November 9, 2008
April 17, 2009
I am a BADASS: Bloggers Against Deprivation, Alienation Syndromes, & junk Science
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
November 8, 2009
Shared Parenting?
Some things are just wrong. And one of them is when fathers take babies from mothers, even keeping them from seeing each other.
Peter can keep trying, but the fact is women were equipped to have and feed and nourish babies. Most people get that. But it seems the shared parenting crowd will keep trying to make it about them and not the children. There is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with sharing parenting, in the fashion that the children are used to. If dad took care of them more, he should continue to be with them more. If mom took care of them more, she should continue with the caretaking. If the children feed at dad’s breast more….
From US News & World Report:
Breast-Feeding Benefits Moms and Babies: Report
Nursing exclusively for six months, then with foods until at least 12 months is ideal, dietitians say
Posted November 6, 2009
FRIDAY, Nov. 6 (HealthDay News) — Breast-feeding offers health benefits for infants and mothers, and should be promoted and encouraged, says an updated position paper released by the American Dietetic Association.
“It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that exclusive breast-feeding provides optimal nutrition and health protection for the first 6 months of life, and breast-feeding with complementary foods from 6 months until at least 12 months of age is the ideal feeding pattern for infants. Breast-feeding is an important public health strategy for improving infant and child morbidity and mortality and improving maternal morbidity and helping to control health care costs,” the ADA said in a news release.
The authors of the position paper conducted an evidence-based review of breast-feeding’s history, practices and health benefits in the United States and other countries. They concluded that breast-milk features optimal nutrient composition for infants and reduces the risk for many acute and chronic conditions. The health benefits of breast-milk for infants include:
- A stronger immune system
- Decreased risk of asthma, lower respiratory tract infections and gastroenteritis
- Improved protection against allergies and intolerances
- Proper development of jaw and teeth
- Association with higher IQ and better grades in school
- Reduced risk for sudden infant death syndrome, as well as chronic diseases, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and childhood leukemia.
The benefits of breast-feeding for mothers include:
- Quality time spent bonding with baby
- Quicker return to pre-pregnancy weight due to increased calorie expenditure
- Less postpartum bleeding, faster shrinking of the uterus and return to menstrual cycle
- Lowered risks for breast and ovarian cancer, as well as type 2 diabetes
- Better bone density with less risk of hip fracture
- Improved self-esteem and less risk of postpartum depression
- Cost savings from not buying formula.
The paper’s authors said dietetic technicians, registered (DTRs) and registered dietitians (RDs) “have an important role in promoting and supporting breast-feeding for its short- and long-term health benefits for both mother and infants. RDs and DTRs also have an important role in conducting empirical research on breast-feeding-related topics. Research is especially needed on the effectiveness of breast-feeding promotion campaigns.”
The position paper was published in the November issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
Domestic Homicides Up in New York State
Hat tip to Cathy Church for this:
ALBANY, N.Y., Nov. 6 (UPI) — In New York state, 50 percent of females age 16 and older who were murdered in 2008 were killed by intimate partners, state officials said.
A report, by researchers at the New York state Division of Criminal Justice Services, tracked homicides in which the victim was either an intimate partner or child of the perpetrator, or involved some other type of family relationship.The report said 4 percent of adult male murder victims were killed by an intimate partner.
Domestic homicides in New York state increased 7.3 percent in 2008, while other homicides increased 2.6 percent, the report said.
Child domestic homicides decreased by 31 percent in 2008, primarily because there were fewer infant/newborn homicides reported outside of New York City, the report said.
The report also said intimate partner homicides increased by 25 percent in 2008 as counties outside of New York City reported a 45 percent increase in intimate partner homicides.
“Most domestic violence does not result in homicide, but we see the bigger problem reflected in police responding to almost a half-million domestic calls every year, shelters housing more than 16,000 people annually and emergency hotlines handling another 300,000 calls,” Amy Barasch, executive director of the New York state Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, said in a statement.
November 7, 2009
Domestic Abuse Linked to Poor Health, Years Later
From U.S. News & World Report:
April 04, 2008 03:55 PM ET | Deborah Kotz |
I didn’t want to read the news story about Amy Castillo, the Maryland mother whose estranged husband drowned their three young children in a hotel room last Saturday. I didn’t want to read that the family court judge refused to deny the father unsupervised visitation because Castillo continued to have sex with him after he talked about killing the children just to hurt her.
I can only surmise what this poor woman would have done had she known that he would most certainly carry out his threats. Shooting him in cold blood would have been an understandable option. (I say this as a mother of three kids.)
No one wants to read these stories, and no one wants to talk about them beyond expressing pity for this now childless mother. Amy Castillo said she shared her fears and no one listened to her. But even she may not have realized that what her husband was doing was a form of psychological abuse. And all women who live under a threat from a loved one, even when it doesn’t erupt into violence, need to start having these conversations with their friends and family, not only to protect themselves but also to educate judges and doctors who all too frequently miss the signs in their female patients. A World Health Organization study published in today’s Lancet found that women currently being abused were more likely to have memory loss, difficulty walking, dizziness, and vaginal discharge. Even those who hadn’t experienced violence over the past year were more likely to be in poorer health overall, which the researchers write “suggests that the effect of violence might last long after the actual violence has ended.”
Yet many doctors fail to connect the dots between partner abuse—including threats of violence—and unexplained health problems like chronic headaches, insomnia, painful sex, and gastrointestinal complaints, according to Janice Asher, a domestic violence expert and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “All too frequently, women will get CT scans, MRIs, and other tests that go nowhere when doctors don’t take the time to ask if they’re in an unsafe relationship,” she laments. While abuse itself can obviously cause injuries, psychologists have found that the pain often lingers after the body heals due to “memories” stored in nerve cells. This could explain why a woman might suddenly develop pelvic pain after entering a new relationship when her last boyfriend forced her to have a type of sex she didn’t want.
With 2 million American women abused by their partners every year, doctors are doing a huge disservice when they don’t screen for domestic violence—especially, Asher adds, since most women won’t talk about abuse unless they’re asked. (And even then, many won’t discuss it until they’ve established a trusting relationship with their doctor.)
“I’m so glad you’re covering this!” she tells me. I told her that I heard a great presentation she gave two years ago on screening for domestic violence. What struck me at the time was how few doctors at the gynecology conference were in attendance to hear her remarks. “Yes,” she sighs, “doctors tell me they’re too pressed for time to ask about abuse.” So, women may have to take it upon themselves to speak up about prior abuse if they’re experiencing unexplained pain or other symptoms.
The first priority for a woman in danger, of course, is to get away from the source. Unfortunately, as Amy Castillo learned, the system doesn’t always make that possible. Organizations like the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence can at least help put many abused women on the right track to safety.
Reaction to the Double X Post: “Men’s Rights” Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective
Reaction posted at salom .com:
“Men’s rights” groups go mainstream
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
By Judy Berman
When “Quiverfull” author Kathryn Joyce interviewed blogger Bernard Chapin, he insisted on addressing her as “Feminist E.” You see, Joyce explains, “he never uses real names for feminists, who are wicked and who men ‘must verbally oppose … until our flesh oxidizes into dust.’” Now, Chapin’s slight isn’t particularly unexpected coming from a voice in the “men’s rights” movement, a loosely organized coalition of individuals and organizations that believe feminist-influenced society is oppressing men.
