Archive for the ‘After She Speaks Up – Reporting Child Sexual Abuse’ Category
He’s a violinist, she’s a violinist & mother & in jail, (update adds Ohio Judge deciding US-Saudi custody issues)
Get out your violin and play the sob story for this professional musician Dad, although it’s the professional violinist MOM who was jailed by a NJ (Bergen County) family law judge who QUICKLY bought his sob story.
OR. . . . get out some old-fashioned file cards and read the other side of this story, and take note of the biased language of reporting.
Remember those mothers whose own “sob stories” were NOT heard, and they are finding America a less and less safe place to live.
The United States of America sure knows how to make friends overseas, by telling other countries how to handle child abuse & divorce, or fork over the Moms.
I voted today. there were a FEW women on the ballot, and some of them got my vote.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/violinist_to_remain_in_jail_until_0dz5SWpINvLazKd7hJIdRJ
Violinist to remain in jail until kids returned: judge By KIRSTEN FLEMING Last Updated: 2:17 PM, May 28, 2010 Posted: 2:16 PM, May 28, 2010 Comments: 9 | More Print
A globetrotting violinist who was arrested in Guam months ago after she absconded with her two young children in South Korea will remain behind bars until the children are returned home, a Bergen County judge said today. “She remains arrested under my orders,” said Judge Alexander H Carver, of Si Nae-Shim, who did not appear in court.
{{well, “duhhh….” — she’s in jail. THAT’s real 4th Amendment conscious..}}
He reiterated that she would not be released until the children are brought home. Shim, 33, is being held on a warrant for interfering with a custody order, while her son Kristian, 6, and daughter Haerin, 3, remain with their maternal grandmother near Seoul.
{{Let’s talk about how that custody order was gotten, and what chance a woman has of getting a similar one should her husband (or ex-) pull the same stunt….}}}
Gee, kind of reminds me of our friend Lorraine in Wisconsin and HER daughter… Or Nathan Grieco in California….
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We of course know our government and courts are PARENT-friendly and GENDER-Neutral, right?
For example, this just out:
Current Government Projects
NFI has partnered with departments and offices of the U.S. Government to promote involved fatherhood. Learn more about these projects below.
NRFCBI
National Responsible Fatherhood Capacity Building Initiative
In partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Family Assistance, National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) has designed the National Responsible Fatherhood Capacity-Building Initiative (NRFCBI) to aid grassroots and community-based organizations through a series of capacity-building grants.
Awardees receive a one-time $25,000 award to strengthen fathers and families and are provided with National Fatherhood Initiative’s professional training and technical assistance at the annual Certification College.
“I pledge allegiance to flag of the United Healthy Marriage Demonstration Project Regions of America.. . . . . . One Nation (alized School, Health, Tax. Warmachine, and Family Design programs), under (our approved) God, with liberty, and justice, for all (those who fit our [male-dominated] definitions of fully human)
There’s a lot more to this story than hit the NY Post. .. Use your SEO and take a look. There’s an age gap between him and her. BOTH of them came from overseas to study at perhaps THE top music school in this country, Juilliard, and I believe the Manhattan School of Music (think Juilliard, high school level) also. SHE as well as HE had to audition and qualify, and both must have been exceptionally personally talented.
I have heard (from a graduate — not Robin Williams, obviously), that the latter school attracts teenaged talent internationally, sometimes without parental protection and support. She (yes she) related being sexually exploited (prostituted, as a matter of fact) through a psychology-based program in the school, and being raped overseas (during a tour) by a (also young, male) music colleague. It was devastating. In this anecdote, her birth mother was not available, and the stepmother was hostile.
BUT she had a Dad. SUrely more Dads in more homes will solve more problems, and if only we women would recognize that we are BREEDERS (whether musical and otherwise talented ones or not) and the fruit of our wombs, those human beings we gestated and many times nursed, or raised, and held, — are not REALLY ours, except by permission.
I also note a significant age difference in this couple (he was older). Perhaps he thought all Asian women were submissive?? ??? Maybe she broke that mold when her kids were involved.
If a North Jersey judge says, your word that they were in danger doesn’t count with me, well, your ass is grass (and jailed….). and his sob story will be heard.
There are a LOT of missing pieces in this story, and I regret that I cannot hunt them out, gather them together, and predigest them for the readers. But YOU can –if you wish to ….
Compare that with THIS:
Divorcing dad wants to take kids to Saudi Arabia
Culture clash at root of Cincinnati custody fight
By Dan Horn • dhorn@enquirer.com • June 5, 2010
File it under “FORWARD TO THE PAST”
Shaheen wants the kids to stay with her in Cincinnati, where they have lived for the past six years.
Bawazir wants to take them to Saudi Arabia, where he says he can get a good job.
Judge Elizabeth Mattingly will make the call, but she says she’s not happy about her choices.
HE JUST NAMED 3 CHARACTERS. HOW COME ONLY THE DAD MAKES THE HEADLINES? ??? AND WHAT ABOUT THE FOUR CHILDREN?
“You have got very few good options here,” she told Shaheen at a court hearing in March. “It’s not a perfect world.”
The big legal questions in the case – who should get custody and what are the rights of the other parent – come up in countless custody battles every day in Hamilton County’s domestic relations court.
But the case of Shaheen vs. Bawazir raises cultural, social and gender issues that few others do.
Shaheen and her lawyer are outraged the judge even is considering allowing her husband to take the four children, all of whom are U.S. citizens, to live in a country halfway around the world.
Yet in other cases, judges and sometimes legislators will reach overseas and try to get U.S. Citizen (children) BACK from a foreign country if a mother took them there, and arrest her for coming back when she did. For example, the Collins case…
They argue that a ruling in Bawazir’s favor would leave Shaheen, a homemaker, with the choice of either losing her kids, possibly forever, or following her ex-husband to a country where she believes he would control every aspect of her life, from where she worked to when she could see her children.
This is NOT just a “she believes” statement, it’s very likely true. Good grief, are our judges literate???
Her lawyer, Phyllis Bossin, said she also fears that any custody or parental visitation order Mattingly issues would mean nothing in Saudi Arabia because men in that country control decisions related to child custody and get preferential treatment in court.
Once there, Bossin said, Bawazir could make his own rules and American courts would be powerless to stop him.
Not Without My Daughter – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Without_My_Daughter – 1 hour ago – Cached – Similar
“He wants to take these children to the other side of the world, practically into a country where she could never see them again,” Bossin said in court last month. “There are human rights issues here. She has a right to parent her children.”
Doesn’t her (female) lawyer yet know that the ubiquitous use of the word “parent” instead of “mother” is to delete the term “mother” from common usage (at least in a positive sense)? I mean, if our current Single-Mom raised African-American President can barely spit out the word — what more can we expect from the rest of us??
Bawazir and his lawyer, Reeta Brendamour, say Shaheen is maligning Saudi culture and that the children would not be harmed by moving there. Bawazir, who was born in the United States but has worked around the world, said he has job prospects in Saudi Arabia that would provide a good life for his kids.
Define “good.”
“We really think it’s the best for this entire family, for everybody, to move back there,” Brendamour said at the March hearing.
That’s right. I’m sure her Swiss born mother would approve of moving to Saudi Arabia, and say “obey your husband, er, ex-husband, honey — it’s all for the sake of the family…”
Brendamour does not recognize his wife as a separate entity here… And I’ll wager he has some understanding of the United States, the Bill of Rights, and some feminist movements here also. Perhaps we moms who have lost our kids WITHIN United STates should reassure this Dad, he need not be worried on that account (unless he has more horrific plans for his four kids)…..
“In the event mom does not want to go, that’s totally her decision. We would like to go and take the children with us.”
Mattingly has noted that the couple, whose children range in age from 6 to 14, lived in Saudi Arabia for eight years earlier in their marriage and are familiar with the culture. Shaheen’s father is Saudi and mother is Swiss, while Bawazir’s father is Saudi and mother is American.
So those Saudi fathers like European or American mothers …. Why??
Both have dual U.S. and Saudi citizenship, although they have lived most of their lives in the United States.
The judge told Shaheen in March that she should consider moving to Saudi Arabia or somewhere else overseas if her husband cannot find a job in the United States, suggesting it might be in her children’s best interests.
Yeah, this family law judge probably never heard of a child support order, or a SEEK-WORK order, or all the many fatherhood programs in place to help men meet (i.e., reduce) their child-support obligations. Or if she has, she ain’t mentioning them…. Or of creative single-Mom solutions available to this mother of four. She wouldn’t be the first single mother of four around.
“You are running out of money, and pretty soon your kids are going to be on the street unless you get a little more realistic about what your true options are,” Mattingly told Shaheen, reminding her that Bawazir had been unemployed since 2009.
WHY ISN’T SHE LECTURING BAWAZIR ON HIS RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD OBLIGATIONS?? BECAUSE WOMEN ARE EASIER TO LECTURE?
FACT IS, THAT’S WHAT THIS SYSTEM DOES — EXTENUATES AND EXACERBATES THE SITUATION TIL THE (TYPICALLY, FEMALE) PARENT HAS FEWER REAL OPTIONS LEFT. THAT’S SURELY IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILDREN….
“Maybe you don’t want to live in those places, but you got to start thinking about your kids at this point,” she said. “If the two of you remain broke, I don’t know how welfare looks to you, but they don’t pay much in this country.”
That’s funny. In MY state, when my ex was thousands$$ behind (without saying why, or expressing any remorse about it) I literally asked her to order a minimal percent (I was thinking 10% ) of his arrears to preserve my housing. Cool and calculated she suggested I apply for welfare.
The idea behind the OCSE Child support diversion acts was too many female-headed housese on welfare, let’s go get them dudes and make them pay up! Get them back in their families. (See above logo). That’s ostensibly the PRINCIPLE behind taking money out of TANF (and taxpayer millions into Responsible Marriage, etc.). Now it’s working beautifully in reverse, driving women BACK onto welfare, with or without access to their own offspring… Sometimes because their wages are garnished to pay a father who won in court.
Well, damn, I’d come to that county and gotten myself OFF welfare, and now a family court judge ruling on a child support arrears, unexplained, after child-stealing, tells me go back on it? How sweet ….
A difficult job search
Shaheen and Bawazir married in 1991 and lived overseas for years as he moved from place to place for his job with Modern Products Co., which is based in Saudi Arabia. They moved to Loveland in 2004 and his family stayed there when Bawazir was assigned two years ago to a job in Venezuela.
He said he lost that job because of the stress of his deteriorating marriage and the separation from his children.
“I want to be with my kids,” Bawazir said at the March hearing. “She refused to come down to Latin America. So it’s like, how do I bridge that?” He said he has been unable to find a job in the United States because his experience in international business means his best job opportunities are overseas, particularly in Saudi Arabia.
“I don’t think I can personally get a job in the U.S.,” he said.
But Shaheen doubts he has been trying hard to find a job here. She and her lawyer say a man with more than 20 years experience in the business world should be able to find a job in Cincinnati at least as easily as in Saudi Arabia.
Shaheen also questioned the fairness of her and the children starting over in a new country every time her ex-husband gets a new job.
“Being divorced, are we supposed to just keep moving and following each other from country to country?” she said in March. “I also fear that going to Saudi, I will not have any rights over there.”
Bossin said Saudi Arabia should not even be an option. She said divorcing parents make concessions about their jobs all the time to be near their children, and that Bawazir is more than capable of finding a job closer to Cincinnati.
“When people get divorced, people don’t follow their spouses,” Bossin said. “They are not married any more.”
Both sides are lining up experts for the trial, which starts June 15, to talk about life in Saudi Arabia. Bossin made clear at a hearing last week that the impact of Saudi culture and society on the children is closely tied to the question of whether Bawazir should be the custodial parent.
When Brendamour said Bawazir would agree to shared custody in Saudi Arabia, Bossin said no.
“If he has the children in Saudi Arabia, he can just simply say, ‘You’re never going to see the children again,'” she said. “The right of women to have custody of their children in Saudi Arabia – or even to see their children – is an issue.”
Discrimination a problem
The U.S. State Department’s 2009 country report on Saudi Arabia, which adheres to a strict form of Islamic law, lists several concerns about the status of women in that country: They are not permitted to drive. They need the permission of a male guardian, such as a husband or father, to get a job, open a business or to move freely around the country.
And the family court system tilts heavily toward men, who get full custody of boys at age seven and girls at nine.
“Women have few political or social rights and society does not treat them as equal members,” the State Department report says. “Discrimination against women was a significant problem.”
The rules for women have loosened a bit in recent years but they remain stringent, said Karen Dabdoub, director of the Cincinnati chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“Just living in Saudi Arabia is not necessarily the most horrible thing,” Dabdoub said. “I know people who lived there and liked it. I know people who lived there and hated it. The kinds of jobs that women can do are limited and where they can go is limited.
“If she’s saying that her movement and rights would be restricted, yeah, absolutely.”
The judge will have to take those factors into consideration when she makes her decision about the couple’s two boys and two girls, said Katherine Federle, director of Ohio State University’s Justice for Children Project.
She said the case is, technically, no different than any other relocation case involving divorced parents, although this one is “writ large” because it involves a potential move to Saudi Arabia.
“This sounds like a relatively typical custody battle that involves relocation,” she said. “It’s just a long way away.”
Mattingly will hear at the trial from experts about Saudi society and what a move there would mean for the children. She also will hear from a court-appointed guardian and lawyer responsible for protecting the children’s interests.
Shaheen, Bawazir, the judge and the lawyers would not comment before the trial, but court proceedings so far have been contentious. Mattingly has said she wants to get the case resolved as soon as possible for the sake of the kids.
She said their grades in school and their well-being have been damaged by the long court fight.
“Your children are suffering with this battle,” Mattingly said in March. “You are getting to the line where decisions have to be made.”
Yeah, well — — there’s the Korean/Chile/NJ case, then there’s the dual-citizenship Saudi-Swiss-American Hamilton County Ohio case. Either way, women are getting lectured and jailed and separated (or threatened with it) from their own children. Sounds like third world stuff to me…
Go read Phyllis Chesler’s account of getting HERSELF out of such a marriage. It’s on her site….
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Today I’m still thinking of Nancy Schaefer..
This is part of what probably caused their deaths:
The Corrupt Business of Child Protective Services | Nancy Schaefer …
Dec 5, 2007 … In this report, I am focusing on the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS). However, I believe Child Protective Services …
I haven’t screened the sites below — you may. Then it’s on your shoulders, how you evaluate them…..
But, are we to take it for granted that, whether shot, reported as killing each other (when it’s dubious they did), or are incarcerated, and the voices shut off — that no one will step up and take their place in this travesty of agencies, bureaus, offices, and courts??
I just want the info up there….
“So what?” if the United States is trafficking in children? It sells news, at least…
CPS Warrior Nancy Schaefer Gunned Down
http://www.infowars.com/cps-warrior-nancy–schaefer-gunned-down/ – Cached
http://www.examiner.com/x-15873-Family-Rights-Examiner~y2010m3d27-Family-rights-advocates-mourn-death-of-Nancy–Schaefer – Cached
Nancy Schaefer exposes the EVIL CPS |
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10 min – Apr 14, 2009 –
A speech given by Nancy Schaefer on Child Protection Services The System Can Not be trusted It does not serve The People of USA |
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Get more video results
Nancy Schaefer and Husband Dead Killed Husband CPS Corruption …
http://www.time2news.com/…/nancy–schaefer-and-husband-dead-killed-husband-cps-corruption/ – Cached
Report of Georgia Senator Nancy Schaefer on CPS Corruption
CPS Warrior Nancy Schaefer Gunned Down – Volconvo Debate Forums
From the Associated Press: State investigators say the husband of former state Senator Nancy Schaefer shot his wife before turning the gun …
http://www.volconvo.com/…/29400-cps-warrior-nancy–schaefer-gunned-down.html – Cached
Get more discussion results
informationliberation – CPS Warrior Nancy Schaefer Gunned Down
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=29709 – CachedShow map of 18 Capitol Square SW, Atlanta, GA 30334
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“PC278.5” Arresting Moms, at least, for Felony Child-Stealing…
http://www.prevent-abuse-now.com/unreport.htm
Parental Child Abduction
is Child Abuseby Nancy Faulkner, Ph.D
Presented to the
United Nations Convention on Child Rights
in Special Session, June 9, 1999,
on behalf of P.A.R.E.N.T.
and victims of parental child abduction.© Nancy Faulkner 1999-2006
Interesting: The NCJRS 
Seems to sort “child-stealing” under two main headings:
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This would be coherent with the recent Click-Hill case, as the girl disappeared after allegations of child abuse. The other reason for child-stealing (see “Garrido,” and others) might be for personal sexual abuse by strangers, or prostituting kids.
Two reasons I can think of might be to protect a child, or to punish the other parent. Authorities ought to get which is which straight… (More on the NCJRS info towards end of this post)
pc 278.5 IS (California) Penal Code 278.5.
I have come to believe this law was written for men, not women, to get their kids back. I would like to hear of any California woman whose children of around that age were actually returned to her under this code.
We already know of women in this and other states who have been incarcerated for much lesser custodial interference (see Oconto, WI blog, and “Lorraine.” Or, Joyce Murphy.
http://custodyscam.blogspot.com/2009/06/joyce-murphy-accused-of-kidnapping-her.html
SO WHEN IS THIS LAW TAKEN SERIOUSLY, AND WHEN NOT?
It reads as follows:
http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/278.5.html
(a) Every person who takes, entices away, keeps, withholds,
or conceals a child and maliciously deprives a lawful custodian of a
right to custody, or a person of a right to visitation, shall be
punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, a
fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), or both that fine
and imprisonment, or by imprisonment in the state prison for 16
months, or two or three years, a fine not exceeding ten thousand
dollars ($10,000), or both that fine and imprisonment.
(b) Nothing contained in this section limits the court’s contempt
power.
(c) A custody order obtained after the taking, enticing away,
keeping, withholding, or concealing of a child does not constitute a
defense to a crime charged under this section.
Do you see the word “SHALL” in there?
Here’s 287.7, which indicates circumstances — unbelievably, it seems – -in which a parent or someone COULD take, entice, or conceal a child. It is to handle possible abuse or imminent harm to the child. (Child, FYI, is defined as under 18 in this law).
(a) Section 278.5 does not apply to a person with a right to custody of a child who, with a good faith and reasonable belief that the child, if left with the other person, will suffer immediate bodily injury or emotional harm, takes, entices away, keeps, withholds, or conceals that child.
(b) Section 278.5 does not apply to a person with a right to custody of a child who has been a victim of domestic violence who, with a good faith and reasonable belief that the child, if left with the other person, will suffer immediate bodily injury or emotional harm, takes, entices away, keeps, withholds, or conceals that child.
“Emotional harm” includes having a parent who has committed domestic violence against the parent who is taking, enticing away, keeping, withholding, or concealing the child.
(c) The person who takes, entices away, keeps, withholds, or conceals a child shall do all of the following:
(1) Within a reasonable time from the taking, enticing away, keeping, withholding, or concealing, make a report to the office of the district attorney of the county where the child resided before the action.
In other words, such a person shall, as an adult, give an account to the authorities of his or her reasons for the devastating action of removing a child from a parent.
NOW HERE WE ARE IN THE CLICK-HILL CASE, and a mother disappears with a daughter (mid-1990s, right when VAWA and NFI had gotten started), having accused the father of child molestation, after which he got (apparently) unsupervised time with the girl, again, then disappears.
Here’s an article by Robert Salonga:
Resurfacing of Walnut Creek girl highlights strains of parental abductions
By Robert Salonga
Contra Costa TimesPosted: 03/05/2010 04:45:10 PM PSTUpdated: 03/05/2010 05:35:35 PM PSTWALNUT CREEK — The arrest this week of a woman who took off with her 8-year-old daughter in 1995 during a child custody dispute is being lauded by police and missing child experts as an exceptional event.
In some ways, it wasn’t an exception at all.
Parental and family abductions account for nearly 97 percent of child abduction reports in the state. In Contra Costa County, all 29 abductions reported in 2008 involved family, and just one of the 64 reported in Alameda County that year was committed by a nonrelative.
Click said Friday that he divorced Wendy Hill in the early 1990s, and their relationship became estranged after he was granted primary custody of their daughter. When he went to pick her up from his ex-wife’s Redlands home in the summer of 1995, they had moved out. He never saw Jessica again, he said.
This sounds to me like a custody-switch; another version (below) says he got unsupervised visitation… There were allegations of child molestation, which is every bit as much a crime as child-stealing, but is often not handled as such in family law system.
