Archive for the ‘History of Family Court’ Category
Here Come Da Psychologists & Mediators. . . To help return Mr. Thompson’s “wife” to her right mind. Or, she could do the jail thing, instead.
How many psychologists can you count in this case? Or was it Psychiatrists? And when are the rest of you on the sidelines going to get angry about this “insane” practice?
Where is the “leading Australian psychiatrist’s report” [apparently court-ordered diagnosis??] that gave this poor, distraught Dad rights and public sympathy, and a high profile that no MOTHER got who’s had her kids legally kidnapped through the courts, or illegally by the father(s). I instead of the nation(s) hunting THEM down with psychiatry, Internet, and Interpol, they simply let it slide.
When did the press become lackeys of this system and why aren’t they REPEATEDLY (like me) pointing out that something’s wrong when a woman has been judged publically, but indicted privately.
(see my last post).
Where’s his first wife? Did they have kids? If you are there, please say something!
In this report, as well as in the photo of the foursome I posted yesterday, Mr. Thompson refers to her as his “wife.” Yet indicators are — first of all, dude, she doesn’t want to live with you! Second, we read “wife” and “former wife.” The word only means “ownership.” In the current global culture, this word has become meaningless, and was most certainly exploited.
Kidnap mother may escape jail in new deal
Paola Totaro, Amsterdam
September 12, 2010
The mother of abducted boy Andrew Thompson – under arrest in Amsterdam and facing a prison term in Australia – could be offered a “get out of jail free” card, under a new system to resolve international custody battles.
A new form of cross-border mediation, tested in the Netherlands, will provide Melinda Stratton with a last-ditch chance to avoid criminal charges – and help parent her little boy – if she can co-operate and come to a binding, workable agreement is accepted by his father, Ken Thompson.
[sentence grammar off, but its intent is clear — to bring her to her knees under threat. This same practice is used in the United States towards (a) domestic violence offenders and (b) child support deadbeat Dads, to downgrade the meaning of criminal activity, typically towards women. Mediation works when there is actually a balance of power, genuine acceptable options, and TWO willing participants willing to work it out. This is nothing of the sort. It’s “threat therapy.”]
This system, thrashed out over two days under intense specialist mediation with a team of counsellors and lawyers, must be agreed to by both parents – and becomes a legally binding order in both the Netherlands and Australia.
Mr Thompson, met a team of psychologists in Amsterdam yesterday and drove to The Hague to meet the legal expert on the Hague conventions who is to manage the complex legal processes needed to return the six-year-old to his father.
It is now likely that he will need to remain in the Netherlands for at least three months as custodial orders from Australia are translated into Dutch and given effect in the local courts. These will allow the legal handover of Andrew while extradition proceedings against his mother unfold. Ms Stratton faces criminal charges and up to 13 years in prison in Australia if she refuses to participate in cross-border mediation system.
This could even result in the boy remaining in the Netherlands with his father as the legal processes unfold there while his mother is extradited to Australia to face charges.
Mr Thompson said yesterday he understood an agreement could be enforced very quickly – perhaps within a fortnight – if there was co-operation between the two parents to come to a resolution in the interests of the child.
Ms. Stratton/Thompson could not have said MORE plainly, and by her actions demonstrated, that there are serious allegations against Mr. Thompson. The public and press are NOT told what these are, but a person of reasonable intelligence might deduce that this woman does not appear to be hard up for another partner, should she wish one, or for supporting herself independently. Perhaps her psychological “problem” is called Mother Able to Decide — meaning per se “M.A.D.” IF allegations are true, best interest of child is no contact or only supervised contact with the father. IF they are false, best interest of child might then be co-parenting.
He has yet to see his child but insists that he bears no malice towards his wife and, while deeply anguished by the events of the past 2ÌÌ [???] years, simply wants to “be a dad to Andrew, to be in his life to love him and to give him back the human rights that were taken away from him“.
Wait a minute. His wife? [My ex went through this also, repeatedly calling me his wife, while living with someone else and arguing with authorities for his right to disobey standing court orders.]
Please. Everyone consider the current U.S. President (among others) who was raised by his mother. Also, Fatherhood Expert Ronald Mincy, Ph.D., apparently ditto. Did you notice the “Ph.D.”??? Perhaps mothers can do all right, if the word were still acceptable to use in public apart from the words “paranoid” and “facing criminal charges.”
Mr Thompson, visibly relieved after his day with lawyers and psychologists, said he believed Andrew’s was the first case worldwide in which the internet had been used successfully to track down an abducted child.
It’s time for our society to start considering their collective responsibility for allowing the courts to become psychology-normative, and administering threat-therapy instead of justice. If this continues, someday it might be YOUR turn for reasoned civil disobedience (which this case sounds like, to me, and the “wife” states it was). And then who will speak up for you?
Europeans are sometimes just too obedient, as if this solves problems. You know what other population was characterized that way? Rwandans.
“We did it on a shoestring and so many fantastic people have helped me. I lived on less than 50 euro a day for the past four months – and I found my son.
He lived on 50 euros a day for 4 months, and got a lot of public support, empathy, publicity, and eventually, they did the work for him, turning in this mother. A conference of mayors of major U.S. cities has concluded that domestic violence is a major source of homelessness. I know women whose wages are being garnished below survival level, whose disability benefits — the disability being related to serious injury by the father — are being garnished (below living level) and from this position, they advocate for contact with their children, and no charges any more serious than disobeying (without kidnapping) a court order probably as arbitrary as the mysterious one surrounding this case. Welcome to OUR world, Mr. Thompson — poverty in pursuit of justice, and our children. The difference being, when was the last time an abducting father was called “paranoid” and hunted down like an animal? Or jailed, when caught
“OK, my legal fees are horrendous … overdraft on overdraft on overdraft, and I don’t even want to think about my mobile telephone bill. But I could not give up. Ever. A young guy with the fire services built the FindAndrew website for me – and he had never done this before. I had the most amazing people helping me if I was in trouble with electronic banking or a lost card. I had emails, thousands of them, in support. I’ve got people around the world who saw my plight and felt something. I can’t thank them all enough.
He should thank the U.S. IRS, whose progressive income tax policy made it possible to accumulate astounding amounts of $$ for use by the likes of Wade Horn, “National Fatherhood Initiative,” Fathering Courts, Fatherhood.gov, and a complex web of federal grants promoting marriage — at any cost — throughout the land. This makes possible — when combined with astounding wealth from tax-exempt foundations — to restructure society. He should thank Presidents (in approximate order) Bush, Clinton and Obama for making sure this never stops, and also the Conciliation Law / AFCC folks in Southern California who learned early on how to defraud even the IRS with a judges’ slush fund and developed organization-morphing techniques to avoid accountability and cover up collaboration and conflicts of interests, from which we eventually got a worldwide ogranization to promote the viewpoints of pedophile and incest-friendly gentlemen as Richard Gardner and Warren Farrell (quite the psychologist these days).
He should thank his lucky stars, or if he subscribes to one of the three Abrahamic religions, he should thank whoever put the book of Esther into the canon, where a Gentile Queen told the king “No!” when asked to come forth and strut her stuff halfway through what was likely a drunken banquet. Some accounts say, she’d have had to disrobe. She indeed DID say “No!” (as the story goes) and so was replaced. The search went throughout the land for more submissive, nubile young women, who knew their place in life, lest ALL men might need to experience the horror of a wife saying “no!” and changing society.
What grateful Mr. Thompson with his team of psychologists and psychiatrists doesn’t seem to empathize with, or appreciate, is the position he put his “wife” (or former wife) and THEIR son in when he called in a court psychiatrist to counter the serious allegations that we aren’t allowed to know about. If he wanted a more docile wife, he shouldn’t have picked a tri-lingual MBA.
I hope, I really hope that my wife will co-operate and that we can find a way for Andrew. I will stay here for as long as it takes and until Andrew is ready to move on. I have an EU passport and no visa issues … It will take time to reintroduce the relationship. It has to be carefully managed.”
It is understood that the little boy now both speaks Dutch and has lived under a different surname.
Psychologists have made clear that the reintroduction must be slow and carefully supervised as it is not known what the little boy has been told during the years of avoiding authorities.
Mr Thompson, a former NSW deputy fire chief, cycled 6500 kilometres across Europe to raise awareness of international child abductions and to distribute bumper stickers with Andrew’s face and promote his website to try and find his boy.
An alert Dutch woman checked her suspicions about the little boy and his mother on the internet and Googled “missing children” and “Australia” and discovering he had been kidnapped. It was her decision to contact Dutch police that traced him and led to the arrest of his mother.
The Bitch. Does she know anything at all about this field? Did she forget about Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Does she know what happens when women lose their children in similar situations? It’s rare we get them back. Did she forget the Holocaust, and the label “Juden”??
(If I were able to put my case details on this blog, you might understand the sentiment.)
Take Heed — the press is owned, for the most part. I found only ONE press (as opposed to blogs, which are many) stating that this mother might have had a legitimate reason for fleeing. The Internet WAS developed originally as part of a military technology; now we see some of its real purposes — nowhere to hide. Citizens (GLOBAL citizens) must be trained how to think, act, and report on each other, and call in the authorities — lawyers, psychologists, and of course police. Remember the Gulag. You’re in it.
IF laws were enforced equally, with similar amount of effort as Mr. Thompson put in, I wouldn’t be so “vociferous” (mouthy) for the other possible interpretation of this case.
EVERY United States citizen ought to examine some of the fatherhood sites, and the federal grants system, and start demanding accountability. Sleep less. You can do it! Get religion out of government; and part of government is education. Learn to barter, and minimize taxes all round. I seriously considered (as to education) a requirement that all parents, without exception, should educate their OWN offspring up to a certain level (far above what the government currently requires them to) and the public schools should be shut down, so that adults and children can develop normal relationships with each other. If the neighborhoods retained some vitality, then, perhaps — just perhaps — people might KNOW each other well enough to stick up for an abused wife, or child — and stop dreaming that someone else they pay, funded from a distant centralized government, might be doing the job without indoctrination about what is the “appropriate” psychological norm.
Which brings me to this page by Charles Pragnell, whom I quoted yesterday, on this same case:
Are you an `Appropriate’ person?
ByCharles Pragnell January 04, 2007
The last decade has seen an insidious drive by the British government to turn the country into a totalitarian regime marked by the unwarranted and unnecessary intrusion and interference in family life by agents and employees of the State. This has been done under a perverse pretext of protecting children and a belief system within governmental departments that children need protecting from their parents and that the State can raise children better than parents or at least they can transfer large numbers of children to the care of the “approved” substitute parents as part of a latter-day social engineering experiment.
Britain is not becoming what politicians term, a Nanny State and the concept of welfare services being a `Safety Net’ no longer applies. It is much more sinister than that. A Nanny State is driven by a benign altruism whilst the present changes are being driven by an insidious and malignant ideology reminiscent in some respects of the Stalinist regime in Russia. “We know what is best for you all” is the mantra of the faceless bureaucrats inside the respective government departments to which can be added, “but it will be painful for some of you who will not or cannot change to fit in with our Utopian dream!”
The ill-defined boundaries of what is `appropriate’ and what is `Inappropriate’ behaviour of members of the general population, are now being constantly driven back by psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, doctors and nurses and all of those other professionals involved in child protection work. They in turn are driven more by the alluring seduction of fame and status within the profession for creating a new theory of child abuse, rather than a compassionate concern for the safety and welfare of children. A successful adopted theory of child abuse can rapidly lead to demigod status as has been seen on several occasions albeit some of those demigods careers and reputations now lie in ruins as the country begins to awake to their deceptions.
He is writing her about parents (plurall) vs. child protective services. It’s a blend, when the situation comes to divorce, though. In any conflict, whatsoever, here comes the STATE, and in their trail, are psychologists.
Let me explain, a little, how this “EVERY CHILD NEEDS BOTH PARENTS, REGARDLESS …” works out, already, in cultures where divorces is a crime, as is adultery. And European, Australian, Western, “developed” countries need to accept and openly acknowledge that their present-day psychologists are NOT too far a cry from this:
This mother, an Egyptian Coptic Christian, wished she had listened to her daughter. Now it’s too late:
Among Egypt’s Christians, few question Church ruleALEXANDRIA, Egypt — When Irini Ibrahim, a young Coptic Christian woman, floated the idea of divorce from a husband she said was abusing her, her parents immediately opposed it, reminding her of the Biblical vow, “What God has joined together let no man put asunder.”
So the 25-year-old Ibrahim entered “reconciliation sessions” with her husband Rizk Kands, moderated by a priest. In April, the priest anointed Ibrahim and Kands with sacred oil, pronouncing their union healed.
Hours later, Ibrahim’s battered body was found in an Alexandria hotel room the couple had booked for a sort of second honeymoon. Kands, an Egyptian who also holds U.S. citizenship, fled to the United States, charged by an Alexandria prosecutor of strangling his wife after slamming her against the wall and toilet. Kands’ trial opens Sept. 21. He will be tried in absentia.
The case sparked shock and grief among Egypt’s Coptic Christians. But it did not bring much soul-searching over the Coptic Orthodox Church’s almost total ban on divorce. The ban makes divorce such a taboo among Christians that no matter how bad or unbearable the marriage, ending it is unthinkable in the face of the social shame.
Alternately, in Egypt, one could be part of the Muslim majority, and as a woman, one of several wives, and sharia law integrated with the law of the land:
But the “Western” “liberalized” way, no matter the religion, is to use psychologists, psychiatrists, and just hunt her down, and make a public, press scandal of it. This is called separation of church and state (in the US, a thing of the past) lest these newfangled concepts get a toehold, and infect other women with thinking that there is a safe place somewhere to raise a child safely.
Mr. Thompson, I”m sorry, but your story lacks credibility. Congratulations for your persistence, but don’t expect me to believe you really believed she was paranoid. You haven’t accepted that she left you, as witnessed by continually calling her your wife. and an “in” with the press does NOT substitute for facts, or shouldn’t, in the public eye.
Sincerely,
A mother who was labeled “paranoid” on several levels, and ignored when I told authorities the father was going to abduct, as well as after he did.
Fathers have religion AND government behind them. Mothers are not even close, yet. And we don’t start all those wars, either.
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Society’s Reasons to hunt down, strangle, flog and/or shoot/stone mothers:
Let’s remember, sometimes female judges, psychiatrists, reporters and relatives participate in the hunt:
(#3: Taliban shoot pregnant widow, police report said:
The Taliban publicly flogged and then executed a pregnant Afghan widow by shooting her three times in the head for alleged adultery, police said
Bibi Sanubar, 35, was kept in captivity for three days before she was shot dead in a public trial on Sunday by a local Taliban commander in the Qadis district of the rural western province Badghis.
The Taliban accused Sanubar of having an “illicit affair” that left her pregnant. She was first punished with 200 lashes in public before being shot, deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Mohammad Sayeedi told AFP on Monday.
“She was shot in the head in public while she was still pregnant,” Sayeedi said.
The execution is a grim reminder of the Taliban’s harsh six-year rule from 1996 to 2001 in Afghanistan. The radical Islamists staged public stonings or lashings of those found to have committed adultery or sex outside marriage.
(#2: An Afghan man strangled a mother with her veil, she was becoming “too Australian”
AN Afghan man strangled his wife with her veil after complaining she was “becoming Australian”, a jury has heard.
Mother of five Marzieh Rahimi, who was said to be trying to escape a violent arranged marriage, was killed in front of her baby and toddler.
Soltan Ahmad Azizi, 45, has pleaded not guilty to her murder at their Hampton Park home in November 2007.
The Supreme Court heard yesterday that Ms Rahimi, 33, had told social workers her husband had branded her a slave with no rights.
Prosecutor Peter Rose, SC, told the jury Ms Rahimi had complained her husband punched her and said her only purpose was to have babies and raise children.
Ms Rahimi, who spoke little English and communicated through an interpreter, had told a family violence officer and a health worker that she wanted to leave the marriage, but that she felt powerless, unsupported and fearful
n his opening address, Mr Rose told jurors that when Mr Azizi learned she’d talked to outsiders he told her she was shaming him and must stop.”I’ll kill you because I can’t carry the shame,” he allegedly said when she spoke of separation or divorce.
The jury heard that about a week before his wife’s death, Mr Azizi complained to his sister-in-law that she was “becoming Australian and had changed her religion”.
The cousins wed in an arranged marriage and came to Australia as refugees in 2005. Their eldest children were aged 11, nine and six.
Mr Azizi told police he didn’t plan to kill Ms Rahimi. He said he punched her, then “choked her with her veil”; he then rang 000, telling the operator, “I killed my wife … come see. You come. My kids are only little.”
Police found Ms Rahimi on the floor with her baby, three months, and toddler, 22 months, nearby.
“I’m ready for the handcuffs,” he allegedly told them.
Defence lawyer Stratton Langslow urged the jury to consider whether Ms Rahimi’s claims of domestic violence were prompted by post-natal depression
[HE ADMITTED killing his wife, but did he MEAN to? is the defense, apparently]
#1A. Melinda Stratton, MBA — she was “paranoid“
Missing Australian boy Andrew Thompson found after three years
- From: news.com.au
- September 09, 2010
HAPPIER TIMES: Ken Thompson with his wife Melina and son Andrew.**
Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied
**This is not a picture of two parents with THEIR son (note: she didn’t change her last name, so I didn’t say “Mr. & Mrs. Thompson and their…”). This is not a picture of a son, Andrew with HIS parents Ken Thompson and Melina/Melinda Stratton. This a picture of a man, and HIS (2nd) wife and HIS son. Her role is to give birth, smile, and have a photo caption giving ownership of her to him.
AN Australian boy who went missing almost three years ago has been found in Northern Europe, bringing an end to his father’s desperate search. [And to his mother’s desperate attempt to not be found]
Andrew Thompson was abducted in 2008 by his mother Melinda Stratton after she was diagnosed with a mental disorder. [next article shows a different CAUSAL relationship..]
Ms Stratton began showing the first signs of mental illness in 2006 according to Mr Thompson.
The symptoms were subtle at first, but they progressed, manifesting themselves in paranoia and false beliefs about various people, including Mr Thompson.
“I didn’t realise it at the time, but it started slowly and just escalated, it was terrible,” Mr Thompson said previously.
By December 2007, his wife had been diagnosed by one of Australia’s leading psychiatrists as having a paranoia disorder, and left their family home on January 1.
Under what circumstances? (such as a custody battle, and the father or his attorney, probably called that leading psychiatrist (WHO? Do we get to know? No hyperlink?) in. Or she was showing signs of discontent. Or, there were allegations of . . … …).
By the way, having false beliefs about various people could easily be applied by any religious (or political, or cultural, for that matter) group to members of another. To settle THOSE matters of false belief, however, psychiatrists in this context are not really authorized.
I’ve been at this a while, and pick up on news language. Also, FYI, women and men tend to think differently, have different perspectives and sometimes notice different things. Paranoia MAY be in the eye of the beholder, but if a leading psychiatrist said so — and of course this psychiatrist has no gender bias, and there is no conflict of interest, etc. — then paranoid she must be. About WHAT nothing specific: “false beliefs about various people, including Mr. Thompson.” OK, we’ll have to take that one on faith– this article is after all about him: his search, his emotions, his relief, his account (plus one quote from a friend) and his son, found again.
The drama of his quitting his job and bicycling through Europe is told in this article:
He has cycled through over half a dozen countries in his desperate mission to find his missing son.
A family Friend, Robin Bowles,** told the Sydney Morning Herald, “Ken’s ecstatic, emotional, relieved, overjoyed and still in a total state of shock,” Ms Bowles said.
In such cases, family friends tend to have to take sides. I’d say Robin Bowles was more like Mr. Thompson’s friend. Ms. Stratton’s emotional state was not recounted. Well, she’s paranoid, so her emotional state is not newsworthy.
“It is no secret there were fears for both Melinda’s and Andrew’s safety and the longer time went on, the fear grew deeper within Ken that maybe he’d never see his son again. He wants to see him. He can’t wait a moment longer.”
I can understand that fear. I know it, too.
And of course escalating fears that your wife is mentally ill, to the point of calling in a leading psychiatrist to diagnose one’s wife, doesn’t qualify as paranoia on the part of the husband. Was she cutting herself? Was she threatening suicide? Threatening anything? Neglecting a child? Showing up at work disheveled, or not at all? What, exactly were those symptoms?
