“I ask that you please keep telling my story so that the truth is known far and wide.”: A final plea from a Protective Mother the day before she took her own life

Updated June 3, 2023

TRIGGER WARNING: This is an extreme trigger warning. Catherine Youssef Kassenoff, victim-survivor took her own life yesterday after enduing several years of post-separation abuse/coercive control. Below is her final message which echos the life experiences of mothers around the globe and their experiences in the family court system.

This is a story of Post Separation Abuse/Coercive Control. The weapon of abusers: Family Court is used to remove the children from their loving, caring mother and ruin them financially, psychologically, physically and emotionally in the process. Again, this is Post Separation Abuse/Coercive Control and it’s enabled by the current Family Court system, and it’s a global human rights crisis.

“A fellow survivor/advocate took her own life yesterday — dying with dignity in Switzerland. Her message was what I woke up to this morning, and it’s taken all day to find the appropriate words. Unfortunately, there are none. She was recently diagnosed with cancer — sadly, auto immune diseases and cancer is something I’ve come to accept as part of the survivor community. The stress of battling an abuser, who is enabled by the family court industrial complex is too much. It was too much for Catherine. How do you find hope when fighting cancer — how do you find courage when you are constantly beaten down and left feeling defeated? Between her email today and her post on Facebook, she truly felt that she had nothing left to live for or, to fight for. My heart is broken for her and for anyone who is walking the same path. I cannot count the number of moms we’ve lost to suicide over the years.” — Tina Swithin, One Mom’s Battle

“For many of us, it’s not accurate to say that we are victims-survivors of domestic violence; the truth is, we are also victims-survivors of family court. But the collective trauma and injustice we have experienced have brought us together, and our global solidarity — and healing — is a powerful force the world is just starting to see.” — Custody Peace

“Coercive controllers very often seek out weapons to retain or regain their control. A choice weapon is the very systems intended to protect victims and survivors, such as the criminal justice and judicial system. The coercive controller weaponizes these systems to further inflict harm on his target. All too often, the systems themselves are complicit in this abuse, simply due to the patriarchal ideology in place. Systemic coercive control can be the most traumatic experience for individuals who have experienced abuse. When abusers use the system, with false accusations or to further inflict financial or legal abuse, victims trapped in this cycle of abuse, have no escape. Revenge. It becomes the final weapon used by all coercive controllers. — ‘If I cannot control you, then I will use the systems intended to protect you, to control you.’” — Dr. Christine Marie Cocchiola

https://www.facebook.com/catherine.y.kassenoff

A letter from: Catherine Youssef Kassenoff via Facebook

“Dear Friends, Family and Supporters,

It is with a profound heartbreak, that I hope none of you ever experience, that I am writing my last post ever. Today, I will be ending my own life. I will be doing so in a dignified and idyllic setting in Europe. There are simply no other options left.

In the last four years of my life I have woken up every day to a nightmare like no other.

I can no longer endure the abuse and terror of Allan Kassenoff, who has spent the last 4 years mercilessly trying to incarcerate me on false charges, as recently as March 2023. I have also endured the emotional devastation of being without my children for so long, homeless from Allan’s repeated ex parte evictions of me from the homes I own and rented, deprivation of my property and obliteration of my life savings, the loss of my two dogs, the loss of my career and reputation, and the concomitant humiliation and ostracism from all this.

Perhaps if I had the physical endurance to keep going, I would. But with a new, terminal health issue that will soon be severely limiting my physical strength as well, and with no protection from our courts, I cannot keep running from Allan. I was recently diagnosed with a virulent and life-ending cancer — after having had breast cancer twice in my life already. I cannot go through debilitating chemo, surgeries and radiation again, this time with a dire prognosis and with Allan fighting me “until he dies” and no court intervention whatsoever. Those were his exact words to me in an email he sent on March 19, 2023 . So please understand why I did not share this news widely: if Allan had known about my health issues, he surely would have tried that much harder to end my existence.

As many of you know, on January 26, 2022, I was falsely arrested on serial reports made by Allan Kassenoff in October 2021, December 2021 and then on January 25, 2022. After I proclaimed my innocence and fought these allegations, I won. On March 16, 2022, all his bogus charges were dropped and his bogus ex parte orders of protection were vacated. His claims for “contempt” — seeking my incarceration — were also dismissed with prejudice.