Here’s another one…
Man waits to reunite with daughter
found 14 years after being abducted
as a 7-year-old by her mother
March 5, 2010 | 4:26 pmA woman who vanished 14 years ago with her 7-year-old daughter was arrested Tuesday in Monrovia and her daughter was located unharmed, authorities said Friday.
Wendy Hill, 52, was spotted at a local Claim Jumper restaurant and arrested on suspicion of abducting her own daughter.
Jessica Click-Hill, now 22, was contacted by authorities after the arrest. She is believed to be living out of state.
“I’m just so excited that Jessica is found and well and that, physically, she’s fine,” said the girl’s father, Dean Click. “She’s got family who haven’t gotten to be with her, to spend Christmas or Thanksgiving together, so we’re looking forward to reconnecting with each other.”
Click said that since his daughter is an adult, authorities will not release her contact information. “At this point, she will have to come to me,” he said.
The father said he and his ex-wife were in a custody dispute when Hill cleaned out her Redlands apartment in the fall of 1995 and left with the girl.
Click said he lived in Walnut Creek in Northern California at the time and for years had not been able to visit his daughter without a mediator present. [[he probably means supervised visitation. Mediation is something different.]] He said at the time he’d been accused of molesting his daughter, a claim he denied.
He said he ultimately was exonerated and that his rights were restored for full, unsupervised visits. On his first visit, he said he celebrated by bringing his parents along and taking Jessica out to lunch.
On his second visit, he said he arrived at the apartment complex and found that his ex-wife and daughter had left.
Authorities said Hill changed her name to Gail Jackson and moved from state to state. She was sighted outside Tampa, Fla., and at one point lived in Boston, authorities said.
A warrant was issued for her arrest in 1996 out of Contra Costa County, and the FBI issued its own warrant a year later.
Click said he kept in touch with authorities, but leads were few and far between. Then a tip came in several months ago from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about the mother’s alias and her location, said Sgt. Tom Cashion of the Walnut Creek Police Department .
Hill flew to Los Angeles, apparently for a business meeting, and was picked up Tuesday at the Monrovia restaurant, Cashion said.
She has since been taken to Northern California, where she was being held on $250,000 bail.
Click said he was asked by prosecutors if he wanted to press charges.
“I said ‘yes’ because she’s been a thief and she’s taken away those years that I did not get to spend with my daughter,” Click said.
— Amina Khan
Here’s another version, from a blog apparently local to the area she was stolen from. March 4, 2010: This isn’t quite current — the mother is now out on bail.
WALNUT CREEK GIRL MISSING SINCE 1995 FOUND HEAR L.A.: MOM ARRESTED FOR ABDUCTION.
![[found.jpg]](https://familycourtmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/4e352-found.jpg?w=700)
8-year-old Walnut Creek resident Jessica Click-Hill was allegedly abducted by her mom in 1995, and today, the Walnut Creek Police announced they found the girl, who’s now 22-years-old, and arrested her mom for parental abduction.The following is from the Walnut Creek Police….
Walnut Creek Police Detectives took Wendy D. Hill into custody for the parental abduction of her eight year old daughter Jessica Click-Hill in Los Angeles.
This case started in 1995 when Jessica’s father Dean Click reported to Walnut Creek Police that he believed his wife had abducted their child, Jessica. Detectives worked the case and in 1996, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office filed charges against Wendy Hill and an arrest warrant was issued for her PC 278.5.
In 1997, the FBI issued an unlawful flight to avoid prosecution warrant (UFAP warrant). Recently, Walnut Creek Police and the FBI were alerted by NCMEC regarding a possible location for Wendy Hill and Jessica.
WCPD and the FBI followed up on the information and started their search. On March 2, the FBI located Wendy Hill in Monrovia (Los Angeles County) and arrested her on their UFAP warrant.
Walnut Creek Detectives were immediately sent to Los Angeles where they took custody of Wendy Hill.
The FBI has also located and made contact with Jessica.
Early this morning, detectives booked Wendy Hill into the Martinez Detention Facility in Martinez and she is being held on $250,000 bail.
(THIS WOMAN HAS SINCE BEEN RELEASED)..
The “California Family Institute” founder boasts (on the site) how he was one of the first to get a substantial reward under this law… Here’s the resume…(portions of it):
MICHAEL KELLY, ESQ. RESUME:Martindale Hubbell A.V. (VERACITY, Highest Possible Lawyer Rating by Judges and Peers, Preeminent National Lawyer Directory Listing):
California Divorce Attorney, Best interest of Child Advocate, Accomplished Victorious Lawyer:
I. Professional Leadership (42 Years Family Law Experience):
- Chairman of American Bar Custody Committee 2003
- Chairman of CA State Bar Custody & Visitation Comm., two terms
- Chairman of CA Trial Lawyers – Family Law Section Mem. Comm.
- Chairman of American Bar Association – Family Law, Law Practice Economics Committee
- Chairman of American Bar Interstate Custody Task Force Committee; UCCJEA (Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Enforcement Act)
- Chairman of American Bar Association – Family Law, Practical Use of Computers Committee
- Chairman of California Family Law Institute
- Chairman of California Custody Commission
- Chairman of Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce – Legal Committee
- Chairman of Santa Monica Bar Association – Family Law Committee, Three Terms
- Judge Pro Tem in Los Angeles County Superior Family Law Courts 20-years
- Family Law Mediator in Santa Monica, Torrance & LA Central District Superior Courts, 24-years
- Executive Member of the American Bar Association – Continuing Education Committee
- Executive Member of the American Bar Association – Economics of Practice Committee
- Secretary of California State Bar – Custody & Visitation Committee, Two Terms
- Produced and Moderated a Course on Negotiations – 1988 Joint Meeting of California State Bar, Child Custody, Support and Division of Property Committees
II. Legal Achievements:
- First CA attorney to try a Grandparents’ rights suit (January 1970) (Petrikin)
- First CA attorney appointed by children to represent them as individuals (June 1984) (Ryan)
- First CA attorney to file suit against an abducting parent under Penal Code 278.5, for $2.5 Million (1985)
- Largest child abduction award litigated in the United States, $12.4 Million (July 1993) (Wang)
- Rewrote and expanded CA Civil Code 4606, “Children’s right to an attorney” (1985), expanding childrens rights to an attorney (Ryan)
III. Teacher:USC Law School, Advanced Family Law & Divorce Litigation classes. All courses have been certified and accredited by the California State Bar Family Law Specialization Committee for attorney certification as family law specialist since 1986 to present.
While I’m at it, let me point out this site was SPECIFICALLY called a site addressed to MEN on an information sheet at a law library near a courthouse in Northern California. Look at the connections this person has, and the functions he has worked, in the family law venue. It is unbelievably interwoven…
This is the same site, where, while women are being told that conflict is bad, and if they have “conflict” with their ex, their heads need to be examined (let us appoint someone official, that we have trained), while apart from this, sites friendly to fathers have pages like this one:
.
Evil unanswered, is evil supported. You cannot allow evil to exist, and you cannot fight it with evil. Evil resisted by evil means, contaminates the resistor. The end that justifies the means is an imperfect and flawed concept. No end justifies evil, hurtful, injurious and mean behavior to others or against innocence.
The very concept of mediation and supervised visitation, parenting plans, etc., in the family venue is a brainchild of increasing noncustodial parent visitation time, when due process, fact-gathering, and evidence wouldn’t. The Family Law venue IS a violation of due process, and it IS a venue where the end (“required outcome– more noncustodial parent time [[noncustodial parent being, “father,” as far as the intent of such programs]] justifies the means, and as such, might be characterized as “evil.” IF the concept is justice, and due process.
Evil flourishes by creating distraction, misdirection, trust, ease, inattention, enjoyment, false pride, etc. If one were asked, “What do you do?”, the answer could ask “I wage war against evil, in all of its myriad forms and colorations, at all times, places and at all costs.”
You cannot face evil on impulse; it thrives on such action. You cannot defeat evil with anger . . . anger makes evil burn brighter. You can only cut down evil with cold, fierce force driven by the vision of right, honor, truth, and godliness. Evil is so opposed to these forces that anything else simply exacerbates the evil.
Evil is heartless by necessity. Both it and the person possessed by it see circumstances and events with the view of a malignant narcissist. All things that do not agree with their view of the world are immediately labeled “Deadly Opponents” in an opposition to the self-appointed right of the evil person to their sole view of what is right and wrong, what is proper behavior and what is not, what should and should not be said, or done . . . how things should or should not be done.
Question:
SO when is a crime not a crime? Or a law against felony child-stealing not a felony or not applicable?
Answer:
When someone in authority says it’s not. And that’s up to whoever decides to prosecute, or, alternately, decides NOT to prosecute. This is NOT up to the parent, but to the reporting officers, and after that, the D.A.
When it is bounced to family law, and ends up as a check mark on a mediator’s report form.
I just searched the well-known “NCJRS” on “Child-stealing” and got these results. notice — they aren’t exactly “current,” for the most part (note years).
| Results in Publications (Abstracts Only) | ||
| Parental Child–Stealing | ||
| NCJ 078760, M W Agopian, 1981, (157 pages). | ||
| NCJRS Abstract | ||
| Parental Child Stealing – California’s Legislative Response | ||
| NCJ 074911, M W Agopian, Canadian Criminology Forum, 3, 1, 1980, 37-43, (7 pages). | ||
| NCJRS Abstract | ||
| Epidemic of Child–Stealing – What Can Be Done? | ||
| NCJ 080631, B W Most, Current, 194, 1977, 40-44, (5 pages). | ||
| NCJRS Abstract | ||
| Problems in the Prosecution of Parental Child Stealing Offenses (From Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act of 1979, S 105 – Addendum, P 76-87, 1980 – See NCJ-77752) | ||
| NCJ 077753, M W Agopian, 1980, (12 pages). | ||
| NCJRS Abstract | ||
| Characteristics of Parental Child Stealing (From Crime and the Family, P 111-120, 1985, by Alan J Lincoln and Murray A Straus – See NCJ-98873) | ||
| NCJ 098879, M W Agopian; G L Anderson, 1985, (10 pages). | ||
| NCJRS Abstract | ||
| CHILD STEALING – A TYPOLOGY OF FEMALE OFFENDERS | ||
| NCJ 036248, P T D’ORBAN, BRITISH JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY, 16, 3, 1976, 275-281, (7 pages). | ||
| NCJRS Abstract | ||
| Child Stealing by Cesarean Section: A Psychiatric Case Report and Review of the Child Stealing Literature | ||
| NCJ 140929, S H Yutzy; J K Wolfson; P J Resnick, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 38, 1, 1993, 192-196, (5 pages). | ||
| NCJRS Abstract | ||
| Parental Child Stealing – Participants and the Victimization Process | ||
| NCJ 085267, M W Agopian, Victimology, 5, 2-4, 1982, 263-273, (11 pages). | ||
| NCJRS Abstract | ||
Here are Miscellaneous Abstracts and characterizations from these ties:
FROM “typology of Female Offenders.” Kinda reminds you of Chesler “Women & Madness…”
| Annotation: | CASE STUDIES ARE PRESENTED AND DISCUSSED FOR FOURTEEN ENGLISH CHILD–STEALING OFFENDERS – MOST OF WHOM ARE EITHER PSYCHOTIC, SUB-NORMALLY INTELLIGENT, OR SUFFERING FROM PERSONALITY DISORDERS. |
| Abstract: | ‘CHILD–STEALING‘ IS DEFINED UNDER ENGLISH LAW AS THE UNLAWFUL TAKING AWAY OR ENTICING OF A CHILD UNDER THE AGE OF 14 YEARS WITH INTENT TO DEPRIVE THE PARENT OR GUARDIAN OR ANY OTHER PERSON HAVING THE LAWFUL CARE OF THE CHILD, OR WITH INTENT TO STEAL ANY ARTICLE FROM THE CHILD. |
| Index Term(s): | Case studies; Child abuse; Crimes against children; England; Female offenders; Kidnapping; Mentally ill offenders |
(I beg your pardon, but due to internet access time, I’m simply copying and pasting. Better option — check the links yourself).
Language: English Annotation: Analysis of parental child–stealing cases in Los Angeles reveals that this crime occurs after a divorce action and following a period of compliance with court-ordered visitation privileges. Abstract: Study data came from cases screened for prosecution by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office between July 1977 and June 1978, the first year in which California law made this activity illegal. A total of 91 cases were examined. The crime generally involved young Caucasians, with fathers generally abducting children from mothers awarded custody. The crimes occurred equally throughout the seasons of the year, but took place more often on weekend days than during the week. The parents communicated after the child theft in almost half the cases. The communication usually involved announcing the offender’s intention to keep the child, trying to influence the severed relationship, or justifying the crime. Surprise abductions and use of force were rare. Although just over half the abductions took place within 18 months of the divorce, 37 percent occurred 2 or more years after the divorce. The child stealing reflected the offender’s desire to maintain a full-time relationship with the child and to help reestablish the marital relationship. Additional California and national data suggest that about 1 child theft occurs annually for every 22 divorces. Further research should focus on other jurisdictions and other aspects of child stealing. One note, data tables, and 22 references are supplied. Index Term(s): California; Child snatching; Crimes against children; Family offenses
IN OTHER WORDS, the young Caucasian fathers didn’t want their women to leave them, so to keep the mother attached, they stole the kids. Nice… It’s not necessarily that they loved the child, or were concerned about his or her welfare.
1980: Parental Child Stealing – California’s Legislative Response
. . . Prior to July 1, 1977, California law had provided that the father and mother of a legitimate unmarried minor child were equally entitled to custody, services, and earnings.
What is a “legitimate” unmarried minor child? One whose parents were married?
Because parents had equal rights, neither parent was in violation of the law, civil or criminal, by taking and concealing the child in the absence of a court order giving custody to a particular parent. On July 1, 1977 the California legislature transferred child stealing from the civil to the criminal jurisdication and toughened sanctions and legal procedures dealing with child stealing. This California legislation is a significant effort toward clarifying numerous legal discrepancies and oversights wich have prompted parents to employ child stealing as an extra-legal method of securing their children.
I find it interesting that child-stealing went from CIVIL to CRIMINAL.
Now, depending on the context, and the prosecutors, it appears to me to be going straight back to CIVIL where protective parents (typically but not always mothers) are involved…. This was my case. It was treated like a minor blip on the radar by a “mediator.” I put the word in quotes, because what happened to us wasn’t “mediation” in any sense of the word, but a bypass of the judicial process, which otherwise would have shown missing kids!
When I search adding the word “parental kidnapping,” results differ:
Parental Abduction: A Review of the Literature NCJ 190074, Janet Chiancone, 2000, OJJDP, (13 pages). Overall, the research on parental abductions indicates that this type of crime can be traumatic for both children and left-behind parents and that the longer the separation continues the more damaging the experience becomes.
THAT would be an understatement!
(some reformatting added 2017Aug ,when I approved a comment that had mistakenly been overlooked. FYI, comments on this blog are few and far between, despite the number of views or followers showing on the front sidebar. I was working hard on current posts (this one now about 7 years old), which takes a lot of focus, and am less active on my own email. I’ll try and remember to check it more recently for submitted comments from now on… //LGH.).
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When Judges Ignore Evidence, and Women’s Gut Instincts, Again…
I don’t know that reporting problems is going to change them. Our society is becoming immune, rapidly, but there is clearly a VIEWPOINT divide between the potential victims and those charged — at public expense — with protecting them.
MY common sense says, don’t lean on the broken posts to protect onesself. What the other legal options are is clearly up to each individual — or relative/friend of someone being stalked — to figure out.
WOMEN TARGETED BY STALKERS NEED MORE SELF-DEFENSE TRAINING AND EMPOWERMENT, if not some EQUIPMENT, too, and LESS TRAINING IN RISK-TAKING BEHAVIORS, SUCH AS SEEKING HELP THROUGH PROTECTION ORDERS.
Among the SELF-DEFENSE measures available — sometimes — can include, if possible — LEAVING THE AREA. Is it better to be totally uprooted, even poor — but alive? Or well-grounded and respected in the community, hoping the powers that be will do what they are supposed to do, and staying, until caught by a stalker who went over the edge, or got tired of playing cat and mouse, and went to endgame mode… Like in the incident reported below.
Again, an “ORDER” is a piece of paper issued by the judge. It does not possess magical powers.
When a piece of paper comes up against a person intent on stalking and making sure no one else gets a woman, no matter what, that person is going to get what (he) wants unless he is behind bars. Even from then, there’s the potential to incite others of similar mentality.
There’s a real backlash against assertive women in religious circles, at a minimum. Well, if we can’t be assertive in these situations, what is the option?
From the site Anne Caroline Drake.com
This site has organized commentary and detailed summaries on news events. These posts are worth checking regularly, particularly if my lack of spell-checking is a hard read.
Teacher Murdered by Stalker while Legislature Bickers
Friday morning, February 26, Jed Ryan Waits waited two hours outside Birney Elementary for Ms. Paulson to come to work at 7:30 AM. She was with a colleague. Without saying a word, he fired three shots and killed Ms. Paulson. The fire department arrived within seven minutes to find Ms. Paulson bleeding profusely, but there was nothing they could do to save her life.
Within a half hour, a deputy spotted Waits’ car and pulled him over. Ironically, it was at a day care parking lot in Frederickson. When Waits fired at the officer, the deputy returned fire and killed him.
Four hundred children go to Birney Elementary. The newspapers didn’t say how many kids were already at the daycare center.
What were the options?
Get her a bullet proof vest, and wear it daily?
MOVE, and change her identity, including name and social security #? Her stalker had military training, and was persistent. He’d met her in college!!
This isn’t even an intimate partner relationship. However, the theme of stalking IS family court matter, and so I find it relevant. Continuing, from this website:
Pierce County and Olympia: What if Jennifer Had Been YOUR Daughter?
Pierce County has a very long history of callous disregard toward domestic violence. They didn’t lock up domestic violence perpetrators Tacoma Chief of Police David Brame or the DC Sniper or Isaiah M.K. Kalebu or Maurice Clemmons or Darrel Street or David E. Crable or dozens of other people they knew or should have known would kill.
Judge Thomas Felnagle refused to grant bail to a couple of punks who savagely murdered a stray dog, but he let Maurice Clemmons go home to further terrorize his 12-year-old step-daughter, who he allegedly raped. Maurice Clemmons assassinated four cops in Lakewood while out on bail.
The legislature got all excited when David E. Crable, who had been abusing his 16-year-old daughter for years, killed a deputy sheriff and wounded his partner. Crable’s daughter Bryona had to rescue the cops {{SEE BELOW}} who were supposed to be protecting her.
Legislature Bickers and Keeps the Status Quo Firmly Entrenched
Did the legislators in Olympia focus on the domestic violence underlying these killing sprees? Hell, no! Did they try to pass a law to deny bail to domestic violence perpetrators? Hell no!
The law enforcement task force focused on protecting the cops rather than people experiencing domestic violence. Gov. Christine Gregoire, who perpetually evidences callous disregard for domestic violence, according to the Seattle Times:
The original bill proposed by Gov. Chris Gregoire would have let judges deny bail if they determined that the suspect posed a public safety risk, but in order to get enough support in the House, the criteria was narrowed to those who would face a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole and if the suspect is considered dangerous.
By the time the bill got to the state senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Adam Kline, who also has his head up his ass, said:
A prediction of violence is a shot in the dark right now. We’re not going to have judges deny a consititutional right on a hunch.
(HERE”s MY rant on that). He happens to be right on the matter of PREDICTING violence. That’s what the experts do, and want us to participate in helping them do. Here’s a new one from Michigan I became aware of recently:
http://www.biscmi.org/thelethalityequation/index.html
And here’s the sales plug. Notice: WHO (to “whom”) is it addressed?
- Do you feel like there is more to evaluation than current assessment tools provide, but you’re not sure where to turn?
Are your current lethality assessments and abuse histories enough to adequately understand and predict future intimate partner violence and sexual assault?
Would you like to learn more about what to assess with individual perpetrators within your community? - If so, join us at this training and learn more about personality issues among those who are violent and abusive to others.
Not to minimize the research and expertise that went into exploring this, but WHY should I want to know more about personality issues among those who are violent and abusive to others. Isn’t this information already available by listening to their victims? What benefit will a new set of vocabulary to describe what we already know “dangerous” is? HUH?
What does a large cat predator do before the kill? It stalks!