Not mentioned in this story — it’ll show up in the next — there WAS a debate of custody, and family court was involved, or about to be. INTERESTING OMISSIONS for such a dramatic rescue.
Mr Thomson has spent every day of the last three and a half months cycling through Europe, looking for his son in a heroic search effort.
WELL, his tenacity, his publicity and cycling (and the fact that the Interpol system helped him) paid off, and he has his son, now. Now, the other side of the story. Well, the part of it that the papers were allowed to print:
#1B. Melinda Stratton — she was “defiant“
Defiant: mother tells why she took her son and ran
- From: The Australian
- February 02, 2009
Note: this 2009 story carries several links to the found boy. The one above carries no links to why she ran, from her account.
“Melinda Stratton is a woman on the run. In April last year (2008), she fled Australia with her four-year-old son, Andrew, to avoid a custody hearing in Family Court.
Maybe she was paranoid about the nice Family Court..
Ms Stratton – a professional woman from Sydney’s northern suburbs, who has an MBA, speaks French and German, and has lived and worked abroad – has so far managed to dodge the authorities, but yesterday emerged from seclusion to tell her side of the story.
A 10-page letter – the first contact between Ms Stratton and anyone outside her immediate family since last April – was provided to The Australian with no identifying marks. …
Ms Stratton says she had no choice other than to flee Australia, because she had lost faith in the Family Court.
She says the balance of the court – once firmly in favour of granting custody to mothers – had tipped dramatically towards fathers. The Howard government’s regime of “shared parenting” had given power to fathers at the expense of mothers.
“I have lost all faith in any form of justice coming out of Australia,” Ms Stratton says.
“By remaining silent, however, I ensure that they (the Family Court) can continue to treat other mothers and children this way.“
I spent $30,000 on court proceedings. I have been told I will receive harsh penalties as ‘punishment’ for leaving from the Family Court.
“I am in my 40s. My son is only four. His welfare and future are my priority.
“The decision to break all contact with my family and friends, leave my job and our home was not taken lightly.
“I also understand that the Family Court could take my son away from me and give Ken full custody of him, again as punishment.
OK, let’s review the chaotic, surreal, disordered, selfish, thinking of a paranoid mother, who chose to get a 10-page letter to The Australian, and managed to do so without any identifying marks.
She appears to be educated, and was likely working — having spent already $30,000 on court hearings. (That’s a lot in any country). She is concerned for his son’s welfare, but ALSO for other mothers and children being mistreated by the same system. She has ordered her priorities and exhibited empathy for strangers. She, too, (not just her husband) left her job — and home — and family and friends, something he didn’t sacrifice in this.). She also understands the consequences of disobeying a court order, and once she left, knows that failing to STAY gone will mean full custody to the Dad as punishment. . . . . . She also relates a historical shift in the courts to a shift in government. That sounds like someone that’s aware of her surroundings, on several levels, reasons, weighs, and chooses. She has not specified WHAT about her son’s welfare she is concerned about, nor can she:
Ms Stratton has made more serious allegations against Mr Thompson but The Australian is constrained by law from publishing them. She made the allegations in December 2007, left the family home in January last year, and the country in April.
Well, the truth or falsehood of those allegations sure seems to be keey in the case. If true, she fled to prevent harm. If false, she’s paranoid and should be hunted down and locked up. You be the judge. Of course, you don’t have all the facts. Oh well…
You know, different degrees suggest different character traits or strengths. Sounds to me, being an MBA, she assessed the dynamics of the situation, made a strategic decision (although an illegal one) and acted swiftly. That’s a leadership quality. I’m not advocating felony behavior, but she just related her thinking. It does not sound like she is attempting to dodge child support or other criminal accusations against her, other than a belated being diagnosed paranoid by a man she was planning to leave. Judging by the ages, she probably was on her first, not second marriage; he was on his second marriage. Maybe there’s a reason , similar, between both divorces, though of course I wasn’t there. No mention of other children…
The battle between Ms Stratton and Mr Thompson for access to Andrew is complex and bitter.
?? Sounds fairly typical. She alleges something serious and relating to her son’s welfare. He retaliates “you’re paranoid” and gets a leading Australian psychiatrist to diagnose her. That’s as old as Freud. Or Dr. Phyllis Chesler’s “Women and Madness.” A very long time ago, slaves running away was diagnosed as a mental disorder, too. What’s complex is, it went international, and apparently she had enough resources to move fast.
She says he suffers from depression and anxiety. He says he suffered from “mild anxiety” when his first marriage ended 20 years ago.
Well, he’s a fireman, right? That can be challenging. Serious depression is one among several homicide indicators. Bitter is normal in contested divorces. Complex, well, how complex is that?
“It was nothing more than mild anxiety,” he says.
“It was a very difficult time, but it was also a very long time ago.”
I don’t see his age listed, but would say, a bit older, unless he had a VERY short marriage 20 yearsa ago. Also not shown is how long these two were married.
When he launched his campaign to find Andrew, Mr Thompson said that his former wife had a “mental condition”. On his blogs, he says she is “paranoid” and that she may harm Andrew rather than return him to Sydney.
Sorry, buddy, I don’t think the statistc bear out on that one. Dads are the more deadly in this context, than biomoms. Show me the headlines if they aren’t:
When did they divorce? The 2010 shows a happy family photo of all 4 and doesn’t mention “former.”
Ms Stratton says she has “no mental problems whatsoever”.
Mr Thompson strenuously denies his wife’s claims, saying she “made all kinds of allegations … the psychologists have said there is no reason to even investigate them“.
WHICH psychologists is key. . IF abuse happened, long-term consequences can be severe:
What are the possible long-term effects of child sexual abuse?
If child sexual abuse is not effectively treated, long-term symptoms may persist into adulthood. These may include:
- PTSD and/or anxiety
- Sexual anxiety and disorders
- Poor body image and low self-esteem
- The use of unhealthy behaviors, such as alcohol abuse, drug abuse, self-mutilation, or bingeing and purging, to help mask painful emotions related to the abuse
If you were abused as a child and suffer from any of these symptoms, it may help you to get help from a mental-health professional who has expertise in working with people who have been sexually abused.
AND, from a *.uk site, “The Royal College of Psychiatrists,” talking about, if it’s by a close caretaker, how it can be hard to detect:</spa
It can be hard to detect long-standing abuse by an adult the child is close to. It is often very difficult for the child to tell anyone about it, as the abuser may have threatened to hurt them if they tell anybody. A child may not say anything because they think it is their fault, that no one will believe them or that they will be teased or punished. The child may even love the abusing adult, they want the abuse to stop, but they don’t want the adult to go to prison or for the family to break up.
If you suspect that a child is being abused, you may be able to help them to talk about it. Your local Social Services Child Protection Adviser will be able to offer more detailed advice.Where can I get help?
First and foremost, the child must be protected from further abuse. Social Services will need to be involved to find out:
- what has happened
- if it is likely to happen again
- what steps are needed to protect the child
Ms Stratton says the court psychologist is biased against mothers. She points to papers presented by Family Court practitioners in which they say that mothers can make up allegations of abuse and that children can be manipulated by their mothers to say they have been abused.
The identity of the psychologist is protected by the Family Law Act (1975).
Well, guess we’ll never know, at least for a while:
HERE’s a Supportive U.S. post (2009, before she was caught) from RandiJames.com, citing a press release from an Australian site:
Melinda Stratton and other Mothers on the Run
I fully support the following from Anonymums:
Press Release
RE: Melinda Stratton and other Mothers on the RunAs a spokesperson for Anonymums, we understand that the Family Court does not investigate child protection matters and during the proceedings if there is no history of child protection involvement, there are no investigations that are likely to ensure the protection of children involved in proceedings. The matters of Arthur Freeman, Robert Farquharson and Jayson Dalton are just a handful of reported cases that reveals the amounting negligence that the Family Court has in regards to children’s rights. The laws particularly the Shared parenting bill based on United States joint custody laws, prioritize parent’s rights above children’s rights. Children don’t have a say and are often punished by the court if they speak out against child abuse often portrayed as “alienated children”. We are aware that these measures are in violation of human rights and until the court adequately provides protection for child abuse victims and domestic violence victims, we fully support the plights of protective mothers who are often alone in gathering the evidence and ignored by the court. We believe Melinda Stratton based on her extraordinary lengths, the statements that support Melinda’s mothering concerns towards her child that despite the law that is against a higher law(human rights), she is doing the best she can for the child. We believe that the system is incorrect and abusive towards both the mother and the child by barring her from vital services to provide for the child(Article 14) and hunting her down like an animal. It is the system itself that is at fault for failing to protect children and women in the first place regardless of the institution or reason. There are more protections for murderers and pedophiles than there are for these children. We recommend that instead of Melinda coming forward to be jailed and barred from seeing her child that the system endeavors to investigate further into these allegations instead of laying the sole burden upon the mother. We recommend that the order that seeks her out be withdrawn until the system can adequately provide proper protections for Children. Until this takes place, we support the mother in obtaining alternative safety measures.
Related Posts :
asylum for domestic violence survivors
Finding a lost boy should be an occasion for joy, but this was not necessarily the result that anyone wanted: not Ken Thompson, not his estranged wife Melinda, and certainly not their six-year-old boy Andrew. Since Melinda Stratton disappeared 2½ years ago and [father Ken] Thompson began a campaign to find her, the South Australian child protection expert Professor Freda Briggs has spoken to both parents about Andrew’s abduction, and how it might end.
Thompson, a former NSW deputy fire chief who has spent the entire time searching for his son, had assured her he did not want a climax involving foreign police, child protection officers and sudden, possibly violent, intervention.
As for Stratton, ”she rang me from Frankfurt and didn’t know anything about the Hague Convention and my advice to her was ‘come back because if you are caught the effect on your child will be devastating’,” Briggs said. ”But she obviously ignored me.‘
In the past 48 hours, since a Dutch school principal noticed Andrew’s expired passport and reported it to police, Briggs has watched as the case unravelled in the dreaded fashion, with all parties powerless to prevent it.
{{??? In any scenario whatsoever, including things so severe as floods, earthquakes, or oil spills, there is power, and an opposing power somewhere historically, and in the present moment. RARELY are “all parties” powerless, and almost never “equally” powerless. }}
Andrew’s mother is now arrested and he is with foster carers who may not even speak his language. ”If it follows the usual pattern, he will be sent back here accompanied by strangers without a stopover. Previous children [in this situation] have reportedly cried all the way home. He will probably be placed in foster care here until the judge makes a decision about where he will live,” Briggs said.
Briggs believes that Andrew may never have been abducted if the Family Court did not have a history of declaring mothers to be ”mad or bad” when they made serious allegations against fathers.
It happens, she says, ”to the extent that solicitors now advise mothers not to mention abuse in the court because of the risk they will [lose contact] or at best have occasional contact that is supervised’‘.
Sounds like they took a cue from the US courts:
Charles Pragnell, from the National Council for Children Post Separation, said the Family Court lacks the expertise to investigate serious allegations.
”In our experience with many hundreds of similar cases, psychiatrists and psychologists merely label the mother as borderline personality disorder without conducting a professional assessment as they are required to do under their professional standards of practice,” he said.
Being IN this field and speaking out about fellow-professionals takes courage. He says, they lack expertise and may be right. I can’t speak for other countries, but if you kow this blog, I say, they lack the MOTIVATION to do so, in part because a series of grants called Access/Visitation aimed at fathers gives them a nice motivation to make MORE time with the Dads. We believe, based on an anecdotal AND policy, that the family courts not only do, but are designed, to make sure that child abusers and molesters do NOT lose contact with their target children. The mental health professionals come in to validate this policy, because this field is a LOT more nebulous than criminal law, and has fewer protections, and less “due process” requirements.
”It is absolutely certain that if Melinda and Andrew are forced to return to Australia they will not receive justice in the Family Courts which operate according to the provisions of the Family Law Act 2006, which Family Courts interpret as giving inalienable paramountcy to the rights of fathers and little regard is given to the needs, wishes, and rights of children.”
That was a MAN speaking, not a woman…
Coral Slattery, of the Family Law Reform Association, said Australian and international laws do too little to prevent children being whisked away, which amounts to a severe form of child abuse.
The Hague Convention is little comfort for those who do not know where their child is, she said. Even if found in a Hague Convention country, abducters go before foreign courts first, which can refuse to send a child back to their ”habitual residence” or can do so only after years and thousands of dollars in legal and travel costs.
Let’s Get Honest commentary on the condition of this post:
3 is a Taliban situation, 2 is an Afghan in Australia situation, and #1 is how Aussie/Europeans like to persecute women perceived as uppity, immoral, or protesting something.
They represent, in order, #3 Taliban – Sharia, and no government intervention acknowledging. CONFLICT between this mentality, and #2 a Western Culture that starts to at least SAY, violence against women is wrong, and stop beating on your wife.
And #1 is how Caucasians do it. They can’t in this culture come out and admit, they basically side with examples 1 & 2, but can’t pull it off. In this culture, one engages “mental health professionals” and labels, which then allows the hunt down, incarcerate, and separate child from mother.
Examples 3 & 2 came to my attention from the same on-line press that reported the Thompson/Stratton case. I wish to cover them, but have already lost significant work on this post, through my own dysfunctional CPU and internet access, which results from my own having been stuck in this system for so long, affecting obviously income and resources.
For example, an organization at the bottom, NCCPS is fascinating (and my first awareness of it). I posted its list of experts and an excerpt from an article. At the top, I also had more commentary.
ALL of this was lost on the attempt to safe the wordpress document towards the end of my day (no internet at home). Formatting errors (multiple quotes) remain.
Other losses of research happened on a recent Arizona/Bahrain post, and to be honest, some day the processor works, other days it does not.
I AM posting this information, in moral support of Ms. Stratton because, based on the one (only) positive article about her, placed in the proper context of family courts overall, globally — I believe she is telling the truth.
Moreover, the religious domination from Islam is being imitated within fundamentalist/evangelical “dominionist” type Christianity in the U.S. I have personally experienced this, and know a LOT about how it behaves in practice, versus theory.
The sharia stoning DOES replicate the same standards (although not so vicious in execution, I think) in Old Testament Bible, i.e., Israel in the wilderness. A feminist book has referred to these mentalities as “nomad priest/warrior” tribes, as opposed to the more peaceful (?) agricultural ones.
The author indeed has a point.
In the New Testament, John 4, an account of Jesus Christ actually saving a woman (allegedly!) “caught” in the act of adultery, again — no male participant present and accounted for; it may even have been one of the accusers. She may have been raped, or set up, we don’t know. Jesus was caught “between a rock and a hard place” like many court professionals are today, if they are ethical — if He protested the law, he came out against what he declared himself to be the fulfilment of. If He didn’t say SOMETHING, the woman would die.
The answer was, “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone,” and by this method, the situation was diffused.
The Westernized “family courts” TODAY are a version of the individual-discretion religious courts of these countries where religion and politics mix, if they are indeed distinguishable. I have experience with both, years of it, and no longer participate in “church” circles — they are morally erosive for women, MOST of them, and blow-off human rights issues. Helping homeless or poor, often created by these issues no longer counts for me. One reason I can say it no longer counts is I’ve done my homework on the grants and organizations (see this blog, and be assured that’s not the whole content of research), enough to get a PRETTY good sense of how they operate, the basic premises, and many of the interrelationships.
Concerned readers should look up the organization listed at the bottom, “National Council for Children Post Separation” and read the site. Much as I love to provide links and excerpts myself, using Google, hitting “Search” and reading are not exactly highly technical skills, and I suspect many readers have faster computers than I do. I simply continue the habit, and try to retain what I’ve read, comparing it with anecdotal, networked, but most of all, experienced reality in these systems (religion, courts, local culture).
GET OVER the “I don’t know — she says that, he says that” and take a position on the issue — or lose (US citizens!) what remains of your civil rights, and liberties, if those indeed existed in the past half-century or so.
And when international marriages (and economy) are involved, we have to DEAL with the issue of Sharia law influencing Christian Theocracy (cf. “Tea Party”) claiming to represent the “founding fathers” when it doesn’t. Which I know because, again, I’ve done some homework. There are different strands within “Christianity” as there are within Islam. I cannot speak for Judaism as experientially; but I do know that the offshoot/now mainstream religions perceive themselves as heroes and protecting the “good” values of past centuries, failing to distinguish the impact on their own lives, and husbands, wives, children, relatives, friends, and colleagues.
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(the Gulag, cont’d.) Politics,Policies,Prisons : The Business of Detention (Case study)
I’ll be honest. I am VERY concerned about how far down the Road to Serfdom we already are.
Why spend all that energy on human rights, civil rights, legal rights, due process, when who one is dealing with is a calculating policymaker/investor (the door rotates in and out of private and public sectors) who knows a good — business- deal when he (or occasionally, she) sees one?
I found “Corrections Corporation of America” and the Lamar Alexander (Tennessee) connection. I retain a lot of information upstairs, even though words may come out crossed occasionally. I notice anomalies. Or just things that interest me. When I looked at the richest Congresspersons roll, long ago, and the Obamas came out 10th (probably 2008), counting assets, and spouses assets as well — Mr. Alexanders interest in a huge work-site Child Care provider made an impression (see comment to most recent post). OK, so why would someone so interested in child care also be interested in prisons?
The topic of lockup relates to family court matters because violation of law, or contempts, or crimes, obviously could lead there. My research process is real simple. I google, read, and pay attention. It’s not rocket science.
I recognize good reporting when I see it. (A few awards doesn’t hurt either). Too bad more court reform people wouldn’t form the investigative journalism, FOIA, and looking at the Financials habit that these Columbia University journalism grads did:
Washington, D.C. – CCA plays the game of politics like a pro. After all forty percent of its revenue comes from federal contracts.
The company backs key politicians who support an immigration crackdown, and has intensified its lobbying in order to influence those still on the fence. For good measure, it hires former prison and immigration officials to coordinate its federal relations.
(from interactive graph on site, slide 3 of 4). Notice, graph source is from “opensecrets.org”, another good resource.
“The rest of CCA’s political giving went directly to lawmakers who determine detention funding through their positions on the appropriations committee in the House and Senate. In 2008, the committees approved a $2.3 billion budget for ICE detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, including funds for an additional 4,870 new beds. More than half the senators backed by CCA’s PAC are on the appropriations committee, and four of them are on the subcommittee on Homeland Security.”
Maybe some mothers and fathers who want Family Court Reform ought to spend a little more browsing (and submitting testimony) time on the House Ways and Means Committee, where many programs affecting the courts are. (see some of my posts). CCA knew right where to go to get their policies through.
”
One CCA-backed appropriations committee member deserves special mention. Former Tennessee governor, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) received $31,200 from 2003-2008 from the Nashville-based company and its employees, spouses and their subsidiaries, according to Federal Election Commission documents. Alexander’s history of supporting CCA includes endorsing its failed bid in 1985 to take over the Tennessee prison system.
In the House, CCA’s PAC gave $5,000 to Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY), who sits on the Subcommittee on Homeland Security Appropriations. Another $2,500 went to fellow committee member John Carter (R-TX) who is also on the Committee on Homeland Security. Carter’s district is where CCA’s T. Don Hutto family residential center is located. He is a major advocate for “a system of 100 percent catch and return.”
Republican members of the House Immigration Reform Caucus reaped CCA’s support for backing the Secure America though Verification and Enforcement Act. The Act calls for expediting “the removal of illegal aliens by expanding detention capacity.
I have a question. Suppose, very hypothetically, all illegal aliens (that’s people…) WERE removed? Then what about all that prison capacity? Hmmm??? Maybe another Kids for Cash scenario? (As if aspects of the child protective services, and foster care incentives, and child support agency system(s) weren’t already this…)
WELL, some people – shareholders — wanted to know what was going on with all this money:
In 2007, the company fought a shareholder resolution that requested semi-annual reports on the company’s political contributions and expenditures.
“Absent a system of accountability, corporate executives are free to use company assets for political objectives that are not shared by and may be inimical to the interests of a company and its shareholders,” argued Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary Investment Program, who introduced the failed measure to force CCA to disclose payments it makes to trade associations, political recipients and soft money entities such as 527s.
To influence lawmakers who did not receive direct donations, CCA has spent millions on lobbyists. They got what they asked for.
