Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

THS POST, published Feb. 13, 2013, is:

The next post after this one* is:

*(see date added to end of its title, a habit I adopted later in the blog)

Previously, there were seven causes for divorce; a plaintiff requested and was, or was not, granted it if any one of those causes was proved. 1. Adultery; 2. Extreme Cruelty; 3. Conviction of felony; 4. Willful desertion; 5. Willful neglect; 6. Habitual intemperance, and 7. Incurable insanity. When divorce was granted, one party was innocent and the other at fault. Only a single instance (with witness) of causes 1,2 and 3 was needed, a single year for causes 4, 5, and 6, but for the 7th, three years of the situation. Apparently the 7th cause was added because you can’t really fault an insane person..

We have been led to believe there is something noble and feminist about No-Fault Divorce, and indeed some highly placed feminist law professors are involved in its passage?

But I believe that it was more likely damage control, a strategic response to trial-court-confirmed evidence of severe physical brutality and extreme cruelty acknowledged in the 1952 Opinion, above. It appears to me a “bad” trial court and appellate decision, allowing counter-filing and denying both husband and wife the divorce, was a pivotal moment used to spearhead system change, a la “Hegelian Dialectic.” (Unfreeze/Change/Refreeze. Provoke Conflict to drive a situation in a desired direction, etc.). However, the powers in motion at the time were apparently waiting for just such an opportunity, and jumped on it, particularly a certain progressive judge, who (as it turns out) had influence on certain leading women law professors, at a time when even being a female law professor was rare.

Did this change to no-fault solve the problem and improve the status of divorce and custody issues?

Now, even despite potentially the presence of one, several, or even possibly all seven causes, even longstanding over years pre and/or post-separation, the courts can continue to force-order indoctrination services allegedly to reconcile or coach one (or both) parents into better co-parenting, or for example, may try to turn a convicted felon into a wonderful father through training and mentoring.

However, for the “cause” of parental alienation, now that fault and identified causes associated in the common ethics as “bad” (extreme cruelty, infidelity, abandonment, criminal convictions, etc.) are removed, in the discretion of any court judge, the punishment of completely breaking the relationship with the “alienating” parent is possible.

When fault for extremely cruel, even felonious behavior was removed as a legal grounds for divorce, it also seems to have evaporated from the cause for removal of children from the same extremely cruel, even felonious behavior. In realty, the new “fault” seems to be resisting the forced therapy, in practice, resisting the equivalent of extortion, or psychological reprogramming, and so we can have long, coercive incarcerations as “cure.” Antitrust attorney Richard Fine got 18 months coercive solitary confinement in Los Angeles (2009ff). A Georgia mother also got a total of around 18 months also and has scanned her paperwork to show the how truly collaborative this therapy (which involved funneling profits of her business into the Registry of the Court under two similar, but not identical case docket#s, was).

When law and courts are in coordinated movement towards the therapeutic model we have today, we can, and should, observe, and note that movement. The attorneys of the day most certainly did, in their law journals. Were we all reading law journals? No! Should lawyers and judges — versus people who have elected representatives — be writing the laws? Probably not! how can we stop it? For one, watch their private associations in motion, and speak up next time! Part of this next time is March 2013 (welfare reauthorization). Obviously (or it should be by now if you read this blog), the Social Security Act contributes to the cause by funding the exact types of services that the transformation away from fault-divorce to no-fault divorce anticipated, wanted, and got.

I used to think this situation began around the late 1980s and kicked into high gear with welfare reform 1996. I now am seeing it’s been a VERY long time coming, such as almost immediately after World War II (around the time the last state ratified the right of women to vote).

Recent finds, probably lawyers know about these, but I’ll bet most parents aren’t thinking about the significance.

In my continuing quest for where conciliation courts [not just the “Conference of Conciliation Courts” but the courts themselves set up by various judges] got started, and conciliation law passed, I found, and began reading:

“Irreconciliable Differences: California Courts Respond to No-Fault Disolutions” by Elayne Carol Berg (Sept. 1974, Vol. 7 #3 of Loyola of Los Angeles Review, Table of Contents) discussing the major, almost “carte blanche” changes of the 1970 California Family Law Act (“FLA”). At only 37pp with footnotes (the footnotes themselves a good resource), and only four years after the major change in divorce law, why not read it?

Unlike the straight-propaganda found to be on many web shingles and private-purpose conference pages, this narrates and footnotes how, by whom, what, when, and in what form divorce law was changed, and with it, a family court venue (including the real estate & buildings) set up. I discovered a national organization (nonprofit, exclusive membership of bar attorneys only), that is, nonprofit, working to present THEIR concept of a UMDA (Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act) for all of us.

