An Alienated Child Addresses the Court. Share this. The abuse needs to stop.

Alienated child addresses the court.
The video and statement transcribed for this post:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1431806655238132

My life was determined by courtrooms, attorneys, custody hearings and judges who believed they knew what was best for me. Today, I am standing here as the child those judges made a decision for, and I am here to tell you all this, they've got it all wrong.

I was as young as 8 years old sitting inside of a courtroom, watching adults argue over my life. I was a child. I did not understand evidence, custody law, parental rights, or the long-term consequences of what was going to happen. But the judges did.

They were the adults entrusted with the responsibility of looking beyond accusations, conflict, and what each side wanted them to believe. Their decisions had the power to determine whether I could have a relationship with my own father, and those decisions followed me long after everybody left the courtroom. I grew up believing my father was the problem. I grew up being taught to hate and despise a man I should have been allowed to known for myself.

There were judges who decided my father should be removed from my life, but did anyone ever stop and ask what would happen to me because of that decision? Did anyone consider the years I would lose, the relationship I would lose, the anxiety I would carry, or the day I would become an adult and realize that the father I had been taught to resent had spent nearly almost 20 years fighting for all 3 of his children?

That was the consequence of getting these decisions wrong.

A custody ruling does not end when the judge signs an order; that order goes home with the child. I was that child, and today I still carry the consequences.

If you ask me now what a father figure looks like, I point directly at that man (her father). He is one of my best friends. He is the father I prayed as a little girl, not realizing that all along he was fighting to be allowed to be that father.

So my question to every judge who decided he was not fit to be a part of my life is why? And more importantly, how many other children have walked out of your courtroom carrying the consequences of a decision you got wrong?

Judges have an extraordinary amount of power over families, but behind every case number is a child who will eventually become an adult, an adult who will remember, an adult who may one day understand what actually happened and an adult who may eventually stand in front of you and say: you made a mistake.

I cannot get my childhood back. I cannot recover the years that were taken from me and my family. But today nobody is speaking for me, no attorney is telling me what to say, no parent is telling me what to believe, and I am speaking for myself.

And I am asking you to open your eyes, because your decisions do not stay inside these courtrooms; children carry them for the rest of their life.