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

I was looking at Massachusetts AFCC filings and website again recently, in the context of reunification camp “Overcoming Barriers” being advertised on the site; a topic I’m posting on currently, and very concerned about; the practice seems so aggressive towards minor children and can involve and has involved hauling them (transporting, including by airplane) cross-country for group therapy and re-indoctrination, “deprogramming parental alienation” camps.

MA AFCC “Resources for Families” page, featuring, among other offerings, the 501©3 “Overcoming Barriers.” Parental Alienation-antidote,a.k.a. reunification therapy (or camps)….

(Overcoming Barriers website detail: Our Approach) viewed 12/19/2017

MA AFCC web page featuring Parent Coordination (see website for active links)

Anyhow, I noticed that the MAAFCC.org website, which is pretty basic, not overly populated with information, does take time to advertise and talk about Parent Coordination, and its certification (i.e., get trained to be listed as a provider).  It also shows this to have been, it seems, a very recent (2017) administrative ruling to make it, or some new element of it, happen.

Home page of AFCC chapter in MA. Fairly straightforward.

MA AFCC Articles of Incorp (partial, from state business entities search site)

So… on the topic and title of “Parent Coordinator,” like others AFCC members (under its name or under other significant organizations or center they may have been involved with) helped sponsor as professions, such a dispute resolution, or mediator, or the concept of “collaborative divorce,” etc.,  just because this may not be making headlines on “outraged parent news” journalism, including about parents periodically suing over it in protest, doesn’t mean the court-ordered practice or judicial involvement in certifying or training people for it (to get referral business from the courts) has ceased operations.

Click to enlarge. Self-explanatory. Found on MAAFCC.org website on a page dedicated to  “Parenting Coordination” news.

Some apparently have, though, it seems ceased staying legally registered at the state level.  The ones in Georgia here, I DNR whether I ever found related tax returns.  There may have been Forms 990-N filed (or, maybe not), but it’s not on my priority list to check the IRS individually for these.

Post title:

To be honest, I wanted to refer to this, check back because I referred to it, but not clutter up the original post.  Parent post (this will probably be published right after it, and before Christmas Day, 2017) is “Incentivizing Reunification Camps while Family Policy already sets the stage for Familial Abductions.” (short-link ending “-8fE”).  The post you’re reading now IS short; consider it a footnote only (not a major expose!)…

The lead-in text from parent post, I was thinking aloud about the ‘flash-in-the-pan” business formations, or on-line advertising which doesn’t connect (at least not obviously or readily — Overcoming Barriers 501©3 above, excepted) to the corporate filings or how to locate any Form 990, if it’s operating nonprofit.  I was remarking on the astonishing, almost proprietary (“it’s our turf”) level of influence for what, “on the books” at least is a relatively small private association (AFCC “mother ship”) without even chapters in the majority of US States, and most of those chapters not being much to look at, and some of them, not lasting long, either….

Members in some places have helped get administrative judicial rulings establishing even a Family Court Division passed in the first place (speaking of Baltimore, Maryland example; I posted on it with evidence in late 2014). Not to mention an innate tendency to seek even more specialized diversionary courts, i.e., the High-Conflict Court Docket in Connecticut.

In an upcoming AFCC conference, whose agenda and brochure are already posted on the website, I noticed one workshop recommending, to better help “pro se” people (“called “SRLs” – Self-Represented Litigants) and unrepresented people in the family courts, the lawyers and/or mediators should be allowed as “neutrals” to actually draft and file orders, although it seems from the workshop description that outside Wisconsin, (by law,?) they can’t — yet. [sentence update 12/25/2017 to avoid possible mis-statement].

Here’s the workshop, and another (nearby) in how to expand the “IDVD” model, another diversionary court:

Lawyer-mediator can draft AND file “on behalf of both parties..” One of which may, and the other may not, be well-informed of the agenda towards women and mothers, or categorization/labeling of abuse or criminal behavior, held by the very association convening this conference. Maybe neither know. I sure didn’t before entering the family courts, or family court facilitators office, at the time of first “mediation” (compromise and dilution of our existing, just-issued restraining order, reducing its geographic zone and basically facilitating any-day-of-the-week entry to the property he’d just been forcibly vacated from, through proper legal notice and service of the TRO, and with a civil standby which I made sure not to be nearby for).