But the movement’s bizarre fringe is nothing new, as Joyce reminds us in an in-depth Double X article. What’s really frightening is the impact men’s rights activists (MRAs) are having on mainstream politics. As more reasonable-sounding leaders and organizations emerge, groups arguing “that false [domestic abuse] allegations are rampant, that a feminist-run court system fraudulently separates innocent fathers from children, that battered women’s shelters are running a racket that funnels federal dollars to feminists, that domestic-violence laws give cover to cagey mail-order brides seeking Green Cards, and finally, that men are victims of an unrecognized epidemic of violence at the hands of abusive wives” are facing unprecedented success. Joyce reports that a group called RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting) claims responsibility for blocking four federal domestic violence bills. And with the help of organizations like Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, MRAs are beginning to find a place under conservatism’s big, reactionary tent.
The more moderate men’s rights movement also features some high-profile “converts.” Joyce introduces us to Glenn Sacks, a popular fathers’ rights radio host and writer who she describes as “a former feminist and abortion-clinic defender.” Dismissive of the Bernard Chapins of the world, he’s working toward the comparatively modest goals of increasing shared custody and lightening divorced dads’ child-support obligations during the recession.
What’s so wrong with those goals, you may well wonder. As Joyce illustrates, the issues MRAs are pushing are much more complex than they seem. For instance, divorcing parents are usually able to work out custody agreements on their own. Only 15 percent of cases go to court, and, of those, half involve domestic abuse. Tragically, even in those instances, mothers don’t always have the upper hand. A common family-court defense of fathers whose children testify that they are abusive is something called “Parental Alienation Syndrome,” “a medically unrecognized diagnosis that suggests mothers have poisoned their children into making false accusations against their fathers.” Joyce tells the story of Genia Shockome, a woman who spent 30 days in jail and whose husband was awarded full custody of their children, despite the fact that his abuse had left her with post-traumatic stress disorder. Incredibly, Shockome’s story doesn’t end there: After criticizing the judge’s decision in print, her attorney was slapped with a five-year suspension.
As for MRAs’ accusations, inspired by deeply flawed studies, that men and women are equally likely to commit domestic abuse, well, the numbers speak for themselves: “While some men certainly are victims of female domestic violence, advocates say the number is closer to 3 percent to 4 percent, rather than the 45 percent to 50 percent RADAR claims.” Toward the end of her piece, Joyce makes a particularly fascinating point about MRAs’ domestic violence arguments:
Critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves, minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims. MRA groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false, as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the violence as mutual—part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse—as individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence was reciprocal. Additionally, MRA groups’ predictions of future violence by fed-up men wronged by the family-law system seem an obvious additional correlation, with the threat of violence seemingly intended to intimidate a community, like a fearful spouse, into compliance.
So, what do we do about the increasingly mainstream men’s rights movement and the worrisome gains it has made? Personally, I’m torn. It’s certainly chilling to hear Sacks empathize (albeit ambivalently) with men like George Sodini, the deeply misogynist Pittsburgh gym shooter, telling Joyce that “the cataclysmic things I’m seeing done to men, it’s always my fear that one of these guys is going to do something terrible. I don’t want to say that, like, I condone it or that it’s OK, but it’s just the reality.” But I also realize that the more marginalized these groups feel, the more extreme (and potentially violent) they become. With that in mind, do we go to war, or do we try and hear MRAs out? Is there common ground to be found, or is the new men’s rights movement nothing more than the old men’s rights movement with a fancy haircut and a flashy suit?
Maricopa County Arizona Courts: Are you Safer With the Mafia?
I believe you are! Watch this video….I knew the courts there in Maricopa County were bad. From reason.com:
Welcome to Marikafka County, Arizona
Radley Balko | November 3, 2009
The amazing video above was taken on October 19 in Arizona’s Maricopa County Superior Court.
As defense attorney Joanne Cuccia discusses her client’s sentencing hearing with the judge, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department detention officer Adam Stoddard walks up behind her, and begins sifting through one of her files, which she has placed on the defense table. Remarkably, Stoddard then removes a document from the file and hands it off to another deputy, who then leaves the courtroom with it. They don’t even bother to inform Cuccia, who has her back turned the entire time. The judge appears to have missed the incident as well.
Cuccia was justifiably upset, and requested a hearing. That hearing was last week. According to freelance journalist Nick Martin, who writes at the Heat City blog, Stoddard’s story changed several times over the course of the hearing. His main defense was apparently that he spotted “keywords” on the document that made him think it contained threats to the courtroom. The problem with that story is that if you watch the video, he swiped the document from the middle of the file. It wasn’t lying in open view. Which leaves open the question of why, in open court, he went snooping through a defense attorney’s file in the first place.
I don’t know Arizona law, so perhaps a Hit & Run reader with some experience there can help out. Could it possibly be legal for a law enforcement official to meander up to the defense table, begin reading the defense team’s files, then take documents from said files without notifying the attorney? That sounds absurd on its face, even for Maricopa County.
It gets weirder. According to Heat City, the purpose of Friday’s hearing was to determine if Stoddard had violated the attorney-client privilege of Cuccia’s client, Antonio Lozano, and/or if Stoddard should be held in contempt of court. But Judge Gary Donahoe ruled that because the swiped document itself is protected by attorney-client privilege Stoddard wouldn’t be able to mount his “keyword” defense, because the contents of the document can’t be divulged. According to Heat City, Donahoe said Lozano would have to wave attorney-client privilege if he wanted to proceed with the hearing on whether Stoddard violated his rights.
If this is an accurate portrayal of the hearing, stand back and admire the absurdity: Judge Donahoe is refusing to punish Stoddard for possibly violating Lozano’s attorney-client privilege unless Lozano waives his attorney-client privilege.
November 5, 2009
Bullies Do Become Frighteningly Effective, Thank Goodness Ben Atherton-Zeman, Michael Flood and Other Good Men are Out There
From Double X. Good job Joyce. You’ve done your homework well with this one. Go to the website and comment please at Double X. See what some nutcase men are saying:
Prevent Kati from molesting young boys
By: manhood101 | Sun, 11/08/2009 – 13:14
delusional cunts like her are so funny when they are trying to make sense. this is why women belong in the kitchen and not online. they are too fu cking DUMB to make a coherent, rational point without resorting to hysterics. LAWL 
men need to learn how to protect themselves from these violent, dangerous, man-hating cunts. this is the type of fat fugly troll that ends up molesting young boys. do you really want a dangerous man-hating cunt like kati out there molesting young boys? learn to protect your children from pedophiles like her:
Kati = retarded yapping cunt
By: manhood101 | Sun, 11/08/2009 – 13:12
Who would leave a boy in the care of Kati? After she was done molesting him, she would crucify him and then put him in the oven for dinner. She’s an angry fat fugly abused cunt who is lashing out at men for all her inadequacies.
She tries to fight men and then complains when she gets knocked the fuck out. If you can’t handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen ya dumb cunt 
LOL
On second thought, get back in the kitchen and burn another tv dinner you worthless cunt.
Nancy Carroll = $2 slut sucking on Feminim’s cock
By: manhood101 | Sun, 11/08/2009 – 13:09
Hey stupid cunt, just keep babbling like a fucking moron. You keep proving my point that mindless feminists have no intelligent or coherent thought whatsoever.
Angry radical man-hating cunts like you are a dime a dozen. Crawl back in your obscure irrelevant hole and die already. Nobody cares what mindless cunts like you have to say. People only care about thoughtful intelligent posts which means your mindless cunt ramblings make good toilet paper.
Fetch your stick ya dumb bitch!