So how much more does one need to fine-tune that, rather than get that woman protection, including if necessary OUT of there?
Yeah, Anne Caroline is right to be on a rant (and I’m out of time, also).
However, since constitutional rights aren’t going to be infringed upon (when it comes to certain profiles of people), we’ll just have to go back a little further than this Constitution, I guess, and remember some INALIENABLE RIGHTS, the FIRST one of which is to LIFE. That’s physical, breathing and not having that breathing stopped violently or suddenly by force. Then LIBERTY. Being stalked compromises one’s freedom to wander about at will, freedom that people NOT being stalked may take for granted but we (yes, I said “we”) can’t.
In this country, women attempting to leave violent relationships involving children for the most part CAN’T. They have to show up again and again and fork over either more funds for court-appointed professionals, or court-associated professionals, OR if they can’t afford this, they too often have to fork over their children to the batterer, or the state.
Just like the anti-harrassment orders in This case (resulting in one dead woman), that too is regardless of court orders.
This is where the “cult of the experts” leads to, logically speaking. IF “we” (collectively) are going to farm out the basic things of life:
- Thinking
- Self-Defense training for ALL
- Knowing how our legal and economic systems really work, for ALL (male & female, rich and poor)
- Raising our young and educating them
- Governing ourselves.
- Restraining people close to us from violence
- Also entertaining ourselves without pornography, excesses of drugs, alcohol, violence, or simply mind-numbing idiocy (sometimes I’m not sure which is worse)
- Respecting people of other faiths or no faith, by which I mean, not trying to press OUR views onto OTHERS’ kids — and this is going to require a hard look at the school system also. The message is in the system, not just the supposed content of it. These schools are war zones, and the response is too often to blame the parents. Parents then blame the schools. Well, come on folks, it’s an interactive system!
- Living moderately and requiring that our politicians and leaders ALSO do.
- Health, Welfare, and things pertaining to general HUMANITY
Then what kind of country is this?
Rep. Mike Hope and Rep. Chris Hurst, who are former cops, went ballistic. Rep. Hurst told the Seattle Times:
I can’t remember a time when a couple folks sat down behind closed doors and didn’t talk to their colleagues, didn’t talk to the law-enforcement community.
We will not leave this session without this legislation. This is the most important piece of criminal-justice legislation in decades.
Amen.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a public hearing a half hour after Ms. Paulson was gunned down. I’m willing to bet they still didn’t get it.
We the People get it. And, we’re mad as hell at your callous disregard for our safety and welfare.
Click on her links and learn how the abused daughter protected the cop.
Here’s a sample, as summarized on same website:
Deborah Horne onKIRO7 has just reported that Pierce County deputy sheriff Walter “Kent” Mundell passed away this evening at 5:04 p.m.
He had been on life support at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle since being gunned down during a domestic violence call near Eatonville in Pierce County, WA on December 21.
NOTE: shortly before the holidays…
Police officers had been keeping a 24/7 vigil at the hospital.
Last night there was a candlelight vigil at the LA Fitness outlet in Puyallup, WA where deputy Mundell worked out.
His partner, Sgt. Nick Hausner, visited him at Harborview after he was released last week from Madigan Army Medical Center at Ft. Lewis, WA.
Sgt. Hausner credited Bryona Crable, the 16 year-old daughter of David E. Crable (the perpetrator who gunned down the deputies), with saving his life.
Apparently, she courageously jumped her father during the close-range shoot-out and took his gun away before he was fatally wounded by deputy Mundell. Her aunt and uncle pulled Sgt. Hausner to safety.
HERE is a SEATTLE TIMES account of this incident, in which a pro-active teenager saved what could easily have been more lives, although her own father and eventually a police officer died. THIS FAMILY knew more about the “danger assessment” of their relative David Crable than, apparently, a Pierce County Superior Court judge, which shows up in prior sentencing to “parenting classes.” When in doubt, a parenting class will stop bullets, abuse, and change behavior for sure. Do you think the policy of assigning parenting classes to men who are terrorizing their family is going to change just because it resulted in deaths of a cop, and in essence, Suicide by cop, this time?
Bryona Crable, 16, whose dad shot 2 deputies, is a heroine, possibly saving Sgt. Nick Hausner’s life
December 27, 2009 – 16-year old Bryona Crable is being called a ‘herione’, {spelled like that?] according to The Seattle Times. She didn’t just stand by and watch as her father opened fire on two unsuspecting Pierce County Sheriff’s deputies who were at her home responding to a family violence call. Instead she grabbed her father, pushed him to the floor, possibly avoiding additional gunshots from being fired, and possibly saving Sgt. Nick Hausner’s life.
Deputy Kent Mundell, 44, was shot multiple times by Bryona’s father, David E. Crable, 35. Mundell was able to fire back and kill David Crable. According to Ed Troyer, Spokesman for Pierce County Sheriff’s, Mundell now remains in ‘grave’ critical condition. He is on life support at Harborview Medical Center.
During the shoot-out David Crable was hit. His daughter, Bryona, “jumped on her dad and fought him for his gun,” Troyer said. “He went down and never got up again.”
Bryona ran outside to get help from neighbors and to call 911. She and Jason’s girlfriend, Bridget Warren, protected Hausner by dragging him to another room, barring the door, and administering first aid, “while Bryona went for help.”
“She’s absolutely a hero, but she’s also a victim. She witnessed her dad being shot,” Troyer said. “She’s had a bad life at her dad’s hands. She saw her dad shoot two deputies and she stood up and did the right thing and tried to help our guys.”
The Seattle Times reported that Bryona has been in the middle of family fights involving her father whose life, according to court records, was plagued by alcohol and violence.
After the shooting Edward, David’s brother, Bryona, and Warren, were forced to leave their Eatonville home with ‘little more than their clothes’. The property has been ‘torn to pieces’ during the criminal investigation. According to Warren, it took more than two days for them to even retrieve their cell phones.
“We’re going minute by minute,” Warren said Thursday morning. “Obviously, we can’t go back to our house, so at this point, everything’s up in the air.”
The three have been staying with friends due to a lack of relatives in the area. They are trying to figure out what to do about a funeral for their troubled relative, David E. Crable.
Background of sentencing? (Maroon print, below, from HERE):
Callous Indifference to Domestic Violence Reigns in Pierce County
Gimme a break. Let’s review the myriad opportunities various government officials had to stop Crable:
- Spring, 2007: Crable was hospitalized after threatening suicide. He was arrested on domestic violence charges against his mother and daughter.
- June or July, 2007: Crable’s brother Jason sought a protection order against David because he had threatened “to kill my dogs and damage my car. .We started talking and he started to get upset then started yelling. . .he was going to ruin my life and do anything to possible to mess up my move.” This was a clear indication that Crable was a pit bull abuser.
- February, 2008: Crable was charged with DUI, fined $966, and sentenced to 24 hours of community service.
- May 18, 2009: Patsy Jo Crable (his 71 year-old mother) asked for a restraining order against her son David: “I am afraid in my own home with him because of the many guns he owns. . .before I left home, he was always threating suicide, and told his daughter he wanted to die. . .The altercations have escalated. This constant threat of what he’s going to do has caused me great stress. I have a heart condition, and he constantly gets in my face and tells me he wants me to die.” She described him as armed, suicidal, violent, and abusing drugs.
- May 28, 2009: Crable was arrested at his mother’s home after getting into a fight with his brother, choking his daughter, threatening to punch her in the face, and pointing a knife at her. All four of the tires on his brother’s car were slashed. This was the first police standoff.
- June 25, 2009: Crable pleaded guilty to a third-degree malicious mischief, to unlawful display of a weapon, and to unlawful carrying of weapons in Pierce County Superior Court. Judge Vicki Hogan suspended his sentence, put him on two years of probation, and ordered him to pay $800 in fines and court costs, to have no hostile contact with his brother Jason, and to take parenting classes.
OK — did you GET THAT? They finally arrest the suicidal, assaulting people, threatening people, property damage people who is totally out of control, and escalating, has access to weapons (which kill people, right?) and a (female, but that may not really be as relevant as the system that spawned judges that come up with “solutions” like this) says “be a good boy now, and take some nice, friendly, parenting classes.”
Should we fast forward to the latest AFCC conference about the REAL CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER is not enough funds for court-associated professionals to do MORE parenting classes and behavioral modification programs ??? Sure, yeah…
- June, 2009: Child Protective Services (CPS) received a complaint that Crable had assaulted his 15 year old daughter. The allegations were deemed to be “founded,” but nobody at CPS did anything to protect his daughter.
- November 14, 2009: Crable was arrested for a DUI.
- Pierce County prosecutor Mark Lindquist said multiple protection orders were issued against Crable: “They are a result of people saying this guy is a danger to me. I think you can reasonably infer from his history, he had an alcohol problem.”
Crable obviously had more than a problem with alcohol. But, Lindquist, Troyer, and the judges in Pierce County minimize and trivialize evidence in domestic violence cases. Perpetrators get a slap on the wrist. Crable, for example, was never charged with a felony despite abundant evidence that his long history of terrorizing his family was escalating. He was, therefore, allowed to own guns. His victims survived the best they could with nothing but a piece of paper to protect them.
Crable’s daughter wasn’t the only terrified teenager in Pierce County in 2009. Maurice Clemmons’ daughter was similarly left unprotected after her daddy raped her until her daddy assasinated four Lakewood cops. Then, the system pulled out all the stops to arrest him. The people who allegedly aided and abetted him before he was murdered by a Seattle cop are facing serious jail time.
THE QUESTION IS NOT, IS THIS NOW ROUTINE? THE QUESTION IS, WHAT ARE PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT THOSE CLOSE TO THEM GOING TO DO, IN LIGHT OF THIS INFORMATION?
Here’s from the Pierce County, WA, website (I went there and searched on “domestic violence.”) They have a Domestic Violence Diversion Coordinator . . . . This is about their Domestic Violence Unit 
The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department Domestic Violence Unit was established in 1995 in order to more effectively stem the tide of what is a very serious and harmful crime to society.
That’s apparently why, when it occurs, the perpetrator can get “parenting classes and probation…”
The Unit is comprised of detectives and deputies whose responsibility it is to investigate domestic violence related crimes including assaults, property damage, court order violations, rapes, threats, custodial interference, and others. Additionally, Unit members serve as liaison to health care providers, advocacy groups and social agencies to improve identification and reporting of existing instances of domestic violence and develop prevention strategies linking law enforcement and community efforts. We review cases to more quickly identify high rate offenders and high rate victims and direct coordinated intervention efforts toward these groups. We identify high rate locations for domestic violence, especially multi-family housing units. We work with patrol, crime-free multi-unit housing coordinators and social service agencies to focus on early, comprehensive attention to cases of domestic violence.
The Unit also serves arrest warrants and develops new, innovative programs to help deal with domestic violence.
Should you have any questions about the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department Domestic Violence Unit or wish to contact us for any reason, please call us at (253) 798-6516.
?? ??? ???
They also have one of those “family justice centers” that are now becoming commonplace.
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The Crystal Judson Family Justice Center will work collaboratively to achieve the following objectives:
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The Crystal Judson Family Justice Center (FJC) opened in December, 2005. Over 800 clients were served the first year of operation. Many of these clients have been to the FJC more than once. Our service providers handled 1200 client visits to the FJC during this time period. The FJC was created as a result of an interlocal agreement between the City of Tacoma and Pierce County. The City and the County jointly fund the FJC. An Executive Board oversees the operation of the FJC and is comprised of two County Council members and two City Council members and a fifth person of their choosing. The FJC was named in honor of Crystal Judson Brame. In addition to funding from the City and the County, the FJC has received financial contributions from the City of Lakewood, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, the Tacoma/Pierce County Health Department, the City of University Place, the City of Gig Harbor, and the Federal Government. |
=================
Oh well . . . .
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The Hidden Price Tag of Child Support….
Women: Beg, borrow, don’t sleep (we did this when kids were little, and if you have also lived with domestic violence, many of you already know how not to have a sound night’s sleep), figure SOMETHING out.
“Beware Greeks” (or government employees) bearing “gifts.”
There is NO such thing as a “free lunch.”
But if you are living in poverty, as many single mothers are for various reasons, and you enlist the support of your local government by applying for TANF or Medicaid, the Child Support Division will GET YOU (LMAO) so that they can collect from the absent parent. The government got tired of supporting single mothers so they figured out (many years ago) that they should get reimbursed by the absent parent….
which was when the absent parent decided “he” wanted shared/50-50/equal parenting/custody (in recent years).
Well said. That’s not QUITE how it developed, Randi, but I’m posting your warning / opinion link below, because women deserve to know up front.
Nonprofits need warm bodies as clients. Nonprofits that take funding from the federal system (through states, through counties, sometimes through courts) actually RECRUIT fathers — in various institutions, and offer them help to abate child support arrears in exchange for more custodial time with their kids. This is a win-win situation for most people — except the kids, and the parents of those kids. Why? Because the mothers are told one thing, and the fathers another. Then, naturally, we are labeled for having indignation, including at that.
The word “noncustodial parent” is code for “father.” If you haven’t figured this out yet, don’t blame me!
The child support system is incredibly opaque to mothers, so many times. Easy in, hard to get out. For example, I haven’t seen my own children for far too long, they have not been in my “custody.” The normal, average, street understanding of the word “custody” has to do with either a sheriff that just took a criminal or someone off the street into “custody,” or — in these fields, which parent has the child. Or, do child protective services, or foster parents receive, I guess “custody.”
NORMAL WORDS HAVE DIFFERENT MEANINGS IN THE CHILD SUPPORT SYSTEM.
But this system calls parents who are OWED money “custodial” in its electronic calculations, regardless of where any children live. For example, if I want to go check on how much my ex has not paid me on the outstanding arrears he had before he (or someone helping him) figured out a way to at least stop child support from accruing — take the kids — I must still sign in under “custodial” parent field in this statewide distribution system.
IS IT IN EFFECT CHILD RENTAL? OR IS IT NOT?
Then they repeatedly assert (falsely) that it’s NOT about children for time (i.e., children’s time for SALE, essentially. Consider the message this sends growing young ladies….and what a “healthy” marriage message it is…). However, in calculating who owes what, time IS a factor.
And if you can follow that, you should be able to graduate from at least calculus, let alone be able to add, subtract, multiply, and project what direction income is heading, and where.
NO, she is right. Child Support is a misnomer.
There is NO “free lunch,” no matter what you are told on the posters.
My involvement:
I, too, after a decade of abuse, really relished the reliability — for just a few months — of actual predictable income, welfare level plus Food Stamps — that I could actually spend, and determine how to use for my (then young) children’s needs.
It was just a single stair-step out of the abuse. I was off it almost immediately, and with him out of the house, and then one move, I had my act together.
Then, WHAM! You have no idea how THREATENING it is to certain powers to actually be a self-supporting, good, single mother. Of for an ex-batterer to have actual proof that, once he was out of the home, the home was doing better (even if he was not out of the children’s lives). Either way, you are cutting in on someone else’s business.
Besides, poverty of any sort is your own fault, right?
RESULTS?
What I paid for thinking that someone helping us AFTER and OUT of abuse was actually altruistic, and didn’t have an ulterior motive:
I paid with the custody of my children, the viability of my profession, and was eventually forced BACK onto Food stamps, only years older, with a further broken job history (broken by years in family court answering ridiculous allegations that a single phone call — or a single examination of probably less than 3 pages of paper evidence proving the allegations false — would have easily proved baseless). Both parents — neither who could afford this — alternately hired an attorney; me, to defend from custody action, he to stop my second attempt to reinstate a restraining order.
I have news for you. Restraining orders are hard to get once you’ve been in family court. The police tend to defer to that venue; their job is tough enough already.
Wade Horn (below) was eventually “outed” and as I recall, had to resign, but the programs he initiated remain. The OCSE (Office of Child Support Enforcement) is basically a fatherhood and healthy marriage programs recruiting center.
In my own case, once the kids were switched, the child support agency went deaf, dumb and blind. They couldn’t get a document served. I couldn’t get a response until I talked to someone who knew someone who knew someone, after which it turned over, lumbering in sleep, and started to act.
N ot nearly so swift as the father and friends, who had a VERY fast learning curve as to the system (or some help navigating it, apparently). While it was thinking about thinking about moving, our situation heated up, especially around the frequent exchanges.
After the snatch, a significant arrears was retroactively abated, reduced by a significant portion, and payments almost eliminated. The almost-eliminated payments didn’t come in regularly, anyhow, and my rights to enforce contempt, hard enough to start with, were snipped.
So, while this child support organization (locally) goes on TV crowing about their successes, I keep my doggie-bag handy at the time, for spit-up (gag reflex). Besides, the OCSE, and Fatherhood AND . .. DV agencies are basically in (bed, may I say?) together in some of these matters. At least they are conferencing together….
So, DO NOT GO FOR CHILD SUPPORT AGENCY — IT”S A TRAP! IT’s A SINKHOLE! For further documentation, see http://www.NAFCJ.net, among others. (Disclaimer: Obviously this is opinion, and not legal advice! Am I your counselor? No…. I’m a blogger….)
Thank you, Randi James, for saying this better (and in better fonts) than I could.
Here’s an older post of hers citing the 2005 open letter from CA NOW to investigate Fatherhood Funding and citing their 2002 family court report.
Randi asks (or Helen Grieco does, read for yourself) who is going to audit those funds?
Then Ms. James (Randijames) comments — what’s happened since then?]
I’ll tell you what I think happened: NOW’s agenda changed. They are active, but not as active in this venue. STILL, the work remains on-line, at least I think so…
Thursday DHHS, Responsible Fatherhood, the Family Court: Your Tax Dollars Being Wasted On an Illegal Hype
August 2, 2005
California Member of Congress, California National Organization for Women (CA NOW) is respectfully requesting that you join the call for a federal investigation, by the U.S. Government Reform Committee, into the operations of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration of Children and Families’ Access/Visitation and “Responsible Fatherhood” programs, including those operating in California.
CA NOW believes that these fatherhood programs misuse funds, do not account for their spending nor evaluation of their programming, and encourage illegal court practices that result in harm to women’s safety and well-being. We believe that fathers’ child support arrears are frequently abated by these groups, in violation of the Bradley amendment.
We also believe that Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Administration of Children and Families, has a conflict of interest serving in this capacity, and operates from a dangerous political ideology that actively favors fathers’ rights and seeks to minimize mothers’.
CA NOW believes an investigation would expose serious system failure and fraud in these fatherhood programs. They are funded with federal money intended for resolving parental disputes, but instead give legal representation to fathers, which often results in high conflict litigation against perfectly fit mothers. CA NOW believes many fathers use these resources in order to avoid paying child support, and that many batterers do so in order to continue to abuse and manipulate their spouses and children through financially draining and emotionally devastating litigation, that often stretches on for years and years.
Fatherhood programs operate on the false premise that there is a “crisis in fatherlessness,” which is contradicted by Census data. CA NOW asked HHS, and the National Fatherhood Initiative (the most cited program on the HHS website) to justify this claim of crisis, and to date have not received an answer from them.
{{Comment: This is like asking a pimp to stop collecting wages from the fees of his “stable.” Or ASKING a crack addict to stop. There’s a high off that power!
{{I am starting another page, and plan to post some of the $$ quoted (at least on HHS own’ site). NFI is again receiving funding, although initially they were more in the breeding (of programs like themselves) business. Chronologically: 1994 — NFI formed. Then its key player goes to key position within HHS. Then he’s out, but the programs remain. The work is done, and ongoing. I just haven’t figured out how to upload spreadsheets yet.}}
We believe the entire premise for the programming is erroneous, and that mothers and their children are suffering harm from the consequences of such a focus. Through political connection, legal trainings, and funding diversions, these fatherhood programs emphasize false syndromes, such as Parental Alienation Syndrome as a technique to remove children from their mothers. Fatherhood groups train court appointed minors’ attorneys, mediators and evaluators to discriminate against mothers, and create a vacuous draining of mothers of funding, faith in the system, and ability to fight to protect their children.
{{And where Joe Public, or Jane Doe are taken in is credulity. “SURELY, no one would do that; that’s outrageous. This is a JUSTICE system, right? Everyone “knows” that mothers have an advantage in custody trials…” ((oh???))}}
Tell that to the mother in Victorville who lost a 9-month old infant on court-ordered visitation, and her attempts to get safety dismissed because a judge affirmed she was making it up. This is now the new “model” in too many families, and it’s GREAT business all round — for certain professions — except for the families and kids who have to pick up around this, and society, who picks up the tab..}}
These are primary caregiving mothers. Single mothers whose children’s fathers come back after years without contact, and demand and receive full or partial custody. Mothers are losing custody to their abusers, to men who have abused or neglected their children, and men with criminal backgrounds.