Another “Integrated” DV court — pilot-tested in a rural area, hey, before meeting at an international conference and suggesting to judicial officers they might want it in THEIR area too. NOT on this agenda, how the same “traditional courts” referred to are in fact, family courts (which that abstract of the workshop fails to mention), and the conferencing association coming up with the bright idea to create family AND conciliation courts as additional diversionary courts (mandating mediation and divorce counseling wherever possible, for its membership to provide, whether court-appointed or privately) themselves (family courts) began as a diversion, and led by the same association (and subsequently over time continued to critique their own creation as if someone else was responsible, so as to introduce a “new” model variation on the original basic principles that retained control over the families and especially the kids…The old “perspective switcheroo” or schizoid characterization of the courts themselves…

What they lack in size, they seem to overcompensate for in: coordinated/synchronized specialty language; the tendency to multiply nonprofits using specialty language names, and once started, diversify applications (i.e., into institutes, academies, trainings, certifications, etc. named after the original idea;  High-Conflict, Parent Coordination, Collaborative Practice, etc.); programming; and last but not least, group loyalty for mutual promotion of, and control over access to and the standards for the specialized fields their members have helped create.

It’s no surprise that the Center for Court Innovation (Fund for the City of New York, Inc. + NYS Unified Court System joint project dating back to the mid-1990s? although the Ford-initiative “Fund” was started in 1968) can be found evaluating the second such court.  Read about it here.

The list of stakeholders for this 2nd IDVD in Vermont (Bennington County was first, This was for Windham County, in Brattleboro) include service providers (BIP for no doubt “Batterers Intervention Program”) and “SA” probably “Sexual Assault.”) (six images, two annotated, you have the pdf link above). This is “gallery style” – click any image to enlarge, and once started can be viewed in sequence  (forward or backward) by clicking on <   > arrows which appear.

[See “What they lack in size, they seem to overcompensate for in: coordinated/synchronized specialty language…group loyalty for control…” paragraph above] … Like any good, international cult. Or “gang.” (Lack or presence of quotations around the last two nouns there is deliberate).

If you think about it, “language and group behavior synchronicity” is efficient, maximizes effect, and creates a sense of authority coming as if from multiple sources, sources typically in our culture associated with power and authority on their own, and that therefore the cause must be just, or if not, that opposition may be futile.  Forming societies historically has been good for meeting privately, in select company, and  apart from the public to obtain agreement.

But societies become associations become corporations (tax-exempt) whose primary purpose is to redirect and re-purpose public institutions, and whose members are targeted to civil servants in positions to move assets and revenues, write rules with a goal of eventually re-writing legislation, and creating more public-funded institutions — now that is a problem.

The history of family court seems to be a history of a number of such societies. In the last half of the 20th century, particularly when combined with the impacts of major restructuring of a large part of the US government (federal) budget, i.e., Social Security Act, to get involved with the same issues driven by also by the various societies (associations) — that’s major impact.  And that’s not the Constitutional form of government, it’s in essence in basic conflict with the concept of “representative” government, and it’s exploitation of tax-exempt status in pursuit of this purpose.

And in the latter half of the 20th century, in part because of its shape-shifting and organization website About/History accounts do NOT match Secretary of State (state-level) or IRS accounts, when it comes to the family courts, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, in combination with its journal (Family Court Review) co-published with Hofstra University, where AFCC founder-members were long on the editorial board or running the journal of this created profession, has established major leverage upon major sectors of the US (and international) populations through this venue.  It’s the few ruling the many without direct representation, in private association, and without adequate fiscal or other accountability.  Their membership (as I said, this operates essentially, in my opinion, like a cult) then routinely creating more named networks of nonprofits promoting similar language (semantics), practices ,and policies, and when publishing frequently citing to group members’ work (and less so, non-group-members’ publication).

Now indications continue that Oxford University Press has been picking up (under “social sciences” at least) publication of many of AFCC or collaborationists with the organization as well, giving it an aura of credibility in a whole other level.  Apart from the ongoing “international” aspect having been in place from the start, the ability to cross international borders to hawk ones’ wares AS IF representing to people abroad the situation in America (meaning, the USA) makes it tougher for people affected by this within the country to track, address, and counter the publicity with some hard facts as to the networked entities involved.