IF men want to learn how to deal with mindless yapping cunts like Nancy, be sure to check out the free online guide:
skxskibum = child molesting cunt
By: manhood101 | Sun, 11/08/2009 – 13:03
Do women actually talk to you without laughing at your pussy between your legs? Do men talking to you without slapping you like a bitch? If you spoke to me in the belligerent tone you write in, you’d get your little bitch ass slapped back to the kitchen. But this a comment forum so you can be as brave as you want to be and no one will call you on it. I hope your menopause is really big because you were writing like you had a dildo up your asshole and it was just getting stretched out. Have a new age sensitive man day, ya dumb cunt LOL…
One additional note, a correction was made on what Glenn Sacks said. Here is the correction:
*Clarification, Nov. 6: This article originally said that Glenn Sacks “cautiously defends” Angry Harry. In fact, he “cautiously agrees that what Sacks calls ‘family court injustices’ could lead to future violence.”
Now on to the article that made these joyous boys happy:
“Men’s Rights” Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective
They’re changing custody rights and domestic violence laws.
- Posted: Thursday, November 5, 2009 7:45am
- By Kathryn Joyce
At the end of October, National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, members of the men’s movement group RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting) gathered on the steps of Congress to lobby against what they say are the suppressed truths about domestic violence: that false allegations are rampant, that a feminist-run court system fraudulently separates innocent fathers from children, that battered women’s shelters are running a racket that funnels federal dollars to feminists, that domestic-violence laws give cover to cagey mail-order brides seeking Green Cards, and finally, that men are victims of an unrecognized epidemic of violence at the hands of abusive wives.
“It’s now reached the point,” reads a statement from RADAR, “that domestic violence laws represent the largest roll-back in Americans’ civil rights since the Jim Crow era!”
RADAR’s rhetoric may seem overblown, but lately the group and its many partners have been racking up very real accomplishments. In 2008, the organization claimed to have blocked passage of four federal domestic-violence bills, among them an expansion of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to international scope and a grant to support lawyers in pro bono domestic-violence work. Members of this coalition have gotten themselves onto drafting committees for VAWA’s 2011 reauthorization. Local groups in West Virginia and California have also had important successes, criminalizing false claims of domestic violence in custody cases, and winning rulings that women-only shelters are discriminatory.
Groups like RADAR fall under the broader umbrella of the men’s rights movement, a loose coalition of anti-feminist groups. These men’s rights activists, or MRAs, have long been written off by domestic-violence advocates as a bombastic and fringe group of angry white men, and for good reason. Bernard Chapin, a popular men’s rights blogger, told me over e-mail that he will refer to me as “Feminist E,” since he never uses real names for feminists, who are wicked and who men “must verbally oppose … until our flesh oxidizes into dust.” In the United Kingdom, a father’s rights group scaled Buckingham Palace in superhero costumes. In Australia, they wore paramilitary uniforms and demonstrated outside the houses of female divorcees.
But lately they’ve become far more polished and savvy about advancing their views. In their early days of lobbying, “these guys would show up and have this looming body language that was very off-putting,” says Ben Atherton-Zeman, author of Voices of Men, a one-man play about domestic violence and sexual assault. “But that’s all changed. A lot of the leaders are still convicted batterers, but they’re well-organized, they speak in complete sentences, they sound much more reasonable: All we want is equal custody, for fathers not to be ignored.”
One of the respectable new faces of the movement is Glenn Sacks, a fathers’ rights columnist and radio host with 50,000 e-mail followers, and a pragmatist in a world of angry dreamers. Sacks is a former feminist and abortion-clinic defender who disavows what he calls “the not-insubstantial lunatic fringe of the fathers’ rights movement.” He recently merged his successful media group with the shared-parenting organization Fathers and Families in a bid to build a mainstream fathers’ rights organ on par with the National Organization of Women. Many of Sacks’ arguments—for a court assumption of shared parenting in the case of divorce, or against child-support rigidity in the midst of recession—can sound reasonable.
But do any of their arguments hold up? Many of the men for whom Sacks advocates are involved in extreme cases, says Joanie Dawson, a writer and domestic-violence advocate who has covered the fathers’ rights movement. The great majority of custody cases, in which shared parenting is a legitimate option, are settled or resolved privately. But of the 15 percent that go to family court—the cases that fathers’ rights groups target—at least half include alleged domestic abuse.
Unsurprisingly, this argument is missing from MRA discussions of custody inequality and recruitment ads, which cast all men as potentially innocent victims “just one 911 call away” from losing everything they have earned and loved. These rallying calls, and the divorce attorneys hawking men’s rights expertise on MRA sites, promising to “teach her a lesson,” serve as what Dawson sees as a powerful draw for men in the midst of painful divorces.
While MRA groups continue to expand their base of embittered fathers and ex-husbands, they’ve cleaned up their image to court more powerful allies. RADAR board member Ron Grignal, the former president of Fathers for Virginia and a former state delegate candidate, organizes the group’s Washington lobbying activities. In 2008, RADAR partnered with Eagle Forum for a conference at the Heritage Foundation about the threat that VAWA poses to the family. Grignal argues that state interpretations of VAWA are so broad they could cast couples’ money disputes as domestic violence, enabling unwarranted restraining orders that then win women’s divorce cases for them. Politicians, Grignal says, are increasingly on board with men’s rights movement concerns.
“On domestic violence, I’ve had both state and federal legislators tell me they know that this process is out of control,” says Grignal. “They’re afraid if they support [reforms] they’ll be tagged as ‘for domestic violence.’ But I’ve had Democrats on Capitol Hill tell me they agree with everything I say. A member of the Congressional Black Caucus told me that his brother can’t see his kids, and his wife threatened to throw herself down the stairs to ruin his political career.”
Some domestic-violence protections do seem to have unintended effects, such as mandatory-arrest policies that compel police to take someone into custody in response to any domestic-violence call—a policy that has been criticized by RADAR as well as by some domestic-violence advocates, who say it imposes an absurd equivalence between largely nonviolent family spats or insubstantial female violence and serious abuse. But groups like RADAR are criticizing the law for the wrong reasons. In fact, the effect of mandatory arrest in conflating women’s low-level violence with battery, seems very close to RADAR’s campaign for viewing women as equal domestic abusers.
One potent idea advanced by MRAs is the claim that men are equal victims of domestic violence. Mark Rosenthal, president and co-founder of RADAR, makes a very personal argument for the phenomenon. Rosenthal, who doesn’t call himself an MRA, grew up with a mother who he says terrorized the entire family and hit her husband frequently. The true impact of the violence, he says, was more than physical and eclipsed his petite mother’s ability to inflict serious injuries. Rosenthal wants to see an appreciation for women’s nonphysical abuse incorporated into domestic-violence policy. “It’s not about size,” he told an audience at a law enforcement domestic-violence training. “It’s not exclusively about physical attacks. However, it is about a pathological need to control others, and women are as prone to this as men.”
RADAR and other MRA groups base their battered men arguments largely on the research of a small group of social scientists who claim that domestic violence between couples is equally divided, just unequally reported. Most notable are the studies conducted by sociologist Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire, who has written extensively on female violence (and who Dawson saw distributing RADAR flyers at an APA conference). Straus’ research is starting to move public opinion. A Los Angeles conference this July dedicated to discussing male victims of domestic violence, “From Ideology to Inclusion 2009: New Directions in Domestic Violence Research and Intervention,” received positive mainstream press for its “inclusive” efforts.
While some men certainly are victims of female domestic violence, advocates say the number is closer to 3 percent to 4 percent, rather than the 45 percent to 50 percent RADAR claims. Jack Straton, a Portland State University professor and member of Oregon’s Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force, argues that Straus critically fails to distinguish between the intent and effect of violence, equating “a woman pushing a man in self-defense to a man pushing a woman down the stairs,” or a single act of female violence with years of male abuse; that Straus only interviewed one partner, when couples’ accounts of violence commonly diverge; and that he excludes from his study post-separation violence, which accounts for more than 75 percent of spouse-on-spouse violence, 93 percent of which is committed by men.
