A California woman is speaking out after being forced to pay spousal support to her ex-husband who was convicted of raping her daughter for over 16 years.
Carol Abar told Los Angeles CBS2 that “Every time I wrote that check, I cried because I felt like I was paying the man that raped my daughter.”
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed Assembly Bill 1522 last year to close the loophole that requires some victims of domestic abuse to pay spousal support to their attackers. Currently there is no California law that prevents child abusers from receiving spousal support, but a court could take any history of domestic violence into consideration. The problem is that although California law provides protections for women who are victims of domestic abuse, child abuse is not specifically addressed by the law.
Carol Abar’s daughter was 9-years-old when she married Ed Abar back in 1991. According to Carol Abar’s daughter, who wishes to remain anonymous, she was raped and abused by Ed Abar for over 16 years before telling her mother, Carol. Carol immediately filed for divorce, but because of the loophole she was ordered to pay Ed $1,300 in support as she had a higher income.
She was eventually granted relief in the form of a temporary court order after Ed plead guilty to 1 of 5 rape charges last year and was sentenced to a year’s confinement. By that time she had paid over $22,00o in support. However, upon his release, Ed Abar has petitioned the court for her to resume those payments, and it even gets worse: “He’s asking not just to resume the existing support of $1,300 a month, but he’s asking for what amounts to approximately $33,000 in past due support and that too is a miscarriage of justice,” according to Carol Abar’s attorney Brian Uhl.
Because of the fact the law does not specifically address child abuse, coupled with the fact that both Carol and Ed assert that she was never abused by her husband, he may have a legitimate legal claim for that support.
You can watch Carol Abar telling her story in the video below from Los Angeles CBS2, aired on Monday.
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