If Dog-Fighting, Cock-Fighting, and Exploiting Prisoners as Gladiators (resulting in shooting deaths for some, and “hundreds of shootings,” not to mention fight-related injuries for others) is “BAD,” then why isn’t also Federal (PRWORA-based) and State (Family Courts) Policy with similarly staged, high-stakes conflicts — rigged for intended outcomes, and obviously potentially lethal for the combatants and, periodically, bystanders — on a far larger stage (national, and in some high-profile cases, international), also involving known criminally violent** fathers and their children’s mothers, AND young children of all ages? [Published Dec. 17, 2017]
The “parent post” also dealt in part with guns and groups seeking to reduce death by gun violence. I guess they just weren’t thinking in terms of, “of prisoners, by prison guards…” Its title:
This is a short (ca. 6,700 words or so) aside to that post, and a link to return to the parent post above is provided again at the bottom. There may be some repetition as I added documentation and examples to the text before publishing.
It originates in making references of these topics as analogies for the situation I am most deeply concerned about, the macro-economic, system-wide practice of the same power blocs setting up artificial, high-stakes and sometimes life-and-death conflicts especially between men and women overall, and between individual men and women who are mothers and fathers of children in common, while demanding the public fund both sides (the public as taxpayers and through other service consumption of governmental business enterprises, including accessing the courts, registering vehicles yearly, marriage licenses even, continues to pay “up front”)
Many men and women can handle themselves without hurting or destroying each other economically or physically, and not all men and women, on divorcing, use their children as pawns or take them as hostages. But WHEN some do, it seems to be “game time” for others. It’s “show time.” All can be manipulated, and the longer the conflict goes on, the higher the bills, the more civil and legal rights concessions are demanded of them (and the larger public), the higher the stakes and the greater the risks of those personally involved — yet these concessions are often described as the intended methodologies to change the outcome.
But doing so directly is contrary to our self-impressions of the country and view that we have a possibly functional system of laws and courts. The influences are from the sidelines, from outside specific jurisdiction of family courts involved, and these influences come from Congress and the White House (which expends funding allocated to it by Congress, i.e., that budget) and are applied through, as the title above says, a real “money maze” — sometimes direct to the states, sometimes direct to nonprofits within the state but involved in the courts, and sometimes otherwise.
That’s why I say the game is “rigged.” It’s not a level playing field, and its rules can be altered year to year, and situation to situation — and that’s the way some people like it. Rather than SETTLING the standards by the law, with a preference throughout of NOT prioritizing privilege for violators of penal codes when there are two parents and one is a violator and the other, not.
Rather than just having fair laws and enforcing them fairly.
We (so to speak) also already exploit at least federal prisoners for slave labor, through FPI (Federal Prison Industries) a.k.a. Unicor (and have since the 1930s), which is also referenced here near the bottom, but not in this post’s title, which reads:
QUESTION: What’s bad when found to have occurred in secret, in confined and closed quarters from which combatants cannot escape, and involving animals (whether dogs or roosters with spurs) or when it happens in prisons with caged men, and in ALL of the above resulting in serious injury and sometimes death, not to mention being “exploitation, defined,” ….
LA times 4/24/2000, by Staff writer Max Arax, “Guards on Trial in Corcoran Shootings blame Prisoners
…Pointing the finger at a vast group of prisoners with no faces or voices in the federal courtroom, the defense is using the government’s own witnesses to put Corcoran’s violent culture on trial. Sounding at times like prosecutors themselves, attorneys for the eight guards are also blaming official state policy handed down from Sacramento for the thousands of fights between inmates and the hundreds of shootings by guards during a six-year reign of terror at the San Joaquin Valley prison.
Beginning in 1989, defense attorneys contend, the state’s integrated yard and shooting policies required guards to mix rival inmates from different street gangs and then to fire at them with deadly force if they refused to stop fighting.
…why is the same basic routine under “family-friendly policy,” and when the forced interaction with known dangerous persons frequently happens WITHOUT armed guards or trained personnel nearby but WITH women and children, boys or girls nearby — in fact sometimes without even any authority supervising the exchange, but the exchange is still court-ordered, forced after reasons for separation or requested protection are on record as domestic violence or child abuse — somehow justified as moral, ethical, and as “American” as (well, what should we say, truthfully — as American as slavery? or as indentured servitude based, this season, meaning, this past half-century minimum, on parent gender?)?
“The gender wars” do include age-old issues, with or without citing to any religious basis for them, but in 20th century (as in 19th and 18th, and now the 21st century) USA there are still social-services and public policy staged, rigged gender-based battles, and especially with federal government through state governments as participators, since the 1980s and 1990s.
The appearance of genuine concern by funding one side (as expressed in VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act) is effectively countered by an even larger funding (as it’s under TWO titles of the Social Security Act (Both IV-A, TANF and IV-D, OCSE (Child Support Enforcement) largest grant-making agency, and blended into programming under others). I’m referring to “HMRF” and “Access/Visitation” funding only (for pt. of reference only, see next two images).
Reference to CFDA 93.597 (Access & Visitation) as explained on a North Carolina DHHS site (in two images), FY2016-2017.
Reference to CFDA 93.597 (Access & Visitation) as explained on a North Carolina DHHS site (in two images), FY2016-2017.[Notice annotated / underlined areas which are causing contention, conflict, and, innately, danger within the family court system and among participants particularly where prior violence or danger has been identified.
Doesn’t even reference PRWORA, and says that 1983 changes were the most significant. It’s still good summary reading. (There’s a Summary, Intro, and Overview; it’s an easy read. One image and header image provided here).
Or (also) see a 2003-dated CRS Summary (it’s short) of major changes represented by TANF (CRS = “Congressional Reference Services”). The short descriptive paragraphs do mention “abstinence education” having to be continued by quarterly appropriations (along with TANF) after expiration in 2002, and it also reference Child Support Enforcement changes.
Child Support had been legislated since at least 1975, but this gets more aggressive on tracking absent parents, setting the stage for future battles:)
CRS 2003 report by Vee Burke on 1996 Welfare Reform Law. (Short, but two images provided in this post).
CRS 2003 report by Vee Burke on 1996 Welfare Reform Law. (Short, but two images provided in this post).
Social Security Act : A Program and Policy History (2005). First para. of “Summary” (there’s more). A recommended read…
Social Security Act : A Program and Policy History (2005). [written for its 70th anniversary, many authors, one web page only] This section is “Introduction.” See also the 1980s, which talks about the accumulated surplus and responses to it.
What’s more, major domestic violence “prevention” nonprofits are taking funding from the same source — HHS — under “FAMILY” violence prevention and services act of 1984 (FVPSA), such that a DV (“Domestic Violence”) entity could, and some do, take funding from both revenue streams.
These were then consolidated by designated subject matter so that the “Special Issue” or other Resource Centers, in part setting up significant websites with endless references and documentation — but NO significant discussion of the opposite side of the gender war’s funding (as expressed in last paragraph) or where there’s overlap or takeover of personnel (nonprofit leadership) involved.