And we even got a corporate (CCA) counsel taking a spin at a judgeship in Tennessee. That should help:
CCA’s general counsel, Gustavus Puryear IV, could give the revolving door another turn. Puryear made headlines this year when President Bush nominated him for a federal judge seat in the Middle District of Tennessee, where CCA is headquartered. Puryear has worked as a speech writer for Vice President Dick Cheney. He testified during a Senate hearing that he would recuse himself from cases involving the company.
WELL, this is just a flavor. Not only does this subject matter overlap with family court, but take note of these TWO students’ masters’ thesis project. The same principles apply in organizations which are close to the federal faucet through HHS (see “What Decade Are These Stores?” post.). I notice that the Loop21.com article noticed a n Arizona connection. (bottom of last post)
from their ABOUT BD link — and I also added this link to my blogroll:
Our desire was to create an innovative way to present the business of privatized detention services — using solid reporting skills and pairing that up with video and interactive info graphics. This was also an experiment for us in creating a platform for a news product, that largely went under reported in mainstream news when we started the Corrections Corporation of America investigative project in late 2007. That project became the first investigative-new media project for the University and has since won the Melvin Mencher Award for Superior Reporting and James A. Wechsler Award for National Reporting, and a finalist at the 2009 SXSW Interactive Awards.
This link is to a “money.cnn” report focusing on Arizona, where a bid was made to privatize the entire state’s prisons.
”
According to research firm IBISWorld USA, private corrections is a $22.7 billion industry with an annual growth rate in the last half-decade of 4.7%. While growth slowed from 2009 to 2010, projections for the industry remain largely optimistic.
“The prison population continues to grow regardless of what the economic conditions are,” says George Van Horn, senior analyst at IBISWorld.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of federal inmates housed in private facilities jumped nearly 14% between 2000 and 2007, and nearly 6% between 2007 and 2008.
Even so, the federal government nor any other state has gone as far as Arizona has in the march toward prison privatization. Last fall, Governor Brewer signed a law calling for the privatization of all the state’s prisons, should a private contractor offer an upfront bid of $100 million. This March, the law was repealed because no private company made a bid.
A prison too far?
But with the recent escapes, officials in Arizona and elsewhere have started to question the use of private correctional facilities. When Arizona’s privatization bill passed, the state’s director of corrections, Charles L. Ryan, took the unusual step of writing a letter to Governor Brewer expressing concern.
“[The bill] seeks to attempt something never experienced in the nation: Privatizing a state’s entire prison system. This is bad public policy,” the letter read.
“This escape has put everything in stark relief,” says Goddard. “A private company has an acceptable level of loss. In the case of violent offenders, I don’t believe the public does or should tolerate any incidence of failure.“
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Funny, and Not so Funny . . . Bad, and a BIT Better: in Bahrain, Arizona and Rhode Island
(1) Funny
(especially if you’ve experienced what they’re talking about)
Welcome to caught.net’s
BLACK IS WHITE LAW DICTIONARY
Tongue in cheek but pathetically true!
Copyright 2009 – All Rights Reserved
(2) Not Funny: Broke in Bahrain
(A)
Breezy Globalsapiens Travelogue perspective: narrative
The Arabian Peninsula for an “infidel” traveller
It took me almost one month to get my Saudi Arabian visa in Egypt. I decided to visit all the Arabian Peninsula countries in a row (except Yemen, where I had already been in the past): Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Qatar, and Oman. I succeed! //
//
Mosque of the Prophet in Medina
In the Arabian Consulate in Cairo I was told that they only issue visas to enter their country under three conditions: if you are a muslim pilgrim, if you are a businessman with invitation from a commercial company in Arabia, and if you are in transit. Immediately I requested a transit visa. First I had to go to my Embassy to request a letter stating that I had no pending trials in my country, and therefore was a bona fide citizen. Then I obtained my Kuwait visa (after me one more week), and finally the Arabs gave me a three days transit visa. From Cairo I travelled to Nweiba, in the Sinai Peninsula, then by boat I reached Aqaba, in Jordan, and the next day I boarded a bus to Kuwait together with emigrants from Turkey, Sudan, Syria and Egypt. We crossed the town Tabuk, wholly militarized because of the proximity to Israel. Five times a day we stopped for the muslim prayers (except me, being a Christian. I just waited for them sitting in a Buddha position under the shadow of a palm tree drinking a cup of tea). We ate in some small restaurants in several oasis and small villages, where the waiters were from India or Philippines, and the Arabs, almost all fat, dressed with immaculate cleaned white clothes, where sitting indolently, smoking in their nargils, and only raised slowly from their cushions when they had to cash the consumptions. We stopped for a full day in a restaurant open 24 hours a day, called Almuhaya, in the town of Hafar al Batin, which I visited during a few hours. Then some of my companions invited me to go with them to Ryad and afterwards to Mecca and Medina. But although I dreamed to visit these holy places, I knew that it was not possible because of the controls of the Religious Police along the way (these policemen watch that you observe the Sharia, with the Ramadan and all the muslim rules, otherwise they can punish you or expel you from Arabia), where they ask for the muslim documents to visit these places. The third day I arrived to Kuwait.
Favourite spots:
Historical dhow in Bahrain
Everybody that conversed with me in Kuwait was surprised to see me, being an individual traveller, no a businessman or an Asiatic worker (in Kuwait, most of the population are immigrants from Philippines, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, etc). I was invited several times to drink tea or to have dinner by the astounded rich Kuwaitis. They even offered me a ride around their country in their Mercedes. They were bored and for them talking with a European was something unusual. There is practically nothing to see or to do in Kuwait apart from admiring the futurist forms of the skyscrapers with exotic and original designs. I used to eat in the Filipinos restaurants (chicken prepared in the style of Cebu city is delicious!), or in the cheap Indian restaurants smelling at curry from the street. I slept in a hostel for Filipinos in the Catholic Mission, besides the Cathedral, because in the communal dormitories for Indians I was refused. After Kuwait I flew to Bahrain.
What’s really great:
map of Qatar
Bahrain is one of the most authentic Arabian countries. It is a small archipelago with a population of about 700.000 people. There are three main islands united by bridges with Saudi Arabia, which are claimed by Qatar. Be careful! If your next destination is Qatar, get the visa beforehand. There is no Qatari consulate in Bahrain because of the lack of diplomatic relation between the two countries owing to the islands claims. I did not know this, and suffered a lot with immigration while arriving in Qatar. In Manama, the capital of Bahrain, I saw people playing n’tchuva, a game very popular in Africa. Almost everybody dress like in ancient times, and there are many chaikhanas to drink tea in the streets, and I even saw beggars, very hard to find in Arabia or Kuwait or in the Emirates. After Bahrain I flew to Qatar, not so interesting country for a traveller, half deserted, but people are friendly and it is very easy to get rides hitch hiking. After two days I flew to Dubai.
The Peninsula above is not Bahrain, but Qatar. Bahrain is between Peninsula and mainland, as following images show:
The 25 miles between Qatar and Bahrain “Friendship Bridge,” the longest bridge IN THE WORLD,
has not yet been built (@ 2008 article).
The contract to construct the $3 billion causeway was signed on Tuesday
by Ahmad Hasan Al Hammadi, director of the legal affairs department at
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, and Pierre Berger, chairman of Vinci Group.The
transport link between the two Gulf states will reduce the travel time
from one to the other from approximately five hours to around 30
minutes.
Location
Where is Bahrain?
Bahrain is an island
located in the Persian/Arabian Gulf. 
Can you see BAHRAIN in this NASA photo of a Dust Storm over Bahrain and Qatar, posted at “redorbit.com
[Credit: Jeff Schmaltz; MODIS team; NASA, Posted on: 26 September 2007, 06:45 CDT ]”?
To the East
lies Qatar, to South Saudi Arabia and to the North, across the Gulf,
looms Iran.
Next to these Bahrain is a midget, making even tiny Qatar appear large
in size.
History:
Early History
Bahrain was not always as dry as it is now – in the last 40 years development
has dried up much of the natural springs that used to lure the Qatari
bedouin to its shores in the hot summers – and there has even been speculation
that it was once the Garden of Eden.
There is evidence that the country has been inhabited for 7000 years,
and it was also a major part of Dilmun, a Bronze Age trading empire
which lasted for 2000 years. Later on there was a strong Greek influence
and the country was renamed Tylos – itself a Greek name. Trading was
once again its main activity for 600 years.
In 629, much of Bahrain accepted an invitation from the Prophet Mohammed
to accept Islam, and Bahrain was ruled by Mohammed through a governor.
However, Bahrain was later taken over by the Qarmatians, who used Bahrain
as a base to sack many of Islam’s holiest cities, and desecrated the
Zam Zam well with the bodies of Hajj pilgrims.
The Qarmatians were in turn replaced by a series of invaders, including Genghis Khan.
Modern History
In the 16th century Bahrain was invaded by the Portuguese, who defeated and
beheaded the local king, but they were kicked out by a revolt in 1602.
The Portuguese were replaced by the Persian empire until the Persians
themselves were replaced by the Khalifa family. The Khalifas eventually
fell under the influence of the British, who flexed their muscles after
the Khalifas laid waste to Doha and Al Wakra. Bahrain remained a protectorate
of the British until 1971, when the British left the Gulf and Bahrain
declared its independence.
After oil was discovered in the 1930s Bahrain boomed,
(B)
The Nightmare Gets Worse for An American Woman and Her Child Trapped In Bahrain
by Phyllis Chesler
Fox News
August 27, 2010
On Thursday, August 26 in Bahrain, the country’s police stormed into the home where Yazmin Maribel Bautista was hiding her five-year-old daughter, Fatima, an American citizen. She was hiding her child to keep her from being handed over to her Bahraini father for weekend visitation as ordered by a local court. Yazmin, an American citizen from Arizona, was helpless to prevent this from happening.
Her lawyer, Majid Shehab, who nobly took on the case pro bono, was arrested for trying to report the police and keep them from taking the child away. The lawyer has since been bailed out. Yazmin does not know whether her daughter, Fatima, will be returned to her. She also does not know whether it is safe for her to remain in the country. Yazmin has no money, no job, no financial resources, and no powerful relatives who can help her fight for her daughter.
Fatima is terrified of her father’s family and once hid under a café table when she saw relatives approaching. She said: “I don’t want to see my father. He will take me so that I will never see you (my mother) again.”
. . .
In 2003, Yazmin met Sadiq Jaffar Al-Saffar, a college student, and in 2004 Yazmin was born. Sadiq was a deadbeat dad who seemed more interested in getting a green card than in being with his family in Arizona, spending most of his time back in Bahrain. In four years, he visited only three times.
In January of 2009, Yazmin divorced him and received custody in Arizona.
Later, however, Yazmin went to Bahrain because she got laid off from her job in Arizona and because she chose to believe Sadiq’s promises: that he would get her a good job, an apartment of her own, a car, a cell phone, and that both she and/or Fatima would be part of a loving, extended family.
Major mistake. Unemployment and compromised circumstances can tempt someone to make poor decisions. This makes me think that Yazmin’s own extended family / support system were not able to step up, or involved at this time.
He lied.
Even as I write, her advocate, Beth X, who must remain anonymous, is meeting with Senator John McCain, who represents Yazmin’s state of Arizona in Congress and who previously had written a letter to Bahrain’s Ambassador to the United States urging her to “allow Ms. Bautista and her daughter to return home peacefully.”
Arizona’s got its own issues also, about letting women divorce safely. Or mothers relocate after they have, for safety reasons.
Her ex-husband’s lawyers, Fatima Abdullah and Majd Ramadan, both women, who found Yazmin’s address where she has been hiding ever since the court ordered her to turn over her daughter every week for the Muslim weekend. Yazmin initially complied with the court order but she stopped doing so when her daughter made it increasingly clear that she did not want to be with her father, her father’s new wife, and her father’s extended family. Yazmin called the American embassy, which dispatched consul Nausher Ali, who observed what was happening but did nothing.
This behavior continues the shameful inactivity of the American embassy in this matter. In fact, it was an American consul who prevented Yazmin from escaping with Fatima in the first place. At one point the two had cleared customs before boarding a plane bound for the United States, but the consul convinced them to cross back over to Bahraini-controlled territory, telling Yazmin that this was just a formality and that they would soon be free to go, at which point the Bahraini government apprehended them and put a hold on Fatima from leaving the country.
Yazmin remains dependent on the kindness of strangers and at the mercy of the American government.
She told me: “We’ve been here over a year and I’ve gone to court hearing after court hearing, and it’s not going anywhere…
Aspects of this sound like someone stuck in the courts in the USA for years. I can’t imagine it in a foreign company.
I’m sure the embassy has done everything it can, but at the end of the day we’re still stuck in Bahrain. I was told that I’ll be getting her back on Saturday, but who’s to say that I’ll be getting her back? I feel like even though she’s an American citizen no one is looking after her rights…I feel like there’s no more hope…I’m just hoping that someone somewhere can help us…”
I wonder whether a new foreign policy in the Middle East will be able to bring these two American citizens home or whether it is another tragic tale like Betty Mahmoody’s, the American author of “Not Without My Daughter” who was similarly trapped in Iran with her young American citizen daughter.
. . .
= They’ve Got to be Kiddin’, but Aren’t . . . .
Now, in RHODE ISLAND, our SMALLEST U.S. STATE:
VERY BAD DECISION:
Judge imposes gag order on mother in R.I. custody case
01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, August 14, 2010 [don’t miss the comments submitted]
JUST A BIT BETTER
Judge lifts gag order in Torres custody battle
August 18, 2010 [don’t miss the comments submitted]
Journal Staff Writer PROVIDENCE — Faith Torres left her credit card and other valuables at home Tuesday when she went to Family Court. She didn’t know how her hearing was going to go, and she might be spending time in jail.
Torres is in a custody battle to get her children. On July 29, Family Court Judge Debra E. DiSegna had ordered her not to talk about her case with anyone, including the media, or post anything about it on the Internet. Torres feared DiSegna would find her in contempt of court because she had contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, and a story had appeared in Saturday’s Journal.
But after conferring with lawyers for about an hour Tuesday, Judge DiSegna lifted the gag order, though she forbade Torres and her lawyers from identifying her children or giving out confidential information about them in regard to the case.
“I was hoping for the best,” Torres said after she got out of court. “I was prepared for the worst.
Preparing for the worst is GOOD advice for anyone going anywhere near a family law courtroom.
I wouldn’t hang our hopes on consistent respect for the First Amendment, or any of the others, in places like this, though. The price of freedom is Vigilance (NOT “vigilante, which is a better description of where our civil rights went, and some of the DCFS groups around the country who prefer operating “behind closed doors,” like most abusers, not to mention child molesters, do).
“I thought I might have violated the order. … I was happy she kind of lifted it.”
But Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU’s Rhode Island affiliate, said DiSegna’s new order is still too broad, and still violates the First Amendment.
THANK YOU, The Providence Journal, Steve Brown of the ACLU, and Faith Torres for persistence!
“On Tuesday, DiSegna allowed a reporter in the courtroom for Torres’ hearing, where Torres told the judge that the court visits were financially draining for both her and Fernandez.”
Ya THINK!? — read the articles!
QUESTION: Why is it a “domestic dispute” (per the agency that requested the gag order, referring to the violence between the parents) but a “custody battle” (per the headlines — referring not to her battle primarily with her ex, but with the STATE, who has retained, apparently, legal custody of 3 children that actually live with Ms. Torres. This is odd — unless one understands the implicit “Kids for Kash” concept behind being American, giving birth, not living off 100%non-taxable income, and seeking any form of help from the courts, or social services.
Formerly, the recruiting poster read:
Wikipedia informs us that the first concept of “Uncle Sam” as the U.S. comes from:
“The first use of the term in literature is seen in an 1816 allegorical book, The Adventures of Uncle Sam in Search After His Lost Honor by Frederick Augustus Fidfaddy, Esq.”
What else might one expect from a “Fidfaddy.” (Esq.)?
and that
“The female personification “Columbia” has seldom been seen since the 1920s.” The word “Columbia” supposedly combines “Columbus” (as in, Christopher) and “Britannia” (the colonizer), hence, “Columbia.” Despite the civil war and westward expansion, it still appears, at least as to national symbols, that this country was basically uninhabited except by people of this pale color.
Not suprisingly, around the 1920s women were (FINALLY) getting the vote, so I guess this wasn’t a great image to publicize. While Uncle Sam is an older, paternal figure, this one is certainly not very Maternal (or of similar age)
Not much has changed in the meantime. Ms. Torres is to be gagged, and those speaking for her, then partially ungagged, as a mother, and fork her kids over to Uncle Sam (Rhode Island) on behalf of, not the war on poverty (which was Part 1 of “welfare reform”) but the war on “Fatherlessness” (which is Part 2 of “welfare reform”).
In Bahrain, Ms. Bautista, totally stranded, had her attorney actually jailed, not just threatened with it, bailed out, and what appears to be a very uneven custody battle.
Maybe Arizona can redeem some of its tarnished image by helping out!
NOT FUNNY:
Blogger (that’s me) Just Got Jilted by Slow/Interrupted Internet time, lost my commentary on this case. But I did get a comment in on the second news site under “StillTalksBack” (cf. “StandsWithaFist” from “Dances with Wolves”)
and referred to explanatory comments here:
RIGHTSFORMOTHERS.com 08-07-2010 post
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“Alarm Failed, Burglars Broke In, Burnt it down”– Why property SEEMS to count more than lives…
Legal Remedies that won’t work in Family Law, and why….from Law.com
This might be parallel to the desensitization of “the system” to increasing alarm about domestic violence issues. An incident happens, and here come the attorneys (if any). A food distributor got its damages — but when live are lost through negligence, and the “failed alarm” of the family law system — no such damages, even. WHY? Well, let’s look at two from law.com today….the 2nd isn’t family law case, but the Kids for Cash racket. However, it relates to family law issues…
So how does the case go, and who’s going to be punished by paying for such disasters? The insurance companies already paid the warehouse owners over $10 million.
I’m putting in this post (and article) to point out one thing: Negligence is one thing, and Breach of Contract (which is a tort) another. The question of WHO IS RESPONSIBLE is often moot, but we ought to know.
From Law.com, today:
Pa., N.J. Insurers Win $10.9 Million in Colorado Jury Trial
The Legal Intelligencer
August 27, 2010
PARTIES (not incl. attorneys):
Warehouse owner, a food distributor:
- food distributor Core-Mark Midcontinent Inc [Attorney Letofsky, from Newport Beach, CA]
Warehouse’s 2 insurers [Attorney “Dunford, from Denver, CO]
- PA-based Insurer
- NJ-based Fire insurer
Alarm Company
- Sonitrol Corp.
LOCATION: The trial (and warehouse?) was in Colorado, as were the winning attorneys.
They definitely won:
The two insurance companies, represented by Thomas M. Dunford of Cozen O’Connor in Denver, were suing for the claims they already paid to Core-Mark in the amount of $10.96 million.Core-Mark, represented by Brian Letofsky of Watkins & Letofsky in Newport Beach, Calif., was suing for the amount of damages not covered by insurance, or $7.34 million.
The seven-member jury in Adams County District Court awarded those exact figures on Aug. 18, for a total award among the three companies of $18.3 million. Pre-judgment interest of 8 percent per year in Colorado could add millions to the jury award, Cozen O’Connor said.”
That’s definitely a win — let’s look at it, a bit;
This case, Core-Mark Midcontinent v. Sonitrol Corp. , has been going on since December 2003, a year after the Dec. 21, 2002, fire. About three weeks before the scheduled trial date in October 2006, the Adams County, Colo., trial judge ruled in favor of Sonitrol’s summary judgment motions. The alarm company argued there were exculpatory provisions in the contract that greatly limited their liability to be only $500 or six-months’ monitoring, whichever was cheaper, Dunford said.
The trial judge agreed and ruled the plaintiffs could only be awarded $500 under the terms of the contract.
3 years in the mix, and set for trial. At the last moment, the trial judge blows it out of the water. I’m sure 3 years of legal work wasn’t a $500 deal — these guys kept going.
However, in a family law case involving domestic violence, such a “blowing it out of the water” by a trial judge (if a trial even happens) could result in a deathh (cf. Lemkau/Tagle….) It could send a single mother — or father’s — life into an economic tailspin. They might have to drop issues to survive, or to stay safe, or lest a child be harmed (further). But here, both sides were corporations. Both sides had attorney FIRMS, not a pro bono setup.