Often fathers are awarded custody based on frivolous justifications, such as insufficient cooperation with the father, while documented evidence of domestic violence and abuse, even sexual abuse, goes ignored.
In 2002 California NOW analyzed 300 complaints from California mothers who believed family courts ignored laws, procedures and evidence in their cases. We used this analysis as the basis of our report, the CA NOW Family Court Report 2002.
{{Read it, or be uninformed. Find out which BANK morphed into which BANK funding the AFCC. Same BANK is in charge — at least in this state — of the statewide child distribution system, as far as I can tell. That’s reassuring…}}
The report shows that in these particular cases, where women had lost custody of their children, there was a high correlation between grounded evidence of child abuse by the father and the mother losing custody. 86% could prove that their children’s father had a history of domestic violence, child abuse, or a criminal record. In many cases, illegal maneuvers, such as the labeling of mothers with false syndromes, as well as the use of ex parte hearings, and biased and unqualified extra-judicial personnel, were used to remove children from their primary care-giving mothers, thus violating the woman’s parental rights and injuring the child(ren) by loss of contact with their non-offending mother.
Other professional comprehensive studies show similar results, including the Wellesley Women’s Center Battered Women’s Testimony Project, and sociologist Amy Neustein, PhD and attorney Michael Lesher’s book, Madness to Mutiny: Why Mothers Are Running from the Family Courts—and What Can Be Done About It. In addition, CA NOW believes that Wade Horn, current Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, has a major conflict of interest in his role overseeing such programs, given his past affiliation as president of the National Fatherhood Initiative.
Horn, as President of National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), promoted (in collaboration with fathers rights groups) during 1999 and 2000, “Fathers Count” legislation, which would have mandated $10,000,000 in total annual funding to fathers organizations. According to the legislative language, only NFI and the leading fathers’ rights group, Children’s Rights Council, would have qualified for the grants. The bill passed the Congress, but was stalled by the Senate Finance Committee. In March 2001, NFI received a $500,000 non-competitive grant, shortly after Horn became “Acting” HHS Assistant Secretary ( February 2001), while he was still NFI President (not resigning until July 2001). This grant was authorized by a December 2000 Congressional “ear-mark” inserted in an appropriations bill after the “Fathers Count” bill failed to pass the Senate Finance Committee.
NFI refuses to disclose how this money was used. Also, Horn conceals he has on-going conflicts-of-interest with NFI and the implementation of the fatherhood programs.
California NOW has HHS evaluation reports that show that the “Responsible Fatherhood” program is used for unauthorized practices such as soliciting fathers through the child support system with offers of abatements on their child support arrears (in violation of the Bradley Amendment) and free attorneys for their custody litigation. Some litigating mothers have provided us with county payment records that show the attorney of the litigating farther was paid from these programs. These unauthorized practices are so common that flyers soliciting fathers into ‘litigation assistance’ groups have been found displayed in county court buildings, while some state court web sites display links to their fatherhood programs. This practice violates the mission of the judicial system, as it provides special litigation assistance to one-side of a legal dispute.
While being funded by federal money, these court-based fatherhood services do not admit non- custodial mothers into their programs. (In fact, a search of the HHS website includes 286 references to “motherhood” and 824 references to “fatherhood.”)
California NOW has copies of internal HHS e- mail showing Wade Horn’s staff have obstructed investigations of mothers’ complaints about the Responsible Fatherhood and related programs.
California NOW is asking for you to join the call for a thorough investigation by the Government Reform Committee into the fatherhood programs—including those in California– and HHS Assistant Secretary, Wade Horn’s conflict of interest in these programs.
We implore you to support the Government Reform Committee’s investigations–already now underway–by contacting the staff investigator and urging that California be included in the investigation. The staff director is David Marin, phone number 202-225-5074, address c/o Government Reform Committee, 2157 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515. Thank you for your time and immediate attention to this matter.
For Justice, Helen Grieco
Executive Director California National Organization for Women (CA NOW) _____
(Randi James writes):
This was 2005. What came of this? Where is NOW, now? See below this post for other posts of mine on topics that are covered in this letter.
Here’s another one of her posts, and if you don’t like the blunt truth in blunt language, go be politically correct and euphemistic elsewhere, but realize this is a mutual bottom line we are talking about here.
If you want to know what a WAR is like, remember to talk to the Veterans of it, not just the Congressional people who authorized the war, and sent other people’s kids (or their own) off to it!
A recent NYT featured books written from the front lines about war. Well, these blogs are “from the front lines” on these issues. We are RIGHT about the Child Support farce, and mothers would do well to take heed to it.
The other thing that may happen — and happened to some of us — is that when a father is actually pursued for money, a very important status symbol to men in this culture, and most cultures — a number of reactions may happen, only ONE of which is going for custody of children he previously cared little about.
Anoither version of the same type of struggle is worse, and if you are familiar with the Hans Reiser case in Lafayette, California, his wife NINA disappeared on a court-ordered exchange of their young children.
It was high-profile, he was convicted with killing her before a body was shown up, and then plea-bargained his sentence down by saving the police time and showing where she was buried.
Not so frequently reported about, on that case, was that at this time, he had a $10,000 child support arrears, and had been arrested with thousands of dollars cash on his person.
DECENT fathers understand that children need money to survive, but when feelings are involved, and the “reptilian” part of the brain is active — and when the environment (in the gender wars in the courts) is favorable towards this, and not reason and common sense — things can go seriously haywire. The loser is ALWAYS going to be the kids, FIRST, and thereafter, society.
JUST DON’T DO IT!
Again, that’s not legal advice, that’s my opinion.
As Ms. James says:
I Don’t Want Child Support
Dear Reader,
I don’t want the shit (child support) either. In fact, many of us mothers, at this point, would gladly retract the child support in exchange for the ability to raise our children without interference from our abusers. Legal auction.
(AND that IS what’s in the fine print…That’s what’s at stake!
Consider your situation, I’m writing this half jokingly, but 100% seriously.
Well, that’s not always practical, but the point remains….
Stop presenting children to be fleeced, along with yourself, if at ALL possible. Don’t say you weren’t warned!
(Formatting difficulties below…)
OMB REPORT DESCRIBING ACCESS VISITATION FUNDS — PROGRAM PARTICIPANT SURVEY (This one, 2008):
State Child Access Program Survey:Instructions
Purpose
The purpose of this survey is to provide information to Congress on the progress of services provided under the Child Access and Visitation Grant, the goal of which is to “…support and facilitate a noncustodial parents’ access to and visitation with their children.”
Survey Components
TheThe state is:… responsible for summarizing much of the data provided by its grantees and reflecting this information in the “State Agency Program Survey” part of the form. The state is also responsible for making sure that local service providers or grantees complete the “Local Service Provider Survey” part of the form. In the instance a state transfers its child access grant funds to another state agency (e.g., Office of the Courts) who, in turn, issues grants to local courts and/or community-based organizations, {{this could be called (??) “Separation of Powers” (Legal, Judicial, Executive, right? Yeah, sure. It ALSO is, “separation of church and state.” Yeah, sure.*** }} the state must ensure that these “sub-grantees” complete the “Local Service Provider Survey.”
State Child Access Program Survey is comprised of two-parts: 1) the State Agency Program Survey; and 2) the Local Service Provider Survey. “State Child Access Program Survey” to OCSE by REQUIRED OUTCOME
#1. Increased NCP parenting time with children. (NCP = non custodial parent):
DEFINITION of Required Outcome:
“An increase in the number of hours, days, weekends, and/or holidays as compared to parenting time prior to the provision of access and visitation services.”
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT: OUT-COME BASED JUDICIAL PROCESS. Of course, this doesn’t exactly mean equality of “DUE PROCESS.” They are kind of at the opposite ends of the spectrum, right? How is one to “increase parenting time” if the facts just don’t support the wisdom of this? LIke CPS says Daddy was waterboarding, or Mommy was doing something incorrect too, or so forth? Well, a judge examining facts/law couldn’t, but a mediator sure could. Someone NOT subject to cross-examination, due process, and particularly if immune for prosecution for slander, bias, etc. — that would be a lot harder to deal with, for the shocked parent that wondered “what happened? What part of this don’t you “GET”??” Well, the part that parent didn’t GET is what went on behind closed doors with ONE parent, but not the other, at federal expense. THAT’s what tipped the scale….
In addition, Section D: Local Service Provider Worksheet was developed to assist service providers in compiling information on clients served. The “Case Reference/Identification Number” can be the same “case” number used by a service provider at client intake. It must be emphasized, however, that personal social security numbers are not to be used since this would be a breach of client confidentiality.
SOURCE (and better viewed on the PDF):
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/forms/omb-0970-0204.pdf
Here’s the FEDERAL GRANTSWIRE description, in part:
Program
93.597 Grants to States for Access and Visitation Programs
Federal Agency
Agency: Department of Health and Human Services
Office: Administration for Children and FamiliesAuthorization
Social Security Act, Title IV, Part D, Section 469B, Public Law 104-193.
Program Number
93.597
Last Known Status
Active
Objectives
To enable States to create programs which support and facilitate access and visitation by non-custodial parents with their children. {{of course “support and facilitate” in practice typically may include the reality of “mandatory…” No meet the “required outcome” of the court process — more NCP time with the kid = may compromise next year’s funding. ….}}
Activities may {{??}} include mediation, counseling, education, development of parenting plans, visitation enforcement and development of guidelines for visitation and alternative custody arrangements.
(WOW — sounds like a list of the professions represented in large part by the AFCC…) (What a coincidence….)
Eligibility Requirements
Applicant Eligibility
All States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and Guam.
Beneficiary Eligibility
Custodial and non-custodial parents and children.
My total loss of custody, and other mothers’, was a definite “beneficiary” of these types of services. I suppose…
Credentials/Documentation
The Governors have designated a single State agency to represent the State in carrying out this responsibility. OMB Circular No. A-87 applies to this program.
(Formatting loophole — this info is from the OMB reporting requirements, prior link):
Last, the state is responsible for submitting the
November 30th of each year that the survey is authorized.
The local service provider is: …responsible for completing the “Local Service Provider Survey” for clients served and submitting this information to the state who, in turn, will submit it to OCSE . A new feature of the survey (see Section D: Local Service Provider Worksheet) requires that grantees report on the following:
{{Typical of our government: Grammar off – it doesn’t even agree in number: “a noncustodial parents’ “(is that singular or plural? I think singular was intended by “a” but parents’ is definitely plural. Maybe we can figure it out in context.. let’s read on… )..”access to and visitation with their children.” (Was the NCP a singular or a plural person? Maybe it was plural, because it’s access to “their” children.”
And we wonder why our kids have deficit attention disorder? And need remedial reading? The government can’t even pay attention to number (singular/plural?) for a complete sentence…) Or, maybe there was a sperm donor, so “NCP” — which we know means Dads anyhow — MAY refer to more than one NCP per child. Well, you go figure it out….)}}
{{Now as to the hypocrisy — I already posted on why I don’t copyedit around here, so MY ____ is covered in that regard, I hope.}}
As part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, states are required to monitor, evaluate, and report on programs funded through this grant program in accordance with regulations prescribed by the Secretary.
My personal recommendation is that we citizens get out our GUIDESTAR free registrations, and do this ourselves. After all, whose dollars are they? Whose country IS this?
A final rule delineating the program data reporting requirements was published by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement in the Federal Register (64 FR 15132) on March 30, 1999, and specifies the collection of data as follows:
“Section 303.109(c) REPORTING. The state must:
(1) Report a detailed description of each program funded, providing the following information as appropriate: service providers and administrators, service area (rural/urban), population served (income, race, marital status), program goals, application or referral process (including referral sources), voluntary or mandatory nature of the programs, types of activities and length and features of a completed program; and
(2) Report data including: the number of applicants/referrals for each program, the total number of participating individuals, and the number of persons who have completed program requirements by authorized activities (mediation—voluntary and mandatory, counseling, education, development of parenting plans, visitation enforcement—
including monitoring, supervision and neutral drop-off and pickup) and development of guidelines for visitation and alternative custody arrangements.”
Let’s look at this funding in, say, California, Florida, NY, and Texas — typically among the largest states in grants searches.
Trend
2000 $9,800,000 2001 $9,800,000 2002 $19,543,038 2003 $9,643,505 2004 $10,000,000 2005 $10,000,000 2006 $0 2007 $10,000,000 2008 $10,000,000 2009 $7,141,989 2010 $10,000,000
93.601: Child Support Enforcement and Demo Projects HERE:
Trend
2000 $0 2001 $0 2002 $0 2003 $0 2004 $0 2005 $0 2006 $0 2007 $1,556,856 2008 $1,295,662 2009 $1,051,645 2010 $0
OK, something new coming down the pike, obviously…
And 93.563, Child Support Enforcement:
Federal dollars: $31,546,418,240
Total number of recipients: 157
Total number of transactions: 85,611
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Haiti, Idaho, 33 traumatized kids, 10 arrested Baptists and ChurchThink
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I am going to start posting this, I think, at the top of every post:
https://commerce.guidestar.org/GuideStar/newaccount.aspx
Know thyself, and Know Thy Nonprofits (including churches). ONE way to know someone is to take a look at their books. I mean Income, Expense, Assets & Liabilities, and request proof of who got which services.
Register for FREE with Guidestar, and start looking things up. That’s what the 2 men from Albany, GA did in the nonprofit hospital scam…
Do a local audit. After all, if you pay taxes, aren’t those YOUR taxes? And if a tax-exempt organization is tax-exempt and NOT providing whatever actually qualifies them for tax-exempt status (presumably a healthy does of altruism and concern for the common good, or picking up some of what the government can’t cover itself….) (say WHAT is government for, again? Health? and Human Services ??? Linguistic transformations, etc….).
and
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OK, not one of my best post titles, but who could resist this article?
‘Right Thing’ or Recklessness?
Arrests of Baptists stir debate about trafficking
By Frank Bajak and Paisley Dodds
Associated Press Posted: 01/31/2010 08:39:52 PM PST Updated: 01/31/2010 10:34:56 PM PSTPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Ten U.S. Baptists arrested trying to take 33 children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti say they were just trying to do the right thing, applying Christian principles to save Haitian children.
Prime Minister Max Bellerive said Sunday he was outraged by the group’s “illegal trafficking of children” in a country long afflicted by the scourge and by foreign meddling.
One thing I’ve noticed about people intent on grabbing children is a total insensitivity to their former culture or values, let alone parentage…
But the hard reality on the ground in this desperately poor country — especially after the catastrophic Jan. 12 quake — is that some parents openly attest to their willingness to part with their children if it will mean a better life.
It was a sentiment expressed by all but one of some 20 Haitian parents interviewed at a tent camp Sunday that teemed with children whose toys were hewed from garbage. {{“hewed”? Isn’t that what you do to trees?}}
“Some parents I know have already given their children to foreigners,” said Adonis Helman, 44. “I’ve been thinking how I will choose which one I may give — probably my youngest.”
Haiti’s overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions unless they were in motion before the quake amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold.
Without proper documents and concerted efforts to track down their parents, they could be forever separated from family members able and willing to care for them. Bellerive’s personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child.
The orphanage where the children were later taken said at least some of the kids have living parents, who were apparently told that the children were going on an extended holiday from the post-quake misery.
The church group’s own mission statement said it planned to spend only hours in the devastated capital, quickly identifying children without immediate families and busing them to a rented hotel in the Dominican Republic without bothering to get permission from the Haitian government.
Whatever its intentions, other child welfare organizations in Haiti called the plan reckless.
The church members, most from Idaho, said they were only trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children.
IDAHO has a family court system. There are certainly traumatized children being manufactured over there — why not practice this form of “love” locally, or have CPS and other agencies already marked out this territory? There are battered mothers on the verge of poverty and homelessness there. Were they simply in need of kids without going through the approval process? Or is the Bill of Rights over here getting in the way?
“In this chaos the government is in right now, we were just trying to do the right thing,” the group’s spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, said at Haiti’s judicial police headquarters, where she and others were taken after their arrest Friday night trying to cross the border into the Dominican Republic in a bus.
Silsby, 40, admitted she had not obtained the proper Haitian documents for the children, whose names were written on pink tape on their shirts.
Dang those pesky laws. The “right thing” in this case was obviously to ignore them, or be totally unconscious that such restraints might exist, and be appropriate.
The children, ages 2 months to 12 years old, were taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children’s Villages, where spokesman George Willeit said they arrived “very hungry, very thirsty.”
WERE taken, or HAD been taken? Did the church go to this orphanage to get some abandoned traumatized kids? Or were they taken here after the Haiti-fleeing church folk were caught?
A 2- to 3-month old baby was dehydrated and had to be hospitalized, he said. An orphanage worker held and caressed another, older baby, who was feverish and looked disoriented.
“One (8-year-old) girl was crying, and saying, ‘I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.’ And she thought she was going on a summer camp or a boarding school or something like that,” Willeit said.
The orphanage was working to reunite the children with their families, joining a concerted effort by the Haitian government, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other nongovernment organizations.
In Idaho, the Rev. Clint Henry denied that his Central Valley Baptist Church had anything to do with child trafficking and said he didn’t believe such reports. He urged his tearful congregation to pray to God to “help them as they seek to resist the accusations of Satan and the lies that he would want them to believe and the fears that he would want to plant into their heart.”
{{pls. note on my blogroll link to copyright use…}}
And there, my friends, you have a typical church reaction to being confronted on violations of laws by its members. It wasn’t the members’ illegal activities that count, but Satan that motivated whoever reported them.
That US/THEM mentality is the breeding ground for gangs as much as other areas. Add to it the herd mentality, and people with needy children in the emotional portion of their thinking, and voila — an overseas trip comes together.
I promised in an earlier blog I’d make up for having failed to offend ALL groups, so this is part of my delivery.
=========
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Miscellaneous programs in Idaho (Taggs.hhs.gov. These were REALLY random selections of CFDA programs I thought some of those church folk might want to get involved in, some of which refer to adoptions…
Number of rows returned: 40
Rows 1 through 40 displayed.
