[Mb-civic] PBS's negative picture of fathers - Cathy Young - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

PBS's negative picture of fathers

By Cathy Young  |  November 21, 2005

CHILD CUSTODY battles are always wrenching, particularly when there are 
allegations of abuse. For years fathers' rights groups have complained 
that men face a pervasive bias in family courts, while many feminists 
have countercharged that the real bias is against women. The latest 
round of this debate is being waged over a documentary, ''Breaking the 
Silence: Children's Stories," which has been airing on Public 
Broadcasting Service affiliates in the past month.

The film's point is simple: Children in America are routinely ripped 
from their mothers and given to fathers who are batterers or molesters. 
The women's claims of abuse are not believed by the courts and are even 
held against them when mothers are suspected of manufacturing false 
charges as a divorce strategy.

To fathers' groups, ''Breaking the Silence" is blatant antidad 
propaganda. In a campaign led by the Boston-based Fathers and Families, 
PBS has been bombarded with thousands of calls and letters. It is now 
conducting a 30-day review of the research used in the film.

Film producer Dominique Lasseur told me he was shocked by the backlash. 
''I have nothing against fathers," says Lasseur, a father of two, ''but 
I have outrage about children being given to abusers."

There is no question that our legal system fails children all too often. 
But the PBS documentary presents a skewed and sensationalist picture.

Thus, Joan Meier, a George Washington University law professor and one 
of the film's main experts, asserts that ''75 percent of contested 
custody cases have a history of domestic violence" and that about 
two-thirds of fathers ''accused or adjudicated of battering" win sole or 
joint custody of their children.

The website of the film's producers, Tatge/Lasseur productions, lists 
two sources for these claims: a study of 39 abused women involved in 
custody litigation in Massachusetts, and the 1990 report of the 
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Gender Bias Study Committee which 
states that fathers who actively seek custody obtain primary or joint 
physical custody over 70 percent of the time.

But the 70 percent figure was not limited to domestic violence cases. It 
is also highly misleading, since it doesn't separate custody disputes 
from cases in which the father gets custody by mutual consent. In 
contested custody cases, mothers are two to four times more likely to 
prevail.

''Breaking the Silence" seems to suggest that abusers who get custody of 
their children are virtually always male. In response to criticism, the 
filmmakers say on their site that since ''women are five to eight times 
more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner," to 
feature one male victim of abuse alongside five women would have 
''overstated the problems of men."

The accuracy of their figures is questionable: the federally funded 
National Violence against Women Survey suggests that over a third of 
domestic violence victims are male. That aside, doesn't featuring zero 
abusive mothers significantly understate that problem?

Lasseur told me that if he had encountered cases in which an abusive 
mother was awarded custody of the children, he would have reported on 
them. I asked about the claim on a battered men's advocacy site that a 
man named Tom Gallen had approached him with exactly such a case. 
Lasseur conceded that Gallen had a well-documented story but explained 
that, relying on his ''instinct as a producer," he felt that Gallen 
wouldn't be the right person to use.

It's difficult to assess the credibility of the stories actually used in 
the film, since their presentation is deliberately one-sided. (Lasseur 
told me that women's allegations of abuse are often ''dismissed because 
it's he said/she said," and that he didn't want to recreate that 
dynamic.) In at least one case, involving a 16-year-old identified as 
''Amina," there are serious questions about the film's accuracy.

Official documents supplied by the girl's father, Scott Loeliger, and 
posted at www.glennsacks.com, show that there were fairly serious child 
abuse allegations against ''Amina's" mother. Moreover, the only spousal 
abuse mentioned in these documents is violence toward the father by the 
mother.

The documents also reveal a messy, complicated case in which most 
evaluators concluded that both parents were behaving ''abominably." 
''Breaking the Silence" simplifies this into a straightforward story of 
a villainous man and a noble, victimized woman, and does so in the 
service of a film whose overall effect is to vilify fathers.

The filmmakers contend that their only concern was the well-being of 
children. Yet, if the film contributes to a climate in which fathers who 
seek custody are tagged as suspected abusers, it could endanger children 
as well. PBS should rectify this bias by presenting programs with a 
different point of view.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/21/pbss_negative_picture_of_fathers/
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