We need letters written TODAY.  HB 1620 came back from the Senate, we are referring as Senate Bill, in its original form as written by the Superior Court Judges Association, which wiped away all of our protective amendments, and will wipe away almost all of the Current 191 Statute’s protections.  (Links below to necessary documents.)

1. Put “OPPOSE Senate’s HB 1620” or “STOP Senate’s HB 1620” or “Do NOT concur with Senate’s HB 1620” (something to that effect) in the subject title and in the first or second sentence of the email.  

2.  Instead of copy and pasting below, pick one or two topics and relate it to your case.  Some topics to consider (mentioning the page, paragraph and line number will show you actually read the relevant parts of the bill and not just blindly believing what people tell you about the bill, feel free to copy and paste that part): 

1. The Senate Bill removes virtually every protection for a child and replaces it with unenforceable “guidance”.   (page 16, paragraph 7(b) allows the court to ignore domestic abuse in favor of prioritizing “emotional impairment” and “abusive use of conflict”, which are two extremely vague and over applied factors, often a counter allegation from the abuser).  Financed abusers dominate the court narrative, pro se/underrepresented survivors up against them usually only get judges to listen when they can quote mandatory provisions in the law.  

2. The Current 191 Statute only directs strict limitations (supervised visitation, no contact, or contact contingent on completion of treatment) only on domestic abuse perpetrators, not parents labeled with non-abuse factors such as “emotional impairment” or “abusive use of conflict”—the Senate’s Bill directs the court to put strict limitations for “any of these issues” (page 14, line 33), which, more often than not, these non-abuse factors end up being labels put on the survivor.  (The Current 191 Statute only directs strict limitations for domestic abuse, it's all in paragraph 2–whereas non-abuse factors are discussed in a separate paragraph, paragraph 3, which does not refer to these strict limitations.  The Senate’s Bill groups all of these factors together in the same paragraph with the strict limitations: paragraph 4, starts on page 3. Specifically: supervised visitation on the survivor: page 13, paragraph (i); contact contingent on evaluation or treatment for the survivor: page 14, paragraph 4(ii); no contact for the survivor: page 14, paragraph 4(iii)).

3. The only mandatory protection left in the Senate Bill is for a criminal conviction of child sexual assault.  Every other situation has a rebuttable presumption, or obstacles that financed abusers easily hurdle over.  This means that parents who have been found in family court to have sexually abused their children can get unsupervised residential time and decision making—not allowed by current statute (In the Senate Bill decision making is only restricted to criminal child sexual assault convictions, see page 20, paragraph 5, unsupervised residential time see reference below in #4).  This means parents who have been beaten up, can be ordered to “co-parent” with the person who abused them–not allowed by current statute. (Page 15, line 5, tells the court that they can decide to ignore the limitation of not ordering sole decision making, if its not in the “best interest of the child”).  The Senate’s Bill codifies the harmful practice of giving custody to the abuser because the survivor suffers from PTSD from their abuse and punishing the survivor for protecting their child with the abusive use of conflict label (page 16, line 27 allows the court to ignore domestic abuse in favor of applying limitations for “emotional impairment” and “abusive use of conflict” which are both counter allegations from the abusive parent).

4. The mandatory supervision requirement for a parent who was found to have sexually abused a child, even raped their own child, is removed in the Senate Bill.  (The Senate Bill strikes out the current statute’s language, see paragraph (k) on page 9.  Similar language is pasted in the new sex abuse section, but it only applies to criminal convictions, not family court findings of child rape.  Criminal findings require a beyond a reasonable doubt standard–civil findings are a preponderance of the evidence, we should be erring on the side to protect children.  The Senate’s Bill, Sec. 2., paragraph 4(c) talks about supervised visitation, but it only applies to criminal convictions: paragraph on page 17, (2)(b) for family law sexual abuse findings have no language on supervised visitation and does not refer to further requirements below.)

3. Put your own email in the “To” field of your email, and copy and paste all emails into the BCC field, the email list is linked below.  

Direct Link to Senate’s HB 1620

List of All House of Representatives Emails

Comparison of House 1620 vs. Senate 1620