All in all, advocates say that cherry-picked studies from researchers like Straus, touted by the MRAs, amount to what Edward Gondolf, director of research for the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Research and Training Institute, calls“bad science.” Statistics suggesting gender parity in abuse are taken out of necessary context, they say, ignoring distinctions between the equally divided “common couple violence” and the sort of escalated, continuing violence known as battery—which is 85 percent male-perpetrated—as well as the disparate injuries inflicted by men and women.
“The biggest concern, though, is not the wasted effort on a false issue,” writes Straton, but the encouragement given to batterers to consider themselves the victimized party. “Arming these men with warped statistics to fuel their already warped worldview is unethical, irresponsible, and quite simply lethal.”
In this, critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves, minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims. MRA groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false, as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the violence as mutual—part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse—as individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence was reciprocal. Additionally, MRA groups’ predictions of future violence by fed-up men wronged by the family-law system seem an obvious additional correlation, with the threat of violence seemingly intended to intimidate a community, like a fearful spouse, into compliance.
MRA critics say the organizational recapitulation of abusive tactics should be no surprise, considering the wealth of movement leaders with records or accusations of violence, abuse, harassment, or failure to pay child support. Some advocates call MRA groups “the abuser’s lobby,” because of members like Jason Hutch, the Buckingham Palace fathers’ rights “Batman,” who has been estranged from three mothers of his children and was taken to court for threatening one of his ex-wives.
Contrary to RADAR’s claims, domestic-violence advocates say that not only do abuse accusations not automatically win custody cases for women; there are a rising number of custody decisions awarded to abusive fathers, as judges see wives eager to protect their children as less cooperative regarding custody. More than half the time, studies have found, wives’ accusations of domestic violence are met with counter-accusations from husbands of “Parental Alienation Syndrome”—a medically unrecognized diagnosis that suggests mothers have poisoned their children into making false accusations against their fathers.
In one recent case, Genia Shockome, a Russian immigrant, was fighting for custody of her two children with her ex-husband, whom she charged had beaten her so severely that she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and who had told her she “had no right to leave” since he’d brought her to the United States. The judge in the case sided with her husband’s counter-claims of Parental Alienation Syndrome and awarded him full custody (and later sentenced Shockome to 30 days in jail while she was seven months pregnant). When her attorney, Barry Goldstein, co-author of the forthcoming book Domestic Violence, Abuse and Custody, criticized the judge in an online article, the judge retaliated with a complaint, and Goldstein was given a five-year suspension. Goldstein says the sanction represents a chilling pressure on attorneys, who may now fear penalties for criticizing a court’s gender bias that will interfere with their duties to their clients and that could result in women deciding not to leave abusers out of fear they won’t get a fair trial.
If cases such as Genia Shockome’s are the fodder of mainstream fathers’ rights advocates like Glenn Sacks—who ridiculed her claims and loss of custody as an uncredible “cause célèbre” for feminist family-law reformers—what Sacks calls the movement’s “lunatic fringe” is more vitriolic yet.
Within the ranks of the men’s rights movement, vigilante “resisters” are regularly nominated and lionized for acts of violence perceived to be in opposition to a feminist status quo. In a few quarters of the movement, this even included George Sodini, the Pittsburgh man who opened fire on a gym full of exercising women this August, killing three and leaving behind an online diatribe journaling his sense of rejection by millions of desirable women.
Sodini’s diary was republished widely, including on the website of a popular men’s rights blogger, “Angry Harry,” who added his assessment of the case. “MRAs should also take note of the fact that there are probably many millions of men across the western world who feel similar in many ways, and one can expect to see much more destruction emanating from them in the future,” he wrote. “One of the main reasons that I decided to post this diary on this website was because the western world must wake up to the fact that it cannot continue to treat men so appallingly and get away with it.” In a phone interview, Angry Harry said, “Of course there will be more Sodinis—there will be many more,” likening him to Marc Lépine, a Canadian man who killed or wounded 28, claiming feminists had ruined his life, or Nevada father Darren Mack, who murdered his estranged wife and attempted to kill the judge in their custody battle. (Also among this number is John Muhammad, the “D.C. Beltway Sniper,” whose involvement in a Washington father’s rights group and history of abuse is described in his ex-wife Mildred’s newly-released memoir, Scared Silent.) Perhaps, Angry Harry mused, that as the ranks of online MRAs grow, “the threat” of their violence “may be enough” to bring about the changes they desire.
Glenn Sacks dismissed Angry Harry as an “idiot” without real power in the movement, and yet he cautiously defends him. “I want to be careful in wording this,” he says, “but the cataclysmic things I’m seeing done to men, it’s always my fear that one of these guys is going to do something terrible. I don’t want to say that like I condone it or that it’s OK, but it’s just the reality.” The movement seems eager to supply more martyrs. After Sacks wrote about a San Diego father who shot himself on the city’s courthouse steps over late child-support payments, numerous men wrote Sacks, telling him, “They’re taking everything from me, and I want to go out in a big way, and if I do, will you write about me?”
I asked RADAR’s Mark Rosenthal about the ties between groups like RADAR—claiming, however cynically, to have egalitarian motives—and the blunt anti-feminist positions of men’s movement allies like Chapin or Angry Harry. “I’d like to suggest that what you’ve just done is interview Martin Luther King and Malcolm X,” he told me. “In any movement, there is going to be a reasonable voice and people who are so hurt, who are so injured by the injustices, that they can’t afford to step back and try to take their emotions under control. But no movement is going to get anywhere without extremists.”
November 3, 2009
Should You Dump An Ex-Abuser?
From CNN:
Should you dump an ex-abuser?
By Jessica Wakeman
(The Frisky) — There are dealbreakers and then there are dealbreakers — and a past history of domestic violence is a dealbreaker on a lot of people’s list.
Salon.com’s advice columnist, Cary Tennis, fielded a question from a former abuser who’s nervous about telling his new girlfriend he physically abused his ex-wife half a dozen times during their marriage.
After divorcing, “Ex-Abuser,” as he signed his letter, entered therapy and said it helped him “understand my reasons for the abuse, and the effect it had on both my wife and our relationship.” Also after the divorce, he and his ex-wife went to therapy together and “the abuse was addressed and some amount of nascent healing took place.”
Now Ex-Abuser is in a new relationship with a woman he seems to want to spend his life with. Trouble is, he hasn’t told her about his past. Not only is he afraid his new girlfriend will ditch him if she knows, but his ex-wife is threatening to spill the beans herself. And that, obviously, would be bad.
Of course, Ex-Abuser should tell his girlfriend himself, but I don’t think it’ll go as badly as he thinks. Maybe I’ll get my Feminist Card revoked for saying this, but I don’t think a man’s abusive past should necessarily be an automatic dealbreaker.
The Frisky: Is ‘the one’ just a fantasy?
I believe people can change their mentally ill ways and behave healthily again. I’ve met enough sober alcoholics and clean drug addicts to know that is true. A lot of factors contribute to domestic violence in a relationship, but I have faith a man can be taught how and why he controlled and abused his partner and learn not to do it again.
The Frisky: Should we ask victims of domestic violence why they stayed?
That said, not every woman could handle dating a former abuser. Some abusers probably don’t change too much, even if they say they have. A woman should be very, very careful about choosing to be with one — a woman who is passive and non-confrontational probably is not the best candidate to date someone with a history of controlling behavior.
