May, 2008 I brought to your attention the tragic case of Dr. Amy Castillo, a pediatrician who lost her court fight to protect her children from their psychopathic father. Unfortunately, I have to inform you that another two children have been lost and another mother named Amy is left asking how we let her down. Yes I said we let her down. The judge who allowed the children’s father, Michael Connolly to have unsupervised visitation was representing all of us.
We have to put our heads together and figure out how to change the system. Children need and deserve protection from sociopaths. Mothers and fathers like Amy made a mistake in marriage and love, that shouldn’t mean the children conceived should pay the ultimate price!
According to the Chicago Tribune Connolly, like Dr. Castillo’s ex-husband told people he would kill the children. “In court documents dating back to 2005, she (Amy) detailed her estranged husband’s threats against her family and fought unsuccessfully to keep him from having unsupervised visits with their two sons. Michael Connolly violated the orders of protection against him six times, police records said, and he often vowed to kill himself rather than be separated from the boys.”
Now I often tell people not to believe sociopaths. Here is the official Lovefraud exception to that rule: If a sociopath says he/she is going to kill someone, believe him/her.
I ask that everyone reading this blog write their lawmakers and submit editorials to newspapers about the need to protect children. Not just physically but emotionally too. I also welcome your ideas about what we as a community should do.
One other thing, let’s get the word out that family members have to stop covering for sociopaths and enabling them. Don’t let pity cloud judgment, and stand in the way of safety. The Tribune quotes Connolly’s aunt as saying, “I feel sorry for Michael”¦I know that sounds terrible, but he must have been so tormented.”
(Thank you to Rune, who brought this story to my attention)
Dear Gliinda,
I can relate to your story of your P’s mother bank rolling him, and believing he is “innocent” my egg donor (my P-son’s grandmother) is his ENABLER and no longer “believes” (even with plenty of evidence in his own handwriting) that he “really” tried to have me killed, so she is sending him money! NO WAY she will ever “believe” he is what he is. I share your frustration, but that is why I am NC with her too, that is why my other sons are NC with her as well. Since I am her only child and my kids her only grandkids, she has “chosen” the P-son, in prison for murder (that she knows he did commit) over her “good” child and “good” grandchildren who have done nothing but HELP her. Go figure. But that’s what enablers do.
I am glad that you prevailed and didn’t lose that one. At least someone listened. I think, too, that there are some circumstances where I also would “break the law” if I thought my kids were at serious risk. What a terrible bind to put a parent into though, and so unnecessary. Risk going to jail to protect your kids.
Thanks Oxy. I maintain NC for my children and his mother. She was very permissive and would give my son ANYTHING and everything he did was “precious.” I can assure you, my now 9yo was a regular toddler and not EVERYTHING he did was precious…lol. I can’t really describe it except to call it weird, at the time. But I didn’t fight too much thinking it was a grandparent thing- how harmful could it be, right? UGH! Later I realized I had been witnessing the same pattern of behavior that had created her socio children…she was grooming my son(s) in the same manner. Just thinking what might have happened had I not have gotten the kids out of that environment makes my skin crawl. I’m trying very, very hard to stop the pd cycle without my sons being part of it. (yes, I have dr leedom’s book on at risk parenting!)
On the one hand, I understand the denial of the enabler- I spent some time dancing with denial myself. Yet, at SOME point you have to smell the bs…a thousand flies can’t be wrong. 🙂
Glinda & Oxy…that’s the problem with “domestic relations” courts, “equal parenting” and “grandparents’ rights” movements…they are based on reasonable expectations of non-disordered parties involved. Throw in a P…the system doesn’t work.
Glad you were able to get a good “best for the children” resolution. I think that’s a rare thing. I admire your courage.
Glinda
“a THOUSAND FLIES CAN’T BE WRONG!” ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO CHOKE, SHORT, BRAY, CRY, CHOKE SOME MORE.
THANX FOR THE LAUGH—IT REALLY HURT!!!!
I thought of you when I posted that dear Oxy…I knew you’d appreciate it!
Thank you, Jim in Ind, but I don’t know that I’m courageous…. I just found that I did have boundaries and he wasn’t crossing them again. After spending so much time chasing disappearing lines in the sand, there is a sort of peace drawing a line in cement and then guarding that line.
Dear Glinda,
You are sooooooo RIGHT!!!! I am still snorting over that one, it was unexpected and PERFECT!!!! You guys are “getting my number” about my twisted sense of humor, and my gallows sense of humor.
