Blogger's Note: This is the third of what will be several entries on the 2006 Battered Mothers' Custody Conference, which I attended over the weekend. It was an experience in which I learned and absorbed a great deal about things as wide and varied as the system, those who manipulate it, are manipulated by it, and are victimized by it, and about myself. To try to do this all in one entry would not do it justice.

This'll be fairly quick, as I'm out the door in a moment, but it did occur to me one thing that was encouraging in Albany was the idea that appellate courts are at least starting to get an idea of what's happening to battered mothers out there. The word is that 2/3 of custody cases where custody is awarded to batterers get reversed at the appellate court level. (Of course, that assumes that the battered mother has enough money and energy to fight that long -- many of them don't.)

The Bridget Marks case, which I mentioned a bit earlier, was a victory, where an appellate court in New York recently returned custody of children to their mother on a unanimous 4-zip decision.

And, in the course of looking at some of this stuff, I was pleased to find that the Tenth District Court of Appeals in Ohio has some understanding of what's going on. Neat that they identify it as such, even better that they are willing to say something. Too often, guardians ad litem stop advocating for the best interests of the child and advocate for the parent they think should get custody -- even when confronted with evidence to the contrary. So, it was a delight to find this little nugget:

The trial court also should have considered taking the time to explain its ruling on the contempt to the three young women/girls. Although the guardian ad litem could normally fulfill this role, the guardian ad litem in the contempt hearing conducted himself in many ways as if he were a second attorney for the girls' father, cross-examining the mother in very hostile fashion at times. Schottenstein v. Schottenstein (Dec. 12, 2000), Franklin App. No. 00AP-285, unreported, quoted by Schottenstein v. Schottenstein (November 29, 2001), 2001-Ohio-3987