They appealed to the Colorado Court of Appeals, which ultimately threw out the plaintiffs’ negligence claim
From what I can deduce, NEGLIGENCE is harder to prove. Appeals courts can’t handle causes of action not alleged in the original matter.
but allowed the breach of contract claim to move forward.
Good thing — for them — the attorneys had alleged more than one thing: negligence and breach of contract. Breach of contract is a TORT (a “wrong” ) in civil matters.
Here’s where family law comes in — again, I’m not a lawyer, but I’m deducing from what I’ve read / seen — Is the marriage a civil contract? Don’t go all “Prop 8” on me here, I’m talking about no-fault divorces. No fault means no fault.
UNIV of PITTSBURGH LAW REVIEW (vol 68:835) has an article by Margaret M. Mahoney, a Univ. Pittsburgh Law Professor (I don’t have the year handy)a printout I looked at, becaus of its title: “The Enforcement of Child Custody Orders by Contempt Remedies.” [lawreview.law.pitt.edu/issues/68/68.4/Mahoney.pdf ] She discusses this, (recommended reading, MOms & Dads, FYI): among the issues: “The Distinction between Civil and Criminal Contempt” and under the section, ‘The Nature of Parenting Plan Orders (Part I of II) this major point:
“CUSTODY ORDERS ARE NOT PREMISED ON A DETERMINATION OF WRONGDOING“
IF WE UNDERSTAND ANYTHING ABOUT FAMILY LAW (OR AFCC) — FROM MY BLOG — UNDERSTAND THAT THE “THEME” IS THE PARENT JUST HAVE A DIFFICULTY GETTING ALONG. THE STATE IS HEAR TO FIX THAT, FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR KIDS (OSTENSIBLY).
THIS PUTS IT IN A WHOLE DIFFERENT BALLPARK FROM CIVIL OR CRIMINAL LAW, AND LIMITS WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT ENFORCING ANYTHING.
Punishment for Civil Contempt of Court vs. Criminal Contempt of Court
Unlike criminal contempt sentences, which aim to punish the act of contempt, c iviivil contempt sanctions aim to either: (1) restore the rights of the party who was wronged by the failure to satisfy the court’s order; or (2) simply move an underlying proceeding along. [for example, if they refuse to produce documents requested in discovery] Civil contempt sanctions typically end when the party in contempt complies with the court order, or when the underlying case is resolved.
Like those charged with criminal contempt, the court may order incarceration of people held in civil contempt. However, unlike individuals charged with criminal contempt, people held in civil contempt are generally not given the same constitutional rights that are guaranteed to criminal contempt defendants.
Those held in civil contempt generally must be given notice of the contempt sanctions and an opportunity to be heard, but usually are not guaranteed a jury trial. Also, their contempt does not need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, while criminal contempt charges must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Finally, criminal contempt involves a specified sentence (jail and/or fine), while civil contempt sanctions can be more indefinite, lasting until either the underlying case is resolved or the party in contempt complies with the court order.
Sometimes these basics can be forgotten when in the mix of a family law case.
MANY MOMS GET INTO FAMILY COURT AS A CONSEQUENCE OF HAVING GONE TO SOMEONE TO GET A CIVIL RESTRAINING ORDER, 0r are brought there upon foolishly requesting child support. (LITTLE DID WE KNOW ABOUT THAT LANDMINE…!) AND IN THE AFTERMATH OF THIS, VOILA — SEPARATION, AND PARENTING ORDERS. And those parenting orders can produce civil contempt that, if not obeyed, can get a parent punished.
There’s a legal, principle AND principal difference. That difference affects remedies. Family law is not that new a beast (no-fault divorce is, relatively), but it is a beast of a certain intrinsic nature. It seems (I’m not an attorney!) that divorce itself, or the need to resolve parenting, does not represent EITHER a crime (putting it in criminal), or a TORT (putting it in plain civil court). This, it ain’t a crime, no one did anything wrong (per se, by going to court) puts it in a very swooshy field when it comes to the courtroom. Not so in other venues, which is what I’m pointing out here, when a company recouped its losses, as did the companies insuring it, and too bad for the alarm company whose product didn’t work.
That FL nature can produce situations like a Dombrowski — whose ex-husband’s recent 67 alleged contempts were most likely wilful — and “nothing” for consequence, or a ruling where if she calls the police, to stop the bleeding, she’s in contempt!
A battered Mom, an abducted, battered or raped chid, and a burnt-down warehouse are different scenarios. The alarm company had a specific contract to protect. The spectacular destruction (but no known loss of life or physical injury to a person) was remedied through million-$$ award (how/whether it will be collected is another matter, but at lesat the cause was vindicated by a ruling). Distraught mothers, children, have few remedies if the destrcution is much more spectacular. Some domestic violence fatalities have involved fire and property destruction, too. (Offhand, I can think of a car and a house and a bashed-out window in a place of business — that’s just offhand I also cannot think of a single DV case that got a Victim Compensation Fund award.
Maybe it’s just not really a “crime” or a breach of contract?
In remanding the case to the trial court, the appeals court said damages could be recovered only if it could be proved Sonitrol’s conduct in breaching the contract was done willfully and wantonly. Dunford said the court found that was a question for the jury.
During trial, Dunford and co-counsel Letofsky demonstrated a number of ways they alleged Sonitrol willfully and wantonly breached the contract with Core-Mark. The alarm system was having a number of false activations starting in the years right before the fire. The warehouse was equipped with several microphones that were supposed to send an alert and connect the alarm company to the warehouse when noise 75 decibels over ambient sound was detected. The alarm company would then be able to hear remotely what was happening in the warehouse, Dunford said.
A technician was twice sent out to the warehouse to make the microphones less sensitive to noise after the false activations. Dunford said he argued these changes “essentially disabled” the system. He had one of the burglars who had since been released from jail testify at trial that he used a battery-powered saw to cut down a door 18 feet from one of the microphones. He then kicked at the door, at which point it fell onto the concrete floor, Dunford said, recalling the testimony. The microphone was never activated, he said.
Suppose some law enforcement, judge, or mediator/custody evaluator, or supervised visitation monitor showed truly wilfull and wanton behavior that resulted in death or injury, let alone severe emotional distress?
Could you sue ’em? Where was the contract? The parenting-personnel are often under contract with federal grants systems based in Washington, one down to the states, to sub-grantees, etc. There’s damn little monitoring of those (some of us have been enquiring for years). They are required to “serve” families. Define “service.” They can’t — ever read some of the broad-based, grandiose descriptions on some of these sites that provide “access visitation” or “supervised therapeutic visitation” help to parent?
Same with many nonprofits. The nonprofit status is based on “serving” their clients. If the clients are harmed, or don’t like it, they can stop receiving “services” or go find another provider. Many times the government and foundations are the ones these groups are accountable to. I learned that one the (very) hard way, was just innocent. The real contract is with the government, because they are having taxes abated.
The genius of the (family law system) beast is that these extra professionals are hard to get to. They hide behind the judge, and the judge halfway spreads his responsibility with them. Want to try their accrediting organization? sometimes this may work or does
What about the judges? Well — absolute judicial immunity. It takes a lot to oust a judge, part of which is intentional.
WHAT ABOUT KIDS-FOR-CASH IN LUZERNE?
I posted this link in my own comment on one of the Luzerne posts on this blog.
All I can say is — the players are many, and the remedies narrowing, though not gone. Anyone in family court system ought to listen up, because it’s talking about RICO, fraud and racketeering, and what happens when some are tossed to the crowds. I gather this will be precedent-setting.
Federal Judge’s Ruling Sets Landscape for ‘Kids-for-Cash’ Civil Suits
The Legal Intelligencer
August 27, 2010
- Reprints & Permissions {my use here is within copyright law, as I understand it. I’m if anything helping direct some more traffic to the original site, and recommending some of my non-attorney readers consider the case.}
- Post a Comment //
A federal court judge this week dismissed three defendants from civil suits related to the “kids-for-cash” scandal in Luzerne County, Pa., effectively clearing the way for the case to move forward.
Judge A. Richard Caputo of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania granted motions filed by the wives of former Luzerne County Common Pleas Court Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, as well as one filed by Conahan’s brother-in-law, who served as a psychologist for the county’s probation department. {Fancy that — a psychologist for the probation department…}
“for the case to move forward — granting motions” — sounds like he’s bouncing potential defendants off the case. Further on, Luzerne County itself is also bounced off as a potential defendant.
It had not been proven by the plaintiffs in the cases, Caputo wrote in Wallace, et al. v. Powell, et al., that either Ciavarella’s wife, Cindy Ciavarella, or Conahan’s wife, Barbara Conahan, knew of or were involved in any conspiracy among their husbands and others to send juveniles to a pair of private, for-profit juvenile detention centers in exchange for $2.6 million.
Likewise, ruled Caputo, it could not be proved by the plaintiffs* that Michael Conahan’s brother-in-law, Frank Vita,** knew his contract with the county would allow for the creation of a case backlog that would require juveniles to spend more time in the juvenile detention centers*** while awaiting evaluations.
**Where, exactly, does nepotism start and end? If we don’t in this country, allow brother to marry sister and produce babies together, because of inbreeding and reproducing some recessive (and weakening) traits, which would affect the rest of the populace if it were practice — what about this type of inbreeding within government. I mean, think about it! This is beginning to sound like the Hapsburgs. And, within the land of Healthy Marriage, too. Look at all those married people involved here. . . . well, at least the kids if any probably weren’t hurting financially.
*Well, the burden of proof IS on the plaintiff, and it must be hard to prove what people knew, and intended or conspired to do. The smart defendants (and/or their attorneys or legal advisors) I suspect knew, and took advantage of this legal princple, maybe filed motions to dismiss alleging the plaintiff’s motions hadn’t met the burden of proof for facts alleged.
ATTORNEYS FOR THE PLAINTIFFS, IN FACT, CONCEDED SOME CLAIMS:
Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center, which is representing many of the plaintiffs in the case, said the plaintiffs had conceded the claims against the recently dismissed defendants.
The decision, she said, sets the path for the case to move forward.
A settlement conference is scheduled for Sept. 15. Levick said the fact Caputo’s ruling came in advance of that conference was important because “we know what the landscape of the case is.”
“This, really, was a tremendous victory, I think,” Levick said. “We’re very gratified.”
I don’t know law enough to understand why conceding claims would be a victory. It may have to do with, the points wouldn’t have been won, the limits of what it might take to prove, and possibly an intent to go for the bigger fry, not the smaller fry (see below).
I say “bigger” not “big” because it’s quite possible (and likely) that Conahan and Ciavorella are themselves some small fry tossed out (caught by US ATTORNEY’S OFFICE INVESTIGATING THE RICO / fraud CHARGES). I don’t believe the “few bad apples” theory, i.e., that the remaining applies in the bushel are actualy good. One post said 40% of the judges in Luzerne County had problems. Locking up kids (and adults) IS a business, and the U.S. is not the world’s largest per-capita jailor by accident.
More Moms or protective Dads should try this motion to dismiss before filing ANY response to any insane accusation; it might discourage further ones. Your motions are going to get dismissed sooner or later anyhow if you go forward, and besides, it might send the FIRST judge on the case a message you’re not wet under the ears.
But YOU NAME ME one — even one — family justice center, pro bono attorney advocate working in a domestic violence center, or almost anyone(including her own family law attorney)
that will tell a woman this up front. I say “her” here, because (see NAFCJ.net, and this site) men are getting that helpful information in certain circles, through fatherhood programs reaching out to them.
***Habeas corpus? Smacks of Guantanamo?
The next paragraphs I’m including just so we can see “how many professionals it takes to screw in a lightbulb,” or screw up a youngster’s life by locking him or her up without due process or with it for that matter).
Wonder, of youngsters who were sent their for crimes, one of their parents was stuck in family law system previously… and/or impoverished, homeless, or absent from either an unfair child support order, or an unenforced fair one… I’m adding the bullet format:
The rulings mean the plaintiffs in the cases may proceed with claims against:
- Mark Ciavarella;
- Michael Conahan;
- Robert Powell, the former co-owner of the juvenile detention facilities; and
- Robert Mericle, the builder of the juvenile detention facilities.
Also remaining as defendants in the cases are:
- Mericle’s company, Mericle Construction;
- a company owned by Powell to allegedly help funnel money to the judges,Vision Holdings;
- the company that operated the juvenile detention facilities, Mid-Atlantic Youth Services;
- and the juvenile detention facilities themselves, PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care.
Two judges, a former Co-OWNER OF DETENTION FACILITIES, a BUILDER, his CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, the HOLDING TANK COMPANY getting money TO judges, and (above), the DESTINATION COMPANY (to take the funds: “Pinnacle,” above — owned by judges’ wives), the
SERVICE COMPANY, that operated the detention facilities, and finally — the Dentention Facilities themselves (the buildings only?)Someone knows a lot about business and distribution networks: The Product (cf. “human trafficking”), the supply line personnel, you name it — it’s downright visionary.
Hence, names, like “Vision Holdings” “Pinnacle”
“Mid-Atlantic Youth Services” and of course, it wasn’t really detention, it was “Child Care.” Buyer beware..
But the judges have partial judicial immunity, as judges, and Luzerne County — well, as the article says, it’s a matter of who is the FINAL policymaker, and it can’t be sued. Sounds like a foolproof plan, and what are the chances this was an isolated situation?
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2 from 2002 and the Kitchen Sink: Why Sociologists (are hired) to Rule America
Bifurcating Parenthood (Georgetown), 2-Pronged Fatherhood (Progressive Policythink), Ridiculous Rulings (in Kansas) and Who Rules America (UC sociologist)
Today’s post (extended and updated from yesterdays, which I published in short form) has 4 (FOUR) parts:
1,
2,
3,
4.
As is usual for me, the “juice” that inspired the post is in the middle, [2-3] the Intro, and the kicker [4] at the end, and the Intro [1] sometimes gets so extended, I never actually publish the middle. So we have:
1, Symbolizing Judicial Tyranny (dombrowski)
2, Parental Bifurcation (2002 Georgetown article)
3, The 2nd prong of Fatherhood (2002 Progressive Policy-think)
4. Jobs ain’t Wealth & Who Rules America (since we just saw how).
As is usual for me, the “juice” that inspired the post is in the middle, [2-3] the Intro, and the kicker [4] at the end, and the Intro [1] sometimes gets so extended, I never actually publish the middle.
4 was simply me mentioning the theme of “income v. wealth” that I know by now is critical in the social engine called these courts. It’s basically workforce development, and US/Them paradigm. There are several links and quotes. I could’ve chosen any. But it will hold together, I trust. At the top, I’m going to post a QUOTE from a Professor Dumoff, a sociologist at UC Santa Cruz. It’s from his site “WHO RULES AMERICA?” which is a good question. More below, at the banner.
In my last year of research and reflection (including on my own experience) of who’s doing WHAT in the courts an WHY those dang nonprofits have been useless, basically, I had to get to foundations, who support the nonprofits doing nothing. Then I began to understand the forces that are driving America into materialistic chaos, to sustain a global economy based on permanent debt. I feel this ain’t too bad work, considering what have also been through in the “decade of the courts” in my adult life.
I suggest we read this site THROUGH.
I am burnt out on reporting on outrageous family law cases, also beseeching noncustodial parents I know to take a little more critical look at organizations — not just good/cop bad/cop individuals. I have . . . . . I also have repeatedly encouraged people to take a very illuminating glance at some of the IRS 990s on some of the “helkping” organizations who continue to pay CEOs over $100,000 year to report on the carnage or insults to personhood.
Losers in the family law situation who don’t end up physically and emotionally dysfunctional might definitely end up homeless may definitely end up homeless, male or female. Yet there’s a real reluctance among litigants to not just look at the role of the child support system (federal) as a planned move to socialism for most of us based on policies set by the foundations hiring the nonprofits selecting what will (and will not) get talked about in the arena. They may blog or acknowledge it briefly, then go back to collaborating with the closest nonprofit that makes a big noise.
Battered women who’ve gone into the family law court after leaving the relationship are in a UNIQUE position to understand and speak to the power structure from underneath, analytically and as to attitude.
Once I began looking at organizational structures (it helps to have a model of a virtual “gang” in one’s own family for reference) I never stopped looking. Here’s a diagram for the more visually organized:
This is how such an inane policy as “fatherhood” could actually go through Congress, and get enacted. It’s a form of psychological warfare, basically, to frame the conversation nationally, yet fail to inform have the litigants in court that the conversation is taking place.
ANYHOW, this represents my post for today, and welcome to it. Do your own homework!
Here’s from Part 4, to think about in 1, 2, and 3:
- “The rich” coalesce into a social upper class that has developed institutions by which the children of its members are socialized into an upper-class worldview, and newly wealthy people are assimilated.
- Members of this upper class control corporations, which have been the primary mechanisms for generating and holding wealth in the United States for upwards of 150 years now.
- There exists a network of nonprofit organizations through which members of the upper class and hired corporate leaders not yet in the upper class shape policy debates in the United States.
This I can attest to. See (for a starter) “shady shaky foundations of family law” and some of the organizational geneaology. IN good part, that’s what this blog is for — to show the connections. This tells me also why the “Coalitions Against Domestic Violence” simply “cannot” hear our truths.
- Members of the upper class, with the help of their high-level employees in profit and nonprofit institutions, are able to dominate the federal government in Washington.
- The rich, and corporate leaders, nonetheless claim to be relatively powerless.
- Working people have less power than in many other democratic countries.
1, Symbolizing Judicial Tyranny (dombrowski)
If I don’t post something more “detached” today, I’m going to post the entire docket for Hal Richardson v. Claudine Dombrowski in the “Third Judicial Court of Public Access,” Kansas. Claudine has been in this system for 14 + years, and isn’t broken yet, though it’s making a good effort to do so to her. Her case also illustrates the cognitive dissonance between criminal and family law, and between family law as stated and as practiced. Not to mention what the U.S. is doing to the half of parenthood in the United States who are female. We are still fighting for recognition as human beings and thus covered under civil rights, due process, etc.
Even though I know so much about this case, it’s still possible to be entirely shocked at the behavior of the court and court personnel in it.
As summarized in a blog, August 1, this year
Judge James P. Buchele, who refused to permit adequate testimony at trial, shortening it to benefit his docket, and also ordered Claudine to move back to Topeka to live near Richardson, for the sake of their “co-parenting.” WHAT?! Richardson is a man with multiple criminal convictions for violent behavior (Battery, Attempted Battery, Battery of a Law Enforcement Officer, Obstruction of Legal Process, Possession of Marijuana and violation of Open Container law), a man who has beaten and raped Claudine multiple times before and after her divorce from him, a man who has threatened to kill her and her child.
Worse, Judge Buchele also ordered Claudine not to call the police any more without the permission of her case manager. When Judge James Buchele retired, Judge Richard D. Anderson affirmed Buchele’s previous orders, including the illegal prohibition on Claudine’s being able to call the police.As reported in Manhattan (KS) Free press, July 9 years ago (also see blog):
The divorce proceedings were extended for eighteen months. Throughout the proceedings Claudine’s attorneys filed numerous reports claiming violations of the restraining order and requesting an order to sever contact between Hal, Claudine and daughter Rikki.
The first involved an incident that both parties agreed in court happened, they just could not agree what happened. Claudine said she was hit in the head with a crow bar and Hal said it was a piece of wood. What ever he hit her with it took 24 stitches to close the head wounds.
At a hearing on June 17, 1996 Shawnee County District Court Judge Jan W. Leuenberger signed order giving custody of Rikki to Claudine and authorizing her to move to the Great Bend area so that “Ms. Dombrowski could avoid the history of physical and verbal abuse she had suffered from Mr. Richardson.”
In other words, were she not a mother, she would have the right to flee to protect her unalienable right to LIFE. However, unknown to her, other things had already been cooking in Congress around this time, which are mentioned below. In 1994 a little National Fatherhood Initiative had been formed. In 1995, then-President Clinton had issued his (in)famous Executive Order about Fathers. In 1996, we have Welfare Reform, some of the Congressional Testimony of which I posted recently and which is summarized below on a site calling itself “Progressive Policy.” I call it Regressive, because it results in cases like this. You can track the REgression in individual cases, and how it happened, through adding personnel besides the judge.
