Israel Attorneys Push Children of Divorce, Custody Into Psychology Crisis
By
Herb Brandon Jerusalem-----June 9.......Nothing is more sacred to us all than our families. That natural team for which we are born into which is supposed to provide warmth, stability and love. Even the CIA, Mossad, MI-5 and the former KGB have rules of engagement which directly stated: "You can hurt the agent, but never touch their families." But for some Israel attorneys, such as Yossi Cohen of Netanya, greed and money takes precedence over the welfare of children who are suffering from the trauma of divorce, parental alienation and a lack of equal access by their parents. "Cohen represented my ex-wife in a contempt of court charge against me," said a divorced dad in the Israel city of Haifa. "The charge was nothing more and nothing less than harassment based on false, Disneyworld allegations. Yossi Cohen, whose only motives were his personal wealth, cared not for my 5-year-old son who has and continues to suffer deeply from emotional and mental problems. Chronic problems created by severe conflict and a lack of healthy communication for which the mother is responsible for," he said. "In fact, I had ordered my attorney to speak with my ex's attorney, Yossi Cohen, to come to any kind of agreement whereby we would come to court as a caring team for my son, rather than as adversaries pouring more fuel on a fire which can only harm my child. Both Cohen and my ex-wife refused any rational, healthy and cooperative approach for my suffering son. As long as this case stays in court, and without mediators and social workers involved, Yossi Cohen and other attorneys make a substantial financial profit." Cohen, who was contacted by the INA, did not return our telephone calls. As for the contempt of court charge, it was based upon the fathers' returning the child to the mother occasionally 15-30 minutes late. The father stated that the child, which only sees his father twice a week for a few hours, did not want to go back to the mother. "My child is dumped into kindergarten 6 days a week for excessive hours. The mother operates her own business and is too busy for the child. After she picks up our son, she calls baby-sitters to take over." The divorced dad continues: "On some Friday mornings because the mother is neglectful of our son's dress and physical condition, I often find my son sick with fever, with various infections and take him to a doctor. I have my child's medical visits to doctors as evidence as to his whereabouts. All the same Yossi Cohen tried to punish me through the court system for being a loving, caring and responsible dad." The charge of "contempt of court" was frozen by the Israel judge, while the entire case was sent to Child Welfare for review. Many good judges rarely make decisions based solely upon evidence or lack of evidence submitted to them, but rather they rely on outside, professional counsel and reports. This father never wanted a divorce. He foresaw many of the problems that a divorce would create for his son and suggested marriage counseling. His wife refused. After the divorce, to lessen the crippling conflict which placed his child into psychological regression, again the father suggested a mediator and parental counseling to the mother. Again she refused, stating that there was nothing wrong with the child or herself. Does
divorce lead to less conflict? Yet divorce advocates frequently compare angry marriages to low-conflict divorces on the magical assumption that a piece of paper called a divorce will put an end to parental fighting. In other words, they compare an exaggerated vision of bad marriage with the phantom virtues of the ideal divorce," states Maggie Gallagher who wrote: The Abolition of Marriage. "Divorce often causes a bitter dispute between the parents, even worse than before the divorce was decided upon. Two-thirds of angry divorces remain that way after 5 years of being separated, and one-quarter to one-third of those divorces that were initially in good spirits had degenerated to open conflicts," states Wallerstein and Blakeslee in Second Chances. "A third of friendly divorces turn into bitter disputes, often sparked by the remarriage of one or both of the ex-partners," states Constance Ahrons in The Good Divorce: Keeping Your Family Together When Your Marriage Comes Apart (Harper Collins Publications, 1994).