A friend and I were talking the other day in JEST about “perfect ways to dispose of the body” and we were both laughing to beat the band, and she mentioned that her X-P had (she thought) JOKED about the same kinds of things we were joking about, but in the end, she found out he was SERIOUS. (NO laugh)
Funny thing, though, my X-BF-P did the same thing, and unfortunately he wasn’t joking either! Since most “humor” is based on either stupidity or on someone’s pain or embarassment I guess most of us have some level of “malice” in us at least in that we laugh at other’s pain or embarassment….and some cultures do it more than others. I noticed when I was over seas that different people laugh at different things, and some laugh at things that we (Americans) are HORRIFIED AT…and don’t laugh at all at things we think are uproarously funny. The maddest I think my husband ever got at me was because I laughed at a REALLY (to me) funny rude remark my P-son (a great one-liner!) made about my husband’s very VERY large nose, just off the cuff. The harder I laughed, the more he got mad, the more he got mad, the harder I laughed until I could barely breathe and was making a sound between breaths of a jack ass braying….I literally fell out of my chair at the dining table (fortunately we were at home)—that is one of my FAVORITE memories of my marriage to this day. My husband finally got over it and saw the humor in it! LOL (eventually, anyway!)
Now, I actually look at people’s “humor” and assess what they mean by it, rather than just taking it at “face value” and assuming that they are not serious about it….I also watch myself and try not to do too much “gallows humor” around people who don’t know me well enough to know what is “joshing” and what is “serious.”
We need to be mindful of many issues. In my case, I was told by my lawyer not to say anything that I could not prove. He said that I would just be perceived as a bitter spouse who wanted to get back at a husband who divorced her.
My X got custody of the kids and within one week, there were marks on my daughter that I know were put there by him. He had, to my knowledge, only struck her once before, but I know that he did it. I just can’t prove it. When I asked her, she said she didn’t know how the marks got there. I know she was protecting him, just like an abused woman protects her husband.
I have pictures and witnesses to the marks on my child. I showed them to my lawyer and asked about reporting this to child protective services and he said it would make my case worse. I don’t know how it could be any worse when he had full legal and physical custody.
I actually believe that in my case there was collusion or even bribery, because no one who knows anything about me, my kids, or my case can believe that the X got full custody.
How do we fight against corruption (not just ignorance) in the legal system?
I don’t think that writing letters is enough. I think that some judges and lawyers ought to be behind bars, but they are like the fox guarding the henhouse. How do we ask them to fix the problem when they ARE the problem?
I hadn’t heard of Dr. Castillo’s story so I clicked on the links and read up on the articles. When her ex-P attempted suicide, he was taken to the same hospital my mom worked at during that time, and committed to the same facility my ex-S was committed to after his suicide threat (they don’t name it in the article but it’s the only one people are committed to in Fredericksburg). Virginia really is a magnet for N/S/P’s.
It’s sad to have to wonder how many kids have to die before something changes. What’s even worse is if kids in straits that dire aren’t getting any help, just think how many kids who are being abused to a “lesser” extent are being forced to have contact with their abusers. I honestly didn’t realize how bad a parent had to be to even require them to have supervised visitation until I started researching custody. The whole push for “two parents” is only in a child’s best interest if there are two PARENTS, not one parent and an abuser. Of course, that brings up the grey area question of “how much abuse should be tolerated before severing parental ties?” I’m apparently in the minority because my answer to that question is “none, no abuse is acceptable.” Yet I’ve been told over and over in RL conversations and in online forums that a child needs both parents and it’s a mother’s job to do everything she can to get the father to be a part of the baby’s life, doesn’t matter if he does drugs, doesn’t matter if he does time, doesn’t matter if beats on the mother, he’s the FATHER and has rights. Personally, what I think a child needs is a safe place to live, good rolemodels, and lots of love, biological parents be damned. I would love for the courts to try for a minute to forget there is a blood bond between a child and his/her biological parents and just look at their actions. Are these the actions of a loving parent, or would we put that person in jail for doing that to a stranger’s kid?
The other thing that totally baffles me is how a mother or father’s treatment of other people is considered irrelevent when it comes to custody. How can anyone say that a person who beats their spouse is safe to be around kids? In my opinion, anyone who would physically harm another person (self-defense aside) should have supervised visits with their kids, at best.
Dear Midnight, I agree with you! Yet there are people who disagree with us both….and people who have studied the results of putting kids into foster care and how traumatic that is as well. I was reading on one site where professionals who work with the foster care system are trying to keep “the system” from removing the children from the custody of the mother who is STAYING with the abuser, and the children are witnessing the abuse of their mother on a daily basis. Their “research” is that it harms some children but “most” aren’t harmed by witnessing this, and would be harmed more by being put into foster care if mom stays with the abuser.
I honestly don’t know—I used to think I knew everything and that there was nothing that wasn’t black and white, right or wrong, up or down, and now I realize that it is probably all shades of gray! I wish I had the answer—-I do know that P-parents are monsters in the most part, and as parents are lousy in every way, but HOW DO YOU TELL WHO IS TELLING THE TRUTH? In some cases, of course, like the drug addict parent vs the non-addict parent, etc. the criminal parent, vs the non criminal parent etc. but in other cases, where the P is polished, educated, “calm” etc. HOW THE HECK DO YOU TELL, HOW DOES A JUDGE TELL? I wish I knew all the answers, but I honestly don’t know all the questions. I know that kids suffer and die because NO ONE knows the answers.