Records Searched: 161306
| Award Number | Award Title | OPDIV | Program Office | Sum of Actions |
| 1001ID1407 | FY 2010 ADOPTION ASSISTANCE | ACF | CB | $ 3,149,636 |
| SM059054 | MADISON CARES | SAMHSA | CMHS | $ 996,964 |
| 90RG0083 | REFUGEE MICROENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT | ACF | ORR | $ 200,000 |
| 0901IDAIPP | FY 2009 ADOPTION INCENTIVE PAYMENT PROGRAM | ACF | CB | $ 356,800 |
| 0901IDCJA1 | 2009 CJA | ACF | CB | $ 130,414 |
| 90RX0090 | REFUGEE PREVENTIVE HEALTH | ACF | ORR | $ 128,085 |
| 09PAIDFPSS | 2009 | ACF | CB | $ 38,214 |
| 09PCIDFPSS | 2009 | ACF | CB | $ 23,032 |
| 0901IDCA01 | 2009 NCCAN | ACF | CB | $ 178,963 |
| 0901IDFPSS | 2009 | ACF | CB | $ 1,217,307 |
| 90RU0163 | UNANTICIPATED ARRIVIALS | ACF | ORR | $ 451,468 |
| 0911IDFPCV | 2009 FPSSCV | ACF | CB | $ 36,142 |
| 0901ID1407 | FY 2009 ADOPTION ASSISTANCE | ACF | CB | $ 5,207,087 |
| 0801IDCJA1 | 2008 CJA | ACF | CB | $ 130,413 |
| 08PAIDFPSS | 2008 PSSF | ACF | CB | $ 38,432 |
| 0801IDAIPP | FY 2008 ADOPTION INCENTIVE PAYMENT PROGRAM | ACF | CB | $ 72,000 |
| 08PCIDFPSS | 2008 PSSF | ACF | CB | $ 23,164 |
| 0811IDFPCV | 2008 FPSSCV | ACF | CB | $ 18,717 |
| 0801IDCA01 | 2008 NCCAN | ACF | CB | $ 174,928 |
| 0801IDFPSS | 2008 PSSF | ACF | CB | $ 1,260,832 |
| 0801ID1407 | FY 2008 ADOPTION ASSISTANCE | ACF | CB | $ 4,468,573 |
| 10YO0052 | STREET OUTREACH PROGRAM | ACF | FYSB | $ 150,000 |
| 90CU0011 | IMPROVING POSITIVE OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN THROUGH FAMILY DRUG COURT | ACF | CB | $ 2,575,000 |
| 0701IDCJA1 | 2007 CJA | ACF | CB | $ 124,244 |
| 90ZI0068 | REFUGEE MICROENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT | ACF | ORR | $ 603,054 |
| 0701IDAIPP | FY 2007 ADOPTION INCENTIVE PAYMENT PROGRAM | ACF | CB | $ 68,000 |
| 90RL0137 | SERVICES TO OLDER REFUGEES | ACF | ORR | $ 435,183 |
| 90ZR0004 | REFUGEE AGRICULTURAL PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM | ACF | ORR | $ 303,582 |
| 90RT0123 | TARGETED ASSISTANCE | ACF | ORR | $ 633,376 |
| 90RG0062 | REFUGEE MICROENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT | ACF | ORR | $ 760,000 |
| 90ZE0092 | REFUGEE SCHOOL IMPACT | ACF | ORR | $ 660,000 |
| 90RX0186 | REFUGEE PREVENTIVE HEALTH | ACF | ORR | $ 240,000 |
| 07PCIDFPSS | 2007 PSSF | ACF | CB | $ 25,188 |
| 0701ID00FP | 2007 PSSF | ACF | CB | $ 1,336,795 |
| 0701IDAEGP | 2007 AEGP | ACF | FYSB | $ 208,264 |
| H21MC07735 | TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY IMPLEMENTATION | HRSA | MCHB | $ 568,600 |
| 0701ID01FP | 2007 PSSF | ACF | CB | $ 41,791 |
| 0701IDCA01 | 2007 NCCAN | ACF | CB | $ 171,365 |
| 0701ID1407 | FY 2007 ADOPTION ASSISTANCE | ACF | CB | $ 3,792,023 |
| 0301ID00FP | 2003 PSSF | ACF | CB | $ 1,067,762 |
C’ouer D’alene city blogspot (in Idaho) has this on Child Abduction Prevention:
Although the Coeur d’Alene Police Department receives very few cases of child abduction, the correct response and investigation of missing or abducted children remain a high priority for the department. Last year, Chief Wayne Longo spearheaded up-to-date training in Amber Alert for all members of the police department. Idaho State Police and Kootenai County Central Dispatch have been vital in offering and providing such training in the use of the statewide Amber Alert system. This training initiative has assisted officers in responding quickly and appropriately to these types of cases.
In the fall of 2007, Chief Longo attended a two-day workshop in Alexandria, Virginia, hosted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC, a non-profit entity supported by corporate sponsorships and grants, paid for all expenses associated with the training.
The executive-level training has a focus on a standardized law enforcement response and policies nation wide in child abduction cases. NCMEC also offered additional information and resources such as “Team Adam” to local law enforcement agencies.
Team Adam is a deployment of retired police officers specifically trained in child abduction who respond to a community and assist local law enforcement in the case of an abducted child.. . .
In 2005, Chief Longo was part of a multi-agency team that investigated the devastating Groene case that sent shock waves through North Idaho and the nation. In the past year, the FBI requested that he travel around the nation with other commanders involved in this investigation to share the lessons learned from that difficult case with other law enforcement leaders. FBI Special Agent Mike Genecko, Major Travis Chaney of the KCSD, FBI Supervisor Don Robinson, and assistant US Attorneys have accompanied him. The FBI has paid the expenses associated with all of the trips. Important lessons learned in Idaho are shared with our counterparts around the nation to assist other jurisdictions with best practices and ideas. The concept of cooperation and the Unified/Incident command system (Chief Longo refers to it as the “Blurring of the Patch”) are strongly emphasized.
“Our children are our most precious resource and it is the goal of the men and women of the Coeur d’Alene Police Department to provide the highest level of protection and service to our community,” Chief Longo stated. “This investigation [Groene] has forever changed all who were involved. The response by our community was unbelievable and continues to this day.”
The Coeur d’Alene Police Department encourages citizens to report any suspicious activity or information regarding a child abduction case. For more information on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, please visit their website at http://www.missingkids.com.
Posted by Victoria Bruno at 8:49 AM
(D)
Lessons from Luzerne County, PA:
Despite Red Flags About Judges, a Kickback Scheme Flourished
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Things were different in the Luzerne County juvenile courtroom, and everyone knew it. Proceedings on average took less than two minutes. Detention center workers were told in advance how many juveniles to expect at the end of each day — even before hearings to determine their innocence or guilt. Lawyers told families not to bother hiring them. They would not be allowed to speak anyway.
The 56-foot yacht in Jupiter, Fla., used by the two judges.
“The judge’s whim is all that mattered in that courtroom,” said Marsha Levick, the legal director of the Juvenile Law Center, a child advocacy organization in Philadelphia, which began raising concerns about the court to state authorities in 1999. “The law was basically irrelevant.”
Last month, the law caught up with Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, who ran that juvenile court for 12 years, and Judge Michael T. Conahan, 56, a colleague on the county’s Court of Common Pleas.
In what authorities are calling the biggest legal scandal in state history, the two judges pleaded guilty to tax evasion and wire fraud in a scheme that involved sending thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks.
WHY WON’T CHURCHES START INVESTIGATING THIS TYPE OF ACTIVITY, FROM THE TOP TO THE BOTTOM? THEY CERTAINLY HAVE AUDITORS IN THEIR MIDST… AND AN AUDIT CAN STOP SOME THINGS, LIKE — CHILD-TRAFFICKING…. AND UN NECESSARY INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF U.S. CHILDREN!
On Thursday, the State Supreme Court ordered that the records be cleaned for hundreds of the 2,500 or so juveniles sentenced by Judge Ciavarella, and in the coming weeks, the two judges will be sentenced, under a plea agreement, to more than seven years in prison.
While the scandal continues to ripple nationally as legal experts debate whether juvenile courts have sufficient oversight, here in Luzerne County people are grappling with more immediate questions: How did two native sons, elected twice to the bench to protect children and serve justice, decide to do the opposite? And why did no one stop them?
Old Friends Hatch a Plan
It all started in June 2000 with a simple business proposition, according to the judges’ indictment and more than 40 interviews with courtroom workers, authorities and others.
Robert J. Powell, a wealthy personal-injury lawyer from Hazleton, Pa., and longtime friend of Judge Conahan, wanted to know how he might get a contract to build a private detention center. Judge Ciavarella thought he could help.
The two men agreed to meet and, according to prosecutors, somewhere in that conversation a plan was hatched that courthouse workers and county officials would later describe as a “freight train without brakes.”
First, Judge Ciavarella put Mr. Powell in touch with a developer who also happened to be an old friend, Robert K. Mericle, to start work on finding a site. Then, in January 2002 — the month Judge Conahan became president judge, giving him control of the courthouse budget — he signed a secret deal with Mr. Powell, agreeing that the court would pay $1.3 million in annual rent, on top of the tens of millions of dollars that the county and the state would pay to house the delinquent juveniles. And by the end of that year, Judge Conahan had gotten rid of the competition by eliminating financing for the county detention center.
“They were unstoppable,” said Judge Chester B. Muroski, who sent a letter to county commissioners raising concerns about detention costs, only to be transferred days later to another court by Judge Conahan. “I knew something was wrong, but they silenced all dissent.”
Other dissenters were also steamrolled.
When the county controller, Steve Flood, leaked a state audit that described the state’s lease of the center as a “bad deal,” the center’s owner filed a “trade secrets” lawsuit against Mr. Flood, and Judge Conahan sealed the suit to limit other documents’ getting out. His decision was later overturned.
“Everyone began to assume that the judges had some vested interest in the private center because they were pushing it so doggedly,” one courthouse worker said. Virtually all former colleagues and courthouse workers would not allowed themselves to be identified because the federal investigation into the kickback scheme was ongoing and they feared for their jobs if they alienated former allies of the judges.
Mr. Powell has not been charged. His lawyer said that the judges had coerced him into paying the kickbacks and that he was cooperating with investigators.
The few officials who had concerns at the time say their hands were tied. Probation officers say they suspected that something was amiss but were overruled every time they requested lighter sentences or for sentences to be served at home. County commissioners were the only ones authorized to sign contracts for detention centers. But by eliminating money for the county center, Judge Conahan left them little alternative but to sign on to the deal for the private facility. . .
Stop the carpetbagging!
Prime Minister Max Bellerive said Sunday he was outraged by the group’s “illegal trafficking of children” in a country long afflicted by the scourge and by foreign meddling….
Haiti’s overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions unless they were in motion before the quake amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold.
Without proper documents and concerted efforts to track down their parents, they could be forever separated from family members able and willing to care for them. Bellerive’s personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child
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Have Justice Will Travel — Rural Vermont DV help
I heard of this woman on PBS a long time ago. She is an Ashoka Fellow, doesn’t make a lot of money, and helps women stuck in rural areas, probably saving lives. . . . . . This was NOT a governmental program, not initiated by a federal grant, or managed by those whose prime business is getting such grants and attending lots of conferences. it’s a hands-on type of help.
I googled “Domestic Violence” on the Ashoka site, and will look further. Initially, it seems (as ever) people are much more aware of “what works” when they go outside the continental US than when they look inside. However, judge for yourself!
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from the ASHOKA Social Entrepreneurs site
Wynona Ward
| Country: | United States |
| Region: | North America |
| Field Of Work: | Human Rights |
| Subsectors: | Criminal Justice, Violence and Abuse |
| Target Populations: | Families, Law Enforcement, Women |
| Organization: | Have Justice – Will Travel |
| Year Elected: | 2000 |
Related Links
- Wynona Ward
- Criminal Justice
- Families
- Human Rights
- Law Enforcement
- North America
- Violence and Abuse
- Women
–>
The New Idea
Recognizing that victims of domestic violence in rural areas are not only isolated, but also have to seek assistance from a number of disparate agencies, Wynona launched Have Justice-Will Travel (HJWT) to address this two-fold problem. Raised at the end of a dirt road in rural Vermont, Wynona understands that women in rural areas, particularly battered women, often do not have a phone or transportation necessary to get help. They also find it difficult to trust a wide group of legal and social service providers. Instead of asking women to seek services in distant towns, Wynona brings services to their doorstep. She helps them understand the root causes of abuse and to leave their abuser by achieving economic independence and emotional self-sufficiency. From an initial interview to free legal representation to follow-up services, Wynona’s program offers it all.
The Problem
Results from the first comprehensive national health survey of American women conducted by the Commonwealth Fund in 1993, report that in the United States, more than four million women are abused each year. Children at home and others in the locality are also affected by this violence. The 1995 Gallup Poll of family violence reports that between 1.5 million to 3.3 million children witness parental violence every year. Seeing, hearing, and experiencing the abuse traumatizes most children for life. It results in a cycle of generational abuse, as children who have been victims and witnesses are more prone to becoming violent adults.When women look for assistance, they find a fragmented mosaic of services. Victim advocacy organizations run twenty-four-hour hotlines, give referrals to social services, teach safety planning, and provide emergency shelter. Legal advice and representation must be sought from other quarters. Social Service agencies counsel, support, and help women to be financially independent. Unfortunately, many are unable to navigate this complex network.
In rural areas, other obstacles such as inadequate public transportation, few law enforcers, and lack of privacy in tight-knit communities can seriously hinder access to legal recourse and other support. Moreover, while public awareness about violence against women has increased considerably in recent years, it has been limited to urban areas. As a result, while there is little variation in the extent to which urban, suburban, and rural women experience violence, the primary beneficiaries of research and improved services have been in urban areas.
The Strategy
The third component is free legal representation. Rural Vermont has few attorneys who address domestic violence. Wynona’s on-the-road legal services include client and witness interviews, taking affidavits, pretrial motions, filing for divorce and child support, motions to modify parental rights and responsibilities, custody and visitation, and motions to extend relief from abuse orders.
Understanding that simply ensuring safety is not enough to end the generational cycle of abuse, Wynona is helping women to become self-sufficient and thus raise their self-esteem. The final two components of HJWT programs work toward this end. These programs enable the victim and her children to achieve social, economic, and psychological independence. The first is a skills development and mentor support group for women and mothers. Led by former victims,…
{GOT THAT?? “Led by former victims..”}
this group educates women on the cycle of abuse, the effect of domestic violence on children, generational abuse, and theories of power and control. It also covers practical training such as money management, budgeting, and job skills.
The last component is a supervised visitation program, The Kids Place, which manages supervised visits at home and off-site, parent education, age appropriate children’s classes on domestic violence, and counseling and support groups for victims and their children.
{{And right about there is where I’m sorry I posted this. However, it’s better than not helping the women. . . . . Again, no damn abuser should have access to kids, PERIOD, and no outsider should have to pay for him (or if a her, her) to do so. Plus,this whole system — which I imagine Wynona hasn’t stopped helping women long enough to realize – – of supervised visitation come from a different paradigm, and is in essence refusing to let them get free. The tool can be turned against the women in a flash, also… and is….}}
Wynona piloted her program in rural Vermont and is currently working in three counties. The majority of her clients are referred by victim advocacy toll-free telephone hotlines located in laundry mats, grocery stores, doctor and dentist offices, and schools.
The courts and police also make referrals. In 1999 alone, Wynona served thirty-eight clients between the ages of twenty-one and fifty-eight. National statistics suggest that it takes an average of seven times for a woman to leave before she makes the final break from her abuser. Wynona’s high success rate speaks for itself–95 percent of her thirty-eight clients have left their abusers.
For more of her story, see next post…
Wynona plans to spread her idea by creating an HJWT Institute overseen by a national advisory board. The goal of the Institute will be to teach others across America how to incorporate cultural, psychological, geographical, and economic considerations with legal services for victims of family violence to bring an end to the generational cycle of abuse in rural areas. Using the HJWT mobile model, the Institute will work with partner organizations to train lawyers and advocates using a training curriculum Wynona is developing. Wynona intends to partner with Legal Aid, Legal Service Corps, law schools, and victim advocacy organizations. Her 2001 expansion plans include Maine, New York, Arizona, and Wisconsin.
The Person
“When I’ve think of how far I’ve come from an abused home, I think: Wow! Look how far you’ve come. Then I think: Wow, lady, you have a lot more to do!'”Born in West Fairlee, Vermont, Wynona was one of five children. Wynona’s father sexually abused his daughters and other village children. At an early age she was “given the role of oldest child.” As a result, while she watched her father abuse her mother, Wynona was only abused once “when he was drunk and mad at everybody else in the house.”
After graduating from high school, Wynona worked as a secretary at Dartmouth College and then for a high-tech firm. She attended Boston University for two years, but quit for financial and personal reasons. In 1980, Wynona and her husband started a trucking business and she spent fifteen years as a long-haul trucker. Wynona drove during the day, with the CB radio handle “Daybreak,” and her husband drove nights as “Black Cat.”
In 1986, the family discovered that Wynona’s father had abused a three year old niece. This event forced Wynona and her sisters to confront the family’s history of abuse. They prosecuted their father. He spent a few days in jail but the case was dropped, as it was difficult to have a three year old as a witness. In 1992, the same niece revealed in counseling that Wynona’s forty-two year old brother had also abused her. Once again, Wynona led the effort to prosecute her sibling. This family crisis and the role she played as a “volunteer victim advocate” convinced Wynona that she had to complete college so that she could help other abused women and children.
In 1993, Wynona completed her undergraduate degree from the “back of the cab,” earning a degree from a Vermont College adult education program. In 1995, she entered Vermont Law School. While in law school, she worked at the South Royalton Clinic on domestic violence cases. It was here that the HJWT was born. “I realized that these women needed transportation, in-home consultations, and legal representation.” Wynona drew on three experiences: a survivor of domestic violence, fifteen years working as a long-haul trucker, and legal training to develop Have Justice Will Travel. Wynona is a role model for women who want to break free of abusive relationships as she has been there and survived.
(2) more info:
from AnneCarolineDrake.com\
“Bravo Wynona Ward, 2010 CNN hero”
(best viewed on original site — more active hyperlinks….)
When these women get away from the abuse, they just bloom. They become assured, confident, and want to help other people.
I think about my mom sitting at our kitchen table, trying to figure out how to make the last 10 cents last to feed us all.
You do not have to be a submissive wife. And you do not have to put up with having someone beat you. We can help you. We can help you to get out.
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Stocking Stuffers: 2009-2010 Status of Women, if Jesus had been born in CPS era, and Jurisdictionary plea.
California Commission on the Status of Women 2009
http://women.ca.gov/images/pdf/issues/1073.2009.2010publicpolicyagenda.pdf
HERE is the list Family Law is 9th.
2009-2010 Priorities • 1
Child Care • 2
Civil Rights • 3
Economic Security • 4
CalWORKS • 5
Education • 6
Employment • 8
Family Law • 9
Health • 10
Substance Abuse and Mental Health • 13
Long Term Care & Aging • 14
Reproductive Health • 15
Crisis Pregnancy Centers • 16
Teen Pregnancy and Parenting • 17
Violence • 17
Sexually Exploited Minors • 19
Teen Dating Violence • 20
Women and Girls in the CriminalJustice System • 20
Women and Corrections • 20
Girls in the Juvenile Justice System • 22
Women Veterans • 23
================
This would be good reading, for sure…..
Family Law
California is failing to protect its most
vulnerable children.
[[Not that this is exactly breaking news…]]
Whether it is child support enforcement, the foster care system, or the family courts, the rights and safety of many women and
children are at risk.
[[In a masterful understatement, not mentioned here — many have also died, probably needlessly… Others remain in the custody of their abusers…In truth “at risk” is a diversionary phrase. They have died. What about THOSE? So, as to the living ones, then…]]
Courts are overburdened and
court personnel often lack knowledge and
resources needed to address the complex issues
of domestic violence and child abuse. [*] Women
often suffer financially and emotionally as a result
of unjust rulings. In order to improve outcomes for
children and families, the Commission supports
the following agenda:Legislative Proposals
1. Establish an independent state-level oversight
committee/commission to review child custody
proceedings to better inform public policy, with a
particular focus on cases with allegations of
child abuse or domestic violence (Priority)2. Establish a multidisciplinary team of professionals
with expertise in assessing child abuse
and domestic violence to evaluate cases when
child custody is in dispute and such allegations
are made against one of the parties
3. Strengthen the right of custodial parents to
relocate without the risk of losing custody of
children
4.Support a State General Fund appropriation to
backfill lost federal matching incentive funds for
administrative costs in the child support program**
5. Require judges, mediators, custody evaluators,
law enforcement officers and social workers to
receive education on how to coordinate and
interface with all appropriate agencies in child
custody cases as a means of preventing
systems from failing to meet the needs of
families
If you know my blog, you know I’m not into this solution, because I don’t think that’s the problem. I think that if these personnel receive MOTIVATION (not “education”) to do the right thing, when evidence is on the record, that would be a nice gift for this season….
6. Allow children the opportunity to speak directly to the judge regarding their custody and visitation wishes and needs
And just hope that no undue influence has been applied outside the court…. (??? in a DV case??)
Administrative Proposals
7. Require judicial education regarding
• the dynamic of domestic violence and child
abuse, including the invalidity of the
“Parental Alienation Syndrome” (Priority)
• transgender individuals to prevent
discrimination in child custody matters due
to a parentʼs transgender status
8. Support a request for a Joint Legislative Audit
Committee to audit child custody cases involving
allegations of child abuse or domestic violence
9. Establish a judicial performance evaluation
system for appellate and trial court judges and
commissioners using American Bar Association
guidelines…
Study Proposals
10. An update of the 1987 “Senate Task Force On
Family Equity” report on family law
11. A study of gender fairness in the California
family courts
[added in 2011 commentary:]
[*]Viewing this post, over a year later, again (as then) phrases pop out, that somehow we, the public, are to understand ( believe) that Judges DON’T understand what we do — behaving like an out of control kindergartner in a marriage (or after sex has produced a child, producing whats’ called a mother, and a father, if not a family) and asserting dominance over pregnant, nursing, or mothers of young children — is wrong and dangerous to others than just the pregnant, nursing or mother of young children. Or, to fail to understand that real adult men, really do (and sometimes women, I fear & hear) molest children, and that’s a euphemism. IN such case, to continue this, they have to get rid of any parent who would stop this. The venue where this happens is “family” court.
