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

This post names four sidebar widgets  and includes additional information on Wellesley Centers for Women and the BMTP (Battered Mothers’ Testimony Project) as it relates to violence-prevention efforts for the past several (more than two) decades.  See also added blog right sidebar widget extension (under “More Resources”) for link to the Wellesley Centers for Women.  The funding/funders of the WCW reveals another layer of critical, basic information to the field and involved professionals (cf. Batterers’ Intervention-focused male participating leadership) and why (almost from the start) it was international in focus, thus (conveniently?) ignoring the specifically domestic (USA) components as reflected in the mid-1990s, “Welfare Reform” years except as a progressive orientation might filter this information. [[Lead-in text updated during reformat, Nov. 3]]

Those name four sidebar text widgets….

This post delivers a bit more than promised, which I’ll leave you to deal with until or unless I decide to split it. Right now, I feel like “speaking out” about a number of things. The Wellesley part was an afterthought to the widget off-ramps which, due to timing probably, took on a life of its own today, Friday, October 4, after I thought the post was fine “as-is” October 3 evening.//LGH.

(“SPEAK OUT” | Cover page w/ year, title and “℅” who produced it) Image and link to full ‘BMTP at WC4W’ report’s 2002 pdf shown again below on “Footnote” to this Oct., 2019 LGH|FCM post (shortlink ending “=bcv”).

I completed this post fully Oct. 3 evening, without the verbal “outburst” I just wrote.  I had intentionally postponed publishing one day til Oct. 5, then saw quickly on social media how timely the message on its footnote (itself a kind of indignant commentary on feminist “Gender Bias / Human Rights — vs. System Operations” response to domestic violence). I would consider myself feminist, except for the association with such behavior.

Below, I’d mentioned, off the top of my head (having already looked into the (websites, stated missions, financials where shown and 990s where they didn’t show but could be found anyhow) two obviously feminist-oriented US-based 501©s (tax-exempt, “nonprofit” organizations (Legal Momentum and Institute for Women’s Policy; | See Footnote) and another one which work seems central, is still often cited, but which was produced not out of a nonprofit, but out of an (elite: Ivy League I believe) New England college’s “Centers for Women” — the (2002) Battered Mothers’ Testimony Project (read the cover, above right).

This document’s publication date, project committee members (with a whole “1” woman actual survivor — the others are all JDs and a PhD (with which LundyBancroft sneaks in there, non-PhD’d as a co-author), “Contributing Authors” (actual survivor, not included; look closely), and on the bottom of the same page, the composition of its “Advisory Committee” are all helpful in understanding domestic violence advocacy today and why it seems so ineffective as applied to the family courts, IF you have some grasp of the funding and federalization of the movement, and when this began.  (Answer:  by the 1980s….)(~>Link to a pdf I made last July). BMTP FinalReport (I have been looking closely at this in its timeframe (post-PRWORA) and at involved parties who did NOT examine who or what are the Family Courts (AFCC or etc) | 2019July5

This mini-section added  Oct. 11, 2019; I could footnote but it fits in here, so didn’t

(Next light-yellow-background section with a few quotes from BMTP (above) and from there, a simultaneous (same-year) published book by two of the cited authors: Bancroft & Silverman.

NOW, BACK TO A CLOSER LOOK AT “WELLESLEY CENTERS FOR WOMEN” and Wellesley: 

Wellesley College History (One of the Seven Sisters, elite, progressive for its time, famous graduates include Madeleine Korbel Albright (’59), Hillary Rodham Clinton (’69) and with an Institute named after Albright which is obviously Global in focus.

(Form 990 Part I, Purpose🙂 WELLESLEY IS THE PREEMINENT COLLEGE FOR GIFTED YOUNG WOMEN THAT PROVIDES A SUPERIOR 4-YEAR LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION, PREPARING THEM FOR LEADERSHIP IN A DIVERSE AND CHANGING WORLD

WIKIPEDIA describes the college, and another nearby image (from Wiki on Wellesley) describes its Social Science-oriented, 1974ff “Centers for Women” within this elite woman’s college which allows cross-registration with MIT, etc., and has a hefty endowment, I already showed below:

As of 2019, Wellesley was ranked the third best liberal arts college in the United States by U.S. News & World Report.^[6] As of 2018, Wellesley is the highest endowed women’s college in the world, with an endowment of $2.1 billion. In the United States, Wellesley has the 50th largest endowment among institutions of higher education.^[1]

(Guess where they’re NOT keeping $1 billion of that endowment?  In public-traded securities, and of that almost half the “other investments” isn’t in the US, either… See tax returns; I linked to the table on the footnote below).