But history has shown that Allan will never stop until I am gone. As recently as March 18th, 2023, Allan again tried to have me arrested. On that day, while I was watching our 9 year old daughter skate, he got off the ice and came at me. I told him to “get away from me” four times. He wouldn’t. He taunted me instead. He then reported me to police, claiming falsely that he had a “restraining order” when he didn’t and when I had every right to see my daughter skate. I captured his confrontation of me on video, which I am posting in Dropbox, along with the 911 call and the police report in which he falsely told police I was capable of “killing” him or my own children.

Based on the false 911 call he initiated, police officers came to the rink. Allan stood in the background with our daughter, laughing and pointing at me while I was being questioned, waiting with her to see if I would be taken away in cuffs. See the photo. Fortunately, I wasn’t arrested; the police realized he was lying. But this is how I have been living for years: like a hunted animal, worried about when Allan will make the next false report. He sees all this as a game and the courts have not stopped him; they too are even scared of him or maybe they just don’t care. While they handed out ex parte TOPs against me like candy, on his say-say, they would not even enter a TOP against him after two days of testimony from police and the rink manager that he lied in order to try to procure my false arrest — again.

For a long time, I believed I could make my children’s lives better by fighting to stay in them, even if it was for just moments at a time. As time went on, the “in-between” of those moments became interminable, unbearable. I would long for the girls and try to think of all the things they might need, even though I was held at such a distance that I did not even know what those things might be. I imagined who their friends were, where they went, who they spent time with, what their dreams were. I had nothing more than my own imagination to work with because for the last 3 years, I was excised from being their mother. I could not tuck them into bed at night, take them to school, host their sleepovers, make their breakfasts, or take them on vacations. Allan wouldn’t allow any of that; the court gave him everything he wanted. I often shook from the pain of it.

In recent weeks, I came to realize that my presence in their lives only brings them pain and suffering. That is because they must answer to a father who does not view me as human.

He erased every element of their being that had anything to do with me: French, Christianity, tennis, e.g. They have learned to identify with him, in order to survive. So, they now declare how they “hate Christmas” and they call me “Catherine” instead of “mom.” For him. In the end, they must reject me. For him. I can see the pain on their little faces when they have to manage the unspeakable conflict that only my oldest seems strong enough to manage and fight through to see me. It is a look that has haunted me for a long time. I don’t want to see it anymore. I just want their and my pain to end.

Their father has spent years and millions of dollars — over $ 3 million — to eliminate me from our girls’ lives. He has liquidated savings to do so. He will never relent, he will spend their life savings, he will demonize me to them mercilessly, and he has made them suffer if they even just want to see me. They have been diagnosed with depression and worse. As long as I am alive and want to see them, they will be damaged over and over again with every attempt I make. What is the point of that? The last thing I want to do is make my own children suffer.

Even in death, Allan Kassenoff will never stop. After I am gone, he will falsely tell everyone that I am “mentally ill”, that I am a criminal and a liar. But I am none of these things and have proven it. I don’t have a criminal past; I am a former federal prosecutor and special counsel to the governor of NY; I showed the undeniable abuse he perpetrated on numerous videos, showing I did not lie about that; and I have the testimony and reports of various doctors to prove my mental health. See the link. Indeed, under Swiss law, a person wishing to end their life can only do so after meeting a very high bar and being found competent, not suffering from mental impairments. The Swiss doctor and my therapists, Dr. Anna Filova, MD and Dr. Stephanie Brandt, MD, confirmed this. See the dropbox link. Allan’s need to convince others otherwise comes from his shame about the truth: that he was a domestic abuser. By trying to cast me in these negative ways, he thinks he can clear his name. He cannot: the videos, audios and other materials will follow him forever. You will find police testimony about his abuse, medical records of his abuse, affidavits about his abuse, and more in the link. Shame on Greenberg Traurig, who knew all of this, and did nothing to stand up for the rights of domestic abuse survivors like me and my daughters.

