Declaration for the abolition of the mandatory joint custody law

Five years is too long.

Five years have passed since the New Democracy government passed Law 4800/2021, a proposal by then Minister of Justice Kostas Tsiaras for the revision of family law, known as the mandatory joint custody law, the Tsiaras law.

From the outset it was clear that the focus of the revision was not the best interest of the child and/or the protection of victims of domestic violence. In the initial bill, as published, we saw wording that directly violated the Istanbul Convention – which Greece ratified in 2018 and which explicitly states that the safety of victims of gender-based violence takes precedence over any provision. We also saw references to the pseudo-theory of "parental alienation," discredited by international scientific bodies and organizations, which treats a child's opinion in court disputes as a product of coaching and portrays women as manipulative harpies. On the eve of the vote, then New Democracy MP Yiannis Loverdos summed up the spirit of the law in Parliament by saying that "a man who beats his wife can still be a good father."

The government refused to engage in dialogue with women's and feminist organizations and with the scientific and legal bodies that reacted strongly against the proposed revision, and passed the law anyway. This law was a commission. Ordered by powerful men with connections to the government who were in disputes with their ex-partners and wanted to regulate child support and custody in a way that would benefit themselves, in a punitive manner toward the woman who had dared to challenge their authority even slightly. Alongside them stood the army of the men's rights lobby, a group of men who dream of returning to traditional family models and undoing the rights won through decades of feminist struggle. Among the law's fervent supporters were also many men facing allegations of domestic violence and sexual abuse of their own children.

The real objectives were the reduction of child support, the continuation of control over woman and child even after separation, and the prevention of reporting and/or conviction in cases of domestic violence. So that women wouldn't seek divorce. So that the heads that had been raised would bow down again.

Five years later, the results of the law's passage have shaped an ominous landscape.

The three main pillars of the Mandatory Joint Custody law:

a) the pseudo-theory of "parental alienation"
b) the myth that most allegations of domestic violence and sexual abuse are false allegations, and
c) the doctrine of contact at any cost, which values the safety and wellbeing of the child and the ex-partner/spouse as less important than the father's loss of contact rights, should he claim them,

are taught at the National School of Judicial Officers, to mental health specialists, and to social workers.

Now women who report abuse risk losing custody of their children and are accumulating prison sentences in the witch hunt of the Tsiaras law. Increasingly often, in domestic violence cases we read that the woman was afraid to report the abuse against herself and her child because the abuser had threatened that she would never see her children again. Vasiliki in Kalamata might have been with us today, might have managed to leave, had she not faced her femicidal partner's threat: "I'll take the children away from you."

Amid structural gender, racial, and class inequality, the absence of a unified child protection system, and the lack of adequate, inclusive, caring structures to address gender-based/domestic violence, the mandatory joint custody law arrived as a catalyst and a weapon in the hands of abusers against women and children. It has rapidly increased court disputes and, consequently, the money required, making it impossible for poor women and their children to defend their lives - unemployed women, migrant women, working-class women, Roma women, trans women, disabled women: how many courts can they afford? This economic violence constitutes a tool of revenge and control in the hands of men who are treated with characteristic leniency by the judicial authorities when they fail to pay the child support they owe, while a woman who dares to violate the terms of child-father contact, out of respect for the child's wishes and voice, risks imprisonment. Mandatory joint custody is a permanent threat hanging over our heads.

But if there is one thing that the mandatory joint custody law and the imposed joint decision-making, even in cases of sole custody by one parent, grinds to dust, it is the rights of the child. Because even under sole custody, theoretically the only available protection, the law traps victims together with their abusers. Schools, medical procedures, psychological support, KE.D.A.S.Y (Diagnostic, Assessment and Support Centers), relocations, travel, moving house: almost everything requires a joint decision - a shared decision. The abuser doesn't even need to win custody to maintain control. We see rulings on alternating residence for breastfeeding infants, we see children who have reported abuse ending up in the custody of the abusive parent, or being forced into sessions with the abusive parent, or even remaining in institutions with the aim of being coerced into withdrawing their refusal of contact.

The child's voice has been silenced.

In practice, the Tsiaras law confronts every mother with a brutal dilemma: if she protects her child and refuses to hand them over to an abusive father, she risks imprisonment and loss of custody. If she obeys, she leaves the child and herself exposed to violence. And this is not a dilemma but a trap.

The international institutional reactions ignored by the Mitsotakis government

On May 17, 2021, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women sent a letter to the New Democracy government: "This law, if enacted, will expose victims of domestic violence to increased risk." The recommendation was clear: to review the provisions taking into account Greece's international obligations. The government passed the law the very next day.

In November 2023, GREVIO - the Council of Europe's group of experts monitoring the implementation of the Istanbul Convention - issued urgent recommendations to Greece: to immediately end the practice of removing children from non-violent parents on the grounds of "parental alienation," and to train judges on the lack of scientific basis for this theory. Eighteen urgent recommendations. The Mitsotakis government has left them unread.

On the official website of the National School of Judicial Officers, we find no reference to these recommendations. We do, however, find educational material that promotes exactly what GREVIO is asking to be stopped. It is to these courts that the victims of abusers, children and women, must turn.

We will not take a single step back!

Immediate abolition of Law 4800/2021 (the Tsiaras law on mandatory joint custody).

Any revision must fully comply with the Istanbul Convention.

Throw the pseudo-theory of parental alienation in the trash, that is where it belongs. No use of it in expert (forensic) assessments, court cases, or judges' manuals.

Men in general are not threatened by the abolition of this law. Let them not be afraid. The only ones who should be afraid are the abusers who forced their way into the homes of women and children, bearing the seal of an unacceptable law and the justice system that follows it.

This text is a call to the entire feminist and queer movement, to all organizations, unions, groups, and parties. To take initiatives. To launch campaigns. To fight for the abolition of the Tsiaras law.

It is a call for a counter-offensive against the war being waged on our bodies, in Greece and internationally.

We will not mourn more women. We will not weep for children. We will not go back to the dark times of the man/father as Master. We have no intention of returning to a misogynistic patriarchal regime of violence, terror, and control, from which millions of women and queer beings across the planet have fought to escape - in every corner of it we shout that we, and our children, will live free.

We will win this fight. The mandatory joint custody law will be overturned.

Not one more day.