OK, folks — pls. review the post about “copyediting” (why I don’t).  Fact is, I process information, read on topics (or, case in point, react to them) while out and about.  I have less than 2 hours a day to compress something into this spot — not my own PC — and then print out what I read.  Or sometimes even published. 

Last post, for example, had the usual word errors (some related to the topic, others to brain full of processing, not editing).  For example, a man was “reserved” a restraining order.

I referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and perhaps the woman not wanting to challenge them directly because “they’re armed…”  THAT statement refers to my own reticence about challenging armed law enforcement who refused to enforce the law (or court order) in a number of situations in my own case.  My mistake. 

The point I thought of, afterwards, was:  While Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, and Sotomayor protest a citizen in an “organized” state (say WHAT??) taking the criminal justice system into (her) own hands — and protest breaking that principle — How’s Come they didn’t “GET” that the crime of assault and battery IS a citizen (a male one) taking the law into his own hands, or rather, breaking it. 

And overall, I’d say that the concept of protecting women from getting KO’d by an ex hasn’t exactly worked yet, in this country. 

In Bulgaria, per NYT, women can be an asset.  Glad to hear it…..

Bulgaria News – Breaking World Bulgaria News – The New York Times

I  look at the brochures in the family courts, child support, and social service offices when I am in some of them.  Sometimes I make a special detour into the wonderful

“Family Court Services”

of my local courthouse, to find out whether the concept of domestic violence has disappeared from general use.  FYI, it has.  And where it shows up, it’s no longer called “violence” but “abuse” (that’s more PC).

However the word “Violence” attracts a lot of federal funding.  I know where a good deal of this goes — both now, and formerly (see this blog!).

A new “twist” on the Expert Conference-Talks is to “collaborate.”  While these groups (who are paid to run conferences, and set up websites — and institute after institute — after all, a guy (and a whole lot of white, conservative middle aged males are typically included) has to make a living, right? — want to hear the flavor of the month (which JUST HAPPENS to match federal grants programs with the same flavor names), the one voice they don’t want to hear is mine, or women like me.

For one, we don’t complete our sentences, and our websites (well, mine at least) aren’t as “tight” and colorful.  For another, some of us are just dang pissed off.

And some people put this flyer in the San Diego Family Courts.

Take a look!

San Diego Family Court Protests (Fall, 2009)

In late October 2009, one or more people distributed a large quantity of flyers inside the San Diego family law courts.

Reportedly they were stuffed in books, free magazines, and other literature in the courthouses.

The flyers protest the use of expensive professionals in child custody cases, in particular section 730 psychological evaluators.

Criticisms are also directed at minor’s counsel attorneys, exchange and visitation monitors, and consulting psychologists.

While this criticism is appropriate, it seems these people are unaware of federal policy recommending this, via Access Visitation funding…(search term on my blog, or search “required outcome”)

You can see a scanned PDF of the flyer.

The text of the protest flyer has also been posted on Courthouse Forum, one of the sites hosting discussions about the scandal. Some other web sites with related public discussions are:

• Custody Evaluator’s Credentials Questioned In Lawsuit (10 News main site)
• Custody Evaluator’s Credentials Questioned In Lawsuit (10 News blog site)
• Parents Say They Are Drained Of Money By Court Professionals

Some of the discussions mention the courts sealing the Tadros v. Doyne case after it started to be discussed publicly. Perhaps the courts want to “protect privacy” or maybe simply cover up allegations of their misconduct. Whatever the case may be, you can read the text from this quote in case the link or discussion thread becomes unavailable:

DOYNE case leads to the accreditation of a CAT, as I recall.  However, the whole issue is turning courts into psychological dispensaries to the public, under duress.   The HHS department is set up along the lines of a prominent psychologist, Wade Horn, and with help from such heavyweights as David Blankenhorn (who receives/d grants to write “The Future of Marriage”) and so forth.  It’s not just at the courts level, or at the individual practitioners level.

Here’s the flyer (and see original link for more information on this):

PARENTS BEWARE! PRIVATE CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

 ALSO CALLED “730 EVALUATIONS”

“AND THE CHILDREN GO TO………THE HIGHEST BIDDER”
 

Judges regularly order parents into Private Child Custody Evaluations and appoint a specific evaluator. Yet no one in the Court, including the Judge, verifies the education, credentials, training, or competence of the appointees. The Court deems itself “not responsible” for private sector practitioners, yet they make orders that force you to sign a contract and pay for what could only be called a “disservice” to your children. The evaluator then coerces you to sign a service agreement, medical releases, and other documents, when no legally binding contract existed prior to your signature being received. If the Court is allowed to make this kind of order, why is your signature required?

 But you will do this. You will do this because your lawyer (who probably told you it was a good idea and suggested an evaluator), the Judge, and the evaluator themselves will deem you “uncooperative” and imply that you will lose all custody of your children if you don’t.

 Parents, WE, AS CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY, have no right under the U.S. or California Constitutions to raise or even have contact with our own children.

FALSE, I say.  First of all, the Declaration of Independence talks about “inalienable rights” meaning — that the government is NOT our master, but our servant.

How this relationship was changed around through the tax system (which affects grants, which affect the courts and nearly every other aspect of life) is the topic of future posts.  I’m not a Constitutional expert.  But we know that family courts basically PER SE violate due process. 

Those in the business of the “Justice Factory” know this and will exploit your fear of losing your child to serve themselves and feed the mill.

Yes they do.  NOW, the question is, what can we do about this?  At this point (many years after our case entered, and still has stalled, in the family law system) is that we must boycott it entirely, one way or another.  It’s a large net, and trawling for fish. 

Either that, or continue to enter this slot-machine venue.  Keep pumping in quarters, but the house generally wins.

Regardless of these facts, the Judge will enter any report an appointee generates into your Court file under California Evidence Code §730, without verifying that the evaluator followed the legal procedures and/or complied with the orders they issued in your case. Once released to the court, you have no independent access the report you paid for.If you are ordered into a 730 Evaluation, your only chance at 50/50 custody is if:a) You are paying the “right” Family Law Attorney ($250+/hr.), and;b) You agree to pay for ½ the evaluation, in advance of the report….….which has no set limit as to how long it can take or how much the evaluator charges hourly. Evaluations can cost as much as $30,000 and you may be required to participate in more than one!!! As well, you may be “farmed out” to their partner marketed colleagues for “therapy”, “mediation”, “parenting coordination”, “supervised visitation”, “coaching” and a few other “services” these same people provide.THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “COURT APPROVED” PRIVATE EVALUATOR – DESPITE WHAT YOU MAY HAVE BEEN TOLD* Please download PKT-036 at the link provided belowHOW THIS COULD HAVE HAPPENED?In 1992, the Federal Government enacted The Child Support Recovery Act. The States were at risk of having welfare funding cut. In response, California dismissed “Argos Minimum Child Support Standards Act of 1984”, in favor of “The California Child Support Guideline” (Family Code §§4050-4076). Child support was thereafter based on “time-share” rather than meeting the minimum needs of the child.