From here, I also learned that in 1966 California Governor Edmund G. (“Pat”) Brown had formed a Governor’s Commission on the Family, which reported to the legislature. Of course activist judges and nationwide commissions, and the ABA had their input, after various deliberations, we ended up with a Family Court, no-fault dissolution, and often, suppression of evidence and all but the most basic testimony about the former causes of divorce, several of which read pretty much like a description of what we now call “domestic violence.” The focus was shifted from actions to state of the marriage: reconciliable, or not.

“Irreconciliable Differences” points to a California Justice Traynor 1952 opinion on a certain De Burgh v. De Burgh case. Did he use this case to call for a re-evaluation and re-write of grounds for divorce in a climate already primed to push therapeutic jurisprudence?

When I read that subsequently the California Legislature (Assembly Judiciary Committee) summarily rejected the Commission’s recommendations:

“Counseling was believed to be effective only if both parties were willing to participate. …”to inject the powers of the state into matters of private concern” was an unconscionable invasion of marital privacy.”…suggested expense for mandatory counseling was “in excess of $10 million per year,” a heavy price to pay when no evidence established that counseling would have any significant effect on family stability,” and finally, that [it’s basically reducing the court to the function of signing off on a report, a job any referee could do“). . .

… but still adopted the rationale of the De Burgh case, that 1952 Opinion & case, that judge, definitely had my attention. Of course I looked it up!

When I read that opinion, I knew we’d better talk about it. Before, one party, a plaintiff, had to prove one of seven causes for divorce. After, whenever we enter a courtroom, someone is going to speak, think, in act in terms of relationship jargon, require parenting classes up front (Kids Turn, Kids in the Middle) as innoculation, speed-diagnose a parent, order expensive therapy [if family has money] or the 20-minute variety [mandatory mediation + a ruling], to contract out services, etc.

Wouldn’t it make sense to read both the logic and the technique of this major system change? I found it a refreshing change to actually read others’ reasoning than the (inane and monotonous) proclamations of the behaviorists and their related associations. The documents involve some fine print, but the concepts are not really that complex, or even that long. Along the way, some startling and juicy admissions. I found the details definitely flesh out, gave meaning to the existing skeleton outline I had history of the courts, such as “Court Cancer Metastasizes” by Marv Bryer, the role of the nonprofit associations, and the funding.

The scene was panoramic, the actors operatic, the stage was set.

So, about De Burgh v De Burgh, the 1974 Law Review article, ANOTHER (1968) Law review article, some of the people involved, and the mentality of the times.

Why look at this?

Beyond my flippant or sometimes sarcastic tone, I have to say, there’s a major issue here: Centralization of control over the entire population, at our own expense. We are paying, and have been paying, not only the officials to preside in the courtrooms, but for the courtrooms themselves, to lease the courtrooms at times, and for the affiliated service referrals.

By not keeping tabs on, or putting some sort of leash on, judge-attorney-social scientist collaborations to build the behavioral health archipelago here — we have put the entire nation at risk of being improperly incarcerated, improperly having children removed as solution to a perceived problem, of losing our homes, our property (where it’s existed), our businesses, our right to any privacy of relationship or initiative, and — this has to be said — of religion, including the freedom NOT to belong to a state or other religion. Being treated en masse (collectively) as subject matter to be diagnosed, measured, profiled, labeled, sorted, and deported off for “services,” whether work camps or psychiatric examination, is hardly a light matter!

Isn’t it long past the time to reject this process, and do a social science study of the social scientists, starting with take ’em off the pedestal, recognize which ones come from Yale and/or Harvard, were trained at Oxford, and have consciously or unconsciously imbibed the elixir (drunk the Kool-Aid) which justifies the arrogant “we are gods, you are mere mortals” mentality? This attitude is not merely laughable — it’s dangerous. We all need a healthy antidote as well, where we may have also inadvertently drunk the Kool-Aid, living off the illusion or “aura” that Ph.D. means wiser, smarter, better, that a tax-exempt charity (or philanthropic foundation) has some innate connection with “agape” (selfless love of the other and sacrifice for them), and that access to an attorney means access to better justice.

I will continue to drive home that the attorneys, judges, social scientists, etc., are organized into nonprofit tax-exempt corporations, and that many of these AND the “Centers of Excellence” or “Institutes” blend wealth from pre-income tax family fortunes with the federal grants stream (and other levels of government income to the system). They fund universities to study what they want studied and those centers are often named after the benefactors. From top to bottom, that’s pretty well how education tends to work — it needs its endowments.

The Family Courts, thereafter Conciliation Courts, thereafter (next step I guess) “Unified Family Courts” under one powerful presiding,. but of course magnificent, judge … is a deliberate, planned, and very successful takeover of the court system and the transformation of it into facilities that favor private interests (including pharmaceutical interests and real estate interests) and can keep most of us in constant social turmoil, justifying more and more takeovers. These takeovers depend on our partial cooperation, taking FAR too much for granted, giving all leadership the benefit of the doubt far longer than it’s been earned, sitting still to be lectured at, rather than talking back in a way that’s communicates, we “get” what’s up, and in general projecting upon people who don’t have it, a sense of commonality in purpose, or shared paradigms.

