Just Like His Father? Is nearly four years old now and my own son is nearly eight. At the time the book was released, scientists were still engaged in the genetics versus environment debate regarding the development of antisocial behavior. That debate is now over and every authority accepts that antisocial behavior and antisocial personality traits develop due to a gene-environment interaction. I am working on revising the book because now some specific genes have been identified.
Thankfully, I have not had to cope with the toxic environment a sociopath/psychopath creates for their offspring. Just Like His Father? doesn’t really grapple with that issue other than to encourage people to consider that the child may be better off with only one parent. At time the book was written, my thinking was based on two false premises. The first falsehood, I was taught in residency, “antisocial individuals abandon their young” has turned out to be perhaps the biggest problem at-risk children face. Antisocial individuals do not necessarily abandon their young, but they do abuse them and use them as pawns to damage other people and they also use them in their cons.
Four years ago, I naively believed that the family courts would naturally dictate that sociopaths/ psychopaths should be kept from harming their children. This second premise has also turned out to be false and is the basis for the nightmare many people I now count as friends are living.
It follows that in addition to teaching the material in the book and workbook, to save at-risk children we also have to take on the system-hopefully by working together. The system is composed of mental health professionals who really do not understand antisocial personality disorder let alone the meaning of psychopathic personality traits to parenting. It is also composed of Judges who want to make the tough decisions easy by giving themselves judicial sound bites to go by. Here is the official mantra of the state of New York Family Court:
“Visitation by a noncustodial parent is presumed to be in the child’s best interest and should be denied only in exceptional situations, such as where substantial evidence reveals that visitation would be detrimental to the welfare of the child.”
The important words there are “substantial evidence.” Just what constitutes substantial evidence? I am working on researching the answer to that question and have access to an extensive online law library through the university where I teach.
I am preparing a generic document that people can use as a resource regarding the harmful effects of parenting by antisocial individuals and emotional and verbal abuse on children. Some recent research shows that the developmental damage done by emotional and verbal abuse is as severe as that due to physical and sexual abuse.
But we really have to change the legal mantra. Given what we know of genetic risk, we have to not only protect at-risk children from abuse, we have to provide them with an enriching, nurturing environment to prevent the intergenerational spread of disorder. The new mantra should be:
“In cases where one parent has antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy) the child deserves the best upbringing the least disordered parent can provide.”
AND
“The least disordered parent has a right to live life free of the sociopath/psychopath they were conned by.”
Setting the least disordered parent free facilitates his/her mental health and contributes to the well-being of the child.
Here is what you can do to join this effort:
- If you went through a custody/visitation battle and your children are old enough for you to comment on how the battle and the sociopath affected them please write me. I am especially interested in talking with offspring over 18 about their perspectives.
- If you have an ongoing situation you are willing to share please write. Recently, people from Alabama and New York asked me for help so I compiled the case law for those states. The goal is to compile the case law for every state then make the info available on the web.
- If you want to volunteer to read the case law and help me organize it, I’ll put you to work right away.
- If you are an attorney or legal assistant who wants to help please let me know.
- If you have political connections, we need you.
I am looking to form a committee of workers committed to this cause.
Last but not least, I regret the title of my book because it suggests gender. The title merely reflects my own personal experience. This is NOT about gender or fatherhood versus motherhood. Normal men love and nurture their children and I do not dispute that children need that love and nurturing. This is about a psychiatric disorder for which there is no proven treatment, antisocial personality disorder/ psychopathy.
We are working to save the most vulnerable of all children from abuse, neglect and disorder. We are advocating for those children who carry genetic risk for antisocial personality disorder and who have a mother or father who is not capable of loving and nurturing them.
Contact Dr. Liane Leedom at drleedom@lovefraud.com.
BulletProof, because most of the courts DO NOT care. The only thing they care about is their paychecks get electronically delivered to their bank account.
Next!
well Katherine…that brings tears to me because it’s appalling. I’m so sorry for your trouble and I have no problem seeing how a sociopath would dupe till the cows come home, culminating in seriously bad decisions made on behalf of the children. If it’s any comfort at all…I feel it in my heart and I am very saddened. Wish you the best…wish you a turn around in karma and the strength to be there for your children in love and peacex
Katherine {{{HUGS STRONG HUGS}}} It’s so defeating to experience the blatant dismissal by a Court. We believe that the Courts are in place to see that the most reasonable judgment prevails. And, when I read back over many of the custody/visitation posts, it only reaffirms what I’ve always believed: POWER CORRUPTS from Judges on down to the Social Services case-worker, because their words can affect the entire outcome.
Your daughters will seek you out, in due time, Katherine. At some point, they will NEED you, just as Mike “needed” us. Do the best that you can to let them know that you love them and that you’re available to them – within reason. Take this time to focus on healing and progressing.
My most heartfelt sympathies are with you, and with everyone else who has suffered such a devastating blow.
Brightest, healing blessings to you.
Katherine,
I am sorry for the injustice of it all, not having the results that you desired. It is unfair, a hard pill to swallow.
Dear Katherine,
Unfortunately, they can fool some of the people some of the time, and sometimes the judge or attorneys are sociopaths as well. They get off on the power and control of their position. It seems to attract them as a profession (lawyers too)
I am so sorry for what you went through, and I wish there was some way I could comfort you for your losses and for the losses your children will suffer.