She’d also have to be willing to drop everything if he behaves abusively again and for a variety of reasons (kids, money, etc.), not every woman does that or can do that. Obviously, I believe men shouldn’t be abusive. But I also believe forewarned is forewarned.
The Frisky: How to help a friend who’s being hit
As for fears that his girlfriend will dump him, I think people are willing to forgive a lot of what has happened in the past.
I once dated a man who told me, six months into the relationship, that he had been arrested twice before (for silly, minor offenses). I was able to laugh off the criminal record because I was more annoyed that he hadn’t told me sooner. All that time, I felt like I hadn’t really known him!
The Frisky: Sometimes you shouldn’t mind your business
Tennis’ advice, in case you’re wondering, was to propose that Ex-Abuser explain in detail his past behavior, how his behavior has changed from therapy, and what actions he takes every single day to ensure his new behavior sticks.
“People can believe you or not believe you. That’s their choice,” Tennis wrote. “Now, you can’t blame people if they’re just not interested.”
But I think if Ex-Abuser’s girlfriend is anything like me, she’ll be freaked out for a couple of days. Maybe longer than a couple of days. But I hope she won’t dump him and that they will have a healthy relationship together. If not, what the hell’s the point in trying to reform abusers?
November 2, 2009
Family Court Crisis: Join Kathleen Russell and Connie Valentine on the Radio This Wednesday
CJE Supporters,
This Wednesday November 4th from 6-7pm PST, CJE’s Kathleen Russell and Connie Valentine from the California Protective Parents Association will be on the radio with KDRT’s David Greenwald, talking about the family court crisis.
The Davis Vanguard Show will be live streamed, so you can listen over the internet by clicking on the link below. If you live in Davis, CA, tune into 95.7 FM at 6:00p PST to listen.
This is a great opportunity to call into the show and share your perspectives live on-the-air.
The call-in number for people to ask questions and share insights on Wednesday’s show is:
1-530-792-1648
Click here to listen live online at 6:00pm Wednesday!
For more details, call Steve at 415-459-9211 ext 25.
What Kind of System or Parent Does This to Another Parent?
OH HELL YEAH!
“The only appropriate response to abuse is creativity” Egon Weiner
I have been the unwitting and unwilling participant in the family Courts of New York and Los Angeles for two decades. People ask me, “How did you lose custody?” or “Why did you marry such assholes?” The only question is “What kind of system or parent does this to another parent?” In our culture of self responsibility we glorify the bullies, cheaters, criminals and abusers who win. I humbly recognize my powerless against a sick system in a sick society. My response is to create and to laugh.
Have a laugh on me!
Tonya Pinkins
Awesome video sweetie!
The Family Court Show on “A Citizen’s Voice” Canceled for Tonight
The popular Family Court Show on “A Citizen’s Voice” is canceled for the evening due to scheduling conflicts. Stay tuned for next week’s show on WLIP-AM in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The show is hosted by Terry and Steve, and guests Catherine and Karen, and we greatly appreciate there is a show out there like this to talk about corruption in the family courts!
November 1, 2009
Murri Men: Extraordinary Group of Men Battling Domestic Violence
From Australian Divorce Blog by Stephen Page:
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Murri men battling domestic violence
Once Were WarriorsOn Wednesday night, in my role as a White Ribbon Ambassador, I had the honour of speaking to a group of extraordinary Murri men, includng an ex-Olympian, about domestic violence and White Ribbon Day.
White Ribbon Day is held on 25 November each year. It is the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. White Ribbon Day is an international movement of men saying that they are opposed to violence against women.
I am one of the 600 or so White Ribbon Ambassadors appointed by the White Ribbon Foundation.
I was honoured to talk to these Murri men. In my practice as a Brisbane family lawyer, I have acted for indigenous men and women over the years. Too often there has been violence in the relationship, often much worse than seen in non-indiginous relationships, often associated with other social deprivation, such as alcohol and drug use.
I was honoured on Wednesday night because these men were taking a stand against violence against women. The fact that they wanted to hear from someone talking about domestic violence was significant in itself.
After I had said what I had to say, I was amazed to listen to the men:
- one man had previously tried to watch Once Were Warriors, the critically acclaimed fim about domestic violence in a Maori relationship. He found it too traumatising and disrespectful to women, and had only watched 10 minutes of it. Some years later he had watched the whole fim, after hearing much critical comment of how good it was. I said that I had only managed to watch 15 minutes of it myself- as I found it touched a raw nerve.
- one man, an elder, had such a passionate commitment to ending domestic violence that he chairs the committee of a domestic violence service.
- another man, Norm Stevens, considered that it was more important that he had previously been a poster boy for White Ribbon Day, than a former Olympian!
Three years ago Norm was asked by the Sergeant running the local PCYC whether Norm was prepared to be photographed for White Ribbon Day. Norm readily agreed, and photos were distributed in the local area.
For me, while was that was great, it emphasised to me how much more important Norm considered the fight against domestic violence, as against the fact that he had represented Australia in boxing in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and that this would have taken some personal courage, given that they were the boycott Olympics.
October 27, 2009
Domestic Violence Offenders Aren’t Being Punished
From Enterprise News:
Wendy Murphy: Punishing abusers key to protecting women
By Wendy Murphy
GateHouse News Service
It’s October, which means it’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
But we don’t really need an “awareness month” anymore. There’s so much domestic violence, we’re in a chronic state of awareness. What we really need is a revolution.
First the facts:
- A woman is beaten every 15 seconds.
- Nearly two dozen victims of domestic violence are already dead this year alone in Massachusetts. Other states report similar numbers.
- As many as 10 million children a year are exposed to domestic violence, causing them to suffer emotional and psychological harm, not to mention that they grow up believing that smacking your spouse is part of a “normal” relationship. No surprise then that boys who watch their fathers beat their mothers are far more likely as adults to do the same thing to their female partners.
- According to the Justice Department, women suffer violent victimization more than 4 million times a year. Approximately one-third of the crimes are committed by intimate partners.
- Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury for American women between the ages of 15 and 44.
- Among homeless women and children, half are homeless because of domestic violence.
- Medical expenses resulting from domestic violence amount to around $4 billion annually.
Now a few of the embarrassing reasons for so much suffering:
- Most cases of domestic violence are not reported to law enforcement because victims fear retaliation, are financially dependent on their abuser, or believe the justice system will not protect them and/or is useless to deter the violence.
- Of the cases that are reported and accepted for prosecution, only about half end in conviction while one-third are dismissed by the prosecutor. For the small percentage of cases that end in conviction, the punishment is usually trivial.
In sum, there are three main reasons why women are abused in such large numbers by men who claim to love them: Offenders aren’t being punished! Offenders aren’t being punished! Offenders aren’t being punished!
Some argue that punishment doesn’t stop domestic violence and that we need to do more “education and prevention” to change the way males are raised so they will learn to respect women more. These tend to be the people who get funding to do “education and prevention.” In other words, they’re paid to co-opt victims into believing that justice and punishment aren’t important even though some research shows that the only thing that stops violent men is incapacitation (read: jail).
Even if education and cultural retraining might help some day, while we’re waiting around for our species to evolve, we need to give all endangered women a .45 caliber equalizer and we need to ramp up the punishment of batterers so that beating a woman isn’t sentenced on par with spitting on the sidewalk.
Anti-incarceration advocates will tell you that prison isn’t fun – and that it often spawns a toxic mental software that makes men who enter come out worse than ever when their sentence wraps up.