Meanwhile, the subcontractors on all sides are having a grand old time taking THEIR grants and making their names also (I’m thinking particularly of ICF International and Public Strategies, Inc. which by now probably also has spinoff entities). These economically got much larger grants (much of which was put into media campaigns, incidentally, it seems) and were invited to the private “roundtables” (Wingspread Conferences, etc.) while the actual service providers, by state (as to DV) were organized into smaller and because smaller, more dependent nonprofits taking both funds AND rhetoric / policy from the larger ones.
A while back I posted all the Domestic Violence state coalition entities in the USA, as I recall, as listed under by state on the “NCADV” (which is in Denver) website, and noted that at the state level, Ohio was also collaborating as to projects with the Ohio “IPV Collaborative” which, basically, was promoting David Mandel’s “Safe & Together” trainings, which had then gone international.
Found at “GCFDN.org” which can be confusing until (through “drill-down,” which I did earlier in 2017 as I recall) one realizes that the tiny logo “HealthPathFoundation” Ohio on bottom of one of the pages references (see prior posts for more data) a related entity of the GC (Greater Cinncinatti) Health Foundation… etc.
The basis, apparently was to train child welfare agencies in “Alternative Response” via Safe & Together training, and then evaluate whether this training produced an attitude adjustment in the agencies involved. Typical.
Meanwhile the “Battered Women’s Justice Project” (“BWJP.org” image below) was advertising this and commending it for adopting several of the Greenbook recommendations (Shechter/Edleson, NCJFCJ). Edleson coming from the “School of Social Work” perspective:
BWJP July 2011 had not yet incorporated. Yet its website smoothly moves into “Who We Are” and under “Donate” says “we are a 501©3 (no links provided to any 990, or an EIN#, or “since when” provided) yet they are technical assistance trainer (explore site for more info) for the USDOJ which apparently doesn’t care, either about such niceties…NO reference (on top level links) that they began as the primary project of “DAIP” or that DAIP itself was HHS sponsored.. and so forth…[[LGH “disgusted” commentary here dates to Dec, 2017]]
http://www.csecouncil.org// (images from it below)
. This report makes several valuable points about the progressive erosion of federal/state distinctions pertaining to family law; it brings up the role of National Commission for Uniform State Laws, and acknowledges that (what are now “Title IV-D”) child support enforcement services were no longer restricted to families receiving AFDC, which was the original rationale for establishing it in the first place, under the theory that child support enforcement would help prevent the families from needing to resort to (AFDC).
(From Child Suppt Enforcemt Council, Laura Morgan article).
.. In time, particularly from 1984 onward, this congressional acknowledgment of the historic primacy of states in family law matters was eroded by a succession of federal Acts mandating changes to state laws relating to the parent-child relationship, culminating in the 1996 welfare reform Act (discussed below) which instituted far-reaching changes.” (From Child Suppt Enforcemt Council, Laura Morgan article).
(From Child Suppt Enforcemt Council, Laura Morgan article).
My March 3, 2017, post (“Understand Statewide CADV Funding“; full title with link, below) holds an extended discussion including comparison of funding sizes (violence prevention, marriage/ fatherhood promotion), and why I took the time to post it to put some on notice, and for “laypersons” about use of their tax receipts on this subject matter (both promoting fathers’ rights and protecting women, incl. mothers, from DV — how it was organized early on, including the USDOJ’s ongoing failure to provide a credible, functional, single grants database on its website and tell visitors to “Justice.gov” where it is, then maintain it in a credible, functional way for transparency, not “obfuscation” and straight-out advertising:
Meanwhile the Ohio Commission on Fatherhood had/has also organized and split up the state into 12 regions.
Three previously posted screenprints, from around the same posting timeframe (I think):
OhioChildLaw.org (bottom of page. Note “middle of page” info may not be shown between these two images taken 2-21-2017 by “Let’s Get Honest.”
[Previously posted on FamilyCourtMatters] NCALP at Capital Univ Law School, OHIO IPV Collaborative collective logos shown; Click Link to read my annotations full-sized
OHIO Commission on Fatherhood: Ohio has counties, but this commission instead has 12 “fatherhood” regions.
I’m not posting many links here because I’ve posted on this often before. Browse the blog table of contents for more information, or even the list of pages on the right sidebar.
Think about it: If the government is ONE government, then how can its policies under the same branch and even same federal department (HHS) be so divided against each other?
My answer: THEY AREN’T — That’s the “THEATRE” “DRAMA” part, and it’s audience is the wider public who are sponsoring the play through public funding. It seems that an underlying (but increasingly less disguised) purpose is to cause conflict and then move things in a different direction through consolidation or, if you will, “triangulation,” presenting solutions previously agreed upon as if suddenly, naturally, emerging from the conflict — just like those guards (according to one side — the legal losing side — of the account) set up prison fights (or others set up animal fights) and then (as to the guards) blamed state policy.
(Regarding progress for women): In fact any time supposed progress is made by the “second class citizen status” and allowing some rights in some situations, but few in one of the most critical ones for any woman and mother — setting a model of “NO! excuse for abuse” for the next generation she’s been at least temporarily or conditionally trusted with — do those right evaporate under the blanket policy “family” and supposedly, but not in practice gender-neutral terms thinly disguised as regarding “parents” or “parenting” or even “noncustodial parents’ but clearly situation-specific depending on which gender parent has which issue.
But when it came to guards taking pot shots at prisoners in staged fights over a six-year period (and this is just ONE report from one state; it’s not a stand-alone situation, or just a rogue prison, it would seem), causing seven deaths, although it was allegedly caused by state policy — at least the state policy was then, per a year 2000 LA Times report on the trial — changed, already…
But the similar policy has NOT changed when it comes to parenting and families! !!
No wonder such dangerous policies becoming standard practice and reframed as “beneficial” and in all the taxpaying public’s best interest (MUST be when welfare funds are incentivizing the key practices, ongoing, at the ) had to be debated outside the news headlines and public conscience of just how private sector networked tax-exempt organizations backed by BOTH government and major corporate wealth (with revolving doors on the leadership of both) manages to bypass either taking responsibility for violating subject matter jurisdiction at the state level, or ‘fessing up to this intention in an agenda which, technically speaking, can still say, “well, that’s a state-level decision.”
This was the phrase, I think, which got to me, and got me mouthing off again about the federal policy towards handling physically dangerous people who, as things to, often are also parents, and frequently are men, but in this Corcoran Valley case, probably were. The year is 2000, it’s California (link and citation given in post context, further below):
Defense lawyers argued that guards did not set up the fights, which they said erupted when inmates of different ethnic and geographic backgrounds were forced to exercise together in the prison’s highest-security unit, as part of a state policy that has since been rescinded.
Sure, the prisoners were likely dangerous, but so were the policies, and the guards who exploited it for sport, well, they were acquitted by jurors, it seems, in a town where the prison was a major, if not the major non-farm employer. And in this situation, the guards were the shooters. Some prisoners died, others were injured. The practice apparently started at this prison in 1989; the legal case started in 1994, and the acquittal in 2000.