This is a major problem.  Footnote “Personal” added below (gray, narrative to underscore the point. [I added post-publication and may delete again later.]  The collective influence is generationally, economically destructive while purporting to be beneficial.  The business appears to be moving children, and through the power to do this, family and business relationships around at will, which is disruptive to local economies also, when a parent is driven homeless (it happens), jailed (it happens) or extorted to pay supervised visitation fees to see a custody-switched child (documented — it happens), or the children are carted cross-country for “reunification therapy.”   If new categories of “relationship” crime can be defined, created, implemented, and punished — then the act of forming relationships at any point could become dangerous. This works and drives the herds overall (the population) towards a disruptive, dissociative society.

Do I need to remind anyone still of what comes from allowing people to be hauled off piecemeal (as opposed to in cattlecars “en masse” as previously, and yes I’m referring to World War II) by night to places unknown for purposes not truly legitimate except by the “new words” of behavioral science professionals and for their mutual, ongoing profits, for which they cannot and frequently DO not give proper business registration records, consistently or hold the groups accountable to do either.

To what “problems” is this type of activity the “solution”?  No one would dare (or be stupid enough, promoting it) to call this “The Final Solution” but there’s no problem with setting up systems of “problem-solving courts…”  But what’s the significant difference, except it’s incremental — “culling the flocks” of articulate and independent-thinking individuals who protest abuse? And it’s not, at least on the surface, targeting specific ethnicities or religions…

Or in the case of Sandra Grazzini-Rucki, a truly odd situation, she was hauled from FLORIDA by the US Marshals back to Minnesota, and treated abominably en rte. (see RedHerringAlert blog for an account).  See that Cara Tabachnik article in the Washington Post (5/11/2017) I quoted in “Incentivizing” post, published as I recall, 12/21/2017 or shortly after.  She interviewed people to whom this happened, including children who had reached the age of majority. (Viewable also on “CaraTabachnik.com“– she’s a professional journalist and freelance? writer.)

What’s funny, that in submersion of group member’s own intellectual independence (i.e., limiting, through self-regulating their own use of language = limiting the discussion of ideas which might have been expressed in other terms, which in essence is limiting debate, criticism, or challenges to that framework, a.k.a. “thinking.”) throughout at least the primary association,*** while operating themselves under group identity claiming collectively to be innovators and leaders.  [*** The related footnote is now several inches below, with images inbetween, not right after this paragraph]

One thing they are about is getting into, or recruiting members already in, positions of power and influence, and maintaining hierarchy within and without. Older members mentor and support (co-author with, run nonprofits with, cite to, etc.) younger ones, including younger ones with PhDs, who, left on their own, might stray further afield and run into some “hard reality” scenarios and feedback from men, women and children who have been harmed by the divorce process, and otherwise encounter this without proper “derailment” techniques unique to this field, i.e., new names for chronic life situations.

There’s also with in AFCC a quasi-worshipful naming of awards, scholarships and so forth after earlier (interesting, typically male) members of the association:  The Meyer Elkin, or Stanley Cohen, etc. awards. “Guru” mentality seems high…and awareness that not all Americans may subscribe to it, or should have to, low. Having role models is one thing, but the guru mentality is in conflict with our basic forms of government. If I had to choose between one or the other, I’d go with the basic forms of government that the AFCC seems to have major problems with, including as some of these annotated images say, at times their own creations which, like a parent saying on misbehavior, “that’s YOUR child, not mine!” (an immature statement), if it’s been hurting people — the problem was old ways or traditional courts, or “old language” with a focus on criminal law…

The concept that criminal law may still have a legitimate place in our culture as a deterrent or for public safety or even for a common standard identifying right versus wrong between individuals seems to have been rejected.  Mediation, collaboration, dispute resolution, alternate dispute resolution and so forth, should replace the legal process, or be embedded within it at all possible levels…

This may be among other reasons, why it’s focused on getting to the kids, regardless of what’s done to their parents along the way, and establishing new “above the law” (or should I say, below it? In reality, it’s OUTSIDE it) definitions of good and bad; new values. Parents clinging on to old language or belief systems need to be somehow discarded, humiliated, or quarantined, and justification for doing so (to keep public outrage to a manageable level) must be found.