But if fear of becoming a monster in prison, and respect for women isn’t enough to deter a man from beating his wife, he’s already toxic – and putting him behind bars will prevent him from infecting innocent others with his poison. Punishment isn’t the only way to stop violence, but it is a legitimate and effective feature of our legal system. Lots of research shows how states that send a higher percentage of criminals to prison have lower rates of crime, even after controlling for all of things like poverty and urbanization.
But incarceration is a dirty word in the lexicon of some liberals who claim that locking people up gives the government dangerous amounts of power and threatens the freedom of the individual.
They’re wrong.
The freedom of FEMALE individuals is actually greatly enhanced when criminals who target women for violence are incapacitated.
But our legal system doesn’t care. And despite decades of disastrous statistics, our political leaders don’t care, either. In fact, nobody in a position of leadership is even complaining about the lack of justice for victimized women.
Earlier this month, there was a big to-do in D.C. about women’s issues in the Obama administration. Lynn Rosenthal, whose responsibility it is to deal with violence against women on behalf of the president, gave a lovely talk about all sorts of things, but never once mentioned the profound failure of law to redress domestic violence or the desperate need for tougher punishments for batterers.
Obviously, the men who promised “change” and “hope” for a better society, and who haven’t shied away from talking about the need for tough punishments for corporate criminals, have little “hope” to offer women in danger. It’s just more politicians in a long line of others who value stuff more than women’s lives.
Patriot Ledger contributor Wendy Murphy is a leading victims rights advocate and nationally recognized television legal analyst. She is an adjunct professor at New England Law in Boston. She can be reached at wmurphy@nesl.edu. Read more of her columns at The Daily Beast .
October 26, 2009
Shawnee County Kansas DA Chad Taylor on Prosecuting More Domestic Violence Cases: “This is All About Homicide Prevention”
From KTKA (Topeka, KS):
Domestic violence is on the rise in Shawnee County
Story by Jessica Drew (Contact)
Originally published 02:59 p.m., October 20, 2009
Updated 05:48 p.m., October 20, 2009
“I remember curling up in a ball to protect her from the kicks,” domestic violence survivor, Claudine Dombrowski, described.
Claudine Dombrowski is a survivor to domestic violence, a cycle she went back to many times. “I had a choice I could see my daughter or I could never see her again. The abuser had complete control, so I got my daughter back and went back to him.”
Going back to an abusive relationship is a problem District Attorney Chad Taylor said his office sees quite often. “We see it everyday, and it’s just a matter of the psychology of the cycle of abuse,” Taylor said.
The number of cases coming across Taylor’s desk is growing. “Our year to date projections for 2009 total is going to be an increase of about 80 percent for the domestic battery cases that we filed,” Taylor said.
Claudine fights to help women like herself who have fallen in the hands of abuse. “This was the crow bar, and then I was beaten and raped,” Dombrowski said.
She said she never reported her beatings until after her daughter was born.
Taylor said it happens often, “It goes from bruises to hospitalization, to like we said this is all about homicide prevention.”
Claudine said even if you haven’t been a victim, you probably know someone who has and you can help them. “Don’t think it’s you…get rid of the scarlet letter of shame, it’s the most important thing.”
Taylor wants to show there’s help out there for victims. “Making this a priority and letting people know that this will not be tolerated in our community,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s office gave us statisitics on Domestic Violence in 2008 the DA’s office received 1267 cases, out of those 508 were filed. Starting from January 1st until October 16, 2009 there have been 1347 cases received, and out of those 849 cases have been filed.
One Domestic Battery charges, in 2008 there were 723 received and 246 filed for court. The projections for this year are 784 received and 443 filed, meaning an eighty percent increase on Domestic Battery.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Murder-Suicide: The Most Dangerous Time is After a Woman Leaves an Abusive Partner…
…but anytime is a good time to an abuser. They may even just suspect a breakup, or just feel entitled to kill the family if things aren’t going well for him personally. New information from the U.S. Department of Justice:
Murder-Suicide in Families
Cases in which one intimate partner murders another and the children and then kills him- or herself are rare and usually garner widespread media coverage. This type of murder-suicide is called familicide.
In almost all of these cases, the killer is a white, non-Hispanic man [1].
Cases in which women kill their male partners, their children and themselves are extremely rare and thus gain even more widespread media coverage.
Learn more about:
Risk Factors
Common characteristics of murder-suicide in families include:
- Prior history of domestic violence [2], [3].
- Access to a gun [4], [5].
- Threats, especially increased threats with increased specificity [6].
- Prior history of poor mental health or substance abuse, especially alcohol [7].
Previous history of abuse is by far the most dominant risk factor. In one study, 82 percent of the men who killed their intimate partners were known to the authorities — treatment professionals, the military or the criminal justice system, for example [8].
In most cases, the man exhibits possessive, obsessive and jealous behavior. There is a gradual build-up of tensions and conflicts after which an event leads the man to act. The triggering event is often the woman’s announcement that she is leaving.
The time immediately after a woman leaves an abusive partner is the most dangerous [9].
Role of Guns
The data are clear: More incidents of murder-suicide occur with guns than with any other weapon. Access to a gun is a major risk factor in familicide because it allows the perpetrator to act on his or her rage and impulses.
In 591 murder-suicides, 92 percent were committed with a gun [10]. States with less restrictive gun control laws have as much as eight times the rate of murder-suicides as those with the most restrictive gun control laws.
Compared to Canada, the United States has three times more familicide; compared to Britain, eight times more; and compared to Australia, 15 times more.
Role of Shelters
Domestic violence shelters are meeting the needs of abuse survivors and their children, providing services like housing, mental health counseling and legal assistance. Nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of domestic violence survivors rate the assistance they received at their shelters as “very helpful,” and another 18 percent rate it as “helpful.”
Role of the Economy
The very low number of murder-suicide incidents makes it hard for researchers to understand exactly what role the economy plays in these cases. What is known is that economic distress is a factor, but it is only one of several factors that trigger a man to murder his family. In most cases, the couple has a history of disagreement over many issues, most commonly money, sex and child-rearing.
Although personal economics like the loss of a job may be one of several critical factors, most experts agree that the strength or weakness of the national economy is not related to the frequency of murder-suicides, despite media coverage that suggests otherwise.
Notes
[1] Logan, J., Hill, H.A., Black, M.L., Crosby, A.E., Karch, D.L., Barnes, J.D. and Lubell, K.M., ”Characteristics of Perpetrators in Homicide-Followed-by-Suicide Incidents: National Violent Death Reporting System — 17 US States, 2003-2005,” American Journal of Epidemiology 168 (November 2008): 1056-1064.
[2], [9] Campbell, J.C., Glass, N., Sharps, P.W., Laughon, K., and Bloom, T., “Intimate Partner Violence, Trauma, Violence & Abuse,” 8 (July 2007): 246-269.
[3], [4], [6], [7] Koziol-McLain, J., Webster, D., McFarlane, J., Block, C.R., Ulrich, Y., Glass, N. and Campbell, J., “Risk Factors for Femicide-Suicide in Abusive Relationships: Results from a Multisite Case Control Study,” Violence and Victims 21 (February 2006): 3-21
[5] Adams, D., Why Do They Kill: Men Who Murder Their Intimate Partners, Vanderbilt University Press, 2007.
[8] Sharps, P.W., Koziol-McLain, J., Campbell, J., McFarlane, J., Sachs, C., & Xu, X., “Health Care Providers’ Missed Opportunities for Preventing Femicide,” Preventive Medicine 33, (November 2001): 373-380.
[10] Violence Policy Center. (May 2006). American Roulette: Murder-Suicide in the United States (pdf, 21 pages) Exit Notice. Retrieved July 22, 2009 from the Violence Policy Center Web site.
