An Alarming Trend: Moms Sentenced to Jail for Keeping Kids from Abusers

There is an ongoing epidemic some may say is more dire than violence against women. It’s the criminalization of women who try to protect their children from violence. Often referred to as “protective mothers,” these survivors of abusive partners are desperately trying to shield their children from being weaponized by their abusive fathers. These abusers often involve the legal system, law enforcement, child counselors and evaluators, even their own family members, in a relentless and complicated, long-term assault, doing anything and everything in their power to make sure the woman who dared to gain the courage to leave them may never see their children again, and, to top it off, find herself behind bars if she tries. 

Advocates warn that custody courts have long been taught to treat domestic violence cases as "high-conflict"—which assumes both parents  are contributing to the conflict. 

“They don't understand the fundamental nature of domestic violence custody cases,” says Barry Goldstein, former attorney, long-time advocate and a member of the DomesticShelters.org advisory group. “When a domestic violence victim seeks to escape from an abuser, the worst abusers use the standard abusive tactic of seeking custody … to regain the power and control they believe they are entitled to and to punish the mother for leaving. Court routinely helps the abuser because they don't understand [the abuser’s] motives or the harm to children.”

Heather R. had never been in trouble a day in her life. But on the morning of February 3, 2022, the calm of the home she shared with her two young children, ages 5 and 13 at the time, erupted in pounding fists against the door. Police stood outside, shouting that if she didn’t open up, they would break it down.

Heather tried to hold her ground. She asked for a warrant. They told her they didn’t have one.

In that moment, with her children watching and fear rising in her chest, she says she felt she had no choice. She opened the door.

Within minutes, she was in handcuffs, led away from her children, and booked into jail. She would spend the next 41 days locked inside, charged with parental kidnapping. 

Heather joins a growing list of women who have reached out to DomesticShelters.org—over a dozen so far—ready to tell their stories, all similar to Heather’s. They found the courage to escape an abusive partner who controlled them, beat them, raped them, or maybe all three. Some feared for their lives, and many feared for the lives of their children. They all carried forth a mistaken, but completely understandable belief that the family court system would have the best interests of the family in mind. They believed that if they brought forward evidence of abuse against themselves from their ex-partner, a judge would know that, surely, this abusive person was not trustworthy to be alone with children. 

Unfortunately, these women were wrong. Instead, they were ordered to hand their children over to abusive ex-partners—despite the dangers they knew all too well, and despite studies that show more than 1,000 children have been murdered by a parent in the midst of a custody dispute between 2008 and 2023. 

What these protective moms discovered is that too many judges, men and women alike, still cling to the false notion that having both parents involved is more important than protecting children from violence. Research has shown the opposite: this belief is not only unfounded, it is deadly.

Civil Court’s Punishment is Swift

Most mothers would do anything to keep their children safe, and it’s far from hyperbole. This includes defying the law if necessary. Ordered by judges to transfer custody of their children, some as young as infants, over to an abuser who they know has the means and desire to cause harm, many of these women have refused. Which may explain how an increasing number of minivan-driving, PTO-volunteering, suburban soccer moms are winding their way through intake alongside actual criminals.

“Protective parents, who are mostly moms, are jailed when viewed as noncompliant with court orders,” explains Danielle Pollack, Policy Manager at the National Family Violence Law Center. “This includes court orders sending their kids to ex-partners known to be dangerous, or sometimes not compliant to send their kids to some kind of treatment or therapy.”

These survivors are defying court orders not by boarding themselves inside a house and brandishing a weapon, but by begging the judge to reconsider, filing a motion to appeal, reading law books cover to cover—hoping to discover any possible loophole they can—appealing to lawmakers, journalists and anyone who will listen, and, if all that fails, delaying the exchange as long as possible, not truly believing a judge would force them to hand over their child to a dangerous man. In the end, for many, it’s simply not enough. Their children are taken, and the mothers, too. One given to an abuser and one put behind bars. 

Technically, it’s called contempt. And it is illegal. But so is child abuse. Which begs the question: why aren’t both being enforced equally?

For starters, putting protective mothers behind bars for contempt of court is done through a civil court. Here, the process is different than in criminal court. The ruling is at a judge’s discretion. No jury needs to come to a unanimous decision. The so-called defendant—in this case, the aforementioned soccer mom—will not get to defend herself. Think of it more like a game of Monopoly and you’ve just pulled the “Go directly to jail, do not pass go” card. 

Judges also get to choose how long to put someone in jail for contempt. Is there a process for that? Not really, says Pollack.