***and I’m going to for now call this the “Association of Family and Conciliation Courts” (with its close collaborators started also in the 1970s or 1980s, such as NACC (Colorado, within another institute), DAIP/BWJP (Minnesota), “Futures without Violence,” (California/SF), NCJFCJ (University of Nevada-Reno, and which actually claims to go back to 1939, but corporate registration shows to the 1970s) and smaller ones, the CRC (Children’s Rights Council, I believe in Maryland), or in CPR (Center for Policy Research, in Denver) and the like, at least those visible to the naked eye on the registered entity landscape.

NACC = National Association of Counsel for Children.  I’ve blogged them, and as I recall Anne Marie Termini was a member. It has co-presented with AFCC, it has officers (or had) at high-(state-) level California Judicial Council/AOC staff (Christopher Wu, probably others) as did (and probably still does), AFCC.  The NACC is also a membership organization and took minor, but still significant, HHS grants under “Adoption Law” to professionalize the area of child law, and seeks to put more lawyers in the life of as many children in situations of “conflict” as possible. (Had a CLOP, Children’s Law Office Program, etc.).

The two I marked in blue in name at least are to represent the natural concern for protection from domestic violence (battering, and all that tends to go with it). Neither of those two have particularly stood up to the creation/expansion of the very specialized fields (services) through which people are being terrorized, exploited, sometimes impoverished, and in which influence of the provider is HIGH (quasi-immunity as the judicial helpers), and legal protections for the forced consumers of the services is LOW, and ones which, it just so happens, public funding is also made available at least to set up, or support:  supervised visitation, parent education/counseling, mediation, batterers intervention (of course!), reunification services, and anything which might lead to “alternate custody arrangements.”

So on the “Incentivizing Post,” along the lines of “once-registered, but then revoked or shut down, but still, apparently advertising, soliciting and perhaps operating..” which came up in the “Transitioning Families” instance (see “Reunification post” — an LLC under that name lasted less than a year in California; the dissolution that time was voluntary), and I remembered this situation:

Or, are possibly the revenues actually flowing through the [AFCC] chapters, members, and their multiple spinoff organizations and “goods ‘n services” or publications just invisible because they’re unreported?  I had this question years (about five years) ago regarding a training center for parent coordinators run by two women Ann Termini (of Lackawanna County, PA connections) and another Susan? Boyan, whose connection seemed to originate from Georgia.  The training website was up, but any registered entity, barely visible.  I posted all this on this blog.

(Checking back I see website “parentingCoordinationCentral.com” is still up, though doesn’t seem current, and referencing to contact either trainer (in GA or in PA) at their “Cooperative Training Institute.” The one in Georgia (corporations search: ecorp.sos.ga.gov/BusinessSearch) was formed Feb. 6, 2008, didn’t file in 2009, was warned in 2010, then administratively (involuntarily) dissolved in 2010. Registered agent “Purcell” is all that displays.. Meanwhile the “Cooperative Parenting Institute” websites featuring both states and women, remains up). Looking on Georgia business search site for “Officer” last name “Boyan,” I see that “National Parent Coordination Association, Inc.” formed (as a domestic nonprofit, the filing took only 3 pages) incorporated by Susan Boyan in Feb. 2002, was administratively dissolved by 2003 (reason, unknown), filed again the following May 2003, didn’t file again until 2005, and in Sept. 2010 was finally administratively dissolved.

[These images are below, with the earlier registered group first, after showing “ParentingCoordinationCentral.com” website images.]

A walk through earlier FamilyCourtMatters blog Tables of Contents (found among the top-level “Sticky” posts near top of central area of blog) or searching posts before then, i.e., before Sept. 2012, via the Archive (shows monthly calendars, with drop-down options for earlier months, on top right of blog) should unearth a series of posts on “pushing parent coordination,” and on this one.  Surrounding subject matter also tended to cover the FBI Raid on the Lackawanna County (Scranton), Pennsylvania Superior Courthouse, where family law proceedings are conducted.

