These parades, charades, and facades have become a problem for the people who match the profile of what they claim to represent, “Protective Parents” and/or “Battered Mothers,” specifically. I am among that class and a witness of the practices, tactics, and censorships of dialogues involved. I believe collectively the groups involved comprise a cult, and exhibit all primary cult practices.

Before a few mental circuits of distressed parents disconnect, or melt from the heat of their own righteous indignation, (“But my children were abused; I am an incest survivor” etc.), this post is not about whether or not incest or abuse took place in those cases, or children are being placed in the care of batterers or dangerous parents. I’m a survivor, and I know that plenty of times, abuse, sometimes incest did take place and children ARE being placed in the care of batterers.  Mine were….

This post is about what kind of parents are taking a road trip (real, or virtually) with ANY advocacy organizations whose articles of incorporation (if any) boards of directors on their tax returns and patterns of incorporation, charitable filings they have not yet even identified (let alone read and understood), and what’s worse to a destination they have not evaluated as sensible, based on analyses of those organizations in the larger context.

It’s about the dangers of tunnel vision.  Focus is one thing, but tunnel vision, an entirely different thing. it’s about how even spending days, weeks and months on a combination of social media, group -emails, individual emails, and even supplemented by various published articles on a certain topic can still be like eating white bread and peanut butter only, and wondering why you can’t make it through the marathon.

It’s so easy to get a sense of TIME (date of origin of a group), PLACE (where did it originally incorporated, and if it’s one of those state-skipping chameleon corporations, make a note of it, and find out where it’s been before), SIZE (for that, see the financials), and POSITIONING (who else is it interlocking agenda with; and — this is important — is it talking from a religious-exempt institution, or from a law school, or center/institute (etc.) at a university, or individually.  Universities, hospitals, government represent considerable clout, prestige and authority, and lesser accountability for said “Center” or Institute” when it comes to tracking the funding = tracking the influence.  Is it a regular HHS grantee? On which federal funding streams?

Does it file separately — or has it got another organization as its fiscal agent?  If that status changed (example in this post), when, and probably why?

This post is about advocacy group supporters and followers failing to set standards and keep their own leaders ethical. In a larger sense, the same goes for all of us as citizens, supporting by personal energy and labor (i.e., government revenues) — how can we keep leaders honest or ethical if we don’t have a grasp of what they are doing, what they are paid to do, and how the system is organized?

Consider: If as a parent, you would NOT want your kids to get into a strange cars with smiling strangers and start hitch-hiking with them, for years, recruiting others as you go, why have you demonstrated this same behavior by failing to do basic look-ups, and obtain those fiscal identities and trade-association connections?

[Example: Child-Justice, Inc. (Eileen King, fall 2012] connections to First Star = connections to NACC = connections to AFCC. Another: Battered Women’s Justice Project [“BWJP”] connections (ongoing) to AFCC AND to Duluth, MN’s “Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs” [connection to Ellen Pence, the HHS and DOJ-funded DV industry programming] AND recently, presenting at “BMCC” (Battered Mother’s Custody Conference).

Why would BMCC (and Mr. Bancroft and Mr. Goldstein) keep a ten-year silence (as if they were unaware of its existence) on what has been a $150 million/year federal since 1996 financing program around marriage and fatherhood promotion by way of diversions from Title IV-A, welfare, or the $10 million/year since 1996 (though first financed in 1988) Title IV-D (re: child support enforcement incentives, including percentage-based quotas) access visitation grants? Possibly because out of some of this funding comes the batterers intervention and supervised visitation networked industries, with solid income streams from court-ordered services, courtesy US taxpayers and privately, individual, extorted parents?

One significant “Why?” unanswered ought to indicate something seriously “off,” but there are many — far too many — significant unanswered questions in this company. Suggestion: Come to a decision on the “why” and act on it. Insist on answers as a condition of telling your stories through these channels, lending credibility as the voice of the victims, as a condition of attending rallies, or advertising rallies, etc. BE WISE!

WHO are the friends of those empathetic friends? WHO are they leading you to?
Get the group corporate, fiscal, identity first (the process is simple)! It is a basic indicator and a source of valuable information. It’s unbelievable what a single EIN# and, from there, tax return (Form 990) will tell. Groups tend to cluster around favorite themes (and shun conflicting themes) and even named groups, simply on-line associations, may be dealing with — or have been started by — a tax-exempt organization with an agenda. In fact, every organization is supposed to state its purpose on their tax return — so if one exists, why not go read it?

Assess size and special interest groups, and steer clear of groups which refuse to incorporate, or which refuse to submit state-level charitable returns when states require this — on time.
And which attempt to censor conversations about areas of common interest, or refuse to educate followers about it in communications or in websites.

I have for years attempted to have intelligent conversations on the money trail and the matter of court-connected corporations, not to mention the more than obvious federal marriage/fatherhood promotion grants, with mothers who have been wrapped up in blogging their, or someone else’s personal stories — without running basic background checks on who they’re doing it for.

However, the leadership and by association followers have habitually refused to discuss these topics properly, timely, or thoroughly, remaining focused on the apparently preplanned solutions to the crises — essentially, get better trainers (i.e., themselves:  a self-defining mixture of professionals, nonprofits, some groups absent any corporate identity and enough mothers who tell their stories to lend the experts credibility. For example, see in recent “Parades, Charades and Facades” post, or find and read a typical newsletter or press release from one of the members).  Unless you look at other sources of information, on the same topic it is less clear how self-defining and discussion-limiting the conversations are.These are professionals whose background and skills are in the fields of persuasion, experienced in group situations and guided-group attempts at behavioral modification [seeking to persuade the court, persuade the public, or persuade the legislature towards system change, or persuade people to refer services and advertise product].   People who have obtained PhDs, published, conferenced, been professors, and many (not all) still are.

And there’s been definite “guidance” on what is unacceptable to teach or talk about in these life-and-death matters.

Like, the money trail, from the United States (Executive Branch) Departments of HHS and DOJ.  And private wealth pouring funds into producing certain custody-outcomes, by state, and by gender, and related quotas

Like, nonprofit trade associations that populate judge-ships, head family court services, and organize nationally to favor their members’ interests.

So, the “Broken Courts, Flawed Practices” the court reform group’s leadership it seems was all along as “the professionals” setting their sights on becoming the subject matter experts for this exact type of FCEP project, i.e., public recognition and with it, potential related spinoff income from close association with the “source,” i.e., with people managing the funding stream out of the USDOJ (among other places)’s  Office of Violence Against Women  $400 million budget, and direction of public (federal) money funding grants stemming from the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act).

(Announcing the project June 2013 on facebook and responding to comments)

Barry Goldstein The courts’ response to sexual abuse issues is particularly horrible and I hope that is included in the practices adopted by some of the courts. It is included in the best practices discussed in a few chapters for my next book with Mo Hannah.

June 15, 2013 at 9:09pm

I have been watching the promotion of this book since before it was first published in 2010 and noticed how relentless Barry is on the matter, and how followers of the Crisis in the Courts crowd do this as well, reblogging.  Readers take note:  Similar behavior for the book promoted about ten years earlier, same basic circles, by “Our Children Our Future Foundation” which corporation barely existed for two years.  (See recent post “A Different Kind of Attention“).

The book here is meant to sound so authoritative, but it isn’t!  It is anything but complete on the subject matter and its deliberate avoidance of reference to the money trail stemming from 1996-forward (Welfare reform) , to specific organizations, or any searchable terms or names which might better alert women, definitely primary target readers, to the scope and context and history of HOW “custody of abused children going to batterers” actually happens.

Track the organizations* promoting this book, and you will find a very speckled and incomplete trail of corporate and nonprofit filings with a literal obsession with intervention at the federal level while ignoring how the federal grants factor are already in place to intentionally produce certain custody outcomes. In other words, they are a significant factor in the problems to start with.
Track the people promoting it, and most likely you’ll find a presenter, a nonprofit associated with, or a “poster-child custody disaster” case associated with the “BMCC” conference group in New York, which since 2013 seems to have moved its business to Washington, D.C. (2013, 2014 so far).

[*Some are corporations and nonprofits, however some are not but through associations  masquerade (i.e., whose public writings imply) as if they were a legitimate corporation without actually having filed and maintained as required by state laws the paperwork to become one.

Another neat trick, discovered by simply looking this up, is that some talk “small, oppressed, needy and helpless” but on closer examination are hooked up by association with groups with powerful international connections, including to powerful law firms or lawyers].  Like fish and other oceanic species, each occupies different places on the food chain (which here is the publicity/information/funding), and some relationships are “symbiotic.” ]  By now, and with the announcement of the Family Court Enhancement Project [FCEP] stages,  I hope it’s absolutely clear why the omission of the money trail; the Barry Goldstein/Mo Hannah (editors) book had a strategic purpose related to its editors’ professional positioning on court reform purposes — although it was clear to others earlier, some of who turned away in disgust, or having been wiped out by the system, quit trying to talk across, shout past the PR, or otherwise out-social-media this bunch.

In other words, when one plans to be collaborating with certain groups already higher on the food chain (taking HHS and DOJ grants and private foundation sponsorship) as consultants, evaluators, or reforms, it wouldn’t really do to be exposing those themes AS primary themes with a negative impact on the family courts! (i.e., don’t bite the hand that might be feeding).

Whoever heads the OVW is the “liaison” between that funding stream and other governments (federal state, tribal) in the subject matter of “Violence Against Women.”

The theme song of the Broken Courts crowd is that the family court judges and custody evaluators, etc., just can’t recognize real domestic violence when they see it (but that blindness can be trained out of them, of course, with proper professionals such as ourselves).

This viewpoint dovetails neatly with how the OVW has been set up to do “technical assistance and training” nationwide.  (Why deal with peasants and commoners, and their tough questions or opposing viewpoints, when you can bypass that, get to Congress, and just start turning a private philosophy into a nationwide one?)

Since 2003, the Battered Mothers Custody Conference has been habituated by membership from domestic violence professionals — but somehow 10 years of conferencing and “telling our stories”  produced the sudden awakening of the USDOJ/OVW’s sleeping moral conscience and compassion for the  Crisis in the Courts???  And what other fairy tales (folklore) are we supposed to subscribe to?

Principal Deputy Director of the United States Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women (OVW).

In her role, she serves as the liaison between the Department of Justice and federal, state, tribal, and international governments on matters involving violence against women.

She is responsible for developing the Department’s legal and policy positions regarding the implementation of the Violence Against Women Act and overseeing an annual budget of nearly $400 million.

She has served as OVW’s Principal Deputy Director since May 2011.

The budget may be $400 million but since 1995, when the OVW was established to implement “VAWA” act technical assistance and training, and national leadership regarding that act, it has handled (distributed) “nearly $4 Billion in grants and cooperative agreements.”  (from a 2010 announcement):

From a 2/16/2010 USDOJ press release on a former director of the OVW, more below.

The Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) provides national leadership in developing the nation’s capacity to reduce violence against women through the implementation of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Created in 1995, OVW administers financial and technical assistance to communities across the country that are developing programs, policies, and practices aimed at ending sexual and domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking.  Currently (2010), OVW administers two formula grant programs and 17 discretionary grant programs, which were established under VAWA and subsequent legislation. Since its inception, OVW has awarded nearly $4 billion in grants and cooperative agreements to communities throughout the nation.

From what I can see, this FCEP project is, or will be, pretty much more “business as usual,” i.e., the DV movement making token gestures  towards cleaning up about two dozen years of dumping cases into the family court system, after having years ago already cut compromise deals by sponsoring and recommending (nationwide, and of course with related nonprofit associations named after this) such things as:  supervised visitation, batterers’ intervention, and “train-the-judges” policies to start with, through organizations set up, some of them, as early as the 1980s.  One of those organizations in Duluth, Minnesota now has “BWJP” or Battered Women’s Justice Project,” but also runs family visitation center, and trainings for both fields (supervised visitation/batterers intervention), taking public grants to do so.

The slight difference here is merely that the “protective parents” people finally got their names down as subject matter experts on the roundtable, and now will be providing a ready-made “excuse” if the USDOJ/OVW is again approached about this matter — “but we’re working on it, we have a task force!”

As it turns out, when I looked up where Bea Hanson, Principal Deputy Director of the OVW worked previously (“Safe Horizon” in NYC) — this astoundingly connected and networked organization is already hooked into the divorce/family/mediation business as well as the domestic violence, shelters, and other treatment for victims of trauma business), which from what I can tell, is BIG business.

Including the housing (real estate development and running) business, plus alliances with the Yale Child Study Center, the New York Institute for Peace (which promotes EXPENSIVE trainings for divorce mediators, and was a spinoff nonprofit from Safe Horizon’s Mediation (“CDRC” apparently) program in various New York family courts).

[I only added the yellow highlighting here on Dec.7, 2019//LGH]

Funders and Partners

Altus receives general support from the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Additionally, support for the creation of Altus in 2003- 2004 came from the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute (OSI), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the JEHT Foundation, and the City of The Hague. Program support is also received from the United Kingdom’s Department of International Development (DFID).Department for International Development The Department for International Development (DFID) is the part of the United Kingdom’s government that manages Britain’s aid to poor countries and works to get rid of extreme poverty. DFID adheres to two sets of targets. First, are the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), international targets agreed by the United Nations to halve world poverty by 2015. Second, the UK government’s Public Service Agreement (PSA) sets objectives and targets by which progress is measured. DFID’s Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department (CHASE), supports Altus’ Police Station Visitors Week, which seeks to improve civilian oversight of police.

MacArthur Foundation
One of the ten largest private philanthropic foundations in the United States, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private, independent grant-making institution dedicated to improving the human condition. The Foundation fosters the development of knowledge, nurtures individual creativity, helps strengthen institutions, helps form effective policy, and provides information to the public through supporting public interest media.