The college’s robust alumnae base has been widely viewed as the “most powerful women’s network in the world.”^[7] Notable alumnae include Hillary Rodham Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Katharine Lee Bates, Cokie Roberts, Diane Sawyer, Nora Ephron, Pamela Melroy, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Soong Mei-ling and Bing Xin.^[8]

(Part of) Madeleine Albright’s biography (link provided just above (quoting from the college website, not the Wiki, which I inserted just before publishing), only next to last para. (about her books) omitted) and underneath a VERY large close-up photgraph (portrait)  Some emphases added:

Madeleine Korbel Albright ’59: Diplomat, Global Leader, Visionary 

Madeleine K. Albright is Chair of Albright Stonebridge Group,[++] a global strategy firm, and Chair of Albright Capital Management LLC, an investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets. She was the 64th Secretary of State of the United States. Dr. Albright received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, from President Obama on May 29, 2012.

In 1997, Dr. Albright was named the first female Secretary of State and became, at that time, the highest ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. As Secretary of State, Dr. Albright reinforced America’s alliances, advocated for democracy and human rights, and promoted American trade, business, labor, and environmental standards abroad. From 1993 to 1997, Dr. Albright served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and was a member of the President’s Cabinet. From 1989 to 1992, she served as President of the Center for National Policy. Previously, she was a member of President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council and White House staff and served as Chief Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Edmund S. Muskie. …

Seems to prefer Democrats for sure…

Dr. Albright is a Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She chairs the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and serves as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation. She serves on the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Policy Board, a group tasked with providing the Secretary of Defense with independent, informed advice and opinion concerning matters of defense policy. Dr. Albright also serves on the Board of the Aspen Institute. In 2009, Dr. Albright was asked by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen to Chair a Group of Experts focused on developing NATO’s New Strategic Concept. …[[Para. on books omitted]]

Dr. Albright received a B.A. with Honors from Wellesley College, and Master’s and Doctorate degrees from Columbia University’s Department of Public Law and Government, as well as a Certificate from its Russian Institute. She is based in Washington, DC

[++] Link to the LLC given, why not to the “global strategy firm” also?

Albright Stonebridge Group (“ASG”) per Wiki formed through a merger in 2009), per its website, fine print under menu “Team”

The ASG family will forever be grateful for our dear friend, firm co-founder and co-chair, Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger (1945-2015).

Before co-founding Stonebridge International and later ASG, Sandy had a long and distinguished career in both the public service and the law. From 1993 – 2001, he served as White House National Security Advisor and Deputy National Security Advisor to President Bill Clinton, where he led policy efforts across a range of global issues including the Balkans, Middle East and Northern Ireland peace processes, the fight against terrorism, and strengthening U.S. relationships with India, China, and other nations.  Prior to his service in the Clinton administration, he spent 16 years at Hogan & Hartson, where he led the firm’s international practice. Earlier in his career, Sandy held advisory positions in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Department of State, and with the mayor of New York City. He served on boards and in advisory positions of many organizations, the World Food Program USA, the International Crisis Group, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

This year, Sandy was presented with the prestigious Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun, one of the highest awards bestowed by the government of Japan, for his significant contributions to strengthening the relations between the United States and Japan. (etc.)

Here’s from the website of the LLC link to above, founded in 2005 it says, with Strategic Investment Partnerships (“SIPs”) “vintage” 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2017, and the other firm a “value-added minority shareholder.  Interesting, the first two years, anything ring a bell from those dates? (Like, 2008?).

Albright Stonebridge Group (“ASG”), a premier global strategic advisory and commercial diplomacy firm, is an active, value-add minority shareholder. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who serves as Chair of Albright Capital, is the co-Chair of ASG along with former U.S. Commerce Secretary and Kellogg Company CEO, Carlos Gutierrez.

Sounds like being highly positioned in the Executive branch of the United States Government is good for investment opportunities after leaving office, and good “cred” for raising and managing funds in specific places their public office may have given them key insight into that others, typically, might not have, or be able to leverage so well.

Here’s a 2006 article at NPR about Albright and (Condoleeza Rice), both mentored by her father; in the process it tells more about his founding of a school of International Relations at the University of Denver. “For Albright and Rice, Josef Korbel is Tie that Binds.”

Reminder, my overall context for this is perspective as U.S. Citizen who had to deal (domestically) with wife-battering, child-stealing/kidnapping, family court facilitated and how these courts which are SO effective at destroying families and turning parts of them (one or both parts) into fugitives, criminals, or dead people, somehow in the global scale of causes, rhetoric and purposes, got lost in the “Battered Mothers Testimony Project” at (elitist and supposedly feminist) Wellesley around the turn of this century.  Something’s seriously off when they can’t watch out for “their own” at home, or just don’t care to.  Again, more on the footnote to this post, which it looks like I might have to split anyhow.//LGH.

Dr. Albright (per UNCHR Central Europe, Aug. 2017) emigrated at age 11 with her family in 1948, her father being an international diplomat at University of Denver (which I know from my healthy marriage/responsible fatherhood studies is a dba for The Colorado Seminary and some of its professors sources of key curriculum involved in the post-PRWORA (Welfare) Marriage/Fatherhood programming) graduated from high school with honors, having been raised Catholic, married Episcopal (‘the son of newspaper publishers”) and discovered, belatedly after being appointed Secretary of State, that she had Jewish roots:

Profession: Former US Secretary of State
Country of Origin: Czech Republic
Country of Asylum: United States of America
Date of birth: 15 May 1935

She was born Marie Jana Korbelova (Madeleine is the anglicised form of Madlenka, her childhood nickname). Twice, the Korbels were forced from their homeland due to political turmoil. When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia during World War II, the family fled to England. They returned to Prague when Albright’s father, a diplomat, took a position with his government in the brief period between the liberation from the Germans and the Communist coup of 1948. However, because of the Communist takeover, the Korbels once again had to leave the country.

