Across the United States, family courts are systemically silencing the voices of children. Despite clear, repeated pleas from children not to be forced into the custody or isolation of abusers, these voices are being dismissed, denied, and deliberately erased from the record.
Children are consistently telling judges, guardians ad litem, and court-appointed therapists about the abuse they have suffered and their desperate wish to be protected. Instead of being heard and believed, these children are labeled as “manipulated” or “alienated”—their statements discredited and their autonomy stripped away. The core message from the court is clear: children’s experiences, feelings, and safety do not matter.
Rather than protecting vulnerable children, family courts force them into “reunification therapy” and so-called “treatments” designed not for healing, but for erasing resistance. These programs, with origins in discredited mind control techniques, exist for a single purpose: to silence children and coerce them into accepting unwanted, unsafe, and unnatural relationships with abusers. When initial threats, intimidation, and coercion fail, the courts escalate with further forced “therapy,” intensifying the child’s trauma.
The result is catastrophic. Children who are compelled to suppress their truth and submit to their abusers experience profound psychological harm—broken self-esteem, lifelong trauma, depression, self harm, and all too often, tragic outcomes such as suicide. The silencing of children’s voices breeds a sense of utter powerlessness, teaching them that self-advocacy is futile and personal boundaries are meaningless.
The attached child’s case is a stark example of the torture children frequently endure in family courts as a result of false parental alienation claims by abusers - reunification therapy. For over a decade, this father’s abuse was hidden behind closed doors in D.C.. Now, as the protective mother and trauma-ridden children attempt to escape his coercive control, the S. Family has united in an effort to shield themselves from scandal. The wealthy Washingtonian grandparents of the two abused children are funding vexatious and protracted litigation on behalf of their disturbed son, to try and keep the truth of his misdeeds concealed—trading the suffering and safety of their grandchildren for the preservation of their own public image.
Family courts further enable this silencing by attacking protective parents—those who listen to and support their children. Parents who try to shield their children from documented abusers are branded as “alienators” and punished, while abusers are given custody. Courts use their power to restrict independent legal representation, block expert testimony, and weaponize state licensing boards to disqualify credible professionals who might validate the child’s experience.
This is not accidental. A network of the courts’ so-called “experts” and state agencies collaborate to maintain a system that protects abusers, silences victims, and rewards compliance with money and power. Judges and licensing boards are used to threaten, coerce, or silence external professionals that challenge the courts’ narrative and the predetermined course of custody change to the abuser in high conflict custody battles with claims of domestic violence. Restricting speech, advocacy, and access to the courts—are flagrant violations of constitutional rights.
Frequently, threats such as contempt or custody change are lodged by court actors against protective parents to further decrease the possibility that a child’s voice will penetrate the walls of court-imposed silence. These tactics fly in the face of 18USC1512, meant to protect witnesses to crimes from threats. Protective parents are just that, witnesses of criminal abuse against their children and themselves and should employ this constitutional protection.
The Foundation for Child Victims of Family Courts (FCVFC) is committed to exposing this systemic silencing. We will continue to publish the names of those responsible, litigate to expose wrongdoing, and pursue prosecution of any and all court actors who betray their duty, torture children, and destroy families for personal gain. Children’s voices must not only be heard—they must be the deciding factor in every case involving their lives and safety.
Children must be seen, heard, and believed.
