Violence and abuse: When authorities take away their children from mothers

A doctor expresses a suspicion of abuse, a mother fights for clarification.

Two years later, her son is no longer allowed to live with her.

How could that happen?

Research into how women's attempts to protect their child can turn into the opposite.

Anna Korn finds it difficult to go through the court documents again.

Not only because it says on dozens of pages that she is a mentally ill mother.

Not even because she then realizes again that the youth welfare office snatched her son away from her on the basis of false assumptions, instead of doing everything to clarify a suspicion of abuse.

No, Anna Korn is afraid that she will not be believed again.

She still remembers the day when her three-year-old son Anton gets up from the toilet, cries and complains of pain.

A dragon stuck a horn in his bottom, Anton said.

Korn discovers a circular red spot on her son's anus and is shocked. 

The very next day she goes to the pediatrician.

The doctor documents that the anus is "bright red in a circular shape", according to the patient's file.

In the next few weeks, the reddening will appear again and again with Anton, circular, sometimes clearly red, sometimes discreet, sometimes almost purple.

The reason for this could be an infection.

There seems to be a temporal connection to the weekends visiting the father.

The parents live separately.

“I feel at my mercy,” says Anna Korn

Anna Korn is sitting at a long wooden table, her hair tied in a braid, she is wearing a blue plaid woolen scarf. Behind her is a white bookshelf containing specialist literature on psychology. Korn is a budding psychotherapist, she works in youth welfare. She separated from Anton's father when her son was three years old. Anna Korn says she couldn't stand the humiliation anymore, Anton’s father is said to have sexually assaulted her. The criminal case was dropped due to minor guilt. According to the investigation, Anton’s father was "impressively warned against repetitions", according to the dismissal order. At the request of Ippen Investigativ, the father does not want to comment in detail. 

Anton's file has been passed through many hands.

It was with several courts, with the youth welfare office, with child protection experts: inside, doctors: inside and an appraiser.

Two counseling centers tried in different time frames to investigate suspected sexual abuse at Anton.

The suspicion has not yet been clarified. 

“I feel at my mercy,” says Korn. 

Anna Korn has been fighting for education for almost three years and has lost almost everything: the right that her son is allowed to live with her, the health care for her child, the belief that the state will do everything to protect a child from alleged abuse to protect.

“You have two options,” says Anna Korn.

“They perish from it or they take action against it.

I am often at the border, but somehow I keep pulling myself up. ”Anna Korn is actually called differently.

In order to protect the personal rights of her child, she asked for anonymity.

Statements by children are not always taken seriously by courts and youth welfare offices

Last year, Ippen Investigativ spoke to more than a dozen women affected by violence and read more than 1000 pages of court documents and youth welfare office files. The files and conversations show that in several cases traces of violence and abuse were not investigated at all or not properly. And that mothers and children are not always adequately protected from violence in custody disputes. Stuff was not heard, experts made false diagnoses and the children's fears and descriptions of alleged violence by the father were not taken seriously. 

When courts in Germany decide who will take care of the child and where they should live, a lot is like a lottery: judges and experts are often not trained in how to question children in an age-appropriate manner - let alone how to give signs recognizes abuse or violence.

Reviewers repeatedly produce inadequate reports: A study six years ago showed that three quarters of the reviews submitted to family courts show significant deficiencies.

Again and again this leads to fatal diagnoses.

Our reporter Katrin Langhans (follow her @katrin_langhans on Twitter) is researching further on this topic.

Have you experienced grievances yourself or do you have tips and documents on abuse of power that might interest our research team?

Contact recherche@ippen-investigativ.de in confidence. 

Anna Korn pulled a lot of rivets, if you will.

Her story can be reconstructed on the basis of hundreds of pages of files from court proceedings, statements, an expert opinion, reports from the youth welfare office in the district of Lippe and the kindergarten, as well as with the help of numerous conversations with Anna Korn, her lawyers and other material.

