0 -;DV LEAP By Email OF TEXAS RIOGRANDE LEGAL AID, INC. Bi-N11tion11\ Family Violence Project 301 South Texas Avenue Mercedes, TX 78570 Telephone (956) 447-4800 Toll Free (800) Fax (956) 825-7035 August 31, 2017 Mr. Michael Coffee Attorney Advisor Office of Private International Law U.S. Department of State Washington, D.C. Re: Comments on Draft Guide to Article 13b Dear Mr. Coffee: Thank you again for the opportunity to comment on the Draft Guide to Good Practices on the Application of Article 13b of The Hague Abduction Convention (hereinafter 'Guide'). We are also grateful to have had the chance to provide oral comments at the August 8, 2017 stakeholders' meeting. We are writing to reiterate some of the points we made at the meeting and to introduce some additional areas of concern. We also want to express our wholehearted endorsement of the views and recommendations expressed in comments submitted by Legal Momentum, Americans Overseas Domestic Violence Hotline, Professors JeffEdleson, Sudha Shetty, and Merle Weiner. First, we recognize the significant effort invested in producing this Guide, particularly given the challenge in balancing diverse views on the application of Article 13b. We are, however, troubled that those who fear broad application of 13b appear to believe it has virtually no legitimate applications at all - and seem to believe that children's only interests in such cases are to be returned to the country from which they were removed. The fact is that the Convention incorporates numerous provisions to protect children's interests in different ways. As Dame Brenda Hale has powerfully articulated in a recent article, "Taking Flight-Domestic Violence and Child Abduction,"1 the Convention is aimed at maximizing children's welfare, and one way it does that is to provide an exception to return where children face a "grave risk." To suggest that this should be almost never applied is to violate the Convention's own purpose - protection of children from harm. We appreciate some signs of progress in the Draft Guide. Most importantly, the Guide states that past intimate partner violence is relevant to future child safety, which is a significant step forward, given many courts' failures - to date - to understand this. In addition, the inclusion of longstanding, well-established knowledge about domestic violence and its impact on children
Americans Overseas Domestic Violence Crisis Center August 31, 2017 Via E-mail Mr. Michael S. Coffee, Esq. Attorney-Advisor Office of Private International Law U.S. Department of State Washington, DC 20520 Mr. Philippe Lortie First Secretary Ms. Maja Groff Senior Legal Officer Permanent Bureau Hague Conference on Private International Law The Hague The Netherlands Re: Comments on Draft Guide to Good Practice on Article 13(1)(b) of the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Dear Michael, Philippe, and Maja, Thank you for the invitation to submit comments of the draft Guide to Good Practice on Article 13(1)(b) (the “Guide”). We also greatly appreciated the opportunity to voice comments in person at the public meeting, and your willingness to hear from those of us working with victims of domestic violence who are directly impacted by Article 13(1)(b) decisions. AODVC: Who we are and how what we do pertains to the Guide I am writing on behalf of American Overseas Domestic Violence Crisis Center (AODVC) as its Founder and Executive Director. AODVC works with abused Americans in foreign countries to provide domestic violence and child abuse advocacy. We provide resources and tools so that victims can navigate the complicated jurisdictional, legal and social international landscapes, to be able to live their lives free of abuse. The services that we provide include case management, Business Office: (503) 203-1444 | Fax: (503) 203-5999 Address: Americans Overseas Domestic Violence Crisis Center 25 NW 23rd Place, Suite 6 PMB #461, Portland, OR 97210 Website: | General | Outreach
Domestic Violence, Developing Brains, and the Lifespan New Knowledge from Neuroscience By Lynn Hecht Schafran Tcom and watch First Impressions: Exposure to Violence and a Child’s Develop- ing Brain (15 minutes) featuring Dr. Bruce Perry, senior fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy in Houston, Texas,1 and Dr. Linda Chamberlain, founding director, Alaska Family Violence Prevention Proj- ect,2 available at watch?v=brVOYtNMmKk.3 The New England Journal of Medi- cine recently published an article titled “Silent Victims—An Epidemic of Child- hood Exposure to Domestic Violence.” It called on healthcare providers to under- stand the prevalence and neurobiological consequences of children’s exposure to domestic violence and take action to