Archive for the ‘Where's Mom?’ Category
About Holidays, Speaking Personally (Personal Backdrop to Post-PRWORA Social Policy towards Women Who ~Just Say No!~ to Abuse and Proceed in Misplaced Belief They can actually Exit it) [started Sept. 18, Publ. Oct. 9, 2017, see also Collaborative Justice post/page].
I might as well get this over with, and am taking the opportunity at the same time to say I finally published a related PAGE, How and When Problem-Solving (make that ‘Collaborative Justice’) Courts were Institutionalized and other Consolidate/Coordinate/Standardize/ PRIVATIZE Stories at Courts.CA.Gov (Page started 8/29/2017, published Mon 9/18 evening. With case-sensitive shortlink ending “-7w9″).
Together, that page, another post introducing that page (full title soon, just below) and this post About Holidays, Speaking Personally (Personal Backdrop to Post-PRWORA Social Policy towards Women Who ~Just Say No!~ to Abuse and Proceed in Misplaced Belief They can actually Exit it) [started Sept. 18, Publ. Oct. 9, 2017, see also Collaborative Justice post/page](case-sensitive shortlink ends “-7AD“) are “good stuff” and history on some major program-propagation vehicles in New York and in California, with more in their middles on Minnesota-related events, people, and even a few nonprofits.
What’s here below was originally an insert or aside. At the bottom here, I again provide the link to both the page and my post introducing the page. I hope readers will go back and read both if they haven’t yet.
There are reasons we are continuing to have “family court fiascoes” and destructions of household wealth generation after generation by way of prolonged litigation IN these courts.
Why not take a closer look at how they were assembled, systematically, in recent decades (generation or so) and the pieces from which the parts comprise the whole, or the engine, chassis, fuel, guidance system, [I’m no auto mechanic, but consider the essential parts — and the roads as part of the infrastructure too] and ensuring a constant stream of passengers, with “no stone left unturned” and no child, or life, left unscathed….?] That’s what I tend to do, when not speaking personally..take closer looks. Lots of them.
“ABOUT HOLIDAYS, SPEAKING PERSONALLY:”
About Holidays, Speaking Personally (Personal Backdrop to Post-PRWORA Social Policy towards Women who Say No! to Abuse and Proceed to Exit it) (WordPress-generated, case-sensitive shortlink ends “-7AD.”)
This post, while written (except this foreword) around Sept. 4, Labor Day Weekend 2017, was taken from another post then still waiting publication; its full title (and basic background-color) is “Introducing A New Page, How and When Problem-Solving (make that ‘Collaborative Justice’) Courts were Institutionalized and other Consolidate/Coordinate/Standardize/PRIVATIZE Stories at Courts.CA.Gov. AND Some of the Backdrop (Personal Experience of Turn-of-Century Social Policy towards Women Reporting Abuse and Their Efforts to Exit It… ).”(case-sensitive short-link ends “-7xs“)
Exactly one week later, in fact another historic (but not “holy”!) day in recent history, I was still working on both post and page, as I was over Labor Day weekend, a major US holiday from September 2, 3, and (Monday) Sept. 4, 2017,* through to that day, Sept. 11, 2017…
{*The aside added for international visitors to the blog. I don’t know all their national holidays, and they might not know all ours, either. While this blog covers some international issues because it covers private associations dealing with US courts — many of which make sure to advertise that they have an international membership— FamilyCourtMatters still primarily addressed to people dealing with Life In The USA… because the courts here are tax-supported and public institutions in every state, and in territories, of the USA. We pay plenty for them, while we also through our system here (as to the income tax, corporate taxes, and tax-exemptions) sponsor, incubate, and overall, encourage the formation of tax-exempt corporations to fix whatever national, state, or local governments omit, forgot, or “got wrong..”}
BELOW HERE (within this blue box) is “Soap Box” talk on public vs. private. If you “get this,” skip it this time. If you don’t, please consider the stakes are high in blurring one with another, which is a known practice and agenda now commonplace in the country (and not USA only).
These tax-exempt and other corporations can legally register as domiciled in one place, but operate and influence operations across state and national lines. But the family courts regulating life within the states are subject to state legislatures for individuals once they obtain jurisdiction over a case — and through that, the family members involved — do not have innate jurisdiction over people outside the state except as related to something anchored in it. There’s a division, in other words, between jurisdictions within states, and federal. What I’m saying here – it seems to take corporations to overcome legal boundaries to representative government at the state level — and that seems to be the intent and purpose of a variety of such corporations who would rather “legislate” or at least influence, rule, and have power, over whole regions, or nations, at a time, and the streamlined ability to also influence legislation in multiple jurisdictions without having to fight it locally, place by place — and deal “face to face” with those who might, were they aware of the purposes — have cause to oppose them. (See “Big Seven Associations” and/or the variety of “Do You Know Your NGA, NCSC” etc. posts I’ve written within the last year, or maybe two.. for how this seems to work when those on the private corporations ALSO hold public office, either concurrently, or in revolving-door fashion, recently…
{{As I understand it, there ARE no “regional governments” under the US Constitution, that I’m aware of. Some people have a problem with that (search “functionalism” on this blog for more info), and want it changed. The more and more functions that can be “outsourced” to regionally organized private-sector organizations (or JPA’s — Joint Powers Authorities) — the less and less individually responsive less-than-regional governments become. They feel the pressure and appreciate the prestige of “belonging” as evidence of good governmental behavior.
Sure, federal government’s Executive Branch Departments (like HHS, which was formerly — taken together with the part that split off, the Dept. of Education and any other — “HEW”) organize operationally by regions (cross-state lines), as do Districts of the Federal Court system yes — but even those are not independent government entities.
To organize legally cross-jurisdiction WITHIN government here, one must either be anchored in some part which IS either federal OR state, i.e. be state government or something underneath it– or simply be a corporation, including tax-exempt ones. Joint Power Authorities such as I’ve been blogging, like WestED, SWRL, or FWL (Far West Labs, South West Regional Labs — subject matter, education) still must anchor with a state domicile. WestED’s state domicile, so far as I know, is in California, although other states are spanned in its OPERATIONS (shared programming).}}
That’s why, at a time when “Public/Private Partnerships” (or, strategic operating relationships in the forms of Memos of Understanding — one shown below here as to CENIC and California’s HighSpeedRail Authority) are MOST popular with those already in power — we really should be able to tell the difference between that which is public — and its LEGAL power over individuals, including the power to tax, incarcerate, seize assets, seize children, etc. — and that which is NOT public, over which when we are not consumers of the product or entering into conscious contracts with the corporations, we don’t have many real rights. So government uses corporate to cross jurisdictions, and to (as privatized) avoid full responsibility for its actions, and streamline (efficiency) and corporate uses government to encourage conditions it finds conducive to operations and bottom-line profits. This may or may not include the public interest or health; it depends on the situation. [[end of “SoapBox” commentary.]]
Personal timing & publication dates:
The weeks between Sept. 11 and now (early October, 2017), I was working again on some personal writing for an ongoing situation, which was because of its nature and, shall I say, “tenacity,” triggering PTSD and some deep, deep considerations about how far I should or dare take the push for justice in that situation and with these particular individuals who have gained a legal inroad into my life recently, caused damages, and then inflicted further distress through minimizing/dismissing the same. Classic gaslighting and strategy for controlling personalities and/or abusers.
In “About Holidays,” I also speak about some of the long-term tenacity of the prior personal situations, without naming names — because the names aren’t the point. The patterns are. I realize this type of communication is anecdotal, and speaking about it here is for general info.; expressive, not presented as a basis for policy.
When that communication (or at least the initial stage of it) Sept.11 / end of Sept. was handled (or, at least, delivered) I worked again diligently to update this post’s Table of Contents page, a project I am finally, for the most part, satisfied with (for now) and which led to more fascinating subject matter to research, involving consolidation of telecommunications (broad-band-providing) companies servicing government entities (like schools, public and private universities and research institutes), and such.**
**[Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, “CENIC.org”; its network “CalREN,” and as it’s a membership association, one of its Auxiliary Associate members (in fact the only one currently) “City of Hope” (hospital, institute, development corporation, foundation all inter-related) and dark-fiber network subcontractor, “Level 3 Communications” with its own fascinating history, intersecting with some of the giant telecommunications providers (esp. broadband) mergers of the turn of the century — and its predecessor entity “Kiewit Diversified Group,” which came out of Peter Kiewit & Sons (or similar name), the construction industry. This is basic communications history in the US, and fascinating. It also speaks to the access to high-quality internet capacity and speed of higher education institutions (membership to CENIC or groups like it) vs. the average person, who is the subject matter of so many of the programs, including the social science R&D, federal designer family, poverty research, behavioral mod etc. — while when working as employees, contributing to support the same infrastructure financially based on the trickle-down premise.
Californians are aware of longstanding plans, highly political in nature, for a high-speed physical, commuter (to carry human beings!) rail system connecting Northern Cal. to SoCal (take another look at the map of the USA and see — that’s a good distance!).
So, it looks like CalREN’s (CENIC’s network name) involvement with this high-speed rail project may result in communities along the intended route getting an upgrade to their free? Broadband service. Amazingly, the researchers figured out that poorer, less-educated people living in rural areas are less likely to have internet connections –aren’t they smart? Courtesy “California Emerging Technologies Fund” field research poll, I see.
CENIC article referencing Calif. HighSpeed Rail Authority (a gov’t entity) plans to make broadband communities. CENIC is private nonprofit, so that’s another Public/private partnership, assuming it goes through.
Announced at “Cenic.org” · PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES & NPS, RENS & NRENS
In general, the HSR will connect Los Angeles to San Francisco at 200mph or in about 3 hours by (2025? see info). Another phrase that comes up is “Silicon Valley to Central Valley” with Central Valley being an area where unemployment (and poverty) are high. I see from HSR website that ARRA funds were involved:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. –The California High-Speed Rail Authority today announced it has met federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 requirements by fully investing the more than $2.55 billion granted to the State since 2009 to build the nation’s first high-speed rail system. These funds have helped to create thousands of new jobs and generated approximately $4 billion in economic activity in the Central Valley and across California. Read our News Release to see what Board Chair Dan Richard is saying about meeting the ARRA deadline. For more information, read the full Investing in California’s Future through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 report.
