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Mother’s Story: Family Court Destroyed My Family & Legally Kidnapped my Children
When we hear horrific stories of children being separated from their parents at the border, my heart bleeds. We commend people for trying to feed and find relatives and family members for the children in distress at our borders. We hear these stories every day. There is a lot of attention given to the social injustice surrounding the children separated from their parents. These heart-breaking stories immediately take me to my personal story. My children were not taken away from me at the border. My children were taken away from me by the Saint Louis Family Court and with absolutely no factual basis. I do not drink and am not an alcoholic. I do not do drugs and am not a drug addict. I do not have a criminal record. I work seven days a week. I pay my taxes. I volunteer at church. I donate to the food pantry. I help elderly who are frail or who have no family members around to help them with daily necessities like translating their letters from Russian to
 
English, writing letters for them in English, taking them to a doctor, calling a nurse for them, taking them to a grocery store, running to a pharmacy, or helping to fix their internet or telephone issues. I volunteer for two nonprofits. Up until my child custody proceedings, which I started in August 2017, I was fully involved in the lives of my two children. My love for my children kept me going. It was a motivator for me to work hard, to save for their college and extracurricular activities. I worked hard to be a loving parent motivated by one goal which was for my children to be safe and to have a better life than I had growing up in the former Soviet Union. All I ever wanted was to  protect them, to love them and to give them everything I could so that they could have a chance at a safe and successful future.
 
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I was not perfect, but I tried the best I could under my circumstances. I participated in their school activities and parent associations. I organized their school events, attended their concerts and sporting events. I cheered for them from the bleachers and at their music competitions. I encouraged them to work and study and appreciate people in their lives. I encouraged them to safeguard their boundaries because my boundaries were destroyed and violated during the fourteen-year marriage to their father. One day, when my life was in imminent danger thirteen years into my marriage, I fled home and found help and support at Safe Connections, the Saint Louis nonprofit organization which helps victims of domestic violence to survive and reclaim their lives. I was in unimaginable pain. I was lost. At times I felt helpless and hopeless. I did not view myself as a victim. I considered myself to be a survivor. When a Safe Connections therapist told me that I was a victim of domestic violence, I did not believe her. I rejected her words. It took my therapist, at Safe Connections, at least a year working with me before I accepted the fact that my children and I were victims of domestic violence perpetrated by the children’s father and my then husband. The realization came with pain, suffering and despair. It was hard for me to admit that my children and I were abused. It was even harder for me to fathom that I did not protect my children and instead of making a change in our lives, I was clinging to the hope that things would get better. They never did. In fact, the abuse at home kept getting worse. Both of my children suffered from physical and psychological abuse. Both exhibited stressful behaviors. To make things even worse, my youngest child told me that his father touched him. I refused to believe my son. I still loved the perpetrator. I did not protect my son, and this is the pain and guilt I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Naively and absurdly, I still loved and believed my ex over my children.
 
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One day, the realization came that things would never get better. I became aware that as long as I stay married, I would be discussing safety plans with my counselor, talk about my suitcase and necessities that I would need to run to a shelter on a moment’s notice. Every counseling session we started with the safety plan and where I would run when violence erupts. Once I accepted the fact that things would never get better, I realized that I could no longer cling to any hope for my marriage. Realizing it was excruciatingly painful, I also felt tremendous relief. This excruciating pain became part of my life and I have a long way to let it go. I knew that I needed to divorce the abuser so that my children could at least have peace and be safe with me during my custody time. I was told that I could not seek full custody and that the Saint Louis County Family Court would never agree to that. We got divorced in October 2016. My divorce was non contested and I agreed to fifty-fifty custody with my ex after he  promised me that he would never lay a finger on our sons again, he would not call them names and he would share custody time with me fairly and with the best interests of our children in mind. I did not fight for any assets. My ex took everything he wanted, and significantly more than the law allowed. I did not care. I just wanted desperately out of the abusive marriage. I wanted time with my children so that they could see that there is a different way of life, with no gaslighting, blows, throws against the wall, intimidation, threats, insults, and daily shame and humiliation. Our fifty-fifty custody arrangement did not last long. In March 2017, four months after the divorce, my ex-husband moved my older son to another county, one hour away, without giving me or the court the notice of his relocation. My ex threw my other child outside of his house during his custody time in February 2017. My ex told our youngest that he was no longer welcomed in his home because he was his mother’s pawn. He threw my son’s clothes on the
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