The Foundation’s Program on Global Security and Sustainability, which focuses primarily on international issues and has offices in India, Nigeria, and Russia—home countries for three of the six Altus member organizations—is particularly keen to support the work of the alliance in these areas of the world. For more information about the MacArthur Foundation, go to http://www.macfound.org/.

Altus for Global Justice Peace and Safety, etc.

A deceptively small nonprofit identity in New York, year of formation 2004.  They just wanna improve public safety and promote justice (internationally) that has two board members in common with the larger Vera Institute of Justice:

All the expenses are listed as “other” and no government grants.  That’s a little misleading — it’s UK government grants, in part.  The books are being held in Nigeria. What it does?

FUNDED BY THE UNITED KINGDOM DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (DFID), THIS PROGRAM TACKLES THE DAILY ISSUES CONFRONTED BY COMMUNITIES BY PARTICIPATING IN A GLOBAL PROGRAM THAT SUPPORTS CAPACITY BUILDING POLICE STATION VISITORS’ WEEK IS A UNIQUE GLOBAL EVENT ORGANIZED BY ALTUS TO ASSESS THE QUALITY OF SERVICES DELIVERED IN THE PARTICIPATING POLICE DEPARTMENTS, TO IDENTIFY SOME OF THE BEST PRACTICES IN USE BY POLICE, TO STRENGHTEN THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF POLICE TO THE LOCAL CITIZENS WHOM THEY SERVE, AND TO PROMOTE HUMAN RIGHTS STANDARDS

Small amounts are being distributed (Schedule I) to:  Europe (UK HQ, the DFID), Russia, South America, South Asia (India presumably from their site), and Sub-Saharan South Africa.  None of the directors, who work (“0.50”) hrs per week are paid anything — “

(1) ALISON HANNAH DIRECTOR / (2) DR AA SIDDIQUI DIRECTOR / (3) GEORGI SATAROV DIRECTOR / (4) HUGO FRUHLING DIRECTOR / (5) INNOCENT CHUKWUMA CHAIR / (6) JAMES A GOLDSTON DIRECTOR / (7) JORGE LAS HERAS DIRECTOR / (8) JULITA LEMGRUBER SECRETARY / (9) MICHAEIL FEDOTOV DIRECTOR / (10) MICHAEL P JACOBSON DIRECTOR / (11) PRAMOD KUMAR TREASURER / (12) PROFESSOR ETANNIBIALEMIKA DIRECTOR / (13) RICHARD G DUDLEY JR MD DIRECTOR / (14) SILVIA RAMOS DIRECTOR

By contrast, the Vera Institute For Justice is a little more “flush” :

What Vera Institute does:  “VERA HELPS LEADERS IN GOV’T AND CIVIL SOCIETY IMPROVE SYSTEMS PEOPLE RELY UPON FOR JUSTICE & SAFETY”   Unlike “Altus” — $21,799,110 out of its $30,217,342 of Contributions [not including $446K or so “Technical Assistance fees”] WERE “Government” (meaning, within the US)…  they spent $10 million of that on “Subcontractors,”.

Principal Officer is #10 above, Michael P. Jacobson (paid $227K + benefits); also one of the “1.0 hours/week” directors is #13 above, Richard G. Dudley, Jr., M.D.   See “Board Members” for their biographies.

Of course, as to the Broken Courts, Flawed Practices, “Judges and Custody Evaluators Just Don’t Understand Abusers” (so to speak) groups, neither Barry Goldstein, Mo Hannah, Joyanna Silberg, Connie Valentine, Kathleen Russell, Joan Meier, nor Rita Smith of the NCADV (to reference some leadership of some of the BMCC groups) nor others knew anything about what I just found out in one day by reading a few tax returns and doing some basic internet lookup.    [???] “Oh my….”

They also, judging by the materials put out, are clueless (or just nearly silent) about the involvement some of the same foundations listed as funders and partners of “Altus,” particularly the FORD foundation, in sponsoring major system changes in the US court systems and social service delivery systems either, for example, the Strengthening Fragile Families [entrenched in Texas, at least, in the Attorney General’s Office, and in NYC at Columbia University with Dr. Ronald Mincy, Ph.D., and in other states with other organizations)” (and other fatherhood promotion programming).  They also presumably forgot to notice that a major “Center for Court Innovation” collaboration between “Fund for the City of New York” (Started with Ford money”) and the NYS Unified Court System, has anything to do with anything, to do with custody courts.

When it comes to these subject matter experts and that subject matter, good luck getting a coherent sentence (and anything to document in the same place) from any one of them. Whatever they may privately know the are certainly not leaking much information (other than sound-bytes on a PR piece) or tools to get to that information independently, to the followers, or the public.

BROKEN COURTS, FLAWED PRACTICES, PROTECTIVE PARENTS, BATTERED MOTHERS, SAFE CHILDREN COALITIONS  INTENTIONALLY FORM SELF-DEFINING AND SELF-LIMITING CONVERSATIONS ON SUBJECT MATTER INVOLVING LIFE-AND-DEATH MATTERS, BOTH SUDDEN (BY VIOLENCE) OR GRADUAL (BY LONG-TERM OPPRESSION, ATTRITION AND HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF ONGOING EXPOSURE TO VIOLENCE).

BMCC’s and friends’ Ten-plus years of deliberately (it can be proved, but after reading ignoring federal incentives to the states to tweak custody outcomes, and censoring discussion of it in any open fashion it seems is about to be rewarded with “protective parent subject matter expert” status, while being nothing of the sort.

It wasn’t intentional?  Not deliberate?  OK, then should I go with the other interpretation:  they’re ALL just innocently ignorant (a.k.a. habitually dumb/uninformed) or just brainwashed, while portraying themselves as leadership and subject matter experts, not to mention the voice of the battered mothers of lost children oppressed in Washington, D.C….. Is that a more favorable understanding of the years of conference blackout some very important material?

The DV people have all along continued dumping cases into family law and going back with their hands out for more  VAWA grants, and characterizing what the domestic violence that is actually family-court-generated as “domestic” and riding the conference circuit.  

But now with the “Family Court Enhancement Project,” the “Protective Parents/Safe Child” crowd,  who are staking out THEIR market niche, family court disaster cases, alongside the DV industry friends (and who are called “friends”) can then join them in pretending it’s the “practices” (and not the incentives) which are truly the problem. They are showing their true colors in this matter of continuing to bypass and ignore lone (female) bloggers intent on publishing these matters, even after they have been repeatedly “outed” by individuals who’ve managed to get the message out despite and around the same groups.

 “How It Works” 

In other words, domestic violence nonprofits help women out the door, or into a battered woman’s shelter, and to get initial custody of their children, knowing FULL WELL they’re going to lose those children (or have to undergo a vicious and rigged fight for them) when, or before, any restraining order/protective order expires — when cases are driven (literally, herded) into  the family courts, AND knowing that because the family courts are not so concerned with real “evidence” or with criminal activity (see “no-fault divorce” of 1970 — it means just that!) — the same loose-ethics system will indeed enable some false accusers (female) to get rid of fathers improperly, and if some men won’t naturally incite a custody battle, they can be induced to through unfair treatment in the child support arena.

Moreover the DV movement also has all along known about “conciliation court” which in some states can exists completely parallel to and apparently independent of the section of family code which says “presumption against custody going to batterers”) and the AFCC.  And about fatherhood funding, access/visitation funding and much more.  They just don’t tell US (women who filed for protection) about this in advance.  

It seems that this time, the “Family Court Enhancement Project” [<=<= that’s a link to google.com — search the term!] has a little extra triumphant “oomph” for the family court reform crowd who’ve been trying and insisting for YEARS to institute  NATIONAL (FEDERAL) reform of the nation’s family courts according to their pre-set analysis (I can back up that statement, feel free to challenge it in a comment if you wish) of what’s wrong with them, which just so happens to match certain people’s (group’s) demands to get in on the “best practices” training breadwagon.

A google search shows plenty of search results, but this one from NCJFCJ shows me, from its “code words” known to specific nonprofits, that they are looking for some of the current USDOJ grantees  to be participating, as well as some coming out of the  Duluth, MN philosophy (coordinated community response) AND from the AFCC-oriented community.  With all of these collaborating together, the likelihood of any one sector “outing” the other is — in my opinion — NIL.  It won’t happen.

I gather this announcement was BEFORE June, 2012 — and stated there’d been 4 roundtable meetings since 2008 (i.e., a “whopping” one per year).  I should notice that in 2007,  a presiding superior court judge from New Hampshire (and AFCC member) the Hon. Susan Carbon (who later? moved to the OVW) was appointed President of the NCJFCJ, below.

(CALL FOR PROPOSALS from the NCJFCJ):

Family Court Enhancement Project Call for Proposals

The Family Violence and Domestic Relations Program (FVDR) of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges [that’s “NCJFCJ”**]  is now accepting proposals from family courts that make custody, visitation, and parenting time decisions to participate in the Family Court Enhancement Project (FCEP). There is no direct funding available to participating sites. However, three selected sites will receive training, technical assistance, and support from expert staff and consultants.

Translation:  Notice it didn’t say “No direct or indirect funding.”  However this gives the expert staff and consultants an “in” to coach and guide the pilot, and to build their “we coached and trained these sites” credits.

The Family Court Enhancement Project is funded by the Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women (OVW). It is a collaborative project of OVW, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), the Battered Women’s Justice Project (BWJP), and the National Institute for Justice (NIJ).

[[**and that’s basically a Nevada nonprofit trade association:  not government itself”]

This tells you who’s working on the project:  NCJFC, BWJP, and the NIJ.  Only one of those,FYI, is a government agency, and only one of them is a nonprofit.  The other one BWJP has been for years the project of a nonprofit.*

[*bloggers note: People interested in any particular subject matter area could decide to set, first a personal, and second a common group-discussion standard:  Before publicizing, referring to, reblogging, or otherwise pointing to any “group” by its title (i.e., in that short quote above, there were several, right?), find out WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE (that’s part of the “WHO”), HOW OLD, HOW LARGE, and HOW IS IT FINANCED — of all relevant players.  By mutual encouragement and decision this could easily become common. 

There is little benefit to NOT bothering to look.  There is significant benefit to starting to look.  Why not just start looking and teaching others to?  It takes a decision and some effort, that’s all.  Then a while of feeling “isolated” until enough others start to catch on — this is a major source of relevant information and understanding:  Locate the business entity, label it, and if it takes government funding — find that funding.  If it’s got a tax return, find and read that tax return.  If it doesn’t, make a note of it:  Why would any group which wishes to be seen as a consulting expert and is paid for this expertise, choose NOT to identify itself year after year as a separate organization under its own name?  The motto of BWJP on that site  is “Change.  Justice.  Accountability.” Where’s the accountability if it’s not a separate organization?

WHO is “Battered Women’s Justice Project” (like who is anyone else) can be seen from their own, or collaborating organization’s material (like, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts?) — however that’s not enough.  Websites are informative, but they are also to sell services, product, information, or a cause.  Websites are typically sales sites (among other things).

http://www.bwjp.org/ = the website.  Many groups like to tell what they do and establish credibility.  They do not always like so much to say who they are in measurable terms.  If it’s not volunteered, then simply go get the information.  For example:

The Battered Women’s Justice Projectoffers training, technical assistance, and consultation on the most promising practices of the criminal and civil justice systems in addressing domestic violence.  Staff attorneys and advocates can provide information and analyses on effective policing, prosecuting, sentencing, and monitoring of domestic violence offenders.

OK, so they provide information and analyses.  (So do I, as a battered woman who sought justice;  so do others, however, I don’t have a staff or take DOJ or HHS grants for it.)

In very fine print at the bottom of the page (which also hosts two other groups or resources), it does mention where the funding comes from:   “Funded by the Office on Violence Against Women, the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services”
Copyright © 2014  Battered Women’s Justice Project”

Nice information — but it doesn’t answer:  Are they or are they not a separate nonprofit, arm of government, corporation, or what?  In fact, for years, they have been NOT a separate entity or corporation, or nonprofit, or business, but instead simply a project, and in fact THE primary project (judging by resources spent on it) of the group below.  A little more tricky here is that the group below is not actually called “Minnesota Program Development, Inc.”  Click on the name to get the proper term, which begins with the word “D” as in “DOMESTIC.  Those are its tax returns.  And on page two of the most recent one showing, it reads:

DOMESTIC ABUSE INTERVENTION PROGRAMS IS A NONPROFIT AGENCY THAT WORKS TOWARDS THE ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE IN THE LIVES OF WOMEN AND THEIR CHILDREN

(Code    ) (Expenses $    2,911,311    including grants of $    434,156 ) (Revenue $    136,598)
BATTERED WOMEN’S JUSTICE PROJECT SERVES AS THE COMPREHENSIVE TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE PROVIDER TO JURISDICTIONS AWARDED GRANTS TO ENCOURAGE ARREST POLICIES AND ENFORCEMENT OF PROTECTION ORDERS

• EIN# 23-2473361, got about $326,000

• EIN# 41-1891724, got about $53K ( its tax returns, next bullet).

