From Madness to Mutiny Why Mothers Are Running from the Family Courts – and What Can Be Done about It

by Neustein, Amy; Lesher, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780197661222
• ISBN10: 019766122X
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780197661246
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2026-01-22
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

This book examines the serious dysfunction of the nation's family courts--a dysfunction that too often results in the courts' failure to protect the people they were designed to help. Specifically, the authors chronicle cases in which mothers who believe their children have been sexually abused by their fathers are disbelieved, ridiculed, or punished for trying to protect them. All too often the mother, in such a case, is deemed the unstable parent, and her children are removed from her care, to be placed in foster care or even with the father credibly accused of abusing them.

Employing ethnomethodology, they show how a closed and claustrophobic family court setting that makes practical sense to the system's practitioners looks like madness to everyone else. They also describe the social interactive work of mothers trapped inside the system who litigate furiously, take their stories to the press, or turn fugitive with their children.

From Madness to Mutiny offers an overview of family court malfunction and the parental mutiny that results from it. The authors outline the legal landscape that makes the madness possible and discuss ways to reform the family courts.

This second edition analyzes the recent "business model" that has taken hold of the family courts. Mothers must pay exorbitant fees to court-contracting visitation centers to see their children after losing custody to violent, credibly sexually abusive ex-spouses/partners, many of whom have cocaine habits, arrest records, unregistered (or unsecured) firearms, and histories of mental illness and suicidal behavior. While children have died under such conditions, courts are protected by judicial immunity.

Author Biography

Amy Neustein, PhD, is an independent scholar and an award-winning author/editor of 16 academic books, which have been reviewed in leading journals and cited in the New York Times and Newsweek. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Speech Technology (SpringerNature), and was featured in 2018 in Women in STEM as part of the UN campaign to recognize women who edit scientific publications. She edits three academic book series in speech technology and text mining and has contributed more than 200 opinion editorials to major papers such as The Hill, Newsweek, Jerusalem Post, City Journal (Manhattan Institute), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Baltimore Sun, and Women's eNews. Her letters to the editor have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Washington Times. Her academic work has earned 1,499 citations as reported by Academia.edu.

Michael Lesher, JD, Esq, is a private attorney specializing in protective parent cases and in appellate law. He has argued successfully before the New York State Court of Appeals in a landmark Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case. He also argued before the federal appeals court in a child sex abuse survivor case. He has been quoted a number of times in the New York Law Journal for his efforts to help incest survivors seek justice, and for his penetrating analyses of closed systems that perpetuate cover-ups of child sexual abuse in religious communities. He has been invited to write opinion pieces for publications such as the Forward and the New York Post. His investigative reporting on criminally dysfunctional systems has appeared in muckraking papers such as the Village Voice and other news outlets.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Margaret B. Drew
Preface by Robert Geffner
Acknowledgments
Prologue: What Has Changed in Two Decades, and What Remains the Same?
Introduction
Part I. Family Courts: The Problem
Chapter 1: An Overview of Family Court Madness--and Mothers' Mutiny
Chapter 2: The New Legal Landscape
Part II. Observations in Depth
Chapter 3: Research Methods
Chapter 4: Robed Rage
Chapter 5: Lawless Law Guardians
Chapter 6: Anti-Social Services
Chapter 7: 1 Mental Health Quackery
Chapter 8: Mothers and Madness: The "Aftershocks" of the System
Part III. Changes
Chapter 9: "Rebirthing" the Family Court System
Chapter 10: Reforming the Courts
Chapter 11: Reforming the Court Auxiliaries
Notes
References