The child custody industry in Montana is driven by profit, not the needs of children and families.
At the Hubert Humphrey Building dedication, Nov. 1, 1977, in Washington, D.C., former Vice President Humphrey spoke about the treatment of society's weakest members as a reflection of a government: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
There is always a delicate balance between promoting individual responsibility versus the government's moral responsibilities. These debates extend into the halls of every State Capital and Congress daily. While politicians and advocates debate the semantics of such matters as the “viability” of an unborn child and their right to live or extending end-of-end-of-life care through Medicare, currently, the most common ground between Democrats and Republicans across this Nation appears to be emerging as a child’s right to live free of abuse.
Common sense child safety laws, such as “Kayden’s Law,” are successfully sweeping through States and uniting staunch party members on both sides of the aisle. “Kayden’s Law” incentivizes States to ensure that their child custody laws adequately protect at-risk children by:
The United Nations deems a child’s right to live free from abuse a “fundamental Human Right.” Every State in the Union claims to have laws protecting children from abuse. If this is true, why are we seeing a Nationwide movement declared as #TheChildrenAreComing growing exponentially?
This movement consists of children who are aging out of the Family Court system and stepping forward to share horrific stories of abuse they were forced to endure under Court Orders.
What began only a few years ago as a dozen young adults in Montana connecting through a private Facebook page to share their trauma of being court-ordered into “reunification camps,” where they were forced to bond with an abusive parent they feared, has now grown into thousands of children and young adults who have taken to Social Media to be heard and seek protection.
Most of these custody cases were originally deemed as “high conflict” by a District Court Judge. However, the Center for Judicial Excellence has been working to educate the legal community about the importance of properly identifying cases and not misusing terminology that has proven to create inappropriate bias in court decisions.
“High conflict” designations are now regarded as misleading. It only takes one parent who refuses to take responsibility for anything and constantly blames, or projects, their unhealthy perceptions onto the other parent to create a battle ground in court. If the unhealthy parent deploys the legal strategy of throwing the accusation of “parental alienation” into the court, you often see the protective parent scrambling to keep their children out of harm's way.
“Parental alienation” is another term often misused in custody cases. Parental alienation is not a legitimate diagnosis but a legal tactic an abuser will choose to deploy to distract the court’s attention from one parent’s own abusive history and cast doubt onto the historically safe parent. According to George Washington Law University, extensive research led by Dr. Joan Meier proves this legal tactic of making claims of parental alienation to be effective in altering custody outcomes in favor of abusive parents over 82% of the time when it’s deployed in court.
Despite parental alienation continuously being denied a place in the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Health Conditions), Montana court records across the State are laden with mental health professionals claiming they can diagnose and treat this invented condition.
Judges Refusing to Listen
Parents leaving domestic abuse relationships are naturally seeking help from the Court system. Yet many are often left shocked and confused as to how anyone could think it’s a good idea to take away custody from the historically safe parent and increase the custody of the other parent when both the children and the safe parent have made accusations of abuse.
Montana judges are refusing to listen to these accusations of abuse or take past evidence of abuse into consideration when making custody decisions. This utter lack of common sense occurs regularly in courtrooms across Montana.
According to Elizabeth Peterson, a Family Court Reform Specialist specifically assigned to investigate Montana’s undesirable reputation of failing to protect children in hotly contested custody matters, “These nonsensical custody decisions are the result of a massive lack of appropriate education for our judicial officials and huge amounts of money generated by exploiting children and labeling them as alienated.”
Beginning in the 1980s we can track a series of myths perpetrated through poorly vetted Continuing Legal Education sources offered to judges, attorneys, and minor’s representatives. These myths include the classic misconception of believing that an abuser can isolate their abuse to strictly one person.
A perfect example of gross under-education is Jennifer Bjelland, a court-assigned Guardian ad litem regularly employed by Montana’s 18th Judicial District. A records search quickly revealed Bjelland regularly reported to the Court, “Just because he was abusive to his wife does not mean he cannot safely parent his children.”
“Actually, that’s exactly what it means!” according to Ms. Peterson. “An abuser is not capable of isolating their abuse specifically to one target. They may pick their favorite target to abuse (often the partner) but can easily shift their unhealthy attention to their children when they can no longer physically access their preferred victim. Children are typically the next primary target for abuse because it’s another way to continue to hurt their ex-partner.” This new kind of danger is referred to as Post Separation Abuse.