Meanwhile, many divorces and custody battles would be lucky to last “only” six years, and sometimes, not all participants survive the entire process. There’s known “roadkill,” in some incidents, that’s literal, not just metaphoric. There has been roadkill (and system-generated economic fallout) in my community since I moved here over a decade ago, in my state, in other states — and yet we still are operating at the federal level, with policies of forced interaction of people (not to mention adult/children (parent-child) combinations who evidently don’t belong together in the first place, and aren’t, as witnessed by having placed many of them under “supervised visitation” even to just exchange children, and other times for the length of the visits. Such a racket…)**
Below the double-horizontal line after my attempts to put words to this situation above it and in doing so blurting out some of the situation involving my family in the 21st century, is the moved content, primarily references to a few articles and responses to them, summarizing the parallel situation under welfare reform + “domestic violence prevention” I’m characterizing as staged, rigged, high-stakes fights allegedly (but not really!) in the public interest.
The double line will look like this:
**and/or unprosecuted criminally but still acknowledged through the civil domestic violence intervention system to be dangerously violent men.
Forced, ongoing, Interactions between documented violent vs. nonviolent parents and young children, “forced reunification” for kids who protest and further punishment (deprivation of contact or unPAID contact with one’s own kids) for the non-abusive parents who resist, and even many who don’t, IS a racket. Organized have lined up to take the often court-ordered business, typically under the name “family.”
Link: Family Bridges. See also “About the Author” page for his political involvement on family law reform, custody, and involving the White House
In the past Dr. Warshak provided treatment for families with alienated children and conducted Family Bridges workshops. In order to devote more time to his research and writing Dr. Warshak does not currently provide such services. He continues to investigate the effectiveness of various interventions including outcomes of the Family Bridges workshop and has no business or legal affiliation with professionals who conduct any intervention for alienated children including Family Bridges.
In some cases the court has determined that a child’s best interests are served by placing the child in the custody of a rejected parent and suspending contact for a period of time with the other parent. In other cases, the favored parent is no longer available to care for the child. This may occur, for instance, if an abducted child is found and returned to the rejected parent, and the abducting parent is either in jail, prohibited from seeing the child, or remains underground or out of the country in order to avoid lawful retention.
It’s just been baptized and legitimized through certain policies which, if considered alongside many state penal codes, also conflict with those codes also, leaving these cases up to the discretion of local district attorneys and related authorities how to categorize. (Example, from California: a presiding family court judge for a county can decide whether and which family courts can be put under “conciliation court” law, which is NOT the section of the family code where the rebuttable presumptions against domestic violence as in the best interest of the children, which mothers may have been led to believe apply to their situations, exist)
Another example — and this is from my case — my children were subjected to witnessing domestic violence while young, until I separated. Then at least it didn’t occur in my household — but they had weekly, unmonitored in any fashion, overnight contact with their father available (and in many respects an even more generous visitation schedule than at the time, many fathers without a history of domestic violence were getting, or than I myself got (at least on paper — never enforced) as a nonviolent mother after he stole them.
By the book this was a felony; child-stealing (let alone “parental interference”). Later, when they were carted, still minors and apparently more than once, across the US/Mexico Border (and at times, out of state) rather than permitted to be with me, their mother, on their court-designated visitation time, once I’d become “noncustodial” — this literally became kidnapping. As police knew, because when I protested the initial stealing (which they didn’t acknowledge as “child-stealing” although it was), the dismissal was, “were they taken out of state? Then it’s not kidnapping….)
I was told, to my face also, DURING THE ACT or WITHIN DAYS OF IT (it was years ago, and I DNR which off-hand) by local law enforcement, who had come out to respond to my attempt to report and stop it, that a family court judge would decide whether or not this was a felony.
At every point in the system, it seems, a woman comes into contact with the family courts seeking to stop, report, or get intervention to prevent a threatened crime, and even after a related one has just taken place, in addition to violation of standing (revised) court orders specific to the family, she is likely, if responded to at all, to eventually understand, the criminal/prosecuting side (District Attorneys’ offices, and under them, law enforcement sometimes involved with the exchange of children from one parent to the other due to family court orders) doesn’t want to arrest, intervene or even look into it; and just doesn’t feel it has to even deal with it. Instead, it’s “Let the “family courts” (or “family justice centers, in part”) handle it.”
In effect, we are being told that crimes by a family member upon one or more family members aren’t really crimes, and particularly when the involved perpetrator is male, and even more especially if he’s a white male.
And this is the 21st century. Women did get the vote, nearly (not quite) a century ago, yet still THIS?
Around all the same, and while we are being asked to handle violent men within our own personal sphere without the help of courts, basically police, or district attorneys’ offices (which of course oversee and make decisions regarding what to prosecute and what NOT to bother prosecuting), there are the arguments for more gun control laws, and policies at the federal level. Yet we know well that there are plenty more weapons (such as knives) besides guns, which can kill people, when there’s intent and opportunity.
My “ex” is no longer personally bothering me. But during the 20 years when he did (some during, some after marriage cohabitation), the latter half within the family court context and with assistance from some money-driven (as it turned out) tribal warfare involving my side of the family (his was enough of a mess, most of them, and out of state, there wasn’t much participation. And his family line already had suicide and incest (with jail time for it — a brother) on the record during some of this time. … I had the college degrees; he had none, but when it came to the children’s education, the family court simply gave it to him AFTER he proved character by committing child-stealing, stepped up to kidnapping, and soon (I learned, belatedly) thereafter child (i.e., minor children) physical abandonment, while I was being subjected to stalking before AND after he obtained sole physical and legal custody of the children by showing his willingness to break the law, repeatedly and having done so.
So “pardon me” if I get a little indignant while reading about some of the following situations, one of them in this same state!
I used an analogy, and thought I’d better back up a part of it involving disreputable prison guards, on behalf of those who are doing their jobs honorably and at least a few, who had the courage to blow the whistle on those who weren’t.
I looked for examples, although my intent was only to use known analogies to refer to something I’ve found through years of looking at court-connected nonprofits and certain networks of government-connected nonprofits which form up as membership associations identifying themselves by which position of authority — especially over financial matters, or matters involving the regulation of crimes, courts, charities, state mental health hospitals and funding, schools, (etc.).
What I found led to further commentary, which is now here. This came off the top of the “Money Maze” post, which title focuses on a prominent gun control advocacy group named (now) after Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot and seriously injured in Arizona while speaking in public, in 2011.
This references a prison situation — and that also involved guns. Maybe good to keep in mind when the overall situation is about reducing gun violence, domestic violence, and crime in this country — the contribution to enraged and mistreated prison populations, and the practice of staged fights.
As with dog-fighting, cock-fighting, and as (if or when prison guards have forced prisoners** to fight each other), and bet or helped place bets on which side’s going to win neither the animals, or the prisoners are the actual winners. They are instead, conscripted combatants, or (if paid) mercenaries. Neither the dogs, nor the roosters, nor the prisoners, or any one else forced to fight chosen opponents in high-stakes, RIGGED battles ever really win.