• ORGANIZATION NAME	STATE	YEAR	FORM	PAGES	TOTAL ASSETS	EIN
  PRAXIS INTERNATIONAL	MN	2013	990	21	$262,025.	41-1891724
  Praxis International	MN	2012	990	24	$144,073.	41-1891724
  Praxis International	MN	2011	990	26	$365,150.	41-1891724

At the third conference of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in St Louis, Missouri in 1986, I encountered some of the rock stars of domestic violence work. Ellen Pence (Power & Control Wheel), Susan Schechter (Women & Male Violence), Ann Jones (Women Who Kill), Esta Soler (Family Violence Prevention Fund), Barbara Hart (Attorney PA Coalition against Domestic Violence), Diana E. H. Russell (Rape in Marriage). They were determined to change the way society thinks about battered women and how it responds to violence in the home. We are losing our heroes. Susan Schechter passed away in 2004 and now in 2012 Ellen Pence has left us…

That paragraph lists some domestic violence nonprofits, significant ones taking grants, and considered leaders in the field.  Each of them has a budget, an agenda, and a position for, against, or “don’t want to really talk about it” regarding the multiple issues women who have sought and obtained protective orders experience in attempting to retain custody of their children.  When the male and female so-called leadership of the efforts to address these obvious (people still getting killed, by the household, sometimes with bystanders, sometimes in their homes, sometimes in a business place, in the context of marital separation, relationship separation, and of course, custody, etc.  The term used is “massacres” and after each new one, the press contacts some local domestic violence agency to talk about domestic violence some more.)  I’d like to briefly show the HHS grants (although “NCADV” doesn’t get them directly– it gets them from state-wide coalitions and other sources), and/or size of some of the underlined groups:

NCADV:

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[below next set of photos]…
In the 1960s, Ellen Pence was an activist in the housing, antiwar, civil rights and feminist movements. In 1975, Ellen became active in the battered women’s movement, a place she called home for most of her life. In the late 70s, she worked for the State of Minnesota advocating for funding for battered women’s shelters. In 1980, she and a small group of activists organized the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in Duluth, MN commonly known as the “Duluth Model”.

The most remarkable thing about the Duluth Model is that it works.It makes safety for women and their children, gives some men the incentive to change their behavior, and identifies others who pose a continuing threat to women, law enforcement, and the community.  {{italics mine}}

Ellen was influenced by Paolo Friere, the late Brazilian educator. Freire worked with impoverished and illiterate people in South America and developed an education model that relies on dialogue and critical thinking rather than traditional learning. With her colleagues in Duluth, Ellen developed two curricula: In Our Best Interest for advocates working with oppressed and abused women, and Creating a Process of Change for Men Who Batter for practitioners working with court mandated offenders.

Ellen took time out to attend the University of Toronto and earn her PhD. It was there that she was greatly influenced by the Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith. Smith’s sociology teaches how to create an analytical map of institutional activities that makes transparent the ways workers are organized and coordinated to think about and act on the cases they manage. Ellen was convinced that law enforcement, the criminal and civil justice system, and human service providers either enhanced or diminished victim safety by their intervention. She believed that when victim safety was compromised it was typically not the fault of an individual worker, but of systemic problems that could be fixed….

Ellen then moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, with her partner Amanda. She founded Praxis International in 1998, providing training nationally, primarily in rural areas using the components of the Safety and Accountability Audit to help communities do a better job in handling domestic assault cases. In 2007, Ellen and her colleagues in partnership with the City of St. Paul began to write a comprehensive plan integrating the knowledge gleaned from thirty years of research and demonstration projects and practice that they called the Blueprint for Safety. Ellen called the Blueprint “The Duluth Model on steroids.”

The next paragraph I am not providing links.  The terms are searchable, and I have posted on many of them.  It is written to point out the danger (to life, to others) of assumptions that programs dedicated to some cause are “working” without proving it.

That’s debatable!  Was the person who wrote this article a family court survivor, a parent who experienced violence in the home or in a relationship with the other parent?.  There’s still roadkill; massacres in-home after people have been processed through some of these programs.  There have been murder-suicides IN supervised visitation (2013, New Hampshire) and around them (1992, Connecticut), a respectable objection to the entire concept was put forth IN a Duluth Conference in 1992 by Jack Straton, in “What’s Fair for Children of Abusive Men,” which reasoning makes a whole lot of sense to me.  Supervised visitation providers have been caught in fraud and grand theft larceny (Viola Stroud/also involved in the Genia Shockome case, which Barry Goldstein was handling and, in part, lost his law license over) and I have noticed, for a very long time, the system facilitates money-laundering through the training operations (i’m not the first to notice this — see Marv Bryer).  It sucks million-dollar-federal grants from both the USDOJ (Safe Havens) and USDHHS (Access/Visitation) which sets up the public to fund  and professionals to also privately bill individual parents.

It invites by simply existing, the setup of virtual monopolies by those who insist this is a great idea, involving people of influence in the court system already.  I have been studying this in California in particular; however federal grants fraud has been found in other states.   The same goes with “Batterers Intervention,” which is understood by many batterers, and by mothers alike by now, to divert and diminish the prosecution of felony level domestic violence.

(See “Women’s Justice Center” in Santa Rosa, CA (north of San Francisco).

The work group of this FCEP project listed on the (BWJP) site shows prominent AFCC members, which means that those evaluating the enhancement” of the custody procedures and practices, now that major complaints about them have been (belatedly), admitted and acknowledged (in part) include those who designed those practices to start with — including pushing of supervised visitation, access visitation, mandatory mediation, CONCILIATION and referring services wherever possible.

BWJP as a project of DAIP has for years been actually pretty much on the same page — in pushing trainings, and not discouraging or even questioning the many professions in the courts.  In this, they do NOT represent fairly battered women (and generations of us) who had to deal with this system before, during, and now after, the 1996 welfare reform budget started setting aside funding to remove children from mothers after they’d established separate households from the men who battered them.

Formerly valid url:  http://www.bwjp.org/files/bwjp/images/workgroup_custody.gif

[[BWJP website has changed, removing the graphic (a table of their custody work group shown in groups of three) as a point of reference for the rest of this post.  I may be able to retrieve the contents, however, be assured they are no longer readily available on the new, improved website developed by the newborn (as of 2013) nonprofit]]

See second to bottom listing of Salem, Johnston, Deutsch and Ver Steegh.  Click my links to see the unifying element IS their AFCC connections, and below that, a little more background showing their alliances and common ground IS “AFCC.”

• Peter Salem (Staff:  Associate Exec. Director since 1994, and Exec Director since 2002)
• Robin Deutsch (Massachusetts) has been AFCC President; her self-description (below)* is laced with talk of high-conflict and parental alienation, and she runs (with other AFCC professionals, last I looked a retired family court commissioner “Slabach”,  “Overcoming Barriers” which is a reunification camp.
• Janet Johnston (San Jose) is one of the earlier “originals” and often writes on domestic violence.  She has a 1979 Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford.   Lundy Bancroft (“The Batterer as Parent” and “Why does he DO that?”) in 1998 was debating her “Typology of Batterers” *  Not that I am a Lundy Bancroft fan, but this reflects on where Johnston is coming from:  Typing batterers!  (See not below).
• Nancy ver Steegh* (is from the Wm. Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota, and Past President of AFCC; see Board of Directors scroll down to see just how many were judges (count the ‘Hon.” titles)  Ms. ver Steegh’s shows under “Past President” on the right side near the top.  First sentence in biographical blurb mirrors AFCC motto:
  

• *”Lawyers play an important societal role in preventing and resolving conflict.  They are creative problem-solvers who are able to work effectively with clients and other professionals….”   …William Mitchell College of Law: professor of law, 2007-; associate dean, 2008-2013; associate professor of law, 2002-2007; adjunct professor, 1998-2002.

  Mediator, Erickson Mediation Institute, Minneapolis, 2000-02.

  My present work focuses on using research concerning the context and dynamics of intimate partner violence to re-examine current policy and practice, institute child custody-related court reform, and advance multidisciplinary cooperation.

  President, Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, 2013-14; Member, Domestic Violence and Child Custody National Work Group, 2009-; Member, Uniform Law Commission Joint Editorial Board, 2012-; Member, Editorial Board of Family Court Review, 2003-; Member, Family Law Quarterly Board of Editors, 2004-; Commissioner, ABA Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence, 2009-12; Member, Minnesota ADR Ethics Board, 2009-12; Recipient of the Association of Family and Conciliation Court President’s Award, 2008.

  {and among the articles she’s published, available on Wm. Mitchell College of Law site under her name):

  The Unfinished Business of Modern Court Reform: Reflections on Children, Courts, and Custody by Andrew I. Schepard [book review], 38 Family Law Quarterly 449 (2004).
  SSRN | Hein

  Guest Editor, Domestic Violence: The Journey From Colliding to Connecting Paradigms; Domestic Violence: Essays From the Family Court Review. Madison, WI: Association of Family Conciliation Courts, 2005.

One key concept that pervades the Association of Family and Conciliation Court membership, at the higher (or, older/more longstanding) levels, is self-appointed court reform innovators and visionaries.  “They are the ones,” and proud indeed to be collaborating with so many other “multidisciplinary professionals” (which I believe should be translated primarily as, “with the behavioral/ mental health/social services professionals at our academic level…).  Forget the commoners!

By individual names, here are some more indicators of what their positions or backgrounds are, as may affect their stance on this Family Court “Enhancement” Project.  As if the word “enhancement” didn’t already contain the expect outcome, i.e., “don’t mess with our foundational structure, just “enhance it” some.

Who would that work if the project were a high-rise, or an apartment building — and the issue was foundational, or systemic:  Like absestos, lead paint, or simply unsafe in general? If it were a BUILDING, or MULTI-STATE BUILDING PROJECTS (visibly endangering children and families living in it) on the verge of collapse, with a fatality from various structural causes, would the appropriate response be to continue sponsoring that housing developer and just call for some “enhancements” — and making sure that representatives from the same corporation were in a primary position on the “enhancement” project, and members of the families harmed by it were NOT on it, at all?  Or would the building be condemned?

The participants listed above are a stacked deck.  They represent the invested interests — and they are not members of the affected populations, and historically have not been, either. 

– – – -The top three Loretta Frederick, Gabrielle Davis and Denise Gamache are “Battered Women’s Justice Project” employees, which is to say, they have been in actuality “Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs” (from Duluth) employees.  They actually represent the domestic violence-collaborating-with-AFCC element.   (Recently, as I’m recalling, BWJP presenters have also been welcomed into the “Battered Mothers’ Custody Conference,” which for ten years now has not, to my awareness, ever darkened the room with a mention of (or workshop on), the AFCC, or these grants, let alone any systematic teaching about it, or workshop.) 

• I see from Nancy ver Steegh’s professional “Bibliograpy” at the college of law, that L. Frederick and G. Davis (above)  and been cited by her:
• Look Before You Leap: Court System Triage of Family Law Cases Involving Intimate Partner Violence, 95 Marquette Law Review 955 (2012). With G. Davis and L. Frederick.
• (“Triage” is a term taken from the medical/emergency field.  It is a “treatment” term.  So, the family court are the family doctors then?)
  • Some questions about triage in the context of intimate partner violence were raised at the Wingspread Conference on Domestic Violence and Family Courts and explored more fully by Loretta Frederick in her 2008 article titled “Questions About Family Court Domestic Violence Screening and Assessment.”1 In light of subsequent research and commentary, this Article revisits the topic and concludes that because thinking about triage is in its infancy, important questions remain unanswered.
  • Intimate partner violence poses a number of complicated challenges for any system of triage, including: (1) questions about the complexity of decision-making about dispute resolution alternatives; (2) the feasibility of quickly and accurately screening for intimate partner violence; (3) the substantive and procedural safeguards necessary to preserve confidentiality, protect litigants’ due process rights, and provide accountability; and (4) the question of whether courts or parties are best positioned to make these decisions. After analyzing these questions, we conclude that maximizing the ability of parties to make informed choices about participation in dispute resolution processes is paramount. We urge courts to make this a primary goal of any system of triage developed
    Mitchell Open Access

Why is Loretta Frederick so uninterested in the influence of federally AND private-foundation-promoted of fatherhood, marriage, access visitation, etc. upon custody outcomes involving domestic violence?  If she has any interest (let alone awareness) of this — where’s the evidence?  Or is it more fun conferencing, teaching and training federal grantees, making AFCC presentations and feeling important in front of certain professionals, than actually challenging them, as individual parents have been courageous enough to do, with very little support from the field!!

– – – – The next three, I know by name Ellen Pence (see this post for more) who is not representing mothers in custody issues as they are dealing with the courts, but the DV response to it as sponsoring the various associated professions, i.e., supervised visitation, batterers intervention, and a whole lotta training.  While it’s no question she was a remarkable woman, she is not of the profile of people harmed by dysfunctional courts; she is not a mother, she has not to my awareness been through divorce involving children; she has supported and helped mothers in the earlier decades.    If the second grouping is meant to represent something DIFFERENT from the top, I believe the corporate lookups should clarify that quickly.  They do not.  BWJP springs from the same fountain of “Duluth Model” programming as Ellen’s 1998 PRAXIS group, i.e., with a program she called  “the Duluth Model on Steroids” in her own words.  Same ideas, more of it.

—- The next (3rd banner) three include Hon. Dale Koch — Presiding? Judge of Multnomah County, Oregon, and (I checked) also involved in at least conferencing with AFCC.  He was appointed to a  Domestic Violence “SFLAC” [click “subcommittee”] Subcommittee in Oregon.   “Applications for High Conflict Families, DV and Alienation, OHIO, 2007 AFCC-NCJFCJ Regional Training Conference (notice participants).  Contents of a Similar 2011 conference? in Indianapolis (“Working with High Conflict and Violent Families: A Race with No Winners” (with NASCAR icon) is being sold on-line for $125; Hon Koch was presenting alongside Nancy ver Steegh and Mindy Mitnick (both of Minnesota), this was the topic:   “Accounting for Domestic Violence from the Custody Evaluation to the Courtroom.”  This was an AFCC Regional Training Conference.  The handout associated with Hon. Koch reflects typical AFCC approach of featuring “high-conflict,” “Differentiated Domestic Violence,” and when referencing domestic violence or child abuse in a string of issues, usually AFTER those topics, couched in the words “allegations of…” It also quotes a piece where Janet Johnston was one of the authors.  It is the first page of the session handout:

CUSTODY DISPUTES INVOLVING ALLEGATIONS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CUSTODY DISPUTES INVOLVING ALLEGATIONS OF
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: TOWARD A DIFFERENTIATED APPROACH TO PARENTING PLANS
Peter G. Jaffe, Janet R. Johnston, Claire V. Crooks, Nicholas Bala.