My girls deserve so much better than the life they were given by their father and the court system that was supposed to — and miserably failed to — protect them and me. The court system favors the monied party and, if that party happens to be an angry litigator, God help the other parent. I was a good and loving mom who sacrificed my own career trajectory to have children, whom I finally conceived after many years of fertility treatments. I did not abuse alcohol, children or drugs. I never had so much as a brush with the law (until Allan tried to have me arrested). I put my kids before everything in life. I did not lose my entire life to a fair and just process. I exposed both a corrupt forensic evaluator named Marc Abrams and a corrupt attorney for the children, Carol Most, both of whom were removed in disgrace from my case. But the system did not fix what it broke after that came to light. It turned my custody battle into a money-making churn. Allan filed this divorce action in May 2019. Until just recently, there still was no final trial scheduled in this case. What a complete disgrace — to use the misery of a family so that the various court personnel involved can get rich: Dr. Adler, whose PsyD somehow qualified her to charge $600/hour to “reprogram” the girls; Dr. McGuffog, who charged $450/hour so that the father could sit in on my daughter’s sessions and who told my daughter she had to “pick between me or your mom”; Dr. Abrams, who made over $40,000 to testify for the father and was removed from the Panel of Forensic Custody Evaluators in disgrace; and Carol Most, who just billed a staggering $270,000 after being removed from the case for gross ethical misconduct.

I hope in death I will accomplish what I could not in life. I hope our legislators, judges, media and others will take notice of the price I am paying today, the horrors of family court, and how the court destroys families in order to profit. I hope the public will stand up and say “no more.” Your children deserve better. So did mine.

My primary contact is Wayne Baker (federallitigator@gmail.com), should you have anything to share with him and who has all my documents from the divorce case etc. Please don’t let my demise be in vain. Reach out to him to organize yourselves, use the facts of my case (which Wayne also has access to), and make change. Don’t let our children grow up to re-experience this trauma as adults.

All of my materials in support of what I write above are available at this link, which I urge you to share everywhere before Allan finds a way to shut down this Facebook page. Please don’t let the world or my children forget the real Allan who is on the dozens of videos I have posted here on Facebook — please preserve them for my children when they are ready to remember and learn the truth about him. Please stand up against abusers like this who enjoy tormenting others.

For the sake of my children and other mothers who live through this terror of domestic abuse, I ask that you please keep telling my story so that the truth is known far and wide.

Finally, a special thank you to those in my life who always put my children first and who supported me unfailingly: My Mother, Jennifer Culley, Keri Christ, Stephanie Brandt, Jonathan Davidoff, Wayne Baker, Katherine Klein, Katherine Sinsabaugh, Liz Kurtin, Lizzie Harding, Brian McQuillen, Rory Doyle, and my wonderful lawyers Andy Frisch and Evan Wiederkehr.”

― Catherine Youssef Kassenoff

Rest in the peace you deserved in life, Catherine. We wish peace, love and safety for your children and we will continue to honor your legacy and share your story, which is shared by so many women and children around the globe.

Support:

If you are struggling, please reach out to the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988*. Hours: Available 24 hours. Languages: English, Spanish.

If you are experiencing domestic violence and need immediate assistance, please contact the Domestic Violence Hotline 24/7: Text “START” to 88788. call1.800.799.SAFE (7233), or visit www.thehotline.org

If you are seeking Emergency Housing, to obtain a local DV advocate ora other resources available to you in your community, please visit www.domesticshelters.org (U.S. & Canada).

Advocate for Change in the Family Court System:

​Become an Advocate for the Keeping Children Safe From Family Violence Act (Aka VAWA Kayden’s Law) at www.nationalsafeparents.org, which was recently passed in Colorado in May 2023, which makes Colorado the first state to pass a law based on the federal Keeping Children Safe From Family Violence Act, also known as Kayden’s Law. The federal law, enacted in 2022, is named after a 7-year-old Pennsylvania girl who was murdered by her father during court ordered custody time.

“Kayden’s Law takes the much-needed steps to improve our response to the well-documented, widespread failures of state courts to protect children in custody proceedings and increases funding under the STOP Grant program for States that put laws into place protecting child safety in any private State court proceeding affecting child care and custody. Kayden’s Law will strengthen our state courts’ abilities to recognize and adjudicate domestic violence and child abuse allegations based on valid, admissible evidence so that courts can enter orders that protect and minimize the risk of harm to children.” — Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick

The Keeping Children Safe From Family Violence Act or “Kayden’s Law” in VAWA, which was federally passed by U.S. Congress in March 2022 incentivizes states to ensure that their child custody laws adequately protect at-risk children by:

1. Restricting expert testimony to only those who are appropriately qualified to provide it.
Evidence from court-appointed or outside professionals regarding alleged abuse may be admitted only when the professional possesses demonstrated expertise and experience in working with victims of domestic violence or child abuse, including child sexual abuse.