Non-custodial parents, previously disinterested in custody but ordered to pay child support or face criminal charges, flooded the Court seeking custody. Resources exhausted, the Court, in its infinite business sense, created measures allowing the “out-sourcing” of services at the parents’ expense.

Whoever this author is, the narration is PARTIALLY true.  The focus should not be only on those noncustodial parents (although there’s an element of truth in this).  The Child Support System is recruiting.  From there, grants administered BY OCSE are used to help tweak the system and the litigation, as described herein.  It’s NOT just a natural flooding from deadbeat Dads (or Moms) who don’t want to pay.

It’s recruiting.

For my witness, en route here today, I saw AGAIN, full-scale, HUGE posters at the main commuter train line (I have now seen them at at least 3 stations), you see them coming, going, while ON the platform waiting for an arriving train, and I saw another TWO today, HUGE, each of them at least (I’d say) 10 feet long by about 2 feet tall, and pasted at an angle behind a long bench where people could be waiting either for a taxi, a bus, or someone to get their car, inside the station.  They read, and I quote:

DO YOU PAY OR RECEIVE CHILD SUPPORT? 

DON’T WAIT TIL YOU NEED HELP!

OPEN A CHILD SUPPORT CASE!

TURBOCOURT.COM  (and an 866, plus a logo, for the county’s child support agency).

The photo (I didn’t get a close look from the one across the platform) has a variety of kids (multicultural) together, and below it, one of two (white) kids in front of a suburban home.  This billboard was pasted in a VERY wealthy neighborhood.  Another one had a picture of what looks like a man’s wallet. 

There was no picture of any women, or child, needing child support…

I have another question:  why does it say do you PAY or RECEIVE (in that order) versus RECEIVE or PAY?  Answer:  It’s aiming at noncustodial parents.

Grants to States for Access and Visitation Programs (93.597)

Obligations

(Formula Grants) FY 08 $10,000,000; FY 09 est $10,000,000; FY 10 est $12,000,000

Program

93.597 Grants to States for Access and Visitation Programs

Federal Agency

Agency: Department of Health and Human Services
Office: Administration for Children and Families

Authorization

Social Security Act, Title IV, Part D, Section 469B, Public Law 104-193.

Program Number

93.597

Last Known Status

Active

Objectives

To enable States to create programs which support and facilitate access and visitation by non-custodial parents with their children.

{{NOTE:  this does not work for mothers after custody-switch, that I’m aware of .  And I know lots of mothers who lost their kids to that switch..}}

 Activities may include mediation, counseling, education, development of parenting plans, visitation enforcement and development of guidelines for visitation and alternative custody arrangements.

Types of Assistance

Project Grants

=========

Back to the SAN DIEGO FLYER text……

The Court enticed private practitioners by calling them “expert witnesses”, such that their “work product” was immune to lawsuit, under Evidence Code §730.

With HMO’s and PPO’s limiting payments to doctors for mental heath services that were not “medically necessary”, psychologists who formerly refused to be involved in the Court system, suddenly saw a “cash cow”. The public was now required to pay their full hourly rates for an indeterminate length of time, in hopes of continued, meaningful contact with their children.

 Such practitioners in the Golden State should be well-heeled, as the Terminator is now threatening to entirely Terminate CalWorks, and reduce mental health services (as paid for by federal grants) and in general, things that might help keep children and their families off the streets. 

To this day the Court takes no responsibility to ensure that the credentials, training and education of the 730 Evaluators they appoint meet the legal standards. Lorna Alksne, Supervising Judge of the Family Court, recently told Channel 10 News that it is the responsibility of the parents to verify credentials of an appointed evaluator.** In other words, they “scapegoat” their incompetence, corruption, and deliberate ignorance on you, at the cost of your home, your retirement, your children’s savings and college funds and most important, your child’s psychological, emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing… 

NAMES 

“730’s”: Stephen Doyne, John C. Parker IV, William Dess, David Green, Lori Love, Russell Gold, Steven Sparta, Robert Simon, Yanon Volcani, Breffni Barrett, Neil Ribner, Linda Altes;Marketed Partners: Hannah’s House, Family Connections, Monika Konia, Penny Angel-Levy, William Eddy, Terrence Chucas, Dave Schulman, Margot Lewis….and more too numerous to list here.LINKS

 That’s all the time I have to flesh out that post. 

My Recommendation:

If your noncustodial parent is willing to cough it up for child support without any agency involvement, live with it or do without (for more, see Randijames.com).  If he (or the occasional she) is NOT willing to, then still maybe do without, because sooner or later such a person is going to find some unethical sorts to get his way, and we know where they live & thrive.

If you still don’t “get” this, check out this 1981 organization:

I am a Noncustodial mother who lost her children illegally coming up on 4 years ago because of California’s Failure to Enforce its own laws. 

Readers. . . . . I am blowing off steam here, and the paragraphs may not be in order.  All things considered, I’m doing it OK, and society should be glad that — unlike the man I left years ago — I blow off steam with my fingers on a keyboard and not with my finger’s on someone else’s neck (etc.) as I experienced before finally filing for a domestic violence order with kickout.

NOTE:  The prior post on Evan Stark, I do not agree totally with his perspective (after a re-read).  He is not addressing the primary issues, but simply reframing them.  In looking at the Glenn Sacks link to “Evan Stark,” I found no mention (at first look) of his name on the Glenn Sacks site.  Today’s post is in (irate) response to the hypocrisy of the blog about child abduction, on this site.

I don’t know whether I’ll be too coherent (below), but I do know that I’ll say my piece, particularly as it’s not being heard in the courtroom, or other places.

To expect mothers who can’t see their kids and who have been stuck in the court system for years to act “rationally” approaching this holiday — well, don’t expect too much of this. 

I actually think that these holidays — MOST of them — and “awareness” months (or days) should just be boycotted.  It gives the general public ADHD while simply providing more business for Hallmark, and psychotherapists who handle whichever distraught parent doesn’t get to see his or her offspring.

I[ll try again (better) another time.

Readers also might be aware that I have no regular internet access, and have to put up first drafts on short timespans these days.

I personally am emotionally, physically, spiritually and mentally exhausted from another attempt to do something through the family law system.  On the bright side, going there didn’t provoke PTSD like it normally does…

MOTHER’s DAY:

As I approach yet another Mothers’ Day weekend, realizing I am not going to likely see either of my children, and fully 10 years after separating from an abusive husband, who never spent a night in jail, even though the abuse lasted almost 10 years, and was at a felony level, causing serious injury as defined by law, and for which zero (0.00) compensation was ever received, I am coming up on over a year since I have seen my younger daughter by face, or heard her voice. 

The last time I considered fleeing this area for my OWN safety (even though like many women I’ve lost everything to these systems, which endorse & reward criminal behavior, let alone simple sloth, while promising to do something remedy and relieve it) the other thing I’ve lost is my respect for authority in general.  I am honest in court and have enough self-restraint not to commit crimes, and realize that this means in this culture, I will not be allowed to contact, or transmit these sane values to my own offspring.

