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

I started this on and as a post update to one I wanted to cite to (first published June 15, 2011, already with a 2016 update; apparently the topic retains its relevance…), but from slightly different angle of approach, as it explains in the first few paragraphs.

• Evaluate, Coordinate, call “Alienator!” Pt. 4– Three AFCC Ph.D.’s on ONE case and “PAS” = 2011 NH Supreme Court custody reversal. And what’s Warshak got to do with it? [First publ. June 15, 2011, not on blog TOC yet]. with WordPress-generated, case-sensitive shortlink ending “-JR”.  Publication date added to title later]. Originally about 11,200 words. Some image links have been broken, a few (not all) replaced later.

This post title: Revisiting Reunification Camps: The Nice Clinical Psychologists involved Just Want to Help Traumatized Kids and “Families in Transition” (or “Transitioning Families”), in “protected spaces” (away from naysayers, critics, and potential negative witnesses) … It’s the Good Ole, Time-Tested, Court-Ordered and of course (™)’d Way [Publ. Dec. 21, 2017].. Case-sensitive shortlink ends “-8cC,” written Dec. 16-21, 2017.

Regarding the “(™)’d” comment in the post title, here’s some proof, for the phrase referenced. I looked it up at USPTO.gov, “TESS” (Trademark Electronic Search System) by individual name (after not finding the longer phrase, “Transitioning Families Therapeutic Reunification Model” (or “TFTRM”)  trademarked) and, it was registered — just recently and just  a month before an article citing to it came out in the April, 2016 Family Court Review (Patience!, I show that below) — and as I suspected, owned by a single individual, giving that individual the appearance of an actual business where none is recorded:

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After that, I get into looking at what isn’t apparently a large operation, or possibly while an “operation” still not even a legitimate (separate) business entity of its own  (website and trademarked logo read “Transitioning Families”), but where at least one of the leaders evidently has connections in more than one state to the family court system. Then again, this type of personnel tend to operate in networks … word travels fast about potential high-profile cases that might help the cause.

I did find a cancelled LLC registration for “Transitioning Families” in Glen Ellen, California (the USPTO trademark registration, was at a PO Box in the same, small town. The website seems to contain no contact mailing address at all).  Its registered agent in 2016 (Charles Holmes), then a 2017 filing added Rebecca Bailey’s name to it and confirmed it was the same (“Type of Business:  “Hold Trademark, Treatment Programs”) and later the same month voluntarily dissolved, or as I guess SOS search results call it, “cancelled.”

Apart from using the name in commerce for five years before seeking to trademark it, then suddenly cancelling a VERY short-lived LLC, while keeping the website up, this would seem odd.  However, I’m glad I looked, because the “Trulia” view of the address: 1. classifies it as farm/ranch; and 2. the (satellite view) showed it looking dark and burnt-out.  Did the fires have anything to do with the cancellation? And if the LLC was cancelled but programs continue, to whom are payments made, whether by a parent or possibly by some insurance provider?

(On looking closer, I see two “fire updates” (October 14, 2017 and November 29, 2017) They did have to evacuate, have temporary place, and are rebuilding.  Nothing on the site references any business status, however, or that an LLC ever existed, or was cancelled because of the fire (presumably to be re-registered later??)

Glen Ellen, CA IS in Sonoma County (“wine country”) in Northern California, and there were major fires in this area this past fall; parts of it were under evacuation orders.  I shudder to think what this might have meant if there were treatment programs involving alienated children or “recalcitrant adults” there at the time (maybe there weren’t) but, til further notice, that would seem to provide a possible explanation of why the LLC “Transitioning Families” might be cancelled — although why Rebecca’s name first appeared, then disappeared, from the registration (at California SOS Business-entity / LLC-search level) is still puzzling, or why if the LLC wasn’t shut down, the website wasn’t also, acknowledging the emergency situation created by California’s fires. Note:  Trademarks as I understand it are for “goods and services” but business names (when it comes to LLCs or corporations) are for the business itself.

 

Anyone involved in this particular operation / outfit / program / so-called treatment model or promoting it should not estimate that my choice to report here indicates my estimate of its importance in the larger field, other than as a symptom.

The family court, and “court-connected-corporations” (and career professionals) field deals with copycats and cult-like groups adopting common jargon and attempting to position themselves as the “go-to” people for family courts, domestic violence, child abuse and when there’s apparently not enough of that type of court-connected, psycho-educational attitude adjustment work to go around, also for post-abduction scenarios.  The ones I feature are often chosen because they are so typical, in a series of similar but slightly differentiated, named (and sometimes trademarked) programs, and because looking at them other than by engaging with the rhetoric involved (although I also do that when it’s so symptomatic of the originating association), but by doing more searches for registrations, and commonalities between the groups and individuals sponsoring them tends to bring up such fascinating information.**

**Like the ability to make a pun on the word “Stable” (steady, as in  paths out of alienation, and also, here involving real stables, as in housing for horses…) in such a fixed-point-of-view group of professionals with what appears to be, judging by the websites and articles — which I’ve been reading in general for about nine years, a seriously limited vocabulary outside professional names, associations, and jargon of the field, usually liberally sprinkled with what’s not exactly jargon, but seeks to feature expert status (clinical, clinician, forensic, treatment models, etc.) In one of the images below, annotating this, I included a “Jargon-O-Meter” in case my description here isn’t clear enough.

**Or how deft was the switching of a treatment model featured for NONfamily abductions for application to the FAMILY abductions (and high-conflict divorce, alienated children..) field, not to mention an increasing tendency to get published by Oxford University Press. (Notice, its categories include “Social Sciences” after the others — see nearby image, top banner with links).

**While, in the same context just about, repeatedly using a phrase, and choose a “goods & services” name (Transitioning Families), where “transition” is mostly a noun, but if used as a verb, with the root (underlying) meaning “to go across” (Trans + ire <==Latin for “to go”) would normally — except for business usage tending to ignore meaningful language, or its guidelines — be INtransitive, meaning, not taking a direct object.  Quick illustration (Grammar Bytes!) of Transitive versus Intransitive verbs.  Transitive verbs have direct objects.   Better but still straightforward definition at Oxforddictionaries.com

Online Etymology Dictionary doesn’t even have a reference to it as a verb, just as a noun:  mid-15c., from Latin transitionem (nominative transitio) “a going across or over,” noun of action from past participle stem of transire “go or cross over” (see transient).

The verb “go” isn’t used with a direct object is it?  “I was going the boxes from the old house to the new”  No– the word is “moving.”   So why use the word “transitioning” whose root word means “go across” with a direct object?   (Similar situations in common use:  “she graduated high school” for “she graduated FROM high school..” — the high school didn’t move from one state to another by virtue of someone completing it, unless she was a real hell-raiser, and it graduated from one state to another by virtue of her presence as the actor).

The school graduates the person, who moves, who “steps forward or up” FROM the school — and not vice versa!  (Etymology again — the root word is “step”).  A school, for example, could be said to have graduated (using it as a transitive verb) 1,000 (or any other number of) students, because it did.  The students are the direct object in that sensible use of the verb, thus becoming so-called graduates (noun) OF the school or that level of schooling.

Here’s even a conjugation (possibly for English-language learners) of the “irregular” verb “transition” in “I, you, he/she, we, and they” forms — not one of which used reasonably in a sentence would take a direct object. (Conjugator.reverso.net for the verb transition)

And yet here’s the two-word, trademarked phrase, “Transitioning Families,” which if you think about it, is unclear whether “transitioning” means “transitioning THE (alienated, disconnected, formerly separated by abduction, etc.) families” and is from a verb usage (making “Families” the direct object), or whether it’s meant to be an adjective, a “descriptor,” taken from the noun to describe such families, indicating a “from the sidelines” stance from those using the phrases  — i.e., we observe that the families are just undergoing a “transition” — and we’re here to help them, and better facilitate it (through family-court-ordered reunification therapy…after which they should have “transitioned” to a more connected state.

In which interpretation, it would seem that the trademark is saying — they’re already “in transition,” but we are just the midwives and facilitators of a natural process (which in the actual context, is a less than honest description).

See more at FOOTNOTE “TRANSITIONING LANGUAGE” on the bottom of this post. I just thought it relevant to mention in light of the people using the phrase getting published by the esoteric and highly-regarded, premiere university-associated, “Oxford University Press.”

