Court Ordered Abuse

The divorce went through, and I was finally free of the abusive man that controlled, physically harmed, threatened, and dehumanized me emotionally for years. The escape in itself wasn’t easy; met with him telling me that I was selfish, a horrible disgusting person and that I was destroying my children by breaking up the family. It involved him physically chasing me down a road, grabbing, and dragging me back while I was screaming, holding the children hostage so that I couldn’t leave, my purse, and all of my belongings.

I left with nothing, not even a crib for my youngest child, or any of my photos, and at that point, I didn’t care. I was desperate.

I had to be free of this man. I was terrified, completely run down to the point that I had no more life left in me, and just could not take the non-stop panic attack level of anxiety he was keeping me in, constantly.

I was depressed.

I literally couldn’t breathe.

“You need to both stop acting like children and get along.”

“You both had to have loved each other at one point, get along for the children.”

‘Get along for the children.’ That is what the judge said to us at our custody hearing, even after a court-ordered psychologist had thoroughly assessed both of us for our parenting and personality traits, and he ended up being diagnosed with having a Paranoid Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

We were ordered to co-parent and ‘get along’. We had joint custody.

Now, I can understand how in a normal instance of just simply ex-couple animosity this can be sound and good reasoning, especially when children are involved. Of course, that would be the goal - to cause the least amount of stress on the children, but I had a restraining order on their father.

This was a man who strangled me and continued to chase me down afterward, screaming and slamming on my apartment windows at two in the morning. This was a man who filled up my phone with over two hundred text messages in one day while repeating the same one sentence over, and over, again, until I had to turn off my phone, completely, and call the cops on him for following me. I had serious PTSD and was literally in a ball in the closet when I could hear him outside my window, just shaking.

“Get along for the children.”

He would refuse to return the kids to me on my days at our pick-up time, unless I talked to him, agreed to do what he said, or met him somewhere in private. If I refused to answer his spam of messages or orders, he would cc all the lawyers he had and mine in emails, saying that I was refusing to co-parent and was ignoring him.

He used the co-parent order as a tool to continue to control and manipulate everything I did. If I didn’t agree with him, what he wanted with the kids, or ignored his harassment, his lawyers would smash me in court as ‘not co-parenting,’ and the judge just continued to tell us to talk to each other and try to work whatever issue we had out.

“Stop acting like children.”

I told him, ‘no,’ once and he refused to return the children to me when my sister had flown in for a special visit to see them from out of state, and he knew this. She flew all that way and never got to see them.

The cops did nothing.

“Take it up with the court. We can’t just take the children away from him. The Judge needs to file an order for that unless there’s proof they’re in danger.”

You cannot co-parent with a malignant narcissist. They use every bit of leverage they can find on you to continue their control, manipulation, and abuse. There is no ‘getting along’ for the children. Trying to co-parent with a narcissist who is vengeful and controlling, is far more damaging to the children.

When I watched my son scream in the parking lot of his baseball game as his father yanked him away from me for not doing what he wanted, and saw the utter fear in my baby’s eyes, I’m telling you right now, co-parenting with an abuser is not in any child’s best interest.

By the time we were ordered a Parenting Coordinator, due to the number of court returns we continued to have, he had over nine official accounts of ‘contempt of court;’ meaning he had violated over nine court orders — most having to do with my Protective Order.

Was he sent to jail? No. We were ordered a Parenting Coordinator who would assess and deal with our ‘issues’ and ‘disagreements,’ instead so that we would stay out of court and stop wasting the court’s time and tallying up ourselves in lawyer fees. These people are basically therapists who have some legal right to make cutting decisions for us ‘if’ we can’t agree. (I use that word sarcastically.)

The push of the court was for us to still ‘get along’ and work together, and his push was to continue to manipulate that I was the problem for not ‘co-parenting,’ and being on call for him to do whatever he would say; a fear tactic to get me in trouble with the court, and a pretty effective one. Not to mention, I was still terrified of this man and was dealing with serious PTSD just being around him or hearing his voice on the phone.

The anxiety and suffocation that I felt in the marriage had not gone away, it continued to soar.

I wanted out. I just wanted to be free.

I just wanted it all gone.

It was my children that kept me here. It was my children that I was living for.

The Parenting Coordinators were the start of the turning point; a blessing in disguise. After he had fired the first one for taking my side on several decisions, something I had no idea he could do, our second one the court would not allow him to move. This therapist told us that there was a new theory or way of parenting that is just starting to be used in courts when it came to highly toxic situations. Instead of co-parenting, it was called, Parallel Parenting.

The amount of relief that fell over me was unbelievable. Parallel Parenting basically meant that each of us parents how we want on our own time and that we do not have to continue to be in communication one on one about everything. Main issues, such as health, school, yes, and then we could use the intermediary help of the Coordinator if there was an issue, but I no longer ‘had’ to answer every phone call or text. He no longer could threaten me for not being on call or if I needed some time to deal with my PTSD first, and then respond.

He no longer could tell me how to parent. I had my life, he had his own.

The Coordinator wrote up the legal words for this order and submitted it to the court and it was approved.

The fact is, you can not co-parent with someone who is out to control and continue to abuse you in manipulative and vindictive ways. It does not help the kids, it’s the opposite. It only immerses them in more chaos, confusion, anxiety, and fear. If you are dealing with a situation like this, talk to your lawyer or a coordinator about Parallel Parenting as a formalized option put into writing … and breathe.