Hal was given supervised visitation
Why this Supervision shouldn’t have been done with him inside a jail cell, I just don’t “get.” Rikki must’ve seen her mother’s stitches — what message does that send to a young girl? It’s OK for fathers to beat up mothers, right? A family court judge will sweep up the evidence . Whistleblowers will be punished.
Reading on in the case, he WILL get even for even that restriction. A GAL will help, Scott MacKenzie (if I can keep the narrative straight who did what when….) In time — that’s how these things go — Supervised visitation will be switched to the mother. Then, her fight will be to get that UNsupervised. She will win that “privilege,” but apparently wasn’t docile enough, because she then loses all contact entirely for a while. It’s all in the record. Meanwhile, the various parties are REAL serious about getting the money she owes absolutely everyone for these types of “services.”
In Judge Buchele’s Orders after the trial he made it clear that he wanted more from this couple than what was possible. Here is what he wrote: “Mutual parental involvement with this child has been made worse by Ms. Dombrowski’s unilateral decision to move to Larned, Kansas in May of 1996. The distance between Topeka and Larned makes it virtually impossible for an individual treater to work with the family; for Mr. Richardson to have regular and frequent contact with this child; to establish any reasonable dialogue between the parents toward resolving their conflicts. The move from Topeka to Larned, due to the proximity of the parties, has lessened the physical violence. It has, however, done violence to the relationship of Rikki and her father. If long distance visitation is continued, in the Court’s view, will take its toll not only on Rikki but each of the parties. The Court specifically finds that separation of the child from either parent for long periods of time is harmful for a child of about three years of age.”
And THERE, “in a nutshell,” you have how a family law judge skillfully Re-frames the conversation and Re-Prioritizes it from safety to reconciliation. Better Claudine maybe die the next time than a father’s rights be conditioned upon not abusing them — or her. Sounds “squirrelly” to me. A woman gets temporary reprieve and safety, then this is reversed, and made worse. The decisions become more and more authoritative.
He then went on to require Claudine to move back to the Topeka area.
And then Judge Buchele made a judgment that some Manhattan attorneys say is not legal. Judge Buchele ordered: “Further, respondent (Claudine) is directed to not call law enforcement authorities to investigate the petitioner (Hal) without first consulting with the case manager.”
On December 14, 2000 after returning her daughter to her fathers home Claudine alleges that she was battered and raped by Hal. Under order not to call law enforcement authorities and with bleeding that would not stop, she drove to St. Marys, Kansas to get treatment. Claudine knew that if she had gone to a Topeka Hospital they would have called the police.
In St. Marys hospital officials did contact the Pottawatomie Sheriff and a report was made. She was advised that because the alleged event occurred in Shawnee County she would have to file there.
RIGHT THERE — is a typical “between a rock and a hard place” situation. I have experienced a modified situation, where I was so frightened, I drove, fast, to a police station in another city. They told me to go back to practically the scene of a stalking incident that had terrified me. There, I was treated abominably by officers, who refused to report, though dispatched to do so by the intake person who heard my voice; the incident was also witnessed by others, and signed letters are in the file.
Claudine had a choice of, NOT REPORTING, saving her own skin (to hell with her daughter) and just dealing with it. Supposed the injuries had been different and the bleeding faster, and she didn’t TRY to appease an outright vicious court order, but reported right in Topeka at first, and going straight from having wounds tended to, to jail (or soon thereafter) in contempt. She did what any mother would in a crisis — stop the bleeding, let the mandatory reporters (probably ) report, and go save her daughter.
Claudine said that because of the battery and rape she picked up Rikki the next day and did not return her.
Now, does that “revise” your opinion of what Sherriff’s Departments are in the business of?
The Shawnee County Sheriff’s Department was called and took Rikki back to Topeka. The court gave Hal custody and orders for her to attend Topeka schools.
As it stands now, [2001] Rikki is with her father in Topeka. Claudine gets two one-hour visits per week
Here is a link to that ex parte, JUDGE-initiated order (Neither party initiated it. The judge in this matter totally redefined his own role in the courtroom. This judge ain’t the only one around doing this.). Can you read it? The link is “scribd” and take a while to load. My computer is too slow today to load its 11 pp. Also, I’m curtailing my own commentary because even keystrokes are coming out one at a time, slowly. I can only fill up a short “buffer” zone, about 4 words, and then have to just wait for it to catch up.
Shawnee County District Court– Topeka, Kansas, 200 SE 7th Street 66603 Div 2 – Hon. Richard D. Anderson (785) 233-8200 Ext. 4350
Order without motion from either party WITHOUT Hearing on his OWN—I REPEAT on his own
Took my daughter and gave her to a KNOWN AND convicted Batterer and drug abuser AND CHILD RAPIST
Fast-forward 9 years or so. ..
By way of a 2007 Petition before the “Inter American Commission on HUMAN Rights” On Item 17 Courageous Kids personal stories, please read “Letter to IACHR by siblings” (#3 )here. These are 4 siblings now aged out of the system, detailing what happened when they called the cops, or ran away, what happened to their mother; how one girl was thrown out by her father and forced to live in a car for a while in retaliation. It’s only 3 pages. These are the types of fathers getting custody in this system.
THIS site has links to more details:
People are outraged everywhere. The last time 15 year old Rikki called to cancel her two hour Sunday visit she is allowed each week with her mother, she was crying on the phone and said she couldn’t come. Abuser WOS (waste of skin) Hal Richardson was yelling in the background, and Rikki cried more. Dear Claudine told her daughter it was okay, that everything would be okay. That was it. After that, not even a phone call to cancel, Hal Richardson failed to produce Rikki at the Topeka Police Station as he was ordered to do. Nothing. And the court let him get away with all 67 violations of this court order on August 20th when they went to court.
(the woman who writes this, above, herself lost contact with her own mother, a generation earlier).
(Compare, above, when Claudine “messed up” by going to a hospital, even though she attempted to go to the politically correct one, in 2000. I believe this was when she was punished for bleeding and trying to regain her child, by losing custody of her child then about-5-year-old daughter.)
Contrast this case history and pattern of bad ethics and decision-making with the more detached narratives, below.
2, Parental Bifurcation (2002 Georgetown article)
I decided to post two pieces (first — long / second – short) that talk openly about the social agenda in the family court/ family law arena. That SOCIAL AGENDA is what most offends me about the Family Law Process. Not its equally destructive consequences. What’s most offensive is how the process eradicates precious civil rights, that are encased in the documents foundational to our country. An elitist attitude and practice, that disdains these, needs to be dismantled. Instead, they have become increasingly blatant and oppressive (similar case, CA 2000/StopFamilyViolence.org site reporting).
[Criminal jury exonerates mother, after she was jailed, fleeing to protect her children. Ignoring this family law judge STILL leaves custody with the abusers, and mother has to pay to see her own children. This is how “supervised visitation” — marketed and sold to the public as protecting children from violent FATHERS, is being used to punish protective MOTHERS),]
even after people are dying as a consequence of bad custody calls (2 women and a man dead, Maricopa Co., AZ, 2009/StopFamilyViolence.org site reporting).
I hope the people I network with as well as visitors will download and read these. The first one may explain why so many of us are being treated dismissively and as silly putty to be stretched, bounced, and reformed in amusing or comical distortions that please the manipulators rather than acknowledging that they are of the same substance as us, as human beings, just occupying different seats in the room.
(1) BIFURCATION
in the Legal Regulation of Parenthood
This is 44+ screens long and from GeorgetownLaw; popped up under a search for “The Origin of Family Law.”
I look forward to reading the rest of it. The “bifurcation” around gender. You will see…
There are some misspellings on the website. Font changes are (most likely) mine. I am not indenting for the quote, and will put any comments in bullet form
Parenthood divided: A legal history of the bifurcated law of parental relations
INTRODUCTION
The American law of parent and child is conventionally understood to be extremely deferential to parental prerogatives and highly reluctant to intervene.1 But this picture, endorsed by legal authorities and popular commentators from the nineteenth century to the present day, reflects only one tradition in the law’s regulation of parenthood. Since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, {{1875-1900}}there has also been massive legal intervention into the parental relation. This second legal tradition, moreover, has been guided by norms wholly different from those conventionally associated with family law, often evincing a radical suspicion of parental autonomy and an eager willingness to reshape family relations.
.
A STARK DIVIDE IN THE LEGAL REGUALTION OF PARENTHOOD EMERGES IN LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA
The founding of the first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children marks a pivotal moment in the bifurcation of the law’s treatment of parental relations. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was established in New York City in 1874 by two elite reformers, Henry Bergh and Elbridge Gerry, who used the occasion of a celebrated case of physical violence against a child to create the first organization designed to combat “child cruelty” in the United States.7 Common law courts of the period staunchly protected the rights that parents in general and fathers in particular exercised over the custody and control of their children.
- SPCC formed by two elite reformers
- “the rights that parents in general and fathers in particular exercised. . . .”
8 But the New York society accorded almost no weight to the prerogatives of the parents it was concerned about, characterizing their connection to their children as little stronger than the ties of happenstance. Gerry explained at an organizational meeting in December 1874, for instance, that the society would “seek out and rescue from the dens and slums of the City the little unfortunates whose lives were rendered miserable by the system of cruelty and abuse which was constantly practiced upon them by the human brutes [their parents] who happened to possess the custody or control of them.”9 Describing the homes of cruel parents as “dens and slums” offered a key clue, of course, to the limits the New York society placed on its jurisdiction. From the start, it focused on families that had not been successful in the wage labor economy, operating on the principle that this economic failure had been caused by some crucial moral or character flaw.10
3, The 2nd prong of Fatherhood (2002 Progressive Policy-think)
(2) COMPLETION
of the Critical Job of Welfare Reform
And — what else — “promoting responsible fatherhood“
AND THIS from Progressive Policy Institute. BOTH of them let us know clearly that family law is a social engineering project. Too bad it says “law” on the outside which has other connotations to the unwary.
PPI | Policy Report | March 19, 2002
Promoting Responsible Fatherhood
Some Promising Strategies
By Megan Burns
One of the key successes of welfare reform has been in the increase of low-income single mothers in the labor force. Due in part to a strong economy and the 1996 welfare reform law, 16 percent more poor moms entered the labor force over the past six years. However, evidence suggests poor men did not fare as well. Because the first round of welfare reform required mothers to work, this next round should issue a similar challenge to fathers in order to help them become current and continue to pay child support.According to the Urban Institute, about two-thirds of the nearly 11 million American fathers who do not live with their children fail to pay child support.1 Therefore it is no surprise that children who grow up fatherless are five times more likely to be poor.2
This reasoning assumes that women who have left an abuser (which are among those numbers) cannot do better financially afterwards, or that women in general cannot do well alone — in short, it assumes a stable working wage. In 2002, I had tripled my working wage, and was doing better. But I had to use a nontraditional model of employment. This was not the model that welfare funnels women onto.
This 2002 report was also six years into welfare reform, and fails to account for cases like Dombrowski/Richardson, above, where (thanks go fathers’ rights movements and encouragements) cases STAY in the family law venue for years, impoverishing the family through ongoing litigation, and removing protection for the protective parents.
Social researchers also note that while women flooded the labor market, poor men did not. For example, during the 1990s, the labor force participation of young black women rose 18 percent, whereas the participation rate among low-income, non-college-educated black men actually fell by almost 10 percent.3
Well, now we have it clearly who welfare policies affecting all populations are aimed at. Supposedly.
In recent months, policymakers have increasingly begun to recognize that bringing fathers into the work-based system created by the 1996 law will be the next critical step in finishing the job of welfare reform. While “responsible fatherhood” programs have sprouted across the country, fatherhood and family formation promise to be central issues in the reauthorization of welfare reform legislation this year.
This type of discussion defines where income comes from — labor. However, that’s not at all where it comes from all the time. People who set policies KNOW this and they are not the chief laborers in question.
4. Jobs ain’t Wealth & Who Rules America (since we just saw how).
MOST people can find out the difference between wealth and income, or understand it (I believe) if someone engages in a discussion of it. The policymakers and the child support enforcement system are here to make sure that discussion never happens in any significant way. Here are a few links:
2003
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03interviewswolff.html
May 2003 – VOLUME 24 – NUMBER 5
The Wealth Divide
The Growing Gap in the United States
Between the Rich and the Rest
An Interview with Edward Wolff
Edward Wolff is a professor of economics at New York University. He is the author of Top Heavy: The Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America and What Can Be Done About It, as well as many other books and articles on economic and tax policy. He is managing editor of the Review of Income and Wealth.
In the United States, the richest 1 percent of households owns 38 percent of all wealth. Multinational Monitor: What is wealth?
Edward Wolff: Wealth is the stuff that people own. The main items are your home, other real estate, any small business you own, liquid assets like savings accounts, CDs and money market funds, bonds, other securities, stocks, and the cash surrender value of any life insurance you have. Those are the total assets someone owns. From that, you subtract debts. The main debt is mortgage debt on your home. Other kinds of debt include consumer loans, auto debt and the like. That difference is referred to as net worth, or just wealth.MM: Why is it important to think about wealth, as opposed just to income?
Wolff: Wealth provides another dimension of well-being. Two people who have the same income may not be as well off if one person has more wealth. If one person owns his home, for example, and the other person doesn’t, then he is better off.
2005
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/class_domination.html
Wealth, Income, and Power
by G. William Domhoff
September 2005 (updated July 2010)
This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we use these two distributions as power indicators.
This sociologist actually quotes Wolff, above.
The Wealth Distribution
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.7%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2010).
http://www.halfsigma.com/2005/05/class_vs_income.html
May 17, 2005
Class vs. income vs. wealth
Wealth is how much money you have, income is how much you earn, and class is how much other people think you have based on how you behave.
People often don’t realize class exists because most people only associate with people of their own class. They don’t comprehend that people from other classes behave and think in ways totally alien to them.
If people are aware of class, it’s only of the class directly below them whom they feel superior to. Yes, class has a lot to do with looking down at people, which is why it’s a topic that’s seldom talked about. It’s not politically correct to admit that you look down at people.
2008
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9611
Confusing Wealth and Income
by Richard W. Rahn
Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.
Added to cato.org on August 27, 2008
This article appeared in the Washington Times on August 27, 2008.
Which of the following families is “richer”? The first family consists of a wife who has recently become a medical doctor, and she makes $160,000 per year. Her husband is a small business entrepreneur who makes $110,000 per year, giving them a total family income of $270,000 per year. However, they are still paying off the loans the wife took out for medical school and the loans the husband took out to start his business, amounting to debts of $300,000. Their total assets are valued at $450,000; hence, their real net worth or wealth (the difference between gross assets and liabilities) is only $150,000.
The second family consists of a trial lawyer who took early retirement and his non-working wife. They have an annual income of $230,000, all of it derived from interest on tax-free municipal bonds they own. However, their net worth is $7 million, consisting of $5 million in bonds, a million-dollar home with no mortgage, and a million dollars in art work, home furnishings, automobiles and personal items
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Are Californians Dreaming? There’s no Duty to protect — see Appellate Decisions..
Writing the Luzerne, PA post brought this home (not to mention all the blood on the streets and in the home after protection from abuse orders get issued.”
Ignorance is not bliss. People were told recently that Knowledge is power to Demand Change.
I have recently acquired (belatedly) some knowledge, on which basis I SUGGEST that people thinking police have a duty to enforce anything or protect (though often they do, we are speaking legally, if they don’t). …Can you slap ’em with a lawsuit and demand consequences?
I doubt it. This post came up “automatically generated” —
Suggested reading! Think about Castle Rock v. Gonzales (plus hosts of Family Law cases — Dawn Axsom, in AZ, Joyce Murphy, etc.
“CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Police have no obligation to protect any individual from harm
By libertyfight
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it”. -Daniel Webster
Note: [Many thanks to the great website OUTLAW’S LEGAL, which sadly now appears to be defunct. I saved this information from them several years ago.]
CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Police have no obligation to protect any individual from harm
http://www.outlawslegal.com/G00/G07.htm
“Do you believe that law enforcement officers have a duty to protect you from harm?” Ask yourself that question, and, your answer is . . . . ?
That is a question I have frequently asked. The overwhelming majority of answers have been affirmative; ranging from “Yes.” to “That’s what they are paid to do!” The next logical question is “How can we be certain we know the correct answer?”
The correct answer is found in appellate court decisions. The following summaries of a few appellate court decisions will provide some insight into this area of the law. These example cases are from California – but understand that the police are not responsible for your individual safety in any state.”
“The administrator of the estate of Ruth Bunnell who had been killed by her estranged husband brought a wrongful death action against the city whose police department refused to respond to her call for protection some 45 minutes before her death. Mrs. Bunnell had called the police to report that Mack Bunnell had called saying he was on his way to her home to kill her. She was told to call back when Mack Bunnell arrived. The police had responded 20 times to her calls in the past year, and on one occasion, arrested her estranged husband for assaulting her. The Court of Appeal held that the police department and its employees enjoyed absolute immunity for failure to provide sufficient police protection. The allegations that the police had responded 20 times to her calls did not indicate that the police department had assumed any special relationship or duty toward her such as would remove its immunity. Hartzler v. City of San Jose (1975) 46 Cal.App.3d 6, 120 Cal.Rptr. 5”
“California Penal Code, section 693 provides:
Resistance to prevent the offense may be made by the party about to be injured: 1. To prevent an offense against his person, or his family, or some member thereof. 2. To prevent an illegal attempt by force to take or injure property in his lawful possession. (Enacted in 1872.)
California Penal Code, section 694 provides:
Any other person, in aid or defense of the person about to be injured, may make resistance sufficient to prevent that offense. (Enacted in 1872.)
Civil Code section 50, and Penal Code sections 692, 693 and 694 as quoted above are still in effect. I find those code sections, enacted in the early 1870′s, to be straight forward and easy to understand. They recognize the realities of life. Not all people are law abiding; and, law abiding people have the right to protect themselves and their property, and to come to the aid of others in need of assistance and protection from individuals committing the public offenses.
Today, unfortunately, that is not the current state of the law. Thousands of laws have been enacted since 1872 that have effectively denied any truly effective means of exercising the “inalienable rights” recognized in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution of the State of California, outside of the persons home, with only a few exceptions. The identified “need” for those laws has been “crime control”, but we have a much larger percentage of our population in jails and prisons now than ever before. A vastly larger percentage than in 1872, which is evidence that as government makes it more difficult for the law abiding individuals to protect themselves, they become victims of crime.
There are some people who are unwilling to accept the responsibility for protecting themselves from harm or injury, and advocate the philosophy of pacifism. However. pacifism has never been shown to deter crime. Exercise of your inalienable rights in Article I, Section 1, is not mandatory. You may refuse to defend yourself and exercise your right to be a victim.
I believe the correct answer to my original question is: Law enforcement officers do not have a duty to protect an individual from harm. That raises more questions that should be considered.
Why is the public so misinformed about such a fundamental issue involving public safety? What can be done to educate the public to the true facts on this issue to enable them to make informed decisions about their personal protection?
OUTLAWS LEGAL SERVICE invites ideas regarding solving this problem”
(I have no idea who they are)…
GET THIS ONE from DC:
http://www.users.fast.net/~behanna/kasler.html
“Warren v. District of Columbia is one of the leading cases of this type. Two women were upstairs in a townhouse when they heard their roommate, a third woman, being attacked downstairs by intruders. They phoned the police several times and were assured that officers were on the way. After about 30 minutes, when their roommate’s screams had stopped, they assumed the police had finally arrived. When the two women went downstairs they saw that in fact the police never came, but the intruders were still there. As the Warren court graphically states in the opinion: “For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of their attackers.” The three women sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them, but D.C.’s highest court exonerated the District and its police, saying that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.”[4] There are many similar cases with results to the same effect.[5] ” “The seminal case establishing the general rule that police have no duty under federal law to protect citizens is DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services[6]”
Per ALL these and MANY, MANY articles agrees with that LEO’s does NOT have to play nice and ALL your $$$ goes to Expensive Donuts.
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Reader Quiz — What Decade Were These Stories? About Fathers..
My last post (Luzerne County) was at least a triple-header, ending with some emotion over a mother of three who has taken her case to the international level in disgrace at the U.S. treatment of her civil rights.
I am changed as I blog also. Maybe it’s just another bunch of incidents to you, but to me, I learn and expand the context of this system, look at its history, reflect when compared with my immediate reality and acquired readings.