Wow. I remember where I was in high-employment area SF Bay Area in 2009, after child-stealing events, retroactive reduction of child support arrears owed, dramatic curtailment of my own work as I went repeatedly to court in an attempt to resolve the household who stole the kids’ reluctance to comply with court orders granting me: visitation, or even at its lowest point, weekly phone calls placed by the children (after my attempts to reach them weekly went unanswered time after time), and by 2009 I had not one job in the profession left. No one in the agencies or law enforcement seemed to care about enforcing any court orders which would mitigate the situation, and I was running out of the wherewithal to keep coming back to court (let alone even get TO the courthouse) time and again. During that time I had not yet “figured out” what I have since (on this blog) regarding potential financial DISincentives for continuing any government OR nonprofit advocacy group, i.e., the whole systems, to protecting maternal parenting time once it’d been eradicated without legal cause stated on the record, let alone proved on any record…
In other words, those “access and visitation” grants aimed at increasing non-custodial parenting time, apparently lost their motivational impact when that non-custodial FATHER time had been increased to 100% and mother’s to “0%.” I had never been offered or encouraged to do supervised visitation to prevent the stealing in the first place, and when it was brought up, a commissioner said “there’s no money for it here..” — AFTER which I realized, well, yes there was, in the form of those grants to the state of California for such supervised visitation and exchange — to protect the children from being stolen, and myself from injury or repeated forced dealings with traumatic situations absent support for them, in the context of known prior domestic violence…
That fall 2009, I also had learned my children had been abandoned by their father (physically and it appears financially) and was dealing with both stalking while attempting to extract information from ANYONE involved on WHEN this occurred (including what month/year) or in what manner (two conflicting versions were presented by the ex-girlfriend and my ex-batterer (husband) and father of two children by then both almost adults, with me. Abandonment is also a felony, so I was working through both shock and again attempting to speak with law enforcement on this (district attorney’s office, as I had when they were stolen the first time three years earlier). This went nowhere — other than that in my need to speak to their father for this information, he somehow decided again to claim me “before God” as his wife, resulting in the need to at this low point now deal (again) with the stalking issue — which was terrifying… especially without funds to leave the area even temporarily which was a need.
But that commentary is getting ahead of the subject matter of this section…. Just correlating the State-level developments with my personal timeline developments. Back to “HighSpeedRail”….
Read it from the HSR.CA.GOV (HSR=”High Speed Rail”) point of view — this is their MOU (Memo of Understanding) which, actually, clarifies that one is a 501©3 and the other a state agency, and that a partnership, this absolutely does not make!. The signatures of each party are shown — but not dated (so this is probably not an executed copy of any MOU, despite its title page):
MOU as shown (Nov. 2016) header.
REGARDING OTHER CENIC or “NATIONAL LAMBDARAIL, LLC” referring to a different kind of “rail” with different kind of cargo (the optic fiber kind) images I may include below — these are obviously another story waiting to be posted (here — it’s already posted elsewhere!), consider these footprints and reminders for now.//LGH 10/9/2017
This excerpt of a Form 990 shows Nat’l LambdaRail as a related entity of CENIC, though not the largest one… || … “NLR” has a major, and dramatic though short history, and was purchased in 2011 by a billionaire from its university (public/private) membership. Won’t fit in a single caption. Stay tuned (or look up yourself!)It is a 12,000 mile optic network and the first one to go transcontinental (See Wiki or Bloomberg.com for more; also IO.com)
just web page header.
CENIC corporation, California Registry of Charitable Trust (search results page)
These sprang from an unusually-named corporate (nonprofit) visitor to the blog, but in general reflect major themes and turning points in U.S. history, i.e., control of access to the internet, and characteristics of the organizations controlling this access. For the general outline, see my 2017 Table of Contents page, about half-way down, and the bottom section, and the second section of my Oct. 9, 2017 post talking about SIZE STILL MATTERS. …..
WOW: See that image on National LambdaRail, LLC, above? Well: from Wikipedia:
…National LambdaRail was founded in 2003 and in 2004 its national, advanced fiber optic network was completed. In addition to being the first transcontinental, production 10 Gigabit Ethernet network, National LambdaRail was also the first intelligently managed, nationwide peering and transit program focused on research applications.
In 2008, a company named Darkstrand purchased capacity on NLR for commercial use.[1] By the end of the year the Chicago-based company was having trouble raising funding due to the Great Recession.[2] On May 24, 2012 the NLR network operations center services were transferred to the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California.[3] In October 2009 Glenn Ricart was named president and CEO.[4] On September 7, 2010 Ricart announced his resignation.[5]
In November 2011 the control of NLR was purchased from its university membership by a billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong for $100M, who indicated his intention to upgrade NLR infrastructure and repurpose portions of it to support an ambitious healthcare project through NantHealth.[6] The upgrade never took place. NLR ceased operations in March 2014.[7][8][9][10]
Bloomberg.com on National Lambda Rail. Bloomberg.com gets its data from S&P Global Marketing, part of S&P Global Group (S&P = Standard & Poors, probably)
http://internet2.edu/news/detail/3695. Not shown — this is a 2003 article. See Wiki for follow up info on NLR.
Please click link (or image to enlarge) and read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_LambdaRail#cite_note-5
At Bloomberg.com, but can’t read more w/o subscription to “Professional Services.”See more at NLR “Wiki” page.
Internet2® started in 1996 and has a timeline. See website for more info.
Internet2® doesn’t post its financials With offices in these states, perhaps they could be found. If “internet2” isn’t an entity, then some membership organization ENTITY does have financials somewhere…
Found at Internet2.edu home page, blog article Sept. 17, 2017.
Separately, which I know from email news alerts and family court reform advocacy groups’ social media sites, there are also pending “current events” in local (California) “family court reform” news making the rounds which I feel urgent to address in new posts. I have an idea of a better way to present the situation to people new to it (those familiar with it are welcome to watch from the sidelines, or inbetween rallies, re-blogging, or complaints about the overall injustices in the system, judge by judge or jurisdiction by jurisdiction, something I can’t remember the last time I EVER signed onto that approach as halfway sane, or effective, given the disparate resources….). Some of that way is blended into this otherwise more anecdotal, expressive post about the personal backdrop to our so-called problem-solving courts.
I keep hoping to squeeze enough blogging and activism in between my own ongoing, though more periodic, life events which have been incited by the systematic disruption of my household, work and relationships through the family court and now, probate court, systems and self-important, self-congratulating, and overlapping circles of well-endowed and court-AND social-service-systems-connected “fauna and flora.”
That is, just as in any domestically violent relationship, while there may be at times a “plateau” between incidents (events), during which not a whole lot can be done to push them forward (whether through availability, regulations, or simply personal stamina), and then, responding to moves the individual (here, me) might make to change the status quo or resolve the conflict — there’s an escalation, or other way in which “power-over” is communicated. This communication may be first made in private, but sooner or later can be gestured towards (by the abuser) should it go public, “we attempted to communicate with [____].” Communicate in that context is a euphemism. Something WAS communicated — message of intent to continue the dynamic was sent-and-received — but it’s not what witnesses or outsiders are, for lack of tangible substance, or facts in context, unable to do anything other than assume might be meant were both parties above-board and honest. [I don’t know how that last sentence in green may read to others, but I do know what I meant. There are just multiple layers of meaning, and a style of speaking — which I hate! in trying to actually get down to the facts and resolve the situations — which is more theatre than written communication of important truths. It’s for show, but only those closest to the situation and “in the know” about the overall pattern of the relationship in question, realize how fake it is.
So, again, stamina, or consequences, etc. I don’t know how much longer this can be kept up, either the personal fight, or the writing. It worries me, and may be prompting to get what’s done already in order, backed up, and on-line. And it’s no way to live… with constant risk management while resources are drained, year after year.
Moving on….
Blogging Context/Sequence:
“Introducing A New Page… Problem-Solving (‘Collaborative Justice’) Courts…,” (for short) has a case-sensitive short-link ending “-7xs” and is now published.
See next inset block:
[That] page (#28901) I have named: How and When Problem-Solving (make that ‘Collaborative Justice’) Courts were Institutionalized and other Consolidate/Coordinate/Standardize/ PRIVATIZE Stories at Courts.CA.Gov
I was talking on [the] post — NAATPN, Inc (2000ff, Total Current Assets, $0) and Caffee, Caffee and Associates PHF, Inc. (Hattiesburg MS, 2003ff, Total Assets $0, Tax Filings Questionable), and others trying to squeeze a California Race-Based Stop-Smoking Network (AATEN) into that recipe. .. [Published 8/28/2017 evening and as usual may be updated for clarity, basic copyediting, or length (splitting)//LGH] —— about how the 1996ff (PRWORA-related) events overlapped with my current blogging interest, the 1998 (Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement) events, and similarities (not to mention overlap) of involved networking nonprofits, along with the stories told the public omitting the details of Who’s Who and the gradual, (dare I say “progressive” in today’s political climate, but referencing the generic, not political, meaning of the word?) incremental erosion of local or even state-level accountability to citizens living within those state, as opposed to privatized special-interest nonprofits continually telling us all that the same are protecting against other privatized special-interest FOR profits as though these two were unrelated….
Again, the genealogy (so to speak) of that page, includes ITS originating post, on the NAATPN. So, the sequence is from NAAPTN {already published} ==> Page “How and When Problem-Solving..” ==>Post “Introducing New Page” + ===> before I publish either that Page (or the post introducing it), I sequestered my expressive/reflective section “About Holidays” which you are now reading.
The originating post (“Introducing a New Page…”) will contain some lead-in and concluding material from below for a “footprint,” as is my writing style.