There was a sense at the time (2011 Fall-2012ff as I recall) among many parents (and myself, though I wasn’t local obviously) that this FBI raid may have been “pre-emptive” to grab some evidence as others were closing in on the financial records, and questioning HOW did a court-involved person (such as Ms. Termini) get to work right out of a county courthouse without a lease, and have a direct impact on divorce, custody and of course domestic violence proceedings?A self-evaluation (effectively) from the PA Administrative Office of the Courts was put out, over 100 pages, which I got, and noticed that the final pages were basically almost verbatim from a parenting coordination text put out by these two ladies.  A tag on this post gives a reminder of how Parenting Coordination was promoted top-down, and out-side in at the state (or Commonwealth as it’s Pennsylvania we’re talking about here):

Changing the Culture of Custody” (PA Commission FOR Justice Initiatives|Task force on [Parenting Coordination]

Surprisingly (?) the task force had AFCC leaders on it, and borrowed (IF I’m getting it right by memory) from a model in Indiana for which involved leadership, put a bit “ditto.”  That’s how AFCC the private trade association whose membership consists of and targets lawyers (esp. family lawyers), judges (esp. in family or dependency courts), law professors, psychologists, custody evaluators, mediators, and social workers with a certain perspective on divorce and custody issues, not to mention regarding OTHER women and mothers’ roles in society networks, and has it seems for decades.

(Pennsylvania/Lackawanna County summary is as I recall — it was about five years ago).  For AFCC/NACC personnel in the jurisdiction, well for starters there was the (then; now, retired) supervising judge, the Hon. Chet Harhut, for Lackawanna County, who was also noted on (AFCC-drenched) University of Baltimore/Maryland School of Law (Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff now, not then) Center for Children and Families in the Courts, which was and probably still is, featuring “Unified Family Courts” and was technically assisting others in setting them up. Lackawanna County was among the areas cited.

So back then, I was tracking these things, and also noticing over time how the field of parenting coordination was created, promulgated, propagated, and protested.  It eventually went out the same way it was put in ( taking some lawyers and others off guard), as I recall through state-level administrative order of the Supreme Court. (I may have this on the sidebar widgets also). In Florida, it was first vetoed by Gov. Jeb Bush, but later passed.  A Florida AFCC chapter was set up, most probably, to push it through; and it worked…

So, looking and listening to all this five-plus years ago was part of my schooling in the networked propagation, interstate, of ways to force parents to consume services provided by, in a word, AFCC members, whether they were working as a mediator (“Muklewicz”), a parenting coordinator or other GAL-organizer for the county (Termini), or family court presiding judge (Harhut) or state-level or otherwise, expert psychologist (Arnold Shienvold, if I spelled that right). Or mediator (Andrew J. Libassi, MS, CRC), a basic (little else) “put out my shingle” website, not many levels of sub-menus there — except for “Kids First Program” which “for more info” Pulls out all thecolors, bells and whistles.. Then again, it seems to be a redirect…

(I notice since I blogged it heavily, the website has removed most of the books which obviously reference AFCC board of directors from East and West coast USA and has substituted in the “store” cheaper handouts, all under $15.00.  Probably reflecting the economic status of the general area, in dire straits also).

One website and a judicial administrative ruling, or rules of court, could mean more sales for members in-state and out-of-state for parent education, parenting coordination, and/or as I am now blogging (and referred to this in the context), “reunification therapy / camp” in-state, out of state, and I have a record of a judge in Michigan trying to send three children to a camp based in Toronto, Canada (!).

That’s about how it works.  Now — do the service providers, or the entities or (we’re to assume they are real business entities somehow? Or just not think about such things….) actually connect from the website to something or someone legally doing business under the name advertised?  That’s another matter. Hard to tell without looking…

In this look, I am again reminded that two entities formed (one of them closer matches the website name, but doesn’t bear the owners’ names, only a registered agent’s name, “Gerry Purcell”) didn’t last long, and occurred in sequence:  National Parent Coordinators Association, Inc. (I’ll call it ‘NPCA’ for short) first, and when it was being administratively dissolved by the State of Georgia (probably for non-filing), here comes The Cooperative Parenting Institute (“CPI” for short, an abbreviation seen on both advertising-services websites I’ve imaged here). Speaking of the one in Georgia only.

Although I didn’t go through EVERY page on the old “parentingcoordinationcentral.com” website this time, it seems to me now and as I recall then, the NPCA  was NOT mentioned there, — but it’s the one which showed  both Boyan & Termini as Officers or Directors at the state registration level.  The former, the CPI (in Georgia) did not show their names at the registration level.

etc.

Enjoy…. Most of the rest of this post is images.  While where any legitimately incorporated “Cooperative Parenting Institute” may or may not exist, I don’t know (I do know where one does NOT exist — in Georgia, according to state records, and I also checked, searching first “cooperative” then “parenting” the IRS Exempt Organization Select Check “nonprofit” list also specifying in “Georgia” only, a short list in both cases.