There’s a genetic compo0nent to it as well as environmental and sometimes there is NOTHING we can do to save our children. I have a son who is a psychopath just like my paternal biological DNA donor—I couldn’t save him from himself.
I firmly believe that any child who is determined to be a psychopath that we cannot save from themselves, and any child who doesn’t have a strong genetic component will either become another victim or save themselves–at least from becoming an abuser themselves.
You can’t transplant a conscience in a child that doesn’t have the capacity for one…
YOU did the BEST that you can do. I did the best that I could do, and that is all that even God can expect of us and we shouldn’t expect more from ourselves.
I wish you peace and blessings. ((((Hugs))))) I’m glad you found LF
This thread affects me on many, many levels. I work in Child Protection and ‘am the professional’ that’s supposed to get it right and save children from abusive parents. Yeah right!!?
I work in the UK – so am limited to discussing this issue in the context of my work here.
Stopping S’s and P’s. Well the reality is that it’s very hard to prevent a determined abuser. You had the relationship with the a**clown, so you know how tricksey he/she can be right?
In order to make a case for NO CONTACT between spath parent and child (victim) I need:
1 to spot to Spath (not easy ladies and gents as you’ll all attest).
2 prove that they’re an Spath – (even harder when this disorder is so little understood or recognised).
3 be prepared to confront the Spath. Knowing that they’ll do everything they can to discredit and ruin me. They very often succeed b-t-w. (Not so hard as everyone has no trust in SW’s anyway).
All I’m saying is…………….work with your SW and don’t somehow expect them to be ‘mommy and daddy’ i.e find it any easier than you to confront the Spath. This is the ultimate ‘fantasy’.
People like me need proof that stands up in court. That’s what counts. But it’s hard to get ‘proof’ of the core and timber of one human being relating to another human being. so be realistic.
I would say get organised, get armed and GET CALM. Give us SW’s the ammunition we need ladies and gents and we will do what we were put on this earth to do. No one is more able to protect your own kids but YOU. No-one is more invested in protecting your children THAN YOU ARE.
I know this is emotional stuff. But hell – it’s an important subject.
I’m sure this will get a few hackles up .and not make me particularly popular…. but I feel it really needs to be said.
Blessings all the same
Delta1
Thanks, Delta. You have a difficult job, I’m sure. This is good advice.
Oh – I wanted also to say that this post reflects my own frustrations and hence rather hard words. But I also wanted to say and that I am also really sorry Katherine that you’re having these hard times and worries about your children.
I don’t want to be hard on you personally or to minimise the pain of your situation, which sounds really difficult.
So whatever else my feelings are about ‘the system’ we’re all targets of S’s on this site and are here to learn, share and heal.
None of us deserved the pain that we’ve experienced. That’s for sure!
Blessing to you Katherine. Hope you get the help and support that you need.
Delta1
Delta1,
Your words are not harsh they are TRUTH, and “the truth will set you free, but first it will pith you off” as we say here.
You are so right, we must keep CALM and it is difficult to do when you see your child in danger, and no one else can see that “danger” and in fact perceive it as “love.” Assume it is “love.”
Read the thread here about Dr. Amy Castillo whose kids were murdered by her x even though she told them he had threatened to do so on a visit….he killed them. And there are other threads here about this.
I used to think this was a RARE occurance but if you will search the web you find dozens, (hundreds?) of cases of this. Parents killing children, or worse, to punish the caring parent.
So how many hundreds of thousands of cases of other abuse that is not so newsworthy or obviously abusive?
I know how difficult your job is, and how easy it is to burn out, and how difficult it is to stay objective…I’m a retired advanced practice nurse and though I worked with families and kids in a different capacity, I saw kids who were sexually abused and couldn’t do anything to get the perp prosecuted, I saw kids abused in other ways, and the families cover it up, wives abused, etc. elderly abused. It is frustrating when you know and can’t prove it “legally” or the judge or the lawyer or DA won’t work with you, or sluffs it off as “minor”—
TOWANDA for you for caring Delta and for sharing with us, you bring a good head to the conversation!
Dear Oxy and Kim and everyone, thanks for your thoughts.
I have been face to face with evil many times. Like you Oxy, I’ve sat in a room with a mother or father who I know ‘in my heart’ is hurting a child, but where I have ‘no legal proof’.
I’ve been threatened many times with violence and even death by a wife beater (or 2 or 3 or 4), I’ve had a child sex abuser threaten to sue me for ‘racist discrimination’. Many abusers have tried for the pity play with me in one way or another.
It’s a tough old world out there folks. Don’t you disbelieve it!!
Anyway – really I’m not needing or asking for validation – but it may help other LF bloggers if they understand how to work more effectively with CP services in their area.
CP workers and the ‘targets’ of abusers need to form a trusting alliance – in my experience it’s the only thing that ever takes the S’s or P’s ‘to the Mat’.
Co-operation and love is so far outside the Spath’s experience that the strength of such a union often ‘blindsides’ them in spectacularly unexpected ways.
Anyways……..
Good luck to all struggling with the Spath parent in their child’s life.
Delta 1