Impediments / Other reasons for the delays:
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Ten Posts, Plus One, of nearly 600 published, Covering Basic Issues (+ abstracts)
[I’m “unsticking” ten posts formerly held near the top of blog, a.k.a., redecorating..for functionality ..and out of boredom looking at the same thing every day..This post is “sticky” and stays on top. New posts are beneath the ones marked “This post is sticky.” Also note, I often revise or expand (alas) after (at times long after) publishing. WYSIWYG..] First, the “Plus One.” Regarding biotech, pharmaceutical, and gene-tinkering disruptive technology corporations — don’t mistakenly think they have nothing to do with the family courts, or kids in foster care and other vulnerable populations. SOMEbody has to fund studies, and someone has to become the subject matter of them; we are all interrelated — in our various assigned sectors. Read the rest of this entry »
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What It’s Still About….(… in Summer 2013)
[This post is “sticky” and stays on top. New posts are beneath . ..Some additions, March 2013…(As I learn more, it shows up on the blog). ~ Or see “The Last Seven Let’s Get Honest Posts” links, on sidebar ~ better yet, See also my other blog Cold,Hard.Fact$];
This blog has VALUABLE INSIGHT on the family courts money trail (a trail of tears), and about many crisis intervention groups who are in on it (and hence, won’t blog it), and from some of whom I sought help, solace, or actionable information — and got NONE.
Question: WHY would any group which truly wants to save lives withhold relevant information, tools to find that information, and prior ground-breaking conversations about that information — in the amounts of billions of dollars of federal incentives to the statesaffecting — custody outcomes (as to the child support system, HHS/OCSE) while feeding less helpful information to their clients?Another Question: You should also ask why — where is that money coming from, and why does our government always want to raise taxes when they can’t keep track of what they already collected (MUCH more than is commonly realized) and when a lot of that is simply fed to fraudulent or evanescent corporations that don’t stay registered at the state level?
When it’s a matter of eminent domain and someone gets sued over bribery, then it makes headlines and people get indignant. Daily News 2001, Los Angeles Area.
This one in PARTICULAR shows that in 1999ff Marv Bryer and others were doing what I do now — reading tax returns, looking at the fronts of checks, looking at the BACKS of checks, and noticing that what’s written out to ONE fund sometimes gets deposited into another, which fund happens to be a private judges’ association.
Here’s a yet more detailed one (best: read the series; see “related articles”):
GILDING THE GAVEL? SUPERIOR COURT PAYMENTS DEPOSITED IN JUDGES’ PRIVATE ‘COFFEE’ FUND.
(Now that you’ve read it, naturally, with attention…..)
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Substance-Poor, Repetition-Rich: Parsing ~ Parent Coordination ~ Rhetoric ~ and some Organizations..(Publ. Dec. 14, 2011, updated (format) Oct. 30, 2017)
Substance-Poor, Repetition-Rich: Parsing ~ Parent Coordination ~ Rhetoric ~ and some Organizations..(Publ. Dec. 14, 2011, updated (format) Oct. 30, 2017) (WordPress-generated, case-sensitive shortlink ends “-WN”
My practice of adding borders and listing the post title with shortlink is more recent.
Currently this post is NOT listed on any Table of Contents (my lists only go as far back as Sept. 2012)…I see that many of the logos will not display, and that this post as written was about 10,000 words long. This update made only because a basic search on the blog for an organization I’m writing about again brought it up. (Update this time is only minimal format changes for easier reading; is not in detail and doesn’t include fixing broken links/missing logos, or more recent information on the organizations referenced).//LGH Oct. 30, 2017.
INTRO:
Overall, I seriously doubt that it’s possible to clean up or straighten up the family law system — at all, and I am utterly serious in saying this. There is too much incentive for fraud, and too much need to “pay the mortgages” in the courthouses by ordering more services, and too little oversight and tracking of the funding. There are too many public employees forming nonprofit corporations to franchise for-profit curricula (marriage, parent education, etc.) — in the old NonProfit/ForProfit combo.
There are too few tools in many states to track WHO is repeatedly forming corporations that go belly-up, only to have a partner or other person formerly on one board just go forth and from another one — in another state. Many of these groups, as my last post showed, are membership organizations — membership is charged, conferences run, and we have some evidence from county payrolls or vouchers from court-connected professionals, that the public is billed to fund attendance at nonprofits whose ONE purpose is to expand their services. Child support is one of the worst of these, but they come in all flavors.
Despite the bleak outlook — I still report and I am going to finish reporting on this field of Parent Coordination until it is CLEAR what the AFCC professionals’ intent is in establishing this field and, if possible, having it legitimized at the state level by establishing standards, or by mandate.
The Association for Family and Conciliation Courts runs many task forces at a time, as part of its strategic plan to expand (itself) and transform the “old” language of criminal law into more friendly-to-its-practitioners concepts. One of them which they are taking VERY seriously in promoting — and I take VERY seriously in protesting — is Parenting Coordination.
Parents didn’t ask for this — it’s no grassroots movement, and from what I can tell how it’s been (1) advertised (2) pushed and (3) practiced — there’s no genuine NEED for it either. For that matter, I see no historical record that parents as a sector (both male and female) asked for the family law system, either.
Why I’m addressing it — again:
(1) AFCC PROMOTED IT – NOT PARENTS. NO REAL NEED EXISTED, and SERIOUS ISSUES & OBJECTIONS AS THEY DID.
The LizLibrary lists a page of them, and towards the bottom, some legal opinions, too: Parenting Coordination: A Bad Idea
Here’s less than half the list — and so far I agree with ALL of them. Thank you, Liz (Kates, the FL Family Law attorney, not Richards, of NAFCJ.net)
© 1996-2011 argate.net frcp:
- Parenting coordination is an inappropriate delegation of the judicial function
- Parenting coordination is an impediment to court access
- Parenting coordination is a denial of due process
- Parenting coordination violates privacy
- The parenting coordinator concept encroaches on family liberty interests
- Parenting coordination represents arbitrary dictate by a person, in denigration of rule of law
- Parenting coordination is a make-work role newly invented by psychology trade promotion groups
- No studies indicate parenting coordinators make good decisions
- No studies indicate parenting coordination improves families’ lives or child wellbeing.
- Nothing qualifies a stranger to make family decisions for other people
- Nothing qualifies a mental health professional to interpret a court order or legal document
- Nothing qualifies a lawyer to play at being an unlicensed, unregulated therapist for hire
- Nothing qualifies any third party to “fill in the gaps” in someone else’s contract
- There is no definition of what constitutes a successful parenting coordination
- Parenting coordination does not, in the long run, alleviate court docket congestion
- It creates additional issues and leaves the door open for return trips to resolve them
- Parenting coordination provides a new forum for squabbling over petty disputes
- Parenting coordination is an additional expense that many can ill afford
- Parenting coordination enables one parent to spend the other’s funds
- Parenting coordination is time-consuming and tedious
- Parenting coordination is not confidential
- Parenting coordination constitutes continuous government discovery, 4th Amendment
- Parenting coordination constitutes continuous discovery by each parent into the affairs of the other
- Parenting coordination can never be “voluntary” because it implements unwanted court orders
- Parenting coordinators demand that the parties sign “consents” that give up constitutional rights
- Some have demanded that parties give up the right to go to court, contact police, or involve their lawyers
- They are hired or appointed under shadow of the threat of court sanctions or loss of custody
- They are agreed to by parties ignorant of the repercussions, in fear, out of funds, or overwhelmed
- Parenting coordination does not result in increased family well-being
- Parenting coordination does not make children happier, healthier, or better adjusted
- Parenting coordination is not therapy but coercion backed by the state’s police power
- Parenting coordinators tend to be hostile to, and at odds with attorney-client relationships
- They align with GALs and other court appointees in a pretext of “focus on the children”
- They encroach on parental-child relationships and decision-making
- They undermine the parental authority children require for a sense of security and well-being
- Instead of at least one authoritative parent, children have no authoritative parent
- Petty tyrants place a premium on the perception of who is cooperating with them
- Cooperation with the parenting coordinator is court-ordered and
- They alone decide if a parent is “cooperating” with them
From the same page, a case “Parenting Coordinator Out of Control” — and I have to note that it’s an appeal from an order at the FL (presumably 20th) Circuit Court Level bearing Judge Hugh Starnes‘ name!
- DVLeap brief in 2010 case (Washington, DC) arguing some of the constitutional issues More from DVLeap
“The Court’s parenting coordinator orders unconsitutionally delegate judicial power and violate due process… The Special Master Order’s requirement that Appellant pay for the parenting coordinators to whom she objects violates law and public policy… The Special Master Order requiring Appellant to waive her medical privilege violates her statutory and constitutional rights to privacy…”
AFCC could care less. They DEMANDED it and are still finishing up trying to get this mandated in every single United State.
- Even the brother of the Marriage Promotion President, the “Family” family, George Bush — as Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, FL (2004) had the sense to object based on sound principles. A newly formed (probably for this purpose) chapter of AFCC strategized, lobbied, publicized, practiced, and finally managed to ram it through, over his veto. It only slowed them down slightly.
June 18, 2004
Ms. Glenda E. Hood Secretary of State Florida Department of State
By the authority vested in me as Governor of Florida, under the provisions of Article III, Section 8, of the Constitution of Florida, I do hereby withhold my approval of and transmit to you with my objections, Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 2640, enacted during the 36th session of the Legislature, convened under the Constitution of 1968, during the Regular Session of 2004, and entitled:
An act relating to Parenting Coordination. . .
Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 2640 authorizes courts to appoint a parenting coordinator when the court finds the parties have not implemented the court-ordered parenting plan, mediation has not been successful, and the court finds the appointment is in the best interest of the children involved.
- He lists 5 objections, two of which clearly recognize that it in effect allows a parent coordinator to function as both judge and jury of parents’ or children’s rights, and one of which is that it fails to protect victims of domestic violence. I also note from the language that it looks like a Committee (not the general legislature) attempted to have this substitute for an existing Senate Bill. . . . .
