I worked as a court advocate for 5 yrs with victims of DV. Many of my "cases" were divorce ones. I saw almost every woman have to agree to shared, unsupervised custody bc there wasn't adequate "proof" that the abuser was a danger to the kids. Men who had records a mile long of beating their wives got to have unsupervised visitation. One of these men wound up killing his ex wife in front of her kids as she picked them up from his place.
The things I heard, saw, watched, the frustration I watched these women and their lawyers go through goes through my head EVERY SECOND of every day.
Obviously I am not here with my H still bc I think he's great. I will be damned if I will subject my kids to being alone with him and while the current situation is not great, it is a whole lot better than me packing them up for a weekend wondering what is going on while they are out of sight.
I am getting really emotional about this right now so I'm going to go but trust me, I know better than you know how the court system works and it does NOT protect kids. The burden of proof is on the abused to prove that the abuse is bad enough to warrant restrictions on contact and even when I had a RO against my H this winter he still had unsupervised visitation rights with the girls.