They immigrated to the United States in 1948 when Albright was 11 years old, and settled in Denver, Colorado, where her father took a teaching position in international relations at the University of Denver. In her Denver high school, Albright – then Madeleine Korbel – won a UN-sponsored competition by correctly naming all the organisation’s member states.. [etc]

Joseph Medill Patterson Albright (Albright’s husband 1959 – 1982, they had three daughters); look at his media background (although as adopted son of his mother’s second husband).  (This Wikipedia):

Albright is the scion of a media empire, the grandson and namesake of Joseph Medill Patterson, founder of the New York Daily News who had rivaled William Randolph Hearst in the 1930s. His great-great grandfather, Joseph Medill, owned the Chicago Tribune and had been elected mayor of Chicago. His aunt, Alicia Patterson, founded Newsday.

Albright attended Williams College. He met Madeleine Jana Korbel when she spent a summer working at the Denver Post. They married in 1959 after Madeleine’s graduation from Wellesley College. They had three children: twin girls, Anne and Alice (born 1961), and youngest daughter Katie. The couple divorced in 1982. Albright remarried Marcia Kunstel. Together, they own Flat Creek Ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.^[1]

See nearby image/s from these links and within this quote, from https://www.wellesley.edu/about

Expected to be fully engaged while at Wellesley, students carry this sense of purposeful involvement and personal commitment throughout life. It is the signal mark of a Wellesley woman.

A Widely Envied Campus Environment

The sheer sense of scale of the breathtaking natural environment, in which buildings are thoughtfully sited, distinguish Wellesley’s physical setting in the classically New England town of Wellesley, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston.

Home to leading institutions such as the Albright Institute, the Knapp Social Science Center, the Davis Museum, The Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and the world-renowned Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley’s resources are a magnet not only for the surrounding community and metropolitan area; they attract attention—and scholars—from around the world.

(“Wellesley Centers for Women” is now collecting Donations through “GiveCampus, Inc.” (A Delaware Corporation with plenty of disclaimers and warnings, including:)

3.2. Donor’s Risk.

All donations are at your own risk. Please make sure that when you donate to a given non-profit that you understand how your money will be used. When donating, only donate to those entities that you feel comfortable donating to or otherwise know and trust. GiveCampus does not warrant that funds will be used for any particular purpose and is not responsible for any misuse of the funds by the beneficiary.

The “nonprofit” in question here is the historic, $2B+ gross assets private, all-woman, elite college within range of Boston, Massachusetts.

(See image at top-right, again):  Reminder: the report isn’t the “Project” but the “Project” produced this report.  The project is at a Center at Wellesley, which is economic code for “you can’t track the funding, really.”  Its interest here is the front matter, participants, on who was involved, just one year after U.S. President George W. Bush was elected, not long after “9/11” and the previous (1/29/2001, often ignored) Executive Order establishing an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (the first Executive Order of his Presidency on taking office), and — let’s get real about this — while “Welfare Reform (1996) and, just before it passed the VIolence Against Women Act (1994) had were still recent policy news; major systems were in motion at the time.

By October 3rd evening, I’d footnoted my own commentary (still shows below) and within 24 hours I saw how appropriate it is, and added these few paragraphs on the top.  What you see above, and the next several paragraphs (below post title highlit in yellow through repetition of it, background-color: white) result from my overall indignation, a few recent things which came to my attention.  After that, a bit of description, navigation, the off-ramped text widgets (not that long) and a footnote.

I hope a time is coming soon when I may feel it safe to tell my own story under my own name (right now, not that time) but for now, let’s work to talk systems in more objective terms, not primarily personal points of view. Sure, we have those points of view; I certainly do, but my personal point of view can’t be the basis for expecting an entire nation — or planet — to conform to it.  But, as a person whose work-life produces, when I’m employed, taxes and when not employed, i.e., struggling, makes me subject to becoming “subject matter” for social science “R&D” from people who will not be forced to face the consequences of getting it wrong — I have standing to demand accounts for the use of those funds, or (in the alternate) using my status to fund private career curves based on supposed superiority in managing the poor, the vulnerable, the abused, or “the female who dared to be poor, abused, or vulnerable during or after giving birth to children”

The systems under which we live are supposed to be for the long-term benefit of social living: for the public welfare.  Obviously this doesn’t work out too well for people who stand up to abuse, domestic violence, coercive control, or whatever you feel like calling it this season.  Perhaps we should just call it “evil” and as that’s a spiritual, subjective term, let us then call it “criminal” and talk about why things “criminal” end up in the family court system, where they suddenly lose their nature and are guaranteed to do so by the structure of those courts… so why express astonishment about this any more?