The longer we (collectively) sit still for top-down takeovers of government, the courts, the schools, our kids, our lives, and the economy (a totalitarian plan — when the word “holistic” comes up, a more accurate word would be, “totalitarian.”) — the harder it’s going to be to get out from under.

I am saying this as an abuse survivor. Mrs. De Burgh in 1946-1949 suffered some severe abuse (beatings) in her marriage, one bad enough to cause her to attempt to commit suicide. She was humiliated, degraded, and definitely had her spouse’s adultery flaunted in her face. Her daughter was berated by this intemperate man, and yet the court found somehow mutual extreme cruelty, despite a vast difference in the timing, and the impact of it. The law at that time didn’t make for comparison of depth of extreme cruelty, his versus hers.

Meanwhile, on 10-31-1968 (post-Traynor, post-startup of [AFCC], but pre-Divorce Law reform), “A Family Court: The California Proposal” California Law Review 56.5 (1968): 1205 [56:5=”Vol. 56 Issue 5″] , Herma Kay Hill reviewed a 1968 book by someone who’d been on the Governor’s Commission. It starts right out with the desired outcome:

Was that humility creep? I don’t think so…they went ahead with the prescription anyhow….

As I said, this piece is also loaded with information in its footnotes: “In re: Gault” As of 1967, it was acknowledged by a Task force the juvenile court had not accomplished its goals (See footnotes, esp. #6 “in re: Gault” about an Arizona youth of 15 who was sent away (to a training facility) without prior notice to his parents even of his arrest (beyond even 24 hour) either being notified of their right to counsel, or his, and for a single lewd phone call to a married woman that would have only gotten an adult a fine from $5 to $50, and a maximum incarceration of two months. The youth was sentenced to (training camp) til he became an adult!

This badly handled case (resulting in in re: Gault) appears to have been leveraged to add more attorneys to ensure due process, i.e., setting the stage for every one in the united states with a problem of some sort needing resolution, to require the assistance of a holistic attorney, and their accomplices in the community, who can provide therapy or services.

! ! My, what a “long” way we’ve come in five decades! ! (pre-1952, as it turns out from Judge Alexander’s time, to 2012)

Compare 1968 description to 2012 vision: “Unified Family Court” Blueprint from UBaltimore School of Law, June, 2012 — does the language sound familiar to the 1968? It is also definitely conceived of as a blueprint. It is a vision; it’s what they want, and sometimes have gotten. Already, in some jurisdictions after this was obtained, the parents (litigants) are crying out, the FBI having swooped in, at least to Lackawanna County to grab evidence (probably before a civil lawsuit demanding accountability could proceed; the FBI involvement terminated the jurisdiction of the civil lawsuit about the use of public funds), and the local AOC had to do some CYA. It might as well have been people supporting an oppressive religion crying out against the religion, while back at HQ, the exalted vision continued to be prophesied.

But they are not content to just solve (sic) all family legal problems caused by the justice system just created within human memory, and some of our own lifetimes — but to also add, solving more nonlegal problems as well, including (kid you not), the problems of poverty, addiction, and abuse. “Are you a Human with a relationship of some sort with another human (adult or child)? Got a problem? Come to our UFC’s!”

Seriously, now THAT is true religious zeal! Or trying to stir some up while selling the program! This is what’s being taught at a very prosperous facilities, I heard, the University of Baltimore School of Law, and they are learning this coming out the gate with J.D.’s. My grandchildren, should I have some, wouldn’t stand a chance in any such court if they have even moderate human flaws, or if my children (now alienated per court protocol for stopping parental alienation — remove completely from whichever parent looks more responsible and likely to go try and get them back. Torture everyone in the process, and if someone cracks psychologically, write it up, enter into database, and inform the next generation of professional staff supporting a presiding (AFCC) UFC judge.

By the way, the “CFCC” model in Baltimore appears to have been lifted from the California example, it’s under the Administrative Office of the Courts, and where the grants are processed through, and probably the RFP’s handled, etc.

Ya gotta love the chutzpah. In 1968, the report that the religious zeal of how much good could be done by setting up the family court system modeled after the juvenile system coulda shoulda been a little more moderate, given 1967’s “in re: Gault,” it became clear it was, ah, violating due process of a minor, and resulting in exaggerated sentences, and trauma for some of the people involved.

In 2012, while actually admitting that the family law system (created by, literally, the same people, same agenda, same process, and some of the same nonprofit associations), was harming people, they waltz in with a solution: Let’s collaborate, nationwide of course, to execute the same process, again — only more so! Now we want jurisdiction not only over ALL legal matters involving families,** but being as in 1968, still full of “virtually unlimited expectation of the amount of good [our] judge[s] and [their] staff of experts might do” [and trying not to remember that 1967 task force] we have now a blueprint model for how to stop poverty, abuse, domestic violence, and usher in a therapeutically healthy world, due to our knowledge of the human condition.

