Voices for Reform - Stories from Family Court

in this documentary film….

Several safe parents who try to protect their children from a known danger talk about their experiences in family court. They reveal how the system meant to protect children disallowed them to do the thing they most sought to do: protect.

The safe parents here discuss how their children were sent into harms way, in one case resulting in the death of a young child (Kayden Mancuso) at the hands of her dangerous father after the court ordered the child into his unsupervised care. Another in the film talks of her child being court ordered to an unregulated, expensive “reunification camp” in order to “bond” with the alleged abuser. Voices for Reform reveals how family courts frequently - inadvertently but preventably - send children into harm’s way by relying on debunked, outmoded concepts which are not in step with current research and scientific evidence.

Because family courts are closed to the public and press, this short film offers a rare look into what happens inside these courts which make essential - sometimes life and death - determinations about children’s lives. Even when there is a safe alternative for children (a safe parent), family courts too often place children at risk by ordering them into the partial or full-time care of an abuser, creating both individual harms and costly intergenerational social ills. This film reveals the challenges protective parents routinely face in courts, and at the end offers some suggestions on policy changes to improve matters in family courts so that children are safer and can lead happy healthy lives free from harm. 

This powerful short film was created to drive positive change for children and their protectors in the family court context.

Voices for Reform is being used as an educational tool among policy and lawmakers, advocacy groups in the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and at several organizations and universities, including a United Nations Expert Committee (CEDAW), University of Massachusetts School of Law, Dartmouth, and University of Pennsylvania. It has also been entered in the first ever World Health Organization international film festival.

Media coverage of the film includes this story from KYW NewsRadio.

TOPICS: Child safety, child abuse, family violence, family courts relying on pseudo-scientific concepts, system failures, calls for reform.