Why try to re-purpose courts without acknowledging their original purposes/blueprints?  But, I already just posted on that, again, recently.  This post has a more limited purpose: preserving the record available on this blog sidebar and (this lead-in and one footnote) speaking out again on certain situations and against certain known trends in so-called “domestic violence advocacy,” with awareness of who, generally, have been in the public sphere with greater control of certain media, megaphones, and affiliations circulating their particular solutions to the problems of human nature and, basically, “evil.”

This post is:

Those name four sidebar text widgets. How long were those four displayed on my blog sidebar?

How soon after 2009, 2011 were they added, when I first began the drill-downs and pointing out that there are at least three different “rhetorics” in the (US) family court system, of which without question the U.S. federal government funded, strangely, at least two seemingly mutually-contradictory ones

[1] [1996 PRWORA] promoting marriage and fathers’ rights as a national politically correct health value to counter the risk and public costs of “fatherlessness” (i.e., single mothers, per se). 

as opposed to:

[2] [1994 VAWA — but see also 1984 FVPSA] preventing violence against women (primarily by men who are in close, intimate partnership with them) as a national politically correct health risk, and at some level women’s rights.  … just not (see “1” above?) women who are or become single mothers’]

while the ONE thing most advocacy groups, including those complaining about unfair treatment of parents, litigants, fathers, mothers and children in the family courts — refuse to discuss in detail and document systematically in proving anything much is that funding …. the evidence showing the grants, grantees, contracts, and what’s done with that, how the government essentially squeezed out independent voices in domestic violence field, and through unequal funding (which doesn’t seem accidental), set up specialized professions for all three to be taken (of course) international.

Unlike posts, widgets don’t have a date and time stamp.  I don’t know when I first constructed these, but they’ve been up for many years now:  probably some time after 2012 when I discovered  the “Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports” (“CAFR”) factor.

I’m taking these for text widgets all the way off now, but understand that they’re still relevant, still on-point, and (give or take a few broken links by now), the principles they illustrate are still active.  Now you can read them below.

This post represents an administrative move for my blog, but the key messages especially #1 and #4, are still current.  IF you really want systems change, you MUST and WILL start following the financing which drives the system and provides incentives for the problem-solving courts to NEVER solve the assigned problems, just guarantee their continuance “in perpetuity”…. the more bloodshed associated with it, the greater the demands for system change and funds to make it happen.

I also have to say at this point the reverse applies:  IF you refuse to ever even start following the financing, you do NOT really want systems change.  Those in power now effectively changing systems know better than to reveal their own or the court’s actual financing and operations, the public/private money trail and the “dirty secrets” of managing to keep tax-exempt associations at times hidden out in open, or other times, operating right out of public institutions (including courthouses, court administrative offices, etc.) without properly registering (USA) as a private 501©3, thereby helping their claimed membership — often including judges, family lawyers, etc. — in a word, avoid taxation, run private money who knows where, and certainly anything kept away from public views could be used for beneficial — or criminal — purposes.

In asking why might public officials seek to keep finances away from the prying eyes of public who provides them in so many ways, I’d also ask — what might be the altruistic, beneficial, charitable or public-service reason why?  Why would family court reformists concerned about the oh-so-helpful for public relations propaganda and career-building family court “roadkill” not want to talk about the possibility that financial motivation — not for the “bad parents” that judges just don’t recognize for who they are (for lack of training, the usual allegation) — but the temptation of a perpetual-motion, unaccountable, “conflict resolution system” which itself creates a trail of conflict with all kinds of ethical, clean-operation, and basic commonsense issues.

Add to this international treaties that do not apply to the US and trying to bring our system under the umbrella of systems which have signed to the same treaties, through such private, tax-exempt organizations, I’d have to ask, why would we even think of complying with such standards which effectively would and do override our integrity as an independent, developed nation?

When we also begin to comprehend (through following both government and private finances better) the foresight involved in federally co-opting the leadership in the (created) “domestic violence” movement starting at least as far back as the 1980s — (I write as a survivor, I was a battered wife, battered in front of young children and before one of them was even born, i.e., while pregnant, so calm down, I have a right to talk about this!) — and in doing this, espousing the “Coordinated Community Response” and “theDuluthModel.org” model from a U.S. citizen (Ellen Pence, d. 2012) not even modeled on anything within our legal system — as freely acknowledged in describing its history — and neither a battered women herself, nor a (biological) mother of anyone, and a model which innately blends in treatment of male perpetrators, women victims, child victims, law enforcement (at public expense), and as many judges and social workers as possible — and the theme throughout of “father-engagement” — we ought to wonder whether the “stop domestic violence” motive was really driving motivation, as compelling and emotionally gripping as it is wherever propounded.

LGH Widget showing ‘Sidebar Widgets Now Live Here’ (July2019 Off-Ramps, 3 links) Screen Shot 2019-10-03

LGH Widget showing ‘Sidebar Widgets Now Live Here’ (July2019 AND Oct.3 Off-Ramps, now 4 links) Screen Shot 2019-10-04 AM

Those Four Recently Shortened Sidebar Widgets Now Live HERE.