(2) The “Termini/Boyan Factor” —
- The People fixed on training parent coordinators have a terrible track record when it comes to staying incorporated(I found another one today — Seminars for Advanced Interdisciplinary Family Professionals, or “SAIF.” Formed in 2006, it’s already behind in its filings, in the state of Indiana. And it appears that, again, a nonprofit/for-profit combo, originating not with litigants, but with the professionals, was set up to give (again) some family law attorneys the right to crow about their own parent coordination training seminars they helped run themselves. By and large, that seems to be the situation in Indiana — which it seems New Hampshire liked a lot, too. Termini/Boyan are Georgia/Pennsylvania — but same general idea.
(3) The language of “parent coordination” is impoverished and repetitive.
Here’s an example, from a family law attorney, a bona-fide certified one (although the nonprofit membership she cites all over is anything but “bona-fide” when it comes to filing charitable returns in the home state!)
It’s even from an Amicus Brief (I THINK it got filed, although this isn’t the stamped version). Actually, this is where the title to my post came from:
CASE NO. C064475
SUPERIOR COURT CASE NO. 34-3009-80000359
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL FOR THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT
__________________
RANDY RAND, ED.D. Plaintiff and Appellant, v. BOARD OF PSYCHOLOGY, Defendant and Respondent. __________________
ASSOCIATION OF CERTIFIED FAMILY LAW SPECIALISTS __________________
Face sheet as posted at CaliforniaParentingCoordinator.com (using link from this 12/14/2011 post).
[Three images, inside blue borders, added in 2017 update. See also their list Table of Authorities].
In the statute of authorities for this brief, bearing the name “Leslie Ellen Shear” and “Stephen Temko” (although the certificate of interested parties form bears the name Shear, and is dated 1/27/2011), after the legal and rules of court list, comes:
Table of Contents from Amicus Brief (source url shown on gray window-frame at top of image).
“Treatises, Law Reviews and Other Authorities” – and on reading it, I see it quotes, among others:
- The nonprofit ACFLS (which she’s head of Amicus Brief Committee on, or was)
- AFCC itself (at least twice)
- A host of people, known to be AFCC professionals anyhow, for those who pay attention — such as Ahrons, Coates, Deutch, Greenberg, Kelly, and who knows about some of the others. These quotations include those from the AFCC publication, Family Court Review (joint with “Hofstra Univ. School of Law”) and AFCC newsletters, etc.
- Herself, like 3 times, in:
- Shear (2008) In Search of Statutory Authority for Parenting Coordinator Orders in California: Using a Grass-roots, Hybrid Model Without an Enabling Statute 5 Journal of Child Custody 88…………………………………………..5, 18, 25 (cited on page 5, 18 & 25).
(I’m also adding this quote in 2017 update, from the Amicus Brief):
ACFLS’s purposes in appearing as amicus are to protect and perfect the parenting coordination service model in California family courts, discuss the implications of the issues raised in this case for the future of parent coordination in California, and address the implications of those issues for other family court appointed neutrals including but not limited to child custody evaluators4, minors’ counsel appointed per Fam. Code §3150 et seq., mediators, therapists, members of collaborative family law teams, and other court appointed or connected quasi-judicial dispute resolution professionals.
In other words, to protect her own kind….
Note title — trying to legislate parenting coordination.
Another set of professionals tried to write “Kids Turn” into law around 2002, right? (see my “Kicking Salesmanship Up a Notch post.”) then-Governor Gray Davis (properly!) vetoed even the version of it put out which didn’t overtly say “Kids’ Turn” on its face.
So here’s a sample section of this Amicus:
On page 4, quoting AFCC person Greenberg (whose writing I also ran across) cites who came up with the idea, vaguely characterized as:
In 1994, the concept of parenting coordination was spawned by a concerned group of professionals in California and Colorado who realized that some high conflict families remained chronically mired in conflict and required something different. . . For these families, the traditional tried and true approaches to containing familial conflict such as litigation, mediation, forensics, and therapy had not worked. Thus, the concept of parenting coordination was conceived as a different and needed dispute resolution intervention.
(Tried and True? [is that really an appropriate phrase for use in an amicus brief?]
Try “Tried and found seriously wanting.” Don’t believe me? Look here. I’ve already mentioned the Seal Beach (CA) massacre enough times, so here’s one fresh off the press — like YESTERDAY, in Florida. Actually, it seems there’s an acquiescent mother in this one: even after Dad murdered the son, the surviving children (including one witness to that murder) miss their Daddy. And they shouldn’t even be supervised, but be able to go to events like church, sports, etc.
Sounds like perhaps this is a stepfather (or second family) situation here, judging by age of the children. And the shooter was a retired police officer!
Dad accused of killing son wants custody rights to surviving kids; judge lets him have unsupervised contact (Orlando, Florida)
POSTED: 5:56 pm EST December 13, 2011
UPDATED: 6:45 pm EST December 13, 2011ORLANDO, Fla. — A former Orlando police officer accused of killing his son was back in court, arguing for custody rights to his other children.
Timothy Davis Sr. won a victory of sorts Tuesday when a judge granted him the ability to pick up his younger children from school, including his 9-year-old daughter who authorities said witnessed the killing.
The retired police officer is accused of shooting his son, 22-year-old Timothy Davis Jr., to death at their Apopka home in what he said was self-defense after his son attacked him, injuring his knee in October.
Here’s another involving 3 children, and a custody hearing, plus prior assaults on the child and wife.
Dad managed to get himself shot (to death) after apparently attacking a state trooper. I do not call this ‘tried and true.” This was an American military, married in Germany, but the divorce action appears to be HERE. He also was Marine Corps.
Here’s one from Texas; 40 year old father, who apparently had custody? (or certainly unsupervised visitation), emails nude pictures of his 12 year old daughter. This man was living with his mother who, thankfully, was honest enough to do something about her pervert son, although somehow the courts weren’t alert to this in custody decisions:
by KHOU.com staff
khou.com
Posted on December 8, 2011 at 8:58 PMKATY, Texas – A 40-year-old father is facing charges for allegedly distributing nude photos of his 12-year-old daughter online.
According to court documents, the suspect was living with his daughter at his mother’s house in Katy when the offenses occurred.
Investigators said that in August of 2011, the suspect’s mother found emails sent from the suspect’s gmail account that contained nude images of children. Some of those images were of the suspect’s daughter, the grandmother said.
Sorry to bring up this very unpleasant reality-check, but when in Amicus Brief a parent-coordinator pusher talks about previously tried methods that work — the definition of “works” or “tried and true” apparently / generally just means “tried, sometimes resulting in death, physical or sexual abuse of minors post-separation, or having minor children showing up in child pornography in father’s possession.” All of these were from December 2011 news articles, only.
Keep these incidents for a point of reference while I quote from p.12, a whole chapter on how parent coordinators have such difficult parents to deal with, “poor them”:
… cases are usually referred to parenting coordination because they are chronically litigious and difficult to manage.** These parents have often had several attorneys, evaluators, and mediators — professional hopping and shopping is rampant. Their court files are thick with motions, court appearances, and allegations of wrongdoing by the parents.
Coates, Deutsch et al. (2004) Parenting Coordination for High-Conflict Families 42 Fam. Ct. Rev. 246, 252
**Difficult-to manage parents are the bread and butter of the family court. They are the income producers. Assigning them to parent coordination is yet one more source of income for the professionals, taken from either the parents, or (looks like there’s some effort to make even broke parents participate in this too — AFCC-CA has a workshop or presentation, on the 2012 hearing on this).
Perhaps the professionals in question should re-think the business of “managing parents” to start with.
So, the opening quote to this chapter is from two long-time AFCC professionals (Coates/Deutsch) in an AFCC publication?, although it’s only 2004, using an AFCC-originated concept and term, “high-conflict families” (although I hear Bill Eddy now says they are high-conflict individuals — see my post on “yet another AFCC wet dream.” and his High-conflict Institute….)
The child custody cases referred to parenting coordinators are the most complex, acrimonious, difficult and demanding cases. Most parents regain their perspective and bearings within two years of separation, and do not need this kind of intensive and ongoing service model. Parents who continue to re- turn to court with enforcement and modification requests after completing co- parenting educational programs,* and after a child custody evaluation are can- didates for parenting coordination,
* perhaps this speaks to the quality of the co-parenting educational programs, more than the parents.
* or perhaps they are pissed at being forced to take co-parenting classes to start with, not mentioning affected if they also have to pay.
Parents who need a PC intervention are typically a special group for whom the passage of time has not reduced the rage and angry behaviors of at least one if not both parents.
A casual dismissal of whether it’s just one — or both — parents here. We KNOW that many of these cases — not just some — are in fact cases involving danger, abuse, and etc. These cases do NOT belong in family court at all — but they are there because of greed of professionals, and because of the fatherhood movement (backlash to feminism) that incentivizes and insists that single motherhood is bad for kids. For that matter, even if Mom remarries happily, it’s still supposedly bad for the world if biological father isn’t in his kids’ life.
In short — Ms. Shear and Mr. Temko (whoever drafted this) — are, with their colleagues — unable to literally distinguish between one parent and another when discussing “parents” in front of others who have some privilege (like a statutory justification) or grant to give them.
BUT — their own handbooks, and some appellate cases already involving parenting coordination, show clearly that they are QUITE able to distinguish one parent from another, and not only do, but literally plan how to, target mothers, specifically, for badmouthing and possible intervention in the form of getting the kids away from her. (I have two links to parent coordination handbooks on this post, you can check them out.).
The 10–20% of parents who remain in entrenched and high conflict two to three years after separation/divorce are significantly more likely to have severe personality disorders and/or mental illness (Johnston & Roseby, 1997).