(**Literally, a captive audience and known slave labor force, as well as extensive subject matter for behavioral modification product development, complete with pilot projects and test runs, of all sorts..) [Wiki on Federal Prison Industries or “FPI” and Unicor]:
**Here, I’m using the analogy for something readers might comprehend or have heard of to describe large-scale staged battles (by chosen rhetoric/values) that may be less familiar, and I’m doing it to call attention to how these are set up through “public policy” and public funds with profits for private parties, identifiable by (market, basically) sector and organization type. In referencing the “forcing prisoners to fight,” I’m not following this topic, but headlines do occur. It’s not unknown. Examples: April 7, 2015, Nevada Dept. of Corrections. “Family of slain Nevada inmate alleges guards staged ‘gladiator fight.”(Chicago Tribune Wire Report). Or, in 2000 “Guards on Trial in Corcoran Shootings Blame the Prisoners” (April 24, 2000 in the L.A. Times, Staff Writer Max Arax), said to have gone on since 1989…
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/apr/24/news/mn-22852
….The trial, which is expected to last as long as 10 weeks, is one of the largest prosecutions of prison guards in California history. Federal prosecutors say that former officers at Corcoran will testify that however flawed the integrated yard policy and however violent the inmates, the accused guards engaged in their own perverse games, encouraging fights and deadly shootings.
One former guard and whistle-blower, Richard Caruso, has told The Times and the FBI that one of the officers on trial on charges of civil rights abuses, Timothy Dickerson, would ring a red fire bell to open the exercise yard and announce to inmates over the loudspeaker, “Let’s get ready to rumble.”
Caruso, an upcoming government witness, said another accused officer, Sgt. John Vaughn, held meetings with gun post officers before the yards opened to review which inmates were going to fight. Caruso said supervisors would bunch up all the fights in the morning hours of their shifts, so the paperwork on each incident could be completed early and they wouldn’t have to work overtime.
“Two and three yard fights happened within a 30- to 45-minute time period,” Caruso told The Times in an interview before the trial. “It was all planned and it had little to do with the integrated yard policy from Sacramento.”
Another whistle-blower, Ralph Mineau, a longtime corrections officer, told the jury last week the fights were so commonplace that he and other supervisors sometimes summoned medical staff members to the yard in anticipation of inmate injuries.
From 1989 to 1994, seven inmates were shot dead at Corcoran and 43 others were seriously wounded by guards firing assault rifles to keep fistfights from turning deadly–more shootings and deaths than at any prison in the country.
LA times 4/24/2000, by Staff writer Max Arax, on Corcoran prison shootings trial.
The eight guards on trial were later acquitted. It seems the fights were blamed on state policy which was later changed. Article also notes that jurors tend to be sympathetic to guards in an area where the prison is the largest non-farm employer. It also references an alleged staged rape of an inmate as retaliation.
Guards Acquitted of Staging Gladiator-Style Fights (June 10, 2000, New York Times).
…Four guards could have faced possible life sentences, while the others could have received up to 10 years behind bars.
Defense lawyers argued that guards did not set up the fights, which they said erupted when inmates of different ethnic and geographic backgrounds were forced to exercise together in the prison’s highest-security unit, as part of a state policy that has since been rescinded.
…An inmate who testified for the prosecution, Anthony James, said that the guard, Christopher Bethea, bragged moments before the fight broke out that it was ”duck hunting season.”0
And yet the policy in family courts recommends forced interaction between documented violent parents and nonviolent parents and their minor children, “remedying” the danger at times (though not all times) through supervised visitation, paid for by either the private person under supervision, but in a profession which has received federal support for development through “access and visitation” funding ($10M/year/nationwide, USA) since 1996, and as part of Welfare Reform of that year. Access and visitation funding is directly TO a designated state agency (may change, but only one per state) and is a federal financial incentive to increase noncustodial parenting time through “alternative arrangements for custody and visitation.” At the time, and still, although we now have a newer phenomenon — custody switching from the violent to the nonviolent parent, and opportunity to create noncustodial mothers — this was intended as part of fathers’ rights concern, and promotion of “Fatherhood” from the White House and appropriate to and through the grantmaking giant Department of “Health and Human Services.” HHS appropriations for healthy marriage/responsible fatherhood (“HMFR”) last I checked, remain still at 15 times the amount for access and visitation. ($10M vs. $150M). Each year…
There are indeed have been and still are A/V sub-grantees in many states, and so a potential for both public and private money going direct to a supervised visitation, nonprofit, or professional, providing services before judges (with involvements in such nonprofits, or business connections with lawyers or psychologists who also tend to run them) in individual custody cases, as has been documented since 1999 (incl. on at least one of this blog’s sticky posts quoting a California mother who tracked it as involved in her own custody case) and continues to this day.
Meanwhile, the A/V field and HMRF fields are labeled to disguise their anti-independent women (racist AND sexist) sentiment under social science theory.
A corollary of this focus (if not obsession) is federal policy itself minimizing the prosecution and admission of just how violent some marriages have been, and the beatings some mothers have been taken within the exalted institution (in this worldview) of marriage.
White men at the top of the economic and social food chain — and often women close to it, with them — have helped and sought to from the start — divide and conquor i.e., split African-Americans and the civil rights movement against racism by conditioning receipt of position, benefits, and (running those grant-taking nonprofits) to dividing minority men and women and men per se and ALL women who may divorce and seek to stay separate from their children’s fathers for good reasons such as that violence.
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA, passed in 1994) was matched, same year, by the new (HHS-connected) nonprofit, ‘National Fatherhood Initiative,” yet it seems a mutual “professional courtesy” in both these created industries/professions (domestic violence advocacy, fatherhood research and practice, and advocacy) and the public/private initiatives they often involved was followed to keep the public dissociative about the larger grant-making picture, both that pre-dating the VAWA (DOJ-origin of funding) called FVPSA (dates to 1984?) through HHS. Nor was their full or voluntary transparency about just how much “fatherhood” rhetoric, and how many known fathers rights leaders, had been welcomed with open arms into DV advocacy organizations. In the case of Jeffrey Edleson’s (UMN School of Social Welfare, now at UC Berkeley) involvement for years alongside (including co-publishing with) Oliver J. Williams (both men are PhDs; one is white, one is black) at the UMN School of Social Welfare framing of domestic violence prevention under this large umbrella well represent male leadership of the reframing of domestic violence prevention field as conditional on involvement of the behavioral modification industries (Supervised visitation, batterers’ intervention, parental-alienation-reduction through “parenting education” and forced re-unification camps under fatherlessness-as-a-social-scourge theory), with the 1999-published (by another family and juvenile court connected PRIVATE nonprofit, the ‘NCJFCJ’) “Greenbook” and “Greenbook Initiatives,” i.e., family courts were OK — just make sure there are guidelines to prevent Domestic Violence and Child Maltreatment. Sure.
But I hear California learned, when it came to the Corcoran Prison negative press, that a STATE policy of forced mixing in prison yards of hostile parties of imprisoned (men, mostly), it quickly altered the policy and “voila” — not one death there since.