How a woman handles this, I don’t know.  We have choices — dissociate, and not care?  Or care, and take the law into our own hands (which will likely just result in jail time or a total identity change meaning our lives just got cut in half, and whatever the first half was spent working towards, GOES), or we are continue to hurt and work, but forever changed.  The meaning of language changes.  The alienation towards major institutions — ALL of them — changes.  Speaking for myself, my desire to participate or even support any community which allows the widescale trafficking in children, and women, while loudly protesting it’s AGAINST this — is gone.

My case:

Prior to the last time I saw my daughter (2009), it was almost two years without visual contact.  The seven years prior to that, the father had generous weekly visitation, alternating holidays (and I gave him more) and two weeks in the summer. 

The moment they were put in his care, I didn’t see either daughter on a single major holiday except one of them once, the first year nor did I get any summer vacation.  Within a year, the visitation was hammered down to one phone call a week, which I didn’t get consistently then, and do not get AT ALL now.  I requested in court that the children be required to call me, which was granted verbally, but didn’t make it into the court order (which the father was allowed to write).  So, the emotional abuse of not getting through continues to this date.

During this first, critical year of separation from my children (right about as they hit puberty), I was able to talk myself into two local conferences by expert organizations in the field of domestic violence and child abuse.  NOTE:  I didn’t receive notice, mailing, and was not able to AFFORD attendance, but managed to get in anyhow. 

During this first, critical year of separation, women continued — in the same city — to be stabbed, shot, in one case as I recall, burned, and in general drop like flies while trying to leave an abuser.  I ran into a triple homicide (police cars, TV cameras) one Thanksgiving evening, causing severe PTSD.  This also turned out to be family related.  The court, failing to answer my repeated requests it state a REASON for the custody switch, also failed to acknowledge that outside the courtroom I was being intimidated as well.

Instead, they assigned another court personnel (who draws a salary, I’m sure) who MUST have walked by at least one of these domestic violence murders, high-profile, en route to my courtroom telling me to go fly a kite.

I sought to ascertain the scope or practice from this children’s attorney, and (she) couldn’t give me one.  I communicated to her when my own daughter (who’d already been abducted) sent me a troubling email about another Amber Alert of a girl her age, and was ignored.  I faxed that the father had stalked me (and credible witness of this was in the court file) in response to my attempts to see my daughters, per the court order.  I received, in return, a scathing long-distance psychological analysis by a woman whose initials after her name read “Esq.” and not “L.C.S.W.,” although if they had, she’d still be more professional to at least MEET with me once, or show some evidence that the court file had been at least read through once.

My court order says I am to see the children on Mother’s Day and their father on Father’s Day.  That hasn’t happened in approximately four years.  The court orders are unenforceable. 

After my kids were stolen on an overnight visitation based on FALSE claims that I was an abduction risk, and several other facts not proved in any court, and because law enforcement simply refused to honor the existing physical custody order, I foolishly believed a Family Law Judge would have some interest in the facts of the case, and once those facts were compared with the law, would return my children both to this household and their schools.

At the time of the abduction, the father was thousands of $$ behind in child support, which was set at a VERY minimal level.  The child support order itself was the first time this man was actually forced to support his own children without financially pimping me, i.e., I worked, took abuse, had my credit stolen, and lived in fear and half in and half out of a car (when a car was actually available) until finally, my life (then at risk) was spared by a CIVIL restraining order.  I knew nothing about criminal ones, although they would’ve been more appropriate.

Two days ago, I cooled my heels for a morning in front of a judge who had been in the DA’s office during the years I was getting slapped around my own home, and during the year that my children were stolen. 

I later looked up who he was (and the intermingling of family connections in this area).   I found out (and may write him, as our case isn’t going anywhere, and if it does, any court orders issued won’t be enforced before both kids turn 18) that by the time he got his first bachelor’s, I was getting ready to get my second.  I am beginning to tire of the “attitude” taken towards family court litigants once they get in there.

Without a second thought, my matter was dropped and I was sent back to the self-help desk which had not helped me to start with, because I’d been unable to SAFELY serve this man. 

FYI, Financial Devastation typically follows entry into the family law case.  I couldn’t afford service, was not allowed to serve by mail, and I no longer have associates willing to go there.  I sure as hell am not going anywhere near the father, who lives in another city, and particularly not without a vehicle (the original abduction resulted in lost work and — predictably over time — lost vehicle). 

Thereafter, the same date as I sat in court a half day to receive 10 seconds of judge’s time, the father (who had been at least by PHONE informed of this case, and requested to come drop his divorce action, since he was stalking me and had in writing his intent to reclaim me — against my will – as his wife (having abandoned our children with his former mistress) continued to make phone calls, and waste more of my time. 

This process is utterly exhausting, and NOT possible to work around.

I cannot speak for all marriages, obviously, but in ours the difference in education was significant (I have two college degrees to his none) and the intent from the start of this marriage, rather than for us both to be elevated by working together, was to put me down lower than he already was.  It began, continued, and has continued like a total bulldozer, whirlwind, and I am thankful that at least all of us are still alive — all though there is one daughter I’ve had no contact with for a very long time.

As we head into ANOTHER “Mother’s Day” weekend, probably a few more Moms and/or children will die, in punishment for confronting Dad about something, and Fathers & Families, ignoring this, will continue to advocate to further bury us alive financially, legally, and emotionally because — long ago and legally  — SOME of us second-class-female-gender-Moms said ENOUGH! and said it with court orders.

Japan had it right folks — they understand that women are better mothers.  Men are too often in the habit of importing women for the purposes of babymaking (I’m not saying this is the current case) and then when the mother says NO, they have an issue.

I think God had this one right too — for nine months, generally, we bond with growing life inside our bodies.  Once we give birth — or sometimes before — the battle is on for “whose kids are they” in our current environment. 

Glenn Sacks, your Sack is full of hot air, and whatever God you worship, if there’s a just one around, He will sooner or later set it straight, I hope.  I long ago ceased hoping for balance in the courts OR from law enforcement, as they are so inbred it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference.  If any parent is so foolish as to think that this is where you go for anything other than to get fleeced, you deserve it. 

The practice to get unwilling participants INTO the family law system against their will, and from there into mediation, which is by way of saying “Outcome Based Litigation” (i.e., no due process), is consolidating a restraining order with a divorce order.  She wants restraint, he files for divorce, and voila — she loses her kids, and ends up paying him.  Or else. 

Now, people in the U.S. want to threaten the nation of Japan like it was a recalcitrant child.  Let’s remember in what country Hiroshima is, and in what country American Citizens with Japanese blood in their veins were rounded up and incarcerated several decades ago.  Decades later, this is discussed on public television stations, but at the time, it was another matter.

