Courts in the U.S. have sentenced thousands of children to live with a parent who abused them. The family court judges who reach this decision — and restrict or end the relationship of the parent who reported concerns of abuse — usually do so based on the opinion of a court-appointed expert.
A quick look at how the family courts’ multimillion-dollar expert industry operates reveals a system that is built to invite corruption.
The experts are paid thousands of dollars by one or both parents, facts on how their opinions were formed are forbidden to be reviewed by the public and state laws help shield these decision makers from potential lawsuits. [Read Full Article]
This is the second in a series of articles for Daily Kos about the treatment of abused children in the U.S. family court system. M.C. Moewe is a former criminal justice and investigative reporter for several newspapers with a B.A. in journalism from the University of North Texas.
