Battered Mothers Testimony Project: The Human Rights Approach to Domestic Violence in Massachusetts Family Courts

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has purported that intimate partner violence (IPV) is a tremendous threat to the health and well-being of women. In the United States, a plethora women fall victim to violence at the hands of a male intimate partner every year. In terms of public health, many women suffer physical, psychological, and emotional sequelae as a result of this victimization. Even after a woman successfully disengages from a perpetrator, the abuse she and her children experience often continues through the family court system. The Battered Mothers Testimony Project is a research effort dedicated to exposing human rights violations within the family court system. This poster presentation shares the results of this investigation. Qualitative approaches were used to investigate the experiences of a diverse group of 40 women who self-identified as being both survivors of IPV and having had experienced child-custody trials in the state of Massachusetts. Analysis revealed 6 emergent themes of human rights violations in Massachusetts family courts including: 1) failure to protect battered women and children from abuse; 2) discrimination and bias against battered women; 3) degrading treatment of battered women; 4) denial of due process to battered women; 5) allowing the batterer to continue the abuse through the family courts; and 6) failure to respect the economic human rights of battered women and children. Implications of findings for practice and policy are discussed.