“Sometimes courts will jail a protective parent for a few hours or days, sometimes they’re in there for an extended period of time. I would say a large percentage of cases we’ve seen are certainly punitive and extreme.”

Some of these stories make the headlines—survivors like Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins and Kalea Aine— but advocates would argue not nearly enough, mostly because the mothers are also slapped with gag orders forbidding them from talking to anyone about their jail sentence, lest they be sent back. 

Colorado mom Pickrel-Hawkins was sentenced to seven consecutive weekends in jail in 2024 for not following a court order to continue reunification therapy between her abusive ex-husband and her two sons, ages 10 and 14, who say they were physically and sexually abused by their dad. Pickrel-Hawkins told the Denver-Gazette that continuing to attend the so-called therapy caused her children to cry uncontrollably, have explosive outbursts and express thoughts of self-harm. The mom described the program as “nothing but manipulation, psychological abuse. It’s been nothing but coercion and gaslighting.”

Aine, another Colorado mother, was sentenced to 23 months behind bars in 2020 for defying a gag order in her child custody case, a restriction the judge placed only on the mom. The order was so restrictive Aine wasn’t even allowed to contact a lawyer, something lawmakers say is discernably illegal. She was bailed out after 10 months by an attorney she was eventually able to get in touch with. There are reports that Aine’s young children had disclosed sexual abuse by their father, leading to accusations of parental alienation and a subsequent gag order on Aine. 

It’s an all-too-common abuser ploy to call out a protective parent as alienating, as we wrote about in the survivor story of Jill Montes, who lost custody of her children after her son came forward with sexual abuse allegations against his dad. Some abusers go so far as to accuse the parent of having a debunked psychological disorder called “parental alienation syndrome,” or PAS. The so-called diagnosis was concocted by psychologist Richard Gardner in the 1980s. It claims that one parent is brainwashing a child to refuse to see the other parent, a convenient way to excuse a child’s obvious fear of an abuser. 

“Gardner made this up based on his own clinical observations with no science behind it,” says Mo Therese Hannah, Ph.D, founder of the Battered Mother’s Custody Conference and New York professor of psychology at Sienna College. “It’s a way to divert attention away from the attacker and onto the victim. It’s like a joke that was taken very seriously.”  

In turn, individuals, oftentimes with no clinical licenses or psychological backgrounds whatsoever, have found a goldmine profiting off of abusive fathers willing to pay a hefty sum to buy back their custody through a “parental alienation” claim. Camps like Family Bridges where Ally Toyos and her sister were taken as teenagers offer judges a swift way to deal with what they may see as bickering parents who can’t come to a custody agreement. Conveniently, only the organizers of these very expensive camps can deem when the children are “cured” and ready to come home to their other parent, free from the burden of that pesky belief that they were once abused. 

When the protective parent hears this, it seems almost too unbelievable to be true. But if they resist, they too, may find themselves in contempt of court.

And it’s not just jail time protective mothers are looking at—according to a study by Joan Meier, Professor of Clinical Law and Director of the National Family Violence Law Center at the George Washington University Law School, in published cases of a mother claiming abuse and a father claiming parental alienation, a mother will lose custody anywhere from 50 to 73 percent of the time, sometimes forever.

Which is exactly what happened next to Heather. 

No Updates, No Visits, No Voice

When DomesticShelters.org last interviewed Heather, she told us it’d been 1,314 days since she’d last seen her little boy, Sam, who’s now 8. She’s not even allowed to ask for updates. 

“I look on Facebook so I can know he’s alive,” she says. There, she is sometimes able to see photos of him with his father and stepmother. He looks sad, she thinks. 

She struggles to be present for her 16-year-old daughter, who she had before meeting her ex-husband. 

“I feel awful. I don’t even go out—I work and I come home and put on a happy face for her.”

Many days, Heather wonders if she should have ever left her marriage where, despite the violence she endured, she could be with both of her children.

“This is worse. I don’t care what anyone says. I should have taken the punches so my little guy didn’t have to.”

Before Heather was arrested, it was Joseph who was facing jail time for assaulting Heather when they were married. One night, when Sam was still a baby, she was holding him and sitting with her daughter in bed when Joseph tore into the room in a flurry of anger. She says he spit on her, dragged her across the floor while she desperately held on to Sam, and then strangled her. He was arrested and charged with simple assault against her and aggravated assault against a minor, but the latter charge was dropped. He was sentenced to six months, says Heather, but appealed, and his lawyer was able to stay his sentence for over a year. 