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A person could jump in almost anywhere on the network and find similar DNA (and especially language, and if it’s checked further, often associated personnel by membership in AFCC or its members’ assortments of similar spinoff (though not legally or fiscally related; just “ideologically” related) nonprofits or institutes.  Considering the size of other organizations I’ve just been looking at (for poverty-reduction, including how promoting marriage and father-involvements will do the trick)  — Ford Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation, New Venture Fund (21st century startup combining funds from other philanthropies), IPA (2002ff, Innovations for Poverty Action), taking $35M or more government grants in a year, etc. — this reunification treatment model from California will prove financially minuscule.  But, it still represents the type of mentality, especially blending treatments for victims of crimes by non-families with the same purpose to somehow overcome resistance to involvement by children with a parent who has committed documented crimes, or forms of abuse and violence against them, society and/or their other children.

And, some of the involved websites sporting names do not always match up to identifiable business entities (for-profit or not-for-profit), or dbas for identifiable and registered business entities.  Therefore making a size estimate about what may operate, in part, outside normal reporting vehicles, would be difficult. I shouldn’t mention this — as any professional has a right to register a trade name for doing business under, as I showed at the top of this post  — except that AFCC itself and its chapters have a habit of flying “under-the-radar” and operating as private, networked associations WITHOUT staying legally registered, and doing so at times right out of public buildings, including courthouses, or court administrative services buildings.  I show some of the chapter claims (on the home (main entity) website versus as shows up on an IRS database as having actually filed tax returns under chapter names.  Therefore even though it would seem that a single equine-therapy reunification treatment program (or even several of them) may be small in size, that’s a qualified statement when no way to measure it is known, and when no such way is made readily available by the involved professionals on the websites advertising their services under one or another name (trademarked, registered as a “dba” or not), then we, the public, do not have a practical way to see its size, or numbers, of what’s flowing through the network in terms of families complying with forced reunification therapy or other court-ordered consumption of services by, if I may, “this crowd…”.

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In this post I look at a program trademarked as “Transitioning Families” and it provides “reunification therapy” in camp or so-called “outpatient” settings.  I also referenced, elsewhere and again recently on another post, more extensively, Richard Warshak’s Family Bridges, and a Massachusetts-based “Overcoming Barriers” and I have been properly connecting ALL THREE with ongoing leadership and membership and influence of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (“AFCC”) which, especially in the earlier years, occupied about half the attention of this blog (the other half being spent, I’d say, on tracking HHS Marriage/fatherhood grants and grantees as relates to Welfare Reform of 1996, and connecting the two).

A Family Court Review article (an AFCC publication) comes up in TransitioningFamilies.com, and looking it up, I noticed its lead author was Abigail M. Judge.

For the record (and finding this closer to completion than the beginning of writing this post), I just found a single page in a book published by Robin Deutsch and Abigail Judge which (on its page 83, image below, Google book long url condensed to: https://tinyurl.com/DeutschJudge-Parent-ChildObjex) manages to positively plug, and compare ALL THREE Reunification (conflict reduction, alienation-repair, etc.) treatment models under these names, and even another one in British Columbia modeled on Warshak’s:

• Overcoming Barriers
• Family Bridges (Warshak)
• Family Reflections (in BC, modeled on Warshak’s “Family Bridges”), and
• Transitioning Families, stated as starting around 2008 (the website at some point says, 2006).

I noticed this came out — Oxford University Press — the fall after publication in Family Court Review of a single, 18-page article on the model discussed on this post, that is, October 2016.  For “only” $46, you can get the on-line version of this page-turner and listen to the authors talk about their own creations and those of their colleagues drinking out of the same linguistic watering hole (or should I say, who have “drunk the behavioral science” Kool-Aid?”  Maybe I shouldn’t, but like others get the word “parental alienation” out on the blogosphere and attempt to dress it up as a disease, I did get that image nearby, eh?)

Overcoming Barriers (I referenced in the earlier, June 15, 2011 post with prior 2016 update that this is an update to) I see has moved its entity address from Massachusetts to California, while continuing to file “Forms 990EZ and not completing them according to instructions, which require that for each activity, corresponding expenses be reported.  Instead, expenses are reported on a series of individual categories of expense fragments on “Schedule O,” parsed out under travel, conferences, clinicians, staff (etc.).  It’s also still, by the numbers assuming they are to be believed, a very small operation.  One of its board members still includes a retired SF Family Court (as I recall) Commissioner or (DNR which) Presiding Judge, Majorie Slabach, who I’d previously featured EARLY on this post when several of the judges and commissioners were caught partying, costumed as royalty (robes, fake crowns, the whole deal) and referring to themselves as “Camelot” (“CamiLawt” or similar phrase) complete with lyrics to match.  Simultaneously, they were featured on “poor magazine” for their hostility towards single mothers…  Robin Deutsch’s name is not on the 2016 board of directors list but she is apparently “clinical staff” as well as co-founder. (use Search function on this blog to locate).

 

For just how many other places the “overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems” book is being sold through and featured, search the title.  Take a look at the variety of sites besides book distribution companies (Amazon, Goodreads, etc.)…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An understanding of the organization (Association of Family and Conciliation Courts) seeking to dominate the family court system and transform it to a private mental-health provision model, and that this private model absolutely entails re-framing criminal events as something else, and to basically criminalize family members protesting or reporting of criminal acts including against themselves, while minimizing the criminal acts helps translate “reunification camps” and “therapy” into real-life situations.

Tell me, what kind of personnel, policy-makers, legislators, or other holders of major wealth and in positions of power just might be interested in disarming, de-fanging, and derailing the functionality and even the underlying basis of a justice system which exists, by permission and as part of the US government (the one under serious dismantling process here through diversion to behavioral health services instead), to prosecute violent crime for the safety of the people presumably where justice cannot (or should not) be bought.  When it pertains to vulnerable populations, such as children?  And while maintaining, separately, a posture that it’s actually protecting and defending the children (and helping prevent “Violence Against Women”) in other places?

Protesting abuse is now not protesting abuse, and legitimate — when coming from within a family unit or former family unit (involving at least one male parent) — but a social sickness, a treatable pathology.  The system is in place, the networks are in place, and the replicating models are indeed replicating:

(from Overcoming Barriers 2016 tax return detail, shown just above):

OUTPATIENT REUNIFICATION TRAINING DEVELOPMENT Design for Out Patient Reunification Training completed Review of footage from TX training completed Online Distribution collaboration with College planned##

##[[which college? William James College (a renamed “Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology,”) where Robin Deutsch is featured in a Center for Excellence in Families, Children and the Law, i.e., is working? In what state? The IRS could easily have mentioned, but didn’t… This sounds like a single training was video’d and then will be further monetized through online-distribution and associated with, no doubt, training fees, and through some college, if not William James.]] Also note: Dr. Deutsch’s background shown there (through a click on thumbnail photo, not the other link provided on the “Center” page] includes like Dr. Judge’s, some time working in Psychology at Harvard (“Formerly an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School“). And, is laced throughout with AFCC involvements and leadership, at the national and state chapters, as well as positions of influence at the state level, AND references to roles involving the nonprofit NCJFCJ and Minnesota-based AFCC “token DV consultants, “BWJP.

AFCC has been grrr–eat to Robin Deutsch for filling out the resume.  For example (just an example) in 2015, out of ALL the above presentations (count the bullets) listed, only one (regarding topics AFCC specializes in) wasn’t actually an AFCC conference, but to the Family Law Section of NY State Bar Association.  One might fairly question whether this professional can afford for her loyalties to lie anywhere BUT to this organization, and whether this might legitimately impact world views, and points of reference for measuring, say, ethics, and expert opinions:

• Invited Pre-Conference Institute Presenter with Peggie Ward, Ph.D. and John Moran, Ph.D.  Nuts and bolts of an intensive reunification intervention when a child resists a parent,  AFCC 52nd Annual conference, New Orleans, LA, May 27, 2015.
  • with whom she runs Overcoming Barriers (i.e., a business relationship, but not listed in the title there).
• Plenary panel participant, Protecting children from high conflict:  New Initiatives, 18th Annual Family Law Conference, Boston, MA, April 10, 2015. {{PRESENTER or CONFERENCE SPONSOR NOT LISTED THERE}}
• Keynote Speaker, Intimate partner violence:  What is it and how does it affect children, parents and parenting?  Family Services of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, March 27, 2015 {{appears to be part of a Canadian province’s government…}}
• Plenary panel participant, Working across disciplines:  Conversation from the custody evaluation and intimate partner task force. AFCC California Chapter Annual Conference, Costa Mesa, CA, February 7, 2015.
• Invited Pre-Conference Institute Presenter with Matthew Sullivan and John Moran, Practical applications of intensive interventions for children who resist/refuse contact with a parent, AFCC California Chapter Annual Conference, Costa Mesa, CA, February 6, 2015.
  • with whom she runs Overcoming Barriers (i.e., a business relationship, but not listed in the title there).
• Pre-conference Institute Speaker with William Austin, Gabrielle Davis, Leslie Drozd, Loretta Frederick, Arnold Sheinvold, Nancy Ver Steegh, Sometimes things aren’t what they seem:  Child custody evaluation in the context of coercive-controlling intimate partner violence, AFCC California Chapter Annual Conference, Costa Mesa, CA, February 6, 2015.
  • {{Davis and Frederick long associated with BWJP (including before it spun off of Duluth, Minnesota’s “DAIP” — which it says it only became active as its own entity on October 1, 2015… on the tax returns..  DAIP has been on the federal dole, and an advanced search I did recently at TAGGS.HHS.Gov showed over $23M grants, about 40 awards (line items, which may include some “0”s) (HHS alone) since about 1995 (and that’s only how far back the database — not necessarily the grants — went.  Meanwhile, a “Basic Search” at TAGGS.HHS.gov for the exact same entity name showed only $8M of grants, showing anyone who sees this that something is seriously wrong with TAGGS.HHS.GOV “Basic Search” (the one most likely to be used) function.  
  • NANCY Ver STEEGH holds down the “AFCC” fort at the William Mitchell College of Law (which I seem to recall very recently merged with another law, larger school.  This came up while researching tobacco litigation issues.}} Shienvold is from PA.
• Keynote Speaker, Parenting Plans:  What are the controversies?  New York State Bar Association, Family Law Section, New York, New York, January 29, 2015.

