Co-authored with David Adams, Ed.D.
When engaged in child custody battles, many abusers avoid obvious acts of physical or verbal abuse that might make them look bad in court. However, they often engage in a pattern of “spiteful disregard.” Spiteful disregard is a mean-spirited form of counter-parenting where the abuser puts children at risk to spite the other parent. This also places children in the terrible position of feeling confused about how to respond to the contradictory wishes of each parent. Spiteful disregard often traps children in loyalty binds.
The Saunders study from 2012 found that abusive fathers use counter-parenting to block mothers’ parenting efforts. For instance, domestic abusers frequently block or interfere with their children’s psychotherapy, knowing that children are likely to reveal the abuse in the home.
Abusers Undermine the Ex-Partners
Separated parents often have differing parenting styles. They may disagree about what is in the best interests of children. One may be a vegetarian while the other prefers meat and potatoes. One may be highly religious while the other is a committed atheist. Children learn to navigate their different homes. And parents learn to accept that they cannot completely control what happens in the other parent’s home.
Spiteful disregard is a different story. The abuser’s contempt and disregard for the other parent’s preferences regarding the children is a continuation of their dominating abuse from before separation. In spiteful disregard, an abuser places their children at risk as a tactic to frighten and control the other parent. An abuser uses spiteful disregard to antagonize and undermine the other parent.
Here is what spiteful disregard counter-parenting might look like:
- Cindy, a dental hygienist, asked her ex to stop letting 7-year-old Zak eat candy between meals. Steve, Zak’s father, laughed, telling her that she was “just super-sensitive” because of her job. In the following weeks, Zak returned from his father’s home with bigger and bigger bags of candy. Later, Cindy overheard Steve on a video call congratulating Zak for telling his mother that he wanted candy added to his school lunch bag.
- Carla and Jacki met while playing college basketball and married after graduation. They decided that Jacki would continue her professional sports career while Carla would “become the mom.” Shortly after Carla gave birth to Sam, Jacki increased her coercive control. Jacki began having affairs and frightened Carla and the baby when at home. After they separated, Jacki made a point of antagonizing Carla when Sam was with her. During video calls, she would feed Sam popcorn, which she knew was considered a choking hazard until children were 4 years old. Jacki got Sam a collection of toy guns and encouraged Sam to play with them while on video calls with Carla, knowing that Carla hated guns because her brother had been killed in a drive-by shooting.
- Jeremy began showing up at the house of his ex-wife, Kim, to pick up his three sons in his two-seater sports car, where there were inadequate seatbelts for the children. When she objected that they would be unsafe, Jeremy threatened to call the police on Kim for denying him the right to take his children.
- Six-year-old Kira began having nightmares and wetting the bed when she came home from her weekends with her father, George. She said she was scared of “Chucky.” Her mother, Chantel, figured out that George was showing Kira movies that terrified her during her overnights at his house. George alternated between denying wrongdoing and telling Chantel that it wasn’t a big deal. He refused to stop and made Kira promise never to tell her mother anything else that happened at his house.
4 Ways to Combat Spiteful Disregard
How can a domestic violence victim-survivor—and their therapists—document and resist spiteful disregard post-separation? Here are some tips:
- Document everything. Carla’s lawyer encouraged her to record her video calls with Sam. If a victim-survivor cannot record calls because of state laws on privacy, they can still keep careful notes with dates, times, and a description of what happened. The victim-survivor could also have a friend or family member present when the child calls the other parent to document the abuser’s speech and behavior from another room. Victim-survivors should safely keep any text or email exchanges that show the abusive parent flouting the other parent’s wishes out of spite.
- The victim-survivor should try to respond calmly. The abuser wants to provoke a reaction. Abusers try to rile up their ex-partners and get them to say or do things that don’t look good in court. Abusers may be recording the situations they have provoked, which is called “provoke and record.” Victim-survivors need to maintain their equilibrium, which can be extremely hard. The gray rock method may be helpful—that is, becoming boring, silent, and motionless in their responses. This is difficult. One example: The abuser, Tom, cut their daughter’s hair very short during parenting time, knowing it would bother the mother. Instead of greeting her daughter looking upset, the mother greeted her daughter warmly and helped her figure out ways to rock that style. She even cut her own hair, to “match” her daughters. The mom knew that her daughter would eventually be in charge of her own hair. Trying to hash out differences with an antagonistic ex will not work. Where necessary, victim-survivors can ask their attorneys to put their most important specific concerns in a letter to the other parent’s attorney. However, the abuser will think of new ways to antagonize the other parent through the children.
- Victim survivors need to figure out what they can handle on their own. Cindy started taking away Zak’s candy as soon as he arrived at her house. She was kind but firm, “This isn’t good for your teeth, and I won’t let you eat it.” While Zak responded furiously at first, with time he learned to follow Cindy’s lead. She also taught him how to brush and floss his teeth at his father’s. The candy was no longer a weapon. It’s important for survivors to choose their battles. Seek input from an attorney, a psychotherapist, or other ally or a protective parenting support group.
- In emergency situations, victim-survivors may need to seek help. Kim spoke with her local police department. They told her it was unsafe and against the law for Jeremy to transport children without adequate seatbelts. She dialed 911 the next time Jeremy showed up at the custody exchange with his sports car. The police would not allow Jeremy to take the children until he returned with his larger and safer car.
For Custody Evaluators, Guardians Ad Litem, and Other Court-Involved Providers
Abusive ex-partners use spiteful disregard to rattle and undermine the other parent. The goal is to get a protective parent to overreact or to come across as “petty” or “inflexible.” People who evaluate families to determine parenting time need to do a thorough assessment for domestic violence and coercive control. If they are not sufficiently familiar with these concepts or are unable to help parents feel free enough to describe them, they may need to seek further information, written material, or a true expert in these areas to conduct the coercive control assessment.