Supervised Visitation is supposed to be helping families experiencing domestic violence, to prevent injury, death, kidnapping, or other horrible events from happening, while still maintaining that ever-important connection with a father (typically), that supposedly cannot control himself without supervision.

It also happens to be a handy replicatable and saleable business model, and profession.

It also happens to be used, frequently, to spank mothers who report abuse, as in Claudine Dombrowski, who testified in Kansas on this recently and has been participating in an international case against the United States for violation of human rights in the family courts:

(You need to read this one to understand how it’s used against women for speaking up…)

I have made my opinion (and qualify it as that) on this matter clear enough by citing Jack Straton’s 1990s commentary on the issue, which made sense to me, but has been ignored by the courts.  Why?  Probably doesn’t lead to more federal funding, and a whole class of children, family, relationships that can become the subject matter of MORE federally funded studies of — families, and DV:

What About the Kids? Custody and Visitation Decisions in Families with a History of Violence
National Training Project of the Duluth Domestic Abuse Project – Thursday, October 8, 1992, Duluth, Minnesota 

from the Journal of the Task Group on Child Custody Issues*
of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism
Volume 5, Number 1, Spring1993 (Fourth Edition, 2001)
c/o University Studies, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97207-0751
503-725-5844, 503-725-5977 (FAX) , straton@pdx.edu

---

What is Fair for Children of Abusive Men?
by Jack C. Straton, Ph.D.

In the process, I am going to talk today about the effects of male power and control over children, not about parental power and control. I know that it is popular these days to de-gender family conflict, to talk about “spouse abuse” and “family violence” rather than “wife beating” and “rape.” I know that we want a society in which men nurture children to the same extent that women do.

I know that fathers and mothers should both be capable parents. But if you ask “What about the kids?” I want to give you a serious answer. I cannot seriously entertain the myth that our society really is gender neutral, so to consider “What about the kids?” while pretending such neutrality is to engage in denial and cognitive dissonance. I cannot hope to arrive at an answer that will positively affect reality if my underlying assumptions are based on fantasy.

So I am going to talk today about the effects of male power and control over children, not about parental power and control. As I cite examples, some of you may hear your internal voice saying, “But women do that, too.” As this happens I would ask you to be aware that such voices are often the voice of guilt that try to distract us from what we really know about men’s violence so that we need not take responsibility for this violence.

…

You may notice that this references:

Duluth Domestic Abuse Project

which I have also blogged on (I think) and where, possibly, this concept originated, starting as far back as 1989.  They market a database for it.  I don’t think Jack Straton’s sense is about to be exercised (unfortunately) when there is SO much potential for $$ in this field….

He continues, regarding children speaking up (a hot topic, I know):

Children’s right to choose vs. abuser’s manipulation of a child. 

I want to talk about the question of children advocating on their own behalf. As one who would like to see the rights of children recognized and affirmed, I am tempted to say that, yes, a child should have some input into a decision about with whom they will live.

Yet in the present case we have a man who, though he beats his wife, is often very charismatic to the rest of the world, and perhaps to his kids. And even if he beats his kids as well, it is known that intermittent affection can be a stronger binding agent than consistent affection. We also have a man who has demonstrated his power over another human being through brutality.

It is known that older children will sometimes join in the abuse of their mother. Since it is the older children to whom we might be tempted to accede some measure of choice, I find this mirroring of the father’s brutality disquieting. I do not ask you to take one side or the other of this question, but to be cautious until someone more wise than I can resolve the knot for you.

 

At any rate, here is some of the funding behind some of this issue.

NOTE:  My time is out, the post is incomplete, but I’m going to still publish it here.  I believe we ALL need to start studying this database and start looking up who is doing what with our scarce federal dollars, as the headlines continue to show more and more domestic violence deaths, and some very traumatic and dangerous behavior from the next generation of children.  Perhaps the failure to protect is related to this. . . . .     When will the studies be done?  When will the effectiveness be shown?  WHO is accounting for it?

This is NOT someone else’s business, it’s yours, at least in this nation!

As I’ve promoted on this website, this is one tool for tracking government spending — at least in the Health and Human Services department:

Tracking Accountability in Government Grants (TAGGS) Web Site

GrantsNet Home

The Department’s Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) is the Department’s central repository for all HHS grant transaction data. Much of this data is available to the public at the TAGGS internet site http://taggs.hhs.gov. This site allows users to view standard TAGGS-generated reports or query the database for current and past grant award information. Congressional district, grant program name, recipient (grantee) name, recipient location (state, city, zip, and/or congressional district), awarding OPDIV, transaction amount (or sum of transactions), and fiscal year are some commonly searched TAGGS fields. The TAGGS Annual Report can be found at http://taggs.hhs.gov/annualreports.cfm.