So what LOW value to women occupy in the overall scheme, or children, that the same rationale cannot be applied, and prior attempted re-indoctrination of both women, at times nonabusive men, and children who have been exposed to one parent battering another or otherwise violently abusing (and “trust me,” [I know and not just from my own experience] this comes with psychological, verbal, and economic abuse, too; sometimes simultaneous)] to accommodate privileges of the abusers on the basis of gender and, basically, paternity connections — ceased? Is it perhaps because the practice is so widespread, the infrastructure so embedded, and those involved in perpetuating it are so high up in the state legislature, U.S. Congress, and Court Administration spheres, that to challenge it is to challenge their position and leadership — at one’s own risk, IF there are pending cases within the family line… ??? It’s a rhetorical lesson — but if that’s bad policy for prisons, why is it such an acceptable policy for far less controlled situations, even though there’s known “roadkill” and other criminal activity (such as kidnapping) over the years around just such exchanges?
Continuation of the June 10, 2000 NYT article on the Corcoran guards’ acquittal:
In November, four Corcoran guards were acquitted of setting up the rape of an inmate by a notoriously violent prisoner. State prosecutors argued that the rape was in retaliation for an attack on a female guard.
Prosecutors in both cases faced the daunting task of trying prison guards in California’s Central Valley. Jurors in the state’s rural heartland tend to be sympathetic to guards because prisons provide as many as 10,000 jobs in the the region, accounting for much of its nonfarm employment
So job scarcity in places where prisons are set up apparently may affect justice.
Below here are just a few (two) references to the “slave labor” analogy I made on the “Money Maze” post.
(**Literally, a captive audience and known slave labor force, as well as extensive subject matter for behavioral modification product development, complete with pilot projects and test runs, of all sorts..) [Wiki on Federal Prison Industries or “FPI” and Unicor]:
UNICOR operates at no cost to taxpayers, in that it receives no appropriated funds from Congress to run its operations. In fiscal year 2016, UNICOR had net losses of $18 million. In fiscal year 2016, approximately 17,900 inmates participated in the UNICOR program, which equates to approximately 10% of the inmate population eligible to participate in this program in BOP-managed facilities.[8] All federally incarcerated individuals are expected to work in BOP-managed facilities. In general, those who choose to participate in UNICOR’s voluntary industrial work program earn between $0.23 and $1.15 per hour.[8] There are exceptions, in particular the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification program, whereby inmates earn up to the prevailing wages paid for comparable work performed in the locality.[9]Deductions are then taken for taxes, victim restitution, program costs and court-imposed legal obligations.[10] In 2016, UNICOR generated $498 million in sales, of which 72% was used to purchase raw materials, equipment and other supplies to produce the products and services it offers for sale; 23% paid staff salaries; and 5% paid inmate workforce wages.[8] In fiscal year 2016, FPI’s business were organized, managed, and internally reported as six operation segments based upon products and services. These segments are Agribusiness, Clothing and Textiles, Electronics, Office Furniture, Recycling, and Services.
As of August 2016, UNICOR operates 66 factory operations within 52 federal prisons, nationwide, offering more than 100 products and services in 80 Federal Supply Classifications (FSCs), in areas including clothing and textiles, electronics, fleet management and vehicular components, industrial products, office furniture, recycling activities; and services including data entry, computer aided design (CAD), and distribution.[11][12] While UNICOR’s customer base consists primarily of federal government agencies, it also collaborates with private sector companies to support their subcontracting needs. It offers qualifying U.S. manufacturers domestic facilities and inmate workforce resources to repatriate their operations, with costs comparable to those of offshore production and other benefits.[13]
…Under current law, all physically able inmates who are not a security risk or have a health exception are required to work, either for UNICOR or at some other prison job.[10][18] Inmates earn from US$0.23 per hour up to a maximum of US$1.15 per hour, and all inmates with court-ordered financial obligations must use at least 50% of this UNICOR income to satisfy those debts.[10]
Presumably including child support debts…
Again, as a source of slave labor:
Click image to enlarge or Here for the 9/4/2016 NBC News article on Federal Prison-owned “Factories with Fences”… incl. section on hazardous exposure to workers, defective helmets litigation (2006-2009) for the Army, and “repatriation” offers to non-gov’t. private companies
NBC News, Sept. 4,. 2016, Federal Prison-Owned ‘Factories with Fences’ Facing Increased Scrutiny by Safia Samee Ali
For years, Federal Prison Industries, a government-owned manufacturing corporation which uses inmate labor and has faced several Justice Department investigations, has bypassed the competitive bid process and netted multi-million dollar government contracts, NBC News has found.
The practice, some lawmakers and small businesses say, gives the prison-based company an unfair advantage.
The company has also, for at least five years operated at a net loss of $89.8 million, according to the Justice Department, requiring the corporation to draw on its cash reserves.
At times, the company also had problems with its product line — it once made defective military helmets which had to be recalled. The company also previously exposed some of its workers at electronic recycling centers to toxic chemicals — incidents which led to a scathing rebuke from the DOJ.
FPI, which is also known by the trade name UNICOR, operates 83 prison factories across the country and pays the more than 12,000 inmates between 23 cents to $1.15 per hour to crank out everything from body armor to running call centers.
In years past, the some of the corporations facilities have operated 24 hours a day
Go back to the “Money Maze” post from which this came by clicking HERE:
…….
Footnote BWJP (more images), and speaking of “money maze” in DV Prevention and services area also:
The above image pre-dates the spin-off of BWJP (a project of another government-funded nonprofit also designated at the HHS level, apparently, as somehow “special,” that being Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (“DAIP”) in MN, popularly associated with Ellen Pence, and with her (and its other leadership) promoting the “Coordinated Community Response” to stop domestic violence, and built into this model is the presumptiona/assumption that there should be supervised visitation, batterers interventions, trainings of judges (and law enforcement officers, etc.) and so forth, and that the “state” (government entities) should pay for this system which would, however, be run privately. So we get such things as “Supervised Visitation Network” (a nonprofit), and the intersection of this with membership of the “Association of Family and Conciliation Courts” and with Batterers Intervention groups also (such as “BISC-MI” in Michigan) running conferences year after year.
I’ve point out repeatedly on this blog to notice when a “Project” is personalized in the descriptive narrations as though it was somehow a “Partner.” Description on most organization or project websites tends to be, to say the least, “loose-lipped” and “ballpark” (“Close enough for jazz,” although as a musician I’d say “NOT close enough for jazz” which is itself an expression of the human spirit in musical form, and as a genre, not sloppy, casual, completely unstructured or disorganized). This sloppiness, the evasiveness, and constant re-framing with periodic re-naming avoids accountability to the public, and is disrespectful of it in that regard.
When I’d checked earlier on BWJP, it was either filing a Form 990N or 990EZ (DNR which) but now I see has an honest-to-goodness real Form 990 posted — for YE 2016. Their fiscal year starts Oct. 1, making that single Form 990 for FY2015 (I’m writing in Dec. 2017), meaning, nothing up yet for FY2016, which just closed out this past September 30..
