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Archive for December 5th, 2009

A gash under the eye and a slap on the wrist for: NY Senator Monserrate

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Now HOW many $$ going to NY state for:

  • DV prevention
  • Abstinence counseling
  • Marriage promotion?

Let’s practice what we pass funding for, OK?

NY Senator gets off easy

Monserrate and Giraldo have been under a court order not to see each other since shortly after their violent encounter was caught on video last December. She sought to have the order lifted and said Friday that the two planned to marry, but the judge kept the protection order in place. Giraldo once again said it was an accident when Monserrate smashed a glass into her face, causing bloody injuries that required 40 stitches. “I want to be with him, and I want to continue to be with him,” she said through an interpreter. During the unusually long four-hour sentencing, Erlbaum pointedly questioned Giraldo about what happened, about her contradictory statements during the trial, about the health of their relationship and about her mental health. He said she seemed submissive to a jealous Monserrate. Erlbaum said he would be willing to lift the protection order if the couple could prove that they could address their problems. He also suggested that Giraldo seek therapy. “I hope the time will come that Karla Giraldo will have the self-respect to stop acting like a slave,” the judge said. Erlbaum sentenced Monserrate to three years on probation and 250 hours of community service, and ordered him to pay fines of more than $1,000. He’s also required to enroll in a one-year counseling program on power and control.

His attorney, Joseph Tacopina, said he would appeal the conviction and would start working on getting the protection order lifted. Monserrate was acquitted of intentionally smashing Giraldo’s face with the glass on Dec. 19, 2008, in a jealous rage. Both said it was accidental, but statements she made to hospital officials indicate she changed her story.

How’d you like to confront a powerful Senator?

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

December 5, 2009 at 4:23 pm

While you were sleeping: How Congress got into the Family Law business…

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2016 BLOGGER UPDATE on this December 5, 2009 post:

In an April 3, 2016 post, I searched for documentation on the history of the Access and Visitation grants back in the 1980s, as part of a time-line of the domestic violence industry. These grants are STILL discussed so infrequently, in general, that my own 12/5/2009 “While you were sleeping” post here (as quoted by “Fearless Fathers” 3 days later) was one of the search results.

That post title and the two short links on it posted as far back as December 2009 (within one year of when I began blogging) and found when I didn’t even have access to a normal laptop, almost “says it all.”

I briefly cleaned up formatting in this older (now over five years old) post, added borders and some background color plus lines around quotes (which I didn’t know how to do at the time), and below that will copy, in different background-color, the text on the same subject matter from 2016 post, “Can You Tell the “Tells” of the DV (so-called) Cartel? It’s Show-and-Tell Time.” That was my 15th post of 2016 — see the Table of Contents here.


It took me longer than a few months (a few years) to put together, from the timeline of major domestic violence prevention groups, that most of them probably knew all along about the influence of the HHS-sponsored (at the time, HEW-sponsored, as HHS only came into being 1990, but some key DV groups were formed in 1980 (“Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs” in Duluth, MN), 1989 (“Futures without Violence”), or earlier) strategically positioned ACCESS and VISITATION GRANTS  of first $4M (1988 dollars) then $10M (1996 dollars)/year and MARRIAGE/FATHERHOOD, about 15 times larger annual appropriations than the A/V.

These domestic violence nonprofits at the leadership level did not inform their “clients,” typically battered and abused women with or without children, about the Access and Visitation grants those clients who were MOTHERS would be up against, by virtue of their not being fathers, and by virtue, as it applied, of their having custody of the children and there even being a (male) “Noncustodial” parent. It was social public welfare policy!

This old post stands as a simple testimony that IF certain information is available, other parts of major systems start to make sense, and if it is not, they simply do not. Therefore, in my opinion, one of the larger “crimes” in responding to domestic violence, and evidence itself of an abusive approach to the target population being helped, is to withhold timely information which, if NOT withheld, might lead to a different strategic decision on the part of that individual parent. For example, SOME individual parents may decide whether or not to go up against the largest grant-making federal agency around in seeking to protect their children and do it by way of the family courts.

I found this on-line yesterday [12/4/2009], it appears to date to JUNE 2000.

Congressional Research Service

Report 97-590

CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT AND VISITATION: SHOULD THERE BE A FEDERAL CONNECTION?

Carmen D. Solomon-Fears, Education and Public Welfare Division

Updated June 20, 2000


Found at this link: http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/wikileaks-crs/wikileaks-crs-reports/97-590.pdf

Abstract.

From time to time, the issue arises of whether the federal Child Support Enforcement (CSE)program should be actively involved in enforcing visitation rights. Both federal and state policymakers agree that denial of visitation rights should not be considered a reason for stopping child support payments.

AVAILABLE HERE — and I’m going to add it to my bloglinks.  It’s ONLY 7 pages long, and provides a summary background of HOW the Federal Government got to be “in the family way.”  The rationale was TANF/Welfare.  That was the chink in the door.

The question arises, in my mind at least — what major institutions and practices in this nation are creating the welfare population to start with?  The 2 largest areas of expenditure in the government are two agencies:  1.  Health and Human Service, and 2.  Education.  The others, are smaller.  Go to at least usaspending.gov and look at the pie chart, and take a look.  Why are the courts and the child support agencies in the business of education, at which the educational system is already failing, clearly?

 

http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/wikileaks-crs/wikileaks-crs-reports/97-590.pdf

Recommended reading for the uninitiated, for example:

Is the Federal Government Becoming Too Intrusive in Family Law Policy?

[[Ya-THINK?  Just perhaps MAYBE?  This shows the rationale…]]

 

Congress does not have general authority to pass laws dealing with family law issues, unless there is a connection or “nexus” between such legislation and one of the areas in which it is authorized to act. In the case of the CSE program, the federal nexus is the …

H.R. 3073, the Fathers Count Act of 1999, would provide $140 million in grants over four years to public and private entities to achieve three purposes: (1) promote marriage, (2) promote successful parenting, and (3) help noncustodial parent improve their economic status. H.R. 3073 was passed by the House on November 10, 1999, but has not been acted on by the Senate.
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