Their full versions live elsewhere and a link to these (covering two different post titles) remains on the sidebar still. I added another box with link to this post to that “More Resources” widget (part) of the sidebar.

See nearby images of “More Resources“:

Before (left, with “Donate” button visible) and After (right) show a segment of the sidebar near but not at the top, where the first major off-ramped text widgets in 2019 (July) went. The After (right) as you can see keeps the door open to this content, where I added one more box also calling attention to the footnote commentary on this post (comes up soon…)

Full versions of what’s on this post accessible there; each widget below as copied also already held a link to which off-ramped widgets post it belonged (those two short-links end either “-abt” or “-ahh” as you can see). The box representing this post (AFTER image to right) shows its short-link ending “-bcv” and above title, a quick note that it has some other writing, too, and is not an exact duplicate of the longer texts.

ANOTHER QUICK LIST — BELOW-RIGHT, seen on my blog administrative dashboard view annotated to show which sidebar text widgets I’m taking off now, easy to see  because it lists them by title, without all the texts, and so explains the 1., 2., 3., and 4. in this post title.

This change is the second installment of moving items off the sidebar that I didn’t want permanently lost from easy public access, and my own, to discourage my own continually “re-inventing the wheel” on my own previous work.

Re-stating what I’ve been stating in detail for years mostly for newer viewers who haven’t yet dismissed it and might not be information-immune to anything “older” than current events in anything but the most basic, shrink-wrapped, predigested, animated storytelling form.

I still believe and hope some people under 50 years old (maybe even under 40) who are motivated  to get involved in “family court matters” by something other than political partisanship, or religious or demographic bias (i.e., racism, classism, or the worst of both those, sexism misogyny, overt or covert) surely must exist.  [Re: the volatile (but, popular in some political circles) word “misogyny,” I’ll footnote my “Clarification/Disclaimer” comments, although they’re still short, to the bottom of this post.

Within 24 hours of completing this draft, I saw (℅ Twitter feed involving a well-known name (male) in the domestic violence prevention conferences — who also happens to be “AFCC”) how relevant that added material is.

THIS POST PRESERVES the recently condensed versions of these sidebars with all their “html” formatting instructions, including but not only, links to where I first off-ramped most of their contents, earlier (as I recall) this year, 2019.  

FYI, WHY: I just got tired of looking at these so much in the process of writing.  I write on-blog, not moving from hard copy to blog, in part because of my semi-transient lifestyle and certain aspects from my past (having been trapped at home, isolated, with a batterer for many years, am just skittish of that situation.  Plus, I prefer human contact in the background while writing; I’m still a “social” human being)…  So my writing pad is the blog itself, one screen view at a time.

(LGH Sidebar Cleanup (Showing Four I’m about to remove (Clean & Annotated versions) WP Admin views | Screen Shot 2019-10-03)

For now, I  am leaving the very top one (also one of the older statements of purpose and (generically) “About Me” on this blog) as “Good enough” and because I’m now beginning to exand the “Current, TOC and Key Posts” segment of that sidebar.  Plus, I’m not even sure whether sidebar is that accessible on mobile phones (versus laptops, ipads, and larger viewing devices). It’s not even showing on my own phone when I go to read my own blog.

If you think about it, sidebars aren’t designed for major text, at least in this blog’s current theme (“Journalist”) which, so far, I’m too chicken to switch from (and would need additional writers to support a multi-column layout with continual updates.  My posts take several days to compile, usually and can be in process for anywhere from a week to a few weeks, to a month or more.  Or, if I somehow, having written them and gotten them off my mind, managed not to take them out of “Pending” or “Draft” status until the need to quote them comes up, sometimes a year later…

<~~~By the way, off-ramping the widgets also removes several “DONATE” buttons from where they’d been strung out along the length of that sidebar amid my talking about what others, for whatever reason, for the most part, won’t.  For those who are inspired (and understand this isn’t going to a 501©3, and so isn’t tax-deductible (whatever you contribute “for the cause” will end up in my hands through PayPal), but still want to help me live a bit longer to continue, while I’m still alive and kicking,** also publicizing this information, here’s one of them also “live” on this post… Don’t think it’s too little to matter (though $10 or more would be best; there are some processing fees involved). Thanks in advance! ** “I will not shut up and I will not go away.“

1. “Really Want Systems Change?…”

| 2.  “Let’s Get Honest. There’s Still No Excuse.  But,…”