What is Post Separation Abuse
Multiple organizations, like the Montana Family Court Awareness Project, have been researching Parental Alienation cases, how Montana became a haven for abusers, and the rise of the Alienation Industry within the State. The Montana Family Court Awareness Project spent 3 years researching family law cases across all of Montana, specifically investigating the use of the Parental Alienation legal tactic, documented history of abuse, and the admission and acceptance of that evidence in family court. The research identified an alarming pattern in primarily two areas: failure of court authority to consider past abuse as an evidence standard and the use of unqualified and unethical professionals using trauma-inducing therapeutic tactics. “The self-proclaimed Parental Alienation experts that have hand-fed this pseudo diagnosis to our woefully undereducated courts have proven to be a lucrative industry for mental health professionals willing to ignore their ethical obligations for a price. The simple answer to how this happened in our state is money and lack of domestic violence education,” according to Kyla Hailstone, one of Montana‘s leading researchers on child safety laws and the Director of the Montana Family Court Awareness Project.
“The adage of ‘follow the money’ is, unfortunately, applicable to explaining how and why Montana children are being exploited through the family court system.” Each year, private insurance and Montana Medicaid are often billed up to $10,000 per child to be “treated” for a fictitious diagnosis of parental alienation and reunification therapy. This helped create the Alienation Industry.”
The agenda for mandatory judicial training in 2021 shows that judges across the State were meticulously warned about the dangers of trusting “experts” in parental alienation. Despite this training, court records show almost complete disregard for this counsel in making parenting plan decisions. Judges across Montana continue to operate with a mindset full of myths and continue to routinely strip parents of their Constitutional Right to rear their own children under the guise of the pseudo-diagnosis of parental alienation.
How Did This Happen
A lengthy Legislative report was presented in 2022, unpacking the reasons why Montana was a stronghold to the discredited alienation phenomenon that swept through the Country years ago. It was discovered that one primary perpetrator was the 18th District Court Standing Master, Magdalena Bowen. Bowen created a safe haven for a cell of nefarious bad actors she regularly appointed to custody cases who were openly profiting off funneling children into parental alienation reunification programs.
Magdalena “Mitzi” Bowen speaks at a campaign event on October 13, 2021, shortly before another failed attempt to run for a judgeship position.
Bowen’s court Orders can only be described as “dangerous and dark,” according to Peterson. Reports from dozens of parents forced to be subjected to Bowen’s parenting plan decisions describe her as being fully absorbed into the pedophilia-friendly doctrine of Parental Alienation Syndrome over the last decade. The result has been countless children forced to leave the protection of their safe parent to “reunify” with an abusive parent. The psychological damage of this unnecessary court-created trauma in children is impossible to measure but has already begun to reveal itself in the most destructive manner possible.
Jody Hill lost her son to suicide last year. Years of coercive control evidence was provided to those within the 18th District Court system. Jody’s concerns about the welfare of her son were ignored and minimized, compared to others who had it worse, and she warned that the court would become irritated with her if there wasn’t physical evidence of abuse. Her lawyer in Bozeman, who regularly represents clients in the Standing Master’s court, added an extra layer of warning that she could lose even more custody if legal actions were pursued to protect her son.
Jody shared this quote from their parenting coordinator, assigned by Bowen. “You tried everything you could to be accommodating, flexible, reasonable, and patient with a very rigid, angry, frustrated, impatient, difficult co-parent. [Father] was very aggressive, had very fixed views on ‘how things should be.’ I heard you repeatedly tell me Brody was struggling with him and I believe that based on how I knew [father] to be. I was constantly asking you to be flexible because [father] was darn near immovable. I do not know many other parents who have the level of disdain [father] has for you, and I am sure Brody felt that.”
The court system failed to protect Jody and her son. The parenting coordinator acknowledged the threat to Jody’s son, neglected to follow protocol, and the court abandoned its responsibility to protect this child.
Now it’s too late.
Ms. Hill will address the Law and Justice Interim Committee on Tuesday, May 14, in Helena, using her experience.
Montana’s 18th District Court is being forced to “retire” Bowen later this summer due to overwhelming public support of Legislative reform in 2023 sparked by their Standing Master. Despite this embarrassment, and the fact this new judicial law was nicknamed “The Bowen bill”, the 18th District Court Judges have continued to uphold the outlandish parental alienation-based custody decisions created by their disgraced Standing Master.
The Solution: Kayden’s Law
Danielle Pollock, the lead Policy Manager at the National Family Violence Law Center in DC, stated, “If the judiciary routinely fails family violence survivors, legislators who care about children are left with little choice but to enact reasonable protective reforms which family courts must adhere to. There is no reason children should be forced into unregulated “treatments” and into the custody of an abusive party when there is a perfectly safe nurturing home available.”