What I learned — yesterday — is this: Restraining orders are not enforceable, and probably never were. IF a police officer wishes to arrest, or needs to, the RO may make his job easier. But if he or she witnessed a violation of it, and does NOT wish to arrest, the protected person has no entitlement to that arrest, no matter whose life is at risk. Now that “Castle Rock v. Gonzales” has gone to the Supreme Court and been turned back, it is being quoted in similar cases to protect the officers (not the women or children). While most of government’s operations are self-justified on providing services and protection to the populace, who they are diligently training to expect this from them (and not from within or their local communities). This is closer to feudalism, serfdom, and monarchy.
U.S., Rome, or the British Empire?
It’s time to expose the truths that in the United States of America, and have moved from being “the colonies” (with the colonized populations that came along, or were removed from their lands during westward expansion) to being colonized (if not virtually cannibalized) by our own elected leaders, many who have some real “bad attitudes” towards those they are supposed to represent and serve. Power tends to congregate with power, and unless it’s kept in check, will simply continue to do so, justifying it with manipulation and manufactured “needs.”
- (#1) we are closer to monarchy then ever before, and willingly/passively in more denial of it also, and
- (#2) that this emperor has no clothes has been known for a long time; but the tacit “Bread-and-circuses” agreement to pretend we don’t know, is wearing as thin as the “social services” provided by the superstructure. and
- (#3) in a country such as the U.S., with this Constitution elected officials are sworn with an oath to uphold, the pretense that in practice we are actually OPERATING as a republic (not democracy) is even more deceptive.
Who has the bread, the weapons, and the supply lines to the decision-makers? Who’s issuing the propaganda? That’s the power base. As of about 1980, 1991 (creation of the Health & Human Services/Administration for Children and Families Dept./Operational Div. in the Executive Branch of Government of which the CEO is our President), the fields of propagation (family design) and the downward to Head Start & Home Visitation (education) up through university (foundations sponsoring studies and institutes, often regarding fatherhood and marriage, and the entire work force) have gone from idolizing motherhood (while tolerating beating mothers) and, in response to mothers getting OUT of some of that (feminism/violence against women movement, battered shelters, etc.) to scapegoating single mothers on welfare (for being on welfare), (see bottom of my post), to simply eliminating the word mother from association with the word “family” or “children.”
This is starting to resemble the planned production of human beings from womb to tomb, with the aide of pharmaceutics, apparently, and mental health professionals to categorize and drug the dissidents, which any mother in her right mind would be when she’s been beaten in the home, or terrorized there (or for attempting to leave it) and has noticed — which is what mothers do — the effect of this on her children. They are educated to subjugation and only to the level of their intended place in a fully managed society.
When I say “womb” to “tomb,” I do mean just that . . . . It’s being studied and categorized, and one major database is at ICPSR below. Fertility, lethality, and population studies in 3 urban centers (Chicago, Boston, San Antonia, TX).
Those “in” and cooperate on the planning and distribution of this will prosper, while the supply lasts, and receive government grants and contracts in abundance, which will then compromise them from informing the subject matter (human beings) what the overall plan is. For example
- HQ in Denver: PSI (“policy-studies.com” is the URL, “Performance, Services, Integrity” is the motto)
- Under Child Support Enforcement (one of the 3 major “solutions” area they outsource):
- Noncustodial Parent Programs (“Through our innovative approach, PSI can help increase your collections and improve results for families. Our NCP program expertise extends across the following areas”)
- Case management and community resource referrals
- Enhanced child support services
- Employment and training assistance
- Peer support for NCPs
- Parenting and conflict resolution classes
- Access and visitation services
- Mediation services
- Mental health and substance abuse referrals
- Legal referrals
- Noncustodial Parent Programs (“Through our innovative approach, PSI can help increase your collections and improve results for families. Our NCP program expertise extends across the following areas”)
- Under Child Support Enforcement (one of the 3 major “solutions” area they outsource):
- HQ in Los Angeles: AFCC (“Association of Family & Conciliation Courts“)
- AFCC brings together members of multiple disciplines in the public, private and nonprofit sectors, from all over the world. As a nonprofit professional association, AFCC is unique because members do not share a common profession. Instead, AFCC members share a strong commitment to education, innovation and collaboration in order to benefit communities, empower families and promote a healthy future for children.
- “History of Innovation and Positive Change”For more than 45 years, AFCC and its members have served as a catalyst for generating major reforms. Dispute resolution processes such as child custody mediation, parenting coordination, and divorce education are just a few of the innovative ideas developed by AFCC members. AFCC developed Models Standards of Practice for Family and Divorce Mediators, Child Custody Evaluators and Parenting Coordinators. Task forces and special projects address the ongoing challenges faced by AFCC members and the families they serve. AFCC actively disseminates innovations and ideas {“Parental Alienation, anyone? Mandatory mediation, anyone? Shared parenting, presumption anyone?”} to its members. The ripple effect can be seen in courts and communities throughout the world. {ONE of those stories I copy at length, below, in blue. The ripple effect was most definitely felt, and you can read about it, below.}
- HQ in Denver: what I call “CPR” (Center or Policy Research) [Since 1981, 6 women, only!]
- Childcare and Education;
- Child Support;
- Child Welfare;
- Court Services;
- Health and Medical Issues;
- Incarceration and Reentry;
- Mediation and Alternative Dispute Resolution;
- Fatherhood and Child Access;
- Poverty; and
- Violence and Intimate Partner Violence.
- (OH, and CPR’ssttreamlined connection Connection with Feds:likely HHS & DOJ depts:
- “To make contracting with CPR easier for federal government clients, CPR is a Management, Organizational and Business Improvement Services (MOBIS) and U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) contract”
- In Ann Arbor, MI: “ICPSR” (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, since 1962 ) Member universities/institutions HERE:
-
ICPSR partners with several federal statistical agencies and foundations to provide access to their data resources.
- search on CPR person “Jessica Pearson” – 1 study (listed below, this is link to it)
-
-
Study Design: Data collection involved a collaboration with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) in the administration and analysis of this survey. Court programs providing divorce mediation and/or custody evaluations in 1993 were targeted. The questionnaire was mailed in late 1993 to 200 institutional members of the AFCC and active providers of family and divorce services in the National Center for State Courts database. A total of 149 public-sector divorce mediation and custody/visitation counseling providers responded with information on their official policies and procedures for identifying domestic violence among the population served, and divorce mediation practices and policies in cases with allegations of spousal violence. Sample: Institutional members of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) and active family and divorce service providers from the National Center for State Courts database.
-
- search on CPR person “Thoennes” — 5 studies:
-
20358 Integrated Approaches to Manage Multi-Case Families in the Criminal Justice System in Maricopa County, Arizona, and Deschutes and Jackson Counties, Oregon, 1999-2005
Thoennes, Nancy2005
3142 Role of Stalking in Domestic Violence Crime Reports Generated by the Colorado Springs Police Department, 1998
Tjaden, Patricia; Thoennes, Nancy1998
2566 Violence and Threats of Violence Against Women and Men in the United States, 1994-1996
Tjaden, Patricia; Thoennes, Nancy1996
2561 Divorce Mediation and Domestic Violence in the United States, 1993
Pearson, Jessica1993
3542 Evaluating a Collaborative Intervention Between Health Care and Criminal Justice in Harris County, Texas, 2001-2002
McFarlane, Judith; Malecha, Ann2002
-
-
Did I mention that Jessica Pearson is also (per some sources) a founding member of the AFCC, if not also CRC?
- In fact AFCC, CRC, CPR, PSI, HHS funded studies, and conclusions that MOST of our nation’s real poverty, inner-city, crime & juvenile delinquency problems is simply the ration of sex/conception/marriage, i.e., too few fathers (as opposed to, poor-quality fathers) in the home, and that the solution to this is through seamlessly blending mental health services with child support services, with the legal process — tend to congregate around similar key players.
- Don’t believe me? See RandiJames’ “The List“ or Liz Richards pointing this out in 1993 “Fathers Rights and corrupt judicial cronies,” or again, in 2010, to the House Ways & Means Committee (found at House.gov, this committee, June 17, 2010 hearings, on left side), or an indignant “Fathers Battling Injustice” 2001 complaint “Liz Richards Hates Fathers with a Passion, which provides (if you scroll down) a good listing of key players and their interrelationships — including those on the CRC (Children’s Rights Council) 501(c)3 incorporation papers, and tying into others pushing mediation and Gardner’s “PAS” philosophies through the courts. I’ll try to upload that listing….
Around 1998, a disgruntled grandfather — and CPA — started tracking some of the founding documents of this AFCC, and has something to say about the money trail related to Jessica Pearson of CPR, and AFCC, who weems to be (with others) women of some real foresight and planning, and ingenuity in desgining systems — and evading tax accountability. THIS is listed UNDER “Is Justice for sale in L.A.” a.k.a. at “johnnypumphandle.com”
-
- :Mr. Bryer’s Tort Claim of 1998. You can hear his tone of indignation and upset, and he flat-out calls this Mafia, RICO, money-laundering, etc. The people he is talking about are listed in part, above. I doubt if he ever got justice, or compensation (let alone more discovery), but at least me blew the whistle!. People who want to “reform” the courts ought to at least read the material. OR, they could go back and try to reason more with a professional that may or may not be one of these type of conspirators from long ago. The system remains, I’m pretty well deducing at this point.
- Another take on AFCC et al.: He’s not talking psychology or sociology, but money, IRS, EIN#s and incorporations…
- DESCRIPTION: The ACCUSED ( by this complaint) are part of an underground of white collar criminals who are involved in the theft of CITY, COUNTY, STATE, and FEDERAL money. The scheme started before their time as an organization known as the CONFERENCE OF CONCILIATION COURTS. That organization changed its identity and assumed the name ASSOCIATION OF FAMILY CONCILIATION COURTS. Using various identity changes, the organization was listed in the LOS ANGELES SUPERVISORS DIRECTORY in 1993 as JUDGES TRUST FUND ACCOUNTING.The crime ring is an underground Mafia that posed as the COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES – by using the FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT IDENTIFICATION NUMBER 95-6000927. In recent dramatic announcements, the INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE has informed me that the EIN or FEIN number assigned to the latest version of the organization – the – LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT JUDGES ASSOCIATION – is an EIN that was not assigned to the organization. It Is a COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES EIN!
I previously attempted to get this discovery – in the lawsuit BRYER vs PENTONEY – but 298 judges and commissioners in LOS ANGELES were disqualified on a ruse orchestrated by JUDGE GARY KLAUSNER – a ring leader of the scheme. JUDGE GARY KLAUSNER’S name is on the signature card of BANK OF AMERICA account listed under the name LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT JUDGES ASSOCIATION EIN 95-6000927.
I was forced into the corrupt county – ORANGE COUNTY – where a co-conspirator named JAMES P. GRAY told me he would throw me in jail if I tried to make any more discoveries. FEARING FOR MY LIFE in a county that is FOREIGN to me – I dismissed my case without prejudice and continued to seek discovery away from the strength of ORANGE COUNTYCONCLUSION: My family and myself have been robbed of our money and our rights by a conspiracy that has operated since 1962. In 1962 a JUDGE NAMED ROGER ALTON PFAFF and his cohort – MEYER ELKIN. The association was called the CONFERENCE OF CONCILIATION COURTS. This association routed money through the LOS ANGELES COUNTY CONCILIATION COURT -111 North Hill Street, Los Angeles California, 90012, ROOM 241. In 1969 – the association incorporated and has NEVER PAID taxes. Assuming they used EIN 95-6000927 – then duping the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT was easy. In 1979 the corporation was suspended. There is no record that they surrendered their bank account or the EIN. In California – the organization filed as a CIVIC LEAGUE – Revenue and Tax Code 23701g. A CONCILIATION COURT is NOT A CIVIC LEAGUE. The exemption certificate was mailed to a lawyer named Michael Aaronson at P.O. Box 1055, San Carlos California 94070. The STATE 3500 papers states the organization was to improve marriage counseling. However, conciliation court is a STATUTORILY mandated function of the COURT – not a private corporation for lying and thieving judges and their court staff. The income was alleged to be derived from dues and contributions. In reality, the funds came from laundering legal education money through the COURT CONCILIATION DEPARTMENT through the FINANCE DEPARTMENT.
In an incredible BREACH – a Judge from Detroit Michigan was listed as the Second Vice President His name is Victor J. Baum. The corporation number is 576876. I have no record of what EIN they used.
In 1981 – I presume their bank account was still open and they created a new identity called the Association of Family Conciliation Courts. [CPR, above, dates to 1981 also as a nonprofit] This time – Margaret Little – FAMILY COURT SERVICES for LOS ANGELES, and a Colorado individual named Jessica Pearson orchestrated yet another version of the LOS ANGELES COUNTY COURTHOUSE SCHEME. Pearson borrowed the EIN of the WISCONSIN AFCC and claimed her office was in Colorado as an ILLINOIS corporation. The LOS ANGELES COUNTY COURTHOUSE became PEARSON’S and Dr MARGARET LITTLE’S California – FOREIGN – CORPORATION.
- (WI, Colorado, L.A. and IL if you can keep up with that…)
- I just found a strange, but possibly corroborating 1986 document, the “February 1986 Newsletter of the Alabama Court News, “Newsletter of the Alabama Judicial System” On page 3, it reads, under headline: “Federal Grant funds Sexual Abuse Study:
-
“The Research Unit of the …(AFCC) and the American Bar Association have been awarded a grant from the federal dept. of Human Development Services* to study sexual abuse allegations in divorce cases. The goal of the study is to find how court officials [such as…?] are presently handling such matters, identify preferred procedures, and develop educational materials on the subject.” “Court officials [sic] desiring to participate in the study should contact AFCC at the following address:
-
- Ms. Jessica Pearson
- AFCC/Research Unit, ?720 Emerson St. Denver, CO 80218
- (303) 837-1555
-
- [Wow… Preferred procedures for handling sexual abuse allegations in divorce cases, such as — Gardner’s theories? They want to educate judges how to rule?] Also – it says since 1981 — at that address:]
-
[*Note: the HUGE “HHS that now dispenses welfare, child support, medicare, head start funds, and sometimes is the largest (as to expenses) Exec Branch Dept — was formed in 1991, as I recall. This is 5 years earlier).
- DESCRIPTION: The ACCUSED ( by this complaint) are part of an underground of white collar criminals who are involved in the theft of CITY, COUNTY, STATE, and FEDERAL money. The scheme started before their time as an organization known as the CONFERENCE OF CONCILIATION COURTS. That organization changed its identity and assumed the name ASSOCIATION OF FAMILY CONCILIATION COURTS. Using various identity changes, the organization was listed in the LOS ANGELES SUPERVISORS DIRECTORY in 1993 as JUDGES TRUST FUND ACCOUNTING.The crime ring is an underground Mafia that posed as the COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES – by using the FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT IDENTIFICATION NUMBER 95-6000927. In recent dramatic announcements, the INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE has informed me that the EIN or FEIN number assigned to the latest version of the organization – the – LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT JUDGES ASSOCIATION – is an EIN that was not assigned to the organization. It Is a COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES EIN!
- In fact the information arm is one of the most important, to quell rebellion before it gets going.
Maybe Rome went down because of lead in the pipes, or maybe some “karma” (or god) just got sick of all the slaughter for entertainment. Ever read about what happened in that Colosseum?
Back to this millennium — and the last decades
of the last one (1980-2010). In re: marriage, abuse, divorce, custody..
And the concept of “protection from abuse” or “restraining orders” as if they were NOT certifiably insane, as to fulfilling their supposed purpose of protecting or restraining.
While the literature tends to focus on, “it’s just a piece of paper and can’t stop a bullet,” the ones we REALLY can’t count on are the arresting officers. It’s an additional component of Russian Roulette that a woman can’t afford. And suing for any sort of damages on the basis of, they had a duty to protect, a procedural due process right to the victim, a substantive due process right to the victim, or in short, any consequences that “absolute judicial immunity” or the 11th amendment wouldn’t make LEGALLY protected (let alone the practical aspects) — they don’t, and probably never did.
Some judges are crooked — I don’t know how many. Some attorneys are also, and get nailed on RICO like the Luzerne judges did, RICO (“Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations“) being a criminal enterprise. There’s a case I may post out of suburban Chicago (older) where the husband (an attorney) did murder for hire, but not until he’d conspired in advance to wire-tap (jealous), someone had been prepared to dispose of the body (i.e., of his wife) and someone had been prepared to obstruct the investigation. (Alan & Dianne G. Masters, West Suburban Chicago, 1982 she disappears~ 1988 RICO charges)
As RICO does require some organizational skills, and Masters had already been engaged in other forms of crime, all the players to add murder-for-hire to this were in place, and he didn’t resist the temptation to engage, showing us to drop our illusions that every person in public office, or in positions of power, influence, and with access to streams of $$ isn’t per se there for service. Some are, some aren’t. And the ones that aren’t would be normally attracted to people in compromised situations (like a troublesome traffic ticket, an illegal enterprise of their own, or divorcing with children from a frighteningly dangerous spouse who’s already committed some crimes against your body, or your child’s). This attorney was acting more like a pimp with a stable, and some affiliate marekting reps in uniform. Maybe he liked the thrill of the danger and risk (one sees definite business skills that migh twork just as well in legal activities) or maybe it was simple greed.
It didn’t save her life, and no one was ever charged for murder, but the three “perps” got caught on racketeering and put away for a good many years, and fined. Oh yeah, and he had a $100,000 life insurance policy on his wife also.
So are some officers. And some are good. – – – – that’s just life. Why, then, (though) when women come for help, were they then (1990s) and now (2000s) doling out protection from abuse orders as if they were reliably enforceable? They aren’t. They’re real good at getting men angry though.
~ ~ ~ ~I can’t put my story up (or too much of it). But it’s been so many years in this system here. My infrastructure is repeatedly broken down, year after year, and access to things like transportation, (sometimes food), internet, health care (uninsured presently) just shouldn’t be.
~ ~ ~ ~If you have not been in a situation similar to the one I’m about to post (the part below is summary of her judicial proceedings after deciding to leave– having gotten a real severe beating (while naked), a threat for another, having had a young daughter molested by a visiting stepson, her husband was no inner city young black male, but a nasty computer analyst who’d (it turned out) abused his first wife, too.
~ ~ ~ ~Sleep deprivation is a factor and technique of weakening someone (I know). Attack on personal private parts (ditto). Rules almost uniformly designed to remove one’s humanity, with severe punishment for falling short (and they’re impossible to fulfil) with no rule for him. . . . .Having to choose which child you can do more to protect, potentially sacrificing something important for the other. Having your strength or skills as a professional work against you post-divorce. Historic revisionism (no remorse or acknowledgement of injury, and of course the father was the real caretaker all those years). Health care professionals treating injuries and not really asking questions. Your kids watching the assaults.
I’ll pick up this story mid-stream. See if you recognize the characters: judge, psychologists, attorneys (#1, 2, and 3), theme of supervised visitation, and her knowledge that if she requested it, he’d go for custody, professionals continually minimizing the situation and playing their own games . . . all too familiar.
I want to say something about “stories.” THEY HELPED ME while I was in the abusive relationship. One of the cruelest things is the isolation and dealing with the man’s anger when he perceives you may be connecting with someone who might validate or connect with you, and to whom you might report. You might get out, but there also may (or may not) be retaliation for doing so. Or you might be put through hell beforehand, so you get out, in public, in trauma, shaking, or in shock. One trick pulled frequently in our home (with kids) was I’d have enough gas in the car to get there (when a car was available) but not enough to get back. Hearing of women who got out HELPED me. If nothing else, to feel less guilty.
I pick up the story mid-stream, and admit that I am exhausted today.
Overall, I found the lawyers and psychologists very self–promoting and egotistical. It seemed as if everyone was having a good time, playing the game of litigation and psychology. All the while, my life was on the line. My children and I did not matter. I also felt like the lawyers and psychologists were running a cash register business at my expense. They were a lot more interested in my money than my welfare. The first two years of my divorce proceedings cost me more than twenty–five thousand dollars.
As incredible as it might sound, the judge who heard my custody case had an outstanding protective order against him by his ex–wife. I also sensed very strongly that the judge did not like me. For these reasons, I told my lawyer I wanted to seek the judge’s recusal. My lawyer dismissed me, saying, “You’ll just get someone worse.”