The research appears in coordination with ZDF Frontal. 

Child protection experts: often they cannot investigate violence

In the winter of 2018 Anton complained more and more of stomach ache, only fell asleep in the light, had nightmares and inexplicable fits of anger.

The pediatrician advises Korn to go to a child protection agency to clarify the reddening of the bottom.

A medical advice center that specializes in recognizing abuse of children offers to examine Anton.

But the father refuses to give his consent.

He knows Anton as a happy child. 

If a parent with custody does not agree, child protection experts cannot take action.

Unless the youth welfare office gives an order.

It doesn't work at Anton.

"My hands were tied," says Anna Korn.

According to documents and conversations, several women with whom Ippen investigative spoke failed when attempting to clarify hematomas or signs of abuse in the child because the fathers did not agree.

Cases like that of Anna Korn show that it can be risky for women in Germany to defend themselves against violence by their father in a custody dispute: The attempt to protect the child can sometimes turn into the opposite: criminal proceedings for domestic violence are often dropped, because it is not uncommon for testimony to stand against testimony.

It's hard for victims to endure.

It is even more fatal if the violence discussed is interpreted to be detrimental to them. 

"The mothers are often accused of abuse with the abuse," says one expert

Women who try to protect themselves or their child are repeatedly accused of manipulating their children in order to prevent contact with their father. The logic goes that women invented violence to gain an advantage in the custody battle. Mothers are repeatedly labeled as “intolerant of attachment”, the father is given the center of life of the child. The idea behind this is to give care for the child to those who allow contact with both parents. In practice, however, this endeavor repeatedly leads to fatal decisions. 

The problem has a system.

"The mothers are often accused of abuse with the abuse," says Wolfgang Hammer.

The sociologist was formerly head of the child and youth welfare department in the Hamburg Ministry of Social Affairs and has been investigating problematic cases in which the youth welfare office separated children from their parents for several years.

His findings coincide with those of Ippen Investigativ.

"The mothers' request for a forensic medical report and clarification is often seen as evidence that they want to attach something to the father," says Hammer.

This is the case even if violence against the child or mother is on record - and witnesses are willing to testify.

“I have no understanding whatsoever,” says Hammer. 

The allegations were never checked by doctors

Two years ago, Hammer published a case analysis of problematic taking into care, in which youth welfare offices separated mothers from children because their relationship was allegedly too close and symbiotic.

After that, almost 400 parents contacted Hammer.

Among them were 52 mothers who reported having separated from their partner because they or their children had experienced sexual assault or violence. 

Hammer was able to view extracts from files, reports and court judgments.

His findings are not representative, but they show a systemic failure nonetheless.

In 29 cases, the problem of violence and abuse by judges and youth welfare office employees was hidden, writes Hammer in his research report.

And that despite the fact that the children themselves had discussed violence and sexual assault on their father. 

"I can no longer understand this development in a constitutional state," says Hammer.

Not once have the allegations been checked by doctors or psychologists.

Instead, the women were accused of manipulating their children. 

A dangerous “brainwashing” for the child 

There is a term for this phenomenon, the so-called Parental Alienation Syndrome, or PAS for short. The American child psychiatrist Richard Gardner described cases in the 1980s in which one parent, usually the mother, allegedly brainwashed their child until the other parent accused the other parent of abuse or some other lie. The solution to the problem: One should simply give the parent the care that the child rejects. The child needs - quasi as therapy - an opposite brainwashing. Gardner self-published large parts of his research and mostly referred to himself in the footnotes. Radical patriarchal movements spread his work. 

In the late 1990s, an American journal wrote that Gardner's theory was “a recipe” for declaring allegations of abuse false under the guise of clinical objectivity.

Scientists around the world criticize Gardner's research as pseudoscience.

Neither the world's largest association of psychologists in America nor the World Health Organization (WHO) recognize the disorder.  

In February 2019, it initially looks as if Anna Korn could still hope for a clarification of Anton’s reddening.