(**How many Americans simply have no family members anywhere! is the term “family” inclusive enough yet? Or how many Americans are neither adults in relationship with someone, possibly dissolving the relationship legally, or have children? “Family” could mean almost anything, particularly if there are minors within sight, either biological, step-, foster, or adopted, delinquent, or in need of alienation pre-emptive intervention during a custody contest….)

That is seriously the arrogance of the profession. You read it from the website. “holistic efficiency,” a Final Solution to human imperfections….(which is also partly where the mindset came from).

Either one of those scenes (proposed family court // in re: Gault) could easily have been a playbook model of the current Unified Family Court plan, or of the Luzerne County Kids For Cash scheme. How is it, these same things keep coming up, decade after decade?

In the 1968 article, the author (Herma Kay Hill)then quotes an Ohio Judge Alexander from 1948, 1958, and 1956 publications. So he just made my honor, or rather, DIShonor roll. There’s an inset table on his role.

Herma Kay Hill was also from 1968-1970 on another group which helps explain the “speed of enactment” by which a law passed in one state (particularly California) can spread to the others: the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws,” which was at this time working on a UMDA (Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act).

Justice Traynor clearly leveraged this case to call for reform; those in the Conference of Conciliation Courts, as it were (Los Angeles primarily) were definitely prepared to respond, already eager to drive this vehicle in a desired direction favorable to their professional interests, namely behavioral health specialists attached to the local courts, and paid for by the public. Put in its social, post-World War II, women just got the vote context, I have to call it, damage control.

Started a skeleton of these three references, and filled in a few more key events after seeing how inter-related are the personnel involved in changing the system.

Also, RE: Women in High Places

This chronology highlights one or two prominent women who manage to get through barriers to top legal posts: Has their legacy helped, or hindered?

Two of the skeleton documents (1974 Loyola article and 1968 review of a book) were written by women. I looked up the author of the 1968 book — she clerked under Traynor, was referred to a position at UCBerkeley by Traynor, and is (still?) teaching law at UCBerkeley under a chair named after yet another influential earlier (generaion) woman, “Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong.” Looking up Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong (1890-1976), she was influential in the social security act, the California Family Law, and also closely associated with Justice Traynor, whose eulogy/obituary is referenced below.

From what I can tell, as magnificent as their achievements were, two showed some grooming and help from at least this particular Justice Traynor. Given how ‘Clubby’ the law profession is, it seems easier for those who are “in” to feel qualified to prescribe recipes for those who are now, in part through this family court system (and sometimes literally, nothing else!) kicked to the bottom of the food chain, out of their homes and/or businesses, and their children out of the mothers’ lives. That’s hardly a feminist behavior, but it sure is a female behavior that we have to address.

I believe in part it exists because of the prior disenfranchisement of our gender. The same behavior seems to apply to those who have managed to head up the domestic violence agencies, the big ones, and won’t keep the feedback loop open. ….Either they do not “get” what they have done, or it’s intentional, in shutting out feedback from the bottom of the food chain, including from others of the gender who were booted downstairs in alrge part through welfare reform and conciliation court policies to discourage divorce, and encourage considering it as a social disease needing expert treatment.

There is no longer any legitimate question that this treatment is more than “iatrogenic.” But, let’s look at how the concept of courts as treatment centers for social problems came to pass, here in California. We are looking at how the entire scenario was, I think, SHIFTED out of the realm of civil contract, or equity, and an entire new venue, mystique, and philosophy personally built for it. And, by whom.

The Times:

While the AFCC dates its own beginnings to 1963 (publication of a certain Quarterly), another account states that “conciliation law” had passed in 1955. That’s STILL after De Burgh v. De Burgh.

It’s also post World War II, when the women who had gone to work were now to go back home, continue to breed, and raise children, although since 1938 Alfred Kinsey had been teaching marriage courses at Indiana Univ, and in 1947 the Institute for Sex Research [“ISR”] was incorporated, which institute plays a parallel and definitely entwined role in the development of psychology and psychiatry as professions in the USA. (See its list of directors if you don’t get this yet). In 1954 “The Origins of Psychoanalysis” (Freud’s letters to Fliess, 1887-1902), allegedly censored of cases involving sexual abuse of minors, was published.

FINALLY,

Finally, I ran across a January 2013 fifty-year retrospective from AFCC leader Andy Schephard, Kvelling (gloating with pride) about how forward-thinking the Conciliation Courts were to have thought this up (translation, pushed this through). 1963 marks the starting point in the mind of AFCC, and we are now 2013. Do the math.

