Three Steps to Protect Your Children from Their Porn-Addicted Parents
If you share custody of your children with a porn addict, you probably feel worried and scared for your children. You may panic especially if your children are the preferred age and gender of the porn addict.
Our clients in child custody disputes come to us frustrated with family court.
Fortunately, through their work with us they discovered that immediate action can help children avoid the harmful effects of pornography.
You need to start by learning about addiction. Like drugs and alcohol, pornography offers a consistent and effortless path to pleasure. These pleasant sensations are immediate, but also illusory. They quickly turn out to be temporary and harmful. They leave the abuser diminished in his ability to love someone, including himself and his children.
Like all addictions, pornography leads to a vicious cycle. The pleasure lasts only a few minutes. The user then discovers that his disease leaves him even worse than before. The same triggers that led to his first use of it still compel him, but even stronger. Therefore, he requires repeated use. He discovers that he needs even more stimulation to reach the same climax.
Each successive use perpetuates his dependence, until disease overwhelms his humanity. Almost all addicts pervert their priorities. They make poor decisions about their values, which manifest in the misuse of their time and money. They become poor parents. Some even look for opportunities to carry out their fantasies in real life on real people.
If you find yourself in child custody litigation with a porn addict, your strategy should take three steps. First, prove that your co-parent is addicted. Second, he convinces the court to care about his dependency. Third, you propose a specific action for the court to protect your children.
The first step requires you to prove that the addiction exists. Unlike drugs or alcohol, no chemical test can prove when someone is using pornography. However, you may be able to find evidence in credit card statements, computer records, and phone bills. When examining a computer, check not only the contents of the hard drive, but also the history of the Internet browser.
You can also ask the court to require you to undergo a psychological evaluation. A psychological evaluation is based almost entirely on self-disclosure. You could hide your compulsion from the evaluator. Hopefully, though, you’ll use the assessment as an opportunity to seek help.
Once you prove that you are addicted, move on to the second step of convincing the court that you care. Many families and their attorneys skip this critical step. However, you cannot assume that your judge agrees with you that he is harmful to your children.
Different states take different tacks when considering the moral fitness of parents in custody disputes. For example, Louisiana contains an explicit statute that requires consideration of “the moral fitness of each party, to the extent that it affects the welfare of the child.” The Missouri Court of Appeals held that the father’s viewing of pornography must be considered in deciding child custody, but that this factor alone is not determinative. A Florida court ruled that a home-based pornography business operated by the mother’s boyfriend had to affect her fitness to become a mother, even if the children themselves never saw her products.
Once you prove addiction and convince the court to care, start step three: you tell the court specifically how to protect your children. If your children live primarily with the addicted parent, you can ask the court to transfer custody and residence to you. You can ask the court to require the other parent not to display inappropriate materials in the home when your children visit. You could even ask the court to order that your parenting time be contingent on treatment. You could find a support group for sex addicts, modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous.
As with most child custody matters, the best way to protect your children is outside of court. Ideally, your lawyer can use the short process to convince the other parent to seek help for her illness. If he loves his children as he claims, he should want to be the best possible father to them.
Porn addiction gets worse over time. Act now before your children suffer irreparable damage. If you share custody with a porn addict, contact a family law attorney experienced in these matters right away.
Copyright 2007 Scott Wasserman