By Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D.
Sometimes what looks like a great opportunity to reunite with, or merely protect, your abused child can be a set-up that lands you in jail for decades. Beware!
I recently came across a Facebook post telling the story of a woman who received her runaway child. This woman escaped to Canada and her child ran away from his father in the United States, seeking refuge with his mother. With open arms she accepted her adolescent child and unfortunately gave her ex (or soon to be ex) cause to arrest her. As I understand it, this woman is now serving a 20-year jail sentence.
I was met with this exact same predicament 25 years ago. My son, 16 at the time, ran away from his home in Illinois to meet up with me in Arizona, where I fled seeking refuge from the Illinois Court. I could have been caged as a get-even plan for bringing family violence into light.
This entire story is documented in All But My Soul and briefly in Being the Light. It was inevitable that prison would have been my next home had I fallen for the legal domestic abuse divorce ploy.
Baiting You into Your Own Demise
I’ve seen this again and again in my work with domestic abuse survivors going through divorce. They long to protect their children and quickly learn how severely one can be punished for exercising that natural maternal instinct.
Often, the person seeking to compromise the protective parent will play an active role in this ploy. I realize this may sound kind of paranoid, especially coming from a psychologist, but the truth is these things do happen, far more often than most people realize.
Here’s how it can unfold: A dispute between custodial father and son escalates into a major blow-up. The father loses control, and the child runs away to assert autonomy. In some cases, I’ve seen the parent even egg the teen on—encouraging the runaway behavior in the heat of conflict—only to turn around and frame it as abduction when the child seeks refuge with the non-custodial protective parent in another state.
The one that loses the most in this twisted set-up is he child. Why? Because no matter what the protective parent does under these circumstances, the runaway child loses a parent.
Legal Domestic Abuse Is Domestic Violence
If the non-custodial parent accepts the runaway child into their custody, the custodial parent can press charges for visitation interference or kidnapping. This can lead to arrest, and in tragic cases like the one cited earlier, imprisonment. That child has now lost a parent to a 20-year sentence.
On the other hand, if the protective parent routes the teenager to a safe haven or trusted family member, as I did, the child can be groomed to believe they were abandoned, betrayed, or not loved by a parent who truly had their best interest at heart.
What a heartbreak this can be for the teen, and what a scare this can place on the relationship with the protective parent. …Another causality of legal domestic abuse.
Domestic violence divorce is truly ugly business. Do all you can to understand these dynamics before they spiral out of control. For more information about legal domestic abuse and protecting your rights in divorce court, visit InnerSanctuaryOnline.org.
© Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D. 2025. All Rights Reserved. Domestic Violence Prevention and Intervention
Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever encountered the runaway predicament in domestic violence divorce. For more insights on these dynamics visit InnerSanctuaryOnline.org
Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D., psychologist, author, consultant, helps people break the cycle of narcissistic domestic abuse and find wholeness, happiness and harmony.
For Dr. King’s latest publication, see Being the Light: A Spiritual Memoir