Visitation & Exchange Centers

Leaving an abusive home is a dangerous time.  You have to remember that the abuser is, by nature, a controlling, obsessive person who has clearly demonstrated his willingness to use violence, lies and cheating in order to get his way.  This same personality can become even more frantic and angry when his ability to control is dissolving. 
            This is why so much effort goes into safety planning and providing police protection in the first few days and weeks after a domestic battery survivor leaves the abuser.  Great emphasis is placed on keeping them separated.  He’s less able to hurt her if he can’t get near, so this is a tried and true method used by police and courts across the country.
            One challenge to this strategy crops up when it comes time for court-ordered visitation.  Let’s say abusive husband is the father of two beautiful children, and this weekend is his scheduled visitation week.  Barring evidence that he has also abused the children, many judges will order that he gets to spend time with his kids. 
            Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that he has no issues with parenting, and that the children want time with dad.  There has been violence between the estranged husband and wife, but the children have a good relationship with both parents. 
            Let’s also assume for the moment that the mother is afraid of the father or that she’s been granted a protection order.  How, then, does she get the children to him in a way that doesn’t expose her to danger or expose him to arrest for a protection order violation? 
            Her concerns may be valid.  He’s been violent in the past.  He’s angry that he only gets to see the children every other weekend.  He may believe she’s dating someone new, which brings up issues of jealousy and a sense that some other man may try to raise his kids.  Add in any other stressors such as job tension, money problems, wanting the limited visitation time to be perfect, and you’ve got an emotion-driven encounter brewing. 
            The obvious method is to do the exchange in a public place.  This works fairly well, but there is nothing to stop one parent from saying vile things about the other in front of the children, getting into an argument, or actual physical violence from erupting other than most people’s desire to avoid bad attention from other parents at a fast food restaurant or drivers in the parking lot of a grocery store.
            A reasonable variation on this concept is doing the exchange in the parking lot or lobby of the police department.  This strategy works, and it is used quite often.  Take a look at your local police station next Friday or Sunday evening, and you’re likely to see a man picking up or dropping off his kids at the start or end of a weekend visit.
            Police department exchanges work in that the peace is generally held.  There will be no violence or false accusations.  Arguing will be kept to a dull roar, and overall the exchanges will be uneventful.  However, this method has a serious drawback in that children will become very familiar with the department without ever really having a positive encounter with police officers.  They get the subtle sense that police departments are sad places, where their parents look at one another with glares, and where in all likelihood one or both parents trash talk “the cops” who may have already been to the house for a previous violent incident.   This occurs without the child ever having a meaningful encounter with an officer.  This solution offers all the institutionalization without the humanity, and that is the impression children create.

            I must digress here for one moment to say, not for the first time, that if you’ve ever been a parent who points to a uniformed police officer and said to your child, “Be good or that policeman is going to take you to jai,” I need you to go get a big bar of deodorant soap and shove it in your big obnoxious mouth.  In that one moment where you think you have so cleverly conveyed to your child that he better be good, you have, instead said to your impressionable baby that a man sworn to protect him with his very life will, instead, grab him or her out of your arms and set in motion a child’s worst nightmare:  being taken away from her mother by force and put in a very scary place.  The most important thing in our entire profession is protecting children, and now you’ve turned us in your child’s eyes into the monster under the bed.  If you do it in front of me I will loudly and firmly correct you in front of all the other customers.  Fair warning, so please refrain from rude cruelty when trying to redirect your children. 

            Back on task, we also need to consider what happens when a court has ordered supervised visitation.  Supervised visitation means a parent can visit, but only if a responsible person who has been assigned by the court is there at the same time.  This occurs when there have been allegations of child abuse or neglect, or when there is concern that the parent might snatch the kid and leave the state if left to his or her own devices. 
            Court-ordered supervisors are generally staff members at a local child protective services office, and though these tend to be very kind people, they are also overworked people with deadlines and phone calls to return.  The visitation is generally in a small office that has been supplied with a few toys.  Imagine how despairing it must feel to both parent and child to have to be monitored every moment of a visitation by a stranger in a gloomy office or cubicle. 
            Enter visitation/exchange programs.  These are cropping up all across the country, and chances are you have one near you.  They are generally grant-based non-profit centers where the safety and emotional well-being of the child is paramount, and the safety of the exchanging or visiting parents is also the priority.  Centers tend to be welcoming environments for children.  There are comfortable playrooms with age-appropriate toys, facilities for watching family movies, and picnic areas for nice lunches.  The visitations are monitored every second, but this is done in a way that allows for some sense of closeness between a parent and child. 
            A growing number of judges are ordering that all exchanges or visitations take place in professional exchange centers.  They realize that these centers put a lot of time into background checks on both sides, special needs of the children, and safety planning with local police agencies.  In short, these centers tend to be quite good at what they do, which is somewhat miraculous when you consider that achievement of mere adequacy has been the course for so many families for so many years. 
            Do some computer searching for an exchange center in your area.  Chances are you’ll find a superb one nearby, and most seem very willing to let prospective clients schedule a tour of the facilities.  This is a safer, saner way to manage exchanges and higher-risk visitations, and I encourage everyone to learn more about these facilities and incorporate them into your safety planning. 

From my family to you and yours:  Have an excellent, happy holiday, a merry Christmas, a memory-filled New Year’s Eve, and a momentous 2012. 

God Bless.  D.L. Williams