The saddest part of Eric’s
harassment of the mother of his children – and his endless smear campaign
against her to the family court is no exception – is that it hurts the children
even more than it hurts Maria. It is, in fact, with regards to the children that
Eric’s (and so many other violent men’s) perverted, self-centred and extremely
egoistic, psycho rigid “logic” becomes the clearest. For five years Maria’s and
Eric’s children have had no choice but to be stuck at the very centre of their
dad’s untiring attempts at destroying their mother. They have never been
allowed to relax and just get on with their lives, but their whole existence is
constantly under attack. During their mum’s custody periods they have had to
endure their dad’s endless attacks on her; when they are with their dad they
are exposed to a relentless smear campaign against her. In fact, even though a
series of thorough investigations of the whole family, each one conducted over
a period of at least 6 months, have concluded that Maria is an excellent
mother, whereas Eric is a mentally rigid control freak who prefers to hand over
the children to someone else during his visitation periods, that the children
are leading a good life with their mother, that they wish to go on living with
her, and that it is in their best interest to do so, he never gives in. As soon
as the court has confirmed the previous custody arrangement he produces new
allegations against Maria (always completely gratuitous and without any kind of
corroboration) so that the court is obliged to keep the case open eternally and
expose Maria and the children to ever new investigations - each of them with
the same result.
At the same time Eric would of course never admit that what he does is
in any way detrimental to his children. Instead, he obstinately maintains that
he does what he does "in order to protect them". He even tries to
make out that it is his duty as a responsible father to make sure firstly that
his children understand “what kind of woman their mother is”, and secondly that
they are removed from her. If anyone protests that what he does is harmful to
the children, he claims that this is not down to him. For if Maria (or the
court) would just do what he claims is the only sensible thing, i.e. hand over
the children to him, he wouldn’t need to do what he does, would he?
In fact, I am personally convinced that the whole point of the exercise
from Eric’s point of view has never really been to have the custody transferred
to him but to cause as much psychological and economic harm to Maria as
possible. What Eric is after is so very obviously not to be given more time
with his children – in that case he wouldn’t be quite so eager to hand them
over to someone else, as soon as they are in his care! What he is really after
is instead clearly the same as always: to ruin Maria’s life, in particular by
making sure she doesn’t get a chance to lead a quiet life with his children
outside of his control. He is in fact using a technique that psychiatric
literature describes as very common among violent men who want to get back at
the woman who dared leave them. With the intention of having their own view of
her as an unfit mother confirmed, they do everything in their power to make
life as difficult as possible for her, and, most importantly, they do all they
can to prevent the children from having a good time with her!
Fortunately Maria is both psychologically very strong and has an
instinctive feeling for the best way to counter Eric’s attacks. Thanks to her
consistent refusal to enter Eric’s game, thanks to her always focusing on being
the best mother she can, thanks to the children’s recognition of her
unconditional and unselfish love and care for them, thanks to her honesty and
her calm but unflinching resistance to Eric, Maria has won every custody
battle, whereas Eric has invariably ended up biting the dust; the judge
invariably tells him off for his failure to accept that he is now a divorced
man. At the same time the law seems to stand without possibility to make him
stop producing ever new allegations. So the battle goes on, year after year.
Year in year out, the children are forced to live in a limbo, where their whole
existence is constantly under attack by their own father!
One cannot help but ask oneself: Who does the current system really
protect?
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