I will be quoting from these, but due to difficulties in “copy and paste” from certain documents, I recommend people consider the timeline, and simply read the documents themselves, with attention to language talking about the rationale of removing the “fault” requirement for divorce, and how quickly (particularly in the 1968 piece) the behavioral health element was introduced as a standard.

1952-1974, Chronology

Per the “Court Cancer Metastasizes” article, published a number of places, Looks like under the Family Law, a Children’s Conciliation Law was passed first (1939) and based on that, the first Conciliation Court formed in 1955 in Los Angeles. Note, no conciliation court formed prior to the De Burgh Case below (?)….

The first table reviews a Timeline which appears to hearken back to a section of California Law that I now see is deleted, to be replaced by Section 1800s, “Conciliation Proceedings.” Remember, I mentioned Section 1700s seemed to have been deleted, in the Family Law TOC (recent post)? As this is just setting time and place, I have put it in a pale-blue-background box; it’s review and not the main part of post today…

From Ohio, 1937-1967 Judicial Activism

Compare the timeline to the timeline in the box below:

Now let’s look at the three documents referenced (1952 Opinion, 1968 Herma Kay Hill review, 1974 Loyola Law Review). They show the personnel and the reasoning used (process!) to set this up. I also interspersed some incorporation (of corporation and/or charity) records I discovered, or knew of previously, en route. It’s interesting that the “AFCC” itself states is origins as 1963, however the activism and concepts go back much earlier, blending as it says above: Law, RELIGION, PSYCHIATRY, medicine, SOCIOLOGY & EDUCATION. …

Justice Traynor was at this time Associate Justice; he was Chief Justice of California from 1964-1970 and had been associate justice since 1940. He had three degrees (all in Political Science from UC Berkeley), 1923, 1924, 1926, and also consulted for the US Department of Treasury (1937-1940, helping to draft the Revenue Act of 1938. One of the strong female law professors he helped, who I learned about because Herma Kay Hill sits in a chair named for her (Barbara Nachtreib Armstrong) helped draft the Social Security Act of 1933 also. Interesting..

Thought that background relevant, particularly as Traynor had already experienced striking down a state statute in an opinion (not that the statute was a good one!) Now the 1952 Opinion:

1952

A Justice Traynor Opinion on a 1946-1949 marriage/divorce case was leveraged into cause to remove “fault divorce.” Traynor doesn’t just rule, he calls for reform of the underpinnings of the law, which is going to end up moving divorce from under the civil code to its own little courthouse, category, and creative re-writing of the law.

Detail within the table.

. But, briefly:

1953

1953 The Los Angeles County Bar Association filed for incorporation with the California Secretary of State. (the OAG notes it’d been around since 1930, but the SOS site is definite — it incorporated in 1953 only!) May discuss separately — there are many nonprofits with “Los Angeles County Bar” in the name, plus a Foundation funneling money to them. One of those nonprofits is about continuing legal education (CLE programs), was pulling in over $1 million/year, and has not filed a return since 2007. It is marked “delinquent” as a charity and shows that the California Attorney General has challenged their dissolution, as it hasn’t received the proper statements (as I understand the filing).

1953 Barbara Nachtrieb (Armstrong?) publishes a two-volume book “California Family Law” which is considered foundational. She also was influential earlier in drafting the Social Security Act. More at 1968, Herma Hill Kay, on this other remarkable woman (b.1890-d.1976)

---

Her interest in social insurance, health insurance, and minimum wages led to extensive writings in the area of social economics, and she quickly became recognized as one of the outstanding experts in the field. Her ideas, expressed in her book Insuring the Essentials (1932), exerted a strong impact on the structure of the Social Security Act. Beyond that, Barbara materially assisted in drafting the act when she served as chief of staff for social security planning of the celebrated Committee on Economic Security. Her contributions to the birth of that most important legislation are properly underscored in the executive director’s account of its genesis. Witte, the development of the Social Security Act (1963). She also devoted considerable effort and intellectual leadership to the area of family law. Her two-volume work on California Family Law has been regarded as the foundation for all progress in that area since its publication in 1953.

---

Speaking of behavioral health and therapy for marriage breakdown, as a social sickness:
My interest in this came from reading about Thorazine on the Pennsylvania Unified Judicial System AOC site last year: i.e., Problem-Solving Courts per se, including Drug Courts:

1954 Thorazine begins to flood state mental institutions as treatment for schizophrenia, etc. Characterized as a chemical lobotomy:

Thorazine has been called a “chemical lobotomy” because of the similar effects it creates. Briefly, a lobotomy destroys partially or completely all functioning of the frontal lobes. The frontal lobes are unique to human beings and are the seat of the higher functions such as love, concern for others, empathy, self-insight, creativity, initiative, autonomy, rationality, abstract reasoning, judgment, future planning, foresight, will-power, determination and concentration. Without the frontal lobes it is impossible to be “human” in the fullest sense of the word; they are required for a civilized, effective, mature life. Without this “human” aspect a person is incapable of living a rewarding, happy and responsible life.

