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Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories

A PBS Documentary

Click here for an 8 minute excerpt

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Originally aired: Thursday, October 20, 2005 on PBS

This powerful new PBS documentary chronicles the impact of domestic violence on children and the recurring failings of family courts across the country to protect them from their abusers.

In stark and often poignant interviews, children and battered mothers tell their stories of abuse at home and continued trauma within the courts.

The one-hour special also features interviews with domestic violence experts, attorneys and judges who reveal the disturbing frequency in which abusers are winning custody of their children and why these miscarriages of justice continue to occur.

Features interviews with New York Yankees Manager Joe Torre, who dealt with domestic violence as a child, and in 2003, started the Safe-at-Home Foundation to help educate people about the issue; and Walter Anderson, Chairman and CEO of Parade magazine, who recounts the emotional and physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his alcoholic father.

Co-Produced by Tatge/Lasseur Productions and Connecticut Public Television.

Underwritten by The Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation.

"Small Justice: Little Justice in America's Family Courts"

Fathers who battered the mother are twice as likely to seek sole custody of their children as are non-violent fathers.
-American Psychological Association

This program explores the family court system which routinely takes children away from the protective parent and puts them in the care of the person the children have named as their abuser. It describes how fathers use and sacrifice their children in order to control and punish the mothers, and how the courts, often unwittingly, help those men. By following the stories of three dedicated women and their lawyers the program exposes a systematic legal failure to protect those who need protection the most. A Video By Garland Waller

For more information, please visit the official "Small Justice" web site at www.smalljustice.com.

Awards

Annual Award for Excellence in Media, Family Violence and Sexual Assault Institute
Winning Documentary, Key West Indie Film Festival
Best Social Documentary, New York International Independent Film and Video Festival

Garland Waller, producer, writer, director, and professor at Boston University

CBS News 48 Hours Investigative Reports

Video and text story: "Chamber of Secrets", the Frieda Hanimov Case

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