Right now, we are rounding up noncustodial mothers who said NO! to their husbands, and when the law didn’t protect them, they took it upon themselves to protect their own kids.  The SPIN that we are all lying (based on our female gender), and that somehow the odds need to be evened towards fathers is the same mentality that said Japanese Americans are  a risk to our nation, and need to lose THEIR homes, businesses, and in some cases, childhoods til it gets figured out.  Racial profiling, Gender profiling — what’s the diff? 

MANY women fail to realize how deeply the OCSE (Child Support System) is involved in the fatherhood movement.  Glenn here is at least honest enough to say it up front.  Here’s the quote, from the site:

Fathers & Families has an ambitious legislative agenda and has helped pass family court reform legislation in over two dozen states. Below are updates on Fathers & Families’ current legislative projects. To learn more about our legislative and other achievements, click here.

California

Child Custody Reform Bill AB 2416 Passes Assembly by Unanimous Consent, Moves to Senate

F & F Introduces 5th CA. Family Court Reform Bill—SB 1188 

F & F Helps Amend CA. SB 1266 to Include Both Mothers and Fathers

F & F Introduces 4 Family Court Reform Bills into California Legislature

F & F serves on Department of Child Support Services Programs Workgroup, the only advocacy group included {{Note:  the only link not to be a hyperlink, here…}

The last time I ran into a mother who’d been deprived of her children and was stuck in the family law court was this MORNING.  For 14 years, she’s been involved in this.

WHO is stupid enough to think that this is going to help a child or adult, to keep the litigation going for so long?

That is, other than those whose livelihood is IN the courts….

They are recruiting fathers from child support office, and from prisons, to get free legal help to reduce arrears.  “Poor Fathers…”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Liz Richards ~ http://www.nafcj.net ~ out of Anandale Virginia has documented this and has been blogging the connections for over 15 years.  I took the time to research her statements, and have found them to be accurate.  The paths are clear, if you delete the “spin” and simply look at the federal funding, and see how far-thinking were some of the corporations that positioned themselves to keep “researching” the problems” (without ever solving them or, that I can tell, saving a single life) on the public taxpayer dole.

I started this site to continue posting links and some studies to follow that money trail for those who choose to.

The more I read, the more radical I became.  In the meantime, I quit churches, on the basis that enough is enough of USING women, and SILENCE on domestic violence.  I tell women to avoid the child support trap — and beware its gifts.  If you get there by receiving cash aid after support, you have just signed over your rights to advocate YOURSELF on child support.

I also say, forget it on restraining orders and (a) leave and (b) take a self-defense class, and take it SERIOUSLY.  A restraining order is just going to piss off your ex, and Glenn Sacks & Company, and fact is, they right now have more powerful access to media and government than you do.  If you doubt me, look at the makeup of the U.S. Congress. 

Do you think that the VAWA and Statewide Coalitions and other groups are going to help you?  Victims of Crime compensation?  For lost income, lost teeth, medical reimbursement for counseling and so forth?  If you are such a Mom who was so helped, please add your comment (and identifying information, if safe to do so) HERE.  I wasn’t. 

So here it is on Child Abduction. Hypocrites!   Listen to an employed businessman, apparently (it’s a *.com site, right?) with postings by a lawyer, and Fathers & Family advocating in the Child Support Agency (like it wasn’t already heavily biased towards minimizing child support for fathers, and switching custody when the come into the offices for help), piping up for a pity party that it’s too easy to get a restraining order, and that child abduction prevention orders are not being inforced…

If I could spit on screen, I would.  Women who DO comply with court orders are going to lose in this venue.  Men who don’t will be rewarded.

FL Passes Law Against Parental Child Abduction – Or Does It?

May 7th, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

This article tells us that the Florida Legislature has recently passed, with no ‘nay’ votes, a bill entitled the “Child Abduction Prevention Act.” (Capitol Soup, 4/22/10). The governor is expected to sign it. Here’s a link to the amended bill. It’s a pretty serious bill. The legislators look like they’re intent on preventing parental child abduction out of Florida to another state or to a foreign country.

{{Well, that’s less business for Florida, right?}}

So they’ve given judges the power to issue orders prohibiting a parent leaving the jurisdiction, requiring parents who seem to pose a risk of abduction to post bonds, requiring them to turn over children’s passports, notifying U.S. passport authorities of the order against the parent, refusing permission to travel to any country that’s not a signatory to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction, and more.

Of course the judge has to hold a hearing and receive evidence that suggests that one parent may be about to flee the jurisdiction.

Not in my state (same general wording in the bill) they don’t.  All that was needed was for law enforcement officers to threaten to call in CPS if I didn’t cede my children to the father, whose residence at this time was unidentified, who had a habitual pattern of repeatedly violating all court orders, which this station knew of, and when these law enforcement officers had in front of them a court order NOT 24 HOURS OLD — DENYING him his request for immediate ex parte total removal of my daughters on the basis that I (and not he) was the abduction risk. 

When I requested that if these officers were GOING to allow my ex to actually commit felony child-stealing (which I later learned was the description) they would — right now — issue a report that he was at a minimum violating my sole physical custody order.  They mocked me and refused, and taunted me that they would issue this — many weeks later. 

This provoked a crisis requiring us to go to mediation.  I was in shock and trauma over this, UTTERLY devastated that this could happen.  The same mediator that ignored (totally) the original domestic violence order was my only option, or fail to get to court because no other mediator was available.  He was required — by rules of court — to provide me an intake form.  He skipped it this time, no intake form was provided.  Each of the two prior times I had (truthfully) related the former violence and the current situations. It’d been several years, and the form had been updated to include, as a “check mark” “CHILD-STEALING.”

LOOK:  Is it a felony or is it a check mark on a mediator’s intake form? 

Either way, I received no intake form and was asked by this jerk how was my “relationship” with my kids.  I repeated, several times, my children are MIA, they have been stolen by their father, and I do not know where they are.  He then, doltish, asked me if they were in school.  I repeated, they are not in the school I just enrolled them in, they are truant, and I DO NOT KNOW WHERE THEY ARE AND CANNOT REACH THEM BY PHONE.  THEIR FATHER AND GIRLFRIEND HAVE TAKEN AND CONCEALED THEM. 

We go to court.  The theft provokes a hearing.  The hearing provokes BUSINESS for a family lawyer, obviously, as the mother, I’m going to hire someone to get my kids back.  That’s how it works, folks….

At the hearing, the mediator, ignoring the felony child-stealing, ignoring (which is on the record) that I actually qualified, if I myself had done this, as a domestic violence victim, having had a prior restraining order, and ignoring that for three weeks these children for the first time in their lives had no contact with their mother (something that had never been done to their father).  He produces a report — which I obviously wasn’t given before the hearing, nor was my attorney — containing lies and material factual error, and ignoring the crime.    My attorney, quick on his feet, requests the court to provide the LEGAL and FACTUAL basis for switching custody, which it is required to do by law.

The judge complains about this request (that she comply with custody laws in our state) and, complaining, sets the matter for a short trial to find out what happened (although what happened is already obvious).  The father, now with control, proceeds to violate even more court orders than before, and in essence, this is about the last time I see my children, even though they live not too far away.  When I protest and try to seek enforcement of the drastically reduced court order (less visitation than he had even immediately after being thrown out of our home), I am personally threatened by stalking, plus continued arguing, by the father of our daughters.  Whose employment, at this time, is (while I’m at it) under the table. 