From brochure for AFCC upcoming June 2018, 55th Annual conference (in Washington, DC?) Advertising pages, Parent Coordination. Accessible through AFCC/Conferences page. See very top and very bottom of this image, the latter “training in US and around the world since 1997” and provides a website “http://www.CooperativeParenting.com” the site I’ve blogged on here, images nearby! Top implies that the CPI is a publisher, or at least an entity which could self-publish as pdf something to sell…

Oh yes — and the upcoming AFCC Conference, June 2018 (see page this one supports), I see in its advertising pages near back of conference brochure, is still showing a “Cooperative Parenting Institute” — but not specifically associated with these two women.  I haven’t researched that one yet, but here’s the image.

Above: Training Fees (@ ParentCoord’tnCentral.com); notice at top, it’s referring people to register at “http://www.Cooperativeparenting.com“

ParentCoordinationCentral.com features (references) “Cooperative Parenting Institute” (not — keep reading — “National Parent Coordination Association” actually showing Termini & Boyan names on the Georgia SOS listing)

These images are not annotated, they are just “here” FYI:  Anyone could quickly look up their business records after checking the websites for which states to look in.

I didn’t review Pennsylvania’s this time because that state’s database is such a pain-in-the-neck (and it appears registration in this state isn’t even required annually — a strange situation).

Search results for officer name “Boyan” (one among several results).

Both women’s names (and a third’s) on this one, but it was a “flash-in-the-pan” at least at the corporate annual report-filing level. Time span 2002-2008, with not much inbetween (see “filings” image)

I don’t see a reference to this organization (incorporated 2002, didn’t last long as you can see) anywhere on the other websites, although I may have missed it. Seems to me the names featured were “parent coordination central” and “Cooperative Parenting Institute,” not ‘National Association of Parent Coordinators.”

NPCA Certificate of Adm. Dissolution/Revocation.

Cooperative Parenting Institute Inc. | Notice official incorp. date Feb. 6, 2008

Cooperative Parenting Institute Inc. | Notice official Dissolution/Revocation date is Sept. 16, 2010

Footnote Personal added.  This is to underscore the problems associated with having a private trade association, utilizing also in part funding made available in the mid-1990s via PRWORA, which as I’ve discussed also had ties back to the 1960s “Moynihan Report” anti-woman philosophies based on social science and a response to the civil rights events of the 1960s.  It seems even that the organization “NOW” (1966) was formed in direct response to the sexism of this report, as I blogged recently. Many considered this 1970s an era, a decade, of improving women’s rights, but the 1980s seems to have countered with its ongoing fathers’ rights’ groups, often characterized misleadingly as about the children or about “families” (i.e., attempting to claim the higher moral ground).  By the 1990s, this embedded system, combined with ongoing movements to protect women from the violence they were experiencing within the home and within “intimate partner” relationships, may have mistakenly led many to believe that the movements were in opposition to each other when in fact, they’d been collaborating for years.

This is the country I have been born into, grown up in, attended college in, worked a decent profession in, not designed primarily to make me rich, but to be a balanced and beneficial within my communities way of life, and connected (because it was in the arts) also to history as expressed in architecture, literature, art, music, drama (etc.) as well as in the sciences and the development of religion.

It was a decent and integrated way of supporting myself both single, would’ve been married if the father hadn’t been abusive (many people married have worked in this field, both men and women) and I had proof this century, even was for me as a single mother, even after such abuse dramatically impacting my own recent work history and economic footprint, and access to credit…. and without being otherwise disrupted, harassed and chronically stopped surrounding forced and continuing involvements WITHOUT protection or safe boundaries, to an “ex-batterer” (separation did stop the battering, primarily because I never let him move back into my home, and I didn’t move back in with him, etc.) could’ve financially supported basic living expenses both me, and our children (whether or not the father opted to support them financially through child support) well into my seventies, and their twenties.

