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

I’ve not posted anything since late March in part because I’ve been working intensely on the project this post introduces.  Actually, this post introduces another, upcoming post which diagrams (indexes) the project. The project, ideally, will continue over the next weeks/months as I gradually blend one of my blogs into this main one and update the index with each new post.

I have to say “ideally” because my available time isn’t predictable from month to month or year to year. Hence sometimes the best I can leave is a broad trail of breadcrumbs, distributed wherever I am at any point in time while still running what seems like an endless maze, with daunting obstacles at every apparent “Exit” sign. We all know human, physical life itself has a certain exit — I’m just trying to get into a different place before that final exit.  Anyhow, right now,…

You are reading: Running the Maze, Triathlon-Style, Continuing To Leave a Broad Trail of Breadcrumbs, Field Guides, Consumer Alerts etc. (short-link ends “-9IU,” published April 10, 2019).  It’s about 7,000 words long, in conversational tone and reflects my opinion and perspective.

If you cannot read it all, please scroll down to near the bottom, where this post began and where I explain what is meant by the “triathlon” reference in the title.

After a decade of blogging and other writing, my opinion and perspective still seem to be the minority, if not outlawed set of concepts when it comes to easier to digest (less analytical!) catch-phrases to organize demands to improve or enhance the family courts vis-a-vis better protecting children from abuse, stopping domestic violence, etc.  I cannot swallow, and do not endorse swallowing the level of compromise I see promoted, but at least explain why — which is my “broad trail of breadcrumbs.”

I remain utterly “recalcitrant” (unrepentant about failure to conform to an observable status quo in certain movements, based on what I’ve seen throughout the system infrastructure — at least so far as I’ve been able to see it from public-access sources).

This post is to gently warn readers of another upcoming, heavily-loaded one, with its own Table of Contents and some of its own intro complete with images and references to things that don’t typically make mainstream media in association with reports about family courts, reunification camp survivors and operators, and domestic-violence-, about-to-divorce, or custody-exchange related murders (see below).

This post contains more personal/anecdotal perspective as opinion, while the upcoming one is oriented more towards data and documentation. To keep the two writing styles and types of content separate and for easier access to that index I segregated my value-laden labels and commentary here (see title: Maze, Marathon, Marking the Trail, Consumer alerts, etc.) from the upcoming post designed to function like a Table of Contents to the merged-in, migrating blog posts and pages only, a subset of this larger and older blog FamilyCourtMatters.org. The upcoming post has its own illustrated overview naming specific and influential people, organizations and institutions behind the policies I protest.  The blog being blended in is also, like most of my writing, opinionated, but it at least shows the data on which I base those opinions, and where it comes from.

That imminent (to be published tomorrow or the day after) post, representing a recent blog migration project, is:

“The Family Court Franchise System” (Blogspot.com, 2012 only, 40 posts and 7 Pages) Is Now Grafted into FamilyCourtMatters.org here (WordPress.com) as of April 9, 2019” (Case-sensitive shortlink ends “-9Aj”)

Re: More domestic violence, about-to-divorce, or child-exchange-related murders.

At least three have occurred while I was composing these posts, the latest major one I’m aware of in Hawthorne, California.  As the mother came in to pick up her 17-month old child returning from visitation with the Dad, he shot her point-blank right outside the police station.  He was quickly caught, but that didn’t restore a mother to the child by any means. Reported with live video from drones or helicopters on a number of news stations; you can look it up.  Twitter @Hawthorne_PD.

In what WORLD are 17-month old children being exchanged at police stations because one of the parents doesn’t feel safe around the other one?

In OUR world, current scenario, current social service delivery system, current family courts, and current decision making surrounding domestic violence and child-abuse issues.

In MY World, my children were as minors stolen by father-abduction** in direct violation of an existing court order, during a court-ordered exchange which I was complying with right from a sheriff’s (not “police”) station, an exchange situation that had been in place for a year at the time as the family courts refused to provide me the second restraining order I so much needed and had requested the previous year.