The same child support agency that stalled — for a few years, when I sought its help — acted quickly — within a month — to terminate all current arrears, and continued (for 12 months) to deliberately stall and fail to file a seek work order on my recalcitrant mate, meaning, I went quickly into poverty, as did the children (they ended up receiving NO child support, as I lost my profession over this, and their father was already failing to work at his in order to punish me for seeking standards, and leaving him….). 

Thereafter, in the family law venue, per the law, the judge is require

That evidence includes not having secure ties to the community, not having financial interests in the community, obtaining passports, selling a residence, etc. And no one pretends that the law will prevent all child abductions by parents.

The Sean Goldman kidnapping is a good example.

There, the mother said she was taking the boy to visit her relatives in Brazil and never returned. Nothing in the Florida bill would have prevented that from happening, even if Goldman had lived in that state. Still, there are things legislation can accomplish and things it can’t, and, reading the bill, it’s clear that the lawmakers are trying to put teeth into the new law. They’re doing what they can to prevent parents from depriving their exes of contact via abduction. Until, that is, they get to subsection 7 (b) on page nine. At that point, the elected representatives of the People carve out an exception through which one could fly a 747 en route to Japan. Although you can guess what it is, here’s the language:

This section, including the requirement to post a bond or other security, does not apply to a parent who, in a proceeding to order or modify a parenting plan or time-sharing schedule, is determined by the court to be a victim of an act of domestic violence or provides the court with reasonable cause to believe that he or she is about to become the victim of an act of domestic violence, as defined in s. 741.28.

An injunction for protection against domestic violence issued pursuant to s. 741.30 for a parent as the petitioner which is in effect at the time of the court proceeding shall be one means of demonstrating sufficient evidence that the parent is a victim of domestic violence or is about to become the victim of an act of domestic violence, as defined in s. 741.28, and shall exempt the parent from this section, including the requirement to post a bond or other security. So if a parent has “reasonable cause” to believe that “he or she” is about to become a victim of DV, “he or she” can abduct the kids to any location desired, including any non-Hague Convention country. Once there, as we’ve seen in Paul Toland and Christopher Savoie’s cases, the kids might as well be on the dark side of the moon for all the contact dad will have with them. Significantly, all a litigant needs to show to a judge is that an injunction has issued against DV. Recall that I recently posted a piece on the process for getting a TRO in Florida. The “how to” website I linked to pronounced getting a TRO “easy,” and that looked to me like an accurate description. Just toddle down to the courthouse, ask the clerk to give you a form, fill it out, have it notarized and Presto!, there’s your TRO. No muss, no fuss, no evidence, no judge and no troublesome opposing party. We know that a domestic violence TRO need neither allege nor prove that any form of actual violence has ever occurred. If the person requesting the order fears that it will, the TRO will issue. That’s true of an injunction against DV too; fear of DV is sufficient. So what we have is this: any parent who wants to abscond with the kids can do so based on his/her ability to convince a judge of their belief that DV may occur. Given that the vast majoriy of DV TROs are issued to women, and that judges almost invariably “err on the side of caution” it’s beginning to look like Florida moms at least will have little to worry about from the “Child Abduction Prevention Act.” Thanks to Barbara for the heads-up.

THINKING makes me happy, and this is what I am thinking about after hearing that another Ph.D. has got my story right, in:

Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life

as posted by “ANGELFURY” on:

“Battered Mothers-A Human Rights Issue ”

which was obtained, I gather, from “theLizLibrary” which many of us are familiar with.

THIS bit is MY Commentary:

I expect the tongue-in-cheek aspect may not come through in print; assume it’s there….

Women are “always” being interpreted by men, and the ubiquitous assumption that, because we are women, or because we are in the family law system, or because we actually reported violence, sought restraining orders, or want to report that our children are being hurt or compromised in one way or another — we just cannot get our own stories straight, did not mean what we said, and need someone with a Ph.D. to interpret it for us into psycho-social-jargon that strips the genuine emotion (and identifiable detail) out of it. For example:

What kind of rational reasoning would say, in defiance of all known biology, that a full-grown woman came out of a man’s side after the Lord put him under, and that while she waited (presumably fully conscious and capable of speech) after he regained consciousness, and seeing as he had already named all the animals, she waited until he came to himself, after which he figured out a name for Her (and not vice versa), i.e., “WOE-Man.”

Her primary sin, from what I can tell in reviewing Genesis, was (1) listening to someone outside her husband (i.e., seeking a 2nd opinon) and (2) combining the act of speaking and thinking independently.

Atheists like to mock those who believe this account, but look at the same brilliant logic when it comes to childbirth:

Well, today, there’s Caesarians and hysterectomies and the concept that childbirth is a horrible and unnatural experience better endured while unconscious and with the aid of a scalpel and without the aid of, say, gravity! Guess which gender thought THAT process up! And how long did it take to figure out that the doctors ought to wash their hands between patients– somewhere in the early 1900s? ???

The brilliance of it is the sheer irrationality of it. The only way it can be grasped is by faith, either thesis.

Now let’s talk about women who have given birth to children, which you have to admit takes SOME persistence in life, come into the courtroom. And suddenly, we are supposed to turn speechless again, and unable to say what we mean:

“HELLO, I’m an adult, and this is what EX (with the Y chromosome) did on mm/dd/yy in violation of court order ##-#####. This action, from what I understand of the Penal Code, was indeed a felony, that action, a misdemeanor, that a clearly intentional violation of an existing court order, and the last time we were in court, THESE rules of court and in THAT manner, my right to due process was violated, resulting in THIS waste of our time.

“Let’s remember, Your Honor, that you are on a payroll and I, in this courtroom, am not.

(And so forth)….

That woman has a bad attitude, and needs to be put in her non-expert, non-Ph.D’d place (even if she has a Ph.D.), WE know she has an ulterior motive….

What about, for once, some restraints, judges (etc.) on your treatment of ME in this courtroom? You know how friggin’ long it took me to figure out where those rules of court were that were violated the last time we were in court? You know what my billable $$/hour is, that I spent looking that up, which could’ve been spent “parenting” or, say, working? ??

I’m getting a crash court in the United States Government, broken law by broken law, and civil rights violation by civil rights violation. By the time I hit retirement age, I will have probably qualified to pass my state Bar, but obviously unless I actually DO that, what I say will not be taken seriously, because of my gender, or because we are in the family law venue…

Just because I’m in this courtroom seeking those laws, or your rules of court, to be enforced, or because one of those prior court orders was just flat-out ignored, doesn’t mean I don’t mean what I’m saying, or have some nasty hidden motive for reporting what I have seen and experienced to those who say they care about these issues. Speak for yourself!

Or someone whose livelihood depends on an ongoing stream of adults and children unable to speak for themselves, in other words, those hired by the courts to reframe our truths into ITS perspective.

