I don't know how I'm still breathing..

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

Greetings. I am nine months into a horrifying divorce. My daughters' father has untreated BPD, and my oldest daughter who is 15 has enough of her father's major personality traits that she is heading down the road to developing the full-blown disorder.
He has *all* the money. He has the lawyer. He has the apartment. He has custody of our daughters. He has been able to convincingly paint me as psycho mom, and he has stolen my daughters away from me.
Since May of last year, I have had three separate stays in three separate domestic violence shelters, fourteen days in jail, and am currently facing criminal charges that are complete bull___, but his lawyer tells him how to make them pretty.
I was a stay at home mom, and he set me up and ambushed me with the divorce and custody filings. But try and find a pro bono divorce lawyer where I live, who is willing to take on a complicated case like mine. I haven't found one yet.
It is fortunate that heartbeat and respiration are autonomic functions, else I would have stopped in May. Not that I particularly want to check myself out, but I simply do not know how anyone can keep living with such pain.

[HeartBleedingOut]

Greetings. I am nine months into a horrifying divorce. My daughters' father has untreated BPD, and my oldest daughter who is 15 has enough of her father's major personality traits that she is heading down the road to developing the full-blown disorder.
He has *all* the money. He has the lawyer. He has the apartment. He has custody of our daughters. He has been able to convincingly paint me as psycho mom, and he has stolen my daughters away from me.
Since May of last year, I have had three separate stays in three separate domestic violence shelters, fourteen days in jail, and am currently facing criminal charges that are complete bull___, but his lawyer tells him how to make them pretty.
I was a stay at home mom, and he set me up and ambushed me with the divorce and custody filings. But try and find a pro bono divorce lawyer where I live, who is willing to take on a complicated case like mine. I haven't found one yet.
It is fortunate that heartbeat and respiration are autonomic functions, else I would have stopped in May. Not that I particularly want to check myself out, but I simply do not know how anyone can keep living with such pain.

[Turkish]

HBO,

This sounds like parental alienation to the extreme... .are you in any contact with your daughters? Dr. Craig Childress is fighting to change the dynamic of parental alienation, even to parents who are erased from their children's lives due to a BPD or NPD spouse. I follow him on Facebook too: www.drcachildress.org

What are the nature of the charges?

[pearlsw]

Hi HeartBleedingOut,

I'm sorry I can be of much help with legal stuff, but I saw your post and how much you are hurting and wanted to offer some support! How are you doing?

Through the DV shelters have you gotten any referrals to any free legal aid? 

I am sorry you are in such pain. What have you been charged with? Are you getting the assistance you need to deal with this?

Please let us know what is going on!

wishing you peace, pearl.

p.s. if you need other types of support please post elsewhere (it's hard for me to say where you fit based on what I know so far) so more members can find you!

[livednlearned]

Hi HeartBleedingOut,

Yours sounds like a severe case -- I'm wondering if it might be useful to reach out to the consultants here:

www.parentalalienation.expert/

From the language on the website, I'm guessing that site was developed by Dr. Craig Childress, who is a leading expert on severe forms of parental alienation. He refers to parental alienation as "pathogenic parenting," and has been trying to get alienation recognized as severe form of child abuse by the court systems.

You can find him via Google, but his name doesn't appear on this website (I think it's brand new, as of 2018, but I'm not sure), so I'm not sure you would find this service exactly.

LnL

[Panshekay]

LnL, I reached out to the link you provided. It is not connected with Dr Childress. This is a private professional who is familiar with ABPA and he does follow Dr Childress’s work. I just spoke with him.   He offers litigation services for a lower cost fee.  He has been through this with his own children. I am starting to see a lot more of this being offered online. Obviously there is a lot of money that can be made when you see how many parents are going through this. As we all know it starts with mental health professionals changing how this is looked at.  My heart goes out to parents who dont have the financial means to get the help they need. Everyone parent deserves help. I know Dr Childress is working hard at changing things, but sadly it is still slow going.