I didn’t recognize the name John Moran, but see his (scant) website showing an Arizona connection (Maricopa County) and major interest in reunification also, and “psychosexual” incidents as well as allegations of abuse (etc.).   (sample:  “Parent-Rejecting Children and Therapeutic Reunification“)

The John Moran PhD website is dated “2012” and shows only two “articles.” I provided one link above, and below (skipping the large photo of a young girl in braids and the title), two images from the other, which is footnoted simply “Family Law News” with no other real identification.  Warning: The subject matter is disturbing, but this seems to be with whom Deutsch is presenting, conferencing and has no problem hanging out with professionally.

Look at his response and characterizations about danger to the child being worse from non-family members, and if the other spouse doesn’t back off from concern about the danger after (he’s) passed official screenings as not having perpetrated anything bad, then (she) will need psychotherapy to (be persuaded to just deal with it…). This paragraph’s summary is from a glance at the (short) article, and is not intended to be a full, or detailed abstract.  You can read for yourself from the website.

(Any comments under secondary (second-indent) bullets above obviously are mine. As well as emphases of any sort and anything in olive-colored font).

A bit more on-line search (person’s name) shows John A. Moran as 2010 Arizona AFCC chapter president.  Found at an AzAFCC Chapter “2011 Summit Project” re: developing “resources” for family law professionals, regarding “High-Conflict Parents,” which summit committee involved FIVE Superior Court Judges, many chapter members, and a few names readers who follow these custody issues may recognize from elsewhere (Philip Stahl, William Fabricius, Annette Burns (current AFCC President, I think).

More “plugs” in three images from the same (on-line book), search results by page number show the constant reference to mutual enterprises (however recent). These images show several inches below on this post (similar appearance, and I’ll include caption with the link for each one).

Notice the repeated references to the Family Court Review article, and to “Stablepaths.com” which I’d already deduced was somehow connected with Transitioning Families.

That’s how the network functions — they refer constantly to each other once someone comes out with anything marketable and which could be sold as somehow “new” (although, in general, ALL of it will reference High Conflict Divorces, and Parental Alienation, Alienated child, alienated parents, and now I see there’s a “preferred parent” designation being used in a treatment name.

And ALL of it, in general, at some point will feature one, two, several, or a high percentage of AFCC member professionals (with or without revealing this; if other credentials can be cited instead) and exploiting each and every possible “Ph.D.” regardless of what field it was in (as in, often, psychology, or counseling)..  It’s a  real thing to behold in action, with each new round of family court facilitated (or forced) whole-family treatments, including healing from trauma resulting from court policies which make it hard for people separating from abusive spouses or parents to actually do so, and have many and devious ways to punish those who are serious about the separation.

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Another quick search of “Abigail Judge, Ph.D.” (co-author with long-time AFCC leadership (and Overcoming Barriers participant) Robin Deutsch) showed immediately she’s:

• one or two generations younger;
• running or featured in “StablePaths.com” (sounds like a dual-usage or pun for the word “stable” as horses are involved, i.e., equine-assisted therapy) (See further images below, citing references from the GoogleBook (tinyurl.com/DeutschJudge-Parent-ChildObjex)  to “StablePaths.com”) alongside “Transitioning Families”; and
• a quick look at Stablepaths.com website (I looked at EVERY page just now) shows similar appearance and “feel” to TransitioningFamilies.com (though a different color scheme) and that it’s a shameless promotion of not just AFCC agenda (the usual..) but under “Resources” link (<==) also many books by Amy L. Baker (who managed to make a career around preaching parental alienation and, as a result, is popular with fathers’ rights groups, including one that changed its name from “Fathers and Families” (as I recall) to “NPO” – National Parents Organization).  So, given that StablePaths.com is essentially, AFCC-drenched, and promoting Amy J.L. Baker books, it’s a reasonable inference that AFCC is itself rather into fathers’ rights also, regardless of the gender of professionals promoting it….

Good grief, Amy Baker has “taken it up a notch” and is, copying the others involved in “equine therapy” for alienated children, now targeting ADULT alienated children in her “Restoring Family Connections” (a website apparently thrown together quickly on “wix” but linked to her own, “AmyBaker.com” home page).  “Restoring Family Connections,” surprise, surprise, (sic), is selling a manual (training), books of course, and offering (or, her website does, forget which) telephone coaching for “only” $230 an hour… (incidentally, if one clicks around enough, Stablepaths.com, operational it says in South Boston and in Florida, although it tends to avoid mentioning any $$ figures (its own, or the fees it charges) under “Financials,” does have a website referencing coaching also — and that’s about $200/hour as I recall.
Don’t get me wrong– Ms. or rather, Dr. Judge, has the qualifications, her resume makes it clear.But to some of us following the trends year after year, it’s also clear that as a (much) younger professional, she’s solid on that AFCC track, so the inter-generational transmission of “parental alienation” “high conflict” and getting the courts to force-order entire families into therapy with AFCC associated and promoting professionals, continues.  Stable Paths resume also identifies that she was at least temporarily on Massachusetts Chapter of AFCC Board of Directors (entity formed up only in 2002 and I see has been filing Forms 990-N, probably only, ever since.  However the IRS “Exempt Org. Search” (Pub. 78 data) by EIN# search only records them 2007ff (possibly its data doesn’t go back further, call the IRS at their 800# provided for more official status; as even that website says in a disclaimer).

Images cannot all display immediately next to their relevant text because they typically take up more space.  Here, two annotated (pls. read the annotations) images from “StablePaths.com” appear before the several more images much further below, showing page# references in the Judge/Deutsch “Overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems” book (Google book version) which reference it.

In 2010, Judge’s website referred to her as Clinical Fellow in Psychology.  Just to be aware, many AFCC members are psychologists, and can become associated with (prominent or other) medical schools not as doctors, or psychiatrists, but in this capacity: as psychologists.  I eventually did find her position description (imaged below, tan with maroon borders), and it’s “instructor in psychology in department of psychiatry” which is itself under the Harvard Medical School.  Robin Deutsch (co-author of “Overcoming Parent-Child Barriers..” with Dr. Judge) also has a biography on her faculty page at Wm. James College (geographically in the area) which says she was “…Formerly an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School,”  so apparently they had some career path in common.  Although Abigail Judge attended Brandeis first.

Here’s Harvard’s Dept. of Psychiatry (notice the Stable Paths description doesn’t mention in which department at HMS she works part-time) describing its own range of services:

The Department of Psychiatry of Harvard Medical School coordinates the psychiatric resources of nine major teaching institutions in the Greater Boston area into a collaborative whole that is dedicated to quality clinical services, excellent training and education, and innovative research. This collaboration is accomplished by developing complementary, interdigitated {{?? }} and specialized roles that optimize the existing expertise and unique strengths of each participant institution.

The Department has over 1,700 faculty and 500 trainees across its nine participating institutions. Clinically it has a full range of clinical programs for patients with psychiatric and substance abuse disorders, including over 300 acute inpatient beds, holding/respite beds, partial hospital programs, emergency and crisis intervention programs, residential programs, outpatient services, and expert consultation services to medical patients with co-morbid psychiatric disorders. The nine sites include private general hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and public sector and VA Boston Healthcare System. Services are delivered in a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, coordinated and cost-efficient manner that meets the needs of patients, families and the community.