Add to this, people who want access to the “fruit of our wombs”, have a perspective that differs from, say, those who own the wombs.

Add to this, the second partners of the divorcing or separating partners want to just “get on” with THEIR relationship too, let’s accept, and as such, to totally discredit (or eliminate) the former partner — of the same gender — is in some senses, understandable biologically. That is, if we are all to reduce our behavior to worse, from what I can tell, then a pack of dogs, who eventually figure out a pecking order unless there is a hominid around who’s breeding canines to fight in order to place bets on which dog will kill the other first… Men who do that to dogs suffer worse penalties and social shunning than men who do the similar thing to women and children.

And a dog is NOT a man’s best friend. ….. Although they can be very friendly and fulfil many other roles in life.

To add to this, people who apparently believe that the social sciences hold the answer to life’s problems, and that just some more funding will really help the experts to collaborate until they all agree . . . . . and that if only enough experts agree (and have access to the use of force to elicit “agreement” from their subject matter), that this foolish plague of religion and human fallibility can be wiped clean from the earth.

The experts are likely to totally agree when, either one club totally dominates all the other clubs (i.e., professional memberships). We already tried that with “religion,” and the wars, last I looked, still continue……

ANYHOW, so when someone male with a Ph.D. or who is published seems to “get” what “coercive control” IS, my mind is curious, say, who IS that dude?

Well, for one he’s a dude who has a business, and has published some books:

He’s a Dude that Glenn Sacks is blogging:

Evan Stark – GlennSacks.com

Faculty/Staff Detail

Evan Stark, PhD, MA, MSW

Professor

Chair, Department of Urban Health Administration

Primary Affil: Rutgers University-School of Public Affairs & Administration, Professor and MPH Program Director
SPH Department: Urban Health Administration
Units: N/A
Campus: Newark
Building: Hill Hall
Room: 722
Phone: 973.353.5093
Fax: 973.353.5907
Email: eds203@juno.com

Degrees/Certifications:

PhD, 1984, State University of New York
MA, 1967, University of Wisconsin
MSW, 1991, Fordham University

Global Public Health Experience:

No

Research Interests:

Health Management; Organizational Development; Violence and Health Policy

OK, here’s what he wrote. Seeing as we are approaching Mother’s Day, how appropriate to let a man say it for us….

NEW Coercive Control: Review by Diane Post Despite its great achievements, the domestic violence revolution is stalled, Evan Stark argues, a provocative conclusion he documents by showing that interventions have failed to improve womens long-term safety in relationships or to hold perpetrators accountable.

Stark traces this failure to a startling paradox, that the singular focus on violence against women masks an even more devastating reality. In millions of abusive relationships, men use a largely unidentified form of subjugation that more closely resembles kidnapping or indentured servitude than assault. He calls this pattern coercive control. Drawing on sources that range from FBI statistics and film to dozens of actual cases from his thirty years of experience as an award-winning researcher, advocate, and forensic expert, Stark shows in terrifying detail how men can use coercive control to extend their dominance over time and through social space in ways that subvert womens autonomy, isolate them, and infiltrate the most intimate corners of their lives.

Against this backdrop, Stark analyzes the cases of three women tried for crimes committed in the context of abuse, showing that their reactions are only intelligible when they are reframed as victims of coercive control rather than as battered wives. The story of physical and sexual violence against women has been told often.

But this is the first book to show that most abused women who seek help do so because their rights and liberties have been jeopardized, not because they have been injured. The coercive control model Stark develops resolves three of the most perplexing challenges posed by abuse: why these relationships endure, why abused women develop a profile of problems seen among no other group of assault victims, and why the legal system has failed to win them justice.

Elevating coercive control from a second-class misdemeanor to a human rights violation, Stark explains why law, policy, and advocacy must shift its focus to emphasize how coercive control jeopardizes womens freedom in everyday life. Fiercely argued and eminently readable, Starks work is certain to breathe new life into the domestic violence revolution.

More comments on-line here by the author, Dr. Stark.

Coercive control is a model of abuse that attempts to encompass the range of strategies employed to dominate individual women in personal life. Alternately referred to as coerced persuasion; conjugal, patriarchal or intimate terrorism; emotional or psychological abuse; indirect abuse; or emotional torture, it describes an ongoing pattern of sexual mastery by which abusive partners, almost exclusively males, interweave repeated physical abuse with three equally important tactics: intimidation, isolation, and control.

The easiest way to understand coercive control is to contrast it to the widespread equation of partner abuse with “domestic violence.” Domestic violence laws and most research in the field take an incident-specific focus and weigh the severity of abuse by the level of force used or injury inflicted what I call a “calculus of harms.” In marked contrast, the coercive control model relies on evidence that most battered women who seek help experience coercion as “ongoing” rather than as merely “repeated” and that the main marker of these assaults is their frequency or even their “routine” nature rather than their severity, a fact that gives abuse a “cumulative” effect found in no other assault crime. Physical harm and psychological trauma remain important in the coercive control model. But its theory of harms replaces the violation of physical integrity with an emphasis on violations of “liberty” that entail the deprivation of rights and resources essential to personhood and citizenship. In this view, the psychological language of victimization and dependence is replaced by the political language of domination, resistance, and subordination. . In the coercive control model, what men do to women is less important than what they prevent women from doing for themselves.

In the forensic context where I work, women’s right to use whatever means are available to liberate themselves from coercive control derives from the right afforded to all persons to free themselves from tyranny not from the proximate physical or psychological means used to do this

The domestic violence model emphasizes the familial, cultural, interpersonal and psychological roots of abusive behavior. The coercive control model views the dynamics in abusive relationships from the vantage of the historical struggle for women’s liberation and men’s efforts to preserve their traditional privileges in personal life in the face of this struggle. The incredible strides women have made towards full equality, particularly since the l960’s, have been widely documented. These gains make it increasingly difficult for men to ensure women’s obedience and dependence through violence alone. In the face of this reality, millions of men have expanded their oppressive repertoire to include a range of constraints on women’s autonomy formerly imposed by law, religion, and women’s exclusion from the economic, cultural and political mainstream, in essence trying to construct a “patriarchy in miniature” in each individual relationship, the course of malevolent conduct known as coercive control. Although the aim of this conspicuous form of subjugation is to quash, offset or coopt women’s social gains (taking the money they earn, for instance), this strategy relies for success on the persistent inequalities based on sex that remain, including the huge gap in job opportunities and earnings that continues to advantage men.

Coercive control shares general elements with other capture or course-of-conduct crimes such as kidnapping, stalking, and harassment, including the facts that it is ongoing and its perpetrators use various means to hurt, humiliate, intimidate, exploit, isolate, and dominate their victims. Like hostages, victims of coercive control are frequently deprived of money, food, access to communication or transportation, and other survival resources even as they are cut off from family, friends, and other supports through the process of “isolation.” But unlike other capture crimes, coercive control is personalized, extends through social space as well as over time, and is gendered in that it relies for its impact on women’s vulnerability as women due to sexual inequality. Another difference is its aim. Men deploy coercive control to secure privileges that involve the use of time, control over material resources, access to sex, and personal service. A main means men use to establish control is the microregulation of everyday behaviors associated with stereotypic female roles, such as how women dress, cook, clean, socialize, care for their children, or perform sexually. These dynamics give coercive control a role in sexual politics that distinguishes it from all other crimes.