[HeartBleedingOut]

Hi there-thank you all for the suggestions, I will try and follow up on them after the sun comes up.
My criminal charges are two counts of kidnapping and interference with a custody order, one for each of  my girls. We left Florida ahead of Hurricane Irma, a big Category 5 hurricane that looked like it was going to come straight up the entire Florida peninsula. So, could not go anywhere in Florida for shelter. Went to the house of a relative in Alabama, estranged husband found out where I was because he found the relative's phone number and called him, you'd think a retired cop would have his niece's and grandnieces' back but he rolled over like a dead fish. Estranged husband then sent me a very threatening text "If you don't bring the girls back to (the city we live in in FL), I'll... .I didn't even open up the message, gmail gives you the first few lines, I said to myself The HELL I will, and instead of going back to FL like he wanted we went to Birmingham. He found out where I was probably because the cops pinged my cell phone along the way (they can do that even if the gps locator chip is turned off,), and I had forgotten to change my facebook posts to private and block him, and they tracked us down to the domestic violence shelter we were at and I was informed by my useless caseworker and her hypocritical fake nicey nice supervisor that they would really much prefer it if I left voluntarily before the cops came back with a search warrant and rousted out the whole place and dragged me off in handcuffs. So  much for legal protections extended to victims in a domestic violence shelter. Useless hypocritical fake smiling stupid cows... .So I did, not having any idea that by going to the police dept to talk about this I was turning myself in to get arrested and spend 14 days in jail and my girls would go straight back into the hands of their abuser. I've been screaming for help around here since last May, but not getting any. The only organization that has given me help that's actually been helpful is the local domestic violence shelter in this area. But they're not doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, what they are is survivors. They  listen to me. They understand and have helped me come to an understanding of what I have been subject to. I found a copy of Stop Walking On Eggshells, an excellent book but I can only read a page or two at a time because I'm still in the middle of all this abuse and torture and it's just too close to home... .
Gotta sign off now and go to bed. Thank you, I'll be back soon.

[ForeverDad]

Another excellent resource is Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder by William Eddy and Randi Kreger.  Eddy is a social worker, mediator, lawyer, author and lecturer to family law professionals.  This book focuses on the legal and court issues, how to address them in a practical and proactive way and time-tested strategies that have been known to work.

[livednlearned]

Criminal charges  

What happens next?

[HeartBleedingOut]

Two counts of kidnapping and interference with a custody arrangement, one for each of my daughters. They were legally in my custody the week before Hurricane Irma hit North Florida, and we evacuated ahead of the hurricane. My uncle the retired police chief, who I thought would have my back, rolled over like a dead fish when my estranged husband called him. He let us stay until the hurricane passed through, then threw us out of his house because our drama was too much for him. A retired cop? I was dismayed, deeply hurt, and infuriated. My uncle and his wife go to church every Sunday, but I guess that's as far as the actual practice of Christianity goes.
After my estranged husband found out where we were, he went to court and got an ex parte temporary sole custody order for our daughters, and then, as I was in violation of a custody order I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT, he swore out the felony warrants on me. I'm not sure why they are felony charges, but I was thrown out of the domestic violence shelter I was in, because if you have "criminal" charges hanging over you, EVEN IF THE ALLEGED CRIME IS THE REASON YOU ARE AT THE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SHELTER,  they want nothing to do with you.
I can't talk any more about this as it's two in the morning again and I have to get back on a regular sleep schedule.
Parental alienation? You bet your ass that's what he's doing. To my oldest, not so much my youngest.
How do I find a lawyer to speak for me and my daughters? I've been getting hammered by the legal system which has so far given him everything he wants because his lawyer has asked for it, whereas me with no lawyer has been getting jerked around, blown off, given the runaround, not allowed to speak IN A HEARING IN COURT , or just flat out ignored.
It has been nine months of living hell for me. THis time of the morning, I really start to wonder how much more I've got left to carry on with, and how much longer I can keep on going. I miss my girls so much I don't know how I'm still breathing... .

[HeartBleedingOut]

Sorry, I'm repeating myself, I need to check in to this group during the day because at two am it's all just too much... .

[ForeverDad]

The odds are that if you didn't do anything aggressively bad and can defend yourself as much as reasonably possible — such as you didn't even know what he was claiming in court back in your home area — then it may not go as bad as you fear.  Historically most courts are unwilling to put mothers in jail.  The laws have stated consequences that are much more extreme than what it ends up being.  For example, many courts may charge a person with the maximum penalties simply to give room to "plea down" to a guilty plea on lesser charges.  My ex was offered a deal with Anger Management ordered.  She refused.  Eventually the court relented and had a trial, she walked out Not Guilty despite admitting in testimony to the charge.  Let me quote from a post I made years ago.