We were exchanging at police stations specifically because no restraining order was available, not even a civil one.  HIS (not my) threats to kidnap were already reported, but in the event itself, I was accused of planning to kidnap as justification for sudden custody-switch. No credible evidence of this was presented, ever, but credible evidence isn’t the playground of the family courts.  Allegations of interference with non-custodial (if father) contact are, which triggers “triage” and more services ordered.  The NON-offending parent then goes back into court repeatedly seeking to re-gain contact with (typically HER) children if custody-switch already took place, which is then collectively used to justify overcrowded courts, lack of resources, and more privatization and streamlining/centralizing of services.

**When later, during my revised, unenforceable “parenting time” children were instead driven across not only state, but also country border (to Mexico!), this was technically kidnapping.  I discovered it after the fact and was in a state of trauma (extended) already by then).  What I’m saying — when family courts absorb and “triage” behaviors that qualify as felonies, those felonies rarely come just individually, but (speaking from experience and general awareness, not official studies), but in cluster.  There seems no question, at the street level, that an individual’s having gotten off completely unscathed with one is likely to try some more.  So that business model dilutes the standards — then more trainers (batterers intervention, etc.) and treatments are ordered to supposedly re-establish them.  It’s a circular, self-perpetuating process…

Contact was cut off immediately and, for the most part, kept off to an unprecedented extent (and an extent I never exercised when they lived with me), and regardless of any stage of any subsequent existing court orders. … Supervised exchanges might have been appropriate in, for us, possibly preventing the child-abduction, BUT parent and child have also been killed WITHIN supervised visitation exchanges too (August, 2013, Manchester, NH father Muni Savyon and son, INSIDE the actual room).

The spectre of these events affects people, parents, like me who in the past had to resort to law enforcement office exchange, sometimes with disastrous results and traumatic incidents leading up to them still involving the police anyway. I’m sure it also must psychologically affect those still enduring them, as also does the parade of reports, across the USA and in Canada, the UK, of men murdering the mothers of their children and/or their children in the context of impending official or unofficial separation or divorce.

That is, in addition to lethal violence (murders) around court-ordered or other exchanges of children between parents, there are murders taking place outside of court-ordered custody exchanges also in situations or times such as:

<>midweek, <>weekends, <>near holidays or NOT near holidays, <>when someone is about to radically re-arrange any relationship with another person protesting that radical re-arrangement or <>initiate any significant changes for the children.

Issues like divorce, job change, housing change, school change (for any children) or change in co-parenting schedules thus become risky and lethality/kidnapping-assessment events for anyone with children who has exited (at least co-habitation with) or is exiting any abusive or violent relationships, and/or often may be involved in the family court system over that, or other issues.

In some of the incidents I’ve read about over the years, anger over having to pay child support to the children’s mother has been reported surrounding the events.

In our situation, this seemed to be one factor, which I’d chalk up also to ongoing coercive control.  Being slapped with a child custody order after years of having successfully co-opted my credit, gotten bank account shut down, and manipulated whether or when I could work, and at what personal cost or risk, was a real shock to my husband.  The state (through the County) was actually, for the first time, ORDERING him to support his own family — without being able to abuse his wife.  It for the first time gave some discretionary decision-making on how to help our children back into my hands without direct retaliation for doing so.  I also made sure I had a bank account in my own name, something I’d not been able to maintain during this marriage.  So that child support order was a big shift in the power dynamics; in the year or two leading up to the “snatch” he’d basically (without warning or explanation) just stopped paying — while continuing the harassments around weekly exchanges, putting extra pressure on me as a parent, and on the household the children were then living in full-time.

Something is wildly wrong with having the exchanges in the first place when people (sometimes plural) are murdered during them, sending the alleged murderer (in Hawthorne, there were plenty of witnesses that it was the father), if caught and not also committing suicide, or suicide-by-cop, into prison. In the Hawthorne incident also, her relatives were there, and could’ve easily also become targets, which is to say, have been murdered also.  In general, by the time exchanges get to the point of “we need a police station exchange,” that situation is not redeemable, and is likely to escalate, negatively.

To this day, I’m glad ours didn’t, but the experience changed permanently my perspective on the role of law enforcement in enforcing either laws (as in, against child-stealing) OR court orders when those involved in our situation, refused to — instead, enabling it.

