As an avid documentary consumer, once I heard Hulu released “The Nightmare Upstairs” – even without context of the story it told – I rushed to queue up the first episode. Now, having watched the interviews of a family locked in a contentious custody battle out of Utah, I’m concerned and conflicted more than ever.
Spoilers: The Nightmare Upstairs is a mini docuseries that stitches family interviews reflecting on a years long custody battle and social media posts to tell the story of Ty and Bryn demanding, by extreme measures, to be heard by the court. Those interviewed include the children themselves, their mother, their paternal grandmother, and the court ordered therapist.
After years of litigation, the judge ordered intense reunification therapy between the children and their father – whom they alleged to have seriously sexually abused them both. The judge authorized law enforcement to use reasonable force ensure attendance at reunification therapy and prohibited contact between the children and their mother.
In response, Ty chose to barricade himself and his younger sister in a bedroom for over 50+ days in defiance of the court order. During this stand-off between children, court, law enforcement and parents: Ty live streamed the entire ordeal to the world. After weeks of eating instant noodles, not leaving one room, missing school, and speaking to the growing online community – the judge eventually rescinded the order for reunification. Then after a multi-day custody trial, the case was over but the damage was done. The court did not change custody to the father as he sought, but did not suspend visitation either. The documentary ends on a bitter-sweet note of the father voluntarily surrendering his rights so the children would be adopted by their stepfather.
It was polarizing ending. On one side of the case was the mother and children crying out for intervention to protect them from an abuser; on the other side was a father and his supporters claiming parenting alienation, false memory, and manipulation. The children were caught and harmed in the middle.
The series directly addresses topics of parental alienation, therapy, custody battles, and the interplay of criminal and civil legal systems. And as a family law attorney, all I could think of was: there was no justice in any outcome. Which, candidly, is an uncomfortable truth of the legal system as a whole.
With the availability and access to information, particularly through social media, I think now more than ever our legal system needs to reevaluate the rights, processes, and roles of children embroiled in custody battles. Ty and Bryn’s story is unique but not uncommon. They won’t be the last children churned in a legal custody battle. The difference is, Ty was ingenious, radical, and driven to take unique, loud and public action to be recognized by the court. I fear he is going to be a trailblazer for young, feeling voiceless, teens to take extreme measures in their custody cases – for which Georgia’s family law courts, judges, parents, and attorneys will have no other choice to be reactionary. Those uninformed reactions can, and likely will, cause more harm.
I hope the parents, judges, attorneys, and law makers who watched – or will watch – “The Nightmare Upstairs” will think through what would you do if your child barricaded themselves in their room, ran away – or worse- harmed themselves all in the name to be taken seriously by the court system? And more importantly: what are you willing and able to do to prevent that from even happening? What can our court system do better to protect children, when the custody battle itself is doing just as much harm?
Jess Lill
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