His pediatrician establishes contact with the child protection clinic in Paderborn for a second opinion.

The child protection expert: inside examine Anton, secure body traces and telephone Anton's daycare center. 

The educator reports that Anton often wet himself after visiting his father on weekends, up to three times in an hour.

The father is dominant, speaks ill of Anton’s mother and does not always seem to have an eye on his son’s needs.

It says so in the report. 

Urgent suspicion of acute child welfare risk

Anton speaks of secrets in the daycare that he only shares with his papa.

When asked about it, he refused to speak for several minutes.

Another time Anton wet himself on the arm of a kindergarten teacher and fell silent when his father kissed him over the daycare fence.

Another time he spontaneously wet himself in the building corner at the sight of his paternal grandparents. 

The specialist advice center is alarmed and writes a letter to the family court.

The doctors ask for contact with the father to be suspended "because of the urgent suspicion of an acute risk to the child's welfare through sexual abuse in probably several cases".

One sees a suspicion investigation in a specialist counseling center for sexual violence against children "also against the will of the father as urgently indicated". 

The Detmold district court then suspends visits to the father and hires an expert.

The youth welfare office in the district of Lippe filed a criminal complaint against the father. 

A nightmare begins for Anna Korn.

When Korn wanted to pick up her son from kindergarten a few months later, an employee of the youth welfare office was waiting there.

She asks Korn to have a private talk.

She says that the youth welfare office is now taking care of Anton, Korn recalls.

He should live with his father.

The youth welfare officer does not give a reason for this.

Anna is paralyzed.

Anna Korn feels like the protagonist in Kafka's novel “The Trial”: accused for something she does not understand, confronted with accusations that no one names her.

She doesn't shut her eyes that night.  

A quick, fatal decision

The next day she drives to the youth welfare office and asks for an explanation.

The youth welfare officer blocks.

She declines a help planning conversation.

She also does not mention the endangerment of the child's welfare, which is supposed to come from Ms. Korn.

It is recorded in a protocol that was signed by the youth welfare office.

“The woman didn't want to talk to me because she said I was sick,” says Anna Korn.

"I was treated like a felon."

On request, the Lippe Youth Welfare Office does not comment on specific events, they want to protect the personal rights of all those involved. 

Shortly afterwards, Anna Korn received the court opinion from the psychiatrist Johannes Völler from Marsberg by email. The appraiser commissioned by the court writes that Anna Korn's ability to bring up children is “clearly to be questioned” and that her “bond tolerance” is limited. For her, it is “mainly about binding the boy to herself in the most intense way” and “doing everything to ensure that contact with the father is minimized”. She is “imperative” to do psychotherapy. 

Anna Korn allegedly has a Münchhausen-by-Proxy-Syndrome, writes the reviewer.

This is an extremely rare, serious disease in which mostly mothers intentionally harm their children.

They poison or injure their children in order to then take self-sacrificing care and take center stage as a super mother.

Korn is stunned.

The appraiser was with her a few weeks ago, hardly observed the interaction with Anton, she herself had to answer a number of questions in writing and orally for over five hours.

The attested Münchhausen syndrome, as Korn knows today from the youth welfare office files, led within a few hours to the youth welfare office deciding to move Anton's center of life to his father. 

According to an expert, the report has serious shortcomings

“The derivation of this diagnosis cannot be deduced from the report,” says medical psychologist Uwe Tewes, who has been the head of the department for medical psychology at the Hanover Medical School for many years. Tewes works as a court expert and specializes in sexual abuse, among other things. He wrote a statement on the report for Anna Korn. "The diagnostic procedure is unsuitable and unprofessional," says Tewes in an interview with Ippen Investigativ. The report is demonstrably grossly incorrect in terms of content and subject matter. The reviewer sometimes speaks of "questionable", then of "possible" and finally of "clear" indications of the disease. This serious diagnosis is substantiated predominantly with general literature references instead of concrete explanations.“The report has such serious shortcomings that it hardly appears useful from a technical point of view,” says Tewes.