Note (bio blurbs at the back of this handout):  three out of four authors are Canadian.  Janet Johnston is the only United States person involved.

INTRODUCTION
Highly conflicted, separated spouses disputing custody put their children at high risk and take up a disproportionately large amount of professional and court time, posing special challenges to all who work in the family justice system.

The fact of parental conflict is the leading edge issue, not the potential causes of it. This is the AFCC framework:  The conflict is the behavioral health crime; the criminal activity is not.

Typified by the parents’ high levels of hostility, distrust, fear, and blaming of one another, these cases become especially difficult when there are allegations of domestic violence or child abuse.

Of course they are difficult.  Imagine how difficult it might be also for the children, or the non-offending parent who is attempting to handle this in the family court venue.  What about parents with children who already have criminal convictions in their case history, yet are still forced to deal with this one because they have children? Are those parents mutually to blame for having “conflict” with decisions endangering them or their children?  Did these parents design the courts some of whose leadership (AFCC, self-described) has openly stated its beliefs that the language of criminal law is “old” and needs to be replaced by the better language of behavioral health? (No…)

Inevitably questions arise that reflect ongoing debates in the field: Do these allegations have a factual basis of spousal or child abuse involving violent, negligent, substance-abusing, and criminal behavior? If so, is sufficient evidence available to sustain these findings in a court of law, and if not, what to do? What access should violent parents have, if any, to their children?
Where the violence is severe, ongoing, and clearly committed by one party, the answers to these questions are fairly evident, albeit often difficult to implement. But what if abuse appears to be jointly inflicted, less serious in nature, or a relatively isolated event? During the past decade, a growing body of social science research has addressed the wide range of violent and abusive behavior in families, documenting its severity, frequency, and injurious outcomes and arguing about who perpetrates it and for what apparent purpose (for a review, see Kelly & Johnson, 2008). There is an emerging consensus that the following types of spousal violence1 are relevant to family law cases, with the first two receiving more research attention than the others (Dalton,  Carbon, & Olesen, 2003…)  [[the 46 page handout then goes on to cite more AFCC authors, and detail 4 types of domestic violence:

1. Abusive-controlling violent relationships (ACV), also called battering or intimate terrorism (or coercive controlling violence; see Kelly & Johnson, 2008): This is an ongoing pattern of use of threat, force, emotional abuse, and other coercive means to unilaterally dominate one partner and induce fear, submission, and compliance in the other. In studies of shelter and criminal court samples, men are the offenders and women are victims in most cases of this type.

(Notice: cite to AFCC author Joan B. Kelly no doubt); conflict-instigated [“blame it on the conflict”], acknowledging that men are most prone to this kind;creation of another term and acronym, where the term “battering” from “assault and battery” which is covered under criminal law as felony or misdemeanor, a crime against the State.  Whether or not its purpose is abuse and control, it is illegal.

ALSO NOTICE:  no reference that this can turn lethal and that such batterers can and do kill.  Nor is the so-called “Separation institaged violence” (another created term below) accompanied by any reference to men who kill, sometimes their children AND/OR former spouse or girlfriend, AND at times innocent bystanders; there have been incidents where the responding police officers — once the incident has started — have been shot to death, traumatizing family members, community, costing crime-scene clean-up, etc., and sending a terroristic meessage to others in similar situations.

2. Conflict-instigated violence (CIV), also called situational or common couple violence (or situational couple violence; see Kelly & Johnson, 2008): In these cases, violence is perpetrated by both partners, who have limited skills in resolving conflict. These cases involve bilateral assertion of power by the man and woman, without a regular primary instigator, and are identified more often in community samples. [again cites Kelly & Johnson];

3.Violent resistance (VR): This occurs when a partner uses violence to defend in response to abuse by a partner. Women have been identified most clearly as this type in shelter samples and in studies of victims who have killed their batterers. In some cases, this may in law constitute self-defense, but in other cases it may be an overreaction.  [no cites given]

4. Separation-instigated violence (SIV):  [“blame it on the separation”]This is isolated acts of violence perpetrated by either a man or a woman reacting to stress during separation, divorce, and its aftermath in a relationship that has not otherwise been characterized by violence or coercive control.

Whenever this article was written, it was used as a handout in an October, 2011 AFCC Regional Training.  In October, 2011, a man in California killed 8 people in Southern California.  This was national news.  I am wondering whether AFCC has yet upgraded its understanding of the danger of these situations to acknowledge that, under decades of their expert guidance and innovations, including intentional linguistic shifts and paradigm changes, innocent people are getting killed by divorcing shot to death in public, and in private.

“Seal Beach Shootings:  after please, looking toward punishment” [<=link]

Orange County Register, BY VIK JOLLY AND ERIC HARTLEY / STAFF WRITERS, Published: May 2, 2014 Updated: 10:02 p.m.

Scott Dekraai admits he shot 9, killing 8, in Orange County’s worst mass shooting, ending one chapter of painful case for victims’ families. Depending on the outcome of current hearings, he still could face the death penalty.

SANTA ANA _Fueled by rage over a bitter custody battle, Scott Dekraai shot his way through a Seal Beach hair salon in 2011, murdering his ex-wife and seven other people, including a woman heard pleading for her life amid the gunshots.

On Friday, he quietly pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder in Orange County’s deadliest mass shooting….

Dekraai walked into Salon Meritage on the afternoon of Oct. 12, 2011, heavily armed and wearing a bulletproof vest. He had been fighting his ex-wife, hair stylist Michelle Fournier, over custody of their son and had argued with her that morning. He shot her first, at close range.

Witnesses later described three minutes of terror inside the salon, testifying before a grand jury that some people ran outside while others tried to lock themselves in treatment rooms as Dekraai kept firing. People nearby heard screaming amid the shooting, and at least one victim begged for her life.

Dekraai also shot Christy Lynn Wilson, 47, Fournier’s friend and colleague, and then salon owner Randy Fannin, 61, before shooting others at random. Victoria Ann Buzzo, 54; Lucia Bernice Kondas, 65; Laura Lee Webb Elody, 46; and Michele Fast, 47, were shot inside the salon. Victim Harriet Stretz, 73, was shot and wounded.

From “legalspan.com”

Hon. Dale R. Koch
Circuit Court Judge
Multnomah County

Hon. Dale R. Koch, Presiding Judge, Multnomah County Circuit Court; B.A. and J.D., University of Oregon (1968 and 1971); member of the Oregon State Bar since 1971; president, national Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ); co-chair, National Judicial Institute on Domestic Violence; member, board of directors, National Center for State Courts (2005-present); member, State Civil Law Advisory Committee; executive committee member, Local Public Safety Coordinating Council; OSB Judicial Administration Committee; Multnomah Bar Association Court Liaison Committee; chair, Criminal Justice Advisory Committee; has taught and given presentations both in Oregon and throughout the United States on subjects involving family violence and child abuse and neglect cases; the Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court honored Judge Koch with the Juvenile Court Champion Award (2000); awarded the Fred A. Stickel Public Service Award by the Citizens Crime Commission (2006).

Maureen Sheeran has a history dealing with family violence, however she is NCJFCJ staff.  And Katheryn Yetter (quick lookup) shows is Family Violence Staff on NCJFCJ and “National CASA.”  All of these are squarely within the family court system themselves.

– – -The next four  (4th banner) are the ones that most concern me, as they are so overtly AFCC leadership.

JOHNSTON:

*A Critical Look at Janet Johnston’s Typology of Batterers
By Lundy Bancroft
© 1998

Johnston treats a high level of physical violence as defining a batterer. However, it is common for batterers to be highly physically frightening and psychologically cruel with few incidents of actual physical assault; in fact, clinical experience teaches us that they are the majority of abusers. There are other well-documented and clinically-demonstrated indicators of a batterer’s risk to his children besides the beatings; the incest-perpetrating batterer, for example, often shows relatively low levels of physical violence, combined with high levels of entitlement and manipulativeness. . . . .[after giving the quote…]

Johnston seems to particularly underestimate the well-established risk of incest by batterers (see note 4). One striking section about daughters of batterers warrants extensive quotation. . . . Johnston shows no sign of recognizing this as possible incest, although it reads like a description from a training course on sexual abuse. It is not at all clear why she feels prepared to label girls who are this young as mutually seductive and provocative of his aggression, a stance that would give considerable comfort to both physical and sexual abusers of children. It is also not clear why she labels the girls “phobic,” since she is simultaneously describing their fears of their fathers as realistic.

An “AFCCNY.org” site, roughly shadowing the main “AFCC” site references Dr. Johnston and Dr. Joan B.  Kelly leading a turn-of the-century conference on “Alienation and Attachment.”

The last decade of the 20th century featured continued growth for AFCC. The number of AFCC members increased to nearly 1,700 by during the 1990s and conference attendance also grew. AFCC’s quarterly journal, now named, Family Court Review and edited by Professor Andrew Schepard, found a home and cosponsor at Hofstra Law School, accompanied by a student editorial staff.

The Turn of the Century

The twenty-first century would see unprecedented growth for AFCC, beginning with one of the largest conferences in AFCC history. Nearly 750 delegates joined AFCC for its 37th Annual Conference in New Orleans in May 2000 as U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife, Sheila Wellstone, a well-known advocate against domestic violence, provided the keynote address. AFCC members were saddened to learn later of the Wellstones’ tragic death in an airplane crash in 2002.

The Wellstones being from Minnesota.

The New Orleans conference theme, “Alienation, Access, and Attachment,” provided the opportunity for members of the Northern California Task Force on the Alienated Child, led by Dr. Janet Johnston and Dr. Joan Kelly, to share their reformulation of Richard Gardner’s controversial Parental Alienation Syndrome. The work of the task force was then published in what would become a landmark special issue of the Family Court Review.

AFCC received a second organizational development grant from the Hewlett Foundation in the late 1990s and used it to focus on the future, survey its members regarding their needs, develop a Web site, and take stock of AFCC’s organizational structure and its capacity to move forward. AFCC initiated a revision of its bylaws and governance procedures, and the AFCC Board of Directors was downsized from 50 members to 19.

Dr. Johnston, again, her main connection being from Northern California (San Jose is in Santa Clara, “Silicon Valley” county) was also involved with the Judith Wallerstein Center for the Family in Transition, a theme picked up throughout the court systems.  I blogged this in September 2012, showing corporation records, and an early HHS grant to this center.   “Another POV on the Center for the Family in Transition (and its funders)” including that no less than 3 different EIN#s for the same group were showing up:

The same search in SINGULAR comes up with three different EIN#s and locations for the Judith Wallerstein Center for the Family in Transition:  (huh?) (bulleted information I typed in…)  From that post:

Judging by the California Charitable Registry filings, the 2nd one above “(931207869) filed irregularly, had about $39,000 of “assets” in years ending June 2008 and did not file until February 2013, then eventually dissolved, being now named “Protecting Children from Conflict.”  FYI multiple EIN#s for similar organization is a red flag on fiscal “monkey business. ”  One organization takes on another’s name, etc.

(address (almost) matches the one in #4 above).    The Business filing says “E” street, not “F” street).

The other post (link above, “Another POV on the Center….”) discusses more details.  One of the individuals involved was a “Vivian Roseby,” which I’m saying to set up this next quote, showing how long ago Johnston has been pushing the “High Conflict” (AFCC key concept/terminology) phrase, and how closely this ties into the field of Psychiatry. Or, “Orthopsychiatry”

ABOUT “ORTHOPSYCHIATRY” (setting up Janet Johnston et al.’s publications on these family court matters in a journal of “orthopsychiatry”) and the background of how PSYCHIATRY (and Psychoanalysis) got mainstreamed in the USA…. Really, the family court venue is the stepchild, or grand-child of this field, in my opinion.  The ideas were imported, transported, and disseminated through people in key positions who were able to set up Institutes, Societies, and Associations to keep the traditions going, intersecting with universities (such as Harvard or Univ. of Chicago) and throughout, having access to institutionalized populations to test theories on, whether the “insane” or war veterans, or other incarcerated populations,  etc.  Nowadays, the test population includes people forced to consume classes through the court system.  We are divided into professions who test others, and write it up for their colleagues (test subjects not invited to read the studies about themselves; often they are in professional journals by subscription only, or they may be published on-line — for a fee — a decade or two later); and those tested upon.

“the branch of psychiatry concerned with the study and prevention of mental or behavioral disorders, with emphasis on child development and family life.”  [Wikipedia]

---

Welcome to the American Orthopsychiatric Association!   [http://www.aoatoday.com/]

MOTTO:  “INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO MENTAL HEALTH AND SOCIAL JUSTICE”
Ortho was founded in 1924 by a small group of individuals with a shared interest in uniting and providing a common meeting ground for those engaged in the study and treatment of problems of human behavior. To reflect the interdisciplinary approach of the organization and the actual work with which they were concerned (such as redirecting youth development in a positive direction), they combined the prefix “Ortho” (from the Greek “to straighten”) with “psychiatry.” Today, Ortho continues to attract professionals from psychology, psychiatry, social work, sociology, nursing, and law who are concerned about the application of mental health research to the creation of humane social policy, the improvement of mental health practice in a manner consistent with the public interest, and the prevention of mental health problems.