@ @ @ @ @Z
I probably never would have gotten Daniel back, except that Russ’s live–in girlfriend (with whom he is still living) contacted the children’s psychologist to report that he was abusing Daniel. This was four or five months after Russ had gained custody of Daniel. I think the girlfriend made her revelation partly because I had told her that Russ was planning to seek full custody of Elizabeth, too. Russ was not really taking care of the kids; the girlfriend was. When she learned that he would be going after Elizabeth too, she said, “WHAT???!!!” I think she cared about the children and knew that Russ’s having custody would be harmful and dangerous for them, plus, I doubt she was interested in being the caretaker for both kids.
After learning about Russ’s abuse of Daniel, I immediately went to my lawyer (Lawyer #3), demanding an immediate petition for a change of custody. He said we could not seek a modification of custody because it was too soon. He said, “Let the ink dry on the judge’s custody order.” That was the last straw and I fired him.
I got a new lawyer and a new psychologist. I recorded a telephone conversation with Russ’s girlfriend about the abuse of Daniel. Russ’s girlfriend was subpoenaed, and because of the recording, I knew––and Russ knew––that the abuse of Daniel would come out. Even if Russ intimidated her into changing her testimony, I think he knew that the tape was credible.
Faced with a situation he could not win, Russ folded. He agreed to a modification and I regained custody of Daniel. I grabbed at the chance to get custody back, even though I had to agree that Russ could have unsupervised visitation with the children. I knew Russ would never agree to supervised visitation. I did not want, and could not pay for, another long, drawn–out battle in court. Besides, based on what I had seen, I did not want to risk what a judge might do.
As far as I am concerned, Russ agreed to the change of custody to save face. No one in authority ever held him accountable for his abuse. People in authority, like the judge and the psychologists, always supported him and held a good opinion of him. Russ wanted to maintain his good image at all costs. By giving up custody of Daniel without a fight, he could avoid the public humiliation of being outed as an abuser.
He portrayed the custody change to the children as a sacrifice he was making because he loved them so much. “This is what’s best for you,” he said. Once again, he took no responsibility for doing anything wrong in abusing Daniel. He showed no remorse.
Even after I had custody of both kids, Russ continued to engage in repeated violations of my protective order through phone harassment and stalking. Additionally, his son, Chip, was there unsupervised when the kids visited Russ. Apparently, though, Chip did not abuse either child further.
@ @ @ @
C. Attitudes Need to Change More than the Law
Domestic violence law is certainly far better than it has been in the past. We have seen progress in the legislative, [77] judicial, [78] and executive [79] arenas. Positive legislative reform is on–going, though there is a backlash as well, driven primarily by the Fathers’ Rights movement. [80]
Changes in the law are important. With better law, good people (judges, police, etc.) can do more and bad ones are limited in the harm they can cause. Law can also have an educational effect. A judge or police officer who initially resists laws and policies that are appropriate for domestic violence cases may ultimately come to see their value.
Mary’s story shows, however, that the primary problem is not with the law but with the human beings who interpret and administer it. The legal system betrayed Mary, but not because it lacked the power to act differently. The judges, psychologists, and lawyers could have protected Mary and her children. They could have understood woman battering, or made a point of educating themselves about it. They could have let go of their stereotypes about what batterers and their victims “look like” and how they act. They could have reexamined their values, under which abuse of Mom is irrelevant to Dad’s fitness as a parent. The list continues indefinitely.
Mary’s custody judge easily had the power to find that full custody with Mary was in the children’s “best interest” [81] and that Russ’s visitation had to be supervised. [82] The judge could have warned Russ, not Mary, that he had to be on his best behavior or he would lose even supervised visitation. The judge could have ordered Russ to undergo batterers’ counseling as a precondition for even supervised visitation. [83]
My point is simple: this did not have to happen. Without in any way ignoring or bending the law, Mary, the children––and Russ––could have been dealt with appropriately. Mary and her children, especially Daniel, may pay for the system’s sexism, ignorance, and indifference for a lifetime. And, as Mary says, society pays too when the aftermath of abuse spills out, as it often will, beyond the family.
@ @ @ @
F. Any “Solution” Not Based on Battered Women’s Experiences
Is Doomed to Failure
We cannot know what to do about domestic violence unless we listen to survivors’ stories. In them are the keys to solutions. Battered women and formerly battered women are telling us what works and what does not. People with professional training can help, but only if their actions and recommendations are based on what battered women and formerly battered women say. [116]
Women like Mary tell us that mediation, joint custody, and couples counseling can be terrible for battered women, [117] yet certain professionals continue to advocate for these things in domestic violence cases. [118] Their arguments, however, are from the viewpoint of the mediator or the system, not the battered woman and her children. [119] Women’s safety concerns are either not addressed or minimized. [120]
Proponents of mediation in domestic violence cases express a near–magical belief in mediation and mediators. They believe that the mediator can tell when mediation is not appropriate or when it should be stopped [121] (another example of the helper’s ego surfacing). Sadly, the only expertise that seems to count is the mediator’s. Battered women’s expertise does not seem to matter. [122]
Sometimes, it seems that battered women’s voices are getting more and more lost. The field has become professionalized, [123] semi–respectable, [124] and partially funded. [125] There has been a parallel tendency to turn the focus away from the victims and toward the professionals. [126]
I do not want to be misunderstood here. I have absolutely no nostalgia for the “good old days” when shelters did not exist or led threadbare existences, and when a professor who wanted to teach Domestic Violence would have been laughed off campus. I have been doing domestic violence work far too long for such foolishness. I relish the voice, the power, and even the respectability that our movement has achieved. But people who really care about battered women must remain ever vigilant against those whose solutions come from their own professional experience and not from victims’ lives.
@ @ @
As a mother and wife, I absolutely agree that families need rules. Nothing is sadder than a house where “anything goes” and there are no rules; everyone is unhappy, especially the children. [131] Nor do I think that every rule, even if somewhat imposed by one family member over others, is abusive.
But rules are different in a batterer’s house. They are never negotiated; they are always imposed. [132] And rulemaking is a one–way street: the batterer sets rules for other family members, while he does exactly as he pleases. [133] Russ ordered Mary not to watch comedies on television, just as he announced that he was quitting his job. Mary knew that even suggesting alternatives might result in violence. But Russ could be away for days at a time, and Mary was not to question his actions.
The rules in a batterer’s house are not just for his comfort and enjoyment. They are an integral part of his plan to control and isolate his partner. [134] As Mary said, the rule about no comedies on television meant she could not exercise her sense of humor, an important part of her self–image. Batterer’s rules also control matters such as whether and when she can leave the house, and how she can spend money. [135] Many rules reinforce the victim’s isolation, such as rules about not having any of her friends over or going out with other people after work. [136][137] She might hear something that made her feel good while listening to the radio, or she might hear a description of domestic violence and recognize herself and start planning her escape. Looking out at the world from her kitchen window (or having someone else look in and see what was going on) might decrease her isolation. Even “little” rules, like “don’t play the radio when I’m gone” and “keep the curtain in the kitchen down” are part of an overall pattern of isolation.
In the functional family, rules are negotiated and renegotiated. [138] One partner may give in to the other, but both partners engage in some give and take. The rules may not fulfill everyone’s needs, but they do not destroy family members’ self–esteem either. [139] In functional families, people are basically satisfied with the rules. [140]
Second, the batterer’s list of rules is ridiculously long and ever expanding and changing. [141] While his partner and children are struggling to comply with his existing demands, new and often contradictory rules are added. [142] This again is in marked contrast with the non–abusive “dinner at six” dad. We have all known non–abusive families where one member (usually, but not always, the father) must be catered to, but his demands are limited and stable. Further, the demanding but non–abusive family member is capable of being satisfied. “Just feed him on time and he’s a happy man” is not something an abused wife would say.
Finally, there is the punishment imposed for non–compliance with rules. [143] The non–abusive man does not beat or rape his wife or children if dinner is not on the table at six. He may pout for a while, or whine, he may even occasionally yell. His reaction may be unhealthy, but the other family members do not live in terror of what will happen if the rules are not met.
Identification protocols for battered women should include questions about rulemaking. [144] Something like this would be good: “Every household has rules under which it operates. Tell me about the ones in your house. What are the rules? How are they established? What happens when they’re not met?” With a sympathetic ear and a little prodding, a battered woman may quickly identify a long list of onerous and changing rules, imposed by the abuser and ruthlessly enforced by him. [145] If she is still in the relationship, or just getting out, she may describe the rules matter–of–factly, and may consider them normal. [146] One advantage of asking about the rules is that she may talk about them much more readily and with less shame than about the violence she has experienced. [147]
H. How Physical and Non–Physical Abuse Work Together:
Why Do We See It as Torture When [XxxxxXxxx] Generals Do It,
But Not When It’s the Guy Next Door?
People are still very ignorant about domestic violence and how it works. If you talk to people and read news reports, the emphasis is always on physical violence. [148] Mary encountered this ignorance when the psychologists, judges, and lawyers minimized her danger because the last severe beating occurred a year and a half before Mary left Russ for good.
~ ~ ~ ~
In other settings, we are well aware of how torturers combine physical and mental abuse to get and keep power over their victims. [154] Appendix B is one of my favorite charts, adapted from Ann Jones’s book Next Time, She’ll Be Dead. [155] In the left–hand column are non–physical torture methods that Amnesty International has recognized and cata
logued. [156] Totalitarian regimes often use these techniques against political prisoners. [157] In the right–hand column are battered women’s descriptions of how their batterers used these same techniques to control them. [158] I have added some examples from Mary’s story to what appears in Jones’s book.
Those who work with battered women must understand the interplay of physical and non–physical abuse. When seen in context, a “slap” is not just a “slap”; it is a warning that the victim must comply with the batterer’s demands “or else.” Repeated phone calls to her at work are not just a sign of a little insecurity. They are part of an overall scheme of isolation and control. Busting up the furniture at home, or throwing the cat against the wall are not unfortunate temper tantrums; they say, “you could be next.” [159]
We should recognize domestic violence as the human rights violation it is. [160] We should draw analogies between domestic violence and torture, [161] to kidnappers and hostages. [162]
READER QUIZ: WHAT YEAR WAS THAT STORY ?
(hover cursor above to find the copyright and which attorney related the story).
Hover over THIS and I’ll tell you when this woman married & got her RO.
It could’ve been a decade later, and wouldn’t have read much different. I found this story after, with curiosity, searching on the man who wrote the article below. I hope readers may go back (click on this link, the “READER QUIZ” link) and actually read Mary’s Story, which was an actual case (name changed), and too damn typical. I doubt a person who has experienced abuse would respond the same as one who hasn’t.
NOW, for comic relief, of the monotous drone of fatherlessness being the nation’s crisis (and we have JUST the solution to fix it . . . . ).
Fall of marriage seen linked to decline in domestic murders Drop in homicides called ‘ironic benefit’ of change
The decline of marriage and the breakdown of stable relationships have produced a paradoxical benefit: Domestic murders have declined, with the most dramatic reductions among African- Americans, a University of Missouri criminologist reported yesterday.
“We’re living at a time of dramatic changes in marriage, intimate relationships and family structure,” said Richard Rosenfeld, speaking in Baltimore at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Those changes have had an ironic benefit in reducing the number of intimate-partner homicides.”
Dr. Rosenfeld’s findings are the flip side of the much-reported increase in young men killing young men, which he said may be attributed in part to similar factors — family instability and lack of supervision by harried single parents
READER QUIZ — WHAT YEAR WAS THIS ARTICLE (ABOVE)?
(author date & cite show when cursor hovers over link)
OK, now that you know when Dr. Rosenfled (a criminologist, not a PSYchologist) found out that the decline in marriage rates among African Americans meant reduced DV homicides among African Americans (although young men were killing each other more, they weren’t apparently killing so many wives or “intimate partners.” )
Let’s say what the head-honcho elected mostly white men were saying about the same year:
I searched the 104th Congress (1995-1996) for the word “fatherless.”
As we know, fatherlessness has been for so long blamed on the nation’s troubles that you can barely walk somewhere in a government agency, or any social service community agency (after you come back from either a Catholic church, where the (celibate?) priests are called “Father” in direct disobedience to Jesus’s command in the gospels, “call no man Father.” Or, an evangelical Protestant, not quite mainline (or, megachurch) where, after the ranks were being drained to women, they are adding testosterone to the doctrine, and teaching men to be more sensitive (in men’s groups, of course).
If you want to go without the straight-up religious variety, there’s always “The Mankind Project” and one can get a seminar of the Robert Bly type. There are fatherhood practitioners everywhere one looks, practically.
All I really wanted was the conversation where a legislator expresses shock and dismay that African American boys and girls are waking up on homes without their fathers. (NOTE: The “Mary” story above happened in the late 1980s, and HER 3 kids were waking up with their father in the home. In fact, her little girl Elizabeth, at age 3, had gotten an early introduction to sex when her stepbrother came there for the summer and molested her, after which her mother had another job of making sure they weren’t left alone together. (That couple were white and suburban, so maybe they didn’t count in this topic).
I got a little more than I expected in this 104th Congressional record:
Beginning
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK OPPORTUNITY RECONCILIATION ACT OF 1996–CONFERENCE REPORT
I met a man who was an administrator of one of the hospitals in my community in the 15th District of Florida, and this gentleman told me that, before he had moved to Florida, he had lived in Oklahoma, and he had taken part in a program where he would go into inner city housing projects and read to young children in those projects. This program started because it has been shown in research studies that, if you read to a child, you can improve their reading score. Actually there are some studies that show that, if you read to a child, you may actually be able to raise their IQ slightly, {{Noble cause. Some Oklahoman going to raise inner city kids’ IQs}} and he told me something that I will never forget.
So this anecdotal evidence of an unnamed Florida Hospital Administrator, about (how many years previous?) that administrator going into the projects (hence, he wasn’t from them) was not 2nd-hand but 3rd-hand hearsay — if the event ever indeed happened. The impassioned delivery is to state how Welfare is Cruel — listen up how this is done:
He was going into those projects and reading to those kids, and those children were, by and large, children of single parents on welfare, and he would ask, many of them 5, 6 and 7-year-old children, `What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And, yes, some of them would say I want to be a fireman or a nurse, but some of them would say:
`I don’t want to work. I want to collect a check.’
Not all of them wanted to be firemen or nurses (separate by gender; I don’t know how many female fire”men” there are these days, but we know there are lots of male nurses… And probably were in 1996, too..)
Mr. Speaker, a program that does that to millions of children is not a program of compassion and caring to children. It is a program that is cruel and mean spirited to children.
Here’s the process — a man in Florida heard a man in Florida talk about his experience trying to improve the iQ of little kids in the projects (did he talk to their Mamas?) in Oklahoma, and concludes that (although even in the story some WANTED a profession, others wanted a check) FEEDING such children was mean-spirited and cruel…
Today a young male being born to a mother, a single mother on welfare in the United States, has a greater likelihood of ending up on drugs or in the penitentiary than graduating from high school.
I showed in “Luzerne County” that you don’t have to be poor or (presumable here) black to be a crook. There’s a difference between being a crook and actually being jailed for it. It should be common knowledge now, and I bet then (1996) that America, being the largest jailor (per capita) has those jails disproportionately filled with black males. Some of them got their assaulting their mother’s attacker, too. He’s taking two statistics (if that) and creating a CASUAL connection rather than a CAUSAL one. Of course, how many poor black males — or females of any social status or color — were there in Congress in 1996 to comment on his reasoning process?
And the young females, (single mothers have both boys and girls, right?) — are THEY ending up on drugs or in jail?
The problem that we have with illegitimacy in our Nation today is a problem that has been created by the program that we are trying to change, and you cannot fix this problem by tinkering around the edges. The illegitimacy rate in this country has gone up from 5 percent to almost 25 percent in the white community. In the black community it has gone from less than 25 percent to, in some areas, as high as 70 percent.
If you look at what correlates best, what correlates in communities with problems like teenage pregnancy, drug use, illiteracy, juvenile crime, the thing that correlates best in those problems in those communities, Mr. Speaker, is the amount of illegitimacy, the amount of fatherlessness in those communities. A program that perpetuates and cultivates things like this is a cruel and mean-spirited program, and that program needs to be changed, and our bill makes a serious attempt at doing that.
We are not talking about tinkering around the edges. We are talking about promoting family unity, discouraging teen-age pregnancy and illegitimacy.
The fact that this program perpetuates it, Mr. Speaker, was driven home to me when I was a medical student working in an inner-city obstetrics clinic, and I had a 15-year-old girl come in to see me who was pregnant, and I had never seen this before, and I was so upset. I was grieved to see this. I looked at her and said her life is ruined, she cannot go to college, and I said to her, `How did this happen, why did this happen,’ and she looked up to me and told me that she did it deliberately because she wanted to get out from under her mother in the project, and she wanted her own place and her own welfare check.
Again, on the outside looking in, and one anecdote.
This program needs to stop. The people have asked for it; we are trying to deliver.
WHICH people? I mean, these are elected representatives, are they really speaking for their constituents?
Mr. Speaker, I encourage the Members of the minority to stop their partisan rhetoric and join with us in reforming welfare and creating a program for the poor and the needy that strengthens family, does not undermine them, that strengthens the bonds of marriage, because it is strong families that make strong communities that makes strong nations, and our Nation cannot survive with a perpetuation of a program like this.
Is it the lack of marriage, or the lack of fathers that counts? Because I tell you one thing that makes lack of fathers — WARS. Another thing that previously, broke up families in a callous manner is called slavery.
Who created ghettoes? Who created the two-tier school system, good for some lousy for others (a factor to this date). Who directed one populace into “jobs” and the others (elite ones) into how to run businesses and understand investments, political connections, foundations, and skills that would go along with that goal?
So if you want to know how much we (we WHO???) have invested in the old welfare program over the past 30 years, it is roughly the equivalent of the value of all buildings, all plants and equipment, and all of the tools of all the workers in the United States of America. No society in history has ever invested more money trying to help needy people than the United States of America has invested.
Yet, what has been the result of all of those good intentions? What has been the result of that investment? The result of that investment, 30 years later, is that we have as many poor people today as we had 30 years ago. They are poorer today, they are more dependent on the Government today, and by any definition of quality of life, fulfillment, or happiness, people are worse off today than they were when we started the current welfare system.
When we started the War on Poverty {{and another war in Southeast Asia to follow up on the Korean war I guess}} in the mid-1960s, two-parent families were the norm in poor families in America. Today, two-parent families are the exception. Since 1965, the illegitimacy rate has tripled.
I know that we have colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are going to lament the passage of this new welfare reform bill. But I do not see how anybody with a straight face, or a clear conscience, can defend the status quo in welfare. Our current welfare program has failed. It has driven fathers out of the household. It has made mothers dependent. It has taken away people’s dignity. It has bred child abuse and neglect, and filled the streets of our cities with crime. And we are here today to change it.
Grammar: Is this guy going to “own” the welfare program, or objectify it? First it was guilt trip, “we have created” and net thing it’s got an independent life, like a disease, perpetuating itself of its own accord, where it can be separated from the rhetorical bosom of the speaker, and be viewed running around tearing up the place. As an “it” it can now have stones thrown at IT first. And after the vivid picture of 5, 6 , 7 year olds wanting to collect a welfare check (“millions of them”) (Seriously, that’s the subliminal message — guilt trip first, it’s ours” and then relieve the guilt by blaming the same thing “we” created, and QUICK, call to action.….) Some action is needed to take away
Let me outline what our program does. I think if each of us looks back to a period when our ancestors first came to America, or back to a time when those who have gone before us found themselves poor, we are going to find that there are two things that get individuals and nations out of poverty. Those two things are work and family. I think it is instructive to note that those are the two things that we have never applied to the current welfare program of the United States of America.
This man seems totally unconscious of the fact that SOME ancestors came to America in the bottom of a slave ship; that a lot of wealth, including likely some of the wealth that helped put people in Congress, came from came from businesses that included plantation labor, sweat shops, and some very, very hard work. When he says “us” as to doling out benefits, he also seems to have forgotten that those taxes came from employees’ wages, courtesy a few reforms dating back to 1939. He seems to have forgotten everything about “Jim Crow” and era of attempting to turn back the clock on some serious industriousness by freed slaves.