Date Entered: October 14, 2009
October 25, 2009
Family Courts Betray “Best Interests of the Child” and Award Child Custody to Abusive Fathers
From Women’s enews:
Biased Family Court System Hurts Mothers
By Garland Waller
WEnews contributor
Wednesday, September 5, 2001
Behind closed doors of the family court system, thousands of women each year lose child custody to violent men who beat and abuse mothers and children. The writer says family courts are not family-friendly and betray the best interests of the child.
(WOMENSENEWS)–Studies show that in approximately 70 percent of challenged cases, battering parents have been able to convince authorities during custody battles that their victim is unfit or undeserving of sole custody, according to a recent report published by the American Judges Foundation.
That statement would have once shocked me, but no more. Nor am I surprised when I read that a family court judge has awarded custody of a 3-year-old girl to the father who has violently beaten her mother. I do not even lift an eyebrow when a 2-year-old boy, who comes home from unsupervised visitation with his dad, has a diaper filled with his own rectal blood and that same child is later turned over to his father on a full-time basis. And when a mother is thrown into jail, denied the right to ever see her children again, because she brought up the issue of child abuse in a family court, I’m sickened, but not shocked.
These injustices are commonplace today in the closed-door family court system. These courts often claim to operate in a manner consistent with the “best interests of the child.” In practice this often means that a judge, often a male judge, biased and imperious, defines that phrase. These judges decide, time and time again, when a woman raises the allegation of sexual abuse in a custody dispute, that it is she who will lose her children forever.
I used to think that the family court system was basically fair. That was before my childhood friend, Diane Hofheimer, asked me to consider doing a documentary on the family courts. She had taught herself the law so that she could work with her attorney husband, Charlie Hofheimer, in their Virginia law practice.
Thousands of Mothers Lose Their Children to Abusive Fathers
Representing only women in divorce and custody cases, Diane and Charlie began my education with one grisly case. I thought it was a fluke, but I agreed to look at some of the legal documents. And so began my journey into the dark world of family courts.
What I learned was that thousands of women are losing custody of their children to men with histories of violence and sexual abuse. Sure, these cases are complicated, but it doesn’t take a legal genius to figure out that it’s not good for kids to watch daddy break mommy’s jaw. Research shows a high correlation between domestic violence and child sexual abuse.”We have created a system that purports to be a gatekeeper–keeping victims from victimizers–but the system is really the welcome mat for victimizers to have access to the victims,” says Richard Ducote, a nationally recognized child advocate and attorney. He adds that there has been virtually no change in the process during the past two decades.
In fact, a pilot study in the early 1990s by the California Protective Parent Association and Mothers of Lost Children found that 91 percent of fathers who were identified by their children as perpetrators of sexual abuse received full or partial unsupervised custody of the children and that in 54 percent of cases the non-abusing mother was placed on supervised visitation.
One primary reason for what many consider a disastrous outcome, Ducote and other experts say, is the popularity of the theories of Dr. Richard Gardner, whose ideas are apparently more persuasive to judges than the testimony of battered women and victimized children.
Gardner’s brainchild is Parental Alienation Syndrome. This is the name given for the practice of one parent saying disparaging things about the other parent in an attempt to alienate the child from the ex-spouse. This so-called syndrome is based on anecdotal evidence. Gardner’s books on the subject are self-published, something that should give judges and experts pause, even though he does look good on paper.
He’s a professor at Columbia Medical School and has been publishing papers for two decades. Fathers’ rights groups love him.
Not addressed by Dr. Gardner and his adherents are what a mother should say to a child raped by her father. They merely discount all such allegations as examples of parental alienation syndrome, or some variation of it under a different name such as SAID (Sexual Allegations in Divorce) Syndrome, Malicious Mother Syndrome or some other fabricated condition.
These experts are certainly free to believe whatever they wish to, but much to the harm of thousands of children and their caring, protective parents, these ideas have been accepted by personnel in most of the family courts in the country: the judges, court-appointed lawyers charged with protecting the child’s interests, and custody evaluators such as psychologists and social workers.
In essentially every case in which courts place children with abusers, despite substantial evidence of sexual abuse or domestic violence and no evidence of fabrication on the protecting parent’s part, it is the parental alienation syndrome that is used by the judge, the evaluator or the child’s lawyer to ignore and discount the abuse evidence and to wrongfully construe all of the child’s symptoms as evidence of alienation.
Parental Alienation Syndrome Used to Wrongly Blame Mothers
My colleague Hofheimer is convinced that the so-called syndrome is to psychology what voodoo is to surgery.
“What would a good mother do,” I asked Dr. Gardner two years ago when interviewing him for the documentary, “if her child told her of sexual abuse by his or her father.”
His answer: “What would she say? Don’t you say that about your father. If you do, I’ll beat you.”
That’s on tape and I have a signed release.
In researching my documentary, I have met many honest, caring and courageous mothers who, for speaking the truth, have been publicly called crazy, hysterical and delusional, and labeled with all kinds of pseudo-disorders for being strong and for fighting for the safety of their children.
Yet some of them have been nearly broken by the family court system, and the damage to their children is immeasurable. We must act now to begin reforming our family courts.
Garland Waller is an assistant professor in the Television Department at Boston University’s College of Communication. She has produced more than 10 award-winning documentaries.
Robert Franklin Needs to Come Back From Fairytale Land: Too Many Women are Dying at the Hands of Violent Husbands
We aren’t anti-dad….we are anti-murderer, anti-child rapist, anti-abuser. Why do these men’s rights advocates support actions of violent men like this, or deny they happen? Beats us…
From Fox News:
2 Murder-Suicides in 24 Hours Rock New Hampshire Town
Saturday, October 24, 2009
CONCORD, N.H. — One young mother was trying to escape her home and husband. Another woman was beaten to death at the hands of her husband as two of her children watched, with one of them calling 911. Police say both men killed their wives, then killed themselves, in a 24-hour stretch of violence in New Hampshire that left another man hospitalized and still another man dead in an unrelated shooting.
Londonderry police responded to a 911 call from a child Wednesday night and found 46-year-old Suzanne Vernet at home, unconscious and severely injured. Police said she was beaten repeatedly with an object; they did not specify what it was. Vernet was taken to a Boston hospital, where she died Thursday. Police issued an alert for her husband, Binh Vernet, 48, and later found him dead near his car in Rehoboth, Mass.
Meanwhile, in Manchester, police say 29-year-old Melissa Charbonneau was shot inside her home Thursday — a day after she filed for divorce from her husband, Jonathan Charbonneau, 32. She also filed a domestic violence complaint against him, saying he had choked her. Authorities say Jonathan Charbonneau was out on bail on a charge of simple assault when he opened fire on Charbonneau and her father, John Cantin. Jonathan Charbonneau’s body was later found inside the home.
Steven Pierce, a high school senior, said he and his friends helped keep the wounded Cantin talking until paramedics arrived. “He tried to protect her and he got fired on,” Pierce told WMUR television. “It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Cantin remained hospitalized in stable condition Friday.
Friend and neighbor Wendy Waisman, 37, told the New Hampshire Union Leader that Charbonneau was devastated about losing custody of their 7-year-old son to his wife. “He lost it after that,” she said. Other friends said the couple had been married two to three years. Jonathan Charbonneau also has two children from a previous marriage. Chris Medonca, 18, said the couple were loving parents, “but when he gets angry, he gets violent.” He told the newspaper he often heard the couple arguing.
Melissa Charbonneau worked in the medical field, neighbors said. Her husband was a self-employed contractor.