Truth Fuels Flight, Lies Ensnare. Don’t Hang With, Serve (or Donate to) Tricksters or Their Targets. It’s a New Year — but there is STILL no excuse for abuse. {<~=/= former sidebar widget; but stored with this image from another (+FrontPage) post//LGH 2019Oct3} [This text widget added Feb. 2014]. For over twenty years I have been dealing personally, first with domestic assault and battery, a.k.a. violence in the home, then by witnessing how ALL facets of the system collectively keep “Abuse Awareness” in the public’s face and on-line, while locally, telling live clients in imminent danger, asking for help for the most part, go away and shut up. Or, when such people look for some agency with the words “domestic violence” or “prevent family abuse,” or related sound-bytes on their websites, to show up (sometimes pay for) a class to develop relationship skills for handling one’s: stalker, batterer, or the parent that threatened to, or just did, kidnap the kids. The same crowd (generic) also stay positioned for Technical Assistance and Training — not real-time help. It’s probably good they are often on the conference trail; if they stuck around home more, the word might get out locally exactly what “TnTA” means. My translation? “Need Help? Go Away! It’s Not Our Job. We Just Train the Trainers. We Consult. Dial in for the webinar.”” (etc) So, what can be done then, meaning, by “us,” (we, the people, the public, the huddled masses, or working millions) other than suffering nobly and dying dramatically, dealing with ongoing trauma, or de-sensitizing ourselves to the level of violence and our own government institutions’ collective decisions to make business models out of the human tendency to slap others around, bully, lie, steal, terrorize, kidnap and [do things that is normally for privileged civil servants — for example, in the military, the courts, the social services, an law enforcement, etc. — and the private security forces for certain multinational corporations]]. We cannot help ourselves by taking the duties of law enforcement into our hands, physically — that’s illegal an dangerous! However I believe there is a way the public CAN help, a way to put a stop to free-fall exploitation, without adding to the ongoing stream of bloodshed (that’s no exaggeration) or multiplying marginalized populations (i.e., the poor, those on social services). Individually first, and to each other, “the public” may still have some leverage in examining these TnTA “Go-Away! groups that are more interested in protecting their interests than our children (OR, us). [[Widget Update @ July 9, 2019: Shortening this widget: it’s now copied (in full) to new post: Many of My Sidebar Widgets, Some Mostly Text, Others Mostly Links, Now Live Here! [started June 27, 2019].. (Case-sensitive short-link ends “-abt“)//LGH

|3. ‘To Support (and visually upgrade!) This “Uncommon Analysis” ‘

Want to appreciate or support my four years** of Consistent Writing; over 580 posts, and a website and posts [not to mention sidebar, and its “widgets”!!]] literally loaded with links?

{**[as of 2013; it’s now, July 2019, spanned over ten yrs, 800 posts (here only), plus about 50 pages & have developed more than one blog for specific topics or geographies. See bottom of this widget]}

Whether parsed and outlined or in documented rant form, my reporting will be strategically different, scratch-your-head “Huh?!?” or deeply disturbing “What-the-????” and, in the long run, actionable (like, how can we stop funding the foolishness) information. The average 5-10,000+ words (including quotations), post results from ongoing, original connect-the-dots investigations and analysis, while referring readers to others who’ve done their own research under hard conditions, including court-created poverty, trauma, and even sometimes jail (see Richard Fine).

Basically, I saw a gap in informed coverage for not just women, but specifically mothers, and stepped in to fill and blog it and point to others’ analysis who’d been inappropriately dropped by the roadside. The gap was the connection between federal policy, private nonprofit providers, and the local courthouse. I also felt that the gender wars (both sides) had been exploited by “carpet-bagging” interests as if these interests were neutral, when they were not. I also knew from experience that trauma AND confusion makes one easier to manipulate, while relevant information (and knowing how to get it) are antidotes. Another nonsectarian approach was definitely needed.

The blog should (complete with sarcasm) should help some laugh at the lunacy, then I hope “wake the hell up!” about what public money is being used for, and clearly identify the PUBLIC danger which the PRIVAT-ization of government [2001, see p. 16 on “Nonprofits”) represents. In this, the family courts’ consistently self-congratulating, “problem-solving” model is a significant, and well-heeled part. (see “The Mediation Miracle,” as told by a judge; p. 16/2006). The same groups pushing for no-fault divorce (under “irreconcilable differences”) also pushed for conciliation courts — does that sound rational? Was there another motive? Or was it to cause confusion over what is, and is not, a crime, and in that confusion, expand and engage behavioral health services?

So, this blog provides an alternate framework for some of the toughest issues of our time; life and death issues, social issues, and economic issues that get to the heart of, what IS government, and where do I stand in relationship to it? It is what I wish someone had provided for my children, their father, and me before I set a single foot in, or responded to a single pleading, in the family court venue. Had I known it, I would’ve fought harder to get the case dismissed upfront, just as anyone being kidnapped should fight (if they are caught unawares) hardest right at the start, for the best results.

Regarding donations — any level of assistance will help [text deleted 2019] me to survive to blog again another day. It’s not yet understood HOW the family court system effectively (and I believe intentionally) functions to keep at least one out of every two parents in marginalized “economic survival mode” year after year.