All these people wanting to reform family court, and keep the professionals, while tossing off lives left and right (and some of the damage hit sthe community) and failing to account for usage of grants to the California Judicial Council/Administrative Office of the Courts / Center for Families & Children in the Courts (CFCC, or whatever the acronym) and from there, at a minimum, the “access/visitation” grants system spinning off of welfare reform, which criticizes women of color (primarily) for being poor, and determines to help men of color that have been made poor by the same type of mentality — and this system to supposedly reform welfare and help poor people, is being exploited by very RICH people, and a lot of powerful, white males, to keep their kids. See Nassau County, (NY). wife jailed for ‘alienating” her children. Nassau County, people….Different coast, same mentality.
Also (I learned in this 2010) the “fatherhood commissions” are legislated into various states. Now it’s time for “You, the people” to figure that out.
Or, keep paying taxes without expecting ANY, and I mean ANY accountability in a timely fashion to what the hell they are being used for. YOU take one day a week out of spa, or whatever (or something — like church, if it applies? — and get on-line and fact-check organizations like “Kids’ Turn” or others that are being marketed worldwide (now, in other countries) and funded by U.S. Federal $$, then having parents ordered into counseling, education, and in essence becoming the permanent “infants” (no matter their ages) to the everpresent BigBrother/”fatherland.”
[end of, added in 2011 commentary]
Ah, well.
No, This is closer to my legislative proposal, taken from an email from the author of “Jurisdictionary [TR]”. He waxes eloquent, but he talks about loving JUSTICE in addition to the natural human love we have for each other. He is talking about getting ourselves educated on how the justice system works. Not paying taxes to hire experts to talk to experts about how it SHOULD work and why it doesn’t (only). There is something individuals can do; teach themselves how it works! (Should be required with the marriage certificate, probably).
Love is manifested in many strange and wonderful forms.
There is the unmistakable, mystical love of a mother for her offspring, incomparable, impossible for us men to ever comprehend.
There is the love of a soldier for his comrades at arms, a power deep within the heart that motivates the impossible and sometimes galantly gives the soldier’s final gift.
And, there are other forms of love too many to list here.
Yet, in that mix of many forms of love there is an adoration that dwells deep in the breast of every one of us: the love of honor, the love of peace, and the love of justice that has rules by which our peace and shared prosperity can be fashioned and preserved both for ourselves and those who follow after, justice that is not perverted by the persuasion of power nor undermined by the influence of base motives.
Justice is, perhaps, the greatest of our American ideals.
We must immediately decide for justice that has rules.
We must unquestioningly decide and seek every practical mechanism we can find to promote the ideal of justice that has rules … not for one or a few but for everyone.
. . .
The American Dream is an Holy Experiment, a Republic under law and not an oligarchy of powerful men free to do as they choose and justice be damned.
The American Dream is a Wise People.
- A People who care for those who are unjustly treated.
- A People United.
- A People united by a vision that puts honor first, with love, mercy, kindness, courage, and justice constrained by rules.
- Whatever your faith this Season, whatever your political persuasion, whatever notions you’ve picked up from others about the horrors we are threatened with at the hands of those who hold ideas contrary to our own, remember this:
We are One People United by Our Ideals!
We are one precisely because we share ideals, of which the chiefest is that justice must have rules, and those who judge must obey those rules to-the-letter!
Cling to those ideals as dearly as you embrace your own children, for they preserve your children more than anything that you alone can do, more than any army, more than any doctor, more than anything you can imagine … for those ideals we share as Americans are the very hope of the world!
…
Tell everyone about us, please, and do what you can to help us promote your ideals!
… Dr. Frederick D. Graves, JD
Yeah, it’s an item for sale. But it’s designed for the general public, not the experts, and it teaches principles. I don’t have to share his faith to share the concept that there are rules we ALL should know and hold our appointed officials to by any means possible, and send a strong message that we are NOT their property, they are our paid servants, by law.
to do this, more people need to actually understand the financial systems also..
And a final thought for the evening — suppose Jesus had been born in a manger, and CPS had caught wind of it? Oh my God, Mary would never see him again.
Plus, part of his childhood, it appears he went to sleep in a fatherless home. Well, at least somewhere in there Joseph disappeared.
I think Jesus did all right, don’t you? He had a Father figure, at least….
More irreverence later….
THESE are a START in understanding WHASSUP with “women and Children” — learn the origins of this CFDA, the promoters, what else they promoted, and how they have changed the face of litigation throughout this country. Here’s TAGGS.hhs.gov, ALL I did was sort on “CFDA 93.597.” I learned this at NAFCJ.net, talked to the site author, and fact-checked Wake up!
S
tate = CALIFORNIA
CFDA Number = 93597Recipient: CA ST DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES
Recipient ZIP Code: 95814
FY Award Number Budget Year
of SupportAgency Award Code Action
Issue DateAmount
This Action1998 9701CASAVP 1 ACF 2 05-31-1998 $1,113,750.00 1998 9801CASAVP 1 ACF 1 09-01-1998 $1,113,750.00 1999 9901CASAVP 1 ACF 2 08-16-1999 $987,501.00 2003 9801CASAVP 1 ACF 7 02-24-2003 ($250,805.00) 2003 9901CASAVP 1 ACF 5 02-25-2003 ($139,812.00) 2009 9901CASAVP 1 ACF 8 09-14-2009 ($38,917.00) Award Subtotal: $2,785,467.00 Recipient: CA ST DEPT OF CHILD SUPPORT SERVICES
Recipient ZIP Code: 95741
FY Award Number Budget Year
of SupportAgency Award Code Action
Issue DateAmount
This Action2000 0001CASAVP 1 ACF 3 08-24-2000 $987,501.00 2001 0001CASAVP 1 ACF 4 10-06-2000 ($987,501.00) Award Subtotal: $0.00 Recipient: CA ST JUDICIAL COUNCIL
Recipient ZIP Code: 94107
FY Award Number Budget Year
of SupportAgency Award Code Action
Issue DateAmount
This Action2001 0010CASAVP 1 ACF 5 10-10-2000 $987,501.00 2001 0110CASAVP 1 ACF 1 08-23-2001 $987,501.00 2002 0210CASAVP 1 ACF 2 08-06-2002 $970,431.00 2003 0310CASAVP 1 ACF 1 09-11-2003 $970,431.00 2004 0410CASAVP 1 ACF 1 09-15-2004 $988,710.00 2005 0510CASAVP 1 ACF 1 09-14-2005 $988,710.00 2006 0610CASAVP 1 ACF 1 09-19-2006 $987,973.00 2007 0710CASAVP 1 ACF 1 07-20-2007 $950,190.00 2008 0810CASAVP 1 ACF 1 01-30-2008 $957,600.00 2009 0010CASAVP 1 ACF 8 09-14-2009 ($48,827.00) 2009 0110CASAVP 1 ACF 4 09-14-2009 ($26,938.00) 2009 0210CASAVP 1 ACF 6 09-14-2009 ($46,392.00) 2009 0310CASAVP 1 ACF 2 09-14-2009 ($15,092.00) 2009 0910CASAVP 1 ACF 1 12-23-2008 $942,497.00 2010 1010CASAVP 1 ACF 1 11-25-2009 $946,820.00 2011 1110CASAVP 1 ACF 1 10-08-2010 $928,087.00 Award Subtotal: $11,469,202.00
Total of all awards: $14,254,669.00
Recipient: CA ST JUDICIAL COUNCIL Address: 303 SECOND STREET, SOUTH TOWER
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107Country Name: United States of America County Name: SAN FRANCISCO DHHS Region: 9 Type: Other Social Services Organization Class: State Government Award Actions
FY Award Number Budget Year
of SupportAward Code Agency Action Issue
DateAmount This
Action2011 1101CASCIP 1 1 ACF 12-10-2010 $ 799,429 2011 1110CASAVP 1 1 ACF 10-08-2010 $ 928,087 Fiscal Year 2011 Total: $ 1,727,516 WONDER WHAT 1101CASCIP (court Improvement Program) is? Well, so do I.
THIS SITE CONTINUES TO EXPAND, AND PEDDLE THE “YOU MUST GET ALONG WITH YOUR PERP” MENTALITY; “HE WAS YOUR PURP, NOT YOUR CHILDREN’S, RIGHT?”
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/cfcc/
HOW COME THE STATUS ON WOMEN DOESN’T REPORT ON THIS?
This is the “official” view:
Click to access Snapshot2008SummaryFindings.pdf
Key Findings
The majority of mediation sessions involve clients who are self-represented. The proportion of cases involving at least one self-represented party has increased steadily over time, from 52 percent of cases in 1991 to 75 percent of cases in 2008.
The population of mediation clients is ethnically diverse, the majority being non-White. The proportion of Hispanic/Latino clients has increased since the 1991 survey.
The mediation population includes many non-English speaking clients who may be in need of special language services. Mediators reported that special language services were used in 10 percent of mediation sessions. Approximately one out of ten clients indicated that they would have benefitted from, but did not receive, this sort of language assistance—including more bilingual staff, and bilingual interpreters or mediators.
Many families have been seen multiple times by family court services and are in mediation to try to reach agreement on more than one type of order and to discuss a wide range of concerns. The most frequent issues cited by mediation clients are problems with visitation arrangements not working, the other parent not following the order, and child emotional adjustment and behavioral concerns.
Not cited– threats to kidnap, actual kidnappings, and child abuse, stalking, or death threats from the other parent, which we are told happen, after a case becomes a “statistic.” This report dates to 2008. In 2008, in Contra Costa County, there was a triple-homicide/femicide, DV-& divorce-related. In 2007 in Oakland, there was a church-parking lot gunning down of a woman who was trying to stay alive, on a mid-week morning with lots of witnesses. In 2006, there was a woman who disappeared (mother of two young kids) on a routine exchange, when her ex was thousands behind on child support (Reiser). In 2005, there was (I believe in SF), a man who’d been stalking just a temporary GIRLFRIEND (not even a parental situation) who was ‘diverted into” domestic violence counseling, like many fathers are. Days after he got an A+ from that sesssion, her body shows up in a trunk. (McAlpin). We have had little girls show up in suitcases in ponds (Sandra Cantu), young women kept captive in back yards, giving birth to and raising children by their captor/rapists (Garrido) and all kinds of horrible events happen. The treatment of women throughout this Bay Area has been horrific. Meanwhile, many of the justice NONprofits (vs. “agencies”) are in it for themselves (see my “Dubious Doings by District Attorneys” post. The CEO is a plum position, and the women needing the protection are at the bottom of the barrel.
These reports here are meaningless to many women in my situation. We personally know mediators that regularly lie, fail to do intake forms, and break rules of court designed to protect children, in particular, when writing orders. This creates chaos in their lives, and chaos in the community, and increases poverty — of the affected parites, and those helping them. It creates “business as usual” for the court. Look here — they say it, right up front:
Family violence is a common issue among mediation clients. More than half of the families reported a history of physical violence between the parents.
THE FAMILY COURT paradigm is “Families” and “between the parents.” When one is assaulting another, the only thing “between them” is not enough airspace, and not enough distance. The blows are typically going ONE way, not both ways. The word “family violence” is to replace the term “domestic violence” which is a misdemeanor, or felony, in this state. It is no accident. MORE THAN HALF the FAMILIES reported — means typically ONE parent reported first, and possibly obtained a civil, or criminal, order — at which time the other would be foolish to fail to acknowledge it. That’s how the term “families …. reported… a history of physical violence.” Moreover, if the children were not interviewed by this mediator, then it’s only adults reporting. This phrase is a coverup of an ugly reality.
Approximately 15 percent of both mothers and fathers indicated that there was a current restraining order in place. Concern for future violence with the other parent was common, as was the concern for possible child abuse by the other parent.
Let’s see how oblique and indirect a “report” can get. What does the phrase of both mothers and fathers need to come in here for? The very grants system that ensures lots and lots of mediation happens (see this same site, Access/Visitation programs) does NOT say “mother and fathers” much at all — but “parents” or “Noncustodial” etc. Why stick it in here, haphazardly? To show that Dads get restraining orders too now? Well, they do, but why mention it here, and retain the same consistency of saying the word “mother” throughout, then?
The length of the mediation session and time spent preparing for mediation varied. The median face-to-face service time was 90 minutes and the median preparation time was 15 minutes.
The words “physical violence, history of” equates to “domestic violence.” There are lethality risks involved here, and there typically has been some serious physical injury, though not also. MOreover, physical violence indicates other forms of intimidation and coercion, generally speaking. And to resolve this potentially life-threatening (and childhood stultifying lifestyle of WHICH parent, primarily, against the other — or is fighting back to protect oneself also “mutual violence”? — the litigants get a whopping 90 minutes (we didn’t — the one joint sessions, more like half that, and subsequent separate sessions I swear it was a half hour, at most, and a farce at that). There are two ways to do this: Jointly, in which case a woman sits with her batterer or abuser that she just confronted by filing a DV order, in the same room, and attempts to “negotiate” with the mediator, which I did. Never again! NO way can you keep those thoughts on target that early in the game after separation. the other way — (all subsequent mediations), separate. In which case, there is NO real recourse for a party whose mediation report has factual errors, material ones, or was out of compliance. Why? Because if that family court judge bases an order on that mediator’s report (which they will, typically), then the life goes through another immediate upheaval. She (or he) has to deal with that upheaval FIRST, and appeal, if possible — second.
OK, stop, look, and listen. HALF had domestic violence (excuse me, “a history of physical violence” .. “family violence.”) Don’t think it’s an accident that the word “domestic violence” (which might point one to somewhere in the family, or criminal code, with defining terms…) is NOT used here. But MORE than 50% had a history of physical violence, and of those, only 15% had a CURRENT restraining order. So, who didn’t get restraining orders, or who took them off?
Family court judges, after these cases went through mediation, right? . . . . . Get it??…..
Overall, parents reached agreement in slightly less than half of cases. Agreement rates were higher for parties who were working on initial orders than for those who were working on modified orders.
OK — over 50% had a history of physical violence “between” (i.e., two sets of attacks met mid-air, collided, and none hit another body?? That’s “between” — or, blows were equally exchanged, like in the movie Crouching Tiger, til both lay exhausted?? ??? I don’t think so.) And UNDER 50% (“slighty less than half”) “reached agreement.” In any classroom, this would be a definite fail-rate on the part of the mediator. This means that in less than half the situations, one parent took a stand on some issue.
Reading further on this pdf report, it seems that mediators spent more time on the study than they did per client (15 minutes, average).
Clients rated their experiences in mediation very positively. For example, three-quarters or more of the clients provided favorable ratings on items related to procedural fairness.
What about other items? Which 3/4 or more (which — was it? 75% or more than 75%? Is this summary typical of how accurate a mediation report is?)
“
Parent Survey
This survey was completed by parents prior to their mediation session. The Parent Survey covered topics such as the purpose of the mediation session, issues to be discussed during the session, family violence history, legal representation, and parent demographics. Parent Surveys were completed by 3,176 clients representing 1,741 families. One or both parents completed a parent survey for 95 percent of sessions for which a mediator survey was completed.”
One OR Both parents in a litigation proceeding, lumped together, consisted in 95% of the sessions for which a survey was completed, which resulted in 75% satisfaction.
Well, in my case, the father was satisfied (and subsequently tried to derail my fact-finding in the courtroom to “the mediator’s report,” which recommended an overnight custody switch despite recently felony child-stealing, reported, by me, and obvious from the facts). I was dissatisfied, obviously. This is why I think vendor payments are more relevant than any organization receiving millions of $$ to increase noncustodial parenting time THROUGH mediation, in reporting on the results of Mediation. Of course they are going to give a positive report — if not, they’ll have to go find some other nipple to nurse off, than these access/visitation grants program, administered through the OCSE to the State of California Judicial Council, etc.
From this 2008 pdf, still, look at what they are attempting to discuss in the FAMILY law venue:
Table 2: What Issues Are You Here to Discuss?
Parent Issues N %
Visitation arrangements not working3 717 41%
Other parent not following order 615 35%
Other parent should be supervised during visitation 294 17%
Other parent’s alcohol abuse 282 16%
Other parent’s drug abuse 279 16%
One person is moving 216 12%
Child abduction/taking child without permission 197 11%
THE ABOVE ARE “PARENT ISSUES” AND NOT “CHILD ISSUES” — Except the first “visitation arrangements not working” which is too vague to mean much, and “should be supervised” which indicates (a) report of abuse of child during visitation, or threats to abduct OR (as equally possible) (b) Parental Alienation claims to counter (a)…an underlying criminal issues as to the first, and NOT as sto the second) and “is moving” (move-aways, which also will fall neatly under “parental alienation” claims) — ALL of these issues involved contempt of a court order (“not following is the degradation of the word “contempt of”) substance abuse — which is bad parenting — and the last one is either (a) a crime or (b) what sure looks like one, “taking child without permission.”. These are not “parent issues” as so labeled. They are contempt of court order issues.
ADD TO THIS — the court orders typically, when DV has been outed, or Child Abuse, are StiLL written so vaguely as to ensure constant negotiation needed by (when DV has occurred) a custodial parent with her (yeah, her) former abuser, which was my case. I have never seen a more vaguely written court order, I had to go to court years later to even get a location written in. Holiday exchanges had no location AND no time of exchange. Summer Vacations had no stipulation and resulted in our children not being able to attend summer workshops and events which would’ve helped their college vacations, in areas of already identified interests. I was able to do these while the RO was on, and had to stop once it hit family law, thanks to this mediator’s version of reality. Basically, mediation is going to remove a safety boundary for the custodial parent. Add to this, joint legal with sole physical means, there is no end of argument possible. I cannot imagine any business, sports team, investment, or performance oriented group that would be able to operate under such circumstances, with no enforceable rules when a chaotic individual wants to pre-empt the field. Add to this the impact of the child SUPPORT factor — which mediation refuses to address, although it’s a hot topic — and you have utter, complete, disorder — designed to bring business to the courts after one failed mediation session, to another.
Then, on the basis of “overburdened” and “overcrowded” they can ask for more grants.
Child Issues
Child emotional adjustment 513 29% Child behavior problems 355 20% School problems 331 19% Child refuses to visit 233 13% Child medical needs 213 12% Delay in child growth or development 99 6%
Violence/Abuse Issues
Domestic violence 318 18% Child neglect 306 18% My safety with other parent 304 17%
Child physical abuse Child sexual abuse. 159 9% 40 2%
Note: N = 1,741 families. Percentages sum to more than 100 because respondents were able to check more than one item.
I find that every single one of those items relates to children, and many of them are LEGAL issues and CRIMINAL issues. Mediators should not be handling such matters, but they are. These matters also should not be before family court judges, with their HUGE amount of discretion, but they are.
That said, District Attorneys have the discretion to not prosecute. All in all, it’s a joke, basically.
And a “joint legislative audit” isn’t going to fix that.
This is where to look, for starters:
California’s Access to Visitation Grant Program (Fiscal Year 2009–2010)
REPORT TO THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE MARCH 2010
Then do the follow-up, whether in your state, or if you are California, here.
[I am in a real rambling, ranting mode today. So be it! 01/2011]
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Circular Reasoning – 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (with your kids)
A Quick Post (not mine, except intro & comments)
summarizing the situation fairly well:
On reading this post, pretty accurate, I thought of “50 ways to leave your lover,” by (if you don’t know this, you probably were born after the VAWA act passed the first time) Simon & Garfunkel.
Which I’d like to rededicate to women attempting to do so, once they realize what “love” is and is not. Switch the gender, the song applies; and act on it sooner, rather than later. I guess — pray, carry Mace, and suggest you also enroll in law school ASAP, you’ll need it…
she said it’s really not my habit to intrude
furtermore i hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued
but i’ll repeat my self, at the risk of being crude
there must be 50 ways to leave your loverchorus:
just slip out the back, Jack
make a new plan, Stan
don’t need to be coy, Roy
just get yourself free
hop on the bus, Gus
don’t need to discuss much
just drop off the key, Lee
and get yourself free.she said it grieves me so to see you in such pain
i wish there was something i could do to make you smile again
i said, i appreciate that,
and would you please explain about the 50 ways.she said, why don’t we both just sleep on it tonight
and i believe that in the morning you’ll begin to see the light
and then she kissed me and i realized she probably was right
there must be 50 ways to leave your lover
50 ways to leave your lover…chorus
If children are involved, realize that Big Brother has a different plan for them, and you, as well. See below:
[[my comments in brackets, otherwise it’s quote. Quote ends at the line of ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]’s..]]
Note: Cross posted from Battered Mothers Rights – A Human Rights Issue.