You can’t see it here, but on the pdf it shows: in this quote, we have a triple-layer AFCC site. I believe Johnston is probably Janet Johnston (AFCC Board, or was). Kelly, (below) who’s being quoted in the section, if it’s Joan B. Kelly, has been called the “grande dame” of AFCC and mediation promotion in the family law courts. She runs a Northern California Mediation Center, and obviously publishes too. And Shear is AFCC. So — if so — that represents:
AFCC Shear quotes AFCC Kelly quoting AFCC Johnston, as to parent coordination, which is an AFCC idea. (this is FAR more common than most people — who are less obsessive about looking things up than me — realize. I have labored through some pretty detailed writings (NYState) where when they ran out of ideas, they simply restated them, and I literally read ALL the footnotes too, most of which were “ibid.”
Understanding the characteristics of parents with severe borderline, dependent, narcissistic, and antisocial personality disorders, why these parents react so strongly to rejection and loss, how the child is used in attempts to re-stabilize their functioning and punish the other parent, and how personality disorders are exacerbated by stress, conflict and the adversarial system will facilitate more effective work with these difficult clients.
Kelly (2008) Preparing for the Parenting Coordination Role: Training Needs for Mental Health and Legal Professionals 5 Journal of Child Custody 140,149-150
I don’t know how to state this clearly enough. The difficulty any professional has — who by definition holds an option to quit the profession (which they chose) in dealing with a ‘difficult client” is no comparison with the difficulty of dealing — year after year thanks to policies — with an “ex” who has threatened to kidnap or kill, who has beaten one before, or who may be and/or has molested children, possibly one’s own (dep. on the case) before. Suppose the shoe was on the other foot? Again, if professionals don’t like the difficulty they have an option — find another line of work.
But thanks to their insistence on THIS line of work, i.e., at public AND private expense, and explicit danger to the communities — almost no parent — and I’m going to say mother, specifically– can actually get free from real criminals they’ve had children with, even when he’s already in jail.
I know of one case where the person has already done time in an unbelievably severe situation, and this mother/daughter who already went through hell — is being stalked again. Until she’s safe, I’m not naming names, but once she is/they are, I will – because this case was high-profile and has been in the news.
One point of view is dealing with comfort, and potential burnout, in the performance of one’s duties that have internationally networked, federally-funded, county-judicial-level endorsed, and more — support groups. The other is of staying alive, housed, and after that, functional and employed at all.
If one continues to read the Amicus, it continues to complain and blame. The next quote by Shear is of Shear. Here’s a little further on in the Amicus:
Parenting coordination is a very intrusive model, inserting state authority into the daily family lives of parents and children. With those intrusive powers comes a duty to exercise restraint, discretion and wisdom.
This work often creates the perfect storm. Parenting coordinators struggle to avoid being triangulated into the family’s conflicts.
Well, they triangulated themselves in there to start with, intentionally! Which shows a lack of: “restraint, discretion, and wisdom” per se.
From page 18 (“just one more”!) – This chapter complains that California hasn’t legislated parenting coordination by stipulation (i.e., authorizing it by force) yet:
The only thing that is clear about appointment of parenting coordinators in California is that family courts are without jurisdiction to make them without a stipulation. Moreover, no published case has upheld orders resulting from a stipulated appointment of a parenting coordinator.
The quote from Greenberg in this Amicus acknowledges that professionals in California & Colorado (two hotspots of family law leadership; Center for Policy Research/Jessica Pearson et al. are in Denver) “spawned” the concept. Or rather, it “was spawned” — we can’t name an individual father, so perhaps it was a sort of psychological gang-rape that produced the idea (just kidding). Unlike “collaborative law” which actually names a father, “Stu Webb” out of MN. . .. And that this began in the 1990s.
We are now in 2011. Perhaps it’s time to admit that it’s a bad idea to start with; if even in California — where AFCC originated — they can’t get it into law!
The text continues — and understanding that I don’t know the underlying case, have not read the entire brief and am not an attorney, I’m to add a comment to the next section:
Of course, courts have no power to modify statutes. Statutes prescribe and proscribe what courts may do.
Damn right they do! On the other hand, has that really slowed down AFCC initiatives, has it? I think there’s been a track record of resounding success, if getting around constitutional and statutory limits pending changing the statutes to accommodate more income streams to court-connected (or formerly court-connected, like retired judges) professionals… is what’s intended.
The California Constitution (art. VI, § 22) prohibits the delegation of judicial power except for the performance of subordinate judicial duties. A trial court lacks either statutory or inherent power to require the parties to bear the cost of a special master’s services, even where it may have the authority to make the appointment. (People v. Superior Court (Laff) (2001) 25 Cal.4th 703)
The Court of Appeal reversed trial court orders delegating authority over the visitation schedule to a child custody evaluator, requiring one of the parents to participate in psychotherapy and requiring that all future custody mat- ters be heard before the same bench officer in In re Marriage of Matthews (1980) 101 Cal.App.3d 811, 816–817 because there was no statutory authority supporting such a delegation.
Just GUESSING here, but perhaps if over a 21-year period (in one state), it’s still being stated that there are Constitutional limits on delegating Judicial power, and three years later the Governor of Florida (Jeb Bush) brings it up in a reason for vetoing a parent coordination stipulation — there just MIGHT be a good reason! Parent Coordination is hardly an Occupy San Francisco (or anywhere else in California) grassroots protest or demand, is it, either?
We’re third generation fatherhood programs out here, we are also probably at least second-generation post-TANF (1996), post fatherhood (i.e., about 15-16 years since they passed), and perhaps– just perhaps — the last thing this state needs is more ideas originating from this nonprofit and all its collaborators in therapeutic jurisprudence great ideas.
Perhaps — just perhaps — it’s a good thing if constitutional and statutory limits on out-sourcing the judicial function mean something around here, for a change! Be content with what you got so far, as authorized by access/visitation (three categories of potential program fraud enabled) and all the marriage promotion money too, plus lots of the nonprofits — like ACFLS — not even bothering to report into the state Registry of Charitable Trusts (OAG) anyhow!
(REASON 4)
(4)
Moreover — like most AFCC promotions — the language promoting parent coordination continues to refuse to think or talk in terms of legal rights to INDIVIDUALS as the Declaration of Independence asserted, which helped kickstart the USA, claims they are. The language of parent coordination is continually pluralized, or group-talk. It does not, really, acknowledge that a person could be a member of a family (like “parent” “father” or “mother”) and yet really have — and deserve — equal standing as an individual in any matter, before the law.
Here’s an example from ParentCoordinationCentral.com (Termini/Boyan site). These are the supposed GOALS OF PARENT COORDINATION:
-
Educate parents regarding the impact of their behaviors on their child(ren)’s development.
[supports my thesis that AFCC members are often frustrated teachers. They want to teach EVERYONE, and if people don’t agree, they are clever about figuring out ways to force this, and be paid for it, too.] -
Reduce parental conflict through anger management, communication and conflict resolutions skills.[increasing the expense of divorce, treating parents like kids, undermining judicial authority, & due process, and invading one’s privacy sure will “reduce parental conflict”!! . .. And I haven’t even got (this post anyhow) to the training manual which has an openly hostile attitude towards mothers, it’s unbelievable).
-
Decrease inappropriate parental behaviors to reduce stress for the child.[goes with AFCC goal of switching from a legally defined set of prohibited behaviors to an arbitrary, subjective, and personalized version of what is appropriate or inappropriate parental behavior. Instead, how about just accept the basic definitions in the law, and as to court orders, compliance with them?]
-
Work with parents in developing a detailed plan for issues such as discipline, decision-making, communication, etc.[Good Grief! — Go have your own children, and raise them — well. Let’s see what fine examples they are, then parents can judge FREELY whether Mr. , Ms. & Mrs. Parent Coordinators are competent to make these plans. I mean — the concept is ridiculous! What about various cultures and family values, so long as they are not child abuse, domestic violence, or otherwise illegal?] [Even then it probably wouldn’t be a comparable situation, because the psychologists involved with the court, and AFCC professionals can usually drum up plenty of high-paying business, whereas a lot of the parents they are dealing with probably, by the time they are on the scene, absolutely cannot.]
-
Create a more relaxed home atmosphere allowing the child to adjust more effectively with the new family structure.[You want to have a more relaxed home atmosphere with children/ Again, go have your own and show it to us. Then we can, awestruck by your competence – – and if we want to — copy it!]
-
Collaborate with professionals involved with the family in order to offer coordinated service.[that’s closer to the real reason for it — more business referrals to colleagues]
-
Monitor parental behaviors to ensure that parents are fulfilling their obligations to their child while complying with the recommendations of the Court.[Children need due process, and they need an active, and respected Bill of Rights, for when they grow up. One purpose of the Bill of Rights was to keep snoops out of one’s private business, so long as that business didn’t ramble over into the criminal arena. It’s called LIFE, LIBERTY and PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. How can one pursue anything with the thought police on one’s heels?. . . . .Anyone who’s trying to function as a parent coordinator, and talking about children’s needs constantly (to justify it) apparently doesn’t comprehend what long-term dedication to one’s family AND country entails. It entails respecting its laws. I have before blogged an SF-area parent coordinator and family law attorney, who posted on his own site that the Constitution needs to be scrapped and rewritten, why revere it like Christians revere their Bible (guess he’s not one, and doesn’t understand how few Christians actually practice what’s in their Bible — or Constitution — to start with…)]
- The NH “Parent Coordinators” Association of 2009 “FAQs” suggest a benefit is:
- Q. What are the benefits of Parenting Coordination?
Parenting Coordination offers a much better way of resolving parenting plan issues than returning to court. And the resolution comes much faster than waiting for a court date and then the court decision. The Parenting Coordinator educates the parents about the harm to the children of hostility between parents, mediates issues as they arise, and if the parents are unable to resolve minor issues, makes the decision.