Another “tragedy” (murder) showing up, in Canada, involved a well-known neurosurgeon killing, dismembering — and stuffing into a suitcase — his own wife, who’d intended divorce (prior abuse seems involved) and mother of three children; the wife also been a well-known and loved doctor.    Three children were home at the time and heard the struggle.

The suitcase was then dumped into a river and discovered by others, who got, along with public authorities, to deal with the resulting messes, and the media, and the courts.

The longer you live, post-abuse, the more of these you WILL hear and read about unless you tune them out — don’t read the news, don’t read the headlines, and do NOT get involved in advocacy to change, adjust, or stop these types of events from happening — which by definition requires maintaining an awareness of events and the involved fields. And don’t network on-line with others seeking understanding of the field.  The events continue; they really are an ongoing parade with too few breaks.  They are the dirty underbelly of this (and other) “developed” nations.

I don’t know how anyone aware of these matters could effectively and maintaining a clear conscience, tune them out.

I might be more inclined to IF I saw others continuing to report on similar matters as I have been for years, enough to even partially counter the spin based on the irrelevance or non-existence of EXACTLY what I blog….nor was I even the first, at least as to main themes in this blog…  I believe exposing these matters is essential to any proposed solutions to reduce violence against women and children.  They are the iceberg beneath the visible, MSM-reported, tip.

I have responded to some of these recent headline-events on @LetUsGetHonest (first week and a half in April) if they’re not already on your radar through Twitter or mainstream media. I am not linking here; am already fending off PTSD getting out this much..

By now, 2019, I have been both a participant/ witness and an observer and a researcher of these things for as long as some people claim domestic violence expertise in their LinkedIns and C.V.s, or bio blurbs within academia (faculty profiles), or as footnotes in authoring yet another (sponsored) academic journal.

The difference is perspective.

I am not seeking to make my living or way through life by way of reporting on these things so far, and that “so far” is two decades worth AFTER separation from abuse.

I can see who is, but still hope, for me, there is a different way, perhaps even a way allowing me to close my chapter in this (metaphorical) book (of life) and re-engage in other and more positive and creative fields of interest, study, and work which generate a more positive resonance — and sufficient income above basic expenses to be professionally and socially active and abuse-free in my old age.

…I am only so long in this investigative blogging chapter (of life) by virtue of having been taken for so long away from the things I was engaged in as a parent (since they were born) and as a person (since I was a child, throughout adolescence, college, and my work life up to marrying a batterer determined to shut it down and who almost succeeded 100% in doing so).

Another difference of perspective is that I’m still in need of a level of personal privacy that being a  conference-circuit, book-selling, tell-my-story consultant or advocate would immediately break.  Engaging in those would be more than complicated.  

I need this privacy STILL as an elder, even though both our (one father involved) children are now young adults because of the nature of these systems, and how much compromise on basic personal integrity (boundaries) is forced on participants.

Those in the domestic violence advocacy career curve (and, for the most part, the family court reform networked coalitions of tiny nonprofits featuring specific spokespeople, often male or male/female combos) are not prone to listening to “non-experts” with degrees OUTSIDE the designated advocacy fields, especially when I try to bring up topics that have been historically (through omission and collective silence) off-limits to discuss.  The apparent designated roles, with some (not many, proportionately) exceptions:

Those experiencing or having recently experienced abuse of the sort programming is promoted to prevent are to “tell their stories” in the company of degreed experts (with the bio blurb, nonprofit leadership expertise, or other creds in the field) who then advertise the solutions, and solicit support for them.

People who don’t submit to or match this particular infrastructure hierarchy (tell your story– but you’re no technical consultant, advisor, and don’t get to critique our agenda) are excluded.  People who do, are promoted, and their books.

That formula is a “win/win”  — for the nonprofits dependent on grants, the professionals (whether consultants, staff including lawyers, or subcontractors with the nonprofits), for the politicians obtaining continued funding under the family/domestic violence (same would apply for child abuse) prevention fields and of course for mainstream media.