“We don’t want to remind people of the reality of domestic violence through gruesome cases, but this does remind us that this is happening all the time and that we need more support for victims and more accountability for abusers,” said Grace Mattern, executive director of the New Hampshire Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence.
Jeffery Strelzin, senior assistant attorney general, said autopsies on the Manchester deaths were expected Friday. The Massachusetts Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is handling autopsies on the Vernets. Strelzin said authorities want to determine exactly what happened in both cases and make certain that both are murder-suicides.
Maureen McDonald of the Coalition said Melissa Charboneau took all the right steps, but “we don’t want victims to look at cases like this and get discouraged and say, ‘Well, I can’t leave.”‘ She said abuse victims need to have a safety plan and are encouraged to call one the coalition’s crisis centers to reach out for support. “This can happen to anybody,” McDonald said.
There was no record of any domestic violence or divorce filing for the Vernets in the family division of Derry District Court, which covers Londonderry.
In the Vernet case, police said two of the couple’s four children were home at the time. They were not hurt. All them attend school in the Londonderry School District — one in elementary school, one in middle school, and two in high school. Beth Disessa, a cheerleading coach who knows the family, said it was a tragedy for the children. “Those kids now have to live with what their father did. I don’t know how you live with that,” she told WMUR. School Superintendent Nathan Greenberg said the district has provided counselors and offered meetings with parents to discuss how to address the tragedy. He said the Vernet children have been very active in school activities and have a number of close friends.
Meanwhile, the investigation continued Friday into the fatal shooting of 28-year-old Lennoxx Tibbs, who was found dead in a Manchester street on Thursday morning. The Citizen of Laconia reported that Tibbs recently finished a prison sentence for assaulting a 9-year-old child.
October 22, 2009
Canadian Woman Sexually Assaulted by Father Who Had Sole Custody of Her Awarded $600,000 in Damages
B.C. incest victim awarded $600,000 judgment
Keith Fraser, Canwest News Service Published: Wednesday, October 21, 2009
A 19-year-old Victoria woman who suffered horrific sex assaults at the hands of her father has been awarded nearly $600,000 in damages.
The girl, identified only as C.C.B. in a B.C. Supreme Court ruling, sued her father, identified only as I.B., over sex assaults that occurred while she was between the ages of about five and nine years old.
The crimes were reported to police in 1999 and after a 19-day criminal trial, I.B. was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. He was released from prison in 2008, but for the civil lawsuit he chose not to appear or be represented by a lawyer.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Victoria Gray concluded that the victim suffers from an anxiety disorder, depression and intrusive thoughts about the abuse, lack of trust in others and low self-esteem and educational underachievement.
The judge said the plaintiff was entitled to a “significant” award of damages because of the severity of the abuse and the many aggravating factors.
“The defendant was the plaintiff’s natural father and sole custodial parent, and in a relationship of trust,” said the judge. “The plaintiff had little support from anyone else, because the defendant kept her from school and insisted that she spend time with him, and as a result the plaintiff was extremely vulnerable.”
The plaintiff was awarded $250,000 for pain and suffering, $300,000 for future earning capacity and $41,800 for cost of future care. Though the defendant did not appear at trial, his father recently passed away and the judge said the inheritance is available to be applied to the judgment.
Canwest News Service
October 20, 2009
Arizona Judge Ignores Pleas of Abused Mother, Orders Parental Counseling, and Two Weeks Later Mom is Murdered
There are many mothers murdered anymore these days. Whole families being wiped out. I have stopped running many of them, as there are other sites doing so, but the two I read about today just touched me deeply. I sincerely hope that the judicial system in Arizona fires this judge. Judges need to realize that an abuser generally will not stop, and will find ways to abuse their victim. And judges need to accept that, yes, domestic violence is real, and mothers and children are dying every day because of the inaction that courts take against abusers.
Maricopa County, Arizona is rapidly rising to one of the most dangerous places for mothers and children to be when they are involved in the Superior Court System there.
May this dear mother and her mother rest in peace. From azcentral.com:
Records: Peoria murder-suicide victim sought help from court
Peoria woman later killed in apparent murder-suicide
by Dustin Gardiner – Oct. 20, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
A Peoria mother whose body was found Friday had recently tried to leave Arizona after receiving threats from her apparent slayer, but a judge denied her request, court records show.
Two weeks before she was killed, Dawn Axsom pleaded with Judge Jose Padilla of Maricopa County Superior Court to let her leave Arizona with her son because she feared Gabriel Schwartz, the toddler’s father, would harm her or their boy.
Padilla denied the 26-year-old’s request and ordered the pair to attend parental counseling together.
Axsom’s body was found in her Peoria residence Friday. Police also found the bodies of Schwartz, 28, and Linda Braden, 56, Axsom’s mother.
Schwartz is suspected of shooting and killing both women before turning the gun on himself, Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef said Monday.
Tellef said the violence likely began in the downstairs kitchen, where Schwartz shot Braden. Then, Schwartz went upstairs, shooting Axsom in the master bathroom and killing himself in a bedroom.
Police discovered the grisly scene at about 10 a.m. Friday after Axsom didn’t show up for work and a friend and the friend’s mother went to the home, located in the 7400 block of West Sierra Street, to check on her.
When the friend knocked on the door, she heard Axsom and Schwartz’s nearly 2-year-old boy crying upstairs.
The woman called police, who arrived and found the child unharmed inside his crib.
“When the officer took the baby outside, he covered (the child’s) eyes so he couldn’t see anything,” Tellef said, recounting the scene.
Friends and co-workers who gathered outside Axsom’s residence Friday said she was having ongoing custody problems with Schwartz and expressed frustration that the court system wouldn’t let her leave Arizona when she knew Schwartz might harm her.
Court records show Padilla granted Axsom a protective order against Schwartz four days before the Oct. 6 hearing where he ordered her to attend parental counseling with him and denied her request to relocate to Maryland with the pair’s son.
Axsom’s son was placed into the custody of state Child Protective Services.
“Help Me…I’m Burning” Says Young Daughter in Emergency Call Where Father Murdered Entire Family
May this dear mother and her children rest in peace. From 9news:
Burning teen’s emergency call revealed
07:30 AEST Wed Oct 21 2009
Caroline McGovern with another family member.
A girl killed alongside six family members in a fire started by her father made a desperate plea to an emergency call operator: “Help me … I’m burning”.
Caroline McGovern, 13, gasped for breath as she pleaded to be rescued from the fire at the family’s home in Omagh, Northern Ireland, in November 2007, a local coroner’s court has heard.
The fire was started by her father, 36-year-old Arthur McElhill, a convicted sex offender who suffered from depression and had attempted suicide on two other occasions, the Daily Mail newspaper reported.
Caroline died alongside her father, mother and the pair’s four other young children after McElhill doused the house in petrol and set in on fire.
The tragedy reportedly happened after Caroline’s mother, 26-year-old Lorraine McGovern, threatened to leave McElhill.
In a taped recording played in court yesterday, Caroline was heard pleading to an emergency call operator while her family cried out in the background.
She screamed “help me” and “I’m burning … run”, before mumbling the only partially audible “he’s k… us”.
A phonetics expert told the court he could not be certain what Caroline was trying to say.
The call lasted for almost six minutes but Caroline only spoke to the operator for about 45 seconds.
Gasping noises heard near the end of the call are believed to be the teenager’s final breaths.
Caroline was found dead still clutching the phone in her hand near the bodies of her siblings Sean, seven, Bellina, four, Clodagh, one, and James, 10 months.
The coroner’s hearing continues.
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