A study conducted at the University of Washington divided 117 households into three categories: "martially distressed", "martially supported", and "divorced mothers," and found that children of the families that had marital distress had significantly higher disciplinary problems than children from families that reported a happy marriage, but those children of divorced mothers had a considerably higher amount of disciplinary problems that those who were from the other two categories." A recent Time Magazine article asked “Does Divorce Hurt Kids?” and presented the conclusions from one of the longest term studies of children of divorce. A 25-year longitudinal research study conducted on about 60 children in Marin County, California, begun in the early 1970s by Judith Wallerstein and Joan Kelly (Wallerstein continued the research over the years and recently, in 2000, published the long-term findings in her book, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce; A 25 Year Landmark Study .) Wallerstein’s research concluded that a significant amount of children has permanent scars that linger through adolescence and well into adulthood. Such scars are seen as depression, delinquency, poor grades, fear of failure, fear of commitment, and fear of following their parents’ path. These young adults recall their parents’ divorce as a major trauma in their lives, from which they feel gypped out of a healthy childhood and destined to repeat the pattern, should they marry and have children. We know that children of divorced parents have more emotional and behavioral problems and do less well in school than children who live with both their biological parents. One prevalent element is that one of the parents who has psychological problems and are unable to resolve conflict in a marriage, are more likely to divorce. Parental conflict causes many children to act up and do less well at school. Last, divorce itself may cause kids problems. The income and parental time available to them drops, they see more conflict, the separation scares or angers them, and so on. A research team consisting of Andrew Cherlin and his colleagues studied random samples of over 11,000 children in Great Britain and over 2,200 children in the U.S., using information gathered on parents' and teachers' reports of behavioral problems and the children's reading and math scores (Cherlin, et al., Science, 1991, June 7, 252 (5011), pp.1386-89). They statistically controlled for the children's social class, race, the children's early behavioral and t est scores, and factors such as physical, mental, and emotional handicaps as assessed by physicians. After controlling for those factors, boys of divorced parents scored as high as boys from intact couples on the behavioral and academic tests. For girls , there was a small residual effect, apparently caused by the divorce itself, on their parents' and teachers' ratings of their behavioral problems. This work implies that most of the problems we see in children of divorced parents are due to long-standing psychological problems of one of the parents, the stresses of poverty and racism, disabilities the children themselves suffer, and so on. Their pain is real and must be handled compassionately. Divorce is a distressing experience, both for the couple in conflict and the children caught in the middle. But comprehensive, new research from Iowa State University presents strong evidence that parents, even those no longer living in the home, have a great deal of control over children's adjustment to the break-up of the family. The research, reported in the November edition of the Journal of Marriage and the Family, is the first to examine all the major factors commonly associated with divorce and child development problem. While the findings provide encouraging information, they also reveal some critical gender differences in the ways divorce and parental reaction can affect adolescents. Divorced parents can substantially reduce the probability that their children will experience developmental difficulty by continuing effective parenting and avoiding hostile exchanges. Findings largely support the argument that family structure influence child development through its impact on family processes. In other words, children of divorce are at risk for adjustment problems because their parents are less likely to engage in competent, consistent parenting and are more likely to engage in conflict exchanges than parents who are married to each other. Divorce, with its emotional turmoil, time demands and often financial stress increases the custodial mother's own chances of becoming depressed, which in turn tends to disrupt the quality of her parenting, Simons explains. This, in turn, increases the child's risk for adjustment problems. Compared to fathers in intact families, the divorced, non-residential dads were less likely to help their children solve problems, discuss standards of conduct or enforce discipline, increasing the probability that boys would display conduct problems. "It is essential, especially for sons, that fathers continue to function as a parent," Simons emphasizes. "Simply showing the kids a good time and being a pal doesn't make any difference in terms of developmental outcomes for kids." But
the worst problem that many divorced dads face is being separated from their children
and being termed "visitors" by a narcissistic mother who uses an archaic
gender biased Israel custody law from 1962, which states that the child automatically
goes to the mother with full custody till the age of six. Most attorneys in Israel will argue for the "child best interest" but many attorneys such as Yossi Cohen who is a father himself and serves proudly in the Israel Defense Forces, will bury any notion of what is best for the child as long as he is compensated for it. "When couples start talking divorce - they need mediators, not attorneys," says Drora Burnstein, a child psychologist in Tel Aviv. "The attorneys live off of their conflict. The first measure they suggest is to stop all communication, as they believe that communication can be used against the other party in a legal case. These attorneys create what is known as the 'deathblow' for the child to have any sense of present or future family stability." "Studies show that children whose whose divorcing parents have resolved their disagreements through amicable mediation will have a faster and healthier recovery from the trauma of divorce," Sara Silber, a child psychologist from Ra'anana, Israel told the INA. "I have worked with children of divorce whose parents are fighting each other in court, one can see the suffering and the pain on their faces. It makes me feel very sad, it's heartbreaking, frustrating when I can't reach a parent who is resisting lowering the conflict." Naftali
Shilo, an attorney who has practiced family law in Israel for over 15 years, told
the INA: Shilo adds: "Even if you do not tell the children what is going on they will still know what's happening, they will still suffer from the conflict. Use attorneys to create agreements on shared parenting not to increase tensions which only hurt the child in the present and scars them for life."
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