Child Custody: Avoiding more tragedy

Nazi Germans demonstrated that almost anyone could do almost anything, given the right mix of circumstances.

It would be nice to think that "we" could never commit such a heinous act as killing our own child. It would be comforting to think that no "normal" person would ever do what Daniel Berger did. After the Germans murdered half my family, I similarly reassured myself that Americans could never commit such atrocities.

Yet the hardest part about meeting Germans while I lived in Europe was realizing that they are not much different from us, and accepting the implication: if they are no worse than us, we are no better than them. Nazi Germans demonstrated that almost anyone could do almost anything, given the right mix of circumstances.

The easy lesson to draw from the Berger tragedy would be that, when there is even a suspicion of danger, we must act quicker and more effectively at separating parents from children. A more subtle lesson might be more valuable, however, and if we blind ourselves to it, young Brendan Berger will truly have died in vain.

It is therefore incumbent upon us to consider - just consider - the possibility that we already act too quickly and efficiently at separating parents from children.

Indeed, there is evidence that this routine separation is what drove Daniel Berger into his madness. During my work with thousands of non-custodial fathers, discussions of suicide reveal that a majority have entertained the notion at least once.

We expect parents, whose children are kidnapped, to consider any option and stop at nothing. We are not surprised when their pain and stress sometimes overcome their rationality. Nevertheless, we naively expect that, as long as the person who has snatched their children from their hearth is also clutching a court order, then pain and stress are neatly legislated away. We should know better. The images of anguished slaves watching their children being perfectly legally torn from them still haunts our nation.

In fact, the pain and stress when the separation is legally imposed are often even more unbearable. The exiled parent lacks public sympathy and police assistance to soothe and encourage them. There are no photographs on milk cartons, no streets lined with yellow ribbons. Their frustration is multiplied by knowing exactly where the children are and yet remaining powerless to see them.

Adding insult to injury is the writing of a monthly check to subsidize the infliction of this pain. Imagine receiving a ransom note which demands money not to insure the return of the child, but to insure that the "kidnaper" can afford NOT to return the child.

Is there a way to meet the needs of children without leaving one parent feeling like the victim of a kidnapping? In most cases, the answer is a presumption of joint physical custody.

In the Berger dispute, allegations of domestic violence were made. Such allegations are almost standard operating procedure in cases where a mother wishes to deprive a father of custody. Carole Wasserman, a family law attorney, estimates that half of the women making such accusations are perjuring themselves.