S3 Ep15: Dr. Elizabeth Dalgarno: Surviving Family Court and the Normalization of Abuse

“There is always a reason for people to hate on women.” — Elizabeth Dalgarno

Why is it so hard for victims of coercive control, domestic violence, and other forms of abuse to be believed? This is the subject Elizabeth Dalgarno has devoted much of her work to. A leading researcher on coercive control, Dr. Dalgarno has written extensively on abusive relationships, including on how they affect children and why family court norms are so harmful for victims.

No matter where you live, the court system was never set up to protect women and children. So what do we do? How can we survive? Survival begins with understanding the severity of the problem.

In this podcast episode, Dr. Dalgarno and I talk about abuse as the normal state of heterosexual relationships, and how family court systems reinforce the abuse. Some of the topics we cover include:

The myth of high-conflict divorce, and the reality of victims and perpetrators.

How family courts victimize women, and why so many women enter family court systems totally unprepared.

How patriarchy has weaponized the notion of false memories. For decades, therapists of dubious skill and integrity induced false memories in their clients. This caused real harm that has continued for decades. But real abusers have weaponized the notion of false memories to silence people with very real, very true memories. This has even occurred in documented, proven cases of abuse, such as with Jeffrey Epstein.

The false notion of parental alienation syndrome. The creator of this concept asserted that children “seduce” their fathers, and implied that pedophilia is “natural.”

How trauma undermines the believeability of victim-survivors, and why victims rarely act the way we expect them to.

How gender norms create impossible mothering standards that then harm victims in family court.

Why sexual abuse of children is so common.

Why outcomes in family court are not women’s faults, and why the bad outcomes are the system working as intended.