Her Son Came to Her for Protection. The State Put Her in Jail.

Guest Blog by Annie Kenny

In courtrooms across America, a quiet epidemic is destroying families. It doesn’t make headlines, but its victims live the consequences every day. It’s not a systemic failure, but a state-sanctioned criminalization of motherhood. Mothers who act to protect their children from abuse are not only disbelieved, they are punished. Their children are taken. Their lives are destroyed. In some of the most egregious cases, they are jailed.

Take the case of Julie Valadez, a Wisconsin mother of four. When Julie Valadez’s 15-year-old son ran away from his father’s home in terror, he ran straight to his mother. He chose her. Not the courts. Not the social workers. Not the judge who claimed to know what was in his "best interest." He chose the one person who had always tried to protect him when no one else would.

For that, Julie is now in jail. Her crime? Being a mother her child trusted.

Julie has spent years in legal hell, fighting to shield her children from a man with a history of domestic violence. She begged for protection for herself and her children. She followed every legal avenue. And still, all four of her children were taken from her and given to the man they feared.

The family court system failed her in every possible way. When she appealed the court’s decision, she won. The appellate court agreed; custody should never have been granted to her ex-husband, who had not completed the mandatory batterers’ intervention program. It was a rare and powerful legal victory. But Julie’s children never returned home to her.

Let that sink in. She won in court. And still lost her children.

Years passed. Her babies grew older, more distressed, more broken by what many believe is the system’s indifference, but in reality is the system’s facilitation of abuse. Then one day, Julie’s son fled. He made his way back to his mother, likely believing, as many children do, that if he could just get to her, his nightmare would end.

But it didn’t.

The State of Wisconsin pressed criminal charges against Julie for "interfering with custody." After being arrested, Julie suffered a massive heart attack while in custody. Despite this medical emergency, she is being held on a $500,000 cash bail that she will never be able to afford, essentially being denied bail. She sits in jail today, her son again separated from the only parent who ever tried to protect him. Is this what we’ve come to? Where protecting your child is considered a criminal offense?

This is not justice. This is state-sanctioned cruelty. And it is not unique to Julie.

In Colorado, Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins, a mother of six, was jailed after she resisted a family court order to facilitate reunification therapy between her sons and their father, a former police officer accused of multiple counts of sexual assault against one of their daughters and physical abuse against their son. Despite the charges, and the children’s individual therapist’s concerns, the court initially mandated reunification therapy. Rachel’s refusal, an act of maternal courage in the face of a deeply flawed court order, led to her being jailed, while the main accused of violating her children remained free.

These stories are not anomalies. They are part of a broader pattern of judicial decisions that punish protection and reward silence, where protective mothers are systematically persecuted for doing what society expects of them: safeguarding their children from harm.

Upon learning how deeply biased and unjust the family court system is, many mothers have told me they wished they stayed. But let’s not forget that mothers who stay with abusers are also at risk of criminal punishment. In the case of Tondalao Hall in Oklahoma, after her partner broke several of their infant daughter’s bones, Tondalao was not only criminally charged for failing to protect her child, she was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Her daughter’s father, who actually caused the horrific injuries, received a plea deal resulting in probation and no jail time. This further highlights the societal expectation that a mother protect her child AT ALL COSTS and AT ALL TIMES. So how do we reconcile jailing these mothers for protecting, when the only other option is failing to protect, which can also lead to incarceration?

Across America, protective mothers are being criminalized for doing what society demands of them: safeguarding their children from harm. These are women who report abuse, only to be met with skepticism, silencing, and threats. They are accused of "parental alienation," told they’re being too emotional, too reactive, too protective.

They lose custody. They lose their resources and support systems. They lose their children. And in the most horrific cases, they lose their freedom, arrested and jailed while the abusers they tried to protect their children from are given full control over them.

I know this from personal experience. I faced multiple contempt charges, not because I broke a law, but because I refused to facilitate unsupervised visits between my daughters and their father, a registered sex offender. He had been convicted of attempted sexual abuse of a minor. Still, it took more than four years in family court to secure a no-contact order. In the meantime, I was labeled high-conflict and uncooperative, as though shielding my children from harm made me the problem.