[History page for this Denver, Colorado association:]

It all began in 1923, when a small group of psychiatrists with a common cause – to unite the work force of those engaged in the study and treatment of human behavior. . .

MEMBESHIP — not too expensive, or  a discount if one joins also the AACP (American Association of COMMUNITY Psychiatrists):

Membership Categories and Annual Dues
Regular Member	Students with valid student ID	Retired Member	AACP members
$150.00 Join for 2 Years at $275.00	$45	$60 Join for 2 Years at $100.00	$240 confers dual membership in both organizations (20% off of combined price)

Membership in the association is open to professionals and students in the mental health disciplines, including the professions involved in the development, interpretation, and implementation of policies affecting mental health research and services.  Such professions include but are not limited to counseling, economics, education, epidemiology, ethics, family studies, health promotion, law, justice studies, medicine (e.g., primary care specialists; psychiatry), nursing, pharmacology, political science, prevention science, psychology, public administration, public health, religious studies, social planning, social work and sociology.

 

. . . .  (on the home webpage, recent initiative):

My Brother’s Keeper Initiative

On February 11, 2014, the Obama administration announced the My Brother’s Keeper initiative to focus attention and resources on creating opportunities for boys and young men of color. In 2013, Ortho published a special issue of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (Vol. 83, number 2-3, April-July) featuring the work of the Boys of Color Collaborative. The section includes 17 articles on the development of boys of color. To download articles from this special issue, go to http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/special/5698305.aspx. For more information about the Boys of Color Collaborative, see Youth-Nex (http://curry.virginia.edu/research/centers/youth-nex/project/boys-of-color-collaboration).   

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT ‘SMALL GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS” AND HAVING BEEN FOUNDED IN 1924 seems significant.  Definitely not here by popular demand…  This turns out to have been a small group of psychiatrists, specifically, uniting their work energies to straighten out the rest of society (according to whose standards????).  The list of past Presidents shows Karl A. Menninger, M.D. (d. 1990) (Of the famous Meninger Clinic opened 1925 in Topeka KS,, the School of Psychiatry in 1946, renamed in 1985, moved to Houston in 2003) , “elder dean and statesman of American psychiatry”), and a more recent President some readers following cases in Connecticut may recognize:  Eli Newberger, M.D.  [the following bullets are from miscellaneous sources.  Anyone could look this up, i haven’t provided all links…]

• Founded the Menninger School of Psychiatry in 1946 (renamed the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry and Mental Health Sciences in 1985). For many years after its opening, the school was the largest school of psychiatry in the country.
• Dr. Will Menninger appears on a cover of Time magazine in 1948 for his work in mental health advocacy.
• 1946: The Menninger School of Psychiatry was established. It quickly became the largest training center in the country, driven by the country’s demand for psychiatrists to treat military veterans.  (Wiki Source)

Psychiatry seems to be the handmaiden of both interpersonal AND international war.  The explosion of the mental health field relates directly to the aftermath of at least World War II, it seems….

The Menningers (plural) and this school deeply affected people influential in the structure and re/de?forming of the family courts, more than meets the eye.  Both Wallersteins (Judith B. and Robert S.) were at the Topeka clinic.  Robert S. Wallerstein commentary on the 2007 death of Erick Ericksen who, withKarl Augustus Meninger, Wallerstein says he considered one of the few “authentic geniuses” he’d personally known and worked with.  This illustrates how a very FEW individuals, if in prominent or key positions in the country, can continue influencing the rest of it for decades afterwards.  Please excuse the lengthy quote:

. . . I came into psychiatry in 1949 and knew somehow of The Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, as the premier psychiatric training facility in the United States. I wrote to an old internship comrade and close friend who had gotten out of the U.S. Army before I did and was already a psychiatric resident in Topeka, inquiring about the program at The Menninger School of Psychiatry. He responded enthusiastically, urging me to come, and I decided to do so. So my wife, Judy,** and I drove into Topeka, Kansas, on a blistering hot June 30, 1949, with all our family belongings, our clothes, some books, and some phonograph records in the car, ready to start the residency on the following day. We were met by a huge billboard, almost bestriding the highway, erected by the Topeka Chamber of Commerce. It said simply: “Welcome to Topeka, Kansas, the psychiatric capital of the world.” Thus our entrée into that psychiatric mecca where, at that time, 100 of the 800 psychiatric residents in the entire nation were in training, one out of every eight in the country in that small town on the Kansas prairie.

In this post, I am showing the Judith Wallerstein Center for the Family in Transition, and how the business aspects of this was handled.  I also blogged it earlier, as linked.  This is the same “Judy” referenced above.

This was the world of Karl Menninger. The residency was primarily at the 1,000–bed Winter Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital, 900 of them being psychiatric beds, plus its very active outpatient psychiatric clinic. There was also a far smaller cadre of residents at the Menninger Clinic itself, one of the first small psychoanalytic sanitaria in the nation, modeled after the first such institution in the world, the Tegel Sanitarium, created in the 1920s in Berlin, Germany, by the pioneering first-generation psychoanalyst, Ernst Simmel…

Ernst Simmel:  1882-1947 (answers.com, short bio).  Clearly this is about an enthusiastic promoter of psychoanalysis; look at the centers he started, including this Sanatarium which (Wallerstein doesn’t mention) went bankrupt within 11 years.  This next quote from Answers.com is on Simmel, interrupting the quote on Meninger by Wallerstein (!)

During World War I, however, he (SIMMEL) served as military doctor and chief of a hospital for psychiatric battle casualties in Posen. There he introduced the use of psychodynamic principles; at the time, he was still self-taught in psychoanalysis.

Returning to Berlin after the war, Simmel underwent a didactic analysis with Karl Abraham in 1919. Together with Abraham and Max Eitington, he helped establish the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute in 1920. He served as president of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society from 1926 to 1930, and founded and served as chief physician of the Tegel sanatorium at Schloss Tegel, outside Berlin, in 1927. The sanatorium, the first ever designed to employ psychoanalytic principles in treating patients who might benefit from observation, went bankrupt and closed in 1931.

… (becomes a father of two, divorces, remarries by 1929)…

Simmel, a liberal who had helped to found the Society of Socialist Physicians and served as its president from 1924 to 1933, ran afoul of Nazi authorities soon after Hitler came to power in 1933. Emigrating to the United States in 1934, he moved to Los Angeles after a brief period at the Topeka Psychoanalytic Institute. He was instrumental in founding the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute soon after the Second World War; he also helped establish the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society, and served as its first president

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/simmel-ernst#ixzz39NFaJoQ7

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From Wikipedia on Ernst Simmel, also:

One of Simmel’s abiding contributions was made in the 1946 anthology on Anti-Semitism – a collaborative work of psychoanalysts and social theorists based on the contributions to a 1944 symposium held in San Francisco. Other contributors were Theodor W. Adorno, Bernhard Berliner, Otto Fenichel, Else Frenkel-Brunswick, Max Horkheimer and Douglass W. Orr.

In Simmel’s own paper – “Anti-Semitism and mass psychopathology ” – he interprets antisemitism on the basis of Freud’s critical exploration of myth in his book Moses and Monotheism (1939). Simmel explained the anti-semitic complex in terms of irrational impulses in individuals and groups which were aimed at overcoming pathological disorders. …n Simmel’s model anti-semitism appeared as a mass psychosis that nevertheless enabled the individual to compensate for psychological deficits, in such a way as to remain socially integrated and relatively intact psychologically: “The flight into mass psychosis is not only a flight from reality but also from individual insanity”.^[19]

There you have it, it is modeled after an institution in Berlin, starting shortly after a good part of the world had  just waged war with Germany….  The father (M.D.) had actually wanted to model it after the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, but a son who attended Harvard (and was sold on “psychiatry” there) came back and said, Sure Dad, I’ll work in your clinic, but it has to be a psychiatric clinic:

So his sons were sent off to medical school, and when Karl, the eldest, returned to Kansas from the Harvard Medical School, where he had been inaugurated into the lure of psychiatry by Ernest Elmer Southard, {1876-1920, link added by LGH} the father said that they could now start their clinic. Karl was reputed to have said, “Yes, but it will have to be a psychiatric clinic.”

Karl Menninger became then one of that small but very lively generation of American psychiatrists attracted to the novel psychoanalytic ideas arriving from Europe in the interregnum years between the two World Wars. When Chicago created the first psychoanalytic training center west of the eastern seaboard, headed by Franz Alexander who had arrived from Berlin, Karl Menninger immediately enrolled, to be analyzed by Alexander, and he became actually the very first graduate, holding certificate number one.

[This link, a name-search on Southard, is a google book on the Danvers Insane Hospital where Southard apparently worked. Ch. 7 seems to be written from the perspective of the grandson of a man “Fitzgerald” who commuted regularly from Toronto to work alongside Southard, and shows the dark side of the experimentation (including autopsies on brains, experiments producing anaphylactic shock in animals, attempting to categorize racial groups by blood types, etc.) This grandfather’s successor in Toronto was Ernest Jones, another Freud devotee, who actually had to flee England under accusations of molesting some young women, and landed in Canada….  Or, see “Psycho-Analyses and the War Neuroses” (1921, can read on-line) with forward by Sigmund Freud, and by Ferenczi, Abraham, Ernst Simmel and Ernest Jones.”

American Journal of Orthopsychiatry

Volume 59, Issue 4, pages 576–592, October 1989

=>=>=> ONGOING POSTDIVORCE CONFLICT: Effects on Children of Joint Custody and Frequent Access<=<=<=

 * Deutsch: (another summary available at MSPP)

Dr. Robin Deutsch is the Director of the Center of Excellence for Children, Families and the Law at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (MSPP), and an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. Currently she practices as a consultant, mediator, parent coordinator, and therapist.

Dr. Deutsch lectures widely throughout North America and Europe on Parenting Coordination, parenting and child development, and complex issues related to family conflict, including parent alienation, attachment, abuse and neglect, and trauma. She has published extensively on issues related to attachment, alienation, co-parenting after divorce, high conflict divorce, parenting plans, and parenting coordination and is the co-author of 7 Things Your Teenager Won’t Tell You and how to talk about them anyway (Ballantine 2005, 2011).

Dr. Deutsch is the past president of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) and former Chair of the American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics Committee. She served on the American Psychological Association (APA) task force that developed Guidelines for Parenting Coordinators (2011), the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) Task Force that developed Guidelines for Parenting Coordinators (2006), the AFCC Task force that developed Guidelines for Court Involved Therapists (2010) and as co-chair of the AFCC Task Force for Child Custody Consultants (2011). She is a 2006 recipient of the American Psychological Association Karl F. Heiser Presidential Award for Advocacy.

 Does it sound like this one drank the “parental alienation” Kool-aid?  Harvard Medical School or not — she’s on the conference/lecture/evangelize circuit about certain professions and certain belief systems.  Is there any reference to matters of “abuse” or a single reference to domestic violence in the bio blurb?  If you squint, hard, you can see ONE little word in paragraph two, in a string of four issues:  “family conflict, including parental alienation, attachment, abuse and neglect, and trauma” with the word most important to AFCC listed first,and ALL of them in the word-basked (container, category) of “conflict.” 

In this context, “abuse and neglect” is a closer reference to CPS (child protection) matters, and specifically AVOIDED is any reference what-so-ever to domestic violence, the word violence itself, or spouse on spouse battering.  In this summary, she has not expressed any concern, being a professional woman herself, about physical violence towards women in the form of beating them, including in front of their kids, or psychological violence, in the form of after this beating, removing them from their nonviolent parent.  

FYI, that language (conceptual frame) is stated AFCC policy and goal — to change the language over to the behavioral health and replace the crimes as crimes, with “Conflict” as crimes.  Where did that language COME from before system change, if not characterizing violent crimes as crimes?

FOR YOUR INFORMATION:  Deutsch, ver Steegh and Johnston are still showing on the Editorial board of the “Family Court Review” along with several other alienation promoters and fatherhood specialists (i.e., Dick Warshak).  For those unfamiliar, the AFCC jointly-publishes the “Family Court Review” with Hofstra University (private university in New York).  To look critically at the family courts, one should get a critical look at this trade association the AFCC; they are closely entwined, and one would not be there without the others.  This is also how the AFCC sees themselves, as leaders of the pack, innovators, ground-breakers, and visionaries.

It makes to me no sense to put people whose practices are probably significant to the problems of these courts, on the task force which is supposed to “enhance” them!  Each person on that publication board sands in a particular arena of authority and exerts influence upon the structure and operations with the court.  If I were a parent anywhere in the US or Canada right now with a custody case — I’d book mark that page, study who is on it (look them up) and see what you find. For example, Charlene Depner sits on the highest level of the California Court System (Assistant Director of the Administrative Office of the Courts) as do other AFCC personnel.   or

Barbara A. Babb University of Baltimore School of Law, Associate Professor of Law and Director, Center for Families, Children and the Courts (see “Therapeutic Jurisprudence,” “Unified Family Courts,” etc.  I’ve blogged this).

OVW PERSONNEL, AND THEIR ASSOCIATED ORGANIZATIONS:

This might be a good time to mention that a former official of the OVW (Office on Violence Against Women), in charge of dispensing grants, was in 2007, President of the National Council of Family and Juvenile Court Judges  AND was a supervising family court judge in New Hampshire also — Susan B. Carbon.  As you can see above, NCFCJ is one of the “collaborative project” partners.