Total results: 1. Search Again.
| ORGANIZATION NAME | ST | YR | FORM | PP | TOTAL ASSETS | EIN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Battered Womens Justice Project Inc | MN | 2016 | 990 | 28 | $275,560 | 46-3584341 |
Don’t let the moderate-to-low (for such a supposedly influential force in the DV field and occupying privileged status with US DOJ/OVAW) fool you — in its declared first year of operation (starting Oct. 1, 2015) it obtained $2.7M of grants — ALL of it except $912 “government” (per Pt. VIII Line 1 categorization) — and spent most of it, mostly ($2.02M) on salaries. The listing (Part VIIA) of its board members, directors, trustees, officers, and key employees (the list was all women) showed ONLY two being paid, and for a 40 hour week, it seems to me, those would be poverty wages (below $20K, both of them!), while somehow all the other employees were paid, not counting this amount, the rest of that $2.02M.
However the summary for Part VIIA being only about $35K, the corresponding part on Statement of Expenses (which is Line 5), which might be smaller, but should never be larger than the total shown on Part VIIA total is actually about $200K larger… and the form’s description (which I’m familiar with after all these years) reads DIFFERENTLY than usual, and includes the words “key employees” in the description. Normally, “key employees” are not listed on Line 5.
The next (several) images describe what I just saw. This bears a separate post, but I’m appending it onto this one, since I brought up the BWJP situation….It concerns me…)
BWJP Initial return (EIN#46-3584341) FYOct1 2015-Sep30 2016. Image #1 of (several), all can be seen also by scrolling through nearby link to this Form 990…
BWJP Initial return (EIN#46-3584341) FYOct1 2015-Sep30 2016. Image #2 of (several), Page 1, Prior Year (“0”) but $2.7 Contribs Current. Notice Exp. categories…
BWJP Initial return (EIN#46-3584341) FYOct1 2015-Sep30 2016. Image #3 of (several): Page 2 Program Svce Activities — that’s a fast start-up, wouldn’t you say? Except it’s not a true start-up, it’s a transition, spinning off a previously government-funded nonprofit’s main project, finally coming “out of the closet,” so to speak… Look also at the categories and the $$ amounts).
BWJP Initial return (EIN#46-3584341) FYOct1 2015-Sep30 2016. Image #4 of (several): Pt. VIIB officers, directors, trustees, highest-paid and key employees (I didn’t show the “$35K total page, but you can add — and there were no more shown..This shows executive director Denise Gamache and (also an officer) Dir. of Finance and Admin being paid unnaturally low (under $20K) each. Later in the return (Sched. O), an “executive committee of three officers” is described as being delegated (with certain exceptions) to act on behalf of the board — but which three of the five checked officers here isn’t mentioned – the top three?
BWJP Initial return (EIN#46-3584341) FYOct1 2015-Sep30 2016. Image #5 of (several): Pt. VIIB (blank — NO independent contractors here) and VIII (Revenues) showing that most of that $2.7M startup funding was “government grants...” almost nothing grassroots or from the private sector…
BWJP Initial return (EIN#46-3584341) FYOct1 2015-Sep30 2016. Image #6 of (several): Pt. IX Expenses (not all, I believe thru Line 11g, which hovers just UNDER the 10% of Line 25 (not shown) which avoids having to give an account for it separately. A tradition matched by its predecessor DAIP (501©3), I also noticed. What was $213K of “Other professional services” spent on in an entity which hires no independent contractors over $100K but had access to $2.7M of government grants?
BWJP Initial return (EIN#46-3584341) FYOct1 2015-Sep30 2016. Image #7 of (several): Sched O detail; first item acknowledges it had a predecssor organization but manages NOT to give it a name. Maybe most people will NEVER figure it out may be the hope? … “Cute.”..
Notice that the “Sched. O” reference (top item) to the return is “Part III, Line 2.” Part III Line 2 (which is the top of page 2) has several blank lines and this information could EASILY have fit in there (as well as on page 1). But evidently the fledgling BWJP on its own didn’t want to ‘fess up or raise curiosity about, or in any way encourage any connections to the actual name of its predecessor organization, which in DV circles, and certainly within Minnesota, is well-known if not famous in the field (Google “Ellen Pence” and see) Its practices have been cited as an international model. And its tax returns (only available through FY2014, and mislabeled by 990finder for years now).
This predecessor organization’s model has had the support of the well-known (but died with a daughter, other campaign staff and both pilots (8 people in all) in a small plane crash in October, 2002*) progressive Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone and particularly also his wife, Sheila Wellstone. (*NYT Oct 25, 2002, “Minnesota Senator Is Among 8 Dead in Crash
BWJP Initial return (EIN#46-3584341) FYOct1 2015-Sep30 2016. Image #7 of (several): Sched O Detail, “Financial Statements not made available to the public…” Although this organization, like its predecessor, is primarily government funded?? ???
I continue the BWJP tax return (Forms 990N) and website excerpts after this brief, but with quotes and images, interlude/reminder on the Wellstone influence and involvement in the direction of the domestic violence field, mid-1990s and thereafter, including thereafter for named institutes and action funds that outlived the Senator, his wife Sheila and his daughter Marcia.
They were definitely “into” supervised visitation. Two quotes from there (one image, and one from a 1995 speech by Sheila Wellstone posted at Wellstone.org. Image quality not that good, so I’m posting it actually as text:
(from “Sheila’s Speeches 1995.” This website doesn’t post the entity’s financials).
In Minnesota, we are very much in the front of the country in the work that is being done to stop the violence, but we still, in this state, have a very long way to go. Just coming into your jobs in the morning and reading the papers you know how bad it is. That 4,000 women a year are killed. That every 12 seconds a woman is beaten by her partner or husband. That severe, repeated beatings happen in one out of 14 marriages and that usually there are 35 incidences before it is reported. That up to 40 percent of women who are pregnant are battered during their pregnancies, and that the high percentage of the batterers are also abusing their children. And these statistics are based only on what we know.
Domestic violence is a crime. It is the crime that is most often occurring in this country, but it is the crime that is the least reported. Unfortunately there are probably women in this audience who are victims; there are women who you know where you work, where you go to church or synagogue, in your neighborhoods, in classrooms, and women in your family. It knows no boundaries, it matters not the color of your skin, where you live, how educated you are, what your income is, your sexual orientation, where you come from. Domestic violence, violence against women, is happening all over this country.
I got involved in this work for a very simple reason. I find it intolerable that a woman’s home can be the most violent or the most anxious place for her, often the most deadly, and that if she is a mother that it means that that’s the same kind of home that her children will be raised in. I’ve traveled all over Minnesota, talking with people from all parts of the community, and I’ve talked about myself and them, saying its time that we break these patterns. It’s time that we tell the secret, it’s time that we all come together to work towards ending the violence. It’s no longer an issue just for women; it’s an issue for women, an issue for men, an issue for children, an entire community’s issue. And we maybe can sit here in this room and say this is not affecting me, that I am one of the lucky ones, but I would like to talk about just a few ways that in fact we all are affected. …
We have also passed a law that would say there should be supervised visitation centers throughout this country so that when the court orders supervised visits, there is a safe place to go for the women and children. That all too often the woman risks the most harm after she has left, and this would be a safe place for her to make to make an exchange for the visit, for custody for a weekend or just a day visit for the child. We’ve also passed legislation that would say that anyone was under order of protection could no longer have a firearm of any kind.