While the neuroleptics are toxic to most brain functions, disrupting nearly all of them, they have an especially well-documented impact on the dopamine neurotransmitter system. As any psychiatric textbook explains, dopamine neurotransmitters provide the major nerve pathways from the deeper brain to the frontal lobes and limbic system – the very same area attacked by surgical lobotomy. The disruption in the functioning of the frontal lobes results in the same effect – a greatly reduced person with dementia and reduction of awareness of self and the environment. They become “vegetables” – a body with very little mind or personality left.

While American psychiatrists continue to deny the obvious reality of chemical lobotomy, many European psychiatrists often acknowledge it openly, even in public and to the press. They can argue and play word games all they like – Thorazine is an extremely dangerous drug which does chemically what a lobotomy does surgically.
. . .
Like surgical lobotomy, chemical lobotomy has no specific beneficial effect on any human problem or human being. It puts a chemical clamp on the higher brain of anyone. Therefore, the drugs can be used to subdue anyone.

Neuroleptics have been used in the Soviet Union to quell political dissidents. Russian poet, Olga Iofe, was imprisoned and forcibly drugged. She was singled out for “treatment” after protesting against the resurgence of Stalinism. In Soviet Psychoprisons, says political scientist Harvey Fireside, “The massive drugs she was forcibly given were, in Dr. Norman Hirt’s opinion, ‘in fact a chemical lobotomy’, in light of reports that, on her release, Iofe ‘appears to be permanently damaged, an altered person’ “

.

On February 16, 1976, U.S. News and World Report quoted another Russian dissent who had been forced to take neuroleptics, in this case Haldol, “I was horrified to see how I deteriorated intellectually, morally and emotionally from day to day. My interest in political problems quickly disappeared, then my interest in scientific problems, and then my interest in my wife and children”. The reader might assume he was given mega-doses of some especially deadly drug. On the contrary, “I was prescribed haloperidol (Haldol) in small doses.”

The neuroleptics are also used in tranquilizing darts for subduing wild animals and in injections to permit the handling of domestic animals who become viscous. The psychiatrists continue to attempt to explain the mechanics of the neuroleptics as an alteration, for the better, of bad brain chemistry. The veterinary use of neuroleptics so undermines their antipsychotic theory that young psychiatrists are not taught about it.

Peter Breggin, M.D., psychiatrist, points out clearly that the purpose of Thorazine is to alter and disable normal brain functions. It is actually the HARM caused by the drug which produces the effect.

“The brain-disabling principle applies to all of the most potent psychiatric interventions – neuroleptics, antidepressants, lithium, electroshock, and psychosurgery. . . the major psychiatric treatments exert their primary or intended effect by disabling normal brain function. Neuroleptic lobotomy, for example, is not a side effect, but the sought-after clinical effect. Conversely, none of the major psychiatric interventions correct or improve existing brain dysfunction, such as any presumed biochemical imbalance. If the patient happens to suffer from brain dysfunction, then the psychiatric drug, electroshock, or psychosurgery will worsen or compound it.”

1963-1970

What a decade!

1963 Conciliation Courts Quarterly started (from the Los Angeles Conciliation Court/ Roger Alton Pfaff). Specifically:

1963 Mental Health Facilities Contruction Act passed US Congress

Coincidentally? …

1963 Los Angeles County Bar Association FOUNDATION filed for 501(c)3 says it filed, then filed again in 1967. Look at the link — it’s stunning in scope (apart from membership dues, their “sliding-scale honor roll” starts, at the bottom, with $5K-$9.999K, and has several steps up to the top level, $50K or more. After we, are dealing with law firms that really feel for the poor. Page 7 has lists of law firms contributing thousands, and about page 8, then we get to what they are contributing to, starting with domestic violence representation). This should be compared with their nonprofit filings

1966 – 1970, from Governor’s Commission to No-Fault Dissolution

and Yale finally goes co-ed, but the Rhodes Scholarships (Oxford based) still resist..

1966 Governor Edmund G. (“Pat”) Brown forms a Commission on the Family which Reports to the Legislature and envisions a No-Fault divorce and comprehensive family court.

The commission reports to the California Legislature, and these discussions are in the record. Looks like AFCC original Meyer Elkin, head of an already-existing Family Court Services, and another Judge of Family Law, get their voices in the mix.

1968 (preparing for this, i.e., publicity), one of its members publishes a book and a woman who would later become dean of UCBerkeley Law School writes a review of it. You need to read this — it’s a review of a book proposing The Family Court, as quoted above. “A Family Court: The California Proposal” California Law Review 56.5 (1968): 1205 [56:5=”Vol. 56 Issue 5″] , Herma Kay Hill.

