New California law expands visitation, testimony protections for children in family court
While California law has long required judges to consider a parent’s history of abuse and habitual drug use when making decisions on a child’s custody, it has not done so when it regards visitation.
That will change next year when a new law, SB 654, goes into effect. The legislation won praise from advocates for survivors of domestic violence.
Faith Whitmore, who leads the Sacramento Regional Family Justice Center, said these cases often get referred to mediation, and anything can happen at that point. She said she was grateful this change had been put in motion, saying it’s crucial that judges understand the potential threat of violence to children in families with a history of domestic violence.
“If it’s a really violent situation that the family has been exposed to and there are threats of continuing violence, it is a very, very vulnerable place for that child or those children,” Whitmore said. “If they go unsupervised ... that’s when children are killed, and it’s horrible. It’s just horrible.”
The new measures will make the families of those who have been abused feel much more secure and much safer, she said.
Sponsored by state Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, the legislation also ensures that children will not have to testify in front of their parents in family court. Starting next year, children will testify before a judge and attorneys, unless a judge deems it legally necessary for them to do so in open court.
If children change their position on how they want to address the court, they can inform a professional connected to the court, and that individual must inform the judge as soon as possible.
Jane Stoever, who supervises a domestic violence law clinic at University of California, Irvine, said this legislation ensures that children’s health, safety and welfare will be put first and taken seriously.
She recalled the case of Sophie and Sara Rouin, two sisters who died with their father in a murder-suicide on New Year’s Eve in 2017. Their father had been granted unsupervised visitation amid a lengthy custody battle.
A group of California researchers have been looking into such cases, Stoever said, and have so far found that, since 2008, at least 75 children in the state have been killed by an abusive parent in the midst of a divorce.
Just because a parent doesn’t get unsupervised visitation doesn’t mean they won’t get to see their children, Stoever said. There’s a range of options that judges can choose, she said.
They can, for instance, require a professional supervised visitation in which a social worker, retired law enforcement officer or another individual is present, Stoever said, or the judge may ask the parents if they have an adult whom they both trust who can be present during visitation.
“One of the issues that I think we see is that, over time, there’s a distancing from some of the facts that have occurred,” Stoever said, and one party will “say, ‘Oh, that happened two years ago. Let’s move on and ... have a new start and a new visitation with the child.”
While physical wounds may have healed for a child, Stoever said, that same child still may be recovering from psychological traumas. She recalled one client whose daughter was traumatized after her father had tried to run over her and her mother.