WHY? Because this formula ensures that news of the operational infrastructure and the juices ($$) flowing through it — including the marriage/fatherhood promotional grants — and the illicit character of so many of the grantees, and flubs in the database reporting the grants, i.e., TAGGS.HHS.Gov — tax-exempt, association-based nonprofit/NGO networks (like AFCC, NCJFCJ, NACC, NCSC and such) are not reported in association with the latest disaster, or the latest “programs lacking oversight” (such as the reunification camps and therapies).  This leaves people perplexed, sometimes confused, and of course disturbed — great conditions for manipulation — and prone to OK more funding for the same infrastructure, or add-ons.

(Instead of identifying which financial, public/private power flow “just might be” interfering with the flow of solutions.  Without looking at the infrastructure in terms of infrastructure (government entities AS government entities supported by taxation; non-profit, sometimes called “agencies”, AS privately controlled tax-exempt corporations (businesses) by definition interested in preserving the balance of power as best benefits that sector — and it is a sector!).

When the public can be induced to argue about symptoms of the system in terms irrelevant to its operational infrastructure, the foundation of perpetual conflict = increasingly centralized control, increasingly privatized government, increasing administrative burden to create, standardize, and regulate, ever more specialized professions (i.e., ‘fatherhood practitioner” “fatherhood researcher” “Fatherhood program evaluators” (substitute other cause words for “fatherhood” at any point, though the sound-byte may change somewhat depending on the point of reference:  In other words, “domestic violence ADVOCATE, not “PRACTITIONERS” is used…).  Then for any field, there are (ever more) “research and practice networks” of which FRPN.org at Temple University (Pennsylvania) is just one.

(FRPN has direct involvement of Pearson/Thoennes nonprofit around since 1981 in Denver, Colorado, and as such (Jessica Pearson) direct lines to AFCC (Association of Family and Conciliation Courts).  Explore that site for more information.  Then go to the university financial statements OR any tax returns to see if any dots could be connected between the HHS grants for that project (or any private moneys in addition) and accounting for it.

IF and WHEN you cannot connect those dots, the appropriate definition is a broken money trail, lack of accountability — and HHS grants are public funds.  Period. Universities, public OR private, are often so large that this type of accountability when spread systemwide (i.e., with other universities collaborating in the practice of father-promotion, research, write-up, demonstration projects, etc.) — naturally would not be in the forefront of a public already in distress about other volatile issues constantly in the media.

Thus the growth of any such industry is often rooted, grounded, funded, and typically established by the time its impact hits the public concience — IF it ever does.  So, above, when I said:

Those in the domestic violence advocacy career curve (and, for the most part, the family court reform networked coalitions of tiny nonprofits featuring specific spokespeople, often male or male/female combos) are not prone to listening to “non-experts” with degrees OUTSIDE the designated advocacy fields, especially when I try to bring up topics that have been historically (through omission and collective silence) off-limits to discuss.

I am now seeing that whether from the leadership, or the “follower-ship,” resistance to bringing up these topics remains.  It is sensed as somehow traitorous to a unified movement to plea for help, or demand actions…  Those already invested in the infrastructure I’ve just described (and which this blog, in large part, describes), are of course not even threatened by someone like me — but somehow the smaller coalitions manage to attract people who, it seems, are.

For many of these, the information I’m sitting on** is a landmine. If news and ripple-effect resonance of it ever broke out it’d explode common rhetoric and myths which attract hundreds of thousands (at a minimum) of dollars in nonprofit leadership — not to mention the billions already expended pushing the programming and infrastructure already.  (I am not using the word “billions” loosely.  Go look within HHS or USDOJ for some historic information on the fields, or some of the billion-dollar private foundations also behind the programming).

I am also facing some opposition from new converts to older organizations among the above who (said converts) engage in [minor — not big deal] social-media put-downs because I’m not “going with the flow” and am not sufficiently grateful that SOME media coverage — ANY media coverage — is being brought to the functions of the family courts. The perpetual spin and incompleteness of the reporting is transparent to anyone who has access to even as much as I’ve brought out on the operating systems, and the issues that come with those systems, involved.

