Fleeing for safety: Helping battered mothers and their children using Article 13(1)(b)

This Hague Convention was originally envisioned as helping the left-behind parent - usually the primary-caregiving mother - reclaim their children from a taking parent. Ironically, the intervening decades have witnessed a reversal of this vision as more than two-thirds of taking parents are primary-caregiving mothers, many of whom allege domestic violence by left-behind fathers. We maintain that the current implementation of the Convention has lost sight of its primary goal to protect children by overly focusing on procedural issues. We argue for greater sensitivity to the fact that exposure to adult-to-adult domestic violence often poses a grave risk or intolerable situation to children in the home. While much still needs to be done, this chapter highlights changes over the past decade that have improved outcomes in Hague cases where domestic violence against mothers is alleged. The final section of the chapter calls for additional changes to further the safety of children and their mothers who flee for safety to another country.