As ever, when selling their services, AFCC professionals see themselves as the mature adults on the scene, and the parents as a “plural,” and refuse to assign responsibility where it’s perhaps due. They seem to utterly lack curiosity in fact-finding as to that matter. This is understandable, because they deal in “psychology” more than law– which is the culture of the association. While two individual parents are often involved, in the marketing prose, it’s always “the parents” v. “the helping professionals”
However, once in the door, and in practice — then they are quick to blame ONE parent, often the mother, and recommend severe intervention, often removing of contact with the children to counter supposed “alienation.” In other words, they are hypocrites — professing neutrality and to be helping, but planning in advance (in this case) to do harm to one gender — the female, should she as a parent (mother) counter them.
I blogged this earlier, but again (from the same site) — here is their “sample” report from the handbook:
A handbook for the purpose and practice of parenting coordination prepared by PCANH.
Parts of this were credited (fn1 inside) to “Families Moving Forward, Inc.” in Indiana. This is a nonprofit formed in 2005, EIN# 432074631 with principal listed c/o “Gloria K. Mitchell.”
So of course I looked this person up — she is a Rising Star Super Attorney, member of National Association of Counsel for Children, and works in a four-woman firm. The nonprofit, however, is categorized as “exempt — earning under $25,000). website’s “Divorce and Parenting Research Links” is typical, plus a direct link to the Children’s Rights Council” (hover URL). CRC is pretty big in Indiana… Six years after passing the bar, Ms. Mitchell was on the Executive Committee of Family Law Section of Indiana Bar Assoc., and chaired it in 2005. The articles of incorporation show it’s a 501(c)4 (not “3”) and by address its place of business is another law firm in Noblesville, Indiana: Holt, Fleck & Romini. If the image (showing org.’s purpose) doesn’t show, it’s viewable for free on the site below.
| Entity Name | Type | Entity Type | City / State |
|---|---|---|---|
| FAMILIES MOVING FORWARD, INC. | Legal | Non-Profit Domestic Corporation | INDIANAPOLIS, IN |
Indiana Continuing Legal Education Forum
3rd Annual Family Law Summer Institute
and Family ICO Training Session July 28-29, 2005*
Amy concentrates her practice in matrimonial and family law matters. She was one of the first Indiana attorneys trained in collaborative law, and she has been instrumental in introducing the approach in Indiana. She has practiced collaborative law since 2007, has attended several conferences of the International Association of Collaborative Professionals,* and has been trained by collaborative law founder Stuart Webb. In addition, Amy also practices traditional litigation.
*Readers probably may not remember, so I’ll remind us. the “IACP” is another incarnation, membership association — out of many — formed by AFCC-type professionals, as you can see by the description:
ACP is the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals, an international community of legal, mental health and financial professionals working in concert to create client-centered processes for resolving conflict.
In May of 1999, the first annual AICP [=American Institute of Collaborative Professionals] networking forum was held in Oakland, California. The following year, a meeting was held in Chicago to discuss the state of Collaborative legal practice across the country. The nearly 50 practitioners who attended this meeting agreed that AICP should serve as the umbrella organization for our rapidly-growing movement. At the same time, they recognized that since Collaborative Practice was also developing exponentially across Canada, the organization needed a broader, more inclusive name and mission. Thus the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals was born in late 2000, officially changing its name in 2001.
The Collaborative Review has been published continuously since May, 1999. The work begun by initial editors Jennifer Jackson and Pauline Tesler. . .
Jennifer Jackson (FYI, I’ve never met, spoken to, or dealt with her in court) is kind of branded in my mind as having helped start up Kids’ Turn (SF):
FYI — here is another Super Lawyer, high-profile, longstanding success. Her “about” page lists many accomplishments. Notice which comes first; notice also the variety of terms which are basic to the field: I’ll bold them:
About Jennifer Jackson
Before becoming a family lawyer in 1985, Jennifer Jackson was an illustrator and photographer, raising three children.
A LITTLE LOCAL COMMENTARY relating to this Super-Productive/Super Attorney and her many Nonprofits:
I know artists, including photographers and illustrators. It’s not that easy to make a living at; this speaks of either a good prior divorce settlement, (or not marrying) or some substantial education somewhere along the line, undergrad plus law school. That’s quite a set of accomplishments, but I don’t think represents an indigence. See Resume:
- BA with Honors in 1966, became family lawyer (passed bar?)
- 1985, with Professor’s Assistanceships (in law school) on child-related and mediation topics. Maybe I can assume that almost 20 year gap is called “Mom” and “Wife” time.
- In 1987, she helped found Kids’ Turn and was simultaneously involved in PTA Board at “Campolindo High School” where her kids probably attended. Campolindo is — well, its site describes it well:
“Located in the hills east of the University of California, Berkeley, Campolindo serves the professionally-oriented and well-educated suburban communities of Moraga and Lafayette. Students, teachers and parents work together to provide a positive climate for learning where mutual respect, trust and esteem are valued. ” . . .”In statewide API (Academic Performance Index) ratings, for the fifth year in a row, both the Acalanes District and Campolindo are ranked in the very top percentiles of all public high schools in California with an API score of 919. Nationally, Campolindo is recognized regularly in Newsweek magazine as one of the “Best High Schools in America”. The Association of Californa School Administrators honored Campolindo’s Principal, Carol Kitchens, as the Secondary Principal of the Year in 2009
Blending this background of creativity, caring and flexibility with her legal training enhances her practice of family law and expands the options for her clients.
Jennifer believes that a lawyer must be actively involved in her professional community, and that life is about making a difference. Jennifer is one of the founders of Kids’ Turn, a program for separating families begun in San Francisco which has expanded exponentially in size and in quality of service to children and families.
(If you know my blog, you know EXACTLY why and how Kids’ Turn “expanded exponentially in size” — see family law attorneys, evaluators & judges on the board, see access/visitation funds “facilitating” parent education programs. . . . .As to the quality of service? That’s debatable, but as I haven’t sat through any of the classes — except to note they use the word “parental alienation” a lot in stating benefits, i.e., “reduces parental alienation” type claims. I’ll withhold judgment on this, as should others who haven’t !!)
She is one of the founders of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals and served for eight years as co-editor of its journal, The Collaborative Review. She has had leadership roles in her professional organizations at local, state national and international levels, and is a past president of the Northern California chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.
Within five years of passing the bar, she is serving as a judge pro tem– how common is that? Or this?
Standing Committee on Custody, North: Chair 1988-1990
San Francisco Bar Association
Executive Committee, Family Law Section: Chair, 1992; Member: 1987-present
Fee Arbitration Panel: 1988-1990
Barristers Club, Co-Chair, Family Law Committee: 1988-1990
BASF Delegate to the State Bar Convention: 1989, 1990
Volunteer Legal Services Program Volunteer Attorney: 1986-2000[[This is almost another topic — I’ve footnoted it [VLSP* at bottom of post, a section in itself….]
Expert: Temporary Restraining Order Clinic
Jennifer has been given an “AV” rating by Martindale-Hubbell and has been named one of the top 50 female lawyers (“Super Lawyers”) in Northern California in all areas of practice by Law and Politics Publications for the past five years in a row. Jennifer practices alternative dispute resolution exclusively; she has trained extensively in mediation and collaboration, and is committed to keeping clients out of court and at the negotiating table.
| The IACP has created Standards for practitioners, trainers and collaborative practice trainings. It has promulgated Ethical Guidelines for Practitioners, and continues to support excellence in collaborative practice through resources, training curriculum, practice tools, mentoring and a comprehensive website, allowing collaborative practitioners to continue our tradition of sharing and learning from one another. |
Where we are going…
Today, the IACP has over 4,000 members from twenty four countries around the world. We are dedicated to educating the public about the Collaborative alternative. We are committed to fostering professional excellence in conflict resolution through Collaborative Practice. We invite you to peruse this site to learn more about IACP, our services and initiatives.
Amy is the past-chair of the Family Law Section of the Indianapolis Bar Association (2003) and is president of Families Moving Forward, Inc., a multi-disciplinary non-profit organization devoted to developing healthy approaches to family transitions.. . .[Law Degree summa cum laude Indiana Univ. School of Law, 1999; admitted to IN bar same year, graduate “with high distinction” in 1986. ]
5 years of work and/or law school, and within 4 more years she’s charing the Family Law Section of Indianapolis (that’s one city, not the whole state’s) Bar Assocation. What a nice nonprofit and what accomplished professionals, and how successful they are. As such, we should believe what they say, especially as the nonprofit “Families Moving Forward, Inc.” is DEVOTED to a HEALTHY APPROACH to “Family transitions.” (typically called divorces or custody matters).
FAMILIES MOVING FORWARD, INC., is an interdisciplinary organization of attorneys, mental health providers, accountants, and other professionals committed to improving the process of family transition in Indiana, by reducing conflict and cost, creating healthier outcomes for children, and enhancing the satisfaction of professionals serving families.
Seminars For Advanced Interdisciplinary Family Professionals
| Date | Name (Type) |
| 7/27/2006 | SEMINARS FOR ADVANCED INTERDISCIPLINARY FAMILY PROFESSIONALS, INC. D/B/A SAIF (Assumed)) |
Segments from the Indiana 2005 Sample PC report (handbook):
The sample report begins with a situation between father and stepfather which was hostile. Both wanted to coach on Little (10) Joey’s baseball team.
Therapy for both TOGETHER is recommended:
5. Mr. Smith and Mr. Doe should attend counseling sessions together to attempt to resolve their(For example, the mother did not want the father to volunteer on Fridays at school any longer. She maintained that the children were emotional and upset on those mornings and did not want to go to school. The teachers were contacted and reported that the children looked forward to and enjoyed their father’s presence.
AFCC CLAIMS CREDIT FOR HAVING DEVELOPING PARENT COORDINATION:
From their 5-year prospectus:
AFCC Guidelines for Parenting Coordination
In 2003, AFCC President George Czutrin appointed a Task Force to develop Model Standards of Practice for Parenting Coordination, following the first Task Force on Parenting
Coordination that conducted research and published the 2003 Report on Parenting Coordination Implementation Issues. The Task Force determined that the Parenting Coordination process was too new to use the term “Model Standards” and, in May 2005, proposed to the Board of Directors the AFCC Guidelines for Parenting Coordination. The Guidelines passed unanimously and are available on the AFCC Web site at http://www.afccnet.org/resources/standards_practice.asp.