Ippen Investigativ asked the court expert Johannes Völler several detailed questions.

The reviewer did not respond.

When asked whether the district court would still commission Völler in the future, the court was unable or unwilling to answer.

Anna Korn visited a qualified psychologist, a specialist in psychiatry and a specialist who specializes in Münchhausen-by-Proxy Syndrome - they all certified Anna Korn that the disease was not present. 

During this time, Korn also learns that the Detmold public prosecutor has stopped the criminal proceedings against the father. The suspicion was not sufficient. Anton did not provide any specific information about sexual assault in his hearing. Although it was revealed several times that he did not want to see his father, he did not give any criminal reason for this. 

Numerous witnesses, such as the doctors and child protection experts

were not questioned in the investigation.

The DNA sample taken by the child protection clinic was also not examined.

When asked, the public prosecutor wrote that they saw no reason to do so.

"That is careless, that was a mistake," says Christian Laue.

The lawyer and professor at the Institute for Criminology at Heidelberg University represents Anna Korn in court. 

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It's been two years since the youth welfare office took Anton into care.

His mother sees him on agreed weekends.

He is not allowed to live with her.

© M. Litzka / N. Bruckmann

"The suspicion is still in the room," says the defense attorney of the mother

The expert Johannes Völler, who certified Korn to have Munchausen Syndrome, did not even investigate the suspicion of abuse.

The report states that the father credibly denied the situation and showed him an order to discontinue the criminal proceedings on his cell phone. 

"From the discontinuation order you can not read at all that the innocence has been proven," says Korn's criminal lawyer Laue.

The hurdles for a conviction in criminal law are very high - just because there is no charge does not mean that it is proof of the alleged perpetrator's innocence.

“The suspicion is still in the room.

It hasn't been cleared, ”says Christian Laue.

"Anton spoils his childhood and it just hurts my heart."

It has been two years since employees of the youth welfare office took Anton into care. Korn sees him regularly during the week and on agreed weekends. He is not allowed to live with her. The Detmold District Court decided in November 2019 that Anton's center of life should be with his father, and the Hamm Higher Regional Court confirmed this decision. Both courts did not want to comment on the content of detailed inquiries about the proceedings.

The expert opinion was rejected and the Munchausen-by-proxy symptom is off the table, but the expert's statements have nevertheless seeped into the resolutions.

The mother's allegedly poor attachment tolerance has remained.

It is one of the reasons that the child should live with the father.

The father allows visits to the mother without any problems, Ms. Korn, on the other hand, has repeatedly tried to limit contact.

This is underpinned, among other things, by the time when Ms. Korn obtained protection against violence.

And also with the exclusion from contact that was imposed after the child protection clinic had raised the suspicion of abuse.

The child protection expert has a bad idea

Anton has a close relationship with both parents, according to the decision of the Hamm Higher Regional Court, “although he states that he misses his mother and is not with her enough”, this does not mean that the child will “change the household” ".

There is a risk that the mother will continue to insist on clarifying the abuse and that Anton will not come to rest.

“I have had the feeling that I was attachment intolerant ever since it was suspected, everyone has stuck to it.

I really run into walls, ”says Anna Korn. 

One evening in autumn 2020 she wrote an email to child protection expert Sonja Howard, she is a member of the Affected Council of the Independent Commissioner for Issues of Child Sexual Abuse at the Ministry of Family Affairs.

When Howard opens the email, she has a gut feeling.

An inkling that this woman was wronged, she picks up the phone that evening.

The two speak, Anna Korn sends files on her case. 

Howard was affected by abuse himself in childhood and has been committed to helping those affected for a number of years.

“I say: if in doubt, for the child,” says Howard.

It is incomprehensible that one interprets the mother's desire for education to the disadvantage.

“We need independent specialist supervision because youth welfare offices sometimes lose sight of the child and stick to the path they have chosen. 