Municipal court:  Separation week.  My ex had stormed out one Sunday morning.  When she returned I expected the worst and my recorder was running when my life was threatened.  (My son had asked to go outside and that triggered her overreaction.)  This time she had stepped away and so she didn't stop my call to 911.  (She did hang up my call and break the handset though.)  Police arrived.  I was asked to hand son over to her and 'step away'.  My son shrieked and clung to me even tighter.  The officer looked at me for a long moment, said 'work it out' and they left.  Possibly my son saved me that day because my lawyer, a former police officer, said the policy is not to leave a domestic call without taking someone with them.  My recorder's speaker didn't work so I downloaded it and called the police back later that week.  She later went to trial for Threat of DV, something impossible without a recording.  She had to move out because I had a temporary protection order.  In the trial when it was played she admitted it as "that's how we argue".  The judge dismissed it saying without a weapon it did not meet case law which limited actionable threats to "imminent" ones.  I really think the judge stretched it because of her gender and that it was her first time in court.

This is your first time with such charges.  You probably won't be viewed as a 'perp', you have no prior history of breaking the law.  Yes, they're scary now, possibly to pressure you into a plea deal where you admit some level of guilt.  It's a catch 22 situation with no perfect solution.  If you take a plea deal on lesser charges then you can't legally claim you were innocent of bad intent in domestic court, I think.  But if you stick to what really happened, you didn't know all the legal maneuvers ex was doing, you were trying to handle things as best you could from within a DV shelter framework, then even if it goes against you to some extent, you can still state you are innocent, had good intent and was unfairly framed.

[livednlearned]

I miss my girls so much I don't know how I'm still breathing... .

I'm really sorry you're apart from your kiddos  That has to hurt so much.

Two counts of kidnapping and interference with a custody arrangement, one for each of my daughters. They were legally in my custody the week before Hurricane Irma hit North Florida, and we evacuated ahead of the hurricane.

What kind of custody arrangement did you have in place before leaving with the girls?

After my estranged husband found out where we were, he went to court and got an ex parte temporary sole custody order for our daughters, and then, as I was in violation of a custody order I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT, he swore out the felony warrants on me.

That's how it works where I live, too. If there is an active custody file, the other parent could not leave the state with the kids during my custodial time without my consent.

Were you unable to notify your ex that you were evacuating the girls?

I'm not sure why they are felony charges, but I was thrown out of the domestic violence shelter I was in, because if you have "criminal" charges hanging over you, EVEN IF THE ALLEGED CRIME IS THE REASON YOU ARE AT THE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SHELTER,  they want nothing to do with you.

By alleged crime, do you mean something that your ex did to you? Is this something that got worked out in court at some stage?

How do I find a lawyer to speak for me and my daughters? I've been getting hammered by the legal system which has so far given him everything he wants because his lawyer has asked for it, whereas me with no lawyer has been getting jerked around, blown off, given the runaround, not allowed to speak IN A HEARING IN COURT , or just flat out ignored.

I'm not sure how things work where you live, but in my state, you can pay a lawyer for an hour consult to make sure you understand how things work where you live. If you end up retaining that lawyer, then you can move forward with representation. If you are financially strapped, as many of us are during custody battles, I wonder if you can find pro bono lawyers who will represent you.

My experience during initial consults is to just state the facts. "I had full custody of my daughters on day/date. Hurricane was coming so we evacuated to Other State. I did not notify the other parent. He filed an ex parte motion and I was compelled to return the girls to Our State, which I did. They are now in his custody. I am seeking xyz so that I can see my daughters again, who I haven't seen since day/date. Please walk me through what I need to do in order to make that happen."

Then ask how much something like that might cost, how long it could take, and what other cases like it the lawyer has had, how those cases went, etc.

Depending on how things work where you live, you might need to find a criminal lawyer? A quick call to lawyers in your area will be able to help you. Maybe even the clerk of court where your charge is filed can tell you.