Randi James is a brilliant writer- her site is replete with information from the top to bottom -thx you Randi James! http://www.randijames.com/
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The System Sends Mixed Messages to Abuse Victims
Do you stay, or do you leave?
If you haven’t been a victim of abuse, or a victim of the legal system, you may not be able to understand why this is even posed as a question.
Of course you should leave!
I mean, who deserves to get beat up and/or sexually assaulted in their own home…regularly…or even occasionally. Even as careful as you could try to be to make sure everything is perfect, so as not to anger your abuser, SOMETHING always sets him off…sooner or later. He is a time bomb. You are his target.
What does it mean to be a target?
When you are a target, all of your abuser’s anger is directed toward you, specifically. Typically, he doesn’t pull the same shit towards those who he considers his equals, or more powerful than he. This is about power. He needs you like capitalism needs slaves. He uses you so that he can feel better about his shortcomings. He doesn’t know how to feel good without you.
But he is a good father. He doesn’t beat the kids.
You’re right. Good fathers don’t beat their kids…But nor do they beat up on women to whom they are temporarily, or permanently committed. Getting beat in front of your children doesn’t exactly send the kids a good message. In fact, they are put in limbo because your kids will either
A) Side with your abuser because he is more powerful and gets what he wants, or
B) Side with you in attempt to protect you…But let me break that down a little more
1) In protecting you, your children become targets, and the moment will come when they take blows for you
2) In choosing to side with you or not, your children will mimic the behaviors they have seen and normalize them.
Is this what you want?
I hope not because if some outsider reports what is going on in your household, CPS will come knocking and your kids may be gone before you ever get a chance to ask questions. You will be charged with neglect, endangering your children, or failure to protect.
Why?
Because everyone on the outside thinks you should have just left. You are themother. If you didn’t leave, you must be an accessory to the abuse.
What mother allows her children to get abused?
And what mother lets her children watch as she gets abused?
You must be a bad mother. You don’t deserve to have children. If you’re lucky, maybe your relatives will do you a favor and step in and raise your children for you. If not, foster care will do a great job…because it is indeed a job when they are getting paid.
Maybe you have a chance though, if you would just leave.
That seems like the best idea. Leave.
Wait!
Are you going to tell your abuser in advance, or are you going to sneak out in the middle of the night?
Remember, he needs you…is he going to agree to all of this?
Who the fuck do you think you are leaving him, and taking his children?
He owns you. He’s paying the bills. He’s the reason you can stay home and take care of his children.
[[Comment: Not all the time. Wasn’t true in my case… Many times they are financially dependent on you as well…]]
If you go, you have reason to be fearful. Get a lawyer and a restraining order. But, back up a little. The lawyer says, if you take out a restraining order, in the near future, the judge in family court could use it against you. He (the judge and your abuser) may say this was part of your vindictive scheme to get the kids and the money and the house and the car. Restraining orders don’t prevent you from being harmed though anyway, because you still have to rely on law enforcement to act.
Get the restraining order anyway.
You’ll have record of what you tried to do, in case the news opts to report it upon your “tragic” death. But you can’t put the kids on the restraining order…Silly woman! You know fathers have rights!
In fact they have so many rights that if your abuser happens to get locked up, Responsible Fatherhood money will ensure that he has the means to transition back into his caretaking, father-role (don’t roll your eyes, we know you were doing the caretaking, but you’re not important and this is politics).
Go ahead and report the entire history of abuse.
You do have pictures, right? You mean to tell me in all these years that you have been getting assaulted, you weren’t taking pictures of your injuries and saving them in a secret location?
Did you at least tell the doctor? Is there anything in your medical record?
Where are your vaginal tears, bruises, scars?
In talking to police without evidence (or with it), your case will seem suspicious. It will be your word, against your abuser’s. Your local DA will be hesitant to take the case…well, hesitant is an overstatement because he may not even acknowledge you. DA’s only take cases they can win. DA’s aren’t interested in intrafamilial abuse reports in the midst of divorce…
[[No matter what the local DA’s office website declares, it’s often true.]]
You have bad timing. You should have reported this before you were trying to separate. Oh, whoops, I forgot, they would have charged you, too!
Maybe you can work things out peacefully without involving the court.
[[Yeah, that’s the general philosophy behind sending such cases, involving kids, to mediation… Just “work it out.”]]
When was the last time you worked things out “peacefully” with an abuser?
In good conscience, you allow your abuser to continue to have a relationship with the children he didn’t abuse, well, directly abuse (or at least you think so). I don’t know if you are really doing him a favor, or rather doing as the court would order you to do so, because you do know that the court will order you to do it, right (askMs. Leichtenberg and also ask the Paul family…family, because Monica Paul happens to be deceased)? Father’s rights.
I know, I know. Yes, you have been abused, but now, yes, yes, you will be court ordered to continue to have a relationship with your abuser because kids deserve both parents. If you try to resist, they will call in the child custody evaluators and Guardians ad Litem and they will say things you would never imagine…because you ARE crazy, aren’t you?
What mother would keep a father away from his children?
[[I didn’t, because doing so would’ve been to violate a standing custody order, ordering visitation. Consequence? I lost contact with my kids. To this date! He continued to violate without impunity thereafter.]]
You know your abuser best.
[[Yeah, right. Everyone knows that only the ‘experts’ know what they’re talking about when it comes to abuse. ‘Experts” prefer to talk with each other in their language, out of the earshot of the traumatized folk. It’s cleaner and less personally disturbing/challenging. People suffering PTSD often skip around in chronology, speak or write associatively, and can ge derailed on particularly frightening topics. It takes a lot to overcome that. . . . . . . So, in one sense, this is understandable, because after long enough living with “lethality assessments” and threats, after actual physical assualts and the very high stakes of child custody, plus retaliation for reporting, some women can sound more garbled than they really are. In reality to even stay alive, or emotionally somewhat intact, through significant abuse, esp. years of it, takes keeping track of more things that the average middle manager can, I’d be, in a rapidly changing economy. We have literal lives at stake, let alone livelihoods. Let alone the normal multi-tasking that often goes with being a mother, let alone a working mother with small kids who are growing up watching your abuse. We also are highly motivated to stay alive, knowing that if we don’t who is likely to get custody of our offspring — either the abuser, or someone who enabled it, such as a close, nonreporting, non-intervening relative. Or CPS, for which money changes hands…]]
You know that when he makes threats, he can carry them through. You know if you don’t meet his demands, you and your children will suffer. But if you try to protect yourself and the children, you risk losing custody to your abuser. And why would you want to put your kids in that situation? They don’t want to live with him and if they do live with him, you already know how their lives will turn out. They will be like lost souls.
Sacrifice yourself…like Jesus Christ. Maybe you were put on earth to suffer for the sins of others.
You were supposed to be omniscient–to know that this man you chose would end up being an abuser.
You were supposed to be omnipresent–to know that this man would abuse your children while you were away at work, or school, or while he was away with the kids.
You were supposed to be omnipotent–to protect yourself and your children and to be able to hide and simultaneously remain visible, and to be able to leave your abuser, but let him remain in your life.
How do you want to die?
[[Seems to me I blogged on this long ago — title about unacceptable choices for women.]]
What do you want the news to say about you when you are murdered?
That you were nice? No, they won’t say that! The neighbors and other members of the community will say how nice your abuser was. He was a family man. He played with the kids in the yard.
Everyone will be so shocked and sad that this happened. No one knew that you and your children were getting your asses kicked on a regular.
Your family may’ve thought you were crazy, or a bad mom, so they may’ve distanced themselves from you a long time ago. In fact, they may have ADORED your abuser.
Your children’s friends will not come forward. They are children–either they won’t tell anyway, or their parents won’t let them.
You know who else might know? The teachers. But teachers are so busy disciplining and teaching to the test…and besides, it’s too late for them to come forward now.
You see what you get for pretending and ignoring and trying to keep the family together? No credit.
Maybe the media will pull your court record and note that you tried to get a restraining order, but you didn’t show up. More than likely, they will relay gossip about how you were having an affair and how you were always provoking your abuser. Because violence is mutual. Girls hit, too.
Didn’t you know in advance that he was easily provoked? You should have checked his criminal record, or asked his ex.
Maybe your children will die, too. But everyone will talk about how tragic it was andhow innocent they are. They, not you, because you had to have done something to make a nice guy want to kill you.
Or maybe you wanted to be killed, because who stays with an abuser anyway?
See Also: Carl Brizzi: Prosecuting Battered Women
Minnesota Supreme Court Allows Judge Timothy Blakely to Profit from His Fraudulent Earnings
In Texas and Florida–Court Ordered Exortion
Pennsylvania, Corruption, and Children, Just Like Florida
How Judges Set Up A System to Rig Cases for Fathers
Technorati Tags: Rock,Hard,Place,System,Messages,Abuse,Victims,Randi,James,haven,victim,abuser,equals,needs,capitalism,father,kids,children,message,fact,limbo,Side,moment,outsider,reports,failure,accessory,Maybe,Leave,Wait,Remember,lawyer,money,orders,news,death,woman,rights,Responsible,transition,role,politics,history,pictures,location,doctor,Where,tears,word,overstatement,cases,midst,conscience,relationship,Leichtenberg,Paul,Monica,custody,Litem,threats,demands,situation,Sacrifice,Jesus,Christ,earth,life,yard,friends,affair,violence,Girls,Didn,Also,Carl,Brizzi,Women,Indiana,Bench,Paradox,Recusal,Minnesota,Supreme,Court,Judge,Timothy,Profit,Fraudulent,Earnings,Texas,Florida,Exortion,Pennsylvania,Corruption,Just,Judges,fathers,injuries,Guardians,souls,members,teachers,doesn,aren,parents
Note: Cross posted from Battered Mothers Rights – A Human Rights Issue.
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http://www.nbc-2.com/Global/story.asp?S=10697462
Joseph and Melissa Shook had been separated and a final mediation hearing for their divorce was scheduled for the 26th – two days after her disappearance.
Meanwhile, her van was located at the Alva residence, allegedly abandoned with the keys in the ashtray.
The case was then turned over to detectives with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit.
Air, K-9 and ground searches were coordinated with family and friends in attempts to locate Melissa over the following . . .[fill in the details… they tend to blur, one family after another…]
On July 29, Shook’s body was found in a shallow grave, just four blocks from the Fitch Avenue residence.
Her hands were tied behind her back with approximately 10 feet of rope and her mouth was covered in duct tape.
AND, obviously:
Wednesday, a local hardware store employee was contacted and verified the sale of a red handled shovel and approximately ten feet of rope.
Thursday, an employee positively identified Joseph Shook as the person who purchased the items.
Around 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, 32-year-old Joseph Shook was located at local restaurant and taken into custody.
He has been charged with second degree murder.
Thursday evening Amy Davies, spokeswoman for Melissa Shook’s family said, “The family is relieved an arrest has been made, that justice has been served, and the family now has some closure.”
Davies said now the family’s main concentration is providing care for Shook’s three children.
Her parents knew something was funky about those text messages declaring she was going to break up with a boyfriend. Her coworker heard her ask who wanted some lunch brought back, after dropping off child(ren) to the father….
On Wednesday, Melissa Shook’s mother took the stand to talk about texts message she received, supposedly from her daughter, the day she disappeared.
One said she and her boyfriend, Justin Castagner, were through.
Smith thought that was odd since she’d spoken to Melissa just a few hours earlier and there was no mention of any problems.
Castagner testified Tuesday that the couple had made plans for that night and she left him a note in his lunchbox that said, “I love you.”
Melissa’s father, Gary Esckilsen, also testified Melissa was happy with Castagner.
Melissa’s parents said she had a strong relationship with Castagner and texts saying she was going somewhere to get herself help didn’t make sense. They knew something was wrong.
A co-worker of Melissa Shook testified as well, saying he got a call from her when she was on her way to drop the baby off at Joe Shook’s home.
He said she asked if anyone in the office wanted her to bring back lunch – and never heard from her again.
Just to reiterate my point: Mediation, frequent exchanges ordered. Was there prior domestic violence? WHY did she leave? Was the risk known? Should ALL women separating — not just ones experiencing abuse as the reason for separation — be afraid?
Or, should they learn to be cautious, period, and should the family law venue stop advising them to “just get along” for the sake of the kids, without regard to this possibility…
Was money a factor? Who knows…:
……..
Police say emotional distress led man to kill estranged wife
Mother’s death, impending divorce, lack of medication are factors in Lakemore killing
By Phil Trexler
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Saturday, Jan 10, 2009
LAKEMORE: His mother had died unexpectedly, he avoided the pills that helped combat his depression, and just this week, his wife left him.
Daniel Tice’s emotions boiled over Thursday afternoon when his wife, Brandi, came to pick up their three children, a day after announcing her intention to divorce.
Brandi Tice, 28, would never leave the Lakemore house. She died of a single gunshot wound to the head — a rifle shot that police say was fired by her estranged husband.
About seven hours later, after keeping SWAT officers at bay with his 4-year-old son by his side, Daniel Tice was shot by police, struck by a 9 mm bullet that miraculously bounced off his forehead, sparing his life.
Tice, 32, was to undergo surgery Friday for a fractured skull. He is expected to recover and be charged with murder.
Daniel Tice admitted in conversations to family, friends and police that he killed his wife of eight years, shooting her once in the head with a .22-caliber rifle, police said.
He blamed infidelity and divorce.
”[Brandi Tice] told me before she
was wanting to leave him and I said be careful because of his mom dying, [Daniel] was bomb,” family friend Janice Wood told police in a taped call. ”I was afraid something would happen.’
Wood, a close friend of Tice’s late mother Diana, told police that Daniel Tice called her after the shooting. Around the same time, police were surrounding his home.
”He said he killed his wife,” Wood said. ”He thought everybody was against him or hated him . . . he said, ‘I’m not coming out [of the house]. They’re going to have to kill me.’ ”
Daniel Tice made a series of phone calls that afternoon, including one to a sister who came to the Tices’ ranch-style home on Martha Avenue shortly after 3 p.m., saw Brandi Tice’s body on the living room floor and fled outside.
Tice’s brother-in-law struggled for the rifle outside the home, but the towering Daniel Tice won out, and retreated back inside.
At one point, Tice stood guard by a window with his rifle in one hand and his son, Noah, in the other, police said.
Shortly afterward, Tice’s daughters, Faith, 8, and Grace, 7, exited their school bus and were met by police, who rushed the girls away before they could go inside their home.
Stressful standoff
For the next seven-plus hours, police took over Martha Avenue, trying to coax Tice into surrendering and hoping to avoid more bloodshed. Lakemore Mayor Michael Kolomichuk gave the order to use deadly force on Daniel Tice, if necessary.
A small army of SWAT officers, talking by phone to Tice, crept closer over several hours — from the street, to the front door, to the living room and eventually to the basement stairs, where Tice paced below with his son.
The silence was sometimes unnerving to police, who feared little Noah was dead. As the night dragged, they hadn’t heard from the child and Tice was talking to police in past tense about how much he loved his son.
”We were worried that he had done something to Noah because he wouldn’t let us talk to the child,” Police Chief Kenneth Ray said.
Police eventually disconnected a land line into the Tice home and with the help of prosecutors, they cut off Tice’s cell phone. Negotiators then moved inside the house to bring Tice a cell phone.
By then, Tice had moved to the cover of the basement, at times hiding under the staircase. Metro SWAT members tossed a miniature camera to the basement, which gave them insights into Tice’s location.
Around 10:40 p.m., SWAT snipers from the top of the steps could see Tice and his rifle leaning against a wall out of reach. They fired two nonlethal bean bags, hoping to knock him to the floor. The bean bags didn’t faze Tice, who then made a move for his rifle, police said.
A sniper tried to fire his AR-15 assault rifle, but the trigger jammed. A second SWAT sniper twice fired his MP5 assault rifle. One shot missed; another struck Tice’s forehead, penetrating to the bone and bouncing off.
Suspect interviewed
Police interviewed Daniel Tice at Akron City Hospital shortly after he was shot.
”He confessed, that’s all he did,” Chief Ray said. ”He didn’t give a reason. He just said he did it.”
Noah was reunited with his sisters. The children are staying with Brandi Tice’s mother, Sandra Fox, 53, in Green.
”She was a good mother, she loved her kids so much,” said Brandi Tice’s uncle, Randy Renard.
The Tices spent Christmas with Renard and other family members at Sandra Fox’s home. The get-together came four days after Daniel Tice’s mother died.
Daniel Tice, who family said suffers from bipolar disorder, said little on Christmas Day. Family and police said Tice stopped taking his medication, which contributed to his erratic behavior.
”They brought the kids over for Christmas and I already heard what he was going through with his mother,” Renard said. ”He come over and he didn’t talk for four hours. He just sat in the chair with a stare.”
On Wednesday, Brandi Tice told her husband she wanted a divorce and was taking the children, Renard said. Police said the couple had a history of domestic squabbles, some of which ended with Daniel Tice’s arrest.
Daniel Tice also told friends that his wife was carrying on an affair with one of his relatives. The couple married in 2000.
On Thursday afternoon, Brandi Tice arrived at the Martha Avenue home, planning to take her daughters with her as they exited their school bus.
Brandi Tice worked the past four years with Community Caregivers, a Hartville home health care provider. She visited three or four patients every day, helping them with health needs.
Terry Smith, the company’s director, said Brandi Tice grew close with her patients, whom she would visit for more than two hours a day, passing the time sharing stories and proudly showing pictures of her children.
She hoped one day to be a nurse to better provide for her family, he said. The company has set up a fund at all Huntington bank branches to help the Tice children.
”Brandi was somebody who had been through some bumps in the road, some hard knocks,” Smith said. ”Yet she was someone who gave so much even though she had so little herself.”
Phil Trexler can be reached at 330-996-3717 or ptrexler@thebeaconjournal.com.
LAKEMORE: His mother had died unexpectedly, he avoided the pills that helped combat his depression, and just this week, his wife left him.
Daniel Tice’s emotions boiled over Thursday afternoon when his wife, Brandi, came to pick up their three children, a day after announcing her intention to divorce.
Brandi Tice, 28, would never leave the Lakemore house. She died of a single gunshot wound to the head ? a rifle shot that police say was fired by her estranged husband.
About seven (Akron Beacon Journal (OH), 1079 words.)
June 2009 — Autenreith – Pennsylvania:
Police rescued a 9-year-old boy who had been kidnapped by his father as a fatal gun battle broke out between the man and state troopers.
After arguing with his estranged wife during a custody exchange, Daniel Autenrieth kidnapped his son at gunpoint, then led police on a 40-mile high-speed chase that ended with a crash and an exchange of gunfire, state police commissioner Col. Frank Pawlowski said. Autenrieth and a state trooper were killed.
“I can’t begin to describe the hurt and sorrow being experienced by the Pennsylvania state police,” Pawlowski told a somber news conference at the Swiftwater barracks, the trooper’s home base. “What happened yesterday is nothing short of an American tragedy.”
September, 2009 (Labor Day) Minnesota:
Minn. officer reportedly killed with own gun (see video)
Holidays — family times for some — can be trouble hotspots for others.
Veteran North St. Paul police officer Richard Crittenden apparently was shot dead with his own gun during a violent struggle with a man who lunged at his estranged wife and the slain officer with a burning towel or rag.
“He died saving someone else,” said a law enforcement source of Crittenden. The source, familiar with the ongoing investigation, offered the first detailed description of Monday morning’s chaotic scene.
Crittenden reportedly pushed the woman out of harm’s way but in the process left himself vulnerable for the man to ambush him, grab his handgun and shoot him, the source said.
A Maplewood police officer was slightly wounded but shot the suspect dead during an exchange of gunfire moments later inside the North St. Paul apartment in the 2200 block of Skillman Avenue.
The scenario, based on preliminary witness accounts from the injured female officer and the estranged wife, remains to be confirmed and is the subject of an investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
But the setting pieced together so far by investigative sources shed light on the likely circumstances that led to the first shooting death of a police officer in the line of duty in North St. Paul’s 122-year history.
Investigators on Tuesday released little official information about the details surrounding the Labor Day shootings — including the names of the injured officer and slain suspect, who was identified by his estranged wife as Devon Dockery.
But reams of court papers released Tuesday on Dockery’s numerous run-ins with the law show a violent and troubled man.
“Devon is a ticking time bomb ready to explode,” his estranged wife, Stacey Terry, wrote in filing for one of four orders of protection against him.
What would she know? Is she an “expert”?? However, she got those protection orders. . . . . .
