What We Do
Domestic Violence
Family and domestic violence affects an estimated 10 million people in the United States each year. One in four women is a victim of domestic violence.
Domestic and family violence includes economic, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of children and adults.
A broader, more inclusive term for this behavior is “coercive control,” a pattern of behavior an abuser uses to take away mothers’ and children’s freedom and control their lives.
Yet mothers who report this abuse – especially child abuse – lose custody of their children at astonishing rates. When fathers counter-allege using the parental alienation syndrome, the rate of mothers losing custody increases to nearly 50 percent.
Richard Ducote understands the dynamics of domestic violence and represents women and children trying to extricate themselves from this insidious behavior.
More importantly, he understands the mindset of the biggest abusers of all. Family court judges and child-custody evaluators like guardians ad litem who ignore strong proof of abuse and frame domestic violence as being “high conflict” or a “messy breakup” instead of protecting women and children.
They punish protective parents and facilitate custody for abusers. They accept so-called experts with little understanding of domestic violence who present flawed evidence that would be rejected in criminal court.
The system should stop framing abuse allegations and discrediting them as from a “vindictive” ex-spouse and listen to women and children.
Custody
Child custody and visitation disputes must be understood in the context of family violence and abuse.
Family courts do not often consider the history of violence between the parents when they make custody and visitation decisions.
In this context, the nonviolent parent is at a disadvantage. Emotional behavior that seems reasonable as a protection from abuse will be twisted by attorneys and misunderstood by family court judges as signs of instability.
Psychological evaluators not trained in domestic violence contribute to this process by ignoring or minimizing the violence. They attach inappropriate pathological labels to women’s responses to chronic victimization, making it even harder to convince a judge that children must be placed with the mothers.
Child Sexual Abuse
Incredibly, mothers who allege child sexual abuse during custody disputes face steep odds in the family court system, which is more sympathetic to a father’s bogus claim of parental alienation than it is horrified by the direct testimony of a child who is being sexually abused.
The “child sexual abuse penalty” penalizes protective parents.
In 68 percent of cases when child sexual abuse is alleged against the father by either the mother, the child – or both – custody is switched to the father.
These allegations actually increase a father’s likelihood of winning custody to 81 percent because, in family court, parental alienation trumps validated allegations of abuse.
Yet the vast majority of disclosures are not false. For a number of reasons, children are more likely to disclose sexual abuse during a custody dispute.
Ironically, children are more likely to disclose sexual abuse because of divorce proceedings.
In many cases, the abuse is the underlying reason a mother files for divorce. In almost all interviews with child-custody evaluators, children are more likely to be asked how they felt at the other parent’s house. They might be spending more one-on-one time with the abusive parent as a result of the impending divorce. Or, they simply have more time with the protective parent because of the divorce and feel more comfortable discussing the abuse.
Richard Ducote has spent 45 years advocating for and protecting children brave enough to disclose their abuse.
Tort Law
Why should abuse survivors consider suing an abuser?
It’s a very powerful remedy that many people overlook.
They get a jury trial. Their lawyers have a different standard of proof. While you need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal court, there’s much less burden of proof in civil court.
A tort is an act or omission that gives rise to injury or harm to another and amounts to a civil wrong for which courts impose liability.
When you have a domestic violence claim, the victim has a lawsuit against the abuser, just like they’d have with anyone who inflicted harm on them.
The fact that abuse happened in your home doesn’t mean you can’t sue. If you’re walking down the street and someone hits you with a baseball bat, you can sue them, but you can also do it if it happens in your own home.
You can sue for personal injuries and, in some states, punitive damages on top of that.
Sometimes you can’t sue your spouse while you’re still married, and it’s suspended until your divorce.
But sometimes lawsuits can be filed during a divorce, and as part of that settlement, custody is worked out.
For example, the protective parent will waive damages if the father agrees to the custody terms and a structured payment plan. If the father defaults, the mother gets full damages. Ducote Law will come after him from every conceivable angle.
Women can sue even if their abusers didn’t inflict emotional distress. If they’re being called names daily, being isolated, being threatened – “I’m going to kill you” – that suffices for a lawsuit.
Most abusers are bullies, and bullies don’t do well when people stand up to them.