[[Years later … while still actively networked, investigating and reporting on post and social media, I’m focusing now more on cleaning up its format and appearance: (sticky posts, tables of contents, now the sidebar widgets. I’ve copied this 2,000 word widget in full with some others to a new post Many of My Sidebar Widgets, Some Mostly Text, Others Mostly Links, Now Live Here! [Published July 9, 2019]. (Case-sensitive short-link ends “-abt“). That link also kept near top of the blog with few other similar ones. //LGH. Deleting most of content on this particular widget; click there, look for this widget’s title to read it all as expressed about six years ago 2013-early 2014. If I my reporting EVER flowed with the current trends, this BLOG would not have been necessary. By following the public/private networking and financing (including where it’s been made impossible to follow), which current reporting trends discourage over following the leading networked organization’s “anecdotal – social science — pilot studies, demonstration court improvement policies (etc.). With adequate drill-downs, I still say ANYone capable of observation + reason can deduce in what direction it’s been flowing, both the public systems and the groups claiming intent to reform or clean them up. SOMETIMES the best news is that it’s OK to face the bad news, and deal with it…//LGH 7-11-2019.]]

Any amount received with thanks — a tiny % I believe is taken (from amount submitted) with the donate process. NOT tax-deductible (I’m not an IRS-designated 501©3 or other nonprofit!…). Thank you in advance! (“Donate” button only added Jul. 2013. In 2019, still works!)

|4. The “Technical Assistance and Training Excuse”

END of FOUR Off-ramped, previously abbreviated (& somewhat updated) WIDGETS.

If you’re in the mood, continue to “FOOTNOTE” below.//LGH Oct. 3, 2019.

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FOOTNOTE: My Clarification/Disclaimer on “Misogyny” (just a bit of commentary, my current take on this, informal!).

Patience please in the upcoming “Clarifcation” (disclaimers) about misogyny.

IWPR Institute for Women’s Policy Research (1987ff), quoted on LGH Front Page in context of EvanStark’s ‘CoerciveControl’ book acknowledgemts. Image 1 of 2 (logo), Sept. 3 2019

I’m adding the next paragraph to set up the one after it, in which I state that I think the basic identifiably “feminist” professionals’ and organization’s response (from the start: 1980s, 1990s and ff) (just one example, quoted by Evan Stark, image to the right; see also my Front Page and recent post on this one) reaction to the build-up and formation of separate family court divisions, and codes within the state laws, (locally and state by state in the USA), the complaints about the courts CANNOT and MUST NOT be state in terms of gender bias or the generic “fathers’ rights.”  That’s still “cause-based” rhetoric, not Accounting Literacy, which is more important.  Somehow, these seem to want to have it both ways — everything’s gender-biased (but the women judges, mediators, and custody evaluators “ETC.” granting custody to known dangerous abusers — along with male judges, mediators and custody evaluators “ETC.” being themselves women in power, are making those decisions because of rarely/barely-defined fathers’ rights groups?)

Paragraph 1. Being shunted through the family courts is NOT quite the gender-neutral process; it does exacerbate an existing contest, widespread, between the sexes (I’m referring to M/F as it, so far still, relates to biological reproduction, with or without added surrogates, petri dishes or technology for artificial insemination; if you don’t like it for the overbroad generalization not taking into account variegated marriage relationships and “equal rights” struggles, sorry).  So long as we have a majority male Congress, have never had a woman president (and so many of the existing presidents had mistresses or lovers… some of who disappeared in mysterious circumstances), entrenched interests of ALL-male (for the most part) priestly hierarchies, involvement of the largest all-male order of the Catholic Church (i.e., Jesuits), not knocking the intellectuality or charitable activity — but there is a connection to the “AFCC” favorite university centers involved here). not to mention other major non-Christian religions with express (negative, disenfranchising) views towards the females of the human species.

…….

Legal Momentum (formerly Women’s Legal Defense & Educ Fund)

Paragraph 2. THAT SAID, focusing on gender derails from following the money, which does flow from “Big Brother” (USA.gov) with both open arms labeled so as to sweep all between them, like pincers: The domestic violence movement (as constructed/funded in the US) and the “fatherhood = welfare = child abuse/poverty/juvenile delinquency prevention = more just, equitable and democratic society” sectors BOTH entail grants from the same sources, BOTH take public-private funding, and BOTH claim the moral upper ground (regardless of political persuasion) when it comes to the above topics.  Sooner or later it’s time to admit this and look at how and why similar tactics on both sides with significant accountability drawbacks would ever yield good results.

(I was, however, in writing this thinking more about the 2002 Massachusetts Battered Women’s Testimony Project at Wellesley Centers for Women, among other things): (a pdf printout I took last July) click 2nd time if needed (i.e., on the blank page icon).