AFCC Parenting Coordination Task Force: Christie Coates, J.D., M.Ed. (Chair), Linda Fieldstone, M.Ed., (Secretary), Barbara Ann Bartlett, J.D., Robin Deutsch, Ph.D., Billie Lee Dunford-Jackson, J.D. , Philip Epstein, Q.C., Barbara Fidler, Ph.D., Jonathan Gould, Ph.D., Hon. William Jones (ret.), Joan Kelly, Ph.D., Matthew J. Sullivan, Ph.D., Robert N. Wistner, J.D
. . . .
The following new publications have been developed since 2002 while dated products were been eliminated:
• Parenting Coordination: Implementation Issues
There are scholarly articles galore about this. One by matthew Sullivan, Ph.D. (and a parent coordinator) uses the phrase repeatedly in the abstract — but to access the article one-time costs $34 and permanently $155. Needless to say, not many people who have parent coordinators in their lives can afford to read up on it….
“In 1994 the concept of parent coordination was spawned by a concerned group of professionals in California and Colorado who
WHILE PROMOTION EFFORTS TEND TO PHRASE PARENT COORDINATION PASSIVELY (as if a natural development), IN PRIVATE PUBLICATIONS, IT TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PROMOTION OF THE FIELD:
AFCC STAYS FOCUSED ON IMPLEMENTING AND PROMOTING PARENT COORDINATION:
And I am going to show you what apparent frauds some of the prime “trainers” are in this field too. But first, let’s look at the upcoming 2012 conference called:
The New Frontier
Exploring the Challenges and Possibilities of the Changed Landscape for Children and the Courts:
This is an upcoming (Feb. 2012) meeting of the California Chapter of the AFCC. An entire day is dedicated to a workshop on Parenting Coordination, and a secondary one talks about how to get it in there — even if parents are indigent.
Here are the presenters’ bios (please scroll through). Some are more than a page, others short. Notice the types of professionals involved (typical), Judges, Attorneys and Psychologists, Mediators, etc. Some have been around forever (Joan B. Kelly, Dianna Gould-Saltzmann) others seem newer:
Graduate of Tehran University School of Law and Harvard…
Abbas Hadjian, Esquire devotes a substantial part of his family law practice to educating the Farsi‐speaking community on the comparisons between the American and Iranian legal system and recently published “Divorce in California,” which is written in Farsi. He is an expert on Iranian culture and laws.
(from his website, partial description of an amazing background):
Mr. Hadjian was born, educated and lived in Iran until 1980. Between 1959 and 1968 Mr. Hadjian was a professional journalist in Iran, with positions including editor, writer, reporter, translator and commentator in major Iranian publications and news agencies. His profession a journalist required and helped Mr. Hadjian’s foundational understanding of the Iranian legal, social, economical and political structure. Between 1962 and 1966, Mr. Hadjian attended the School of Law, Political Science and Economics in Tehran University. Among others, he received courses in Iranian Constitution, Civil, Family and Probate law, furthering his understanding of the legal, social, economic and political infrastructure of his native country.
Upon graduation. Mr. Hadjian became a political appointee in the Office of the Governor General, Iranian Southern Ports and Islands (Persian Gulf), where he acted as a ranking civil officer in the region until 1978, the year of the Iranian Revolution. As deputy to the Governor General in social and economic affairs, Mr. Hadjian relied heavily on his legal studies and implemented them in real life situations. In 1975, Harvard University accepted him to the renowned Edward S. Mason Program for Public Development on full scholarship, acknowledging five years of Mr. Hadjian’s services in developing the Persian Gulf region as one year of post-graduate studies. He was awarded a Masters Degree in Public Administration
A related site from “Culture Counts.net” (site has three diverse professionals) has a page about fatherhood, the new normal, which “surprisingly” reminds readers about:
Positive Effects of Father Involvement on Children
- Children display increased self-confidence.
- Better able to deal with frustration and other feelings.
- Higher grade point averages.
- More likely to mature into compassionate adults.
- Paternal emotional responses to sons were associated with a 50% decrease in sons’ expressions of sadness and anxiety from preschool to early school age
Positive Effects of Father Involvement on Men
- Helps men reevaluate their priorities and become more caring human beings who are concerned about future generations.
- May reduce health-risk behaviors.
- Decreases psychological distress as emotional involvement with children acts as a buffer against work-related stress.
- Happiness and increased physical activity.
- Sense of accomplishment, well-being, and contentment.
- Men tend to be more involved with extended family and others in the community.
- Over time, fatherhood increases marital stability.
Leslie Ellen Shear, JD, CFLS, CALS
Ms. Shear is a graduate of UCLA School of Law and admitted to the California Bar in 1976 and maintains her practice in Encino, California. A frequent lecturer in custody matters, she has been involved in a number of high-profile custody cases over the years – most recently, Marriage of LaMusga and Marriage of Seagondollar.
9:00am – 5:15pm
All Day Institute (2)
(I2) Inside Parenting Coordination Practice in California: Managing Roles, Responsibilities, and Risks
- Lyn Greenberg, Ph D
- Alexandra Leichtner, JD
- Leslie Ellen Shear, JD, CFLS, CALS
- W1 Establishing a Local Parenting Coordination Program Including Pro Bono PC Services to Indigent FamiliesHonorable Lorna Alksne// Charlene S. Baron, JD, MA // Shirley Ann Higuchi, JD // Lori Love, Ph D
http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/submit-sentence-4.html
III. Parenting Coordinators Work With the Most Difficult Family Court Population – Those Most Prone to Assert Grievances and Challenge Decisionmakers
… cases are usually referred to parenting coordination because they are chronically litigious and difficult to manage. These parents have often had several attorneys, evaluators, and mediators — professional hopping and shopping is rampant. Their court files are thick with motions, court appearances, and allegations of wrongdoing by the parents.
Coates, Deutsch et al. (2004) Parenting Coordination for High-Conflict Fami- lies 42 Fam. Ct. Rev. 246, 252The child custody cases referred to parenting coordinators are the most complex, acrimonious, difficult and demanding cases. Most parents regain their perspective and bearings within two years of separation, and do not need this kind of intensive and ongoing service model. Parents who continue to return to court with enforcement and modification requests after completing co- parenting educational programs, and after a child custody evaluation are can- didates for parenting coordination,
Parents who need a PC intervention are typically a special group for whom the passage of time has not reduced the rage and angry behaviors of at least one if not both parents. The 10–20% of parents who remain in entrenched and high conflict two to three years after separation/divorce are significantly more likely to have severe personality disorders and/or mental illness (Johnston & Roseby, 1997). Understanding the characteristics of parents with severe borderline, dependent, narcissistic, and antisocial personality disorders, why these parents react so strongly to rejection and loss, how the child is used in attempts to re-stabilize their functioning and punish the other parent, and how personality disorders are exacerbated by stress, conflict and the adversarial system will facilitate more effective work with these difficult clients.
Kelly (2008) Preparing for the Parenting Coordination Role: Training Needs for Mental Health and Legal Professionals 5 Journal of Child Custody 140,149-150
+ + + + = = = + + + = = =
[VSLP*]. This footnote comes from a fragment of attorney Jennifer Jackson’s resume, which itself came from a bio of another nonprofit, Families Moving Forward, Inc. in Indiana. I was following up in another nonprofit, “International Association Collaborative Professionals” and I guess you can see about how curious I am about the inter-relationships of various nonprofits.
I looked at the staff. This one caught my attention — because of the specialties, not him personally:
Chris Emley (in 2011, or at least now on the website.)
Chris is a certified family law specialist and a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, with 41 years of experience focusing on child custody litigation. He has been included in Best Lawyers in America since 1991. He has helped to govern VLSP since its inception in 1979. He received the State Bar President’s Pro Bono Service Award in 1983, the Legal Assistance Association of California’s Award of Merit in 1989, and two Awards of Merit from The Bar Association of San Francisco (1977 and 2004). He was a BASF board member from 1979 through 1981, and chaired the Lawyer Referral Service Committee. Chris was Vice President of the San Francisco Child Abuse Council, Chairman of the Board of Legal Assistance to the Elderly, and Chairman of the Board of Legal Services for Children, Inc.
There happens to be one pro bono group in the SF Bay area which used to help women leaving violence and eventually in the news (and had I known at the time to check all these 990s, I’d have seen the notation that it specialized in helping NONCustodial, low-income fathers, I’d have realized why this group refused to help so many mothers stuck in the family law system.). The presence of a Certified Family Law Practitioner on the board of VSLP, with his emphasis being on children’s rights, and without question, children in ANY institutional system these days need help and representation, does make me wonder who is helping with women’s rights when it comes to actual mothers who aren’t in jail for killing their batterers (which have some groups advocating) — but actually dealing with the horrors of year after year in a custody battle with a violent or abusive ex, and doing so without even a grasp of how it works, or who pays its bills.
General Comments:
I don’t see anything in VSLP which remotely deals with the situation, and was able to get no actual help (legal representation of any sort, pro bono) in my case either, not past the initial restraining order, and a perfunctory (and NOT in court) attempt to renew it, which I was told would be a non-issue, it’s often granted automatically! No one came to court where I, like many, many other “custodial” mothers after leaving abuse, was blindsided by a prior ex parte movement consolidating renewal with a divorce and custody matter, thus shifting the case into the family law system, where it remained, and where the actual topic of ongoing DV was drowned by the type of talk we see in these realms — psychological states, not literal deeds!
The moral is, every program and every nonprofit has its target clientele. As the target clientele (for keeping in their proper place) in so many federal grants to the states are fathers (when it comes to custody matters), it would make no “sense” for the government to also pay the opposing side, the protective mothers!
