Get out your violin and play the sob story for this professional musician Dad, although it’s the  professional violinist MOM who was jailed by a NJ (Bergen County) family law judge who QUICKLY bought his sob story.

OR. . . . get out some old-fashioned file cards and read the other side of this story, and take note of the biased language of reporting.

Remember those mothers whose own “sob stories” were NOT heard, and they are finding America a less and less safe place to live.

The United States of America sure knows how to make friends overseas, by telling other countries how to handle child abuse & divorce, or fork over the Moms. 

I voted today.  there were a FEW women on the ballot, and some of them got my vote.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/violinist_to_remain_in_jail_until_0dz5SWpINvLazKd7hJIdRJ

Violinist to remain in jail until kids returned: judge By KIRSTEN FLEMING Last Updated: 2:17 PM, May 28, 2010 Posted: 2:16 PM, May 28, 2010 Comments: 9 | More Print

A globetrotting violinist who was arrested in Guam months ago after she absconded with her two young children in South Korea will remain behind bars until the children are returned home, a Bergen County judge said today. “She remains arrested under my orders,” said Judge Alexander H Carver, of Si Nae-Shim, who did not appear in court.

{{well, “duhhh….” — she’s in jail.  THAT’s real 4th Amendment conscious..}}

He reiterated that she would not be released until the children are brought home. Shim, 33, is being held on a warrant for interfering with a custody order, while her son Kristian, 6, and daughter Haerin, 3, remain with their maternal grandmother near Seoul.

{{Let’s talk about how that custody order was gotten, and what chance a woman has of getting  a similar one should her husband (or ex-) pull the same stunt….}}}

Gee, kind of reminds me of our friend Lorraine in Wisconsin and HER daughter… Or Nathan Grieco in California….

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We of course know our government and courts are PARENT-friendly and GENDER-Neutral, right? 

For example, this just out:

Current Government Projects

NFI has partnered with departments and offices of the U.S. Government to promote involved fatherhood. Learn more about these projects below.

NRFCBI

National Responsible Fatherhood Capacity Building Initiative

In partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Family Assistance, National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) has designed the National Responsible Fatherhood Capacity-Building Initiative (NRFCBI) to aid grassroots and community-based organizations through a series of capacity-building grants.

Awardees receive a one-time $25,000 award to strengthen fathers and families and are provided with National Fatherhood Initiative’s professional training and technical assistance at the annual Certification College.

“I pledge allegiance to flag of the United Healthy Marriage Demonstration Project Regions of America.. . . . . . One Nation (alized School, Health, Tax. Warmachine, and Family Design programs), under (our approved) God, with liberty, and justice, for all (those who fit our [male-dominated] definitions of fully human)

There’s a lot more to this story than hit the NY Post.   ..  Use your SEO and take a look.  There’s an age gap between him and her.  BOTH of them came from overseas to study at perhaps THE top music school in this country, Juilliard, and I believe the Manhattan School of Music (think Juilliard, high school level) also.  SHE as well as HE had to audition and qualify, and both must have been exceptionally personally talented.

I have heard  (from a graduate — not Robin Williams, obviously), that the latter school attracts teenaged talent internationally, sometimes without parental protection and support.  She (yes she) related being sexually exploited (prostituted, as a matter of fact) through a psychology-based program in the school, and being raped overseas (during a tour) by a (also young, male) music colleague.  It was devastating.  In this anecdote, her birth mother was not available, and the stepmother was hostile. 

BUT she had a Dad.  SUrely more Dads in more homes will solve more problems, and if only we women would recognize that we are BREEDERS (whether musical and otherwise talented ones or not) and the fruit of our wombs, those human beings we gestated and many times nursed, or raised, and held,  — are not REALLY ours, except by permission.

I also note a significant age difference in this couple (he was older).  Perhaps he thought all Asian women were submissive?? ???  Maybe she broke that mold when her kids were involved.

If a North Jersey judge says, your word that they were in danger doesn’t count with me, well, your ass is grass (and jailed….). and his sob story will be heard.

There are a LOT of missing pieces in this story, and I regret that I cannot hunt them out, gather them together, and predigest them for the readers.  But YOU can –if you wish to ….

Compare that with THIS:

Divorcing dad wants to take kids to Saudi Arabia
Culture clash at root of Cincinnati custody fight
By Dan Horn • dhorn@enquirer.com • June 5, 2010

File it under “FORWARD TO THE PAST”

Shaheen wants the kids to stay with her in Cincinnati, where they have lived for the past six years.
Bawazir wants to take them to Saudi Arabia, where he says he can get a good job.
Judge Elizabeth Mattingly will make the call, but she says she’s not happy about her choices.

HE JUST NAMED 3 CHARACTERS.  HOW COME ONLY THE DAD MAKES THE HEADLINES?  ???  AND WHAT ABOUT THE FOUR CHILDREN?

