In late 1992, my sister faced a life-threatening choice. It was not a medical choice, but a legal one. She had to decide whether to remain living in the state of California or to break all ties to her family in order to start a new life far from the one she had always known.
From age 17 to 22, she lived with a man who both physically and mentally abused her. In December of 1990, she left her boyfriend after he pulled a gun and threatened to kill both her and their son.
She thought the beatings would stop if she just left him, but it was not that easy. For the next two years he continued to abuse her, my nephew and my family.
At first he tried to lure my sister and my family’s sympathy back by claiming he would kill himself if she did not come return. When he realized that doing so would be more a favor than a punishment to my family, he quickly changed his tune.
He started to abuse the court system by filing repeated civil cases. Judge Martha Ballinger gave him weekend visitations with my nephew, even after he admitted to hitting my sister and holding her and his son at gunpoint.
He and his family filed repeated false police reports against my sister. And when he was not busy filing reports, he continued to harass my sister. He sent her letters telling her that if he could not have her than no one would.
I watched my sister turn from a strong, vivacious leader to a scared and weak follower. She came to the point where she did not even want to go out of the house. She knew he would be waiting for her around the corner.
In early September, 1992, an incident happened that pushed my sister over the edge. Every weekend, she had to drop my nephew off at the local church for visitation with his father. Shortly after dropping him off on one such day, the boy’s father came to our home and attempted to gain entry.
“You’re going down,” he chanted repeatedly. Along with his father, they managed to barricade my family inside our home as they lingered outside.
For over an hour, they screamed outside our home. Finally, the police came and told us that my sister and her then-boyfriend were suspects in a vandalism act committed against my nephew’s father.
The following week my sister gained sole custody of my nephew and left the state. Some may say she “ran with the child,” but she did what was right. After all, she is alive and the way things were going before she left, it did not look like she would be.
After living a year and a half in Nevada with my nephew, my sister was forced back to California. She faced several unfounded, outstanding warrants. While she was in jail, the father, who my nephew barely knew, was granted primary physical custody.
When granting custody to my nephew’s father, the judge said, “This is your punishment Ms. Sinapi. Since you robbed the father of his rights for a year and a half, you must pay.” She never once took into consideration the years of abuse my sister had faced and the continual harassment. Later that month, as my sister dropped my nephew off, she was beaten by the boy’s father and his wife. At the time she was seven months pregnant. But even that did not give reason for the courts to allow my sister sole custody of my nephew.
She continues to fight for custody, yet the system does not seem to work for her. People sometimes ask her if she did anything to provoke him. When she tells them “no,” they often seem amazed, like my sister would lie about her life.
What amazes me most is that there are people who think the court was right, that a mother who fears for her life and her child’s must stay close to the father because he has rights. I believe any man or woman for that matter who raises a finger to their spouse or child loses their right to be a parent.
By forcing a woman to stay near her abusive ex-husband or boyfriend, the court system only makes the situation worse for the women and the children trapped in this cycle.