Oh yes — and the Hon. Susan B. Carbon  was (and I’m sure still is) an AFCC member per this newsletter:

AFCC Vol. 26 #4, FALL 2007 — announcing the 45th Annual Conference in Vancouver, Canada the next May: “Five Star Conference, Five Star City.”   Regarding the Hon. Susan Carbon, formerly head of OVW, and the NCJFCJ, and the BWJP:

Hon. Susan B. Carbon, AFCC member from Plymouth, New Hampshire was elected to serve as President of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ). Judge Carbon was appointed to the bench in 1991 and currently serves as Supervisory Judge of the Grafton County Family Division in New Hampshire.

Perhaps it would be most honest to say that AFCC, in general, is the “silent” (un-named) partner in this Family Court Enhancement Project,” when one looks closer…

In February 2010, Attorney-General of the United States, Eric Holder, welcomed the Hon. Susan Carbon to head the Office of Violence Against Women, noting her 2007-2008 tenure as President of the nonprofit NCJFCJ:

Attorney General Eric Holder today welcomed the confirmation of Judge Susan B. Carbon of Concord, N.H., as the new Director for the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women.   Judge Carbon was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last week

“I am pleased to welcome Judge Carbon to the Justice Department and to the Office on Violence Against Women,” said Attorney General Holder. “Bringing greater public awareness and strengthening programs to fight sexual and domestic violence, dating violence and stalking is a top priority for the Department.   Judge Carbon will bring strong leadership to this important office and to the Department’s mission to end violence against women.”

[para. out of order]

Judge Susan Carbon was first appointed to the bench in 1991, and has served as Supervisory Judge of the New Hampshire Judicial Branch Family Division from 1996 until 2010. She is a member of the Governor’s Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence and chaired New Hampshire’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Committee.   Judge Carbon also served as President of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) from 2007 to 2008.

FCEP will be working, it seems, with current OVW  director, Bea Hanson — the USDOJ/OVW Leadership website describes the responsibilities of the OVW, her background in “Social Welfare,” and her previous rise to “Chief Program Officer” of a $45 million (assets) nonprofit in NYC called “Safe Horizon.”

Bea Hanson is the Principal Deputy Director of the United States Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women (OVW). In her role, she serves as the liaison between the Department of Justice and federal, state, tribal, and international governments on matters involving violence against women. She is responsible for developing the Department’s legal and policy positions regarding the implementation of the Violence Against Women Act and overseeing an annual budget of nearly $400 million. She has served as OVW’s Principal Deputy Director since May 2011.

Ms. Hanson previously served as Chief Program Officer for Safe Horizon, a crime victim service organization in New York City that serves 350,000 victims annually, where she directed a staff of 500 in 60 locations. She joined Safe Horizon (formerly Victim Services) in 1997 as the Director of Emergency Services and went on to oversee the agency’s domestic violence, homeless youth, and child abuse programs before being promoted to Chief Program Officer.

Ms. Hanson earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Social Welfare degree from City University in New York, a Master of Social Work degree from Hunter College School of Social Work in New York, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Not knowing who Safe Horizon was, why not a quick look?  In the usual manner:  First, Corporate Identity, in New York State (gives at least when it started).  However, the related organizations I did find (often just shown on a tax return under, “Related Organizations,” surprisingly…. one reason among many it’s good to look at tax returns when looking for general background information) . . . turns out to have a very, very close relationship already with the family and divorce courts, which is odd as many people are going to be going through those same courts after receiving domestic violence services….

I’m showing this to contrast LARGE with apparently SMALL, i.e., by contrast some of the family court reform groups seem disarmingly small and needy.  Maybe — but they manage to hook up very well (if not make a beeline right PAST other local participants, or would-be participants, in family court reform in their respective states – and head STRAIGHT for the groups with the most influence….. )..  I also know that many people tend to throw phrases around as learned from their associates, or newspaper headlines — without grasping the relationships of, for example, the OVW to their pocketbooks, or the DV industry to the real estate and housing development industries.

Registration as a NY Charity, which quickly gives me also its EIN#, and confirms it’s also a fund-raiser [“Registr. Category/Dual”]

Benefits of looking up tax returns, other than reading what’s on them: You immediately get a glimpse of (1) size and (2) whether it’s growing (expanding assets) or not.  Here it is.  I’m guessing, a lot of this is government funding AND program service revenue — and/or membership fees from various groups under it.  Let’s take a quick look:

“SAFE HORISON’S MISSION IS TO PROVIDE SUPPORT, PREVENT VIOLENCE, AND PROMOTE JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME AND ABUSE, THEIR FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES”

Top row (Year 2012) — “Gross Receipts:  $104,139,533.”  Page 1 of tax return — 19 Independent voting members of the governing body; 865 employees; 250 volunteers.”  CONTRIBUTIONS was only $50 million to $104 million “gross receipts”

This tells us that at least half of ONE year’s income is not from program services…  Program service revenues by contrast are $2.5 million.  In other words, not self-sustaining.They have $237K of “other” revenue.

I am always curious how much of “contributions” on any page 1 of a 990 are “government contributions.”  (see Section VIII, “statement of revenue” page 9 on tax returns).  Here, of the $50 million — $43 million is government grants, and only $6 million from others.   They also list $51 million ($51,185,423) of “SECURITIES” and sold it at a loss (“Less cost or other basis and sales expenses”) i.e., had $51 million to write off as far as profits) .  QUESTION.  They were founded in 1978.  For how many years have they been investing in assets, and selling them off at a loss?  Who was paid the cost for selling those assets?

Further discussion — this gets REAL interesting and REAL relevant — on a separate post or page.  Title TBA…

What they do — more than a little bit of everything, it seems.

• (Code) (Expenses $21,867,415 including grants of $) (Revenue $308,368)DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND HOTLINE PROGRAMS -SAFE HORIZON OPERATES THREE 24-HOUR HOTLINES -THE NEW YORK CITY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE, THE CRIME VICTIMS HOTLINE, AND THE RAPE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT HOTLINE FOR VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE AND THEIR FAMILIES, A PHONE CALL TO ONE OF OUR HOTLINES SERVES AS A GATEWAY TO A RANGE OF SERVICES, SUCH AS SAFETY ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING AND EMERGENCY SHELTER LINKING FOR VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SAFE HORIZON IS NEW YORK CITY’S LARGEST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SHELTER PROVIDER, WITH MORE THAN 730 BEDS AVAILABLE THROUGHOUT THE FIVE BOROUGHS  …
  

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  …SAFE HORIZON OPERATES BOTH EMERGENCY SHELTERS FOR CRISIS SITUATIONS AND TRANSITIONAL SHELTERS WHERE FAMILIES WITH EXTENUATING SAFETY CIRCUMSTANCES ARE TRANSFERRED IN ORDER TO CONTINUE SERVICES AND PLAN FOR A FUTURE FREE FROM VIOLENCE AND ABUSE // THE SHELTERS OFFER SAFETY AND COMPREHENSIVE SERVICES SUCH AS SAFETY ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING, CASE MANAGEMENT, COUNSELING AND SUPPORT GROUPS, CHILD CARE, LIFE SKILLS AND PARENTING, HOUSING ASSISTANCE, PRACTICAL ASSISTANCE (SUCH AS FOOD, CLOTHING AND METRO CARDS), AND REFERRALS TO CRITICAL COMMUNITY SERVICES (SUCH AS MEDICAL, MENTAL HEALTH, SCHOOLS, AND JOB CENTERS)

• (Code) (Expenses $11,536,135including grants of $(Revenue $1,489,100 ):

• COMMUNITY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROGRAMS – SAFE HORIZON OFFERS SERVICES TO VICTIMS OF CRIME AND ABUSE, INCLUDING VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, SEXUAL ASSAULT, STALKING, AND FAMILIES OF HOMICIDE VICTIMS   STAFF MEMBERS LOCATED AT COMMUNITY PROGRAMS, PRECINCTS AND COURT PROGRAMS PROVIDE SERVICES THAT INCLUDE SAFETY ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING, CRISIS INTERVENTION, SUPPORT, ASSISTANCE WITH UNDERSTANDING AND NAVIGATING THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, HOUSING AND PUBLIC SYSTEMS,

{{notice — it does NOT say, the family court system, although if these are families, there are going to be children…}}

• AND INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP EDUCATION ABOUT VICTIMIZATION AND COPING SKILLS CASE MANAGEMENT SERVICES INCLUDE ADVOCACY, COURT ACCOMPANIMENT, PRACTICAL ASSISTANCE INCLUDING FOOD, CLOTHING, AND ASSISTANCE WITH ACCESSING SHELTER, AND SUPPORT SERVICES AND SUPPORTIVE COUNSELING STAFF PROVIDES INFORMATION AND LINKAGES TO PUBLIC ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS AND COMMUNITY-BASED ORGANIZATIONS

{{again, zero mention of family court or custody proceedings is specifically referenced…}}

• (Code) (Expenses $10,106,846including grants of $(Revenue $705,872 ):
• CHILD, ADOLESCENT, AND MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT PROGRAMS -SAFE HORIZON HAS DEVELOPED COMPREHENSIVE PROGRAMS FOR CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED CRIME, ABUSE AND/OR TRAUMA, INCLUDING SPECIFIC PROGRAMS FOR CHILDREN WHO HAVE BEEN SEXUALLY OR SEVERELY PHYSICALLY ABUSED, HOMELESS YOUTH, AND MINOR VICTIMS OF TRAFFICKING SAFE HORIZON IS THE PIONEER OF THE URBAN CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER MODEL THAT CO-LOCATES A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY TEAM OF EXPERTS INCLUDING PROFESSIONALS FROM THE NYPD, DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDRENS SERVICES, MEDICAL PROVIDERS AND SAFE HORIZON // THE CHILD ADVOCACY CENTERS PROVIDE COORDINATED SERVICES THAT EXPEDITE THE INVESTIGATION AND PROSECUTION OF CHILD ABUSE CASES WHILE ENSURING VICTIMS AND IMPACTED FAMILY MEMBERS RECEIVE AN IMMEDIATE AND EFFECTIVE ARRAY OF SUPPORT //  STREETWORK REACHES YOUTH THROUGH A HARM-REDUCTION MODEL DROP-IN CENTER AND EMERGENCY SHELTER PROGRAM FOR HOMELESS YOUTH SERVING CLIENTS FROM AGE 13 TO 23, STREETWORK PROVIDES INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP COUNSELING, CASE MANAGEMENT, ADVOCACY, EMERGENCY SHELTER, ASSISTANCE OBTAINING MEDICAID AND OTHER BENEFITS, HOT MEALS, SHOWERS, CLOTHING, ACUPUNCTURE, HIV PREVENTION COUNSELING, HOUSING ADVOCACY, AND PARENTING GROUPS, IN A SAFE, NON-JUDGMENTAL SETTING. STREETWORK ALSO REFERS CLIENTS FOR LEGAL, MEDICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES

Streetwork is probably trademarked…

Their website (as of 9/2013),however, makes it clear that they do, including running supervised visitation centers as well. Above is the listing from page two of the tax return, here’s from their website, under ‘NAVIGATING THE FAMILY AND CRIMINAL COURT SYSTEM”

Safe Horizon’s Court Programs

Safe Horizon operates over 30 court-based programs throughout the five boroughs. These programs include victim/witness reception centers, supervised visitation programs, mediation services, advocacy, crisis intervention, help with court-ordered restitution, and other legal issues.

Where are we located?

We are located in all five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.

[so they have a monopoly throughout the city?]]. . . . . .(MANY PROGRAMS ARE LISTED)…]

Family and Criminal Court Children’s Centers

Safe Horizon operates six centers in the five boroughs. A day in court can be stressful and frightening for children involved in a court case. Children may be exposed to sensitive matters that are discussed openly in the courtroom (e.g., abuse, domestic violence). The presence of children can also interfere with the ability of court employees to perform their job efficiently.Both children and adults benefit from Safe Horizon’s Children’s Centers, which provides:

• Free, supportive, educational child care for child victims and witnesses and other children of adults who must appear in court

• Parent education and referrals on child care programs, Head Start, child health and nutrition, and developmental care

Family Court Supervised Visitation Program

In the Brooklyn and the Bronx Family Courts we provide safe, supervised visits between children and their non-custodial parents, as well as individual and group counseling for children and their guardians. Our program provides:

• Case managers that assess each child’s well being, advise parents on problems resulting from separation, and help families develop long-term visitation agreements

• We maintain contact with the Judge, in order to keep the court informed of the progress and cooperation of each family member in the program. The court relies on this feedback in order to make visitation and custody decisions that are in the best interest of the children.

• Supervised visitation when ordered by a judge is provided in a safe and child-oriented environment

• Supportive services and referrals for families in the program

You can also get help at one of our Community Program locations.

READ:  http://compeerrochester.org/Portals/59/Documents/ChildTraumaStudy.pdf

This older publication shows that Safe Horizons (name changed in 2000) was considered the nation’s leading victim services organization.  It teamed up with YALE CHILD STUDY CENTER  at the Yale School of Medicine… (around since 1911) regarding the Urban Child Advocacy Centers (“CAC’s).

There was already a “Child Violent Trauma Center” there, but a “Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention”  (CFTSI) was developed there.  It is a 4 to 6 session “early intervention” for children 7 to 18 years old that reduces PTSD and traumatic stress reactions.  Where SAFE HORIZONS came in (other than partnering with them….)… operated the CACs.  “The only organization in the nation (@2010?) that operates four co-located CACs in an urban setting.  In other words, Safe Horizon provided children to practice on…  Apparently they pioneered the “co-located” (CAC) model in 1996….