He opted to never address the violence part, or acknowledge it, so I kept reconciliation OFF the table as something I couldn’t and wasn’t going to ever live with again.  Like many college-educated working women who opt to leave abusive relationships, seeing no reason to put up with it, through this system it’s STILL possible to utterly destroy that woman, and continue psychological abuse for YEARS. It’s so bad that a system of “family court advocacy” and “broken family court initiatives” were able to get a following (not that I agree with their analysis OR proposed solutions, for the most part)…

An appearance that this is really NOT a gender war is kept; I realize men have also been destroyed and made homeless, potentially through outrageous child or spousal support rulings, and that men can and have been falsely accused of child abuse AND of domestic violence.  However, this interpretation MUST omit the HHS grants to promote healthy marriage/ responsible fatherhood and the structuring of public funding to flow towards the family court system based off of “Welfare” in the US, and the influence of historically antagonistic to women (or at least heavily patriarchal) religious-affiliated groups, historically, involved with (for one, the AFCC:  It’s dispute resolution centers are more than one at a Jesuit university in a major metropolitan area).

This is in many ways, a gender AND class war; both sides can be played.  But when it comes to prioritizing preserving the family unit over physical safety AND economic viability of wives and mothers within it, that’s demanding we live risking our physical lives and the safety of our own children, year after year — and that’s a gender war.  I am not speaking only for myself; this is waste of human life and ability based on their FUNCTION within the family unit, and this being an obvious area of ongoing conflict within society, the “Conflict resolution professionals” have made quite the living out of it…serving themselves.  They do NOT hold the higher moral ground, and they are working to level, that is, lower, the legal and courts’ playing field to the “out-come based” level, every step of the way.

As I’ve indicated in this blog from time to time, being hauled repeatedly into court by my ex and having protections at every step compromised managed to upset my personal household, bringing out the worst among family members, when and after I as a parent simply acted in the only way made available to me to keep both myself, our children — and on another level their father (because their father, my husband, was continuing to talk about suicide: despite his near-complete domination of me as a person, and control of nearly all my financial activities, it wasn’t “enough”)  — physically alive, let alone the other forms of meaningful use of one’s life, energies, and abilities for any meaningful purpose outside satisfying another person’s “power deficit” which no amount of submission to, including escalating forms of abuse would ever satisfy…

For one, I couldn’t submit to chronic below-gutter-level treatment as a parent.  No human being should have to, and I certainly wasn’t going to voluntarily set that model for my own children of endorsing this kind of treatment by their father of their mother… These children grew up seeing me battered, when I myself wasn’t working full-time, forced to beg for necessities for them and myself, at times having to flee the home overnight for safety, and being lectured and denigrated not only by their father — but also by others in a religious community, one of whom was flown into the home to do this (and I’ll say, was among one of several precipitating events causing loss of my full-time job, and decision to file for protection.

We also had a number of pets, and they were witness to animal abuse in which some of the pets died). It was a tremendous relief and brought hope to me as a person and as a mother when the first separation, and particularly a move out of the household and neighborhood where the abuse had been taking place, into a nearby one where work quickly returned to me now that that level of chaos was, it seemed, gone.

I truly do not believe that groups, or cults, whatever their professional accomplishments may be, that fail to understand and do not wish to acknowledge the factual realities of a relationship, who cannot admit in their own dealings that this is in no way tolerable, and who only deal seriously with domestic violence professionals and agencies who support the agenda of “more services” for facilitating ongoing contact with such people, should be controlling anything involving children.  Yet that is exactly who this association has intended and positioned itself to control — that, and the courts, and the cashflow to and through them, and how it’s distributed through collectivist networks to the association’s membership.

Parents can be and are controlled effectively through their concern for the children. Bring or threaten to bring harm to the children, and you have any good parent’s full attention. Full attention that in a more just, and fairer system, would be left available for safely participating in and contributing to a society through that parent’s work efforts, or otherwise community involvement.

This information needs to be publicized because failure to acknowledge it fails to acknowledge a situation involving the most basic essences of liberty and of life, including individuals‘ basic human rights to enough information from the governments our work efforts support by which to reasonably plan for their own future as an incentive to invest in it — and to not have our lives planned down to the details by un-elected authorities and professionals who refuse to be held accountable to us through fiscal transparency, are unelected, and have evidenced planned takeover of public offices for private profit and personal careers.

If we cannot comprehend or obtain sufficient information from our own governments (such as the family courts sector, and I should add the probate also, which gets into transmission of family wealth from one generation to another — or to the state or to private parties through chronic “extraction” in the “trusts and real estate” sector, something I’m dealing with currently — that is NOT government by consent, but by force.

//LGH 12/25/2017

(Footnote added on this major national school, bank, government (etc.) holiday).