The social media put-downs don’t make me feel personally bad, but they do remind me how the belief that consensus on SOMEthing, almost anything is more important than actually getting to the truth and being able to prove the truth in other than psychological terms has been normalized.  The process of proof is looked down upon as a personal attack, and responded to in similar form.  What happened to the art of arguing points, and any sense of accountability to support them?  Would that fly when a doctoral thesis must be supported?

Then why should it when dealing with matters of life and death, representative government itself use of public resources we are taxed (and fined, and pay licensing, etc. fees of all kinds)?  In establishing any movement for reform, what’s wrong with internal pressure to actually prove the statements around which a movement is sought to organize? If they can be so easily disproved by someone on the same side of the question, how would the same arguments and positions withstand opponents?  With bigger, more widespread personal insult and (ad hominem) one-upmanship?

People will fight about the fine-points (or even broader points) of generalized terms within this field, while showing next to no curiosity about more objective terms, such as “this corporation existed since YYYY and receives funds from _____ authorized under ____ law in effect since YYYY and as administered by the (US Department of)____.  Those are definable terms that, once listed, are hard to argue about.

And these definable terms involve numbers and awareness of how they are reported, accounted for, and categorized.  Numbers come with concrete points of reference (i.e., what is being counted or measured) — and in the field of public policy and programming, and in business, indicate revenues, and expenses and lead naturally to awareness of related organizations (a category on any IRS Form 990, that is tax return for a US-based 501© tax-exempt corporation).  They are helpful measures of SIZE.

Numbers when attached to YEARS also indicate chronologies (timelines).  When news reports are in the omin-present “present tense” (“So and So, CEO (or other title) of organization Such and Such” is quoted as a resident, or handy expert (if not official for court-testimony purpose, assumed to be so for media purposes)  and when the readers have no idea of where said organization is in any network, how long it’s been around, how large or small it is — or its friends in power (if any) — then they have little concept of how competent is that advice also.

Getting to the numbers is also one shortcut to getting to the organization and public/private networks, and cutting through the PR or simply bypassing it and in the process, a stance from which also to assess it.

Over time, and with some consistency, it’s an efficient way to get to some very sound value judgments on who’s naughty and who’s nice, i.e., has their practices lined up with what they preach and by “their” I typically mean either a private corporation or a government entity’s spokesperson, that is, leadership.

The social media put-downs from not being collaborative enough, or for being too analytical/critical at least within circles I inhabit, has gone from passive to active.

Attempts to derail, and after I continued bringing attention to the derailments, then discredit my repeatedly bringing up the networking factor and that individual so-called “bad-guys” operate through nonprofits hooking up with both private and public funding — not in a vacuum.  They are not magically powerful or influential; it’s THEIR support system which holds the power.

Imagine how hard it’s going to be to show not only the national networking, but how the international connectivity functions to perpetuate danger for women, and family court “status quo” further entrenched, while promising the opposite, “reform.”

It’s not hard to see, just to show where there’s a mindset pre-disposed to discredit it.

I don’t begrudge people just not interested.  I do, however, knowing long-term and firsthand the consequences, resent people who seem to derive their sense of power in discrediting me without effectively demonstrating their own competence or knowledge in these fields.  Observers (the other audience) without even clues to what other kinds of information is available, are also clue-less on how to judge the on-line debates.

What I do resent is the “dog-in-the-manger” factor (usually basic pride/fear, or a financial incentive is nearby).  When it comes to the “Our Broken Family Courts” crowd, the financial incentive is already identifiable.  As I look at more and more “newcomers,” the similar incentive  usually shows up and is not hard to find.  They are selling time, services, consultancies, books, trainings, curricula and some or all of the above.  In that case, the ignorance (omissions) are further distributed.  There is a ripple effect.  People like me get disgusted and disengage; we sometimes just go away — meaning that those who stick around, will be absent key nutrients to even understanding the family court systems from a clean perspective.

So, by now, I’m used to that, however my awareness of it is among the reasons I still decided to incorporate (preserve by merging into this one) a separate blog I constructed in 2012 just as major pieces of the puzzle –beyond the ones I already had exposure to and understood to be valid by 2009– were coming to my awareness.  

