Misogyny in New York custody decisions with parental alienation and child sexual abuse allegations

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes 24 New York (NY) published child custody cases decided between 2001 and 2017 that contained parental alienation and child sexual allegations. It addresses whether there was a tendency toward gendered decisions and the evidence on which the decisions were based. It reveals that most decisions favored alienation allegations over child sexual abuse allegations and transferring custody from mothers communicating sexual abuse allegations in court to fathers defending against them by alleging parental alienation. On appeal, these family court decisions were overwhelmingly upheld. The analysis also shows that the decisions were based as often on implicit misogynistic cultural assumptions in the absence of allegation-specific evidence as they were on allegation-specific evidence. The article adds to the growing understanding of sources of bias by proposing four errors that support biased reasoning. It concludes with suggestions about how experts, attorneys, and judges can question themselves and others to reduce bias.

KEYWORDS:

• Bias
• family court cases
• misogyny
• NY
• reasoning errors

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Tim Tippins, J.D. for giving me access to his MatLaw Library, and to Richard Warshak, Ph.D. for his detailed critique of this manuscript.

Disclosure of interest

M. S. Milchman does not have any personal or financial conflicts of interest related to this article.

Ethical standards and informed consent

This article did not involve any research with human subjects.

Notes

The first initial for Friedrich (1997) is “B” and for Friedrich (2005) it is W, but the two authors are the same.