(just my filename): BMTPFinalReport (I have been looking closely at this in its timeframe (post-PRWORA) and at involved parties who did NOT examine who or what are the Family Courts (AFCC or etc) SEE NEARBY phrase-count*pngs| 2019July5

This early on set the themes as:  Human Rights emphasis (Global, not national), Gender-focus not violation or dilution of legal rights process, no critical analysis of origins of family court (still recent) or how we got them, nothing to speak of on Welfare Reform, and (for those who are now aware of the existing DV networks under 1984 FVSPA (see my top right sidebar for some of that information), i.e., HHS funding, and for the participation of NCJFCJ as a Special resource Center with it, and NCJFCJ’s (at about that time — that is, 1999, 2000 (Greenbook and start of Greenbook Initiative, which pre-dates this report) and anything much about the entrenchment of “fatherhood” — as promoted in the 1980s by specific, well-known ( to lawyers and political, D.C. area people involved with welfare reform) groups such as “the Children’s Rights Council (David Levy Esq. et al.), AFCC’s 2000 conference involving the (progressive) Wellstones, that is Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife; and such conference also including Ronald D. Mincy, Ph.D. (Harvard, MIT, at some point working at Columbia, but previously also with the Ford Foundation), and plenty more instances in which those involved here surely DID know, just FAILED TO REPORT, the existence of these influences on the family courts — and (as ever) the existence of AFCC since the 1970s (and as claimed in the 1960s), … the establishment in certain states nearby (like Maryland) of family court divisions over the state legislature’s objections (which I blogged starting in 2014 at least)…

(Images from the pdf above, including cover and front matter):

1 (As available for download)

2 (cover page w/ year, title and “℅” who produced it

3 Acknowledgmts (NB first funder listed is Ford Foundation)

4A (top half of page: JD’s, a PhD (& co-author Lundy Bancroft, w/o either degree) but the one Survivor (no JD or PhD) listed here is NOT “Contributing Author” altho has both experiential and front-line service experience. Why?

4B (bottom half of same page). NB: The composition of the Advisory Council and Committees often pre-determine outcomes & what info will NOT make it into the report, which then can be used as a basis for policy: David Adams, Peter Jaffe (Note: London Family Court Clinic in Ontario =/= gov’t but private nonprofit; also, he’s AFCC stalwart, Canadian), Joan Zorza (JD, from the professionalized DV field, Amnesty International, a director of ‘AWAKE,’ etc.

And the (1980sff) “Ellen Pence” factor which is, in fact, an imported (not USA in origin) concept, “Coordinated Community Response” networking and with this “therapeutic / Health / Treatment” approach, naturally engaging treatment of male batterers through “Batterers Intervention Services” — all of which I, AFTER realizing I’d gone “from the frying pan into the fire” by simply trying to stay alive and keep my family (children — and him too) physically ALIVE, learned in hindsight… With all this information available AT THAT TIME, now look at some of the types of “Contributing Authors” and “Advisory Council” to the report above:  (i.e., Lundy Bancroft, Jay Silverman, Ph.D.) ONE representative (i.e., “token” battered mother) listed, but not as “Contributing Author”) and (Advisory Board), David Adams (“Emerge”), Rita Smith (NCADV, also later a regular (?) with other DV groups at the Battered Mothers’ Custody Conference (2003ff), etc.

AGAIN:  I’m showing you vested interests in the Batterers Intervention + Domestic VIolence professionalized FIELDS (which by definition are going to be and by then also may have been government funded while taking court-ordered referrals, at least now.Hence where you hear about “Coercive Control” (Evan Stark), Safe & Together Institute (Connecticut, but programming on several continents and in several U.S. states) David Mandel, and/or the yearly since about 1993 “BISC-MI” (Batterers Intervention Services Coalition – MIchigan) (Now it goes by BatterING I hear) conferences — you are in the same church, different pews, flush with programming also for “responsible fatherhood” run through the DV system, and programming for DV prevention (on the contrary) run through the Healthy Marriage/RFesponsible Fatherhood (“HMRF” is a Twitter hashtag I use) programming (i.e., nonprofits and supported “clearinghouses” or websites, resource centers, etc.).

ALL of those are taxpayer funded but being private also free to take private funding, which they assuredly also do.  Then this is also spent (at times through tax-exempt on subcontractors which could be and sometimes are consultants, mediaor public relations professionals, ad agencies (The Advertising Council also donating), or funding them directly, i.e., other times (example:  Public Strategies, Inc. in Oklahoma, or ICF International, as I recall HHS Grants 90FH0001 and 90FH0002 (the one letter I DNR for sure is “H” but I have posted it and TAGGS.HHS.GOV (Advanced Search) would also reveal it; look at year 2011).  By 2002 there were in some states, literally, “Fatherhood Commissions” — yet back at Wellesley Centers for Women, speculation continues about why there’s gender bias in the family courts? ???

BLOGGER DISCLAIMER: This FOOTNOTED entire segment is still ex temporaneous “impromptu” and included to expand upon a passing comment in the intro to this post.  Keep that in mind, I’m not providing full proof here.  Comment if you have questions and cannot find more answers to them on existing posts.  It could be I have the material downloaded as image files or pdf but not posted yet, or even in post draft status.

FYI: My recent renewed interest in the London Family Court Clinic (and with it, Peter Jaffe, whose name is well known in the DV fields over the years) comes in part from seeing the “Collective Letter of Concern to WHO about (PAS) and taking a closer look.  I have recent post/s on it; see the 2019 TOC for more info…)//LGH.

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FOOTNOTE 2 “Just For a Perspective, Wellesley College” IRS Tax returns, Total Assets, etc.