Lies - Coming a College Near You

MIT, Boston University, Boston Magazine Promote Holly Collins Child Custody Hoax
October 26th, 2011 by Glenn Sacks

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, and Boston Magazine are unwittingly promoting the Holly Collins child custody hoax via their glowing coverage of the new documentary film No Way Out But One. The Boston Magazine piece ‘No Way Out But One’ to Unveil at MIT says the film “will open your eyes to a stunning injustice.”

In Professor Takes a Stand Against Domestic Violence, the film’s director, Boston University professor Garland Waller, claims “[I]f you beat your wife and abuse your children in America you are more likely to get custody than not. This is a shocking fact that most people have no idea about.” Advocates of this view, including Kathleen Russell, Executive Director of the Center for Judicial Excellence, Rita Smith, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and numerous others, hold up the Collins case as one of their prime examples.

In reality, courts tilt heavily towards mothers in awarding child custody, and the Collins case is a discredited hoax. In January of 2009, Fathers and Families released an exhaustive, 11,000 word analysis of the court records and documents in the case. This analysis, which can be seen here, exposed the Holly Collins case as a complete fabrication. Our Report enumerated dozens of falsehoods in Holly Collins’ version of events.

Holly Collins’ claims about her high-profile custody case are disputed by her own mother, grandmother, sister, brother, stepfather, former in-laws, her ex-husband and his wife, the father of her third child and his wife, numerous doctors, Guardians ad Litem, social workers, mental health professionals, and all seven judges who have heard this case.

Collins kidnapped her three young children after she lost custody of two of them in 1992 when Minnesota Family Court Judge Michael J. Davis found “the evidence is overwhelming that the children are at great physical and emotional risk if the children remained in Holly Collins’ care.”

For decades Holly Collins has made false accusations of abuse against a wide variety of people, including her mother, stepfather, both of the fathers of her children, both of the subsequent wives of the fathers of her children, as well as former landlords and neighbors.

To comment on the piece at the Boston Magazine website, click here. Fathers and Families has written to Boston Magazine about their Collins piece–others can write them at editor@bostonmagazine.com.

The MIT screening is on Thursday evening (10/27) but I can’t say I recommend you go, since if you do you’ll probably be accused of abuse. In fact, after Collins spoke at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference in Albany, New York in January of this year, she invented a completely mythical incident, writing that, apparently organized by me from Los Angeles, “Father Supremacists forced their way into a New York hotel where vulnerable battered women were staying for the conference. They cornered, scared and re-traumatized women in the hallways and their hotel rooms, sending them terrified, crying and running for help.” I wrote about the Conference after it took place–to read, see Misguided DV Groups Back Discredited Battered Mothers Custody Conference.