URL: http://taggs.hhs.gov

Now, when I key in the words “supervised visitation” and search the 85,000 grants that actually have abstracts (vs. the about 500,000 on this database), I come up with only 3

Number of rows returned: 3
Rows 1 through 3 displayed.
Records Searched: 147753

Award Number	Award Title	OPDIV	Program Office	Sum of Actions
90EV0356	DEMONSTRATION OF ENHANCED SERVICES TO CHILDREN AND YOUTH EXPOSED TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE	ACF	FYSB	$ 353,948
SM058554	FAMILY SERVICES OF GREATER WATERBURY	SAMHSA	CMHS	$ 118,886
90EV0355	EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR	ACF	FYSB	$ 355,648

http://www.hhs.gov/grantsnet/TrackingWebsite.htm

As you can see, the grant numbers are themselves interactive.  let’s look at this one with the colorful (sic) descriptive title “Executive Director.”  Notice, the OPDIV is “ACF,” a key player in this field (I”ll leave its typos in, but have separated the objectives 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5….)

Here it is:

Award Funding Details

 It is always good to enhance services, right? 

Anyhow, then you can click on the recipient name, also interactive.  For some reason here, it only shows the 2009 grants to this organization, the NY State Coalition Against Domestic Violence:  (NCADV):

Recipient:	NEW YORK STATE COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, INC
Address:	79 CENTRAL AVE, WOMEN’S BLDG ALBANY, NY 12206
Country Name:	United States of America
County Name:	ALBANY
DHHS Region:	2
Type:	Other Social Services Organization
Class:	Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organizations

Award Actions

FY	Award Number	Budget Year of Support	Award Code	Agency	Action Issue Date	Amount This Action
2009	0901NYSDVC	1	1	ACF	06-11-2009	$ 241,087
2009	US4CE001530	1	000	CDC	02-02-2009	$ 321,234
2009	US4CE001530	1	001	CDC	08-26-2009	$ 41,184
Fiscal Year 2009 Total:						$ 603,505

Here’s an advanced search (on that name) with a few more fields.  It will probably exceed the margins in my post, but you can copy it (or search on similar fields) and notice how many awards are either NEW or NONCOMPETING CONTINUATION, meaning, once you’re in, you’re in.  We also see that (though these awards are, I admit, modest overall) they stretch back to 1996 in time.  You also then see several investigators, and can look them up, if you wish:

Now, in 2007, it appears some more research is being done in “applied health.”  I am a domestic violence survivor (though not East Coast), and am glad to know that my experiences are somehow contributing to health research, although it’s a little distressing to not yet be free from the situation, so many years after I filed the initial restraining order.  Perhaps I can nab a government grant to put my two bits of data in….

US4CE222482

Fiscal Year

OPDIV

Grantee Name

Grantee Class

Grantee Type

Award Number

Award Title

CFDA Number

CFDA Program Name

Award Activity Type

Award Action Type

Principal Investigator

Sum of Actions

2008

CDC

NEW YORK STATE COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, INC

Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organizations

Other Social Services Organization

US4CE222482

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PREVENTION ENHANCEMENT & LEADERSHIP THROUGH ALLIANCES

93061

Innovations in Applied Public Health Research

HEALTH SERVICES

SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION

JESSICA VASQUEZ

$ 205,436

2007

CDC

NEW YORK STATE COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, INC

Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organizations

Other Social Services Organization

US4CE222482

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PREVENTION ENHANCEMENT & LEADERSHIP THROUGH ALLIANCES

93061

Innovations in Applied Public Health Research

HEALTH SERVICES

NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION

PATTI J NEWELL

$ 194,706

What are they doing with this? Who else is functioning under this CFDA code 93061?

The TAGGS database doesn’t (appear) to list anyone but these two, NYSCADV, so I went to my other database “usaspending.gov.”

I think you need to click on this one:  The charts speak louder:

http://www.usaspending.gov/faads/faads.php?cfda_program_num=93.061&sortby=u&detail=-1&datype=T&reptype=a&database=faads&fiscal_year=&detail=-1&datype=T&submit=GO

Trend

Assistance for 93.061: Innovations In Applied Public Health Research
(FY 2000-2010)

Summary

Although this is obviously conclusive, I simply don’t have time to post more today. 

My conclusion:

Supervised visitation is an outgrowth of the unresolved conflict between letting women actually leave abuse, and father’s rights to their kids as property.  PERIOD.  Rather than allow the first, the feds are funding the second, and supporting a bunch of professionals in the process.  HOW does this help the kids? 

Abuse?  Separate from it.  Period.  it’s a role model.  Don’t force the non-offending parent to be strung out in this year after year, at public expense!