“You have got very few good options here,” she told Shaheen at a court hearing in March. “It’s not a perfect world.”
The big legal questions in the case – who should get custody and what are the rights of the other parent – come up in countless custody battles every day in Hamilton County’s domestic relations court.
But the case of Shaheen vs. Bawazir raises cultural, social and gender issues that few others do.
Shaheen and her lawyer are outraged the judge even is considering allowing her husband to take the four children, all of whom are U.S. citizens, to live in a country halfway around the world.

Yet in other cases, judges and sometimes legislators will reach overseas and try to get U.S. Citizen (children) BACK from a foreign country if a mother took them there, and arrest her for coming back when she did.  For example, the Collins case…

They argue that a ruling in Bawazir’s favor would leave Shaheen, a homemaker, with the choice of either losing her kids, possibly forever, or following her ex-husband to a country where she believes he would control every aspect of her life, from where she worked to when she could see her children.

This is NOT just a “she believes” statement, it’s very likely true.  Good grief, are our judges literate???

Her lawyer, Phyllis Bossin, said she also fears that any custody or parental visitation order Mattingly issues would mean nothing in Saudi Arabia because men in that country control decisions related to child custody and get preferential treatment in court.
Once there, Bossin said, Bawazir could make his own rules and American courts would be powerless to stop him.

Not Without My Daughter – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“He wants to take these children to the other side of the world, practically into a country where she could never see them again,” Bossin said in court last month. “There are human rights issues here. She has a right to parent her children.”

Doesn’t her (female) lawyer yet know that the ubiquitous use of the word “parent” instead of “mother” is to delete the term “mother” from common usage (at least in a positive sense)?  I mean, if our current Single-Mom raised African-American President can barely spit out the word — what more can we expect from the rest of us??

Bawazir and his lawyer, Reeta Brendamour, say Shaheen is maligning Saudi culture and that the children would not be harmed by moving there. Bawazir, who was born in the United States but has worked around the world, said he has job prospects in Saudi Arabia that would provide a good life for his kids.

Define “good.” 

“We really think it’s the best for this entire family, for everybody, to move back there,” Brendamour said at the March hearing.

That’s right.  I’m sure her Swiss born mother would approve of moving to Saudi Arabia, and say “obey your husband, er, ex-husband, honey — it’s all for the sake of the family…” 

Brendamour does not recognize his wife as a separate entity here…  And I’ll wager he has some understanding of the United States, the Bill of Rights, and some feminist movements here also.  Perhaps we moms who have lost our kids WITHIN United STates should reassure this Dad, he need not be worried on that account (unless he has more horrific plans for his four kids)…..

“In the event mom does not want to go, that’s totally her decision. We would like to go and take the children with us.”
Mattingly has noted that the couple, whose children range in age from 6 to 14, lived in Saudi Arabia for eight years earlier in their marriage and are familiar with the culture. Shaheen’s father is Saudi and mother is Swiss, while Bawazir’s father is Saudi and mother is American.

So those Saudi fathers like European or American mothers ….  Why??

Both have dual U.S. and Saudi citizenship, although they have lived most of their lives in the United States.
The judge told Shaheen in March that she should consider moving to Saudi Arabia or somewhere else overseas if her husband cannot find a job in the United States, suggesting it might be in her children’s best interests.

Yeah, this family law judge probably never heard of a child support order, or a SEEK-WORK order, or all the many fatherhood programs in place to help men meet (i.e., reduce) their child-support obligations.  Or if she has, she ain’t mentioning them…. Or of creative single-Mom solutions available to this mother of four.  She wouldn’t be the first single mother of four around.

“You are running out of money, and pretty soon your kids are going to be on the street unless you get a little more realistic about what your true options are,” Mattingly told Shaheen, reminding her that Bawazir had been unemployed since 2009.

WHY ISN’T SHE LECTURING BAWAZIR ON HIS RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD OBLIGATIONS??  BECAUSE WOMEN ARE EASIER TO LECTURE?

FACT IS, THAT’S WHAT THIS SYSTEM DOES — EXTENUATES AND EXACERBATES THE SITUATION TIL THE (TYPICALLY, FEMALE) PARENT HAS FEWER REAL OPTIONS LEFT.  THAT’S SURELY IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILDREN….

“Maybe you don’t want to live in those places, but you got to start thinking about your kids at this point,” she said. “If the two of you remain broke, I don’t know how welfare looks to you, but they don’t pay much in this country.”

That’s funny.  In MY state, when my ex was thousands$$ behind (without saying why, or expressing any remorse about it) I literally asked her to order a minimal percent (I was thinking 10% ) of his arrears to preserve my housing.  Cool and calculated she suggested I apply for welfare. 