The scholarly and research activities of the Department are characterized by their diversity, ranging from molecular neurobiology to the application of psychoanalytic theory to literature interpretation. In addition, the Department has initiated efforts to develop centers of excellence in emerging specialty areas of psychiatry including child and adolescent psychiatry, geriatrics, clinical psychopharmacology, consultation-liaison, forensic psychiatry, epidemiology, mental health services research, and serious and persistent mental illness. The total amount of sponsored research funding across the Department is over $100M annually.

I did find Abigail Judge, PhD listed at Harvard (“Advanced People Search“) but with no more information (on institution or department) than you see there:  name and degree, even though searches can be filtered by institution (drop-down menu shows how very many) or departments (ditto).  There are five clinical science faculty listed under Harvard Dept. of Psychology/Clinical (she’s not one.  Interesting list of course requirements…). Eight faculty under “social psychology”  Four under “developmental psychology”  and sixteen under “Cognition, Brain and Behavior.” However Dr. Judge is saying she’s part-time faculty with HMS (not the Dept. of Psychology).

Here it is — part-time instructor in psychology, in the HMS dept. of psychiatry (found from basic “People” search starting this time at “harvard.edu.” The link has no more detail, such as which courses she teaches.

It appears that Robin Deutsch has been something of a support and mentor not just from co-authoring, but favorable mentions on each others websites (of Deutsch on StablePaths.com for A.M. Judge, OvercomingBarriers.com for R. Deutsch, home page moving banner includes one featuring the book).

 

The first three (name searches, basic internet search on Google) links showed:  her own website, this book’s website, and stablepaths.com website.

[Next paragraph repeated from aboveto clarify point of reference and context of the one after (i.e., “this association” means “AFCC” not “StablePaths”).  My posts undergo many revisions. Typically I insert sections, which may separate the flow of meaning or strand a paragraph, making the antecedent to its pronouns or context unclear in the immediately preceding paragraph context).  The repeated paragraph is in purple font:

An understanding of the organization (Association of Family and Conciliation Courts) seeking to dominate the family court system and transform it to a private mental-health provision model, and that this private model absolutely entails re-framing criminal events as something else, and to basically criminalize family members protesting or reporting of criminal acts including against themselves, while minimizing the criminal acts helps translate “reunification camps” and “therapy” into real-life situations.

 

That purpose includes but is not limited to, nor is this the only association interested in the agenda, to substitute “thought-” and “relationship-” crimes for violations of the state penal codes or what society commonly understands “crime” to mean.  It’s also just a part of an ongoing, multi-faceted push (not just from this organization) to re-align society to the behavioral health model, setting up alternate systems of meaning (alternate from the laws of the land) and new quasi-“priesthood” (or at least quasi-judicial) professions which cannot be challenged — because the subject matter is so subjective, and some of it defined by the creators and funders — and not open to fair challenge by outsiders, or “the common man.”

While families are families, and governments / “the state” is “government” or “the state” it’s not THAT far a jump from one to the other, when the governments are already intervening “parens patriae” (in a patronizing manner) with structuring of families, housing, education, our social environments, communications, and  what values are and are not acceptable in the next generation.

And it seems billions of dollars are being invested, on-going, into ensuring that development of the personnel, tactics, practice models and existing systems of enforcing “attitude changes” and “belief shifts” on the relative importance of crimes against the person, including against one’s children or oneself, and reporting and protesting of them — to acquiescence in the name of the preserving “group” peace and “group dynamics.”

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I speak as now a “senior citizen,” and I’ve taken personal heat, losses, and forced sacrifices for over two decades now, in a supposedly progressive, liberal metropolitan location (San Francisco Bay Area), after living and functioning sufficiently and supporting myself (though at the time single) in other regions of this country, that functionality thanks in large part to parents who prioritized a college education and made provisions for it, and what some would call a nuclear family.  But once I took a stand against being battered within the context of marriage, and with small, and growing, observant, and deserving-better children in the same household, this apparently exposed or widened long-held personal rifts among this generation of my family.

And I have seen how many individuals within my family AND within the courts and social service systems, and at time over the years, law enforcement apparently believe that my “attitude adjustment” should revert from “There’s NO longer an excuse for abuse” to insisting that I immediately stuff it, all of it, back into the closet where it had spilled out from, and run my life pretending that any economic or work fallout was a natural consequence of being a single mother, or myself (even when ongoing actions were hauling me back into court, or forcing me to seek further restraint, help with child support enforcement, and at times police help getting the children back from court-ordered visitation, creating routine and repeated incidents around which I was supposed to somehow engage in a “normal” work life — and that, given this fallout which supposedly no longer related to anything involving “domestic violence” or dealing with an unrepentant (about the battering OR economic abuse OR attempted isolation from all but the most conservative religious circles) batterer I was not competent to make my own plans, and follow through them (which I was doing…) to figure out how to plan a life WITHOUT in-home battering, ongoing degration, terroristic threats, and unacceptable situations, as a routine.

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Moreover, my research and basic common sense has proved that traditional corporate employment is NOT the only way to make ends meet, that other avenues exist, and that part of the other avenues involves choices in location, housing, and for the parent with most responsibility to comply with state law and provide for decent education for minor children, also schooling.

But, being forced into mass-schooling, mass-corporate employment traditional for women, and the “school as child-care, and more child-care after school in exchange for minimum-wage or just above it work, full-time for mother” is apparently preferred, because this model gives the lowest ROI and, for families already involved in “high conflict divorce,” shall we say? (after abuse…), the MOST wasteful use of a single parent’s waking hours and life energies.  In addition, we are supposed to stay dependent on child support systems, such that we can be further controlled, when in fact, minimal and consistent protections with respect to individual choice and abilities, would’ve made possible adequate financial provision from just one parent.

Ideally, both parents should be providing — but not all men are going to, and some resent it so much they will harm the children, or just not work, to restore “balance” which, for them, entails “domination of the female.”  When they’ve already made it clear to partners, and to the state (by letting the arrears run up without showing any remorse or significant effort to change this despite still having contact with their children)  they are only “into” providing when they are “on top” of the pyramid — these are not situations where forced reunification should take place, but better boundaries to let at least the parent WILLING to work, to do so.

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Quick summary?  Well, we are building a “Mental/Behavioral Health Archipelago” would seem to fit, with intended comparison to the (in)famous “Gulag Archipelago.” Buyer-beware (and we are the buyers when it’s constructed from public resources and institutions) applies.

Dissenters will be and are being sent for their attitude adjustments, whether it be through a series of psycho-educational-dynamic classes intended to counter “parental alienation” or whether through being sent away (as minor children) to forcible, constructed scenarios where they must admit to, and exhibit, a change of attitude towards former abusers, such as the parent they ran away from, with help from the practitioner-clinicians etc…

For each of those situations, I’d still say — is the promo for them showing anything approaching to a credible identity which might lead to a chain-of-cash-flow from Point A through B (C,D,E, or etc.) to the service provider –and are those service providers doing so in an upright (i.e., if for-profit, reporting it properly ad paying appropriate taxes on it; and if organized as a NOT for profit, showing their “stuff” as required by state and IRS (that is, the Internal Revenue Code) laws.

In the case of Transitioning Families, and based on its website — no!  

And that’s also par for the course, as I decided to show also here, for state chapters of the AFCC and for the main AFCC also.  It/they, and their self-description websites individually and collectively utterly cannot be relied on to tell the truth in such simple fiscal, corporate matters, and often avoid leaving even a clue, a fingerprint, a smell, or a vestigial truthful piece of evidence or even a verbal reference to the existence of outside, non-company standards where such might be found (like mentioning the word “Forms 990” “tax return” or “financial statement” or “corporate registration, IRS ruling, etc., then how is any truth going to be told, in words, in the more sensitive, dynamic and subjective personal matters as it may intersect with other laws regarding the same?

In other words, would you hire a tax cheat who keeps company with the same, to hold a high standard of ethical and legal differentiation between abuse of children or others as important? Or, in those matters, also, might not the same feel they have the professional and privileged pre-rogative to act “above the law” (and/or under the radar) also?

[Some of the above references will make more sense with what I’m showing below, i.e., examples.]

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I chose this one only because it came to mind in association with two high-profile cases, one earlier in Northern California (Jaycee Dugard, NONfamilial abduction, lasting 18 years and eventually costing taxpayers $29M after lawsuits for the preventable and missed opportunities / chances to rescue her with known rapist/perp and his jailbird (she chose him while in jail to marry) wife, Phil and Nancy Garrido.  The other case, I heard that this provider was used for the not abducted, but runaway teen Rucki girls, after they were discovered and returned to their father, in Minnesota divorce-gone-NUTS (and that’s not a reference to the parents…) Grazzini-Rucki case, where the mother was forcibly ordered out of her home and out of her children’s lives (more than two of them) on LESS THAN 24 hours and without a warrant or justification. (Some of my 2016 posts refer to this case and other blogs, such as RedHerringAlert, who were reporting on this).