So early on, incorporating the assumption that visitation with the violent parent should continue. See top of this post commentary on the rigged fights, and how when it came to prisons, state policy was changed after several deaths. Well, there have been ONGOING deaths, in-state and out of state involving court-ordered visitations, and sometimes, at or even during supervised visitations — yet the policy is NOT changed. Perhaps because it’s mostly women and children dying?? And no legislators are coming out against the continued practice, which would offend the domestic violence industry in their jurisdictions, which has based itself on compliance and perpetuation of that model (and has continued to welcome fatherhood practitioners into their ranks, and/or be taken over by them piecemeal (nonprofit by nonprofit)?
Notably, while Wellstone was not shy about confronting health insurance companies, doctors, or requesting trainings for judges, or getting the VAWA passed, or criticizing welfare reform (for defunding it, apparently — in this posted speech, for which NO context is labeled on the website, however) — somehow there was zero mention of confronting, challenging, or even suggesting that the concept of continued visitation with violent or abusive family members was a bad idea, and shouldn’t be done. … I also find it odd that this speech makes no mention of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Program (DAIP) in Duluth, MN or its famous “DuluthModel” (if active by then, which it probably was) — although the organization had started back in 1980, and with support by another, as I recall, state legislator. No, family first, safety second, and rights to be safe by AVOIDING CONTACT with dangerous persons — for the kids too… just make sure those visits are “supervised…”
Just this spring, Paul introduced legislation that said that health care and health insurance companies can no longer discriminate against a woman who is a victim because she has battering on her medical records.
I’ve posted this before, but in 2000, both Wellstones were keynote speakers at an AFCC conference focused on Alienation, Access, and Attachment (with special sessions on it), as was a well-known fatherhood researcher (then associated with the Ford Foundation), more speakers representing LGBQT rights, someone from Louisiana who’d authored a Covenant Marriage law (!), and someone involved in Troxel v. Granville, a visitation case that had reached the US Supreme Court.
This time (but not for surrounding images) click image to access underlying website and read the rest of (fairly short) statement on the “SWI”
With only this couple representing anything “feminist” to the point of truly strong stance against the crime of domestic violence, or even questioning the “Duluth model” or questioning the wisdom of accommodating judges who order visitation through setting up another (public-funded) entire field of practice (actually, expanding the use of a pre-existing one: this practice had been used for child abuse cases before with the goal of reuniting the abusive parents with their kids; just re-named and promoted through different organizations for application to “domestic violence” cases…), common sense had no spokesperson at the conference.
And during these years, was anyone outside the involved professionals publicizing to the larger audience — including abused women in shelters or seeking protection, or battered men — that the AFCC existed, was conferencing, had an agenda, and was working with people with connections to private foundation wealth (such as but not limited to Ford Foundation) to influence federal legislation involving subject matter that was really under state jurisdiction? With a goal to influencing custody and divorce outcomes? And was anyone outside the involved professionals publicizing to the larger audience communicating who was collaborating with whom, and cutting various compromises while still talking about bold steps and stances they were taking?
The FVPSA, again, passed in the 1980s and is still operational, and was in the 1990s too. Did the Wellstones talk about this and say why a different approach was needed? — and if so, how “different,” really, was continuing to support supervised visitation and related services?
Those are of course rhetorical questions.
Another article supports my understanding that the Wellstone influence — and this summarizes several of them — continued far past their lifetimes. Minnesota Democrats invoke the Wellstones in debate over domestic violence legislation (May 25, 2012 by Devin Henry in “MinnPost.” (informative on some of the history also): [[I did look up and look at MinnPost tax returns. It’s been around only since 2007, produces daily, started with $1.5M contributions, and maintained with combination of very modest (in general) levels + some advertising + (not much else) each year over time; fills in a boilerplate description of activities on Form 990 “program service accomplishments,” gradually condensed, and other sections (such as Part VIIB listing of directors and officers) “See add’tl info.
I could say more, but not here, but it shows a range of foundation sponsors over time which may be taking turns, as the contributions just aren’t that massive. Most money goes to salaries, and they’re only showing 20 employees. Their first paid publisher was only hired in 2014 (Andy Wallmeyer), who has an MBA and a background with the AP, Dow-Jones, and is “senior associate at McKinsey & Co. (global consulting). FY2015 showed his MinnPost pay (and the only paid officer) was $109K. His MBA dates to 2002.
The article goes on to show #1 Sheila was looking for a cause when her husband became senator, and picked this one, and that, clearly, #2 she was looking to frame it as more than just a legal issue — also a healthcare and social one:
…By the time then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden introduced the original VAWA legislation, a few years into her husband’s term, Sheila Wellstone had begun working with her staff and, at times, her husband’s, to put violence prevention and outreach measures into the bill.
Early on, she had two main policy focuses, Avner said: framing domestic violence as a health care and social justice issue instead of just a legal one, and working with Minnesota businesses to highlight the impact of domestic abuse on the workforce.
“She was a fast learner and she had a very deep commitment to ending the violence,” Avner said.
One of her first major goals was to provide more services for children who lived in abusive homes. Paul Wellstone added the provisions to the VAWA bill, creating an educational initiative for children exposed to violence and worked to ease## the exchange of custody for children in abusive homes.
##again, “ease” not “challenge.” By failing to solve the fundamental problem — expansion of professional, court-connected services was assured.
Later iterations of the bill contained Wellstone-backed provisions to protect immigrant women, and study the effectiveness of college programs to prevent sexual assault. He introduced a bill establishing a full-time Office on Violence Against Women in the Department of Justice…###
(read more at): Minnesota Democrats invoke the Wellstones in debate over domestic violence legislation (May 25, 2012 by Devin Henry in “MinnPost.”)
(next three images are re: MinnPost, the last one from the site re: its CEO from the start, Joel F. Kramer), and here’s a Sept. 2007 “preview” of the journal including some initial foundation support mentioned, and the background of some of its journalists (who, incidentally, are on contract and not employees, it says). His background at the StarTribune also interesting.
New Journalism – MinnPost Editor Previews Brave Venture (from another wordpress blog):
Note: Joel Kramer, the founder of MinnPost, the soon-to-be-launched internet-based daily, is trying something new and brave. We asked him to tell us a little about it, and here’s his guest post. Joel was my former boss at the Star Tribune, and a few of us from the blog have given Joel a little advice, worth every penny he paid for it. Tell us what you think about the new enterprise — and Joel invites comments at his site as well.
