Taken Into Custody by Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D. examines one of the greatest and most destructive civil rights abuses in America today–our family law system.
In the Taken Into Custody excerpt below, Baskerville discusses the extraordinary powers family courts have to reach into the deepest and most private areas of parents’ lives. Baskerville writes:
No one realizes it can happen until it happens to him. A man comes home one day to find his house empty. On the table is a note from his wife saying she has taken the children to live with her sister or parents or boyfriend, or to a “battered women’s shelter.”
Soon after comes a knock on the door. He is summoned to appear under an “emergency” motion to a family court within a few hours. In a hearing that lasts a few minutes his children are legally removed from his care and protection, his right to make decisions about them is abrogated, and he is ordered to stay away from them most or all of the time.
He is also ordered to begin making child-support payments, an order is entered to garnish his wages, and his name is placed on a federal government data base for monitoring “delinquents.” If he tries to see his children outside the authorized time, or fails to make the payments, he can be arrested.
The man may be accused of domestic violence or child sexual abuse, in which case there may be no hearing at all or he is not notified of it, but the police will simply come to his door and order him to leave his home within hours, or even minutes, even if no evidence has been presented against him. Without being formally charged, he will not be allowed to see his children at all or perhaps only with a supervisor present or at a visitation center where he and his children will be observed and for which he will pay an hourly fee.
The man may also be ordered to pay alimony and the fees of lawyers he has not hired and threatened with arrest if he refuses or is unable.
The state seizes his children with no burden of proof to justify why. The burden of proof is on the father to demonstrate why they should be returned.
When he goes to “trial” the most private corners of his and his children’s lives will be scrutinized with an intensity that attorney Jed Abraham characterizes as an “interrogation.”
He will be asked if he loves his children, how much does he love them, does he kiss them, where does he kiss them, what does he say to them, what does he do with them, what does he feed them, how does he bathe them, where does he take them, why does he take them there, why doesn’t he take them here, why did he buy this, why didn’t he buy that. Nothing is too private for the eyes and ears of the court.
To learn more or to purchase Taken Into Custody, click here.
Baskerville, author of many articles on fatherhood and family issues and a frequent media commentator, is assistant professor of government at Patrick Henry College and an Earhart Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society.
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