So I’d looked up both TransitioningFamilies.com and the JayC Foundation a while (about a year or two) back when it came up, got the general concept (but didn’t do an ongoing drill-down or reporting on this blog; at the time I was getting tired of doing others’ legwork for them when the others were equally capable of doing the same, just hadn’t been at it so long… and it seemed, wouldn’t get seriously started and stay at it, either..). This was just another example of reunification camps, which came to mind — I’d already reported on a few others (“Overcoming Barriers,” and Richard Warshak’s “Building Bridges”) earlier.  The concept of animal therapy for traumatized children was also involved in the Rucki case, but not in a court-ordered way.

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(attempts to self-inflate the importance are already throughout the brief descriptions, and are sooooo  typical of this field, the clinical, forensic, treatment, and attempt to sound professional, scientific and possibly even “medical” in the behavior and wording, well.. those garments are now so common, it’s starting to sound threadbare.  If there’d been more actual substance mixed in with the verbal posturing, it might have worked better, but .. seriously?  “The founding clinicians….”

 

…The founding clinicians have expertise with family systems therapy, advanced training in animal assisted therapy, and a forensic specialization with families in high conflict, court involvement, and post-trauma. For a more comprehensive description of the model see page 232-249 of the Family Court Review Journal,** Volume 54, Number 2, April 2016.

**Which, remember?, is a joint publication of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (legal domicile debatable, depending on whether one believes state records, or AFCC’s own indications on tax returns, whether Illinois or Wisconsin) and Hofstra University in New York, as the primary journal of an association of, literally, courts whose originators take claim for leading, innovating within, and at the same time standing as impartial observers with an agenda to improve the “adversarial” nature of the procedures taking place within them…

Whoever wrote this apparently in that reference is speaking  to subscribers to that journal and people with normal access to it, which isn’t most people….  And didn’t even bother to give the article title with it, or link, or bother to produce even an academic citation… Either that, or they’re hoping that non-subscriber (and not in possession of extra cash to throw around lightly) people will just take as an indicator of their professional importance and success somehow…

I went looking, found it, (link to the whole issue; scroll down and click to see the article) and as anyone can see, the options for reading the article if a non-subscriber to this journal already (and thus financially supporting the association in a minor way) would be to pay $6 to rent for 48 hours, $15 for the Cloud (but no ability to print or save), or fully $38 to read, print and save (download to pdf) this 18-page article, after joining “ReadCube…”

“a forensic specialization with families in high conflict..” is a giveaway whose mindsets are involved, and the attempt to position self as “the adult” on the scene through use of important words which separate them from the subject matter they are treating — “families.”

However, the article reference is not to familial, but to NONfamilial abductions, but the writing goes on saying, also a great model for FAMILIAL abductions…

This is a case-specific, solution-focused approach originally designed for Reunification after familial abduction or for contact refusal and resistance cases – situations when a child(ren) is having significant difficulty in managing the relationship with one or both parents during or after a separation or divorce. ** The workshop is not a fact finding blame-focused intervention.  Nor is it a custodial evaluation. Instead, it is an alternative to traditional interventions for families that are seeking ways to connect, break down barriers between family members, and repair existing or past difficulties.

**bolded green emphasis mine.  The following bolded words, not mine (but on website).

Now watch the timeline:  March, 2016, trademark obtained; April, 2016, Family Court Review publication (although near the end, still an article in the AFCC’s mouthpiece journal, and there doesn’t seem to be any countering or competitive, or even alternative journal on the same subject matter.  Those involved are in apparent agreement how to frame the courts and their “international, inter-disciplinary” collectivist treatments, group-membership-based (versus individual legal rights-based, with legal rights established by, in the majority of AFCC membership’s national citizenships, case here, the United States Constitution and wherever it doesn’t hold authority, state legislation) world views of the role and value of individual human beings  NOT in their own aligned professions under this label, “Family Courts.” {re-stated again, but let me show the reference image/exhibit first, from Marin CAMFT promoting Transitioning Families Therapeutic Reunification  Model (TFTRM) — but instead of for ‘Nonfamilial Abductions,” deftly substituting “for Fractured Families…”

Family Court Review article title referenced (when talking about applying this to “parental alienation” situations, not non-familial abductions):

April, 2016: The Transitioning Families Therapeutic Reunification Model for Nonfamilial Abductions:

May, 2016 in Northern California (Marin County is in the San Francisco Bay Area, quite close and considered part of the (Associated Bay Area Governments or “ABAG” metro) nine-county region, it’s now “Therapeutic Reunification: A Connection-Focused Model for Fractured Families” (and by the same basic trio of, as it happens, women) in the behavioral health fields — a Psy, an LCSW, and and LMFT.

 

Let me say that again:  the Family Court Journal is considered (from what I can tell) THE main journal for those courts, yet it is published by a center at a private law school in New York, and a private association in Wisconsin (and/or Illinois) whose own listed chapters (shown below), let alone how legitimate or current is even that list, show fewer than one-third of the United States even represented…. Yet the membership range from administrative court professionals, to presiding judges, to people working at major universities, or some minor universities, but as law professors, and have a tendency to set up organization after organization to spread the philosophy throughout, if possible, academia, and attach it to a form of major respectability.

None of which can erase the fact that the AFCC is itself a private organization whose membership tend to run in public, civil servant employment (and when outside the US, a preference for English-speaking (or English/French as to Canada) “Commonwealth” nations.  Without getting into the exact terminology and differences between these countries, we are talking: Australia, Canada, and possibly (for membership if not chapters) New Zealand.  There seems also a tendency to get the UK involved when professionals start publishing, or promoting similar programs. I’m probably close to the mark in calling this “Anglo-American Alliance” policy alignment.

Reminder from CAMFT web page – the state chapter (membership a prerequisite for the county chapter, just above found promoting three professionals, one of whom registered a trademark just in time to get an article published in the ‘Family Court Review’ last year (I write in late 2017 about spring 2016) — is still a MEMBERSHIP organization, in the business of promoting the interests of its memberships who help their clients with “relationship” problems of all sorts:

The California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists is an independent professional organization representing the interests of licensed marriage and family therapists. With nearly 29,000 members, CAMFT is dedicated to advancing the profession as an art and a science, to maintaining high standards of professional ethics, to upholding the qualifications for the profession, and to expanding the recognition and awareness of the profession.

Although no doubt convinced their profession itself is unilaterally a public benefit, at no place does this description say it’s organized “in the public interest” or for the public welfare.  That would be a corollary, or trickle-down, benefit, should (if and when) it take(s) place.  It’s a “business” association intent on establishing the businesses its members are in as a respected profession. Having some sort of standards, journals, and ongoing education, not to mention conferences, of course all goes towards lending legitimacy to any profession.  So does having a state board (and state boards in most states, I’m sure) acknowledging the profession by regulating it — the Board of Behavioral Health Sciences.  Still, they say “as an art and a science” above, and have welcomed into their ranks, and with open arms, promotion of a private association’s pet agenda of the second half of the 20th century and continuing into the 21st:  having “high conflict” and “parental alienation” as treatable (with therapy and counseling) diseases, and pathologies.

Back in 1965, a Department of Labor employee, who later became a famous, liberal (except in his policy towards women — and minorities) Democrat U.S. Senator, i.e., Daniel Moynihan, and quoting sociologists, characterized female-headed, at the time, “Negro,” families — that is, “matriarchy” as a major “tangle of pathology“** — and then HEW, later, HHS along with Ivy League universities (again, I’ve been documenting this:  Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton) and well-heeled (including taking ample government grants decade after decade) Brookings Institution, Manpower Development Corporation, the Urban Institute (and others) — swallowed this whole, while adopting their politically-appropriate postures on OTHER matters, and kept those OTHER matters in the public’s face while working on this one:  two-parent families: best.  single mothers = worst unless “noncustodial fathers” are actively involved. In practice, and upon discretion of the courts: sole custody fathers — OK, especially if that’s when single mothers are being put (back) in their place for objecting to sharing, enough.  Or, objecting to other things, like mistreatment of their children, or financial abandonment of the family, etc.

**I used the word of “pathology” and that famous phrase.  Here’s another person’s summary of that legacy as “the New Jim Crow” — and still blaming black mothers:

THE TANGLE OF PATHOLOGY: FROM BIOLOGICAL TO CULTURAL BLAME OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY Jan. 2017 by “Hidden Truth” in “BlackThen.com” (Michelle Alexander).