October 23, 2009 Atlanta, Georgia, Strube-Allen:
(Isn’t this DV awareness month?)
Child of woman killed at Target in custody battle
Mother-in Law charged!
In April, a toddler sat in the backseat as someone shot and killed his mother, Heather Allen Strube. She had just gotten him from her estranged husband, his father, and hadn’t buckled her child into his car seat yet.
Moments after Steven Strube left the Target parking lot on Scene Highway, his estranged wife was approached by a person wearing a black wig that looked like a mop. As Heather tried to get into her SUV, the disguised person shot her. Investigators found Carson holding his mother’s cellphone. His mom turned 25 years old just six days before her death on April 26.
Carson, who turned 2-years-old last month, has been in the care of Heather’s parents — Buddy and Mary Allen.
Little Carson Luke Strube is now thriving in the care of his maternal grandparents. But his other grandmother, Joanna Renea Hayes, was charged this week with killing his mother, her daughter-in-law.
Hayes in jail facing charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Carson’s father, Steven Strube, is also in jail, following a probation violation from a 2008 conviction (for what??)
Hayes is now behind bars following her murder indictment on Wednesday. Police believe she is the one who donned a disguise and killed her daughter-in-law.
Sometimes it turns into a virtual tribal warfare, with in-laws and relatives involved….
November 30, 2009 (this one, barely cold…), New Jersey:
Police Search For Motive In Fatal N.J. Shooting
Paterson Father Allegedly Shot Estranged Wife, 2 Children
PATERSON, N.J. (CBS) ―Police are still trying to figure out what triggered Edelmiro Gonzalez to go on a shooting spree, killing his seven-year-old son, and injuring his wife and other son. They are recovering at St. Joseph’s hospital.
- Related Stories
- 2 Dead, 2 Wounded When NJ Dad Shoots His Family
(11/29/2009)Police were looking for a motive Sunday in a triple shooting that left one boy dead, and his mother and brother fighting for their lives.
Detectives in Paterson said Edelmiro Gonzalez opened fire Saturday morning on his estranged wife and two young children.
“I don’t know how anybody could do something like that,” said resident Angie Rolon.Investigators said 31-year old Johanna Gonzalez, who had been separated from her husband since September and had a restraining order against him, was in the process of dropping off their two sons at her mother’s apartment on Broadway. That’s when the 54-year-old father allegedly walked up to their vehicle, armed with two handguns.
“Her estranged husband came up to the vehicle, shot several times into the vehicle, at which time her two sons, Adrian and Eldryn exited the vehicle,” said Det Lt. Ray Humphrey.
Police said
Gonzalez actually then chased down his 7-year old son and shot him in the neck near the rear of the apartment building.The boy was pronounced dead at the scene.However, the ordeal didn’t end there. Police said Gonzalez went back to the street and chased down his estranged wife. That’s when off-duty Paterson Detective Lt. Washington Griffen, a 19-year veteran who was at a nearby McDonald’s drive-through with his son saw what was happening and intervened.“He hollered out to the suspect, advised him he was a police officer, and to drop the weapon. There was an exchange of gunfire, and the suspect was shot twice,” Humphrey said.
Edelmiro Gonzalez died later at an area hospital. His elder son Edryn and the child’s mother Johanna remained in critical condition.
ReportingGunman kills estranged wife at Tualatin lab, injures two, kills self
By Bill Oram, The Oregonian
November 10, 2009, 8:49PM
TUALATIN — By late afternoon Tuesday, a lone state trooper guarded the front of a drug-testing clinic where a man with a rifle opened fire, killing his estranged wife and injuring two of her co-workers.
The gunman fired multiple shots inside Legacy MetroLab-Tualatin shortly before noon, said Tualatin Police Chief Kent Barker.The shooter was found dead at the scene, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Barker said.
The dead woman was identified as Teresa Beiser, 36, of Gladstone.
A week ago, she filed for divorce from her husband of 15 years, Robert Beiser, 39, who worked as a car appraiser for Property Damage Appraisers in Lake Oswego and as an independent contractor for The Oregonian.
They had two children, a 14-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son.
Hans Reiser Admits to Murdering Nina Reiser, Pleads to Reduced Murder Sentence
Full story: Associated Content
Hans Reiser was sentenced to 15-years-to-life Friday in an Oakland, California, courtroom for the murder of Nina Reiser. Many believe that the sentence was too lenient, that prosecutors should have given Reiser more time on his sentence. Besides, Hans Reiser was convicted in April — andconvicted without the body of Nine Reiser. But Hans Reiser, a brilliant Linux guru, had held onto one piece of information about Nine Reiser throughout his trial, a trial throughout which he maintained his innocence. Hans Reiser knew where Nina Reiser was buried.According to Wired, Hans Reiser led authorities to Nine Reiser’s body Monday in exchange for his prison sentence being reduced from a 25-years-to-life charge to 15-years-to-life charge. Prosecutors offered him the deal with the added stipulation that he waived his right to appeal the conviction. He had buried his wife just a short way from the house where he lived with his mother.
According to his confession, which was part of the plea deal, Hans Reiser killed his wife, Nina, on the afternoon of September 3, 2006. She had dropped off the couple’s two children for the Labor Day weekend. The two were going through a bitter divorce.
FYI: All I googled was “estranged wife exchange of children”
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Did you enable any of these events? I bet you’d say, Heck NO!
But, wait again (US residents) — do you pay taxes? Well then, perhaps you did….
The Trap Door They Don’t Tell Divorcing Mothers, or separating-from-abuse partners about — almost ANYwhere…
Forcing the Connection through “Access Visitation Funding” and social policy closing the exit door.
Taxpayer funds enabling these events, sometimes, through federal grants to encourage contact with noncustodial “parents” (Dads).
Meanwhile, nationwide HHS-funded “Access/Visitation” funding encourages more, and more frequent, contact between children and noncustodial parent (if male), and advertises this through child support services (“OCSE”):
GEORGIA:
These services are offered at no cost to OCSS clients and include the following:
- Coordination of visitations or parenting time
- Mediation between the parents (non-legal, non-binding)
- Written parenting plans
- Group parenting education
- Counseling on access issues
Funding for all of these projects comes from grants from the Administration for Children and Families
What is access and visitation?Mississippi’s Access and Visitation Program (MAV-P) is designed for noncustodial parents to have access to visit their children as specified in a court order or divorce decree.
[[HUH? The court order or decree ALREADY specifies this, so why do we need this program?]]
Assistance with voluntary agreements for visitation schedules is provided to parents who do not have a court order.
NOTE: Participation without a court order is strictly voluntary. Both parents must agree to be involved.
What are the goals for MAV-P?The ultimate goal is to afford services that improve the quality of life for separated families by providing noncustodial parents opportunities to participate in their children’s growth and development.
[[If it didn’t have a noble-sounding goal like this, it might not have passed Congress or anywhere else. Who wants to vote for, after-all, exchange-related gunshots, stabbings, and officers/bystanders-down headlines? But if you read details of many of these articles above, it’s in there.
“Improve the quality of life.” How does this resemble “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness” eh? Come here. We have federal grants to improve the quality of your life. TRUST US…]]
Other goals include:
- Encouraging family agreements through mediation;
- Providing parent education plans to enhance parenting skills;
- Furnishing a safe, neutral facility for visitation, as needed; i.e., [pushing Supervised Visitation]
- Promoting compliance to the noncustodial parent’s court ordered support obligations; [[Translation: reducing support obligations in hope to bribe the other parent to better comply. This is called “helping.” ]]
- Aiding custodial parents in honoring court ordered visitations; and
Women are regularly jailed when they fail to comply with court ORDERS. Recently, a 14 yr old young man in Michigan was jailed himself, briefly, for refusing to comply. So what is this a sort of persuasive pleading session, or brainwashing? The legal process provides for a contempt process. When custodial parents are women, this is often enforced, regardless of consequences. When they are men, a different standard seems to apply.
- Working with fatherhood mentors and coaches through a Fragile Families Initiative Program.
Now WHY doesn’t that surprise me?
What are the benefits of the program? The program benefits include:
- BOTH parents being involved in the development stages of the child’s life.
- BOTH parents providing emotional, medical, psychological and financial support.
- BOTH parents sharing in the child’s character and core values development.
- BOTH parents agreeing on scheduling and time-sharing.
Potential side-effects, where an overentitled abuser, a man off (or on) medication for depression, or someone not in control of his emotions is involved — death. That’s a potential “benefit” in certain contexts. But let’s not talk about that in THIS setting, OK?
Who is eligible to participate in MAV-P?Individuals interested in participating in MAV-P are not required to have a child support case or affiliation with the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Paternity must be established for all cases. Participants seeking assistance with supervised visitation must have a verified court order or divorce decree. Finally, the custodial and noncustodial parents must agree on scheduled mediation, parent education, unsupervised or supervised visitations, as needed.
(EVER tried to “agree” with an overentitled abuser? See Randi’s article, above….)
What services are provided in MAV-P?
- MEDIATION includes MAV-P staff working with both parents to develop a peaceful resolution to visitation disputes. This process is a face-to-face interview and/or telephone sessions.
- SUPERVISED VISITATION is scheduled for parents with legally established visitation directed by a court order or divorce decree.
- EDUCATION is offered through parenting classes which address the basic needs of the child, money and stress management, child abuse, co-parenting and the concerns of the parents for their child(ren)’s well-being.
Take time for THIS link: a “wiki-leak” an “mit” site. I’m OUT of time for today….
fathers who do not pay their child support are more likely to have frequent contact with
their children (many on a daily basis) than fathers who pay their child support.
fathers’ rights groups would argue that spending time with one’s children (especially on
a daily basis) should be counted in terms of reducing that father’s financial obligation.
More generally, advocates of increasing parental responsibility would argue that it
is now time for the federal government to focus more attention on the “non-financial”
benefits associated with preserving the connection between noncustodial parents and their
children. Many policymakers and analysts maintain that a distinction must be made
between men who are “dead broke” and those who are “deadbeats.” They argue that the
federal government should help dead broke noncustodial fathers meet both their financial and emotional obligations to their children and vigorously enforce CSE laws against deadbeat parents.
+/- $1/million/state/year for Access/Visitation grants (ongoing) can’t be all wrong, despite headlines, and despite reality of the consequences of frequent exchanges, more time, with resistant disgruntled fathers..
I may take up that document in a later post; it illustrates the system involved in these issues.
Randi, good writing, thank you –I find it pretty darn close to the reality.
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
“Here Come da Judge!”
with 14 comments
Some times, hard times, a little humor helps me. I seem to notice things that maybe others don’t (oft-burnt, twice as observant?)…
This is from Womenslaw.org about Custody, and a good question, plus a sidelong plug for (what else) supervised visitation. . . . And no absolute commitment either way on this topic:
Can a parent who committed violence get “custody” or “visitation”?
Maybe. It is possible that a parent who has committed violence will get custody or visitation if the court determines that it is in the “best interest of the child” to do so. Generally, judges beleve it is in the child’s best interest to have frequent contact with both parents.*1
{{so, the “court” kind of being the “judge” who signs the order, we get back to what judges generally believe… For more of that, see the AFCC conference as to what’s being promoted among many of them…}}
Conservatorship / Custody:
If a person is filing for sole or joint managing conservatorship, the court will consider whether the person has been abusive toward his/her spouse, the parent of the child and any person under 18 years old within the 2 years before filing for conservatorship or during the proceeding. A judge may deny joint managing conservatorship if s/he finds that there is a history or pattern of child neglect or physical or sexual abuse of a parent, spouse or child.*2
{{then, again, they also may not. Sounds like a toss-up to me…}}
The judge may not {{OR, may…}} appoint joint managing conservators if reliable evidence is presented of a history or pattern of past or present child neglect, or physical or sexual abuse by one parent directed against the other parent, a spouse, or a child. *3
Likewise, the court [[as opposed to “the judge?”] will consider {{but will it act on?}} any incident of family violence in deciding whether to deny, restrict, or limit the possession of a child by a parent who is appointed as a possessory conservator.*4
Possession and Access / Visitation:
If a parent has been violent within the last two years before filing or during the court proceedings, a judge may {{or may not, we have no committed policy here, right?}} deny that parent possession of or access to the child unless:
the judge decides that allowing the parent access is not a danger to the child and is in the best interest of the child; and
the judge approves a possession order that will protect the child and any other victim from the abusive parent. The order may require:
exchange of the child in a protective setting (see note below);
that the parent not drink alcohol and not use any drugs within 12 hours before or during the time the child is with him/her; or {{See my comments on Oconto, Wisconsin, where the father was caught DUI with the daughter in the car, but still it was the MOTHER who was jailed for failing to force the daughter back into that situation.}}
that the parent attend a batterer’s prevention program or any program the judge finds appropriate. *5
Tell the judge if you have gotten a protective order within the last 2 years against the parent seeking possession of and access to your child. The judge will consider this when determining whether there is a history of family violence.*6
{{Note: Some women get SMART after the first several violent incidents, and survive more than 2 years in a relationship before someone shows them how to get out. In this case, asking what happened in the last 2 years may not indicate that the father/husband/partner has reformed or settled down, or repented, but simply that the mother/wife/partner simply got cagier and smarter in how to avoid them. As many abusers also are control freaks, as toa ccess to transportation and ways to escape their abuse, this may involve shutting down emotionally, and teaching the kids to also, i.e., “walking on eggshells.” how many judges take the time to tell the difference?}}
Note: If the abuser is granted possession and access to your child, ask the court or a local domestic violence program for information about visitation centers or visitation exchange facilities in your county if you think that is a good option for you.
GOT THIS? The judge MAY respect the danger of domestic violence, or the judge MAY instead choose to drop-kick the problem to some cronies in the supervised visitation field.
{{Which of course they will prime you to. . . .. . I asked for this, and was of course, not told that there is federal funding for this, but not available so readily for MOMS… Not being incarcerated, an abuser, or behind on my child support (as the custodial mother), there was no outreach program to help me. And as I wasn’t preventing access, that wasn’t an issue. Thanks, dudes for rewarding me for compliance and good-faith allowing regular access to my growing (and healing) children by totally removing them from me, failing to enforce child support — at all, practically — and allowing him after custody switch to totally cut off contact, failing to report felony child-stealing (meaning, no Victims of Crime compensation), and no help after this event trashed my jobs. Thanks. Merry Christmas to all, and let’ em eat cake…}}
It is assumed by the court that it is not in the best interest of a child for a parent to have unsupervised visitation with the child if there is credible evidence of a history or pattern of past or present child neglect or physical or sexual abuse by that parent directed against the other parent, a spouse, or a child. *7
*1 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.131
*2 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.004(a)
*3 Tex. Fam. Code §153.004(b)
*4 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.004(c)
*5 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.004(d)
*6 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.004
*7 Tex. Fam. Code § 153.004(e)
======================
(Since I’ve already dated, if not geographically marked (as to California) myself, I’ll go one step further and admit, this “well, it depends. . . .. ” approach to whether an abuser (or “a parent who has committed violence”) can get custody of a child approach reminded me (see highlit words, above) on the old comedy routine:
“Here Comes Da Judge!”
A little more judicial humor, even more dated (i.e., not my own…):
“THE INSCRUTABLE WORKINGS OF PROVIDENCE“
More, “HERE COME DA JUDGE” info:
I’m not really “playing around” so much as it might appear. Did you do your homework last few posts, and look up the L.A. County Judges Slush fund (at least acc. to Marv Bryer et al.), how it started out of the county court house, not paying taxes for years (til basically forced to), morphed into CCC then somehow AFCC, and now we have these tremendous professionals, and social scientists figuring out our problems for us…..?
ETHICS, TRANSFORMATIONS, and Dr. JUDITH REISMAN, Kinsey, etc….
http://www.drjudithreisman.com/archives/CaliforniaCripplesWomen.pdf
I cannot find the exact article where Dr. Reisman was talking about the importance of ETHICS in public servants, and referring to a certain (old) law that was being undermined. She is a controversial figure for sure, but I responded to her personal story, which you might also, and how her own world got rocked when it was discovered a relative had been molested. …. I’d also like to note: articles are published onto “WND” (World Net Daily) which I do NOT espouse overall….
http://www.drjudithreisman.com/about_dr_reisman.html#journey
Summary:
HER STORY:
What will your judge believe? Suppose it was your daughter? As a mother — like the Berkeley (female) officer who finally noticed something was “off” regarding Phillip Garrido’s twoa ccomplices, will “da judge?” be receptive to your story, your kid’s story, or your partner’s story? Will all of them be considered “stories” and then business farmed out to a mediator, because the story now, is, equal parenting, pretty much no matter what….. And we MUST resolve our (irreconciliable?) differences in Conciliation, excuse me, Family Court, because it’s emotionally damaging to have irreconciliable differences with real damages.
I really believe the only way out is to find out who is paying these pipers. My research, to date, shows that it’s NOT just the litigating parents, but the entire taxable workforce. And the organization spouting all this stuff began by dodging taxes itself, allegedly. Go figure!
(THESE few from NAFCJ.net, home page — links may or may not be current, but are searchable):
“Protective Mom Accused of Witchhunt”, 11/23/1999, By Cheryl Romo, LA Daily Journal — Karen Anderson, one of the retaliated protective mothers mentioned in the Insight story, has since obtained hard evidence (cancelled checks) that federal money from fatherhood programs was used without her knowledge to pay-off all court officials in her case. Anderson along with Connie Valentine are heading up NAFCJ’s reform action in California.
A Financial Fiasco Is in the Making, By Kelly Patricia O’Meara, Insight Magazine, Los Angeles Superior Court Judges Association, 2002, still slushing funds
and not paying taxes…
Insight Magazine “Is Justice for Sale in LA?”, By Kelly Patricia O’Meara – Marv Bryer fights against corruption in Los Angeles County Court – the original AFCC court judges’ association, and promoters of Dr. Richard Gardner’s discredited pedophile theory, “PAS” Parental Alienation Syndrome.
Insight Magazine “New Scandals in LA Courts”, By Kelly Patricia O’Meara — Continuation with more of Marv Bryer’s evidence details on an alleged slush fund for the L.A. Superior Court Judges Association (AFCC judges) and the possible extortion of civil litigants by some officers of the court.”
Retaliation Against Professionals Who Report Child Abuse, By Katherine Hine, J.D., Exposé The Failure of Family Courts to Protect Children from Abuse in Custody Disputes, A Resource Book for Lawmakers, Judges, Attorneys and Mental Health Professionals.
I’m still looking at the googled “Marv Bryer” myself: here’s a sample of printouts:
You know what? Maybe the love of money IS the root of all evil. Not using it, not having it, but loving it more than, say, children. Or oaths of office, etc.
DISCLAIMER: Note, this seems to be a survivalist, gun-toting, all-American (you get the picture), I’d say for sure conservative site. I am just curious to read the Marv Bryer article, and don’t know if this represents his philosophy either. Sort through it, though.
THE THING IS:
If you are going to the fruit stand in a store, are you going to sort and pick through apples for the good ones? Or pick a pre-bagged, inspected, certified organic (etc.) one, whose packaging you trust? Or, alternately, skip apples for today.
They say one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. When you get divorced and can’t figure it out OUTside court, you must go INSIDE, and in this case, you can’t forum-shop or judge shop. Remember, if there is conflict within a family, the parents just lost jurisdiction, acc. to that old law (see last few posts). Your kids and your life are no longer your own.
Therefore it’s IMPERATIVE that ALL financial incentives to defraud the public be removed for ALL judges. This ain’t going to be a walk in the park, and I wish that the Moms and Dads both (the honest ones) would quit yakking about social science studies and do their math homework.
Hope you appreciate this sacrifice of my own internet time just made to day. Have a nice day… and Let’s Get HONEST! And make sure our public officials do also!
Thanks.
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Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up
December 19, 2009 at 3:57 PM
Posted in AFCC, After HE Speaks Up - Reporting Child Sexual Abuse, After She Speaks Up - Reporting Child Sexual Abuse, Cast, Script, Characters, Scenery, Stage Directions, Context of Custody Switch, Designer Families, Domestic Violence vs Family Law, History of Family Court, Mandatory Mediation, Organizations, Foundations, Associations NGO Hybrids, Split Personality Court Orders, Who's Who (bio snapshots)
Tagged with Child Molestation, custody, Dr. Judith Reisman, Due process, Jaycee Dugard, parental kidnapping, Phil Garrido, retaliation for reporting, social commentary, Studying Humans, Supervised Visitation, U.S. Govt $$ hard @ work..