Welcome to Athena's ShieldTM, an organization dedicated to promoting awareness about Domestic Violence and the effects of emotional, physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.
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About Our Organization:
Athena's ShieldTM is an advocacy and awareness foundation dedicated to victims of Domestic Violence.
Domestic Violence against women and children is too common in American culture. Authorities, including police, courts, mediators, psychologists, therapists, and Guardian ad Litems, often fail to recognize the personality characteristics of abusive men (also called “batterers”). Abuse is defined by the Domestic Abuse Project (DAP) as “a systematic pattern of behaviors in a relationship that are used to gain and/or maintain control and power over another.” Types of abuse/battery include emotional, psychological, financial, physical, and sexual abuse. Women may seek legal protection for themselves and their children with Restraining or Protection Orders, and they may even seek help from organizations that provide shelters for battered women and their children. In many cases, these protection efforts fail because Family and Domestic Law Courts recognize the rights of biological fathers as paramount, despite evidence of past abuse and/or potential abuse. Thus, abused mothers and their children are often further victimized by both their batterer/abuser and the legal system itself.
We are dedicated to ending a harmful trend in custody and visitation decisions. Controlling and abusive men – especially those who “only” abuse emotionally, verbally, and psychologically (stopping short of physical violence) – often fool authorities with charming and calm public behavior. Mothers who try to protect their children from abusive fathers are often blamed for any problems involving children and visitation. Many mothers, who have experienced the trauma of domestic violence and abuse, often experience gender bias and discrimination in Family and Domestic Courts when custody or visitation is in dispute. We disseminate information to help mothers and their lawyers in custody and visitation matters, and we promote education and awareness to Family and Domestic Court judges, attorneys, and custody and visitation Evaluators.
One way we are working towards these goals is by compiling a database of Custody and/or Visitation (also called Parenting Time) Evaluations from cases with histories of domestic violence. Our research indicates that Custody and Visitation Evaluations in such cases often favor abusive fathers and label protective mothers as “alienators.” To pathologize protective mothers, Evaluators use an alleged “syndrome” called Parent Alienation Syndrome (PAS). PAS alleges that mothers “claim” that fathers are abusive because the mothers are either psychologically unstable (i.e., hysterical, paranoid, etc.) or bitter and angry over their divorce, thus these mothers “alienate” their children from fathers. Several factors in these cases cause concern among violence prevention organizations, including the fact Evaluators favor fathers even when the fathers' abusive behaviors are well-documented and described in police reports and other objective source materials. Another cause for concern that indicates gender bias and discrimination is the fact that PAS has never been used by Evaluators against a father - not even one father - in a custody or visitation matter, yet PAS has been used by Evaluators against countless protective mothers.
PAS has been discredited as “junk science” by the scientific community, including the American Psychological Association and the National Council for Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ). The NCJFCJ states that any Evaluation using PAS should be inadmissible in court, yet all over the country, biased evaluations ARE being accepted into evidence by uninformed judges who simply rubber-stamp the “professional opinion” of Evaluators. Organizations like the NCJFCJ attempt to educate judges, but there is more work to be done; our goals are to advocate for awareness and justice.
Our Evaluation database provides a quantitative analysis of gender discrimination. If you would like to add your Evaluation to our database, send us a copy:
Athena's ShieldTM
P.O. Box 1934
Noblesville, IN 46061-1934
We insure privacy: you may black out all identifying data (names, locations, and dates), or we will black out all such information when we receive your Evaluation copy. NOTE: For purposes of the quantitative analysis, Evaluators must be identified as male or female, so if you choose to black out identifying information, please indicate the biological sex of your Evaluator when you send in your documents.
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Announcements
Posted 27 March 2007:
If you would like to receive our Newsletter, please contact us at the email address or mailing address below.
Posted 04 April 2007:
We are currently accepting submissions for our Newsletter. We accept personal stories of abuse and/or survival, poems, Letters to the Editor, and artwork (please do not send original artwork: we prefer .jpg file format via email, and printed copies of artwork via regular mail.) Send submissions to the email address or mailing address below.
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