Before the era of the Civil Rights movement, beliefs in biological racism allowed white Americans to explain the disparities of wealth, power, and quality of life as a natural consequence of biological inferiority. As biological racism was debunked and black America pushed back against the oppressive restraints of a white supremacist society during the Civil Rights Movement, the United States was forced to recognize its extreme mistreatment of the black population. After the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, pushback against the progress African Americans had made was rampant. Reasonings of biological racism waned, and new schools of thought regarding the American social order were created. Culture, rather than biology, became the main focus regarding black poverty

In 1965, a sociologist named Daniel Patrick Moynihan released an extensive report on the black family. Following the lead of sociologist and pioneer of comparative slave studies Frank Tannenbaum, Moynihan started off explaining the perceived roots of black inferiority by referencing the horrors of slavery. By minimizing the impact of Latin American slavery on African slaves and exacerbating the role of slavery in “black pathology” in the United States, Moynihan used slavery to explain the deterioration of the black family structure that led to matriarchal family lines. He noted that

“When Jim Crow made its appearance towards the end of the 19th century, it may be speculated that it was the Negro male who was most humiliated thereby; the male was more likely to use public facilities, which rapidly became segregated once the process began, and just as important, segregation, and the submissiveness it exacts, is surely more destructive to the male than to the female personality. Keeping the Negro “in his place” can be translated as keeping the Negro male in his place: the female was not a threat to anyone.”

Coining the term, “tangle of pathology”, Moynihan blamed the lack of widespread economic gain in the black community on a “black subculture”. The prime target of Moynihan’s blame was black mothers. Deeming the perceived matriarchal structure of the black family as inferior, black women were accused of the emasculation of black men, which affected the capabilities of black men to provide for their families and raise their children. Blaming what he called the “reversed roles of Negro husband and wife”, Moynihan blamed black mothers for increases in childhood delinquency, which reinforced a cycle of criminality and a warped family structure for black children

That rationale itself is, in my opinion, “sick.”  Moynihan, himself raised poor and fatherless, which is to say, primarily by his mother, ended up one of the most powerful Senators in Congress by the 1990s, and a force to be reckoned with.  His childhood involved many household moves.  Like another famous male “raised fatherless” achiever, our recent United States President (!!), their own examples belies the matriarchal = pathological theology.

What about women who have become significant achievers without their fathers or husbands in tow?  Moreover, some of these women did so overcoming violence at home as well.  What contribution to pregnant-woman-batterers (which some are; my “ex” was…) really bring to any household or family line, assuming that the household can survive financially without them?

This victim-blaming attitude, meshes naturally with many brands (sic) of Judaeo-Christian religion not to mention Islam, at least as practiced, and other cultural practices involving degradation and repression of women.

One way, apparently, some women can enter into and stay closer into the power structure is to, along with men in similar fields, continue to utilize social science, psychological re-framing or demographic studies a few steps up (if that) the evolutionary ladder from the horrific ‘phrenology’ and eugenics associated with cultures that endorse and subsist and have their comforts built and maintained by slaves of NOT THAT LONG AGO (100 years or so only, or as to eugenics, I don’t know that it’s entirely gone.  Renamed, perhaps…)… develop the art and science of discrediting women and particularly women with children, who take ANY strong stance against them — or against wife-battering, child-molestation, or other forms of chronic mistreatment by their partners or their kids’ fathers — seriously and insist on talking about it, not suffering in silence, or assenting BY their silence.

For such people, court-ordered, forced therapy for their children, or having the courts steal them from the “dissident” parent and hand them over to known abusive parents, is a form of torture and it’s often effective.  It’s a horrible price to pay for simple survival, and that price is NOT just psychological — it’s absolutely economic also.

While connecting with each other around terminology which strategically and consistently drifts towards “connection at all costs” and away from ANY legitimate cause for complete and absolute separation (outside determined by these agencies working with each other, i.e., for “dissidence” to the reigning philosophy), and preaching “connection” and “unity” — these women in power within the family court system and its networked service-provider-professions are enmeshed in innate and ongoing conflict with semantics.   

(Para. added 12/22/2017):  I realize not all employees are AFCC membership, and may not all hold to the philosophy.  But — where are the voices of those who have not ABOUT the AFCC if they disagree?  It seems we would’ve heard them by now if there were the serious protest and ability to stand up to the organization, calling it by its name and telling the public what it does, to distance ones-self from the philosophy in a forthright and clear manner.   IF these voices had been heard a generation earlier, many of us mothers might have acted differently in our own divorce and custody (and protection order, as it applied) cases.  We also might’ve had some hope left in the family courts by now.. Speaking for myself, I certainly don’t….

Joining in on the “re-indoctrination therapy” business doesn’t seem to require independence, creativity, or even much courage.  Just borrow some terms, adopt them somewhat, trademark them, find a SLIGHTLY different application, and if accepted in one place, adopt for other market niches, and then apply to one’s associations or other similar associations for publicity.

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How long, would you think, in such a (forced family reunification) program, for the text to get down to classic invented business selling labels such as “high-conflict” or “alienation” (as in, “parental alienation”) as, ideally, eliminating concepts such as any “finger-pointing” or “blaming” when one parent has been abusing the other, or the children (criminally or otherwise?).  Given the personnel and the field of practice …. NOT LONG…

I continue (from the quote [with yellow background and fine print, from TransitioningFamiles.com far above), with the image as websites have a tendency to change, especially after being featured on this blog, I’ve noticed over time…

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My June 15, 2011 post (<=same link as above) I think did a good job comparing this type of activity (ReUnification Camps) to “Viet Nam Re-education Camps,” and then citing other current examples involved in the family court arena, as its title describes.

It also identified and took on practice of “stacking the decks” with association-connected professionals (i.e., AFCC-connected) to add credibility when in fact, that association runs its own journal, takes major credit for leading (except when they screw up, at which time it distances itself as the “fresh blood and innovators” to) the family court systems — featuring in its motto and long-held by-lines, “interdisciplinary” and “international,” AND promoting “behavioral health” everywhere.  After the “reunification camps” the article shows my look-ups of the involved personnel on a recent (at the time, in 2011) New Hampshire divorce case of jail time for the mother because of “alienation..” which was being reported, with a certain amount of triumph, glee, and sense of vindication particularly among fathers’ rights groups, which alarmed the protective mothers groups and further fueled the “let’s debate parental alienation as bona fide or unsound psychological theory” fires.**

• **As they had been coached and by example mentored to do, rather than look up the financials, connect the dots, systematically go for the bigger players, instead of the fringe organizations involved, or describing the system in terms of age, size, and money involved with documentation … instead of following the money and documenting/exposing the systems that move it in terms and from independently verifiable sites with links to those sites — as I have been laying out in this blog for years, and was known by several (of the protective parent and DV advocacy groups already in 2011) to be focused on and consistently doing…

As it turns out, New Hampshire was home to a “parent coordination” group dominated by AFCC members, copied from an Indiana model which (on tracking further back) had also been copied by Pennsylvania.

Also from New Hampshire (although I do not remember the specific dates) a former director of the Office of Violence Against Women (as I recall) had come there from New Hampshire Family Court Judgeship (the Hon. Susan B. Carbon) as well as from board membership if not presidency, at the well-known “NCJFCJ.”

Also in New Hampshire, as it turned out, not two years later, in August 2013, a murder/suicide took place DURING a supervised visitation exchange (at a YMCA/YWCA?) of a young boy with his father. In Manchester, NH.  I apologize, but seem to have blocked out the individuals’ names; but this is searchable.  The man’s brother had just died, he’d returned from the funeral in Israel, and had threatened harm to self and/or the mother or son (I DNR the details), and had at least some connection locally with the “Lubavitch” community.

I also posted on it.  (August 29, 2013, my post came up on the search results for this incident).  The post has a lot of organizational detail on both a SF “Rally Visitation Center” and the professionalization of this at the state level, connection to (known) AFCC person active at the top state level (Judicial Council/AOC/CFCC) on the Access and Visitation funds, Shelly LaBotte, and there seems to have been some religious connections involving both Rally, as well as to some of the names listed on the “California Association of Professional Supervised Visitation Providers) to a Los Angeles area church of dubious registrations.  I see on reviewing that (long) post, for those who may be interested, at the time I tracked millions of dollars direct to a Protestant evangelical-, digital-multi-campus (etc.) style church in Florida; including of course HMRF funding.  It must’ve been after this that TAGGS changed its database, judging by the appearance of the tables posted therein.The reference to the NH supervised visitation tragedy is towards the bottom of that post.

