How this judge helps make children feel more at ease before they’re to testify against their own parents, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
If the domestic violence cases end in divorce, the children were often made to testify on the stands, to tell the court, the judge about what they witnessed at home, and this is going to increase the traumas of their experiences, being witnesses of their parents’ violence. A lot of groups in recent years are having conversations with the courts, hoping to educate the workers of the justice systems on what the children who bore witness to violence in the home go through, to become the partners in protecting these children.
The Garden of Hope Foundation’s social worker, Hong said, as the parents engaged in court, fighting for custody rights, wanting the children to choose sides; the witnesses of these domestic violence are faced with “choosing mom means betraying dad”, and they’d normally melted down in court. And there were some children who suffered from temporary amnesia after bearing witness to their parents tear each other apart in court.
The fears hidden in these young witnesses of domestic violence usually got recalled back as they see their parents engage in court, so how can we help resolve the psychological difficulties in these families?
The judge of the Juvenile & Family Court of Kaohsiung, Lin said, as the parents start engaging, they may get physically violent, or state things such as, “Maybe I should just take the kids and disappear”, to protect the children, the justices of family courts normally followed the rules of “reducing the instances of children appearing in court”. So long as it’s highly credible that abuse had occurred, the judge would do away with the questioning of the precise details, and just sign off on the restraining orders.
Lin stated, that if the kids must testify, there is a comforting testify room set up, with the stuffed toys, the toys, and “in here, there’s only the court justice, the social workers, the investigators, without the presences of both parents”. The judges took off their robes, and started having conversations with children, getting the children to open up about what they’d not dared to talk about when their parents are, present, “the most important is to make the kids feel safe.”
The mediating investigators are professionally trained, they used the play therapy methods, to guide the children in art, to select the cards, to reduce the stress the children experienced. Lin said, that winning the cases in court isn’t everything, that there are, a ton of problems that the law can’t resolve that needed to get resolved.
And so, this, is a good system, to help children tell their side of the stories, like how those play therapy techniques were used by the psychiatrists to help guide children to tell their stories, because children sometimes aren’t expressive enough verbally, and in these court cases, if both parents were present, then the kids may not be able to speak freely, because if they speak on behalf of the father, then, they would feel like they’re betraying their mother, and vice versa, so, this playroom the court set up is something good.
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