2. Limiting the use of reunification camps and therapies which cannot be proven to be safe and effective.
No “reunification treatment” may be ordered by the court without scientifically valid and generally accepted proof of the safety, effectiveness and therapeutic value of the particular treatment.

3. Providing evidence-based ongoing training to judges and court personnel on family violence subject matter, including:
​
​(i) child sexual abuse;
(ii) physical abuse;
(iii) emotional abuse;
(iv) coercive control;
(v) implicit and explicit bias;
(vi) trauma;
(vii) long and short-term impacts of domestic violence and child abuse on children; and
(viii) victim and perpetrator behaviors.

​4. Courts must consider evidence of past sexual or physical abuse, including protection orders, arrests, and convictions for domestic violence, sexual violence, or child abuse of the accused parent”

Learn more at www.nationalsafeparents.org

Raise your awareness:

• United Nations Report: Custody, violence against women and violence against children Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, Reem Alsalem (April 19, 2023)
• The Go-To Defense Tactic of Abusers in Family Court Since 1985: A brief history of the debunked concept of “parental alienation”
• They will use the systems intended to protect you, to control you. Written with contribution and advisement from Dr. Christine Marie Cocchiola, Doctor of Clinical Social Welfare, Coercive Control Educator/Researcher, and Dr. Emma Katz, Global Coercive Control Expert and Author of “Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives”.
• Domestic abuse victims are 3 times more likely to attempt suicide (Broadhurst & Mason, 2019).
• It is not up for debate: Family Court needs to be reimagined (just ask U.S. Congress, the UN, the California Judicial Council in 1996, & the U.S. Department of Justice)…and Kayden’s Law is the first step
• National Safe Parents Organization: Anational coalition of more than 100,000 survivor parents and concerned citizens in the United States advocating for evidence-based policies which put child safety and risks at the forefront of child custody decisions. We believe it is a child’s human right to live free from abuse and that child safety, which is implicit in the law, must be made the top priority in practice, in all private custody decision-making. We work with similar national coalitions across the globe, all whom are contending with the same problems we see in the U.S.: Court’s resistance to taking risks and abuse to a child seriously in the context of child access decisions. Visit www.nationalsafeparents.org to become an advocate and bring the Keeping Children Safe From Family Violence Act (aka Kayden’s Law) to your state. (Known as Piqui’s Law in California).
• One Moms Battle: The mission at One Mom’s Battle is to raise awareness and educate family court professionals on post separation abuse as it relates to co-parenting and the family court system (divorce, paternity and child custody battles). Education on high-conflict individuals and post separation abuse will allow family court professionals (Judges, Commissioners, Magistrates, CPS workers, Guardian ad Litems (GAL), Parenting Coordinators (PC), Custody Evaluators, therapists and attorneys) to recognize the abusive dynamics that play out in the family court system so they can make decisions that are in the best interest of children.
• Dr. Emma Katz: Globally respected expert in coercive control, domestic violence and domestic abuse and author of Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives

Additional Stories:

“In her final statement, she said, ‘Reach out, organise yourselves, use the facts of my case, make change. And so that’s what I am doing.” — @DrJessTaylor Keep Reading (Above image via Dr. Jessica Taylor)

“It is high time we all realised that the family court process is one of the most effective ways to continue to abuse, terrify, control and humiliate women in the world. Abusive exes can accuse virtually anything in the family court process, which often leads to women being forced through psychological assessments, false psychiatric diagnoses, accusations of ‘parental alienation’, lawyers advising women not to disclose domestic abuse at all, removal of children, and in some cases, custody of children being given to domestic abuse and sexual abuse perpetrators.” — Dr. Jess Taylor, ‘Do not let my demise be in vain’, A woman has ended her life because of the family courts

We invite you to watch the news coverage as reported by Blaise Gomez, News12 on June 1, 2023: Watch here

“A sickening story of cruelty and domestic violence is making the rounds on social media, and it is truly shocking.” — Cafe Mom, Story by Colleen Dilthey Thoma (June 2, 2023) shttps://cafemom.com/lifestyle/viral-video-shows-vicious-man-emotionally-abusing-dying-wife