OK, the father’s name was “Muni Savyon.”  Three references to this:  #1. In the Union-Leader:

After Manchester YWCA tragedy, child visitation centers eye security

By MARK HAYWARD | New Hampshire Union Leader | August 13. 2013 10:44PM

…On Sunday, Manchester resident Muni Savyon shot and killed himself and his 9-year-old son at the YWCA Supervised Visitation and Child Exchange Center on Concord Street. Savyon had made threats to the child’s mother, and could only see his son during supervised visitations. (Related story, Page A8.) On Monday, Manchester YWCA director Monica Zulauf said metal-detector wands are used sporadically at the Manchester center.
However, an undated protocol available at the Manchester YWCA website lists minimum security measures for visitation centers….[including] staggered arrival and departure times for parents, separate building entrances for parents, collaboration with local police, and metal detectors.
Minimum-security measures include: “use of metal detectors at a minimum for the non-residential parent entrance, and at both entrances when possible, or when warranted by the risk assessment,” the policy reads. The policy was developed by the seven-member New Hampshire Family Visitation & Access Cooperative, of which the Manchester YWCA is a member. Zulauf did not return a telephone call on Tuesday.

#2. Father’s rabbi speculates:  “If he left Joshua alive, his ex won.” (Aug 18, 2013, at NewHampshire.com; included here because it contains more details of the previous custody arrangements (which sounded close to 50/50 with ability for father to take son to Israel even) and why they changed. Note, the mother had moved on — married.)

And #3, the later (Nov. 07 2011 by url) DOJ.NH.Gov investigation: “Final Report of the August 11, 2013, Murder of Joshua Savyon and Suicide of Muni Savyon in Manchester, New Hampshire (next three images, the third is annotated and a bit larger):

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Full title (and the link, again):

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Again, I started this on and as a post update to (Published June 15, 2011): Evaluate, Coordinate, call “Alienator!” Pt. 4– Three AFCC Ph.D.’s on ONE case and “PAS” = 2011 NH Supreme Court custody reversal. And what’s Warshak got to do with it? [First publ. June 15, 2011, not on blog TOC yet]. with WordPress-generated, case-sensitive shortlink ending “-JR”.  Publication date added to title later]. Originally about 11,200 words. Some image links have been broken, a few (not all) replaced later.

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Basically, two professions (judges and lawyers, which we know may involve some overlap of backgrounds, i.e., many judges were first lawyers) already in power have for decades been giving a helping hand to their “colleagues” in the “psycho-” related fields. Starting WAY back in the 1960s, apparently, or if you count earliest known incorporation, 1975.  (AFCC itself likes to claim 1963 as a start date, as that section of its history page now reads (in part):

The first AFCC conference was held on Saturday, September 7, 1963, in Los Angeles.

Click image to access webpage and be able to click on any of the subtitles (or menu items at the top).  Notice subtitle “In the Beginning: AFCC in the 1960s..”  — really?? As viewed Dec. 18, 2017

Conciliation counselors and judges from six counties in California gathered to talk shop well into the evening. Among those participating in the first inaugural event were two Los Angeles Conciliation Court counselors who would lead AFCC in the future. Meyer Elkin, who would serve as AFCC President in 1977 and as editor of the Review from 1963 to 1986, and Stanley Cohen, AFCC Executive Director from 1983 to 1988 and co-editor of the Review from 1986 to 1991.

Interest in court-connected services (etc.)

So even as self-described on the website, a website whose own “Donate page” — unfortunately — leads to no tangible reference to the organization’s financials, or even a statement that it’s a nonprofit, or an EIN# (etc.) but instead, currently, to people who have contributed to scholarships for others to attend their conferences (since 2000), and solicitations for others to continue the tradition….

…from the alleged 1963 start it was not judges, but the particularly two counselors (Meyer Elkin and Stanley Cohen) who would lead the organization.  It thus seems clear that this was started by civil servants with “day jobs” or business already in the courts, including the new “conciliation courts” which were existed to promote counseling instead of or alongside of divorce.  Which is by definition also to promote those who sought to counsel divorcing couples in their career paths. AFCC hasn’t stopped with just mutual (and relentless) promotion of their own  membership through on-line mentions, citing in publications, and membership gravitating towards teaching at law schools to train up the next-gen family court leadership in the “right” way to think about families in conflict (etc.) but has also been active in pushing for state-legislated or presiding judge (over a county, or sometimes a state) administratively-(judicial rule)-mandated special professions, starting with counseling, mediation, moving on to “parent coordination” and more.

Put just those few facts together with the non-posting of financials on their website (to this day, although by now others, not just myself, have put some of those financials up on the web in a variety of forms whether pdfs, in-post charts, or on scribd) and you are closing in on a few defining characteristics of this association and the leading personnel involved with it.

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(This would be review, but maybe as a footnote to this post: I see that the acknowledged chapters of AFCC or (chapters under the name, written-out) have been “dropping like flies” so far as searchable tax returns are found, and that those still — or recently — existing have been filing either 990EZs (which strategically avoid reporting “founded” date and other data), 990Os, and (The Connecticut Chapter, which went through some public humiliation around 2011ff, thanks in part to this blog, and simultaneous and published in some more main stream on-lines, the work of investigative journalist (not to mention, mother and also family court veteran) Anne Stevenson more locally (to CT) by digging up and documenting their non-registration activity (for decades) in the state, and problems this posed) even a single “990PF“.

Put another way, it seems the chapters are keeping a lower profile than before, and are either shutting down or going underground (possibly, again).  Meanwhile, the main one (I call it the “mother ship”) remains citing to a Wisconsin address (but no suite# — and it’s an office building with property management business at the same address in downtown? Madison), but only the chapter (not the main organization) is incorporated in Wisconsin.  Its Forms 990 (improperly) say “legal domicile” WI (it seems it should be “IL”). No Illinois Chapter is showing up (on tax return searches by name), however the name is registered as an Illinois Corporation.

You can check here:

ORGANIZATION NAME	ST	YR	FORM	PP	TOTAL ASSETS	EIN
Association of Family and Conciliation Courts	WI	2016	990	33	$3,731,286.00	95-2597407

Note: until the IRS form changed for FY2008 (I cannot speak for Forms 990 pre-dating those available on the databases where I research them, for the most part, before 2000 or 2001) its header info. didn’t even ask for: Year founded, legal domicile, or (opening lines) details about the number of actual employees, boards of directors, and such.  However, from 2008 forward I see that this organization is saying “1963” and “legal domicile Wisconsin” which the State of Wisconsin records do not verify.  A before and after screenprint provided for your information:

 

And we want or continue to permit courts suggesting that such people should be entrusted to mediate, reconcile, evaluate, advise and otherwise DISentangle the various affairs of families in conflict?  Really???

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That decade and timeframe, pre-dating even California’s no-fault divorce law (1970), the first in the nation puts the start-up of this organization “smack!” in the middle of 1970s feminism following on the civil rights movements of the 1960s (that’s not the only “civil rights” movement so the qualifier is needed).  Women were hoping, at last, to be treated as regular citizens and human beings, which covering up violence towards them within the family unit, and other sexist practices in the business and government realms, let alone academic (university) levels wasn’t, at the time, exactly helping!!

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Consider this — elite universities, especially on the East Coast USA — managed to resist enrolling women as regular undergraduates until the 1970s, and one until 1983 (I forget whether Cornell or Columbia University).  Brown University in Rhode Island (I learned while researching Annenberg Institute for School Reform + “CES” (Coalition of Essential Schools) and its abominable nonprofit track record in Rhode Island (skipping to California, then back, then getting a special legislative, retroactive, exoneration for having simply failed to provide a registered agent for YEARS, and re-instated “as if” it’d done no wrong, so long as it paid the registration fees…).

Meanwhile AISR proper doesn’t seem to have felt any particular obligation to file tax returns, and donations to its name seem to have gone directly to Brown itself, not a separate EIN#. (I never did find any separate EIN# for the AISR)…

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In this 1960s, 1970s, contexts, and sometimes involving those historically all-male, resisting admission of women undergraduates elite colleges helping produce leaders and better run the country, we have that 1965 Moynihan Report which admonished the government for its need to adopt a specific Action policy for “The Negro Family” and with proclamations with ramifications for women of all colors, by virtue of our genetic, chromosomal ID as women, not men.

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I’ve just published a (long) post documenting some of the foundations, universities, and professionals (including several women — many but not all, married to their own kind, i.e., professors at university centers and darlings of the social science R&D tax-exempt fields, i.e., Russell Sage Foundation, The Urban Institute, MDRC, Brookings, etc.

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I have long felt, on reading so much material regarding this and welfare reform, and having identified specific connectivity claimed to Moynihan and “Federal Family Design” agenda enacted through the Social Security Act, i.e., “Welfare” (incl. child support and all that goes with it), that the innate “diversion” to actually addressing significant racism in the legal and employment fields was to develop other fields where NO ONE could fully challenge the policy — because the field was itself subjective, and its scientific reports dependent so much on who controls the assets sufficient to sponsor the research.

