Domestic Violence & Child Custody - VAWA Kayden's Law: How We Created It and What States Can Do Now To Protect Children
Episode Type: Professional
Host: Danielle Pollack
Links for Danielle Pollack
Danielle Pollack
Personal Website: https://www.daniellepollack.com/
Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielle2u
National Family Violence Law Center at GW Law
NFVLC Website: https://www.law.gwu.edu/national-family-violence-law-center NFVLC
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nfvlcgwu
NFVLC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nfvlc_at_gwu/
National Safe Parents Organization
NSPO Website: https://www.nationalsafeparents.org/
NSPO Twitter: https://twitter.com/safe_parents
NSPO Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationalsafeparents/
Description:
Growing out of Pennsylvania after several years of intense strategic policy work and analysis by Danielle Pollack and a group of legal experts she brought together in 2017-18 - including Professor Joan Meier, litigators Richard Ducote and Jodi Lewis, and others - the federal Kayden's Law was signed into law by the President as part of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 2022.
In Congress, the effort was led by Pollack's Pennsylvania Congressman Fitzpatrick and it built upon the state-level work on Kayden's Law, led by Pennsylvania State Senators Santarsiero and Baker, in consultation with Pollack's team.
In the U.S., child custody is a state matter, meaning custody laws are determined by the states and differ somewhat from state to state. There are a few things, though, one can do on a federal level to help uniformly improve and reform family courts' response to family violence and child safety risks in custody decision-making nationwide. The intent of VAWA Kayden's Law is exactly this, and it does so by incentivizing states with federal grant money to adopt the provisions in the new federal law, thereby making the needed protective improvements in state custody laws. All states which adopt the provisions will become eligible for the funds, and the National Family Violence Law Center at GW Law, where Pollack is Policy Manager, is providing state lawmakers and stakeholders with technical assistance.
Research shows that family courts are too frequently making child custody decisions which ignore or minimize family violence and safety risks to children. As a result, vulnerable children are being preventably court-ordered to be in the care and custody of an abusive party. These children are subsequently often maltreated for prolonged periods and/or sometimes murdered by an abusive parent - as Kayden Mancuso was in Pennsylvania - when there was a safe parent available and seeking to protect the child from harm. This is a systemic state, national, and international problem in private custody courts.
Increasingly organized grassroots coalitions of advocates, protective parents, domestic violence survivors, and some family court practitioners have been calling for more protective reforms for children in family courts for many years. Recently, some celebrities, including actor and UN Ambassador, Angelina Jolie, have spoken out on behalf of the protective reforms Pollack and her team have developed and advanced, including VAWA Kayden's Law. The press is increasingly covering these family court issues, with recent in-depth investigative reporting from ProPublica, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, The Texas Observer, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Denver Post, and others. The national organization which brings the country's leading advocacy groups together under one umbrella is the National Safe Parents Organization.
People Waiting to Help in the United States:
Emergency: 911
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
National Domestic Violence Hotline: Phone 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) Text “START” to 88788
StrongHearts Native Helpline: 1-844-762-8483
National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-422-4453
Safe Helpline, Sexual Assault: 1-877-995-5247
LGBTQ National Hotline: 1-888