The idea behind the OCSE Child support diversion acts was too many female-headed housese on welfare, let’s go get them dudes and make them pay up!  Get them back in their families.  (See above logo).  That’s ostensibly the PRINCIPLE behind taking money out of TANF (and taxpayer millions into Responsible Marriage, etc.). Now it’s working beautifully in reverse, driving women BACK onto welfare, with or without access to their own offspring…  Sometimes because their wages are garnished to pay a father who won in court.

Well, damn, I’d come to that county and gotten myself OFF welfare, and now a family court judge ruling on a child support arrears, unexplained, after child-stealing, tells me go back on it?  How sweet ….

A difficult job search
Shaheen and Bawazir married in 1991 and lived overseas for years as he moved from place to place for his job with Modern Products Co., which is based in Saudi Arabia. They moved to Loveland in 2004 and his family stayed there when Bawazir was assigned two years ago to a job in Venezuela.
He said he lost that job because of the stress of his deteriorating marriage and the separation from his children.
“I want to be with my kids,” Bawazir said at the March hearing. “She refused to come down to Latin America. So it’s like, how do I bridge that?” He said he has been unable to find a job in the United States because his experience in international business means his best job opportunities are overseas, particularly in Saudi Arabia.
“I don’t think I can personally get a job in the U.S.,” he said.
But Shaheen doubts he has been trying hard to find a job here. She and her lawyer say a man with more than 20 years experience in the business world should be able to find a job in Cincinnati at least as easily as in Saudi Arabia.
Shaheen also questioned the fairness of her and the children starting over in a new country every time her ex-husband gets a new job.
“Being divorced, are we supposed to just keep moving and following each other from country to country?” she said in March. “I also fear that going to Saudi, I will not have any rights over there.”
Bossin said Saudi Arabia should not even be an option. She said divorcing parents make concessions about their jobs all the time to be near their children, and that Bawazir is more than capable of finding a job closer to Cincinnati.
“When people get divorced, people don’t follow their spouses,” Bossin said. “They are not married any more.”
Both sides are lining up experts for the trial, which starts June 15, to talk about life in Saudi Arabia. Bossin made clear at a hearing last week that the impact of Saudi culture and society on the children is closely tied to the question of whether Bawazir should be the custodial parent.
When Brendamour said Bawazir would agree to shared custody in Saudi Arabia, Bossin said no.
“If he has the children in Saudi Arabia, he can just simply say, ‘You’re never going to see the children again,'” she said. “The right of women to have custody of their children in Saudi Arabia – or even to see their children – is an issue.”
Discrimination a problem
The U.S. State Department’s 2009 country report on Saudi Arabia, which adheres to a strict form of Islamic law, lists several concerns about the status of women in that country: They are not permitted to drive. They need the permission of a male guardian, such as a husband or father, to get a job, open a business or to move freely around the country.
And the family court system tilts heavily toward men, who get full custody of boys at age seven and girls at nine.
“Women have few political or social rights and society does not treat them as equal members,” the State Department report says. “Discrimination against women was a significant problem.”
The rules for women have loosened a bit in recent years but they remain stringent, said Karen Dabdoub, director of the Cincinnati chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“Just living in Saudi Arabia is not necessarily the most horrible thing,” Dabdoub said. “I know people who lived there and liked it. I know people who lived there and hated it. The kinds of jobs that women can do are limited and where they can go is limited.
“If she’s saying that her movement and rights would be restricted, yeah, absolutely.”
The judge will have to take those factors into consideration when she makes her decision about the couple’s two boys and two girls, said Katherine Federle, director of Ohio State University’s Justice for Children Project.
She said the case is, technically, no different than any other relocation case involving divorced parents, although this one is “writ large” because it involves a potential move to Saudi Arabia.
“This sounds like a relatively typical custody battle that involves relocation,” she said. “It’s just a long way away.”
Mattingly will hear at the trial from experts about Saudi society and what a move there would mean for the children. She also will hear from a court-appointed guardian and lawyer responsible for protecting the children’s interests.
Shaheen, Bawazir, the judge and the lawyers would not comment before the trial, but court proceedings so far have been contentious. Mattingly has said she wants to get the case resolved as soon as possible for the sake of the kids.
She said their grades in school and their well-being have been damaged by the long court fight.
“Your children are suffering with this battle,” Mattingly said in March. “You are getting to the line where decisions have to be made.”

Yeah, well — — there’s the Korean/Chile/NJ case, then there’s the dual-citizenship Saudi-Swiss-American Hamilton County Ohio case.  Either way, women are getting lectured and jailed and separated (or threatened with it) from their own children.  Sounds like third world stuff to me…

Go read Phyllis Chesler’s account of getting HERSELF out of such a marriage.  It’s on her site….