While I’m at it, in 1969: Yale College Went Co-Ed. And, from the Yale Daily News 2/1/2010 (by Shahara Mehroze Shachi) “Yale Celebrates Coeducation,” [40 years of it]

Laura Wexler, Women Faculty Forum co-chair and professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Yale, moderated the first panel, which included Michael Kane ’70, Laurie Stevens ’75 and Margaret Homans ’74 GRD ’78.

---

“Forty years ago, women were first admitted to Yale. At the same time, the African American House was also founded — it was a time of intense social change,” Wexler said. … Kane described his and several other students’ attempt to organize a “Co-ed Week” in 1968, before Yale decided to admit women, by inviting 700 women to Yale to stay at the dorms, go to classes, eat at the dining halls and lead the life every male Yalie did for a week. Kane said that at the time he hoped to prove to the administration that coeducation was plausible. The organizers went door to door to convince existing male students to give up their dorms to the female students for a week, and 70 percent agreed, he said. Demonstrations were held at a Yale Corporation meeting after the administration rejected the plan. The events made the administration apprehensive, Kane said, and that week Yale announced it was going coed. “It was a movement from below — that’sthe way social changes happen,” Kane said, “If you want something, you have to organize it and fight for it.”

---

After Kane spoke, Stevens shared some of her memories of Yale in the early years of coeducation. During a conversation with an alumnus while on campus [2010], Stevens recalled that she asked him for his view on the admission of women to Yale. The alumnus responded that he thought Yale would graduate not just the “1,000 male leaders” then-University President Kingman Brewster said Yale would continue to graduate with coeducation, but also “300 prostitutes.”

---

“In my freshman calculus class at Yale, I was the only female student, and my professor asked me, ‘Well, what’s your perspective on the chain rule, the female perspective?’ ” she said. “I said, ‘It’s a math class, there is no female perspective.’ ”As one of the few female students majoring in the sciences in her time, Stevens said that when she wanted to apply to medical school, her academic advisor suggested she apply to nursing school instead. Stevens went ahead and applied to 40 medical schools and was accepted to two, she said.

[[And, in 1969, future First Lady of Arkansas, and the United States, NY State Senator, and US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham gives commencement address at Wellesley, then going on to get J.D. From Yale in 1973. This reminder from Wikipedia free of charger, hover cursor for family-related issues.]]

1969 “Conference of Conciliation Courts” (NOT at a Los Angeles Address, but a PO Box) files for and gets tax-exempt status. (fuzzy franchise board image from Johnnypumphandle.com, courtesy probably Marv Bryer) California Secretary of State shows they incorporated 7/30/1969 (in 3100 S. Central, Chicago, IL!) and are now suspended, Entity #C0576876. I have a separate post in draft about some of these corporations….

1970 Looks like we got us a nice No-Fault Divorce Law Situation in California by now. Judge Alexander in Ohio had been pushing for this since about 1948, including through the ABA. Conciliation courts were set up, funding for them also (obviously). Plenty of Publishing and trading ideas — at the law journal, legislative, and private conference level for this to happen. People who watched only the Legislature (if that) would’v been taken by surprise. As the internet only really got seriously going in the 1980s, I’d have to characterize this one as run by the elite professions.

1972

Feminist psychologist and author Phyllis Chesler publishes “Women and Madness,” her first book.

1974

1974 The Ford Foundation and several federal agencies combine to form “Manpower Research Development Corporation,” which as of 2003 was renamed “MDRC.” Discussed in a recent post, I’m just pointing out the timing. Notice: One of the Board members is Ron Haskins (DNK since when), who, I hear, is the author of the PRWORA “addendum” to get that $10 million for access and visitation funding on the 1996 welfare reform package. MDRC does plenty of fatherhood studies, and never seems to consider the fact that NOT doing them is advisable, even when the results show, they don’t work, and other groups have to follow after and do the audits for misappropriation of funds (an example being, Parents Fair Share, ca. 2004, St. Louis, Missouri — as I recall).

The entire MDRC website was recently designed (not improved, but redesigned) so my links in previous posts probably don’t work. That’s another reason it’s important to get the basic understanding in one’s MIND, and know how to find the documents, as they WILL move repeatedly.

1974 “Irreconciliable Differences: California Courts Respond to No-Fault Disolutions” by Elayne Carol Berg (Sept. 1974, Vol. 7 #3 of Loyola of Los Angeles Review, Table of Contents) discussing the major, almost “carte blanche” changes of the 1970 California Family Law Act (“FLA”).

AND — Women were admitted to Rhodes Scholarships. (“How Women Became Rhodes Scholars,” the US played a role, but it wasn’t until 1974. Good article, also shows the clout of a Trust, please read.)