CACs, make a note of it…  In 1999 the White House designated the Yale Child Study Center as leading agency by the White House and USDOJ as the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence, and in 2001, it says, receiving SAMHSA funding to develop interventions and “early collaborative responses to childhood trauma.” Sounds like JUST IN TIME FOR 9/11, in New York City… (I though that center was developed MUCH later…).  It references Dr. Steven Marans about every other paragraph.  Here’s the reference from YALE CHILD STUDY CENTER.

Note:  Dr. Marans ALSO has a strong influence (background) in psychoanalysis.  He IS a child and adult psychoanalyst, and after an M.S.W. from Smith College (1979), he then spent 14 years (1979-1993) – well, see “Education.”  Note the British connection.   He got a degree from an Ivy League College (the companion to Brown, guess they just let men in?) in 1979, and has been in psychoanalysis ever since.  Hence, his British psychoanalytical approach should be distributed nationwide in the US after major traumas, individual, or building-bombing, school-shooting, or hurricane-devastation events.  ??

Education & Training

M.S.W.

Smith College (1979)

Ph.D.

London University (1993)

Fellow

Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, Adult Psychoanalysis

Fellow

Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic/Anna Freud Centre, Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (1979 – 1984)

Check it out.  Seems there will ALWAYS be a trade-marked process, standardized, and taught (train-the-trainers) style for national, or international roll-out.  For example, see “AMBIT” including the diagram  [Actively stimulating and sustaining “Mentalization” in the worker colleague” showing “shift of emphasis” (in simple circles — instead of circling the “Young Person and Family” with professionals, the child interacts with a “keyworker” who is then encircled with (the same types of) professionals.  At no point, does “removing professionals” from having input into the situation, seem to occur.  Notice it says, reducing the number directly involved — not the number involved.

AMBIT (Adolescent Mentalization-based Integrative Treatment) was developed in response to the need for a well-structured, evidence-based intervention that could be realistically implemented for those adolescents labelled as “hard-to-reach”. It is an innovative approach which brings mental health, education, and social interventions together to provide direct help to these very troubled young people, who are not yet able to access mainstream help.

AMBIT provides a simple solution: Utilising innovative technology to train and support a network of field workers who can provide accessible, approachable and most importantly immediate help to young people in crisis. It supports a new kind of integrative outreach mental health practitioner, trained in multiple treatment methods supported by close and robust supervisory structures.  One of the core aims of this approach is to reduce the number of professionals directly involved in the case, in order to focus on maximising the productivity of the therapeutic relationship. 

 

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(CALL FOR PROPOSALS from the NCJFCJ Family Court Enhancement Project Call for Proposals, cont’d. from above inset box)

 

Eligibility:

Applicants should be state, tribal, territorial, or local courts.

Letters of Intent:

To assist NCJFCJ in planning for the review process, letters of intent should be submitted to ebranch@ncjfcj.org by June 14, 2012. Please note, however, that letters of intent are optional. Interested applicants who do not submit a letter of intent by the deadline can still apply.

Deadline for Proposals:

10 p.m. PST on June 28, 2013.

Applicants will be notified of the selected FCEP courts by October 30, 2013.

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Many of these families come before a family court, which makes custody, visitation, and other decisions that will have a significant long-term effect on these children and adults. In the past decade, family court personnel have become increasingly aware of domestic violence and have made improvements to court practices to address it.Yet many challenges remain. Children continue to be placed in unsafe environments because the system fails to adequately assess and address the impact of domestic violence on the children.

 

Notice the applicants are courts – not corporations.

That children “continue to be placed in unsafe environments” is evident, because children are getting killed, and/or kidnapped, and apparently molested.  However, that this placement into “unsafe environments” happens because the system fails to adequately assess and address the impact of domestic violence on children, at this late date, is an assumption.  Another assumption, and possibly as valid, is that the system simply doesn’t care, and has other motivating influences driving its decisions, like financial rewards to the states, and to the people associated with the courts themselves, and to private providers, when children ARE placed in unsafe situations.

Notice who participated in the roundtables when the decade of constant outcries and the headlines about stolen, and/or murdered children (and/or murder/suicides of various parents) actually was – ‘could it be?’ too loud to cover up any more:

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As a way to better inform the Office on Violence Against Women’s work on this issue, OVW has held four roundtable discussions since 2008 to examine the intersection of domestic violence and custody.  Meeting participants included subject-matter experts in the field, such as judges, attorneys, domestic violence advocates, researchers, child protection specialists and protective parents. These experts identified the following issues as barriers to safe outcomes for battered women and their children involved in custody proceedings:

Failure to identify, understand, and account for domestic violence in court and in third-party assessments and recommendations;

Structural and procedural barriers; Limited legal and advocacy resources; and Effects of race, class, and gender biases on outcomes.

The Family Court Enhancement Project was funded by OVW as an opportunity for three courts to work closely with national experts on domestic violence and court improvement to implement better ways for keeping domestic violence victims and their children safe through and beyond court proceedings.

Family Court Enhancement Project

The Family Court Enhancement Project (FCEP) will provide technical assistance (TA) and training   [etc.]

SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS (close translation, protective parents organizations who else?) and PROTECTIVE PARENTS (parents who are involved with these organization, have accepted the designation, “Protective parents,” feeding into the concept that the family courts are there to protect children).

The term “protective parents” was coined — and it was coined for a purpose.  This appears to be the purpose.  The first usage I’m aware of was with the filing of California Protective Parents Association in 1999, almost simultaneous with the discovery by one of their own that access/visitation funding, supervised visitation funding and fraud — had influenced a custody decision by one of the parents involved.

It appears that the term ‘PROTECTIVE PARENTS” came from an organization formed, possibly deliberately, to NOT discuss recently discovered supervised visitation, access/visitation grants fraud…

See my March 23, 2014 post “A Different Kind of Attention Develops Sound Judgment“ which, through corporate filings and other non-subjective, NON-anecdotal information available, that the “PROTECTIVE PARENT” name came within months of discovery about the financial fraud and writing about it to the California Judicial Council, and by some of the same people.   The practices in producing Barry Goldstein’s/Mo Hannah’s (eds).  “Domestic Violence, Abuse and Child Custody” book in 2010 were followed in producing — via  corporation that only existed long enough to publicize the book and solicit support of it, this:

EXPOSE: THE FAILURE OF FAMILY COURTS TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM ABUSE IN CUSTODY DISPUTES by Elize T. Charles and Lynn Crook (Editors). Los Gatos, CA: Our Children Our Future Charitable Foundation, 1999. Paper $25.00. No ISBN.

This book contains nineteen chapters on the protection of children from abuse. The volume’s selection focus on issues related to the law and judicial, prosecutorial, and administrative behavior in abuse cases. The chapters reprint court records, government documents, newspaper accounts, and professional social science journal articles. Original commentary also is contained in certain chapters. The materials support the objectives of the Foundation, but scholars of domestic relations law and policy might find them useful.

Again, the foundation existed for less than a few years — from Sept. 1999 through Sept. 2002 (as a corporation in Calif. at least) and never filed a tax return or registered as a 501(c)3, that I can see, with the IRS.  What “OUR CHILDREN OUR FUTURE FOUNDATION wanted:

. . . . The goal of these projects is to build a national constituency of support for substantive change in family law courts as the first stage of the reform process.

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Mission:
OCOF is dedicated to the prevention of the perpetuation of family violence by exposing and promoting reform of policies and practices in family court vis a vis child abuse and domestic violence. As a result of misinformation, discrimination, inadequate education of professionals, corruption and misguided government policy,

https://familycourtmatters.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/a-different-kind-of-attention-develops-sound-judgment/

The “Different Kind of Attention” is simply paying attention to who formed which nonprofits WHEN, and in what context.  This proves that the CPPA crowd knew about the grants fraud — and deliberately formed up outfits to NOT talk about it, exposing generations, and year after year, of parents to misleading and off-target information about WHY they were losing children to batterers.

As collectively this is some serious moulah ($$) I think it’s appropriate to look at how basic information gets handled in some of the participating advocacy groups.

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Pick your part — if you want to see it, scroll down to the more colorful section with nice, big colorful letters, and pretty backgrounds and a lot more hyperlinks to the evidence, or read fast through these mostly black & white paragraphs full of WORDS, first.  Know in advance, I’m not interested in your potential attempted psychoanalysis of what’s wrong with me because I speak in long sentences and am opinionated.  The opinions come from both experience and investigation, and I have more than earned the right to speak based on either one of those.

 

 

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I do “SHOW and TELL.”  SHOW is what convinced me, but most people aren’t used to (yet) looking at what I have to SHOW, so my posts often become TELL, then SHOW.  If you won’t get to “SHOW” (by looking at the evidence), you’ll never get to KNOW (by seeing).   Sorry I don’t have more pretty colors, flashing graphics.  No apologies for not putting this onto YouTube.  I’m looking for people with an attention span, and motivated already to investigate.

Whichever works best for your learning style, this is today’s offering…

PREFACE/WARNING. 

About 25 paragraphs of this preface in part handle my concern addressing a public audience in such a blunt, sarcastic manner and opening some closet doors which the “shine the light on the plight” personnel have kept closed for a decade now (since 2003), and some, at least a decade and a half (since 1999).  I think it’s time we let the sunlight in and find out what’s up with the parade of fools; why has talk been completely framed around certain themes and excluded other major ones?

Why is that these groups can’t seem to open their mouth without first giving homage to their friends and cohorts in a specific agenda — to transform the courts from the top down through federal influence?  Don’t they understand that this is already being done (although probably not in the desired direction) — and why can’t about every other member of the favored coalitions actually form a corporation, stick their name on it, and keep it registered as a corporation OR, if it’s self-styled as a nonprofit, ALSO as a properly registered  nonprofit, while they are crusading?

The AFCC connection to Parental Alienation theme in response to Domestic Violence Issues:

Why can’t [why won’t] they ‘fess up, those that have been hanging out with the most loudly “prevent parental alienation, false accusations of abuse”  organization around (Association of Family and Conciliation Courts), that while complaining loudly about PAS being considered in custody and divorce cases, they actually know this organization exists?  In this context, I personally think the dialogue isn’t at ALL about what it claims to be about, not when a closer look is taken.

Why are classic cult mentality and behaviors the rule, rather than the exception, here?

 

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This post is dedicated to the ongoing and what will be future generations of traumatized, distressed, and afflicted mothers who have been, or are being, deprived of contact with their children because they took a stand against violence in the home, or against abuse of those children before or after maintaining a relationship (including marriage) with the father of those children.  I see that these mothers are going to be younger  than me by one or two generations, unless the momentum of various (Fix the Broken Courts, Flawed Practices, Safe Children, etc.) coalitions is noticed and some of us get a little smarter about the history of the family court reform groups and their multiple conference activities.  Meanwhile, I continue to hear from smart, college-educated women blindsided by the state of the family courts, who appear to have not gotten up to Square “Family Court 101 BASICs” yet.  It’s just not covered in a typical college education, or professional workplace outside of these family-court-connected professions.

I have already seen next generations going through the same set of cattle chutes, directing families into the very venues they will and their children be crying to get out of shortly after they enter that path, whether driven by the other partner, or walking in unawares.

This post (these posts) also put on notice to certain groups listed below that their practices have been noticed and will continue to be exposed where it applies as dishonest, self-referencing (i.e., self-centered) and similar — literally from the same breeding grounds — as the groups they wish to correct, i.e., judges, custody evaluators, mediators, child psychologists, etc.

I already know a typical response — I’m “attacking” I’m non-collaborative, I’m splitting “the mothers’ movement.“

WHAT mothers’ movement?  Since when does that represent all mothers?

There was only a need for a “mothers’ movement” in the 1990s or 2000s in response to the fathers’ movement of the 1980s and 1990s (til now), which was itself a response to feminism  of the 1970s after the civil rights movement  of the 1960s.  In these matters, we need to understand what decade we are in.  Things changed, major social policies, each decade and half decade.

That short summary, on my part, comes from five years of reading and experience, and having read what are considered key documents influencing welfare reform, and the time leading up to it.    have NO advanced degree (M.A. level or higher), but what I do have is tenacity, curiosity, and the habit of observation.  That short paragraph represents a lot of lookups; for a sample, read the sidebar widgets or “New Here?  Need a Roadmap?” post. 

Characterized as concern for children, families, and the poor (i.e., run through the welfare system), the most handy epithet for justifying the centralization of power and breakdown of court jurisdictions (i.e., blending judicial, social services, and legal decision-making authority) — was the word CHILDREN.  Like Apple Pie and America, who can be against defending, protecting, preserving, and etc. CHILDREN?

A primary fathers’ rights organization formed mid-1985 is called the “Children’s Rights Council.”   However, out of the public eye, it’s acknowledged to be what it is —  a leading and influential at that time (and still) nonprofit with an adversarial view on divorcing women, a.k.a., mothers.  After feminism it was no longer AS socially acceptable or AS politically correct to be specifically either ANTI-mother, or ANTI-African American, or both.  In this context, it was, however, simpler to come out as “pro-family, pro-children (and afterwards, pro-fatherhood).”

In 1965, it was “The Negro Family:  The Case for a National Policy” and Part IV, “The Tangle of Pathology” explained that we are a patriarchal society, so in this context, matriarchy is indeed a pathology.   No longer quite so acceptable, this has been translated into the themes of “fatherlessness” as a social ill.  It’s saying the same thing!!

The contortions of trying to eliminate the word “mother” in a positive sense, in public policy, are painful and awkward to those who pay attention.  It’s OK for “Women’s Rights” and “Parental Rights” (supposedly neutral), and “Father’s Rights” but Mother’s Rights — or mothers apart from their family function — has been either absent, or a curse word.