In that time, Heather says Joseph’s abuse didn’t cease. He continued to stalk and harass her even after the couple divorced. Heather thought if she could appease him, it would give her some reprieve. She gave him the house, let him have more supervised visitation with Sam. She hoped it would get him to leave them alone. It didn’t. 

She decided to put some distance between them and requested to move to a bordering state with Sam and her daughter where her family lived. Joseph seemingly obliged. For safety reasons, she didn’t share her new address with Joseph. Much to her surprise, she says that when she showed up at the vacant house on move-in day with her children, the police were waiting for her. 

“[Joseph] had called 911 saying I had kidnapped my son and that I took my kids out of the state. He said I was going to kill my son.”

She showed the police her order of protection, Joseph’s sentencing guidelines, all the documentation that allowed her to be there. The police eventually moved on, but the message was clear—Joseph was never going to leave them alone. 

Pediatrician Rules ‘Severe Neglect,’ Judge Isn’t Swayed

Even though Joseph was facing jail time for assault, he was still allowed supervised visitation, supervised, says Heather, by his mother. Sam would come home from his weekend visits with mystery bruises. He was a toddler, so they may have been able to be explained away, but Sam’s terror couldn’t be. 

“He was saying things like he was very scared, and he would get hit for saying he missed me. He said they would show him a scary clown on YouTube [as a punishment]. He said he was kept in a tent outside and kept getting bit by bugs,” recalls Heather.

She made reports with child protective services and the local police department. She filed for a motion to stop visitation until the situation could be investigated. Joseph claimed parental alienation.

A judge ordered Heather to continue to allow Joseph to see his son. 

Heather says she tried to comply, but it was heartbreaking to see Sam’s reaction to being taken to his father. 

“I tried my hardest to get him to the exchanges and he’d hit his little head on the window over and over in tears saying, ‘Please mommy, don’t send me.’”

She claims that Sam even told police at the exchanges, when asked if he was scared, that he didn’t want to be hit by his father. 

“That’s not even normal for an adult to deal with, let alone a little kid,” Heather says.

That’s when he really started coming home hurt, she says. 

“We’re talking handprints on his back, golf ball-sized bruises, a thumb print on his neck. He had such severe sunburn he would come home screaming. I didn’t send him back the next weekend and the judge made me send him for 12 days the next time.”

After that longer visit, Heather says Sam came running across the parking lot toward her, screaming. It broke her heart. 

“He thought I was dead,” she says. They got in the car and began to drive home. That’s when her daughter noticed Sam’s lips were beginning to turn blue and his breathing became shallow. Heather drove straight to the emergency department. 

It turned out that Sam, only 4, had RSV, severe bronchitis, fluid in his lungs and had to be put on a breathing machine. The emergency pediatrician documented severe neglect. Heather filed for another emergency custody hearing in the state where her ex-husband lived. Before the custody hearing date could arrive, she says Joseph, who was now finally serving his 6-month jail sentence from more than a year prior, reported Heather to police as kidnapping his son. 

 “All of a sudden I was getting emails from his lawyer that if I didn’t show up to give [Sam] back to his dad I would go to federal prison,” says Heather. She refused. 

“Who would [Sam] go to? His dad was in jail.”

She Knows Her Son Has It Worse

The jurisdictions of two different states didn’t make things any easier, with each one to the other. But Heather claims it was when Joseph got out of jail and eventually convinced the police of the state she was in that she had kidnapped his son that she was arrested. She says she was never taken in front of a judge. Never processed. And since she’s been out, she’s had hearings every month in the state where her ex-husband is located, sometimes twice a month, where she appeals once again for custody of her son. The process has been slow, but she’s hoping she’s getting closer to proving the truth. 

In between those hearings, Joseph still torments her from a state away, especially as Heather gets closer to seeing Sam. 

“I’m pretty smart with the law now,” she admits. This past June, she had a small victory in court. But soon after, the police were at her door.

“Joseph told them I had a machine gun,” she says incredibly. “I’ve never owned a weapon.”

Heather and her daughter live under a protected address, arranged through a domestic violence shelter. Still, she says her ex manages to find them. 

“Any time I get that much closer in court to reversing the custody order, he likes sabotaging that. He has not stopped. This man, I don’t know what he wants.”

What’s worse, she says, is knowing her son is enduring it too. “I know he’s going through much worse than I am.”

She remembers the last thing she told Sam before she was taken away three years ago:

“When you get really scared, buddy, and miss me and sissy, just close your eyes, picture feeding the birds on our beach with the ocean waves. I’ll meet you there in your dreams.”

Heather’s story is not unique. In Part 2, we’ll report on other mothers who say they’ve endured similar battles in family court.