GOLDSTEIN & YORK

Preventing Domestic Violence and Child Abuse: Legal. Medical, Social and Faith-Based Strategies for Protecting Children and Families

By Barry Goldstein, Mo Therese Hannah, and Veronica York

Our new book has been published and is available to change the custody courts and the widespread harm they cause. The book is called Preventing Domestic Violence and Child Abuse: Legal, Medical, Social and Faith-Based Strategies for Protecting Children and Families. It is based on our belief that the ACE (adverse childhood experiences) Studies offer a similar opportunity to the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report linking smoking and cancer. ACE tells us that exposure to DV and child abuse causes cancer, heart disease, and many other health and social problems.

Many different parts of society helped discourage smoking and in doing so saved millions of lives and trillions of dollars. Preventing DV and child abuse offers the same opportunity. We spoke with the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and the CDC about their work to prevent smoking and their work to reduce DV and child abuse. We believe courts and legislators would be more likely to listen to the research that supports protective mothers if the information is coming from these highly respected organizations.

In 1961, the Cancer Society and two other health organizations wrote a letter to President Kennedy informing him about research linking cancer and smoking. President Kennedy asked the Surgeon General to create a committee to study the problem. This led to the Surgeon General’s Report and all the subsequent efforts that have reduced smoking resulting in enormous health and other benefits.

The book has chapters by experts in a variety of fields and communities. They discuss past harmful practices and what has and can be done by each community to prevent DV and child abuse. The United States spends over $3.6 trillion dollars to tolerate domestic violence. At the start of the DV movement in the 1970s, society came together will many reforms that made it easier for victims to leave their abusers. This led to a steady decrease in DV homicides. Abusers and the cottage industry responded by developing tactics to regain what they believe is their right to control their victims by manipulating the family courts. Tragically, the courts have failed to update their practices or integrate the research that would make it easier to recognize and respond to DV and child abuse. As a result, abusers are often successful in custody cases. This makes it almost impossible for victims to escape and exposes children to multiple ACEs. The family court failures have reversed the DV homicide rate so that women are now murdered by their partners at a rate greater than when the DV movement started.

We are excited to publish this book from Civic Research Institute because it could be the start of a major response to prevent DV and child abuse to gain the human and economic benefits. The same kind of social change we did with smoking. The book is now available.

When Barry taught in a batterer program, the director, Phyllis B. Frank often mentioned that our opponents often complained, "You just want to change the world." She would always answer, "Yes!"

That is the goal for our book.