It became fashionable, and was encouraged, to develop fields in population research and control fields, i.e., “poverty research.”  Until you start looking at some of the tax returns, or salaries held, or subcontractors profiting from these increasingly unified fields, and how “slippery” are the accounts at the transaction or even door-to-door (entity to entity) levels, you might think this is just altruism at its best, and the problem of poverty is despite the decades of such philanthropy and altruism — and not caused in large part by the caste-preservation tactics involved in the philanthropic/government/university-center (unaccountable) levels.

 

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So this post, again, came from one published June 15, 2011, part of a four-part series that hasn’t yet made it onto my Table of Contents Page but, in hindsight, was still a pretty damn insightful post at the time. I’d researched some of the subject matter below back in 2016; and because now, mid-December, 2017, it’s not “yesterday’s research” fresh, I revisited some websites, and wanted to while there include more screenprints than should go into an update section.  All of which complements (further fills in background for) a different post I’m intending to publish today, Dec. 16, 2017, whose name (with one attached paragraph) is next:

[current post title and key question in the pipeline:]

[end, excerpt from current post {its title and key question} in the pipeline]

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UPDATE COMMENTS:  I’m getting ready to cite to this post again in December 2017 (I referenced reunification camps as high-staked, rigged conflicts forcing hostile and sometimes dangerous people to interact with each other in the presence of young children, and when children resist, break down their resistance (likewise if one of the parents resist) and mentioned that sometimes this results in deaths, which I call “roadkill.”  But when prison guards in Central California (Corcoran Valley) were, for sport, probably (although it wasn’t mentioned) some gambling on the outcomes, and I might add, it seems also for spite, were over a six-year period (starting in 1989) setting up inmate fights, and when more fighting broke out, fired shots resulting in injuries and some inmate deaths, to “break up” what they’d just set up — the resulting lawsuits, and trial, produced a “not our fault” decision.

It had been state policy to force known hostile and different groups to mix on the yards.  The problems were blamed on the state policy, which was then changed, with commendations in that it resulted in fewer tragedies (killings).

Yet when it comes to family courts and documented abuse or domestic violence — is the same wisdom followed?  Not hardly!  Yet aren’t the people involved also exploited, and by being put constantly at risk of serious injury, to selves or children, or abductions, or simply just having to deal with this forced interaction year — after year — after year when the state hasn’t proved, typically, a criminal case against one of two parents; the non-criminal and non-abusive (as abuse is prosecutable under criminal code) parent is still put through “hell” in the names of the collectivist “family” mentality.  THAT pretty much characterizes the family court system itself, period.

My comment on the current post reminded me of the various reunification rackets (my term) going on in the family court arenas, so I found this post, and am updating some of it, as a point of reference to the hypocrisy of realizing that mixing hostile groups even in a highly supervised situation (prison yards!) was labeled “bad policy” but when women, and children, and innocent (non-abusive) men as fathers are involved, somehow it’s in the public interest to maintain the connections with the criminally-inclined, criminal-involved sometimes, and dangerously inclined to harm (again, women and/or children) because biology, apparently, trumps right vs. wrong in this country, and permanently — unless the state or the courts opt to arbitrarily disconnect.

Bystanders to this system, who also must fiscally support it because public institutions are involved, would be understandably confused IF they considered it; but the apparent desired response is dissociative acceptance of the family courts’ bastardization of right vs. wrong, criminal vs. noncriminal, and dismissing common sense in protecting anyone of any age — do not heighten the risk by frequent, forced interactions with others who have threatened to kill or kidnap, and have previously assaulted, battered, terrorized or otherwise abused a partner, or a minor child within the family unit!

Instead, the psycho-educational “helpers” to the judges making custody determinations, have decided to handle the dilemma that actually prosecuting violent crimes as violent crimes would entail if “to female and underage (male or female) family members” are included in the definitions, by working through change of language and inserting themselves wherever possible into the legal deliberations (for pay of course), re-define right and wrong according to the new point of reference:  Group Dynamics (etc.) and elevating the mental/behavioral health/psychological professions, if possible, to the social status already held by lawyers, doctors, and judges in this society.

Evaluate, Coordinate, call “Alienator!” Pt. 4– Three AFCC Ph.D.’s on ONE case and “PAS” = 2011 NH Supreme Court custody reversal. And what’s Warshak got to do with it? [First publ. June 15, 2011, not on blog TOC yet]. with WordPress-generated, case-sensitive shortlink ending “-JR”.  Publication date added to title later]. Originally about 11,200 words.

Dec. 2017 update/preview to this post is in this font and background-color. The section has at least four images referring to the update on another “reunification camp” situation from Minnesota, but which apparently happened somewhere in California and with the high-profile, 18-year abduction case of Jaycee Dugard (and a foundation established in her name afterwards to which, apparently, and AFCC-friendly professional attached herself).

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TRANSITIONING FAMILIES.com, Trademarked, and a Program “conceptualized” in 2006:

(Notice the “contact” page seeks info from readers, but doesn’t provide even a legal domicile or mailing address under this name.  The website avoids detailed identification with any named entity, while by wording, providing the appearance that there is one, or at least something, behind the names). It also subtly undermines the concept that family members may have legitimate reasons — such as protection, or a criminally active and inclined family member — for distancing themselves from each other, while helping promote the same “AFCC” rhetoric and re-framing of cause under collectivist, not individually responsible, terms.

The inherent conflict of this agenda with the standing of individual citizens (whether male or female, and if female, including mothers) under state law to expect some forms of protection from criminals within the state (or coming from outside it, or criminally abducting children across state lines), and that includes domestic abusers and batterers, child-molesters, etc. At some point, we should be allowed to exercise basic human rights of self-protection; yet the “parens patriae” apparently opposes the entire concept.  Family courts have been set up and run to best facilitate this restructuring of understood reality to minimize what is and is not considered “crime,” and to move families, particularly, into the category where “it’s NOT crime” except in some of the worst instances, and sometimes not even then…

 

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FOOTNOTE “TRANSITIONING LANGUAGE”

Described here: (which I notice references a link I’ve also quoted before, in part because so many of the people involved in counseling of traumatized people may have been schooled in this, and think it perfectly acceptable tactics in therapy):

If you are feeling confused, even anxious, that’s good. It means you are in a light trance and highly vulnerable to suggestibility. Well, maybe it’s not good for you, but it is good for somebody. It means that you are susceptible to anything (and with that, anyone) who will bring stability to your mind and focus it on one thing, rather than allowing it to remain in a state of desperation, unable to select from the barrage of messages you are experiencing and which are making you feel confused. Confusion is a wonderful technique used in hypnosis and brought to a high art by Milton Erickson, one of the co-developers of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Together with John Grinder and Richard Bandler, they specialized in “transformational grammar” or using language as “an agent of change.”

The art of modern mind control (post 1945 – “propaganda,” as it was called in the old days) involves partial truths wedded to distortions, redirection (aka “spin”), and even the not-so-occasional lie. The best way to avoid this is to disconnect. …. To engage the agents of confusion in debate is to enter into the well-laid trap of distraction – a trap so well described by Father Merrin to Father Karras in the book and movie The Exorcist.

Well, I can’t speak for the Exorcist or other fictional characters, but last I read the Bible, Jesus, ignoring that advice, when he got involved in a situation, was direct and did converse with so-called demons, as in “what is your name?” and from there, “____, get out!”).  All I’m doing here is saying, be aware that this is taking place, and that one way to avoid derailment through arguing (over-engaging) with the intended subject matter using the promoters’ ‘transformational grammar” phrases, is to instead engage more with the financial and corporate connections, which at least leads to further understanding of how certain things work.

The networked dissemination of such nonsensical phrases, whether passively or actively, serves to spread confusion, and is I have no question (given other indicators throughout the system) is indeed meant to use language (including the language naming websites advertising “goods and services” of the “mental health services” variety from and surrounding the family court venues) is “transformational grammar” and “language as a systems change agent.”

In these cases, and one reason I “parsed” that phrase (and some others from the website, elsewhere on this post) is that the intended derailment is on the reality, existence, and naming of criminal behavior affecting both children and adults.  Entire alternate systems of vocabulary (which I call the “jargon”) are there to derail the conversation most specifically around child abuse and domestic violence, and to ensure that conversations on WHAT types of organizations are dominating this conversation, and HOW, do not take place unmonitored, and among the public.

This vagueness is habitual, and a known art within the therapeutic community, at least some sectors of it, for helping get the doubter or intellectually “hung up” person in opposition to a change of perspective to enter a self-induced trance (and become more susceptible to subliminal suggestions) while their conscious mind is busy figuring out what the heck was meant when an authority or respected/trusted figure (such as a professional psychotherapist or psychoanalyst…) utters a series of statements which sound sensible, then drops in something out of context and absurd, but with the same tone and seriousness, into the conversation.  Logical fallacies / nonsequiturs, and so forth.