The coercive control framework does not downplay women’s own use of violence either in fights or to hurt or control men or same-sex partners. Numerous studies in the United States indicate that women of all ages assault male and female partners in large numbers and for many of the same reasons and with much the same consequences as men. However, there is no counterpart in men’s lives to women’s entrapment by men in personal life due to coercive control.

The Origins of the Coercive Control Model

The coercive control model reflects two concurrent realities, that the domestic violence is stalled and that our current predicament can be traced to the gap that separates how abuse is understood and the actual experiences of battered women with abusive men.

Nothing in the coercive control model is meant to discount the enormous gains achieved by the domestic violence revolution since we opened the first battered women’s shelters in the l970’s. Nor, as some critics of our movement have argued, do I want to turn back the clock by retreating from the important protections we have won for women in the legal, criminal justice, health or mental health arenas. Hundreds of thousands of women and children owe the fact that they are alive to the availability of shelters and to criminal justice and legal reforms. What is less clear is whether women as a group are safer today or are less likely to be beaten, controlled, or killed by their partners than they were before the domestic violence revolution began.

Partner violence against women is no longer just life. But anyone with reasonable sympathies and a passing acquaintance with interventions to stem men’s abuse of woman will sense the failure of a range of systems to mount an adequate response, the justice system included. Among the most dramatic facts are these:

• Partner homicides have dropped precipitously. But this change has benefited men far more than women. The number of men killed by female partners has dropped dramatically since we opened the first shelters, particularly among blacks. But the number of women killed by male partners has changed very little. While severe violence by men against women has dropped, the so-called “minor” violence that makes up the infrastructure of coercive control has increased sharply. Women as a group are not appreciably safer today than when the domestic violence revolution began.

• Though domestic violence is an ongoing crime and is almost always complemented by acts of intimidation, humiliation, isolation and control, in most communities abuse is treated as a second-class misdemeanor. While victims repeatedly insist that “violence isn’t the worst part” and mounting evidence points to structural constraints on independence and personhood as the most devastating aspects of abuse, these dimensions remain officially invisible. Millions of men may be arrested each year for domestic violence. But the chance that a perpetrator will go to jail in any given incident is just slightly better than the chance of winning a lottery.

• Batterer intervention programs (BIPs) are widely offered as an alternative to incarceration. But these programs are little more effective than doing nothing at all. Regardless of intervention, the vast majority of perpetrators continue their abuse.

• Shelters are the core response to abused women and so they should remain. But in hundreds of communities, shelters today are indistinguishable from the traditional, paternalistic service system they arose to challenge.

. Perhaps the key fact is that the domestic violence revolution appears to have had little or no effect on coercive control, the pattern evidence shows characterizes between 60-80% of the relationships for which women seek outside assistance. Refocusing on coercive control would be a giant step toward changing this situation. The domestic violence movement began with a vision, to provide women worldwide with a safety net that protected them against harm in personal life. Such a net is in place in most countries. But long-term protection still eludes us.

The limits of current interventions can be directly traced to a failure of vision, not of nerve. Conservatives attack the advocacy movement for exaggerating the nature and extent of abuse. In fact, because of its singular emphasis on physical violence, the prevailing model minimizes both the extent of women’s entrapment by male partners in personal life and its consequences.

Viewing woman abuse through the prism of the incident-specific and injury-based definition of violence has concealed its major components, dynamics, and effects, including the fact that it is neither “domestic” nor primarily about “violence.” Failure to appreciate the multidimensionality of oppression in personal life has been disastrous for abuse victims. Regardless of its chronic nature, courts treat each abuse incident they see as a first offense. Because well over 95% of these incidents are minor, in that the physical assault involved is not injurious, almost no one goes to jail. In custody or divorce cases, because abuse is framed as incident specific or as only involving injurious violence, when women or children present with claims based on the ongoing, multidimensional and cumulative nature of abuse, these are often treated as fabricated. Worse, a protective mother may be blamed when her expressed level of concern or fear is at odds with evidence of assault: in the dependency court, her children may be placed in foster care; in family court, she is alleged to be engaged in alienating her children from the “good enough father.” As calls to the police or visits to the emergency room are repeated over time, the helping response becomes more perfunctory and may actually contribute to making abuse routine, a process called normalization.

Coercive Control

The coercive control model is built on earlier work that has remained marginal to mainstream intervention, a mountain of data that contradicts every major tenet of the domestic violence model; and a growing body of literature documenting the prevalence of tactics to isolate, intimidate and control women in abusive relationships. But its major source is the real-life experiences of perpetrators and victims of abuse

As I’ve suggested, the most important anomalous evidence indicates that violence in abusive relationships is ongoing rather than episodic, that its effects are cumulative rather than incident-specific, and that the harms it causes are more readily explained by these factors than by its severity. Among these harms, the dominant approach identifies two for which it fails to adequately account, the entrapment of victims in relationships where ongoing abuse is virtually inevitable, and the development of a problem profile that distinguishes abused women from every other class of assault victim. The prevailing view is that women stay and develop a range of mental health and behavioral problems because exposure to severe violence induces trauma-related syndromes, such as PTSD or BWS that can disable a woman’s capacity to cope or escape. In fact, however, only a small proportion of abuse victims evidence these syndromes. Most victims of abuse do not develop significant psychological or behavioral problems. Abused women exhibit a range of problems that are unrelated to trauma, the vast majority of assault incidents are too minor to induce trauma, and abuse victims can be entrapped even in the absence of assault. The duration of abusive relationships is made even more problematic when we appreciate that abuse victims are aggressive help seekers and are as likely to be assaulted and even entrapped when they are physically separated as when married or living together. Thus, whatever harms are involved can cross social space as well as extend over time and appear to persist regardless of how women respond. If violence doesn’t account for the entrapment of millions of women in personal life, what does?

The answer is coercive control, a strategy that remains officially invisible despite the fact that it has been in plain sight at least since the earliest shelter residents told us in no uncertain terms that “violence wasn’t the worst part.” Cognitive psychologists in the late 1970s and 1980s tried to capture what these women were experiencing by comparing it to “coercive persuasion,” brainwashing, and other tactics used with hostages, prisoners of war, kidnap victims, and by pimps with prostitutes. Largely ignored by researchers, the understanding of abuse as coercive control was developed in popular literature and incorporated at least implicitly into how various practitioners approached the problem. Working on men’s control skills has provided one template for batterers programs since the founding of Emerge in Boston. Prosecutors are increasingly charging batterers with stalking, or harassment as well as domestic violence, crimes that typically involve a course of intimidating and controlling conduct as well of violence. Scotland and Canada are examples of countries that now define violence against women or abuse from a human rights perspective that includes a range of coercive and controlling behaviors in addition to assault. The most widely used graphic representation of abuse is the Power and Control Wheel introduced by the Domestic Violence Intervention Project (DAIP) in Duluth, Minnesota. Although violence is the hub of the original wheel, its spokes depict isolation, economic control, emotional and sexual abuse, and other facets of coercive control. This attention is merited. The several dozen studies that attempt to measure control and psychological abuse suggest that victims have been subjected to multiple control tactics, among which the denial of money, the monitoring of time, and restricted mobility and communication are prominent.