It was high time to resurrect the word “mother” in a positive sense — but now certain men who have come from the Batterers’ Intervention field, itself  a compromise position against violence and dangerous personnel when they have also sired children, are characterizing themselves, with a number (but not a significant number) of followers nationwide, as having a plan for mothers’ rights in divorce and custody. 

And they want it to be called “the Mothers’ Movement” and inform us that we are not supposed to be ugly and aggressive, but nurturing and peaceful — with them, and with each other.  Lundy Bancroft, accordingly, is part of a “Nurtured Parent Support Group” After a few articles symptomatic of the same group of people and associations, here’s that page’s list of participants:

• LUNDY BANCROFT . . .
• BARRY GOLDSTEIN . . . 
• GARLAND WALLER (No Way Out But One — Holly Collins story…) . . .
• “BMCC”: Battered Women, Abused Children, and Child Custody: A National Crisis was created in 2003 by two mothers, Mo Therese Hannah, Ph.D. of Albany, NY, and Liliane Heller Miller of Charlotte, NC.  Now in it’s 10th year,   Mo and Liliane continue to organize and guide the conference with the goal of hosting a national public forum to address the many complex issues facing battered women as they strive to protect themselves and their children   during divorce, custody, and visitation litigation. Battered Mothers Custody Conference:http://www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/
• DVLEAP (Joan Zorza et al., focusing on the appellate level for domestic violence cases:)  “DV LEAP provides a stronger voice for justice by fighting to overturn unjust trial court outcomes, advancing legal protections for victims of domestic violence and their children through expert appellate advocacy, training lawyers, psychologists and judges on best practices, and spearheading domestic violence litigation in the Supreme Court. http://www.dvleap.org/ ” [There’s now a similar group in California, FVAP — Family Violence Appeals Project. Closely tied into the DV Cartel structure..]
• NOMAS The National Organization for Men Against Sexism is an activist organization of men and women supporting positive changes for men. NOMAS advocates a perspective that is pro-feminist, gay affirmative, anti-racist, dedicated to enhancing men’s lives, and committed to justice on a broad range of social issues including class, age, religion, and physical abilities. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irT-8zb6xWk
• TIMES UP BLOG: The Broken Custody Court System: Is there Reason for Hope?  [including but not limited to articles by Barry Goldstein] http://timesupblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-broken-custody-court-system-is.html
  
• THE LEADERSHIP COUNCIL ON CHIILD ABUSE AND INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE: The Leadership Council is a nonprofit independent scientific organization composed of respected scientists, clinicians, educators, legal scholars, and public policy analysts. We are committed to providing professionals and lay persons with the latest scientific information on issues that may affect the public’s health and safety. We also seek to correct the misuse of psychological science to serve vested interests or justify victimizing vulnerable populations — especially abused and neglected children. http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/
  
• COURAGEOUS KIDS NETWORK: The Courageous Kids Network is a growing group of young people, whose childhoods were shattered by inhumane court rulings, which forced us to live with our abusive parent, while restricting or sometimes completely eliminating contact with our loving and protective parent. http://www.courageouskids.net/
  

At the bottom of all these, is another plug for Donald Saunders study:

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice released a study (Saunders Report) that found the STANDARD and REQUIRED domestic violence training received by judges, lawyers, and evaluators does not adequately prepare them to handle abuse cases. Inadequately trained professionals tend to believe the myth that mothers frequently make false allegations. MOST contested custody cases are actually domestic abuse or child abuse cases in which abusers have been allowed to use the courts to regain control over their victims, and bankrupt the safe, primary care-giving, protective mother.

Sign the Petition!

[Incidentally, give your name and email address in the process.  The petition isn’t even viewable til you give that up!]  ”

708
SIGNATURES

Note: This petition is a project of Patrice Lenowitz and is sponsored by MoveOn Civic Action. By signing, you agree to receive email from Patrice Lenowitz, MoveOn Political Action, and MoveOn Civic Action. (You may unsubscribe at any time.)

> Outside the US? Sign Here.

> Terms of Service

The group that fund-raises together, and finds an occasional generous donor, and conferences together ….

The term “Nurtured Parent” isn’t very original.  “Nurturing Parent Networks”

Nurturing Families Network in Connecticut

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THE Mothers’ Movement?

In what world view would a few small, and not that reputable (when you look at their incorporation histories) groups whose leadership are part of the system they claim an intention to transform, constitute THE leadership of something called “the mothers’ movement” for all the mothers in this situation in the United States of America?  50 States and Territories, how many counties, nationwide?  (Courts are often at the county level)….

However, IF there is “a mothers’ movement” as characterized by the groups listed below, yes, it deserves to be split open. I hope I split it open, and at expose the foundations [with the right tools and an attitude, it only takes some time].  Then people younger than me can decide what they want to build, or rebuild, or whether it makes any sense at all to attempt to unify all mothers under one or two short sound-bytes with a limited vocabulary, and less than half the history of the problems they’re addressing, and a LOT less experience tracking which directions the factors they’re refusing to talk about, have gone while this refusal continues….

But the foundations have to be seen.  So, is that an “attack”?  Yes.  It’s an attack on the logic of following people year after year, without looking up their corporate identity — and finding out which ones among the leadership, have none.  And, checking out who are their private (conferencing) friends when they are not busy selling reform policies to mothers and narrating how great the last roundtable with someone at the USDOJ went.

And in these circles, the (so-called) worst accusation is already in– I’m “angry.”  I must surely be “angry” because I’ve been  hurt, and I need to discharge emotion ((typical patronizing dismissal — you must not really mean this, it’s just your trauma speaking…)). …. right?    Angry is wrong, pleasant and friendly is right?

Well, that’s projection, assumption, and presumption — to be inside my head and know why I’m saying something, without looking at what’s been said, which just might be the cause for any anger, assuming that was my motivation.

Isn’t that the argument an abusive controller uses?  How dare you be angry (said after discovery of betrayal, or after a major abusive incident).   Whether or not I’m properly or improperly angry, being angry isn’t a crime.  It’s not a breach of ethics.  Censorship is, and pretending to be something one is not, for profit and prestige IS.  Wasting people’s time who, as parents, have no time to waste (their kids are growing up fast) — IS, in my opinion, a breach of ethics. 

However, my anger [for this post, it’s actually, sarcasm and name-calling] also might be a symptom of what’s called LOVE.  Notice I didn’t say “violence” is a symptom of love (it’s not).  But anger can be, and sometimes it’s appropriate.  Here it is.  And, all I’m about to do is use some sarcasm, and point out some things which have been habitually disregarded.  Many people know what I’m saying already, but I just don’t think they’ve been blogging it.  Someone has to be “the bad guy” and speak up.  So be it.

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AND this post (and the ones to follow) are also addressed to, it puts on notice, so-called good men and women out there, as well as the public — the chaos in the courts was created, not accidental, and to throw your hands up in “what can I do?” is to be part of the problem.  I have raised this before – cause-based literacy is one thing, but accounting literacy matters more.  I don’t mean, everyone must be a CPA.  But everyone OUGHT to have a concept of how government and nonprofit/for-profit entities interact, and where the various classes of professionals fit in the mix.

You can be college-educated smart, and professionally tunnel-vision dumb. Or, you can be smart in several areas, but simply have been unaware of other ones – like these courts!  Smart is what we do with what we have access to- and becoming aware when obviously something we DON’T know is producing a certain, consistent, effect.  If things are too large, or too detailed, or too intricately and delicately interactive to handle — then that doesn’t mean, go to automatic superstition mode!

We need to separate folklore versus facts when an “About Us/History” page of ANY group, or a biographical blurb mentions who’s who, and what groups they’ve conferenced with:  Get some facts, and notice which groups are consistently NOT referenced.  The consistently NOT referenced groups are more likely, just a cult.  A private, allegiance, loyalty group that we’re not supposed to talk about.  Kind of like members of one religion or another seeking each other out in “the public square,” (wink wink, nod, nod….)   Only some of these groups just happen to be staffed by people whose profession is deciding in some very real cases, whether growing children (and sometimes, one or more of their biological parents), lives — or dies.  Is loved — or is tortured.  Is allowed to be in a stable situation –or is trafficked, til the point stability becomes a distant memory, a dream.

Some of these groups have judges as leading members.

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 The “fix the courts” groups I’m talking about in this post, are problematic, and troublesome — but they are not the biggest kids on the block.  They aren’t heavily funded (that I can tell), but they DO consist of group after group which has an INORDINATE (out of bounds) respect for their and their colleagues’ professions.  They have been, for the most part, among the professional class, and canNOT bring themselves to admit that the class as a whole, is functioning as a virtual priesthood:  arrogant, elitist, dumbing down their speech at times as if they were speaking to children (when they’re not), alternately tossing around scientific sounding terminology (in reality, it’s jargon from the professions, and there are a few key ones) to emphasize rank and expertise when challenged.

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The only science in that behavior is the science of persuasion. The art of manipulation. It’s an act!! Like I just said, it’s a charade! I might have said, it’s unconscious, subconscious, or just unintentional …. except that in the groups involved here, I’ve time after time (and over the years), tested that — and seen the reaction when I introduce contradictory, or simply different information. Or, bring up uncomfortable truths, like a spokesperson for a certain networked (entrenched in the mothers’ movement networked) person is caught in a lie, or just about a lie, and tries to change the subject.

There’s nothing “scientific” about a rigid insistence on one (or at most two or three inter-related) professions’ point of view and arguing within that circle of language alone — while other worlds obviously exist and are influencing things.

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So, this series of posts is to keep a personal promise to myself that 2014 is the “Time’s Up” for more of this fraudulent behavior (however sincere, pretense is involved, and censorship is involved.  These are among the SPECIFIC groups I went for refuge and information to (through the predictable on-line search, except for one was a referral from a woman in a courthouse) before, during and after, my own children were removed, without legal or factual cause, on a court-ordered visitation, and stayed removed until they both turned 18.

THEN, I discovered the information about the federal (HHS) grants designed to indirectly influence custody outcomes (increase NONcustodial parenting time, i.e., father’s time with the children, even when there’d been consistent violence towards them, or the mothers).

THEN I discovered, in which years, these groups already knew about PRWORA and the grants, but just didn’t want to talk about it. And gradually (in recent months and/or a year or so) I also saw the collusion (conferencing alongside) the nonprofit trade association found influencing family courts nationwide, although not all judges, mediators, family lawyers, or custody evaluators, by a very long shot, are members. The membership, it says, is still under 5,000 people. But the membership seek out influential (high) positions, and know exactly which ones to head into.

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Failing to reveal these private allegiances when not running protective mothers, etc., groups –is enough to qualify for “fraudulent” in my opinion).  In part, because these have begun to more openly collude with groups they’ve been (all along) colluding with, to gradually introduce and condition people hurt by the same groups (I’m primarily, but not ONLY referring to the AFCC circles), to accept them alongside their trusted allies (or supposed allies) as genuine and good folk just trying to help.

We’re your friends.  Dear Friends — here are some more of MY friends, we will all conference together from here on out.  Respect me, respect them.

I say — No.  Respect is shown by behavior, and anyone who’s gone through what we have (“we” refers to the class of people described in first paragraph above) has a right to, and should say, “Show me the money.  Who’s your Daddy?  Where’d this person’s allegiances and associations fit into MY (make it personal), or OUR (correctly differentiate from people with open custody cases, family court litigants — and people who want such litigants to provide free referral sources for them as professionals.).

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By the way, my posts will be flawed, at least in appearance. They will have excess words also. I am still composing half in html, and half in “compose” and flipping back and forth to “preview” mode before publishing.  I’m writing and formatting both.  If this condition changes, you’ll see it. However, I still stand by what I’m saying below — this is an urgent and increasingly important situation for any woman, mother specifically, about to engage or be hauled into any family court, ANYwhere, when abuse, or allegations of it, are on the table.

AND, as I noted a few posts ago, I also have my own ongoing situations after going public (writing this petition) dealing with the AFTERmath of the domestic violence/family court/children now “aged out” (are over 18 years old).  Though few have signed, significant people have signed and guess what — like filing a restraining order with kick-out — this worked.  And, there’s the collateral consequences to be faced.

In addition to this, I am still learning and writing generally three to four posts ahead, while responding to people the blog brings to contact me, and, from time to time, explain how to quickly identify which of the many nonprofit trade associations are running which training programs (i.e., curricula) for profit, through the local courthouse.

I am ALWAYS looking for smart, independent (mothers) who’ve already been beaten up by or are fighting in the courts (i.e., are awake) who will think and talk in terms of economic systems, track corporations and leave the trauma issues on the side of the road, as what we are dealing with is cold, calculated, cold-hearted strategizing to exploit any situation of vulnerability or weakness.  THAT is what the family courts enable.

This post [which quickly became about three posts, due to more discoveries about the corporate identity of one of the primary Actors] is simply business to handle.

The next few posts (generally — I haven’t decided yet on the exact order of posting) will be dealing with specific national/international nonprofits which have been around much longer (National Council on Crime and Delinquency (New York, with three major offices), Juvenile Protective Association (out of Chicago), and their original ties to the field of psychoanalysis in the 1930s, 1940s, 19450s (though they were around earlier) I’d qualify as far larger in scope and impact.

This material, along with some more background considerations of the “Fix the Broken Courts” crowd, is fascinating in its own right, and if examined honestly, shows us that the underpinnings of MOST of our primary government institutions have imported ideas and elitist systems of thought from, to put it bluntly, Germany and Great Britain — from colonizing empires.  Now, the plan is to re-align the United States of America with this global management process across institutions, coordinated by the internet, and funded by the public at ALL Phases.

[continued on next post, with similar title]…..   [[2016 update — see note at top of this post; “next post” hasn’t happened yet.  Things have changed meanwhile…]