Rejected by My Children
Is there a way to bridge the abyss when your ex turns your own kids against you?
By Rachel Ginsberg
It was a perfect picture, the kind you’d stick in a family photo
album: three smiling girls in matching outfits on a sunny afternoon,
embracing their Tatty as they revel in his attention while licking
triple-scoop ice cream cones. But what started out as a Sunday dream
morphed into a family nightmare — it was the last time Baruch saw his
daughters in four years.
Baruch and his first wife divorced close to a decade ago after a
marriage that was stormy from the outset, and their three little girls
were put into joint custody — Baruch had them every other week from
Thursday to Monday morning, and one overnight in between. Less than a
year later, Baruch remarried and his new wife, Liba, joined in the
custody of the girls (“they were really just babies at the time,” she
says) and raised them together with her own four children. For three
years this new blended family found its rhythm, weathering some
precarious custody battles in the interim — like the time Baruch’s ex
filed an emergency petition in court claiming that he was a drug addict
who regularly beat the girls and locked them in the bathroom. For two
months, while she railed against him to the children, he wasn’t allowed
to see his daughters; he was finally cleared after a series of drug
evaluation exams came out clean, and after a court-appointed therapist
determined that not only was Baruch not a danger to his kids, but that
he was a devoted and stable father and there was no reason he shouldn’t
be allowed to see his children.
The complete article can be accessed by clicking on and enlarging the following images.
Source: Rachel Ginsberg
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