I am far from alone. Professor Joan Meier’s national study on custody outcomes reveals that when mothers report sexual abuse in family court, their claims are believed only 15% of the time. If the father counters with a claim of "parental alienation," that number drops to a horrifying 2%. Even worse, mothers who raise abuse concerns are more likely to lose custody, 50% do when alienation is alleged. The courts aren’t just dismissing abuse; they’re punishing the people trying to stop it. How is protecting a child being viewed as an individual’s criminal act, rather than a societal duty?

What we’re witnessing is the criminalization of motherhood. The protective instinct, a force so vital it’s hardwired into us, is being recast as a weapon. Mothers are forced into impossible positions: stay silent and risk continued abuse, or speak up and risk losing their child.

The courts demand evidence. But abuse, especially sexual abuse, often leaves no visible scars. Children are silenced by fear, confusion, or trauma. When there is no bruising, no recording, no confession, the abuse is labeled a fabrication, and the mother is deemed unfit.

Instead of trauma-informed evaluations, mothers are subjected to cross-examinations of their character. Their mental health is picked apart. Their concern for their children is spun into an obsession. I have worked with dozens of mothers who have exhausted every resource they have, emotional, financial, legal, just to maintain shared custody of their children, and continue having to facilitate their relationship with their abuser.

The most gutting stories are the ones where mothers lose custody completely. Where a child’s disclosure is ignored. Where the courts look at a mother’s desperation and see not courage, but hysteria. Where a child learns that telling the truth doesn’t bring protection, it brings punishment.

We don’t let convicted child molesters teach in classrooms. We don’t let them run daycares or work in pediatric clinics. And yet, in family court, those same individuals are routinely granted visitation, and we are seeing increasing cases where they are actually granted complete custody, even when the abuse is documented and reported by sources other than just the mother. This contradiction isn’t just disturbing. It’s dangerous.

How does this happen? Partly, it’s ignorance. Many judges lack proper training on coercive control, grooming, and the neurobiological impacts of trauma. Partly, it’s cultural: a refusal to believe that fathers can be predators. And partly, it’s rooted in misogyny—an enduring belief that women are unstable, vengeful, or prone to exaggeration, especially when they challenge male authority.

And then there’s the concept of "parental alienation", a pseudo-scientific theory that has become the perfect weapon against protective mothers. Discredited by nearly every major psychological association, it is still used in courtrooms to undermine abuse claims and flip custody to the alleged abuser. The damage this concept has done to children and their safe parents is incalculable.

Because that’s the mandate, isn’t it? The best interest of the child. And yet, right now, the system is too often aligned against that very principle. The psychological toll on these families is profound. Children separated from their primary attachment figures suffer long-term emotional and developmental harm. Studies show that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as witnessing domestic violence, or losing their safe parent, can reduce life expectancy by up to 20 years.

There are too many stories like these. Too many mothers being vilified for doing what the court should be doing already: protecting the vulnerable. And too many children learning that the system will not save them.

Picture it: a mother in handcuffs, led away from the courtroom where she was just sentenced for contempt. Her crime was refusing to send her child to an abuser. Her children are not allowed to speak to her, not even a phone call. In trying to protect them, she’s been silenced and erased. That image isn’t fiction. It’s happening right now, in our family courts. That image should haunt us. It should galvanize us.

Because when a mother is punished for protecting her child, the system isn’t just broken; it’s complicit. We cannot continue to accept a version of justice that jails the protector and hands the child to the predator. Protecting your child should never be a punishable act. It’s the first and most sacred duty of any society that dares to call itself just.

Julie Valadez should be home with her children. Instead, she sits in jail, punished for being the only adult her son trusted. Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins was punished for prioritizing her children’s safety and well-being. These women are not criminals. They are mothers. And their punishment is a national disgrace.

Annie Kenny is a custody strategist, advocate, and founder of Bloom Consulting Solutions, working with protective parents navigating high-conflict custody cases involving abuse.