Again, the upcoming post is called:

“The Family Court Franchise System” (Blogspot.com, 2012 only, 40 posts and 7 Pages) Is Now Grafted into FamilyCourtMatters.org here (WordPress.com) as of April 9, 2019” (Case-sensitive shortlink ends “-9Aj”)

and the one you’re reading now, Running the Maze, Triathlon-Style, Continuing To Leave a Broad Trail of Breadcrumbs, Field Guides, Consumer Alerts etc. (short-link ends “-9IU,” published April 10, 2019)

What follows is where it originally began.  What’s above was added after the move to a new post.  Basically, I identify the three parts that inspired me to use the “triathlon” analogy.

Many thoughts come as I’m nearing completion of a blog migration and an index of the 40 posts and 7 pages moved from there (Blogger.com) to here (WordPress.com) while still under duress (as usual) regarding my own survival, housing, and freedom to obtain employment I might foreseeably maintain at least a half year or more, starting immediately.

The blog migration starts with a summary post and table of contents (index), which this one introduces.  I expect to publish it within two days, and this one possibly right before.

Perhaps this project took this long because I, being occupied with the cognitive forefront of my thinking by the methodical tasks, internally (at a deeper level, and I’m talking also allowing the gut instincts to settle in place next moves to make — or not make) was processing my next strategic moves in what would appear to be an impossible personal dilemma, including a long-distance litigation I can’t ignore, while in a new location where the proper focus should be ONLY, employment and re-building fresh work and social relationships.

I could’ve done a sloppy or partial job, or not even done it, but chose not to.

This has been such a long-term pattern, given the circumstances, it’s now “the norm,” and I wonder, really, what proportion of the people in the U.S. about my age (within about a decade older or younger) are now dealing with similar situations.  In other words, how many (what proportion) have been stranded in the family courts so long, those whose families turn against them as opposed to supporting, that the concept of BUILDING anything itself for the “long-term” future becomes almost an oxymoron.

REGARDING BLOG MERGER:

After all my years watching various nonprofits merge in and out of each other, now I have a need to merge just two of my blogs in order to preserve the contents of the smaller one only active — but very active — during 2012.  FamilyCourtMatters.org (you’re on it)  is the “surviving [non-] entity” (it’s just a blog)!

I seek to report in a way that any motivated adult with basic literacy and at least a sense of numbers and some basic vocabulary to the field, could without constant coaching or mentoring, follow it him or herself, with a little personal self-discipline.  That’s where the “motivation” comes in.

The timing of the need to preserve through the merge couldn’t have been worse, but I decided to save the content on-line not just for a personal record my own learning curve but also for newer generations of, well, battered mothers and others being traumatized, railroaded, and/or angered by ongoing exposure to this “crazy” (or crazy-making**) system of courts and all their court-connected corporations either running them (operationally organizing in the private sector), or running off referrals from them…***

**but logically designed to be other than what it’s portrayed as — that is, generally speaking, problem-solving, poverty- and national debt-burden reducing, therapeutically responsibly healthy jurisprudence in the public interest…

The many phrases in the above inset refer to programming I’ve studied and the sponsors/backers (often private, tax-exempt foundations usually working alongside governments) of which I’ve had a look at while myself both running and attempting to keep up with the mapping of this energy-draining and resource-usurping maze.

I have some more opinion; I’ll fine-print it again.

As I’m writing this, I’m in Phase 3. I have a general life policy of INSISTING on activities other than straight sprints; it’s the only way I’d still have any work or personal connections left. Some sprints have been to “a safe distance” after which, the pursuit / extortion begins. How this isn’t just enslavement I don’t see.

I question what kind of mutual shared mindset by those historically in power already would have concocted not just one facet of such systems, but entire overlapping (in parts) sets of them, and ways to co-opt (privatize) successive parts the worse they perform in order to “improve” them, and the worse they perform, the more the public media (a sponsored category of communication, obviously) is to yet further centralize control — and reduce services, due process and fair treatment in the courts.

It’s clearly a shared mindset, a consensus that the public is to accept, or break themselves upon if/when they don’t.

| | |