Annika Mayer also knows the powerlessness that grabs you when you cannot protect your own child from violence. We also changed Mayer's name to protect her son's privacy. The youth welfare office accused Mayer of manipulating her son in order to prevent contact with the father. It was Elias himself who said five years ago during a specialist examination that he only wanted to see his father with him, that his father had hit him in the past. Elias was nine years old at the time. But the youth welfare office didn't believe him. According to the files, the youth welfare office worker could not imagine that Elias was regularly beaten by the father, the father seemed so "calm and balanced". The mother, on the other hand, makes a “psychologically extremely unstable” and “anxious impression”. 

 “Being right and being right are definitely two different things,” says Mayer 

It quickly became clear to the youth welfare office: Mayer allegedly created a fear of the "violent, incompetent" father and brought the son into a loyalty conflict.

Elias repeatedly asserts his will to want to live with his mother, but the competent court decrees that he has to live with his father.

The mother shows an "absolute rejection attitude" and has so far prevented contact with the father for incomprehensible reasons, according to the decision. 

"To this day, I still don't understand how you can expose a child to domestic violence with eyesight," says Mayer.

"Being right and being right are definitely two different things."

A year later, Elias confides in his therapist and reports violence again.

The father hit him in the face several times for no reason.

He also grabs his upper arms and shakes him, for example if he doesn't turn off the television and go to bed quickly enough.

The case is reopened, Elias is sent to the grandparents, and an expert is appointed.

She questions Elias' environment and finds numerous indications that mother and child are telling the truth.

The pediatrician, for example, has documented bruises on the child's upper arms in the past that have never been clarified by forensic medicine. 

“The trauma is not over,” says Mayer

In her final report, the reviewer wrote that Elias was emotionally stressed and that his wetting indicates a complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

She believes that this is related to physical and mental abuse of the child by the father.

The father denies the acts of violence to this day.

This time Mayer wins in court.

Elias is allowed to live with her again.

Mayer is plagued by insomnia to this day, and on some nights she can't sleep.

Elias finds it difficult to trust other people, he suffers from mood swings, even at the age of 14 he still gets wet.

"The youth welfare office would like me to press a reset button, but the trauma is not over," says Mayer. 

Anton misses his mother 

For Anna Korn, the fight for her own child continues.

This spring Anna Korn found out that a diagnosis should now be made, apparently on the initiative of the youth welfare office, with the consent of the father.

Anton visits the child and youth therapist at the child protection clinic in Bielefeld twelve times. 

In the final report of the child therapist, it is said that Anton is suffering from the parents' conflict of loyalty.

It bothered him that he wasn't allowed to be with his mother much more often.

He missed her very much and told me how much he cried when “mom time” was up.

The fact that Anton was still getting wet at the age of six is ​​a sign of his heavy strain.

Another stressful issue is the dragon that came to see Papa at night, but has now stopped coming.

Anton reacts very defensively to the topic. 

The therapist comes to the conclusion that a specific diagnosis is not possible as long as the child lives with the father.

She recommends that Anton live with both parents in an alternating model - or with his mother entirely.

That would stabilize him.

The father shows little orientation towards Anton’s needs, and he rates his son’s bed-wetting as a “laziness factor”.

He had shown no willingness to resolve parental conflicts constructively.

However, the youth welfare office in the district of Lippe still sees no reason to act.

At the request of Ippen Investigativ, the authority writes that "all indications of a child's well-being endangered" had been processed, but the allegations against the child's father had not been substantiated in any way.

The district court also sees no reason to reopen the case. 

“My son is crying himself to sleep because he misses me so much.

And I'm powerless by it, ”says Anna Korn.

In four days, the administrative court in Minden will decide whether the Lippe youth welfare office was unlawful.

Anna Korn had to wait two years for this day. 

Anna Korn hopes.

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Have you experienced grievances yourself or have you received information and documents on abuse of power that might interest our research team?

Contact recherche@ippen-investigativ.de in confidence.