Despite these inroads, coercive control remains marginal to mainstream thinking. It is rarely acknowledged in policy circles, has had almost no impact on domestic violence policing or criminal law, and commands no special funding. Although providers and advocates may ask about elements of coercive control, I know of no programs or interventions that address it. Everyone acknowledges that domestic violence is about power and control. But we have yet to incorporate this truism into our understanding of abuse or our response.

The major source for the model of coercive control are the victims and perpetrators of abuse with whom I and others have worked. The women in my practice have repeatedly made clear that the most serious harms they have suffered involve how their partners have kept them from fulfilling their life projects by appropriating their resources; undermining their social support; subverting their rights to privacy, self-respect, and autonomy; and depriving them of substantive equality. This is the evidence on which I base my claim that coercive control is a liberty crime. Preventing a substantial group of women from freely applying their agency in economic and political life obstructs overall social development .

The new model is rooted in the same tenets that gave birth to the battered women’s movement—that the abuse of women in personal life is inextricably bound up with their standing in the larger society and therefore that women’s entrapment in their personal lives can be significantly reduced only if sexual discrimination is addressed simultaneously. In the early shelters, the interrelatedness of these tenets was grounded in the practice of empowerment, whereby the suffering of individual victims was mollified by mobilizing their collective power to help one another and change the institutional structures that caused and perpetuated women’s second-class status, an example of women doing for themselves. Our challenge is to resurrect this collective practice and broaden its political focus to the sources of coercive control.

Control: Invisible in Plain Sight

The victims and perpetrators of coercive control are easily identified. Many of the rights violated in battering are so fundamental to the conduct of everyday life that is hard to conceive of meaningful human existence without them. How is it possible then that it has attracted so little attention?

I have already pointed to the prominence of the domestic violence model. Another explanation is the compelling nature of violence. Once injury became the major medium for presenting abuse, its sights and sounds were so dramatic that other experiences seemed muted by comparison. The radical feminists who led the fight against rape and pornography also inadvertently contributed to the invisibility of coercive control. Placing so much political currency on violence against women as the ultimate weapon in men’s arsenal made it a surrogate for male domination rather than merely one of its means. It was a short step to replacing the political discussions of women’s liberation with the talks of “victims” and “perpetrators.” Another explanation for why coercive control has had such little impact is that no one knows what to do about it.

The entrapment of women in personal life is also hard to discern because many of the rights it violates are so basic—so much a part of the taken-for-granted fabric of the everyday lives we lead as adults, and so embedded in female behaviors that are constrained by their normative consignment to women—that their abridgement passes largely without notice. Among my clients are women who had to answer the phone by the third ring, record every penny they spent, vacuum “till you can see the lines,” and dress, walk, cook, talk, and make love in specific ways and not in others, always with the “or else” proviso hanging over their heads. What status should we accord to a woman’s right to have toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom or to the right of a woman I will call Laura who had to beep in periodically so her boyfriend would know her whereabouts or who could not go to the gym without being beeped home? Given the prominence of physical bruising, how can we take these little indignities seriously or appreciate that they comprise the heart of a hostage-like syndrome against which the slap, punch, or kick pale in significance? Most people take it for granted that normal, healthy adults determine their own sleep patterns or how they drive or laugh or make love. The first women who used our home as her safe house described her partner a tyrant. We thought she was speaking metaphorically.

Violence is easy to understand. But the deprivations that come packaged in coercive control are no more a part of my personal life than they are of most men’s. This is true both literally, because many of the regulations involved in coercive control target behaviors that are identified with the female role, and figuratively, because it is hard for me to conceive of a situation outside of prison, a mental hospital, or a POW camp where another adult would control or even care to control my everyday routines.

What is taken from the women whose stories I hear almost daily—and what some victims use violence to restore—is the capacity for independent decision making in the areas by which we distinguish adults from children and free citizens from indentured servants. Coercive control entails a malevolent course of conduct that subordinates women to an alien will by violating their physical integrity (domestic violence), denying them respect and autonomy (intimidation), depriving them of social connectedness (isolation), and appropriating or denying them access to the resources required for personhood and citizenship (control). Nothing men experience in the normal course of their everyday lives resembles this conspicuous form of subjugation.

Some of the rights batterers deny to women are already protected in the public sphere, such as the rights to physical integrity and property. In these instances, law is challenged to extend protections to personal life. But most of the harms involved in coercive control are gender-specific infringements of adult autonomy that have no counterpart in public life and are currently invisible to the law. The combination of these big and little indignities best explains why women suffer and respond as they do in abusive relationships, including why so many women become entrapped, why some battered women kill their partners, why they themselves may be killed, or why they are prone to develop a range of psychosocial problems and exhibit behaviors or commit a range of acts that are contrary to their nature or to basic common sense or decency.

In the late 1970s, we reached into the shadows to retrieve physical abuse from the canon of “just life.” Now it appears, we did not reach nearly far enough.

<#>

Evan Stark

Eds203@juno.com

The idea I guess being to give us more interesting headlines, and fewer deaths…Less real drama…

You have to get the Beauty of this — it’s the simplicity.  Should this come to pass, I predict that no one is going to get married from henceforth. …. for any reason whatsoever.  So maybe it’s a healthy “jolt to the system…” in that regard.

This is California, 2010, where there’s war over whether or not marriage requires differences in (sexual) anatomy, or not . . . . .

And we all know that war is good for SOMEONE’s business.   If  you wish to email this “joker” to find out whether he’s in earnest, the address, handwritten on the image, says “Please direct all correspondence to John@badmouth.net.”

California 2010 Marriage Protection Act

This takes the Healthy Marriage Responsible Fatherhood idea to a WHOLE new level — once in, no way out unless the marriage is declared null or void.

Guess what phrase I was looking up when I ran across this . . . . . . .

Section 7.6 is added to Article I of the California Constitution: 

No party to any marriage shall be restored to the state of unmarried person during the lifetime of the other person unless the marriage is void or voidable as set forth under Part 2 of Division 6 under the Family Code.

This may be (just joking) why, you can find under this logo and at this California Attorney General’s site:

10-0001  [PDF 16937 kb / 160 pg] Title and Summary Issued on March 03, 2010  [PDF 71 kb / 1 pg] REWRITES THE ENTIRE STATE CONSTITUTION. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

The logo on the main page states,

“With Liberty and Justice under law.”

It just forgot to say “for whom” and “by whom.”