The bill before us asks people to work. It says that able-bodied men and women will be required to work in order to receive benefits. It sets a time limit so that people cannot make welfare a way of life. It seeks to change the incentives within the welfare system. And I believe the time has come to change those incentives within the welfare system.
I admit I’m maybe sensitive to this because I know HOW HARD I worked over the years, and none harder than while in a battering relationship that could’ve been a variety of the one above (but a decade later). This relationship, within marriage shouldn’t be happening any more in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, or 2000s, but it is.
Family Court Systems Purposefully Mask Abuse and Abusers
(SEPARATE TOPIC, above)) just saving the link).
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
Gulag Archipelago, Bahrain Archipelago — Systems to Silence Dissent
with 7 comments
LET’s TALK “ARCHIPELAGO”
I often call the Family Law system an “Archipelago,” referring to the networked system that ensnares families.
My other, kind of ridiculous analogy, includes the Giant Squid, lurking in the depths, but with many tentacles, and the nightmare of a ship at sea and sailors’ dreams. When you experience multiple tentacles through this system, the only way to mentally/emotionally grasp the whole is by flexible imagery, it’s a SENSING.
Just in case, someone missed the reference:
AND
You see that “instrument of survival…” — you see this blog, the some of the links on my blogroll, others in this system? This current system doesn’t compare — I THINK — but it sure is headed that way, and becoming an ACCEPTED practice in the USA and overseas, Thought Police is no joke, really.
You cannot help a situation you can’t stomach even being aware of, naming, or seeing. This is how much abuse gets ignored. There’s an innate alienation to emotionally protect onesself from the (truth) that the world just ain’t fair, AND that “time and chance happen to us all.” No, it must have been something about the victim’s fault, and the “But that’s THEM, and not US” scenarios kicks in, even when it’s someone close to the person. I understand this. It’s a daily balance from being paralyzed by awareness of what DOES and CAN happen, right here, now (not referring to this historical piece) and from realizing that one’s conscience canNOT accept a “back to business as normal,” again.
WIKIPEDIA contributes — and would I miss a chance to mention this? Of course not.
He was raised without a father. Must’ve been at risk of a horrible life because of that (and not wars, political changes, or purges. No, healthy families have two parents. WELL then, with this formula, how does one explain such an author? Or is there ANOTHER reason for this policy in the US, and the Family Court Archipelago here, and overseas?
In the BAHRAIN ARCHIPELAGO (physical island chain)
Human Rights Issues in a small island nation:
Yesterday’s post blogged a custody case of a woman and child from Arizona trapped in Bahrain in a custody dispute. Bahrain is an “archipelago.” I showed the NASA photo, and found multiple Human Rights Watch articles on Woman and Child Abuse there. Portugal and Great Britain had their time in its history, divisions between Shi’ite majority and Sunni minority reverse (from what I can tell) the rest of the world’s status, and women only got the vote in 2002. It’s considered more liberal than some of it’s neighbors, and is home to what will be (is?) the WORLD’s longest bridge, from Qatar peninsula to the tiny Bahrain main island. Not the best place for a foreign-born woman to be trapped in a custody dispute!
HERE is an article “Women Don’t Need to Accept Polygamy” (currently that doesn’t seem true, but it presents issues)
And Amnesty International Documented in 1994-1996, increasing abuse of women and children in suppressing civil unrest:
A number of them were subjected to beatings and threats for allegedly [1] having participated in demonstrations or [2] for attempting to prevent the arrest of their male relatives. Some women were arrested and held as hostages in order [3] to coerce male relatives to hand themselves over to the authorities, while others were detained [4] apparently as a punishment for the opposition activities of their male relatives, who were either detained or had evaded arrest. It would appear that some women were also detained [5] in order to deter other women from joining public protests.”
{{Pause to reread the above paragraph — the various PURPOSES for beating and threatening these women. It didn’t always even related to anything they personally had done.}
EVERYCULTURE.COM:
What about Here? What about, now, today, the U.S.A. — are we an island in the world, with our Bill of Rights and Constitution, and legislative, judicial, executive branches of government, and just a bit of distance between the states and the feds? (less and less so each administration….). Do we have ROYALTY? Do we have RIGHTS?
Define “we.”
TheLoop21.com
I decided to look up this CCA, and found a 2000 “CORPWATCH” article that calls the Private Prison Complex a “Gulag.”
Note: My laptop is slow, and frequently loses text before it’s saved. This is exceptionally frustrating — yesterday, I lost probably 2 hours of work, background on Bahrain — which is why it’s on today’s post. The other part of the word “wait” is some days, simply watching a little “processing” symbol spin around and load a page. Graphics rich pages, such as from TheLoop21.com, are painful to load; guilt tends to kick in at this point for even blogging.
While on this topic: NONE of this blog was done from a regular, home PC. I had a laptop, which was stolen, briefly. Then probably a half year of (back to the libraries) (being car-less), and recently laptopped again — only a older, slower one. So be thankful for whatever comes out cohesive and coherent. Most times, I am looking at a single screen maximum 2 paragraphs visible at a time. Printing is another project. So all in all, perhaps it symbolizes the trouble also being stuck in the courts — basic infrastructure is hard to maintain, and forget it for a current generation of electronic equipment, whether computer, phone, or mechanical, such as transportation.
How could any system which so systematically removes work time from adults be in the interest of children? And the instability of it over time is reflected in parents’ ability to retain jobs and social connections.
We are heading towards world-wide slavery, it seems.
Many (noncustodial) mothers I know, active in protesting and seeking reform, speak eloquently on the human face of the suffering. Others also speak of the legal abuse, and psychological devastation of ongoing threat of losing one’s children, or hope of seeing them again, or being caught (liek the author, above) speaking “in appropriately” and thrown in jail, or being gagged, with the threat of jail, if they don’t comply. As I, too, have become alienated from a normal work life, not through economy, but through the courts, after dysfunctional/violent (which came first?) marriage, and similarly dysfunctional institutions willing to do anything about the violence, I have become more aware of, and personally know mothers who’ve become shadows of their former severals, women who have gone to jail attempting to protect a child, and women who have been threatened with jail if they don’t shut up (“Gag order”). I don’t want to think about how many homeless women I know who got that way after a custody switch, or women who are not homeless, but paying their former batterer.
In addressing this, people protest the indignity and the travesty of human rights, legal rights, and common sense.
WELL, some attitudes are NOT common to all, and better acknowledge it sooner.
FAR FEWER are willing to analyze the common CENTS (more like $$) economically that are behind the system. Some do, but how many people do you know that are willing to become the next Irving Fine ? Or will take their chances, and start to subpoena major organizations’ bank accounts, tax records, and insist that answers be given?
If it’s gut-wrenching and and too much to stomach, hearing about the outrage of children and juveniles being raped, without anyone stopping it, of a complete dual system of enforcement of court orders, and no recourse when failure to arrest still results in unnecessary deaths, LOTS of them, then why not look at some “dry” figures, some analyses, and get really outraged?
The bottom line is the bottom line. We all have our personal, legal ones, but the systems in this country (and extending globally) are political/economic. THEIR bottom line looks a lot different.
Remember, in any relationship, there are two points of view, and two “bottom lines.” When the government power to incarcerate is involved, and combined with this same government’s IRS agency (similar powers) to take and reallocate income — not just people — we have to take a look at their books, and who cooked up the business plan.
Now: PRIVATE PRISON ARCHIPELAGO — CORPORATE / GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVE
US: America’s Private Gulag
by Ken Silverstein, Prison Legal News
June 1st, 2000
What is the most profitable industry in America? Weapons, oil and computer technology all offer high rates of return, but there is probably no sector of the economy so abloom with money as the privately run prison industry.
US: America’s Private Gulag
by Ken Silverstein, Prison Legal News
June 1st, 2000
What is the most profitable industry in America? Weapons, oil and computer technology all offer high rates of return, but there is probably no sector of the economy so abloom with money as the privately run prison industry.
Consider the growth of the Corrections Corporation of America, the industry leader whose stock price has climbed from $8 a share in 1992 to about $30 today and whose revenue rose by 81 per cent in 1995 alone. Investors in Wackenhut Corrections Corp. have enjoyed an average return of 18 per cent during the past five years and the company is rated by Forbes as one of the top 200 small businesses in the country. At Esmor, another big private prison contractor, revenues have soared from $4.6 million in 1990 to more than $25 million in 1995.
Ten years ago there were just five privately-run prisons in the country, housing a population of 2,000. Today nearly a score of private firms run more than 100 prisons with about 62,000 beds. That’s still less than five per cent of the total market but the industry is expanding fast, with the number of private prison beds expected to grow to 360,000 during the next decade.
The exhilaration among leaders and observers of the private prison sector was cheerfully summed up by a headline in USA Today: “Everybody’s doin’ the jailhouse stock”. An equally upbeat mood imbued a conference on private prisons held last December at the Four Seasons Resort in Dallas. The brochure for the conference, organized by the World Research Group, a New York-based investment firm, called the corporate takeover of correctional facilities the “newest trend in the area of privatizing previously government-run programs… While arrests and convictions are steadily on the rise, profits are to be made — profits from crime. Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now!”
A hundred years ago private prisons were a familiar feature of American life, with disastrous consequences. Prisoners were farmed out as slave labor. They were routinely beaten and abused, fed slop and kept in horribly overcrowded cells. Conditions were so wretched that by the end of the nineteenth century private prisons were outlawed in most states.
During the past decade, private prisons have made a comeback. Already 28 states have passed legislation making it legal for private contractors to run correctional facilities and many more states are expected to follow suit.
The reasons for the rapid expansion include the 1990’s free-market ideological fervor, large budget deficits for the federal and state governments and the discovery and creation of vast new reserves of “raw materials” — prisoners. The rate for most serious crimes has been dropping or stagnant for the past 15 years, but during the same period severe repeat offender provisions and a racist “get-tough” policy on drugs have helped push the US prison population up from 300,000 to around 1.5 million during the same period. This has produced a corresponding boom in prison construction and costs, with the federal government’s annual expenditures in the area, now $17 billion. In California, passage of the infamous “three strikes” bill will result in the construction of an additional 20 prisons during the next few years.
{{GOT THAT? SERIOUS CRIME RATES HAVE BEEN DROPPING FOR 15 YEARS (@2000). GOTTA KEEP THE PLACES FILLED FOR BUSINESS TO TURN A PROFIT, THOUGH. HOW? DRUGS WAR, 3 STRIKES YOU’RE OUT}}
The private prison business is most entrenched at the state level but is expanding into the federal prison system as well. Last year Attorney General Janet Reno announced that five of seven new federal prisons being built will be run by the private sector. Almost all of the prisons run by private firms are low or medium security, but the companies are trying to break into the high-security field. They have also begun taking charge of management at INS detention centers, boot camps for juvenile offenders and substance abuse programs.
The Players
Roughly half of the industry is controlled by the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, (CCA) which runs 46 penal institutions in 11 states. It took ten years for the company to reach 10,000 beds; it is now growing by that same number every year.
{There’s a TN connection…}
CCA’s chief competitor is Wackenhut, which was founded in 1954 by George Wackenhut, a former FBI official. Over the years its board and staff have included such veterans of the US national security state as Frank Carlucci, Bobby Ray Inman and William Casey, as well as Jorge Mas Canosa, leader of the fanatic Cuban American National Foundation. The company also provides security services to private corporations. It has provided strikebreakers at the Pittston mine strike in Kentucky, hired unlicensed investigators to ferret out whistle blowers at Alyeska, the company that controls the Alaskan Oil pipeline, and beaten anti-nuclear demonstrators at facilities it guards for the Department of Energy.
Esmor, the number three firm in the field, was founded only a few years ago and already operates ten corrections or detention facilities. The company’s board includes William Barrett, a director of Frederick’s of Hollywood, and company CEO James Slattery, whose previous experience was investing in and managing hotels.
US companies also have been expanding abroad. The big three have facilities in Australia, England and Puerto Rico and are now looking at opportunities in Europe, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and China.
Greasing the Wheels of Power to Keep Jails Full
To be profitable, private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also filled. Industry experts say a 90-95 per cent capacity rate is needed to guarantee the hefty rates of return needed to lure investors. Prudential Securities issued a wildly bullish report on CCA a few years ago but cautioned, “It takes time to bring inmate population levels up to where they cover costs. Low occupancy is a drag on profits.” Still, said the report, company earnings would be strong if CCA succeeded in ramp(ing) up population levels in its new facilities at an acceptable rate”.
“(There is a) basic philosophical problem when you begin turning over administration of prisons to people who have an interest in keeping people locked up” notes Jenni Gainsborough of the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
{{Now we are going to talk about LOBBYING….}}
Private prison companies have also begun to push, even if discreetly, for the type of get-tough policies needed to ensure their continued growth. All the major firms in the field have hired big-time lobbyists. When it was seeking a contract to run a halfway house in New York City, Esmor hired a onetime aide to State Representative Edolphus Towns to lobby on its behalf. The aide succeeded in winning the contract and also the vote of his former boss, who had been an opponent of the project. In 1995, Wackenhut Chairman Tim Cole testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge support for amendments to the Violent Crime Control Act — which subsequently passed — that authorized the expenditure of $10 billion to construct and repair state prisons.
CCA has been especially adept at expansion via political payoffs. The first prison the company managed was the Silverdale Workhouse in Hamilton County, Tennessee. After commissioner Bob Long voted to accept CCA’s bid for the project, the company awarded Long’s pest control firm a lucrative contract. When Long decided the time was right to quit public life, CCA hired him to lobby on its behalf. CCA has been a major financial supporter of Lamar Alexander, the former Tennessee governor and failed presidential candidate. In one of a number of sweetheart deals, Lamar’s wife, Honey Alexander, made more than $130,000 on a $5,000 investment in CCA. Tennessee Governor Ned McWherter is another CCA stockholder and is quoted in the company’s 1995 annual report as saying that “the federal government would be well served to privatize all of their corrections.”
In another ominous development, the revolving door between the public and private sector has led to the type of company boards that are typical of those found in the military-industrial complex. CCA co-founders were T. Don Hutto, an ex-corrections commissioner in Virginia, and Tom Beasley, a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. A top company official is Michael Quinlan, once director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The board of Wackenhut is graced by a former Marine Corps commander, two retired Air Force generals and a former under secretary of the Air Force, as well as James Thompson, ex-governer of Illinois, Stuart Gerson, a former assistant US attorney general and Richard Staley, who previously worked with the INS.
Leaner and Meaner?
The companies that dominate the private prison business claim that they offer the taxpayers a bargain because they operate far more cheaply than do state firms. As one industry report put it, “CEOs of privatized companies… are leaner and more motivated than their public-sector counterparts.”
Because they are private firms that answer to shareholders, prison companies have been predictably vigorous in seeking ways to cut costs. In 1985, a private firm tried to site a prison on a toxic waste dump in Pennsylvania, which it had bought at the bargain rate of $1. Fortunately, that plan was rejected.
Many states pay private contractors a per diem rate, as low as $31 a prisoner in Texas. A federal investigation traced a 1994 riot at an Esmor immigration detention center to the company’s having skimped on food, building repairs and guard salaries. At an Esmor-run halfway house in Manhattan, inspectors turned up leaky plumbing, exposed electrical wires, vermin and inadequate food.
To rachet up profit margins, companies have cut corners on drug rehabilitation, counseling and literacy programs. In 1995, Wackenhut was investigated for diverting $700,000 intended for drug treatment programs at a Texas prison. In Florida the US Corrections Corporation was found to be in violation of a provision in its state contract that requires prisoners to be placed in meaningful work or educational assignments. The company had assigned 235 prisoners as dorm orderlies when no more than 48 were needed and enrollment in education programs was well below what the contract called for. Such incidents led a prisoner at a CCA facility in Tennessee to conclude, “There is something inherently sinister about making money from the incarceration of prisoners, and in putting CCA’s bottom line (money) before society’s bottom line (rehabilitation).”
{{Couldn’t have said it better myself: 2 bottom lines. MONEY? or REHABILITATION? (or whatever line someone is pushing at the public, currently}}
The companies try to cut costs by offering less training and pay to staff. Almost all workers at state prisons get union-scale pay but salaries for private prison guards range from about $7 to $10 per hour. Of course the companies are anti-union. When workers attempted to organize at Tennessee’s South Central prison, CCA sent officials down from Nashville to quash the effort.
Poor pay and work conditions have led to huge turnover rates at private prisons. A report by the Florida auditor’s office found that turnover at the Gadsden Correctional Facility for women, run by the US Corrections Corporation, was ten times the rate at state prisons. Minutes from an administrative meeting at a CCA prison in Tennessee have the “chief” recorded as saying, “We all know that we have lots of new staff and are constantly in the training mode… Many employees (are) totally lost and have never worked in corrections.”
Private companies also try to nickel and dime prisoners in the effort to boost revenue. “Canteen prices are outrageous,” wrote a prisoner at the Gadsden facility in Florida. “(We) pay more for a pack of cigarettes than in the free world.” Neither do private firms provide prisoners with soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes or writing paper. One female prisoner at a CCA prison in New Mexico said: “The state gives five free postage paid envelopes per month to prisoners, nothing at CCA. State provides new coats, jeans, shirts, and underwear and replaces them as needed. CCA rarely buys new clothing and inmates are often issued tattered and stained clothing. Same goes of linens. Also ration toilet paper and paper towels. If you run out, too bad — 3 rolls every two weeks.”
Cashing in on Crime
In addition to the companies that directly manage America’s prisons, many other firms are getting a piece of the private prison action. American Express has invested millions of dollars in private prison construction in Oklahoma and General Electric has helped finance construction in Tennessee. Goldman Sachs & Co., Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, among other Wall Street firms, have made huge sums by underwriting prison construction with the sale of tax exempt bonds, this now a thriving $2.3 billion industry.
Weapons manufacturers see both public and private prisons as a new outlet for “defense” technology, such as electronic bracelets and stun guns. Private transport companies have lucrative contracts to move prisoners within and across state lines; health care companies supply jails with doctors and nurses; food service firms provide prisoners with meals. High-tech firms are also moving into the field; the Que-Tel Corp. hopes for vigorous sales of its new system whereby prisoners are bar coded and guards carry scanners to monitor their movements. Phone companies such as AT&T chase after the enormously lucrative prison business.
{{And you thought the concept was just science fiction, or some religious doomsayer, predicting…. NOPE! Shades of Holocauset, much?}}
About three-quarters of new admissions to American jails and prisons are now African-American and Hispanic men. This trend, combined with an increasingly privatized and profitable prison system run largely by whites, makes for what Jerome Miller, a former youth corrections officer in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, calls the emerging Gulag State.
Miller predicts that the Gulag State will be in place within 15 years. He expects three to five million people to be behind bars, including an absolute majority of African-American men. It’s comparable, he says, to the post-Civil War period, when authorities came to view the prison system as a cheaper, more efficient substitute for slavery. Of the state’s current approach to crime and law enforcement, Miller says, “The race card has changed the whole playing field. Because the prison system doesn’t affect a significant percentage of young white men we’ll increasingly see prisoners treated as commodities. For now the situation is a bit more benign than it was back in the nineteenth century but I’m not sure it will stay that way for long.”
This article originally appeared in CounterPunch, a Washington DC-based political newsletter.
WELL, someone had to say this, and I’m not the first. As to women, a term that continues to come to mind as to this court system was a “Jim Crow” period following some feminist gains in the 70s. The backlash can be severe.
I remind this world that a lot of people became fatherless during WARS.
Now, we are ready to read the next post from the UK area. This post was just an introduction which got out of hand…
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Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up
September 1, 2010 at 2:18 PM
Posted in Cast, Script, Characters, Scenery, Stage Directions, Metaphors for Family Law, My Takes, and Favorite Takes, Organizations, Foundations, Associations NGO Hybrids
Tagged with Bahrain Archipelago, Bahrain Human Rights Watch, Cutting Costs Raising Prices on Prisoners, Declaration of Independence/Bill of Rights, Incarcerated Teens Sexual Assault, Industry Lobbyists, Jim Crow, Keeping Prisons Full, Making sense of it all, Nobel Prize Winner was fatherless, Private Prison American Gulag, Racist Institutions, Revolving Door of Government, social commentary, Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, TheLoop21.com, U.S. Govt $$ hard @ work..