-Benidt
…MinnPost’s brand will be a thoughtful approach to news, for Minnesotans who care about high-quality journalism. We will emphasize reporting and analysis by experienced professionals. We will encourage these journalists to be innovative, courageous, and engaged with the audience – to take advantage of the tools the Web offers to do quality work in new ways. But we won’t forget the traditional principles that drive great journalism – accuracy, fairness, aggressive reporting and compelling story-telling.
In an era of out-of-town newspaper owners shrinking the resources devoted to news, this is an exciting mission.
That’s why we’re attracting so many outstanding journalists. More than 30 have signed on to work for MinnPost, and if you check out our website, www.minnpost.com, you’ll see new names added. Most of them are veterans of the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press or City Pages, including – just to name a few – Pulitzer Prize winners John Camp and Chris Ison, well-known columnists Doug Grow and Dave Beal, and experienced arts writers Linda Mack and David Hawley. But we’re also attracting young talent, like Christina Capecchi, whose monthly column “Twenty Something” appears in 30 Catholic papers across the country. She will write for MinnPost about culture and technology.
And we’re attracting money. We announced in late August (with the help of Bruce Benidt and a couple of other people who hang around this blog – thank you all) with $850,000 of seed money from four families and a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation in Miami. I’m expecting to obtain initial national foundation support. But one of the keys to sustainability is annual support from members, along the lines of public radio and public television. Three weeks after our announcement, we have more than 130 members, who have contributed a combined $56,000. A good start, considering that we haven’t begun publishing yet.
### (referencing the above 2012 quote from this on-line journal on the Wellstones’ influence on the VAWA) that’s an interesting formation of further control over (and limitations to) the field. Ever looked at the grantmaking lists and how many of them are “discretionary” and who or what entities (including non-entities) get positioned as technical assistance providers on the grant making? Plus the lack of decent accountability and transparency on their usage, and only periodic DOJ /OIG (office of inspector general) audits of the recipient organizations.
Reframing it as not just a legal issue: While DV does affect almost every other area of life for those dealing with it, this re-framing also worked to undercut the strength of its handling in the legal area as many of us (mothers who left their children’s fathers because of the abuse, although this is I realize a subset of women with children dealing with attempting to maintain boundaries, survive economically, and do this through the current family law systems…by which I mean, not all were married to their children’s father/s)..
It’s also classic to the Minnesota approach shown (1999ff at least) through the University of Minnesota’s SSW (School of Social Work) individuals, both men, Jeffrey Edleson and Oliver Williams (the latter through IDVAAC, a center at UMN, and the former, along with helping Williams by co-authoring books with him over time (it’s unclear whether, despite long years in the field and as professor, Williams ever published his own book), and (Edleson) through his role in the Greenbook (similar tendencies –reframing the issue under “health” not law — as the AFCC Winter 2000 conference above, subtitled “Balancing Legal Issues with the Needs of the Family.” The vague reference to “legal issues” (as well as claiming to be spokespersons for children when it comes to “Needs of the Family,” as defined by AFCC membership and presenters, and under a logo which reads in part “KIDS COUNT ON US”) is troubling.
The IRS confirms that a Form 990-N for Battered Womens Justice Project (no “Women‘s” shown) declaring maximum revenues $50K was filed by this organization for FY2013 and 2014, and nothing before that:
IRS Exempt Org. Select Check search for “990-N” filers under BWJP EIN# produced results for two years (FY2013 and 2014).
Current “BWJP.org” states the current situation (but not all the relevant facts to it) in stating, now correctly, that it actually is a 501©3 — something it couldn’t say before 2013, although the name was in use for years earlier…but (cleverly) in association with two other, legit. nonprofits (though not ones actually in the State of Minnesota) (National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women and one other).. (who showed up as DAIP (“theduluthmodel.org” organization) grantees year after year — in small amounts.
See next image. Captions for images are near (not directly under, as usual) the images. {{Technical challenges, my work-around was to post the image captions for these few as nearby text.}}
“BWJP serves as the Comprehensive Technical Assistance Provider for the Dept. of Justice/OVAW Improving Criminal Justice Response to Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence, Dating Violence and Stalking Grant Program.“Since when? Is it a USDOJ subcontractor then? Why not post some financials, “BWJP??” now that you qualify to have some!!
<==Yet BWJP has time to post names of its staff and board members. Just no “financials.” I recognize three of the above (but then again, I was reading HHS DV grantees, including to the nonprofit that formerly sponsored BWJP in MN, as well as some AFCC newsletters where Loretta Frederick, speaking AS IF on behalf of battered women nationwide, presumably, had her say — while continuing (along with DAIP) not to, really, talk about the PRWORA HRMF funding, ongoing, that was impacting family state custody procedings involving child abuse, DV, or allegations of the same. Nor was the possibility of NOT having Supervised Visitation seriously ever considered, although as early as 1992, (Jack C. Straton, PhD) spoke under the DAIP umbrella against the practice, including for what it communicated to children who had already been exposed to violence or abuse by the same parent they were to see under supervised visitation and participate in the play-acting. (link on my sidebar widgets still, I’ll bet).
An admission that it’s a 501©3 accompanies solicitation for money, stocks or bonds, matching gifts — anything….Mailing address (but no EIN#) provided…
Meanwhile “Foundation Center” (whoever responsible for this continuing name screwup for DAIP) continues to make matters worse by filing the DAIP tax returns under the wrong name, meaning — if you already know the correct EIN#, or wrong name, you might be able to locate them…which I did, and notice that DAIP hasn’t (or it’s not available here) since the FY2014, matches by YE Sep 30, the spinoff, BWJP:
I searched by the wrong name first, to get the EIN# (again) then searched the EIN# to see if there’s been any more recent filings under some other name (like the actual entity business name…). There hadn’t. FYI, the “2015” shown references the END of the fiscal year; and in organizations (such as this) whose fiscal year does not match the calendar year (i.e., Dec. 31 of each year) whenever the “yr” is displayed at least on this database (“Form990finder” by Foundation Center, itself another nonprofit), which information should be found out by clicking through — you should mentally translate it to the prior fiscal year, which again, could reflect on an organization’s filing promptness and habits. Also, fiscal years can be changed mid-stream and many times are, which should be factored in when looking (possibly by tweaking the YYYY_MM990 portion, that is, the date portion, of the URL) for previous years’ returns.
DAIP labeled “MPDI” (EIN#41-1382134). The wrong name implies a state-wide focus, but the focus has been (inter)national for many years now. From active links search results (posted nearby, 12/17/2017 example post) click through and see..
Total results: 3. Search Again.
| ORGANIZATION NAME | ST | YR | FORM | PP | TOTAL ASSETS | EIN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minnesota Program Development | MN | 2015 | 990 | 29 | $1,509,221 | 41-1382134 |
| Minnesota Program Development | MN | 2014 | 990 | 24 | $1,454,065 | 41-1382134 |
| Minnesota Program Development | MN | 2013 | 990 | 26 | $1,345,500 | 41-1382134 |
The extended footnote added about 4,000 words to this post, and may be later re-located, leaving only a small “footprint” here. Or, it may not… either way, again…
Go back to the “Money Maze” post from which this came by clicking HERE:
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
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