mitigate it. Childhood IPV [Intimate Part- ner Violence] exposure has been repeatedly linked to higher rates of myriad physical health problems in children. Altered neuroendo- crine stress response may be one important mechanism accounting for this correlation. Highly stress- ful environmental exposure, such as exposure to IPV, causes children to repeatedly mount the “fight or flight” reaction. Although this response may be adaptive in the short term, repeated activation . . . results in pathologic changes in multiple systems over time; some The First Impressions: Exposure to Vio- lence and a Child’s Developing Brain video starts with Dr. Perry explaining that contrary to what was long believed, neu- roscience shows that the brains of babies and young children are sponges that soak up and are shaped by everything in their environment, including the harm of exposure to domestic violence. Dr. Linda Chamberlain, founding director of the Alaska Family Violence Preven- tion Project,, explains the evolution of her understanding that even babies and young children are impacted by exposure to domestic violence and how that impact is experienced and expressed by children of different ages. Enduring Effects of Abuse and Adverse Experi- ences in Childhood: Convergence of Evidence from and Epide- miology” is an article neuroscientists, pediatricians, physicians, public health experts who assessed findings of the long-running Childhood Experiences (ACE) study in context of the new knowledge from ence. The ACE questionnaire questions about childhood exposure domestic violence and adult After reviewing the more than responses from the mostly white, educated sample, they wrote: [T]he detrimental effects of
traumatic stress on developing neural networks and on the neu- roendocrine systems that regulate them have until recently remained hidden even to the eyes of most neuroscientists. However, the infor- mation and data that we present herein suggest that this veiled cas- cade of events represents a common pathway to a variety of important long-term behavioral, health, and social problems. The convergence of evidence from neurobiology and epidemiology calls for an integrated perspective on the origins of health and social problems through the lifespan.5 32 The Judges’ Journal • Vol. 53 No. 3
is drawn from sev- eral of their publications and videos, all available online.11 In infancy and young childhood, the Lynn Hecht Schafran is an attorney and director of the national Judicial education Program, a project of Legal Momentum in cooperation with the national Association of women Judges. she can be reached at lschafran@ legalmomentum.org. Summer 2014 • The Judges’ Journal 33
cognition. The child in an alarm state will be less efficient at processing and storing the verbal information the teacher is providing.14 The resulting failure to learn has con- sequences across the lifespan. What Can a Judge Do for Children Exposed to Domestic Violence? Children’s healthy brain development is supported by a nurturing relationship with one or more adults, especially the child’s primary caregiver, usually the mother. The most important thing a judge can do to protect children exposed to domestic vio- lence and help them heal is to end their exposure and support the child’s relation- ship with the nonabusing parent. The critical importance of the child’s connection to the nurturing parent is dramatically illustrated in a DVD titled Helping Babies from the Bench: Using the 34 The Judges’ Journal • Vol. 53 No. 3
Civil Aspects of International Child Abduc- tion23 provides that apart from a few defenses, children abducted from their country of habitual residence should be quickly returned. Many “taking” parents are caregiver mothers24 who assert that they were fleeing domestic violence to secure safety for their children and them- selves.25 They invoke the section 13(b) defense, which states that a child need not be returned if there is “a grave risk that his or her return would expose the child to physical or psychological harm or oth- erwise place the child in an intolerable situation.” In 2010 the U.S. State Depart- ment acknowledged that “many” U.S. courts ignore the scientific evidence doc- umenting that domestic violence against mothers harms children and return chil- dren to their mothers’ abusers,26 raising “significant issues related to the safety of the child and the accompanying parent.”27 Neuroscience helps judges assess “grave risk” in the domestic violence context. The toxic stress that harms developing brains comes from living in a chronic state of tension and fear. The risk for children cannot be measured solely by the gravity of their mother’s physical wounds. Summer 2014 • The Judges’ Journal 35