God I then seek out relationships of unity with others, according to what I believe is God’s desire for unity with that relationship. I give myself in serving of others in the hope that true unity will occur. I doing this I accept that I am setting myself up to experience the pain of being rejected, because I know that if I do not give myself, unity most assuredly will not occur. But now, instead of feeding my anger, that rejection feeds my sorrow, and I get to experience what Jesus feels.