2013 Kvelling for Family Court Review on its Fiftieth Birthday confirms

Far from being a feminist advance, given that it seems to have been prompted by the De Burgh case, I’d have to evaluate this as a Hegelian conflict in pre-planned motion. That 1952 Opinion presented the conflict showing that business as usual wouldn’t work; the solution was, what we have now. HOWEVER — Conciliation Courts apparently were already up and running before 1963.

As I just detailed in the 2nd Conciliation Court FUND a Mentals post, in getting the reforms of the 1990 (including Access Visitation Grants) certain steps were taken. I numbered them 1,2,3,4 as related in a government document (Action-Transmittal/Final Rule on the Access Visitation Grants, 1999). Get a law passed to set up demonstration projects (how’d that first law get passed). $4 million or so appropriated. Report to Congress (report prepared by similar personnel to those probably who lobbied for the law: the CPR/PSI combo out of Denver, probably), that makes it more official. Report to Congress, change some more laws, appropriate some more money, and the “trailer” to welfare reform was added on to give $10 million a year to this project, for starters.

The figure $10 million came up in 1974 report on the same idea, below (mandatory counseling). Apparently they’d wanted California alone to allocate $10 million for mandatory counseling. It looks to me like the conciliation courts had already been set up. So, I guess they settled for $10 million a year — nationwide. Hey, it’s a start, right?

The writings discussed the legal basis for changing the cause of divorce by a perplexing decision of “mutual cruelty” which challenged the issue of “recrimination.” In our time and language, thish would be something akin to a mutual restraining order.

What the courts chose to do was focus on the breakup — not the fault, and not innocence. This was supposedly healthy and helpful. However, when there are truly wronged parties (as when felonies are committed against them), it’s a violence upon the truth to equalize the situation.

“To get around mandatory counseling while adhering to the De Burgh rationale, the Assembly Committee [on the Judiciary] retained the established ** conciliation court system and the requirement of a JUDICIAL determination of the alleged grounds or reasons for divorce but with MAJOR INTERNAL REVISIONS to allow the court to handle the factional issues surrounding the breakdown.”

Right about here is where they took the focus of CAUSE and focused instead on the fact of the breakdown. However, to focus on the irreconcilable FACT of the breakdown, they got into examining (?) the SUBJECTIVE REACTIONS OF INDIVIDUAL PARTIES. (read the article…

Footnote 58 to “retaining the existing conciliatory court system” references J. Rykin & Meyer Elkin. Somehow, the “Attorneys’ Ready Reference to Conciliation Court (Los Angeles County Bar Association 1974) Re-Integration of the Disintegrating Families 22 The Family Coordinator 63 (1973), but this is referenced in the “Assembly Report” at 8056. I thought the Assembly report was in 1969. Oh well!

“But to allow the parties themselves, or even a third-party counselor, to determine the fact of marital breakdown was thought to be an impermissible encroachment on the judicial function.”

So,

WHO is to have the power over marriages and their dissolutions? The Judges.

I would love to say more, but seeing is believing: Read the 1952 opinion, the 1968 book summary (and its footnotes and rationale) and the 1974 Loyola summary, if nothing else.

Also look up Traynor, Herma Kay Hill, Barbara Nachtreib Armstrong (all, UC Berkeley), and Judge Alexander of Toledo. Locate their lives in space and time (i.e., US History) and we have a better look at the issues.

Practical, in the future?

I find it interesting to talk about the “Disenfranchisement” of women. Given what the franchise has been doing to truth and reason, I’m wondering why we want a piece of this action to start with. What, exactly, is “The Franchise” might be a good question to answer.

Perhaps the solution truly is not to get married. How then get around the hordes of fatherhood practitioners and marriage-promoters, and co-parenting coordinators, or prisoner re-entry mentoring programs seeking to rule over unmarried couples, the scourge of society, is still problematic, but — and how many of us think of this while exchanging vows? When you get married, the state is a third party, and gets in bed with you. If you propagate, they are definitely also, at least in the collective, thinking in terms of their INVESTMENT in your LABOR (moms, and dads) to make sure there’s a decent return in according with the existing business plan, which apparently (as of about 2013) is to keep the US in such perpetual fear of falling off fiscal cliffs that we will pay anything, do anything, and believe anything to avoid the imminent unknown, including putting up with the insane right-now.

Feedback on the content is welcome, please comment. Suggest printing out the documents and then looking up some of the footnoted groups.

TO GO BACK TO THE TOP OF THIS POST (How a 1952 Divorce Opinion was Leveraged…), CLICK THE TITLE LINK.  TO GO TO THE NEXT POST, CLICK THAT LINK (How Pushy People Got the Paradigm Switched).  WordPress also has links to previous and next posts at the bottom, but they aren’t always easy to see, so these are for your convenience (and because I’m re-publicizing several Feb., 2013, posts at this time.//LGH).

published Feb. 13, 2013, is: