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A recovered, stolen child, now grown, talks about the experience…

with one comment

 

THIS post is a comment reply from a man who is speaking up about his childhood abduction and recovery. 

I think the story speaks for itself, in his voice.  Any emphases are mine, as well as paragraphing.  I tried to comment less than usual, but still did some..

I would like to first thank you for the review of my book, Throwing Stones.

{{I don’t actually have your book, will get it when I am able…  I reviewed the website in response to your earliest comment on this blog.  I also hope to write one.}}

I wish to address a couple questions you raised in your review and also respond to the above comment, since the writer has asked me, the author, to answer: First, you emailed me a comment about the spelling of my last name. I could find no place on there where the spelling was not “Ken Connelly”. If you have found a place where ‘Connelly’ is not spelled that way, please point it out and I will have it remedied.

Second, as to how I was recovered, well that was an interesting and very frightening experience- My father had managed to remarry at the end of our abduction.

{{He was going to need some help with the children, obviously.  In our situation, he first found the new woman and then snatched.  At this point, I’m still not clear (being the Mom) of who was MORE provoking that snatch — the new woman, or the father.  This involving a 2nd adult caretaker figure to punish the first is cruel..}}

My siblings and I were ordered not to tell anyone, especially his new wife and children our true past as abducted children. My father had a way about him that you did not cross. You have to remember, this person feeds you, clothes you, and gives you shelter. I often use the example that if you take a puppy and give it food, then while feeding it you hit it, the dog will grow up believing that pain is love.

{{POW technique, traumatic bonding, sounds like…}}

This can be seen in women who grow up with a violent father and then seek a relationship with an abuser. They may not go consciously looking for that personality type, but they end up with it.

{{If I may inject the feminine perspective here — there is a grammar to this.  It takes two to tango, and men also know where to find submissive women, or women without strong family support who might counter future control & abuse.  The statement above doesn’t acknowledg it goes two ways.  …  Religious settings are great places to find submissive women taught not to protest violence against themselves..}}

My father was pulled over on a traffic stop with his wife. The officer took him in once his alias popped up on the NCIC. I was for the first time going to a public school in Smithville, Texas. Upon leaving for the day, I seen my sister crawling out the back of the bus and running away.

Unknown to me, my mother and grandfather were walking about the school after they were flown from California upon hearing we had been located. Of all the buses, mine managed to leave the school without being stopped.

 Within a few hours my dad was let go from the Bastrop County jail on a technicality. No court had ever held up the recent law, forcing out of state agencies to enforce kidnapping of one’s child as a felony/crime.

{{Reframing this crime as a non-crime happens, I say, through the family courts.  I would almost rather not know this law existed, than know it exists to protect, but isn’t enforced, or even taken seriously, too often…}}

After dad got out of jail he then attempted to remove us to Australia (a plan he attempted a year earlier). A sting was setup to have him come into court and believe he could win full custody once there. After coming into court, he was taken down to the floor and arrested by law enforcement.

At the same time we we were taken out the back and then flown from Austin, Texas to California. My father was later extradited to California where he pleaded guilty to Child Stealing. This became the first time in United States History an interstate felony/recovery was successfully prosecuted. Oddly enough, only 70 miles away, Glen Schulz was arrested for kidnapping his children from out of state but was let go and later granted full custody. My father’s arrest and conviction set a new precedence [precedent] in the apprehension of child stealing.

Three, as for abuse. I often had to endure hours of my father screaming and calling my mother everything from a witch to a lesbian on a daily basis. I began to sleep walk, have severe night terrors, developed turrets syndrome and tics that effect me to this day (although I mask them very well). I also have never been able to trust.

My sister was raped by a stranger and although we disagree that she was taken to the hospital, she has had to deal with that her whole life.

{{While you were in the abduction status, it sounds like??}}

( I say disagree because she believes she was taken to the hospital that night, I know she was taken earlier in the month over another issue requiring stitches. As any law enforcement officer, medical professional or mental health professional knows, when you bring in a 14 year old girl to the ER who claims she has been raped, the police do a background on them and the parent who brings them in to the hospital, of which I verified with the local agency that we lived under in Texas.

Had a there been a police check, the false ID that later got him arrested would have popped up on her or him after the rape.)

When I was found I was covered in chiggers (body parasite) and scabies. Just months before we were recovered, we were living in Burcher State Park, Texas and then in a house where we had an out house and when the water did run, it was reddish in color because of the rust. We also had to boil the bath water on the stove so that all of us could use the water to bathe. Again, everyone used the same bath water. I also had to get saved, learn to speak in tongues and when ever I was bad, I was reminded that I could grow up and become the anti-christ.

{{Indicating that the abducting father was religious, or his new wife.   And that IS emotional abuse of a child.  Not to mention ignorance about that concept, “anti-christ.”  Severe emotional cruetly.  Good grief!!}}

Four, yes psychology is a new science but there are basic truths that are universal. Although I attend to school (working on a degree that can be used in parental child abduction), I have been certified in Colorado, New Mexico and federally to work with juveniles that have been incarcerated. I have seen the effects of abuse, neglect and abandonment and I see a lot of similarities with parental child abduction. As to the writer of the above. Yes, without a doubt ( and I have experienced BOTH), parental child abduction is worse! To put it another way, when a stranger abducts a child, the child always knows that mommy and daddy are waiting for them when they come home. granted, it may be and will be a long haul to heal, but the trust in their parents is intact.

So my question is, when a parent steals their child, tells them the other parent is dead, hates them, evil, abandoned them and so on, who does the child trust?

If mommy or daddy lied and kidnapped you, who do you trust? The entire structure of what trust and family is is forever broken.

As for seeing abuse, conflicts and hate, well upon return I found that my mother had been being assaulted by her new husband. See, professionals have found that many parents after their children have been taken tend to seek punishment for having their children ripped from them. My mother’s then husband hated that she was always sad and grief ridden over having her children stolen.

{{I’ve worked different ways to handle this, but it has affected who I can become involved with, or not.  I know I’m not ready for involvement til some of these issues are closed.  It’s too much of a burden for any new spouse…}}

Over the next two years I watched him beat her, knock her unconscious and steal her purse while driving down the alley way of our home pulling my mom and me, as my mom would not let go of the purse- which held our only money, he held out the window. Or the times he beat me down and mom had to jump on his back and break his black Ovation guitar over him to get him off me while I called the police. Finally on my 13th birthday I was forced to not go to school but get a job and pay rent to live in his home. My mother was finally beat unconscious in 1985 when her husband beat her so bad that he broke the toilet bowl with her face and left a blood trail on the hallway wall, all because I split his beer.

{{“because” — that’s not the real reason, but that supposed “excuse” is common.  NOTE:  1985 is before the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) was passed, I suspect there were fewer options for her at the time, to get ou.}}

Yes, I have seen both and I can tell you that the effects from the abduction were like wakes & ripples that have effects to this very day. I never doubted my mom’s love or felt abused while with mom and her husband, and have talked to many other children who felt that they were able to overcome those abusive home environments. Now I am in no way down playing the abuse that went on upon return. in fact, I believe that both are relevant and need to be addressed. However, the abduction was worse. I started researching and building up all my documentation for book II, Wakes &Ripples, which covers this subject from the age of 11 to 17. I have had to pull together many interviews, police and school records. I have had to verify addresses and places of employment.

This research is still underway as I have tried to avoid the pop culture idea of sensationalizing my story but trying to keep it pure and accurate as possible. I believe that by providing a case study, we can find ways to prevent, educate and inform others on how to stop this terrible crime. I can not tell you if life would have been different had I not been kidnapped.

What I can tell you is that once you throw that rock in to the waters of childhood there is no going back, we must live with the change in the water’s course and the ripples that follow.

To sum it up; kidnapping one’s child, and kidnapping is all it is, is the worst thing you can do to your child. If you are in a bad relationship there are outlets you can use to get help. Children are not our property in the sense of chattel. We have to think about what they need first and I have yet to have fond a parent who kidnapped their child who did not have some vindictive motive behind it.

This is why children are often used as weapons in court during a divorce. Domestic violence is horrific! The years I lived with it, I was always frightened but, they did not have the impact as the years abducted. It was not because of the domestic violence years that ended my relationship with all my family. It was the abduction years. The actions my father made that tore a part our family in ways that I cannot begin to explain in this comment box. I hope I have answered your questions.

Kindest Regards, Ken Connelly http://www.ken-connelly.com ken@ken-connelly.com

 

Speaking of Psychology, another topic, here’s a link to a long discussion of Trauma and the nature of evil.  My printout is 34 pages long, and I enclose it because it deals with vocabulary changes, over the centuries (and across some faiths/cultures) to talk about the same thing.  It dates to 1996, and is by Sandra Bloom, for an organizational conference.  The website Sanctuaryweb.com, I think it makes sense.

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

April 19, 2010 at 3:51 PM

Posted in History of Family Court

Tagged with , , ,

Wet Under the ears Grad students can get grants. Veterans of the street wars, probably cannot..they are the subject matter, or their offspring are.

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No apologies for long title….

More on the NEW AMERICA (United States of??) FOUNDATION:

Grant Opportunity: Child Care Research Scholars

Author(s): Maggie Severns

Published:  April 15, 2010

Issues:  

 Are you a graduate student doing research related to child care? If so, you should know that federal grants are now available as part of the Child Care Research Scholars program. Letters of intent are due April 19; applications are due May 3. The program is funded through the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services.
(source of fatherhood funding, and access/visitation grants ensuring that outspoken-about-abuse-of-their-kids (or themselves) mothers will have to PAY (supervised visitation) to see their children after custody-switch.  If they’re lucky, they will be “allowed” to pay to see them.  Or, not see them — take your pick…. in our free enterprise system….)
WHY doesn’t that surprise me?  Again, for “HHS” think “Executive Branch of U.S. Government.”  For “U.S. Government” which is obviously a business entity itself, think “IRS” and “YOUR TAX DOLLARS.”  (if you pay taxes).
The grants are designed to support dissertation research on child care policy issues and are available for 12 and 24-month projects, with awards of up to $30,000 for the first 12 months of a project and a maximum of $50,000 for a two-year project. Grants are open to doctoral level graduate students who, according to the funding announcement, are “enrolled in accredited public, state-controlled, and private institutions of higher education.”
1/10th of ONE of those grants would’ve gotten me out of a dependency state, if I’d known about it in a timely fashion, and had wanted to study early childhood education after losing all contact with some kids I’d already raised, and being driven out of a profession (in the process) of working with children for decades, prior to being treated like a recalcitrant child during marriage, and during divorce….  Only the time and “freedom” of unemployment showed me where some of this stuff was.  Not a single nonprofit did, and CERTAINLY not any employment development department within commute distance…
Yet THIS guy couldn’t get help, and was (like many women) at risk again for failure to pay up to the licensing agencies, per today’s headlines:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/14/BAFS1CUK78.DTL

Take a read.  And think about women leaving violence, too.  Same story.

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

April 15, 2010 at 11:58 AM

Posted in History of Family Court

Religious Promotion of wife-battering, co. 2006-2010

with 6 comments

 

“What the _ _ _ _?!?”

It’s no longer “domestic violence” (an oxymoron, to start with.  What’s “domestic” about “violence”?  Cats, I can understand, or dogs — are domestic animals.  People who work in the home are sometimes called “domestics” (and treated at times like animals).  All in all the sense that you can somehow tame a person who has resorted to violence to get his way, good grief.  Yes, I said, HIS….

This site actually exists.  No wonder church attendance is down when it comes to God-fearing people (who also use their minds to read, and hearts to feel when others suffer)…..

This site turns my stomach, and it should yours, too. 

“CHRISTIAN DOMESTIC

DISCIPLINE“

 

This website, as well as any information presented herein, is intended for purposes of education or entertainment only. Views or opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of ownership or management.

This forwarded cite turns my stomach, and it should yours, too. 

This is 2010.  This is copyrighted through NOW.  Now do you see why I’m against faith-based initiatives running humanist HHS programs to promote “healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood.”  I think you should know what it looks like from the fundies’ point of view. 

The reason it turns MY stomach is that I had to live with this type of “bad attitude”, and watch it endorsed by people who ought to know better until I found some folk who DIDN’T believe in God, necessarily, but DID in the U.S. Constitution, and at least got a CIVIL restraining order (though criminal, I learned later from the definitions, was in order, and would’ve been better).

We like to kid (numb) ourselves that the rank and file don’t get this extreme, but my experience is they DO.  This philosophy attracts sorts who (unlike Christ) seem — and choose — to really believe that women, of any age, are children.  “Lord help” their children, if this is what they grow up witnessing as to their mothers!

Talk about “entitled.”  You don’t “educate” that over-entitled attitude out of someone with a batterers intervention program….even one with a Christian veneer. 

Read, and shudder.  If you’re a decent human being.  Whoever these people are, they have the nerve to put it out there, and as a *.com, too!:

And understand it’s a how-to manual.  Ladies, Christian women taking it on the chin, neck, or any other part of your body, when you speak up, or look crooked (or not submissive enough), Your man might not be out there doing porn (though it’s not incompatible with the same detached mentality we see below), he might be meeting with the guys to figure out how to restrain YOU. 

The Foundation of Disciplining Your Wife

Before a husband can effectively discipline his wife, he needs to build the proper foundation for said discipline. To attempt discipline without the fundamental foundational principles in place will inevitably backfire, and cause resentment and contempt. Let’s go over them individually.
Your wife must know, feel, and be assured constantly that she is cherished. {{I.e., FAKE IT….}}  This is a prime need for any woman, just as it is a need of the Church to feel cherished by Christ. As a picture of Christ in the home, husbands must always remember that they are not simply dealing with the woman that they married, but the most beautiful, incredible perfect gift that the Lord has ever given to him, second only to eternal life itself. Love notes, gifts, intimacy, conversation, sharing, compliments… Shower this woman with your love every day to show her just how much she is cherished.

{{Even if she isn’t…..}}

Remember that your wife is only as beautiful as you make her, so lift her up as if she is without flaw or blemish. 

{{That’s right, she has no prior existence, and doesn’t actually EXIST as a person even right now…  Keept that in the forefront, not, say, the Declaration of Independence and that hogwash about inalienable rights, or what the Bible says about God is no respecter of persons, and so forth…}}

You must be the primary Bible teacher in the home.

{{Even if you’re incompetent for lack of reading it or desire to practice it.  Surely THIS part of practicing “Bible” will appeal to the manly man a little more……}}

Husbands, lead devotions in the home every day. Remember, it’s not you taking a half-hour or so out of your day to do this, but rather that the Lord gives you the remaining 23 hours or so to attend to your personal business. It’s His time, so don’t rob Him. And if your wife is more biblically knowledgeable than you are, and so more qualified to lead devotions, lead them anyway, and bone up on your Bible while you’re at it (I certainly had to).

 When the wife leads instead of the husband, the husband robs her of spiritual security. I cannot say it any stronger than this – husbands, if you don’t lead devotions in your home, don’t claim to be the covenant leaders of the home. You’re in abdication, and will be living under judgment for it; and it is your wife and family that will suffer the most. If you truly love your wife, lead her spiritually.
Praise her in the gates. Understand that when Proverbs 31 speaks of this, it means that husbands need to praise their wives no matter where they are. Praise her at work, play, home or wherever your path takes you. Tell your friends, co-workers and even total strangers how wonderful the woman you married is. Praise her in the church, praise her to your children, and praise her to your boss. Will people think you’re strange for doing this? No, not really. I know this from experience – not only will your wife be edified, but so will Christ and even yourself. Never miss an opportunity to praise her, and be willing to create some opportunities as well.

The Application of Discipline to Your Wife

You must always remember those two sin dynamics common to all women, for the vast majority of your discipline will stem from her struggles concerning them. Of course, each wife has peculiar struggles for you to deal with as well, and you’ll need to be aware of them when they rear their heads.
First, do not attempt to discipline your wife without first going to the Lord in prayer. No man alone is wise enough, and we must seek the Lord when faced with discipline issues.
There are two primary methods to discipline in the home towards wives, and one necessary means of grace. Following are the methods of discipline:
Exhortation. When your wife is sinning, exhort her with the Word. Use your Bibles, gents! This needs to be done with gentleness, and often you will need to repeat yourself several times (using similar words) before it sinks in. Remember always, when disciplining that the person before you is the most cherished, adored person in your universe. Treat her as such. If you have children, it may, depending on how her sin touched the children require that they be present. However, keep control of the situation. DO NOT LET THE CHILDREN EXHORT YOUR WIFE DIRECTLY! There are times when children may do so, but once you’re involved, it’s your show, Husband. If the children have something to say (and you feel that it needs to be heard) have them address you, and not her. You are your wife’s leader and authority in the home, not the children. Do not risk upsetting that balance.

Rebuke and Lash.

This is the harshest discipline a husband should administer, and it should always be done privately and with Godly, Biblical love. Usually, exhortation will have already taken place before this method is used, but there may come situations where this is the first step. The rebuke and lashing should be administered with a calm heart. Talk to your wife, let her know you are serious, and tell her why she is to be disciplined physically.
When administering physical discipline, take caution not to deliver the lashes anywhere but the buttocks. The first attempt at this punishment should only be delivered by hand so you can get an idea of how many lashings are needed. The best position will be for you to sit at the end of a bed or on a chair (with no arms) and have her lay across your lap. She can also bend over a bed with arms tucked under her chest and your left hand on the small of her back. If a strap (belt) is to be implemented watch that each stoke falls directly on the buttocks and not higher. EDITOR’S NOTE: When using the hand, or a small, short implement, such as a switch or small “hairbrush”-type paddle, over-the-knee positioning can work quite well.
A fearful wife may begin crying or pleading and find it difficult to remain still. Reassure her. of your intent and love (yes this will hurt, that is why it is a punishment) then instruct her to be still. Remind her that she is not in control of this discipline. You should continue the lashing through her tears and pleas for you to stop, until you are certain the message was received. This will insure her remorse and therefore stop the undesirable behavior.
A sound lashing is five to ten strokes with your hand, or three to five strokes with a strap; some wives need more. To avoid brusing do not strike the same area in repetition. Gauge your decision to proceed based on your wife’s readiness to repent.
You may find it difficult to cause your wife pain, but as a woman she needs the release of guilt that this form of punishment brings. Afterwards, help her up gently and hold her while allowing her to cry for as long as you both feel necessary. If you have children instruct her to wash her face before emerging from the room.

Remember to stay in control at all times so her faith in you is not rattled.

{{Also important is to remember to take the car keys before beginning, and of course never attempt this type of treatment if she has friends, or supportive people in her life who are NOT of this particular brand of back to the feudal-age-we-wish religion, or marriage.  Also, you might want to make sure she can’t afford to take a plane ticket OUT of there with your kids.  In fact, to be really secure and make this work, simply read what domestic violence IS, and DO it.  Because that’s what THIS is….  Criminal or misdemeanor, don’t worry — your male buddies will probably back this up, the pastor won’t say too much (lest the attendance, and funds that go with it drop, and if they do, there are always the federally-based grants to states to promote responsible fatherhood under which you might seek help to reassert control, after your ass gets thrown out of the home for this type of treatment!}}

 Her reaction after the lashing will let you know if this punishment works for her. She should be genuinely remorseful, tearful, and sore, but have an overwhelming desire to please you.
This act also gives you, the husband, a release of anger and disappointment which allows your relationship to become immediately bonded in a closeness you may have otherwise never achieved.

{{Commonly known as traumatic bonding…..or Stockholme Syndrome}}

Because of your love and discipline, your fights no longer last for days or even hours. The quick resolve of immediate discipline allows you to reconnect, which in turn rapidly eliminates resentment.
Do not make apologies for the punishment as this will cast doubt in her mind of your authority. The amount of rebuke and lash sessions may be high at first but should slowly decrease as she learns her new role in the relationship, and you embrace yours. Never use ad-homonym attacks and never bring up past sins that have already been forgiven. Deal with the issue at hand, and nothing more. The gift you give your wife in this act will lead to her soul’s full surrender allowing her to embrace her femininity.
Once discipline is administered and repentance is given, we can hopefully move onto the next phase, which is forgiveness and prayer. Remember that you are a sinner too, and are not above reproach. Demonstrate this to her, and to the Lord. Once she has been convicted, be willing to forgive immediately. Don’t waste a moment, and show this forgiveness through praising her and showing her right then the extent that you cherish her. Remember that being cherished is the greatest enabling thing you can show her that gives her emotional and spiritual security, as well as builds her trust in your leadership. This is a crucial step; don’t neglect it!
__._,_.___

This is the graphic under the link “HUSBANDS.”  There is no graphic under “WIVES.” 

Wow.  Note the abundance of scriptural backup for this kind of behavior (like NONE, here). 

Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it…..

=============

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

April 12, 2010 at 1:03 PM

Posted in History of Family Court

The Love of Money Spells “Trouble”

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Follow the trail!  Not your reptilian mammal brain!   Guess what reptiles are:  Cold-blooded.  They adapt to the environment.  Human beings are mammals.  They should be a little more independent.

Money is fine as a means to an end.  As an end itself, it tends to blind, and it gets pretty cold-hearted when that’s the end, forget the means…..and civil rights…

Despite all the hot-button, gut-wrenching, paper-selling issues in the news headlines, and on this blog, I consider my Phoebe Factoids post one of the most relevant.  It talks about what happened to two men who looked at the books, found them cooked, and some of the strategies to shut them up and shut them, their professions, and most especially, their story, down. 

The Profit in Nonprofits and 2 Men in Albany, Georgia

I just caught wind of the story on TV. 

Since then, in Georgia, we have a former Georgia State Senator, Nancy Schaefer, reporting on rampant abuse and a system that is probably beyond reform — and her husband — who turned up with bullet holes in them, and the “murder/suicide” label doesn’t quite appear to fit.  I wonder who is going to finish reporting on this (investigative), or whether the public’s head is going to get turned again, ADHD-style (distract with worse trauma), and forget the bravery (if perhaps not caution) of this woman:

The Courage to Confront Corruption is Costly… « Let’sGetHonestBlog

Mar 29, 2010 … The Courage to Confront Corruption is Costly… leave a comment ». There are some things in life that one can‘t just ignore.
Understand, I haven’t reviewed all the sites below, and most likely do not share ALL their views.  But we know that whistleblowing could cost careers (see Lizgates.com articles on a recent post, professional retaliation and conflict of interest in family court venues), but sometimes also lives:
My Photo
http://disgustedwiththesystem.blogspot.com/2010/04/nancy-schaefer-one-week-ad.html
Another Mother Writes from THIS perspective:
“CPS CORRUPTION & HUMAN TRAFFICKING EXPOSED IN SAN LUIS OBISPO (California)”

About the Author:

Kathleen Dearinger is a Mother to her 16 year old daughter who was “kidjacked” from school by CPS of San Luis Obispo. Her daughter who was not abused or neglected was taken without a protective custody warrant by a biased social worker who never investigated or even visited her house. Her daughter was isolated from her and traumatized by workers at CPS for 5 long months before being sent out of state in the middle of the night against her wishes. She remains a hostage as of this writing and is unable to contact her mother at the direction of a social workers with CPS, who falsely claims she is on a “voluntary placement”. Ms. Dearinger has requested the assistance from Senator Maldonado, Assemblyman Blakeslee, the police, the FBI, and many other agencies only to find that no one investigates or oversees CPS workers. This is why we have over 500,000 children in foster care today.

SHE MENTIONS NANCY SCHAEFER NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THIS EXCERPT:

The standard practices of CPS offices throughout California and other states have been under scrutiny for the last several years. Since President Clinton placed into effect The Adoption Safe Families Act block grants have increased the number of children who are in the system. The state pays extra incentives for adopting out children over the age of 9 years old and additional funds if they require mental services or have other special needs. As a result of these block grants almost 50% of all children in CPS’s care are between the ages of 13-19 years old. Every day 36 children an hour are taken by CPS throughout the United States. In California alone more than 20% of all children are in foster care.

This is an industry, which has grown by huge proportions and must be reined in. The Gestapo type tactics currently being used by County and State agencies to increase revenue from federal sources may provide jobs today for the local economy but is having a negative impact on many levels. Good families are being torn apart and children are dying under the State’s care. When CPS takes children in error they rarely return them right away. The families are subjected to endless classes and programs whether or not they are guilty. The parents suffer great financial hardships because they are forced to retain expensive independent legal counsel. Many families lose their jobs and their homes trying to get their children out of the system. Some attorney’s are working in collision with CPS and help keep children in the system because it’s profitable, but most will agree that CPS is in fact corrupt.

Common practices of CPS agencies include: Not investigating before removing a child, taking children into state custody based upon here say, taking children from school without a “Protective Custody Warrant”, manipulating the Court system in criminal cases against the parents who are improperly prosecuted, obstruction of justice, fabricating documents, omitting facts, coercing minors, deception, isolating children from their parents, breaking bonds, traumatizing children, negative therapy, and placing children in unsafe foster homes. Children are not being evaluated right away by a doctor or seeing child advocates such as CASA. Social workers have been known to go on “witch hunts” against parents, influencing doctors, and ruining parents medical files. Many CPS agencies work in collusion with therapists who give parents false “mental conditions” which is used against them in court. Family court is “secret” so there is no jury or fair trial. Children are being heard in Judges chambers so many testimonies cannot be documented on Court record.

Many judges who rule on family court cases also sit on the boards of phony nonprofit organizations created to generate state adoption/foster care grants via federal funding. San Luis Obispo CPS has politicians heading non-profit organizations and Judges hosting “Adoption Saturdays”. California’s 2003 Little Hoover Commission Report said up to 70 percent of children in foster care should never have been removed from their homes in the first place. Children who complain about foster care or beg to go home are either placed on psychotropic medication and are sometimes sent out of State. California’s website for children up for adoption can be found at: www.adoptuskids.org

Dr. Moore who is the National Director of legislative affairs for the American Family Rights Association is heading up chapters under the NAACP. Children’s rights organizations, parents, and independent non-profit agencies are also joining in the fight against CPS corruption and human trafficking. Senator Nancy Schaffer recently passed a new law that went into effect in Oklahoma and we in California are hopeful that our state will soon follow.

 

ODDITIES IN THE NANCY SCHAEFER CASE

Oddities in the Nancy Schaefer “Suicide” Case(published 3/10/2010)

By Garland Favorito – Infowars.com

On Friday, former Senator Nancy Schaefer and her husband were found dead in their home in Habersham County. Even before a GBI investigation could be initiated, media outlets began pronouncing that their death was a “murder-suicide” and shut off most public comment posting on their web sites. The “murder suicide” theory implies that Sen. Schaefer’s husband shot her and then killed himself (or vice versa). Both Habersham County and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation began investigating the case as a “murder suicide” rather than the more obvious “murder made to look like suicide”. Like so many people, I have known former Sen. Nancy Schaefer for 15 years and spoken to several people who know her better than I do. They believe that the “murder suicide” theory is highly unlikely for any one of the following reasons:

1. It is totally against Nancy Schaefer’s consistently strong commitment to the sanctity of life principles that she has fought so valiantly to uphold;

2. Nancy and her husband, Bruce, have five children and more than a dozen grandchildren who they would not choose to leave behind so abruptly;

3. Bruce’s problem with cancer was corrected and under control so there was no reason to end his life as one senator tried to imply;

4. Nancy or Bruce would not likely agree to commit such an act that violates the fundamental principles of their Christian faith;

5. Bruce was retired and the couple did not appear to be in any type of dire financial crisis that would lead them to commit such acts;

6. Bruce and Nancy knew that her sister who had Alzheimer’s disease needed her to help take care of her;

7. Friends who knew the couple best state that Bruce would simply not have the capability to kill his wife;

8. Nancy was dedicated, as a national leader, to help needy people overcome abuse within Child Protective Services organizations;

9. Nancy was actively exposing corruption within the Department of Family & Child Services (DFCS) including actions by the DFCS director in the county where she lived.

10. Nancy knew that she was needed in the fight against child sex slave trafficking in Atlanta which has one of the highest activity rates in the country;

11. Bruce was highly supportive of Nancy’s work for decades and would have little or no reason to suddenly try to kill her at such a critical juncture in her career.

Specifically in Georgia, former Senator Nancy Schaefer had found during the last few years that:

– in Georgia housed children in a foster home with a known pedophile who molested the children.

– in Habersham County failed to remove six children from a home where they are being abused and tortured.

– in Georgia turned two girls over to a California father who had a pornographic video business.

A report that Nancy Schaefer produced on these remarkable cases can be found here:

http://fightcps.com/2008/02/29/report-of-georgia-senator-nancy-schaefer-on-cps-corruption/

Nancy Schaefer was also interviewed extensively by talk show host Alex Jones about corruption in Child Protection Services nationally. A multi-part series of her interview and an Eagle Forum presentation can be found on You Tube here:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nancy+schaefer&search_type=&aq=f

In addition, Senator Schaefer led opposition to HB582 and SB304, two bills introduced by fellow Republicans that would have likely resulted in increasing child sex slave trafficking. These bills would have made it legal for teenagers to participate in certain illicit acts. The bills effectively removed the legal authority that police now have to pick teenagers up and get them into protective custody so that they can no longer be pimped for those acts.

As President of Georgia Eagle Forum, Nancy Schaefer planned to be in Alabama this weekend for an Eagle Forum convention. Instead she chose to stay in Georgia to develop new information that would have further exposed corruption in DFCS and beyond. Many Eagle forum members who were close to Sen. Schaefer were aware of her courageous efforts. None of them believe that either she or her husband was involved in any type of suicide.

It is particularly ironic that the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) chose to quote State Sen. Don Thomas in their March 26 article about Sen. Schaefer’s death. The AJC portrayed him as a friend of the couple even though he lives on the other side of the state from the Schaefer family and was diametrically opposed to many of their core beliefs. Sen. Thomas, the Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, immediately propagated and expanded the “murder-suicide” theory without any first-hand knowledge or evidence. That is very disturbing considering it is his committee that should have been helping to clean up the corruption at DFCS. Activists supporting Sen. Schaefer explained that he constantly advocated increased power and authority for DFCS in spite of the evidence showing the organization was misusing that authority.

With Nancy Schaefer no longer on the scene the question may be raised as to how best to continue her legacy. I believe that she would want conservatives, progressives, libertarians, constitutionalists as well as grass roots Democrats and Republicans throughout Georgia to unite and work to rectify the corruption in DFCS and eliminate child sex slave trafficking in Georgia.

 

 

FROM HER DESK, NOV. 2007, as quoted on “FIGHTCPS.COM“

From the legislative desk of Senator Nancy Schaefer 50th District of Georgia

November 16, 2007

THE CORRUPT BUSINESS OF CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES

BY: Nancy Schaefer
Senator, 50th District

. . .

In this report, I am focusing on the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS). However, I believe Child Protective Services nationwide has become corrupt and that the entire system is broken almost beyond repair. I am convinced parents and families should be warned of the dangers.

The Department of Child Protective Services, known as the Department of Family and Children Service (DFCS) in Georgia and other titles in other states, has become a “protected empire” built on taking children and separating families. This is not to say that there are not those children who do need to be removed from wretched situations and need protection. This report is concerned with the children and parents caught up in “legal kidnapping,” ineffective policies, and DFCS who do does not remove a child or children when a child is enduring torment and abuse. (See Exhibit A and Exhibit B)

 

Here’s another one from “infowars.com”:

CPS Warrior Nancy Schaefer Gunned Down

Infowars.com
March 29, 2010

From the Associated Press:

State investigators say the husband of former state Senator Nancy Schaefer shot his wife before turning the gun on himself. The couple’s bodies were found in their north Georgia home Friday. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted autopsies on the Schaefer’s Saturday—investigators say all evidence points to the deaths as a murder-suicide. The bodies of Nancy and Bruce Schaefer, 73 and 74 years old respectively, were found by their daughter at the couple’s home in Clarkesville. Nancy Schaefer was a two-term state Senator representing Georgia’s 50th district. She lost her seat in 2008. Schaefer was also a candidate for mayor of Atlanta, Georgia lieutenant governor and governor of the state.

The corporate media does not bother to mention that Schaefer exposed the abuses of CPS and the international child sex slavery ring.

“Investigators told the Associated Press they believe Bruce Schaefer, 74, shot his wife once in the back while she slept in the bedroom early Friday morning and then shot himself in the head. Police found a handgun near his body and several letters written to family members, including a suicide note,” reports the Associated Baptist Press.

Other reports indicate Bruce Schaefer shot himself in the chest. People who commit suicide usually shoot themselves in the head.

“Contrary to early reports that Bruce Schaefer had cancer, the Gainesville Times reported March 27 that the couple’s daughter, who discovered the bodies, told the local sheriff her father was not suffering from any serious illness at the time of the shootings. Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell said some of the letters mentioned serious financial problems and speculated that might have been a motive,” Associated Baptist Press also reported.

Appearing on the Alex Jones Show last May, Schaefer detailed how CPS is involved in child trafficking rings (see video below). After watching Schaefer’s interview with Jones, if you think Schaefer was involved in a suicide pact with her husband, you may also be interested in a famous bridge for sale in Brooklyn.

ETC.

The “Supervised Visitation” (and “mediation”) models, heavily promoted by “Duluth Abuse Intervention Project” and so forth, a finger of the palm I would describe as (apparently) MPDI (Minnesota Program Development Inc.) are basically the CPS model applied to women, in particular, leaving domestic violence.  You can look at the funding on-line (usaspending.gov, taggs.hhs.gov grants recipients) on your own time (and I have some, herein).   

CHILD SUPPORT AGENCIES are involved in administering and tipping the scales.  Broke people don’t fight court battles too well. …  FATHERHOOD GRANTS ARE involved, as our DOMESTIC VIOLENCE GRANTS THAT GO AWRY.

A few good audits are likely to more than a lot of emotional verbiage.  But what this DOES deal with are matters of life and death, as well as life-changing trauma, needless.  Unchecked, it’s going to produce a wide-scale traumatized populace, and a very dependent one, too.

This site can be a friend.

http://GUIDESTAR.org

 

TAKE A LOOK AT THE PATTENS OF THE PHOEBE FACTOIDS (ALBANY, GEORGIA CASE), AND THE PLAYERS INVOLVED, AND WHAT THEY UNCOVERED, ALSO THE THREATS THEY RECEIVED (HIRED SECURITY), and ATTRIBUTIONS…

NOW, UNDERSTAND THAT IN THE FAMILY COURTS, CPS, AND CHILD-TRAFFICKING ISSUES, WE ARE DEALING NOT JUST WITH MILLIONS OF $$ (TAX-EXEMPT) ON THE THEORY THAT THESE ORGANIZATIONS ARE HELPING THE HELPLESS, and not scamming the public, AND ADD TO THE MIX, THE MULTI-MILLION (BILLION?) AND GLOBAL TRAFFIC IN YOUNG CHILDREN. 

Here’s a recent case where (acc. to the press, anyhow) a well-meaning therapist tried to fulfil her responsibility to report sexual abuse and emotional retaliation on female JUNIOR HIGH students, she says, resulted in retaliation for her.  She filed a lawsuit:

Therapist suing Martinez school district

 

This one should be interesting.

Meanwhile, a reminder that — as we all know — the real children at risk for sexual abuse absolutely come mostly from single-parent homes.  Here’s an “example” of that, same area:

Teen’s Account Unravels Decades of Sexual Abuse by Bay Area Swim Coach 

 

And, she had a father in the home.  A youth pastor, mandated, reported. I wonder, had it been happening within the church ranks, would the report have gone down the same way?  But thank God, he did…

THIS WEEKEND —

 WHISTLEBLOWER CHILDREN’S CONFERENCES IN SACRAMENTO, AND DAVIS, CA!

Just for a reminder:

Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Reptilian Brain thinks:

It’s the fatherhood guys versus the feminazis.  It’s the libertarians versus everyone else.  It’s the progressives versus the conservative fundamentalists (name your religion…).  Did I mention any racial categories yet? 

Money-smart brain:  Follow the trail.  What’s the financial incentive?

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

April 7, 2010 at 3:58 PM

Posted in History of Family Court

A Child Survivor of Child Abduction, incl. re: Parental Alienation

with 5 comments

Someone commented on my post: 

Arresting Moms, at Least for Felony Child-Stealing

Which asks why California Penal Code 278.5 isn’t (it seems) gender-neutral, and common “reasons” for abducting a child, two of which fall under (at least according to the data base referenced) either “Family Violence” or “Child Trafficking,” both of them very uncomfortable topics, obviously, and both of them pulling immense funding and many agencies to handle. YET, they continue, and continue, wrecking lives, for sure.

Regarding the “Parental Alienation” argument, many oppose it because of it being junk science, and I oppose that argument because I oppose psychologizing what is probably a normal reaction from a child — again, it could be Stockholm Syndrome, or self-preservation, too.    It is a simple derailing of the conversation from CAUSE to EFFECT.

SO, here is a page from an adult survivor of one of the earliest (1980-1983) prosecuted interstate abduction cases.  I don’t yet know HOW he and siblings were retrieved, but the site speaks about the impact — and not just during childhood — this had on him.

I do not know that “abuse” (other than the child-abduction, which IS abuse per se, let alone any others) enters into his case.  I have not read his entire site or the book yet.

This talks about the impact of the experience, far into adulthood.

Reader feedback solicited — not namecalling, but feedback.  I believe this is within copyright limits, and have linked to the site…

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ken Connelly is the author of “Throwing Stones; Parental Child Abduction through the Eyes of a Child”, and the first book in the “Finding Home” series.   Mr. Connelly was kidnapped on October 10, 1980 in Orange, California, and recovered on December 5, 1983 in the small town of Bastrop, Texas.

 Ken began writing in 1985, while attending middle school.  He continued writing poetry, music and short stories through his adult life.  Ken wrote his first unpublished book, “The Seven Keys of Aráganoth” in high school.  Ken continued to write short stories and poems through his life as a way to relate his emotions and creativity to the outside world.  Writing has been one of two grounding forces through the years for him.  Ken has written as a freelance photojournalist and for his university paper.

Ken tried for years to bury his childhood past. Finally in 2006, on the eve of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his childhood abduction he began asking questions and openly challenging his family’s view to just leave it alone.  Shocked with the fact that nothing significant had changed since his recovery, he decided to act. 

Understanding the importance of his case, Ken started speaking, and soon found his love of writing to be his greatest tool for making change. Ken opened up to the world his long cherished spiral notebook, “Lyrics from the Edge”.  This collection of poems, songs and intimate thoughts span the past twenty eight years of his life.  His goal was to write about his years stolen, and have it published by the symbolic twenty-fifth anniversary of his recovery. 
       Ken’ decision to put into print the first Child Stealing/Parental Child Abduction case to result in a felony conviction across interstate jurisdictions has come with a cost.  Ken has had anonymous threats and nearly a complete loss of family relationships due to his efforts to take this dirty and often quiet crime to the public forum.  Speaking and writing was not easy, but after two decades of having thousands of innocent voices silenced, Ken knew he needed to be that voice. 

Long hours awake trying to relive the dark memories he spent a lifetime burying came back to him like the tides of an ocean. During the research phase of his book, Ken discovered that if he could accurately tell his story, not as the adult, but as the child, he could draw the reader in. Using the first person point of view, Ken has found a unique voice seldom discovered in nonfiction.  Ken carries the reader through a dark journey all the while letting the reader feel as though they are reading a twisted fictional childhood story.

Often as parents and professionals we overlook the child’s feelings while making our case as an adult and parent over pre and post abduction. Unlike stranger abduction, parental kidnapping destroys a child’s basic trust foundation, the family.  Ken successfully shows how Parental Child Abduction/Kidnapping leads to Parental Alienation. Many parents who have abducted their children rely on misleading arguments against Parental Alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), or that the child is unaware, and settled in their new environment.  This argument is absolutely false and is only a red herring to make their action legal and legitimate.  For the first time a victim of this crime has come forward to speak.

Mr. Connelly was kidnapped at the age of seven and recovered three years later at the age of eleven.   Throwing Stones is the first book written from the unique child’s point of view. Regardless of domestic, or international parental child abduction cases, this video will help the viewer understand the confusion and mistrust a child experiences during this type of crime.
Ken Connelly was born in Orange County, California.  He currently lives in Dallas, Texas.

ANY EMPHASES ABOVE ARE MINE…

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

April 6, 2010 at 12:16 PM

Posted in History of Family Court

Tagged with ,

Michael Anthony Nelson ~ Strategic Opportunist (con artist), just in the wrong business

with one comment

 

Brilliant?, strategist/serial entrepreneur, visionary gets caught

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/02/BAJP1COTC7.DTL

It’s the overall effect of this — good Lord, he knows that forming banks, consulting, promising services that aren’t delivered, getting cash to come to him, computer savvy, and in general a leadership mentality — in criminal activity, unfortunately — jail didn’t seem to phase him too much, and while promising altruism, was apparently unhampered with a conscience (that can lead to some successful business ventures) —

Well, look at this:

In 1999, Michael Anthony Nelson created a fake bank in Florida and stole more than $700,000 in loans. Let out five years later on federal probation, he headed north to Chicago, where he created a consulting firm, convinced people that he had friends in high places and allegedly conned hundreds of thousands of dollars out of small businesses and churches.

He went back behind bars, but only for a few months – and when he got out, federal authorities say, he stole the identity of a New York lawyer, hired employees for a bogus law firm and ripped off victims in the Bay Area for about $35,000 for legal services he didn’t actually provide.

This is starting to sound like some organizations I’ve dealt with. 

Did this guy miss a fine career in government, particularly the Executive Branch?  He didn’t seem too interested in climbing the corporate ladder, or that the auto plants wouldn’t close before retirement, or any hopeful employee relationship with a business.  That indicates some savvy.  Wonder why…

The attorney whose identity he allegedly stole, Michael Scot Nelson, was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1995 and works as an attorney for the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

Michael Anthony Nelson, 38, of Orlando, on the other hand, has never been an attorney anywhere in the United States. What he’s been, prosecutors say, is a con man from coast to coast.

On Thursday, a federal grand jury in San Francisco indicted Nelson on charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, computer fraud and aggravated identity theft for allegedly hijacking the New York attorney’s good name.

. . .
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/02/BAJP1COTC7.DTL#ixzz0k4STgZBD

What they arrested them on should speak loudly to people hoping to reform the courts:  Mail Fraud, Wire fraud, and in effect fraud.  I think this line about “they just don’t underSTAND!!!….,” whether “they” is a judge, a social worker, a custody evaluator, an attorney, a therapist, a guardian ad litem, a parenting coordinator, . . . . . .      Let’s work HARD at making them underSTAND!!! . . . that line just doesn’t cut it. 

Let’s look at the books!  Then this may raise some governmental outrage, and action.    I mean, think about it.

Compare that with the writing in this fine exhibit I blogged on earlier.  I actually waded through the verbiage, full of passives and situations that “just happen” or “arise” or “have become” and there is practically not a single, direct descriptor noun actually DOING something in the entire piece.  Programs happen.  It’s kind of like the weather.  No one is seeding the clouds, we are just the reporters. . . .

Ten Key Findings from Responsible Fatherhood Initiatives

February 2008

Prepared for:
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

(Intro paragraphs:)

The role of noncustodial fathers in the lives of low-income families has received increased attention in the past decade. As welfare reform has placed time limits on cash benefits, policymakers and program administrators have become interested in increasing financial support from noncustodial parents as a way to reduce poverty among low-income children. Although child support enforcement efforts have increased dramatically in recent years, there is evidence that many low-income fathers cannot afford to meet their child support obligations without impoverishing themselves or their families. Instead, many fathers accumulate child support debts that may lead them to evade the child support system and see less of their children.

To address these complex issues, {{that rained down from the sky, and that we don’t want to directly attribute responsibility for….}} states and localities have put programs in place that focus on developing services and options to help low-income fathers find more stable and better-paying jobs, pay child support consistently, and become more involved parents. In part because of the availability of new funding sources and a growing interest in family-focused programs,

Could it BE any more evasive???  Interest in family-focused programs is, just, well, like crops, just so happening to coming up through the fertile ground of mega-farms (no one bought seed, plowed, planted seed, watered, or even conceived of the idea of farming.  This interest does NOT, we repeat, does NOT have anything to do with any of the founders of the National Fatherhood Initiative, or any other visionaries who foresaw a real crop of grants with a constant stream of clients, and is not, we repeat, NOT, a backlash to feminism.  It just kinda sorta, you knew, “GREW.”  We here, are just dispassionately reporting on what happened.  (Give me a break…. )

this area is experiencing dramatic growth, with hundreds of “fatherhood” programs developing across the country.

Coincidentally, and surely not causally, related to the fine funds that are available here, and the replicatable business model that is being taught, or their close associations with — child support agencies, attorney general’s offices, welfare offices, and so forth.  Those fatherhood programs just plain out developed, like a young girl entering puberty.  Entirely unpredictable.  It just happened.

Under the expanded purposes of Title IVA, authorized in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193, also known as PRWORA), states have been able to use some of their Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to provide services to nonresident fathers, including employment-related services. PRWORA also authorized grants to states to assist noncustodial parents with access and visitation issues, and it required states, as part of their Child Support Enforcement Program, to have procedures requiring fathers who are not paying child support to participate in work activities, which may include employment and training programs. The Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2005 (P.L. 109-171), which contains a reauthorization of the TANF program, also authorized funding to states and public and nonprofit entities for responsible fatherhood programs.

Funny how the anti-violence nonprofit group I went into didn’t tell me this ahead of time.  You might get your restraining order, but you also might (later) lose all contact with your children, through no fault of your own.

These recent policies encourage the development of more programs for low-income fathers. This brief focuses on several important early fatherhood initiatives that were developed and implemented during the 1990s and early 2000s that provide valuable lessons to policymakers and program staff now in this field.

(Note — not necessary to tell the actual litigants, or both sides of any litigating parties, of these programs, even though funds for them come, at least in California, I believe, come straight to /through the Judicial Council of California)

Formal evaluations of these earlier fatherhood efforts have been completed, some quite recently, making this an opportune time to step back and assess what has been learned and how to build on the early programs’ successes and challenges.

Diagram some of these “social policy” sentences — subject, object, verb, and see if there is a real human being or a specific action in place that relates to real-time, real people’s lives..  Good luck.

Contrast this oblique speech (and by the way, those interested in family court matters would do well to read it, and to notice that the writers are quoting — by and large — themselves.  Or related organizations under contract to report on who is studying what.  Study, study, study.

Michael Anthony Nelson, by contrast, moved at the speed of light, and before you know it, a lot of people were out of a lot of money.  The article describes specific, aggressive action in simple declarative prose: 

He (allegedly):

  • In FL, created a fake bank and stole $700,000 in loans.
  • In Chicago, he created a consulting firm (that’s the BUSINESS these court folks are in, practically!)
  • In NY, he stole the identity of a lawyer, hired employees for a bogus law firm and ripped off victims in the Bay Area for about $35,000 for legal services he didn’t actually provide,….
  • rented office space in Los Angeles and Atlanta, applying for credit cards in the name of a real law firm in Seattle….

Again, this appears to be what a Los Angeles County judges slush fund did, in the county courthouse, according to (Marv Bryer) “Johnnypumphandle”, and California NOW 2002 report, tracking the EIN# of the founding organization behind AFCC (Association of Family & Conciliation Courts).  Their employees are often (not exclusively) civil servants, but the origin of the thing began, I at least believe, with tax fraud.  And its going to HELP us?

The guy’s  a real go-getter.  No, I do NOT respect him.  But I do notice that he’s not like some standing in line for welfare (LONG lines), or at the courts to file some paperwork, or trying to get through (if one is female) to the local county child support agency and get a straight answer about what happened?      

(If this was ever in the background, it’s clear) he quickly assessed that this was a lose/lose proposition.

These systems doesn’t reward good behavior and moral mindsets.  It wasn’t designed to do this.  These systems reward those who profit from them.  Consulting firms, nonprofits, government contracted policymakers, and so forth.  They employ LOTS of people to study unemployment, and the voices of the unemployed are, generally speaking, not reported directly, any more than the structures of the organizations are.

Then there are people who start reporting on corruption, and end up like Nancy Schaefer and her husband, which is an unfinished story with significant “SPIN” on it, and a lesson in the high stakes of exposing corruption regarding agencies that deal with children. 

And these are flourishing, in fact replicating faster probably than our population, around the court system.  Sooner or later there may not be babies enough to report on.

The report above, by the way, actually holds the term “multiple-partner fertility,” as if we were rabbits.  Which we aren’t.  Yet.

Finally, it seems, he made a mistake (or was reported, and caught).  But the business he’s in doesn’t seem TOO different than many operating in the government spheres.

MY POINT:

To think that some people with educationese and social reform on their minds can behaviorally re-condition men (or women) that think like this, and move this fast, particularly when it comes to systems analysis — is simply ridiculous.

OR, itself a con game.

Just putting out a few ideas, and connecting them that may be related.  At least it beats waiting in line somewhere else, with an idiotic hope in my brain.

Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

April 3, 2010 at 2:06 PM

Posted in AFCC, Cast, Script, Characters, Scenery, Stage Directions, Funding Fathers - literally, History of Family Court, My Takes, and Favorite Takes, OCSE - Child Support, Organizations, Foundations, Associations NGO Hybrids

Tagged with ,

Want to understand our courts? It’s “Foundation-al”…

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Behind the government, and many nonprofits, are their FOUNDATIONS.  Behind the FOUNDATIONS, are real global-thinkers, which can be good, or not so good, when it comes to foundational principles of the Constitution of individual countries, specifically, the United States.

In understanding some of this, I’ve also applied some of the basic understanding of “capitalism” when it comes into conflict with “justice” as to controlling “cash flow” that, I think, only people who have been in severely controlling relationships, and watched the individual(s), and bystanders, and associated cultural/religious (or nonreligious) groups endorse, and linguistically sanitize, can understand firsthand.

To overcome long-term, systematic, and intense attempts to, in essence, brainwash a woman against her will as to her position and roles in life requires, besides ongoing resistance and risk assessment, a sensitivity to language tricks used to disguise the intent.  Years of listening to talk about “we” and “us” and “our” while knowing (in the marriage) there was no such beast — in practice — got me a little smarter in understanding how the wider circles work to keep us in these places. 

And, I don’t mean to compare myself to the most severe forms of abuse,  I am fed.  I am clothed,   For now, I’m housed.   BUT, treating a person like an “it” or a “dog” or “using” them (against free will, and destructively so) has a uniform quality — it diminishes both the user and the used. 

In the courts, and through the courts, we have these grants. People walking through the doors are not told about the grants.  They are told, Go here, Do that, and this is the revolving door to your life.  They are told, give us your children, and straighten up & fly right, or we’ll make sure you never see them again. 

I meet women almost daily in this situation.  You just don’t get OVER that, really…..Having left abuse, they are not done yet, with the abuse.  They are still minimized, and patronized, and studied, and behaviorally adjusted, labeled, and categorized, and their rights further eroded, in the courts.

Sometimes other women (the next woman in his life, often), participate.  That’s still sexism, or gangsterism, as far as I can tell.  I’m still experiencing forms of it.

I’ve talked about using us for Fatherhood Practitioner Practices, and funding Domestic Violence Advocates Conferencing (which I have long since concluded are cancelling each other out. 

These are the “glass ceilings” UP through which voices from the street level are, generally, NOT heard, and the plexiglass (but obviously not bullet-proof) ceilings through which the “rain” of federal funds to directly help victims is  — at best — severely diluted into conferencing about “what to do” with all these under educated judges, courtroom personnel, administrators, and — most especially — parents.   

=============

So, I find, there is an informational/”Digital” Divide also, between the policy-makers and the people affected by the policies.  And I do not think this is accidental.  Years go by before the average litigant figures out what happened — and those years absolutely DO represent the minority of their children, for the most part.

How can people who have difficulty keeping their own infrastructure together (i.e., transportation, phone, jobs, internet access, childcare and children’s schooling, typically — which is itself a job for any parent, that cannot be entirely delegated to the schools) — keep up with what is being said and done about them at the governmental level?

The only way I can think of is to somehow streamline one’s personal business, including doing LESS of it, and help each other at the LOCAL level, if possible.

The trouble with this is that the majority of the US are taxpayers, meaning, their own earned income doesn’t go as far as those of the policymakers OR of the nonprofits receiving either private or federal (or both) funding, to supply their own needs.  Many of the “employees” have already paid taxes to handle the basic businesses of life:  For example: schooling, law enforcement, judiciary, and things that Big Brother is supposed to do so that business as usual can continue. 

And, we must understand the “chain of command” and “chain of policy” — the OPERATING SYSTEM — because, like good, decent, family-loving folk (sic), as it actually operates, the consequence is, those chains go unmonitored, and we become more and more centralized.  Centralization = worse, not better, when combined with the human nature.  TRUST ME, it does.  There IS a point of no return (cost/benefit) and we are so far beyond that already.

And the other thing, very hard to emotionally accept and understand, is that the “nice guys” aren’t anything of the sort half the time. When we realize that the same criminal mentality exists at the top levels, often, as well as on the street levels, that’s a great awakening. 

One of the first things to go in this situation is simply “language.”  Every platform becomes a “we” but few of the speeches liberally sprinkled with “we” “us” “our children” “our education system” “our schools” “our jails” “our” etc.  — come anywhere close to the quality of  Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech.  (See this blog for comparisons). 

SO, NEW YORK COURT INNOVATIONS?  OR CALIFORNIA?  WHAT”S THE DIFF?

Halls of JUSTICE? 

Or Populace Demonstration Intake Centers?

What do courtrooms in NEW YORK have in Common with those in CALIFORNIA?   Well, this center has worked with the Judicial Council of California (and I will have to find the page, again, on this site, which talks about it).  It may be a continent away, but the Internet flattens it.   Flying professionals around the country flattens it.  Technology-sharing flattens it.

INNOVATIONS and CENTRALIZATIONs of PROBLEM-SOLVING.

 

THE CENTER FOR COURT INNOVATION:

Wikipedia talks about “The Center for COURT Innovation” as a think tank:

The Center for Court Innovation creates new programs that test innovative approaches to public safety problems. Underlying this work is the concept of “problem-solving justice”—the idea that, rather than simply processing cases, the justice system should seek to change the behavior of offenders and improve public safety.[18]

Behavioral modification…Sounds like that AFCC of long ago, and using “new language” instead of the concept of crime as crime.

In another study, Center researchers explored whether problem-solving justice always requires a specialized court or if core principles and practices from these specialized courts are transferable to conventional courts.[54] After interviewing judges, attorneys and representatives from probation departments and service providers, researchers concluded that a number of principles—such as judicial monitoring and linking offenders to services—could be transferable. The study, conducted in cooperation with the Collaborative Justice Courts Advisory Committee of the Judicial Council of California,[55] was the first of its kind in the country.

Other Center research projects include a national survey seeking to determine how and why courts use batterer programs to hold domestic violence offenders accountable;[56] a comprehensive evaluation describing the Brooklyn Mental Health Court model;[57] an in-depth study of the implementation and early results produced by the Brooklyn Youthful Offender Domestic Violence Court;[58] a study of the Suffolk County Juvenile Drug Court’s effects on recidivism; a study examining the degree to which criminal defendants processed at the Red Hook Community Justice Center believe they were treated fairly;[59] and a five-year national study with the Urban Institute and the Research Triangle Institute that is expected to shed light on which aspects of the drug court model are most important.

THE URBAN INSTITUTE through another viewpoint:

The Urban Institute (see recent posts) that are promoting Responsible Fatherhood Grants, themselves reactionary to laws allowing women to leave violent relationships and STAY out of them…  It is entirely a social science approach to justice, as opposed to the INALIENABLE RIGHTS, BILL OF RIGHTS, and in total opposition to the concept that certain truths are self-evident…..  It is the transformation of PEOPLE into SUBJECT MATTER, and of those who study them, the highly-educated scholars in certain fields of which people, en masse,  are the experimental substance as the priests, prophets, and prognosticators…

RE:

The Research Triangle Institute (first I heard of them):

Hmm:  This link is interesting,  “Submitted by WW4 Report on Tue, 03/09/2010 – 02:12. ”

Research Triangle Institute can be sued

for deaths of Iraqi civilians

A US federal judge has ruled that the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), a USAID-funded organization providing local governance services in Iraq, can be sued in the United States for the deaths of two Iraqi women killed by their security guards in Baghdad in October of 2007. The judge will also allow the victims’ attorneys discovery on whether the security company, Unity Resources Group, has sufficient business contacts in the United States to be sued in a US court. Whether Unity Resources Group can be sued should be decided within the next few months.

The RTI incident occurred only weeks after the infamous Blackwater massacre in Nisur Square, in which 17 innocent bystanders were killed. The first of two civil lawsuits on behalf of Nisur Square victims ended in a disputed settlement, which, along with a botched criminal prosecution, outraged many in the US and Iraq, and recently led to the ouster from Iraq of all former Blackwater employees. A second civil case, brought by a different group of Nisur Square victims, is still pending in federal court in North Carolina.

BUT, more to the topic of what is RTI doing in the US Court System (“This neutrality of this Wikipedia Article is in dispute….”)

The Research Triangle Institute (RTI) is a non-profit research organization based in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) of North Carolina. RTI is the oldest tenant of this major research park, and the sister organization to the Research Triangle Foundation.

BEHIND THE NONPROFITS ARE THE FOUNDATIONS.  BEHIND THE FOUNDATIONS, INCLUDING MANY OF THOSE WORKING THROUGH THE US GOVERNMENT TO DO DEMONSTRATIONS, ARE TYPICALLY WEALTHY — VERY WEALTHY — FAMILIES.

RTI has over 2,600 employees engaged in many distinct research areas. RTI describes its offerings as innovative research and development and … services in health and pharmaceuticals, advanced technology, survey and statistics, education and training, economic and social development, and the environment.

RTI has regularly received many USA government contracts in reconstructing countries in governmental transition, generally helping to implement the privatising of public institutions, especially in Eastern Europe during the 1990s. In 2003 it was contracted by USAID to help in reconstructing Iraq, after the 2003 invasion. Specifically, USAID contracted RTI to privatise water systems and provide education system reform in Iraq. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has two contracts with RTI for, among other purposes, the manufacture and distribution of standardized cannabis cigarettes. [1]

USAID has partnered with RTI to conduct indoor residual spraying of DDT in African countries to control malaria.

SO, WHO ARE THEY?  For one thing, international.  For another, closely associated with governments  (that’s plural) and pharmaceutical corporations.  For another, like any good religion, improving the lot of humanity.  Globally… 

RTI International RTI International is one of the world’s leading research institutes, dedicated to improving the human condition by turning knowledge into practice. Our staff of more than 2,800 provides research and technical expertise to governments and businesses in more than 40 countries in the areas of health and pharmaceuticals, education and training, surveys and statistics, advanced technology, international development, economic and social policy, energy and the environment, and laboratory and chemistry services.The Center for Technology Applications at RTI provides services to help clients extract the maximum value from intellectual property. Our technology assessments and market intelligence form the basis for successful strategies in licensing, corporate partnering, and new business ventures.
RTI International
Copyright© ©2009 Research Triangle Institute. All Rights Reserved. RTI International is a trade name of Research Triangle Institute.

 

FOUNDATIONS IN OUR BUSINESSES, CHARITIES, AND GOVERNMENTS:

What do heads of foundations do in their spare time?  Well, sometimes fantastic things.  Sometimes not:

  • Philanthropist charged with molesting Russian dance student, 12 …

    Mar 31, 2010 … An arts philanthropist traveled to Russia to have sex with a 12-year-old … Apogee Foundation, was arrested March 27 in Larnaca, Cyprus. …

    • Want to see how APOGEE FOUNDATION describes itself? As a top nonprofit, and the gentleman above was:

    Kenneth Schneider, Apogee’s founder, was working as an international financial attorney in Moscow during the 1990’s, when he responded to the radical deterioration of the nation’s performing arts training resources by galvanizing public and private support for their revitalization.

    Recognizing the potential global value of this work, Schneider and his colleagues incorporated The Apogee Foundation in New York in 2004. Since then, Apogee has vastly broadened the reach and impact of its vision through innovative programs designed to discover, develop and celebrate artistic excellence worldwide.

    They even have a cool Logo…  And excellent Ideas.  Not including the one with the 12 year old male dancer, obviously…  Well, Mr. Schneider apparently through it was a great idea, til he got arrested for it…

    Here’s another RTI project, sounds real good.  Same idea — studying human populace:

    GIRLS STUDY GROUP

    (Obviously my “TANF” assistance grant is expired — can’t even copy the logo right).  Again, it’s the ..

    . . . . Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention awarded the Girls Study Group project to RTI International to further the field’s understanding of female juvenile offending and also to identify effective strategies for preventing and reducing female juvenile involvement in delinquency and violence.

    Meanwhile, the hurting continues to go on.  Recent article, NEW JERSEY:

    Police: NJ Teen Sold Stepsister, 7, For Party Sex

    It started with a party invitation to a 15-year-old girl from some men she knew.

    Excuuuuuuse me??  To “some men she knew”???

    She took her 7-year-old stepsister to an apartment down the street from their home near the Statehouse, where the girls had been hanging around outside on a Sunday afternoon.

    For the younger girl, police say it quickly descended into a horrifying ordeal in which she was gang-raped by as many as seven men as her sister not only watched but got paid by those who did it.

    Their parents, none the wiser, thought maybe they had run away.

    “We’re talking about a kid who told her sister to go into an apartment and let people rape her,” said Trenton police Capt. Joseph Juniak. “It’s unfathomable.”

    The teen has been charged with aggravated sexual assault, promoting prostitution and other crimes. Her name was not released because of her age, but the county prosecutor plans to ask the court to try her as an adult. In the meantime, she is being held at the Mercer County Youth Detention Center.

    The 7-year-old had wanted to tag along because she was worried about the 15-year-old’s safety, Mayor Doug Palmer said.

    MASSACHUSETTS:

    And hazing and bullying, just perhaps even girl-on-girl, resulted in a visitor’s suicide, per NYT, as of Yesterday…..

    9 Teenagers Are Charged After Classmate’s Suicide

    Don Treeger/Springfield Republican, via Associated Press

    South Hadley students at a vigil after their classmate’s death in January.

    . . . . .READ THE ARTICLE.

    The prosecutor brought charges Monday against nine teenagers, saying their taunting and physical threats were beyond the pale and led the freshman, Phoebe Prince, to hang herself from a stairwell in January.

    The charges were an unusually sharp legal response to the problem of adolescent bullying, which is increasingly conducted in cyberspace as well as in the schoolyard and has drawn growing concern from parents, educators and lawmakers.

    In the uproar around the suicides of Ms. Prince, 15, and an 11-year-old boy subjected to harassment in nearby Springfield last year, the Massachusetts legislature stepped up work on an anti-bullying law that is now near passage. The law would require school staff members to report suspected incidents and principals to investigate them. It would also demand that schools teach about the dangers of bullying. Forty-one other states have anti-bullying laws of varying strength.

    In the Prince case, two boys and four girls, ages 16 to 18, face a different mix of felony charges that include statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, harassment, stalking and disturbing a school assembly. Three younger girls have been charged in juvenile court, Elizabeth D. Scheibel, the Northwestern district attorney, said at a news conference in Northampton, Mass.

     

    Maybe some more “studies” will fix the school culture, but I doubt it.  I suspect that meaningful engagement in meaningful activities with adults (not just peers) who know that the children MEAN something, might. 

    But how is there to be a new utopia if the values-setters, and foundation-owners and policy-makers are going to actually allow the parents to have relationships with their own kids?  Who would run the factories, clean our shoes, and shovel the garbage?  

    (ah well, another sarcastic post here). 

    Bible:  “Study to be quiet and do your own business….”

    Is that still possible while the infrastructure of life is more and more centralized, federalized, and monopolized, and a middle class going, going gone?  We need to pay more attention what is happening at the tops and bottoms of society.  These are the canaries in the coal mines, and the indicators..

    Apparently (like I used to be), in the middle, it’s the scramble to preserve the quality of life . . . . welll??????  ????

    Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

    April 2, 2010 at 2:59 PM

    Posted in History of Family Court

    “The Transition to Fatherhood” (File under “while you were sleeping…”)

    leave a comment »

     

    We are cutting back on social services at the lower end — libraries, bus routes, courts & DMVs closing more, we are all in a budget crisis (except, of course programs like “Early Head Start” or others of a social service research nature, including fatherhood, healthy marriage, how to stop violence against women, and in general, whatever knowledge is missing on the total sphere of human activity, which MUST be categorized, labeled, and  — this is probably the goal — controlled. 

    Human behavior, another “controlled substance.”

    I mean, get real!  Read this abstract — $4 million grant to Cornell University Endowed Colleges.  From TAGGS.hhs.Gov, and underutilized database source of what your GUV is doing:

    Award Number Award Title OPDIV Program Office Sum of Actions
    P01HD045610  TRANSITION TO FATHERHOOD  NIH  NICHD  $ 4,880,378 

     

    10-MAR-2005 / 28-FEB-2010
    Abstract DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Policy makers and others are concerned that many young men today are only loosely attached to their children and their children’s mothers. This concern has been fueled by rising rates of non-marital childbearing, delays in the age of marriage, increases in the share of children being raised in female-headed families, and the failure of some biological fathers to provide economic support to their children. The aim of this proposal is to form a multi-disciplinary team of research collaborators who will meet on a regular basis to plan and conduct coordinated analyses on topics relating to the transition to fatherhood using multiple data sets. The four projects included in this proposal address the following related issues: 1. What are the economic, policy, psychological, and sociological factors that influence the timing of biological fatherhood and the circumstances under which fatherhood occurs? What is the role of men in the timing and circumstances of sexual initiation, contraceptive use, pregnancy, and childbearing? 2. What is the relationship between the transition to biological fatherhood and other transitions to adulthood, such as marriage, educational completion, and entry into the workforce? 3. What are the determinants of responsible fathering, and, in particular, what is the role of family process within and across generations? 4. What are the social, economic, policy, relationship and individual factors associated with men having additional births after they have already become fathers, and what factors lead men to have additional births, with more than one partner? Each project will conduct parallel analyses across multiple data sets, and similar data sets will be used across many of the projects. The data sets used in the four projects include National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and 1979; Add Health; National Survey of Adolescent Males; National Survey of Family Growth; Fragile Families; Early Head Start; Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort; National Survey of Families and Households; Panel Study of Income Dynamics-CDS. Our strategy will enable us to obtain a much fuller understanding of the factors that influence the transition to fatherhood. We also propose two infrastructure cores: (A) Administration and Dissemination and (B) Data Management and Methodology.
    Thesaurus  
    PI Name/Title H E PETERS  
    PI eMail  
    Institution CORNELL UNIVERSITY ITHACA 120 Day Hall ITHACA, NY 14853
    Department  
    Fiscal Year 2009
    ICD NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
    IRG ZHD1

    ===========

    Good grief!

    See Ecclesiastes 12, the end.  Keep it Simple, eh?

    Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

    March 30, 2010 at 11:57 AM

    Posted in History of Family Court

    The Courage to Confront Corruption is Costly…

    with 2 comments

     

    There are some things in life that one can’t just ignore and move on with life as normal.  Of course trauma affects people, and a collective social sort of trauma is going to affect how society works.

    Today’s post I’m slapping up here in under 5 minutes, after hearing about the recent death of a former, female, Georgia Senator who showed extraordinary courage and concern, adn spoke up to report that a system in her state — and probably nationwide — was so broken as not to be fixed.  She reported it as out of control and beyond reform.

    My point of view is that the size of institutions, however well-intended, naturally tends to that state.

    Some of us (noncustodial moms) already in shock about our own situations, and the systems that didn’t do squat to fix, but instead worsened them in every identifiable category, for us, our children, and the society at large (EXCEPT those in the businesses profiting from this), are now in shock about the Schafer reported murder-suicide situation.

    Within the next 3 minutes, I’m going to try & paste 3 posts.  Check this out yourself.

    ======

    http://www2.wsav.com/sav/news/local/article/former_senators_death_apparent_murder-suicide/109880/

    Associated Press
    Published: March 27, 2010

    » 0 Comments | Post a Comment

    Investigators say the husband of former state Sen. Nancy Schaefer shot her in the back and then killed himself.
       
    The couple’s bodies were found in their north Georgia home on Friday in an apparent murder-suicide.
       
    Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead tells The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that investigators concluded that Bruce Schaefer shot her once in the back in the bedroom and then shot himself in the head.
       
    Bankhead says investigators found a handgun and a suicide note written by the husband to family members.
       
    The newspaper reports that the bodies were discovered by one of the couple’s five children. The daughter lives in the same Clarkesville neighborhood and entered the home when she wasn’t able to reach them.

    http://kidjacked.com/family/schaefer.asp

    From the legislative desk of Senator Nancy Schaefer 50th District of Georgia

    November 16, 2007

    THE CORRUPT BUSINESS OF CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES

    BY: Nancy Schaefer

    Senator, 50th District

    My introduction into child protective service cases was due to a grandmother in an adjoining state who called me with her tragic story. Her two granddaughters had been taken from her daughter who lived in my district. Her daughter was told wrongly that if she wanted to see her children again she should sign a paper and give up her children. Frightened and young, the daughter did. I have since discovered that parents are often threatened into cooperation of permanent separation of their children.

    The children were taken to another county and placed in foster care. The foster parents were told wrongly that they could adopt the children. The grandmother then jumped through every hoop known to man in order to get her granddaughters. When the case finally came to court it was made evident by one of the foster parent’s children that the foster parents had, at any given time, 18 foster children and that the foster mother had an inappropriate relationship with the caseworker.

    In the courtroom, the juvenile judge, acted as though she was shocked and said the two girls would be removed quickly. They were not removed. Finally, after much pressure being applied to the Department of Family and Children Services of Georgia (DFCS), the children were driven to South Georgia to meet their grandmother who gladly drove to meet them. After being with their grandmother two or three days, the judge, quite out of the blue, wrote up a new order to send the girls to their father, who previously had no interest in the case and who lived on the West Coast. The father was in “adult entertainment” . His girlfriend worked as an “escort” and his brother, who also worked in the business, had a sexual charge brought against him.

    Within a couple of days the father was knocking on the grandmother’ s door and took the girls kicking and screaming to California.

    The father developed an unusual relationship with the former foster parents and soon moved back to the southeast, and the foster parents began driving to the father’s residence and picking up the little girls for visits. The oldest child had told her mother and grandmother on two different occasions that the foster father molested her.

    To this day after five years, this loving, caring blood relative grandmother does not even have visitation privileges with the children. The little girls are in my opinion permanently traumatized and the young mother of the girls was so traumatized with shock when the girls were first removed from her that she has not recovered.

    Throughout this case and through the process of dealing with multiple other mismanaged cases of the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS), I have worked with other desperate parents and children across the state because they have no rights and no one with whom to turn. I have witnessed ruthless behavior from many caseworkers, social workers, investigators, lawyers, judges, therapists, and others such as those who “pick up” the children. I have been stunned by what I have seen and heard from victims all over the state of Georgia.

    In this report, I am focusing on the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS).

    However, I believe Child Protective Services nationwide has become corrupt and that the entire system is broken almost beyond repair. I am convinced parents and families should be warned of the dangers.

    The Department of Child Protective Services, known as the Department of Family and Children Service (DFCS) in Georgia and other titles in other states, has become a “protected empire” built on taking children and separating families. This is not to say that there are not those children who do need to be removed from wretched situations and need protection. This report is concerned with the children and parents caught up in “legal kidnapping,” ineffective policies, and DFCS who do does not remove a child or children when a child is enduring torment and abuse. (See Exhibit A and Exhibit B)

    In one county in my District, I arranged a meeting for thirty-seven families to speak freely and without fear. These poor parents and grandparents spoke of their painful, heart wrenching encounters with DFCS. Their suffering was overwhelming. They wept and cried. Some did not know where their children were and had not seen them in years. I had witnessed the “Gestapo” at work and I witnessed the deceitful conditions under which children were taken in the middle of the night, out of hospitals, off of school buses, and out of homes. In one county a private drug testing business was operating within the DFCS department that required many, many drug tests from parents and individuals for profit. In another county children were not removed when they were enduring the worst possible abuse. Due to being exposed, several employees in a particular DFCS office were fired. However, they have now been rehired either in neighboring counties or in the same county again. According to the calls I am now receiving, the conditions in that county are returning to the same practices that they had before the light was shown on their deeds. Having worked with probably 300 cases statewide, I am convinced there is no responsibility and no accountability in the system

    Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

    March 29, 2010 at 1:21 PM

    Posted in History of Family Court

    Uninformed Consent — medical/legal parallels

    leave a comment »

     

    In the last post, I mentioned that it’s perhaps time we stopped presenting ourselves or our children to become the stuff of behavioral modification research, and our problems to fund other’s professions, which prolong the problems.  Among other things.

    (1)

    Particularly in the field of Psychology. 

    Did you read that article yet?:

    What Is Psychology?

    Psychology has as its aim the understanding of human behavior, and as a secondary goal, the treatment of behaviors deemed abnormal. Almost immediately upon the formation of the field, efforts were made to place psychological studies on a scientific basis. Early psychological studies were conducted by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig, Germany. One of his students, G. Stanley Hall, then went on to establish the first American psychological laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.

    Hmmm. Wasn’t JOHNS HOPKINS? referred to on yesterday’s posts, about “Ten Key Findings on Responsible Fatherhood?” (Or whatever variation of studying the practice of “fatherhood” that particular, grants-funded report was on…)

    The Urban Institute scholar moved over to Johns Hopkins School of Social Policy and continued collaborating and reporting on how poor folk respond to interventions…. 

    This is social engineering, for sure, just as surely at the CFFPP

    CFFPPCenter on Fathers, Families, and Public Policy

    (or is it The mission of the Center on Fathers, Families, and Public Policy?

    (just a little verbal confusion there — is it about Family?  Or Fathers?  Or does the “family” consist of fathers and children only? Do mothers get a mention?)

    Either way, it’s to transform society:

     (CFFPP) is to help create a society in which low-income parents – mothers as well as fathers – are in a position to support their children emotionally, financially, and physically.

     BACK TO IS PSYCHOLOGY A SCIENCE? and its uncomfortable German connection….

    Then, in 1900, Sigmund Freud introduced psychoanalytical theory in his book “The Interpretation of Dreams.” This was the first ultimately large-scale effort to apply psychological knowledge to the problem of treatment or therapy.

    Human psychology and the related fields of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy achieved their greatest acceptance and popularity in the 1950s, at which time they were publicly perceived as sciences. But this was never true, and it is not true today – human psychology has never risen to the status of a science, for several reasons:

    Ethical considerations.

    If you want to study the behavior of rats or pigeons, there are no significant ethical limitations – you can kill them, you can cut them up, you can dress them out in EEG probes while they play violent video games, no one will complain. They are expendable, they are animals.

    But as to the study of human beings, there are severe limitations on what kinds of studies are permitted. As an example, if you want to know whether removing specific brain tissue results in specific behavioral changes, you cannot perform the study on humans. You have to perform it on animals and try to extrapolate the result to humans.

    One of the common work-arounds to this ethical problem is to perform what are called “retrospective studies,” studies that try to draw conclusions from past events rather than setting up a formal laboratory experiment with strict experimental protocols and a control group. If you simply gather information about people who have had a certain kind of past experience, you are freed from the ethical constraint that prevents you from exposing experimental subjects to that experience in the present.

    But, because of intrinsic problems, retrospective studies produce very poor evidence and science. For example, a hypothetical retrospective study meant to discover whether vitamin X makes people more intelligent may only “discover” that the people who took the vitamin were those intelligent enough to take it in the first place. In general, retrospective studies cannot reliably distinguish between causes and effects, and any conclusions drawn from them are suspect.

    Think about this for a moment. In order for human psychology to be placed on a scientific footing, it would have to conduct strictly controlled experiments on humans, in some cases denying treatments or nutritional elements deemed essential to health (in order to have a control group), and the researchers would not be able to tell the subjects whether or not they were receiving proper care (in order not to bias the result). This is obviously unethical behavior, and it is a key reason why human psychology is not a science.

    . . .

    This raises another ethical issue, that of informed consent. Has the client been properly informed as to the nature of the procedures — will the sessions consist of research, diagnosis, therapy, or some mixture? But there is no remedy for this problem, because the clinician can’t tell the client what is going to happen, because he doesn’t know, and he is certainly not going to resist publishing any interesting, unforeseen results as research findings.

    Overall lax standards.

    The items listed above inevitably create an atmosphere in which absolutely anything goes (at least temporarily), judgments about efficacy are utterly subjective, and as a result, the field of psychology perpetually splinters into cults and fads (examples below). “Studies” are regularly published that would never pass muster with a self-respecting peer review committee from some less soft branch of science.

    (2)

    RE: HARVESTING A POOR, LONG-DECEASED BLACK WOMAN”S CELLS, and blood from her relatives, and PROFITING FROM IT:

    In a far earlier post, I’d put up “A Woman’s Undying Gift to Science” about how cells were harvested and used for research:  Henrietta Lack:

    Books of The TimesPublished: February 2, 2010

    (review) by Dwight Garner.

    The woman who provides this book its title, Henrietta Lacks, was a poor and largely illiterate Virginia tobacco farmer, the great-great-granddaughter of slaves. Born in 1920, she died from an aggressive cervical cancer at 31, leaving behind five children. No obituaries of Mrs. Lacks appeared in newspapers. She was buried in an unmarked grave.

    To scientists, however, Henrietta Lacks almost immediately became known simply as HeLa (pronounced hee-lah), from the first two letters of her first and last names. Cells from Mrs. Lacks’s cancerous cervix, taken without her knowledge, were the first to grow in culture, becoming “immortal” and changing the face of modern medicine. There are, Ms. Skloot writes, “trillions more of her cells growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body.” Laid end to end, the world’s HeLa cells would today wrap around the earth three times.

    Because HeLa cells reproduced with what the author calls a “mythological intensity,” they could be used in test after test. “They helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization,” Ms. Skloot writes. HeLa cells were used to learn how nuclear bombs affect humans, and to study herpes, leukemia, Parkinson’s disease and AIDS. They were sent up in the first space missions, to see what becomes of human cells in zero gravity.

    Bought and sold and shipped around the world for decades, HeLa cells are famous to science students everywhere. But little has been known, until now, about the unwitting donor of these cells. Mrs. Lacks’s own family did not know that her cells had become famous (and that people had grown wealthy from marketing them) until more than two decades after her death, after scientists had begun to take blood from her surviving family members, without their informed consent, in order to better study HeLa.

    Ms Skloot, who wrote the book:

    Ms. (had she lived at the time “Ms.” was used) Lack & (husband) David:

    (3)

     U.S. Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney, New York to Speak at HERS 2010 Hysterectomy Conference

    http://hersfoundation.org/conference.html

    Now here’s one on the over-use of Hysterectomy — and upcoming conference (NY) from the HERS FOUNDATION on the inappropriate cutting on women, and taking personal CHUNKS of them out unnecessarily, and without INFORMED CONSENT on the aftereffect and consequences.  This has now happened (not this exactly, but the process) in 3 generations of females in my line, myself being the middle one.  I can’t speak about any potential others because I don’t know my forebears that well, but I know that one of them was getting whanged on by her husband while attempting to raise children.

    I am going to paste the particulars, because a number of parallels between showing up for medical help, and showing up for the courts exist; two of the attorneys showing up here have dealt with that, as in, class actions. Place information is at the link above.

    Conference Agenda
    Saturday, April 24, 2010

    8:30 – 9:30 a.m. Registration
    9:00 – 9:10 a.m. Welcome
    9:10 – 9:40 a.m. Keynote Speaker
    U.S. Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney, New York
    Chair of House-Senate Joint Economic CommitteeMaloney has been a powerful advocate for women’s rights since before her first election to the House in 1992, dubbed the “Year of the Woman” for the number of females elected to Congress. Closely allied with groups like Emily’s List and the National Organization for Women, she has taken an active role in pushing for passage of virtually every major piece of women’s rights legislation.In 2008, Maloney published “Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated,” a book detailing the ongoing struggle for women on a number of fronts, including equal pay, healthcare and politics.
    9:40 – 10:00 a.m. The Medicalization of Women
    Sybil Shainwald, JD
    The Law Offices of Sybil ShainwaldShainwald is dedicated to advocating for safe and effective healthcare for women. She pioneered DES litigation and was co-counsel in Bichler v. Lilly, the nation’s first DES Daughter legal victory in 1979. She proved that DES-exposed individuals had been harmed after the pharmaceutical industry failed to test the safety of DES, and continually promoted the drug even after it was known to be a carcinogen and absolutely ineffective.
    10:00 – 10:30 a.m. The Female PelvisMitchell Levine, MD
    Clinical Instructor
    Tufts and Harvard Schools of MedicineWhat the pelvis looks like when the uterus and ovaries are removed, and what fills the empty space. What happens when the blood supply, nerves and ligaments attached to the uterus are severed.
    10:30 – 10:45 a.m. Break
    10:45 – 12:00 p.m. The Voices of ExperienceModerator
    Nora W. Coffey
    President, HERS FoundationPanel
    Jen Bandes
    Nicole Choate, RN
    Sylvia Gill
    Melanie Miller
    Tawanda QueenWomen describe what they were told before and after hysterectomy. They discuss the impact of the surgery on every aspect of their lives.
    12:00 – 1:30 p.m. Lunch
    1:30 – 2:00 p.m. Your Vote is Mightier than the Lobbyist’s DollarIndiana Representative Bruce Borders
    District 45
    Member of Insurance CommitteeThe legislative process, and what you can do to help pass a Hysterectomy Video Informed Consent Law.
    2:30 – 3:30 p.m. Common Conditions, Treatment Options, and Consequences of HysterectomyMitchell Levine, M.D.
    Clinical instructor
    Tufts and Harvard Schools of MedicineAlternatives to hysterectomy for common symptoms and conditions, including ovarian cysts, fibroids, endometriosis, hyperplasia, prolapse, HPV, pelvic pain and obstetric hemorrhage.
    3:30 – 3:50 p.m. Proud Flesh: A Hysterectomy JournalGenevieve Carminati, M.A.
    Associate Professor of English
    Coordinator, Women’s Studies
    Montgomery CollegeReading from the journal she began shortly after she underwent a hysterectomy at the age of 25.
    3:50 – 4:00 p.m. Break
    4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Medical Malpractice: The Legal and Medical IssuesRobert E. Myers, J.D., L.L.M.
    Senior Trial Attorney
    The law firm of Coffey Kaye Myers and Olleyhttp://www.felaattys.com/protect-your-rights.php(When Injury Strikes)….

    What constitutes medical malpractice, what to ask a lawyer, and what you should expect from your lawyer. An expert in medical malpractice, Myers will discuss the basic elements for pursuing a claim and establishing damages. 
    5:00 – 6:00pm Round Table DiscussionSpeakers and AttendeesBruce Borders
    Genevieve Carminati
    Nora W. Coffey
    Mitchell Levine
    Carolyn B. Maloney
    Robert E. Myers
    Sybil Shainwaldh ttp://www.sybilshainwald.com/

    The primary thrust of Sybil Shainwald’s practice has been, and continues to be, women’s health law. Ms. Shainwald pioneered Diethylstilbestrol (DES) litigation. She was co-counsel in the nation’s first “DES daughter” case, Bichler v. Lilly. Since that time, she has represented thousands of women and men, from around the country and worldwide, who were exposed to DES. She has been given numerous awards for her work, including an award by the DES Cancer Network.
    Throughout her years of practice, Ms. Shainwald has litigated cases involving drugs and medical devices that have inflicted harm on women and their offspring. She was a member of the national Plaintiff’s Negotiating Committee for the court-appointed Plaintiff’s Steering Committee in the silicone breast implant litigation. She was also named as the Chair for the Foreign Plaintiff’s Subcommittee representing all the interests of foreign women.
    Not only has Ms. Shainwald been an avid litigator of women’s health issues, but she has been active in numerous women’s health organizations as well. She has also appeared on every major TV network, written, testified and lectured extensively on obstetrical malpractice, IUDs, unnecessary hysterectomies, hormone therapy, and products liability litigation

     

    NOT TO MENTION;

    (4)

    The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women

    Exploding the Estrogen MythThe Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women

    Barbara Seaman

     

    Reviewed thus in 2007:

    Seaman is a science journalist and cofounder of the National Women’s Health Network. She takes on the drug industry in this book, condemning the common use of hormone replacement therapy, especially estrogen. She has studied women’s health both during fertile years and post menopausal. Physicians prescribe hormone replacement therapy for many women’s health purposes, from birth control to menopausal ailments. Seaman believes that hormone replacement therapy is over prescribed and dangerous. The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women examines how the drugs have been used since their beginnings back in the 1940’s and 1950’s. She talks about the different cancers that the drug has been known to cause and others that the medical field won’t admit but she believes has caused. Seaman gives a good history of female medicine going back hundreds of years to different herbal remedies that have been used for menopause.

    Seaman doesn’t call for estrogen and other hormone replacement drugs to be banned, although it’s close in this book. Instead she advocates using them sparingly and at the lowest doses possible. Over the past 50 years the dosages keep lowering as problems start appearing. Yet this is the type of drug that has very long term effects not only on women’s bodies, but the sexuality of both sexes. She scathingly reduces the medical field to a “men’s only” club that pat the little woman on the head, tell her that they know best, and send the female patient out with a medication that could cause death.

     

    I’m not saying that men, too, or girls & boys, are not “experimented” on, improperly, and often for frightenly racist, if not “eugenic” reasons.  This is an INSTITUTIONAL issue, as well as an ATTITUDINAL.  Some of this is frightening to consider:

    As of just about a full year ago (April 19, 2009):

    Gov. Charlie Crist has ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate 31 graves near the school. “Please determine whether any crimes were committed and, if possible, the perpetrators of these crimes,’’ Crist wrote.

    Gov. Charlie Crist has ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate 31 graves near the school. “Please determine whether any crimes were committed and, if possible, the perpetrators of these crimes,’’ Crist wrote.

    For their own good: a St. Petersburg Times special report on child abuse at the Florida School for Boys

    By Ben Montgomery and Waveney Ann Moore, Times Staff Writers

    . . .

    They remember walking into the dark little building on the campus of the Florida School for Boys, in bare feet and white pajamas, afraid they’d never walk out.

    For 109 years, this is where Florida has sent bad boys. Boys have been sent here for rape or assault, yes, but also for skipping school or smoking cigarettes or running hard from broken homes. Some were tough, some confused and afraid; all were treading through their formative years in the custody of the state. They were as young as 5, as old as 20, and they needed to be reformed.

    It was for their own good.

    Someone is always needing to be taught a lesson, apparently, if not medicated for failing to comply with social norms. 

    Using Psychology to discredit normal human reactions to extreme circumstances aint’ exactly new, and sometimes simply approaches, not ‘therapeutic jurisprudence,” but basic namecalling…. 

    Women’s Mental Illness

    A Response to Oppression

    OR,

    Women and Madness

    by Phyllis Chesler
    Palgrave Macmillan, 2005
    Review by Tony O’Brien, M Phil on May 31st 2006

    Women and Madness is the reissued, revised edition of a book first published at the height of second wave feminism in 1972. The Female Eunuch (Germaine Greer), and Sexual Politics (Kate Millet) were published in 1970. Chesler’s book has a more specific focus than the other two; it is concerned with ‘madness’, or perhaps more correctly the social construction of madness in western patriarchal societies.
    . . .

    Women and Madness was written at the time of the DSM II, a diagnostic system that was used to support the sorts of subjective value judgments Chesler rightly complains of. How ironic then, that the use of the more objective criteria of the DSM IV makes little difference to the gendered distribution of mental illness. It will come as no surprise to Chesler to see that despite the influence of political arguments such as those of Women and Madness, change has been limited. Public health literature is depressingly consistent in showing that despite increased knowledge of risk factors, it is still the poor and the oppressed who experience the worst health outcomes. Chesler is under no illusions that the struggle she articulated three decades ago continues.

    Women and Madness is a revolutionary book.

    NOW —

    While He Saids and She Saids still abound, and the hate flows around, the new/old theme is basically that protest – or conflict — or disagreements — are now a “sickness” to be fixed. 

    Enter the Family Law System, in one of its primary organization’s own words. . . . . With a lot of help from the Fatherhood and Healthy Marriage funders….  We need to FIX people!!!  No longer is it “what happened in re: law” but whoever protests the loudest is the bad guy.  The pendulum has swung from “irreconciliable differences” (some of them very legitimate) to the 20th/21st century version of “Arbeit Macht Frei,” (although I do NOT mean to diminish the comparision, only refer to the principle of establishing agencies to force reconciliation “for the sake of the kids). 

    The principle is to look at the “fixers” and the guardians of what is “correct” acceptable social behavior…  In this case, it is the social science (with heavy religious overtones in many cases) superstructure of foundations & grants to nonprofits (and “principal investigators”  – sounds like an experiment to me, or research, right?  On PEOPLE …)

     that is driving the court system in the ditch (or, rather has) and made a mockery of its purpose, methods, and end goals, which used to include the concept of “Justice” and a bit of fair play…

    Next June (maybe catch it after the HERSFOUNDATION one on informed consent about hysterectomy)

    http://www.afccnet.org/conferences/afcc_conferences.asp

    Denver Conference Brochrue

    CHANGING THE CONCEPT, FIXING MARRIAGES, the JUDGE AS THERAPIST (or Dispensary);

    In 1975, Review Editor Meyer Elkin editorialized on the language of family law:

    Why do we continue to use the language of criminal law in family law? Is it primarily tradition that causes us to continue to use the old words in family law? Or is it something else? Is it a reflection of the prevailing ambivalence of this society which, on the one hand, tells people that divorce is okay, but by its actions, or lack of it, shows that many still do not accept the idea of divorce in a pair-oriented society? We need to develop new words that will alleviate stress on the divorcing family rather than add to stresses already present….Family law is entering a new period. There is now present an opportunity for introducing new practices and procedures—and words that will represent the combined expertise of both law and the behavioral sciences who, after all, are equally concerned and have similar goals regarding the strengthening of the family. Lets us now start the search for the words.

    AFCC members and courts continued to lead the way in developing new services throughout the 1970s.  In 1973, the Los Angeles Conciliation Court began a pilot program to mediate custody and visitation disputes.  Divorce education workshops for parents began to emerge in several AFCC member courts.

    …The dilemma that fathers have in this venue, is that it’s a powerful tool WHEN the cookie crumbles in the right (towards them, if a batterer or abuser, or simply uninterested in that Child Support Thang…) direction.  Then the cries are loud and doleful about violation of constitutional rights (particularly among religious groups not particularly friendly to the concept of WOMEN as HUMANs….).  It’s a tough choice — play victim?  Or go with the flow?

    Could you have it much clearer?  For sure, it’s a combo of behavioral science AND law.

    Let’s see if a site promising women help with protection against violence is actually going to SAY that up front that mediation, for example, is   inadvisable when there is domestic violence issue, BUT that to have a “required outcome” of more noncustodial parent time (to get them female-headed households off welfare, and provide nonpaying parents an incentive — not of course, to continue endless litigations til someone ‘breaks,” but to man-up and support their offspring), and moreover, they’re mandatory, too, and funded by a huge ($10 mil/year/nationwide) federally funded program called “Access/Visitation,” and so forth…

    It says:  “JUSTICE IS NOT SERVED TIL VICTIMS ARE.”

     

    (in a nice logo) and has a nice executive director, with background in — Sociology, and passing the bar in 1997.

    Nadia Davis-Lockyer, Esq.

    Nadia Maria Davis-Lockyer graduated from U.C.L.A. in 1993 with a degree in Sociology and from Loyola Law School in 1996. She was admitted to the California State Bar in 1997. Her deep commitment to empower others and assist the underprivileged is inextricably linked to every aspect of her personal and professional life.

    She is currently the Executive Director of the Alameda County Family Justice Center, a one-stop service delivery center comprised of multiple public, non-profit, and government agencies with the single mission of providing easily accessible, coordinated, and culturally sensitive services to victims of domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse and sexual assault and exploitation.

    married to

    Bill Lockyer, California State Treasurer.

     

    About us

    The Alameda County Family Justice Center (ACFJC), under the leadership of Executive Director Nadia Davis-Lockyer, Esq., is a new community initiative launched by more than 50 organizations and 150 people who have joined together to provide comprehensive services required by domestic violence victims and their families.

    Cal Watchdog talks about this, some:

    Her 2003 marriage to Lockyer –30 years her senior – came as a shock to political watchers statewide. They had, according to an April 19, 2003 Los Angeles Times story, been dating for a year when they got married that spring. In fact, she was already pregnant when they took their wedding vows.

    At least one of her supporters believes her age is an advantage. “It’s great to have the participation of a relatively young person who can better understand what students are going through,” John Hanna, a Rancho Santiago Community College District trustee who has worked with Davis-Lockyer on education issues for years, said. “The Board of Governors is typically drawn from an older population that’s not a reflection of the student body.”

    Then again, all this may be academic. Stern said he believed that the “doctrine of incompatible offices” would kick in if Davis-Lockyer gets elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, forcing her to give up her Community Colleges Board seat. When asked if this was true, Paige Marlatt Dorr, a spokeswoman for California Community Colleges Chancellor Scott, said her office’s legal advisers weren’t sure and would ask the state Attorney General’s office for a legal opinion should Davis-Lockyer win the election.

    A call to the AG’s office asking whether the incompatible offices doctrine was relevant to Davis-Lockyer’s case was also not conclusive. “That question would require legal analysis, which we are not able to provide to the public,” Christine Gasparac, press secretary to Attorney General Jerry Brown, e-mailed on Feb. 2. Gasparac added that I was free to refer to the AG’s 204-page Conflict of Interest pamphlet. Chapter 11, which deals with incompatible offices, seems to indicate that Stern is correct.

    “The doctrine of incompatible offices concerns a potential clash of two public offices held by a single official,” states the pamphlet. “When a person holds offices with two governmental entities and there is overlapping geographical and subject matter jurisdiction the offices generally are incompatible.” The pamphlet then lists a dozen examples, the first of which is “county board of supervisors member and community college board member.”

     

    Well, that’s all for today.  …

    Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

    March 27, 2010 at 12:49 PM

    Posted in AFCC, History of Family Court, Organizations, Foundations, Associations NGO Hybrids, public education, Vocabulary Lessons, Where's Mom?

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