[[Interesting program, project of SF Bar: its family law person Chris Emley also on Board of “Legal Services for Children” which (as of 2001) got funding from City & County of SF, SF Dept. of Public Health, and SF Dept. of Children, Youth & Their Families.
Its address seems to be a few doors down from Kids Turn: 1254 Market vs. 1242 Market Street. “Legal Services for Children” (2010) shows no Chris Emley on the Board, but its main purposes are: 1. Guardianship for children wanting it; 2. Helping kids dealing with expulsion and school-related issues; 3. Immigration. . ..It also represents children in foster care and helps support LGBT youth. 200 Volunteer attorneys gave over $1mil worth of their help. The group received over $1 mill. of contrib& grants, and gave $65,000 to a DC nonprofit, National Juvenile Defender Center (EIN# 02060456. On “Foundation Finder” this EIN doesn’t pull up a tax return…..for any year. Nor does a name search! However from NCCSdataweb, I see that it was incorporated in 2002 (legal services for children, in 1975). This “National Juvenile Defender Center” interests me: 2002 income, 0. A 2007 letter from Andrea Weisman, signed DC Dept of Youth Rehab. Services (“DYRS”) (shares address with a Board member of NJDC, Mark Soler, 2002) expresses the serious problems of Youth in Adult Facilities. Weisman and Soler (again, board member of the group which got $65K grant from the West-Coast “Legal Services for Children,” which takes funding from various depts. of SF and its city & county) worked together (1999?) on “No Minor Matter: Children in Maryland’s Jails.” Weisman notes she got a $1.6mil grant from OJJDP. ]]
National Juvenile Defender Center:
2002– income is zero. By 2009 — they are into Technical Training and Assistance. And ExDir. Patricia Puritz as only paid director, gets $134K salary) — and have landed over $5 million of grants, and earning $10K from investment income and have some serious program income in 2010 ($119K= almost (but not quite) enough to pay their own Exec. Director:. Check it out. So why, in the following year (revenues down to $405K — but probably some leftovers, wanna bet?) did a group in SF just grant them $65,000? Or was that a sort of tax equalization between them both. I live in the same state as “Legal Service for Children, Inc.” and we know that our K-12 schools are taking a serious hit? Why should enough money to feed, clothe and house three families in this area for a year, be given to a nonprofit out of DC that just got $5 million the year before?
The National Juvenile Defender Center (NJDC) was created in 1999 to respond to the critical need to build the capacity of the juvenile defense bar and to improve access to counsel and quality of representation for children in the justice system. In 2005, the National Juvenile Defender Center separated from the American Bar Association to become an independent organization. NJDC gives juvenile defense attorneys a more permanent capacity to address practice issues, improve advocacy skills, build partnerships, exchange information, and participate in the national debate over juvenile crime.
They operate 9 US Regional Centers; the California one is in SF and among its projects is:
MacArthur Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network (JIDAN)
In 2008, California was selected by the the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as one of four sites in the nation to participate in the foundation’s Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network (JIDAN). The four JIDAN sites, Massachusetts, Florida, New Jersey and California, join the four MacArthur Models for Change “core” states of Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Washington to form an eight-state network.
The California team is led by the Youth Law Center, and includes members from the Center for Families, Children and the Courts of the California Administrative Office of the Courts; the Loyola Law School Center for Juvenile Law & Policy; the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office; theSan Francisco Public Defender’s Office; the Contra Costa County Public Defender’s Office; andHuman Rights Watch.
The eight-state network is coordinated through the National Juvenile Defender Center (NJDC), and engages juvenile defenders, policymakers, judges and other key stakeholders in designing strategies to improve juvenile indigent defense policy and practice. California was chosen as a result of its demonstrated ability to achieve measurable reform on juvenile indigent defense issues. California’s JIDAN work will be centered in the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center.
The Exec. Director of this “NJDC.INFO” nonprofit (inc. 2002) was in 2003 appointed by the Governor of Virginia to a Board of Juvenile Justice:
This bio/blurb places Ms. Puritz Professionally, prior to here, she was ABA Juvenile Justice Center, etc.
Much of this relates to the “OJJDP” and the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act. This is an entirely different category than “Parenting Coordination” through the family law center; it is dealing with things such as the US being the world largest per-capita jailor, that those in jail are disproprotionately minority, that horrible things are happening to youth while in confinement, etc. By comparison, the “Parent Coordinator” issue seems like kids’ play unless one begins to wonder how many of the youth in detention had parents stuck in the family law system, which definitely cuts down on actual parenting time and focus!
p://www.americanbar.org/groups/child_law/policy/juvenile_justice.html
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A Straightforward Explanation of the Federal/State Child Protection Industry
I think that at some level, this country (USA) has to be collectively held responsible for just “going with the flow” in this field, including tolerating Presidents that rule by Executive Order, giving tax perks (tax-exempt status) to religious institutions which historically (along with plenty of others) abuse boys and girls — with impunity for too long — and continue to fund departments such as the Health and Human Services, which — while it dispenses valuable medical research, Medicaid, etc. — is entirely out of control.
Feedback from the post recommended the bottom section be moved to the top. This 12/8/2011 revision does so. Often the idea that inspires a post gets gradually removed to the bottom, as the front matter (including further explorations of the matter) grows, pushing the punch line further and further down the page.
Let’s look at a Massachusetts report detailing “The Money Behind the Madness” which is not so emotionally disturbing one misses it’s common sense, and that is where I’d like to end this post on a fine December day.
Thanks (anonymously) the friend who forwarded this. I’m marking this section RED, which in the context of Traffic Lights (cf. “trafficking”) stands for, STOP!
See, there are the conservatives (Eagle Forum), and family preservationists — and they report on CPS stripping married couples of their kids, but are hard of hearing when it comes to an individual mother needing to flee an abusive husband or father — because they are father-oriented by virtue of religious inclinations. (Not to mention the existence of plentiful fatherhood incentives as well).
Then there are people like me, who thought they were normal citizens with some sort of rights, only found differently when their case went from protection against abuse to fight for custody. Into the family law system. In this phase of life, being a “conservative” will not help one much — because conservatives aren’t much into, say, divorce. You’re on your own there, baby…
Adoption Bonuses — Why Not Support the Biological Parents Instead?
After this article (including my comments during it) material below checks out some of the groups and funding. Please note that funding continues even if audits show noncompliance; and who knows, really, where the difference between a monthly simple support of a family, to the (more than double the size) payments to the foster care contractor to find foster care parents to house the same kids.
Moreover, we KNOW — it’s not speculation, it’s pretty obvious by now — that SOME (and what %, only good accountability — which we don’t have — would tell) — that there is massive trafficking of children in compromised situations (foster care, or institutions like Boys’ Town, Nebraska) into sex slavery, to high-ranking officials, who can then be blackmailed with the photographs. This also relates naturally to money, drugs, murder, banking (The Franklin Credit Union in this case) and politics. Documentation by a U.S. Senator (John DeCamp) and subsequent court transcripts (cited) and a million-dollar award to one of the victims of trafficking from age 3 through 17 (Paul Bonacci) show that this extended to the White House parties after parties. Other testimony of a young woman who reported, mentions George H.W. Bush.
This is not “sex, drugs and rock and roll” — it’s access to vulnerable kids, incentives to get them away from their parents, sex– with minors, including torture of some of them, drugs, money, blackmail – – – and politics. Who can handle even thinking about this, or emotionally deal with the logical conclusion — that when these hearings came up, the Congress decided NOT to clean its own house; the legislators involved were not removed from office or named, and no attempt was sought by the judge involved to name them either?
Because knowing, from ethical persons, will result in seeking activism — or guilt, or numbing of the conscience to continue life AS IF it were normal, and business if all is well. In an attempt to restructure one’s life somehow to make more time for civic activism.
So, that’s apparently legislative, and judicial leadership in this country. Merry Christmas. That, plus the other financial corruptions in the family court (systemic).
The Per-Capita Bounty on Breaking Up Families**
**Not to be confused with alternate bonuses for attempting to reconcile families which either did not exist, or have already voluntarily broken up, sometimes around abuse or desertion issues. THOSE profits are for the family law practitioners and the various corporations involved, and also have separate federal financing streams. Let me repeat: If you are married but on the radar somehow as abusive, or if you are in particularly a single black woman raising children — it’s fair game. Someone may find an excuse to call CPS and violate all due process rights. After this article, I posted (again) on the black couple with children from Pennsylvania who ran afoul of a new “Child Safety Team” with an agenda to promote awareness of Shaken Baby Syndrome. I found the grants on TAGGS as well. A father was incarcerated wrongfully for a year (shortly after the program was up and running), they medical authorities apparently didn’t know about Rickets among African-Americans, and positive (defense) testimony by a doctor on the same team was suppressed; “experts” used this case to BECOME experts, and when the Dad went in jail — the other children were grabbed by foster care.
SOMEHOW, they managed to sue back, and get some help in doing so. But those stories are further down in the post. I also identified how HHS is helping some coordinated (multistate) adoption centers AND a resource center to create awareness of what a great field this is, to be in.
If growing children cannot bond with their own parents, they WILL find someone else to bond with, another peer group, or another powerful individual — if they are not literally kidnapped by powerful individuals and use in unspeakable ways. Those peer groups are not likely to respect the biological bond between parent and child, and its defensive nurturing qualities. This population is likely to be raised by a government willing to warehouse and label them, drug them (and some recent evidence, testing drugs on foster care kids), and other behavioral science “demonstration” projects funded by the public, and force them to become an ever-consuming (of services, trainings, products, etc.) population.
And for what purpose, what REAL purpose ? to satisfy the IMF somehow? or global billionaires with time on their hands and worlds to revise?The more authoritarian and repressive a society becomes, the more it is simply asking for anarchy — and it will get this. It is about greed, and sale of human beings for greed’s and merchandising’s sake.
In the Bible, “Babylon” is railed and prophesied against in Jeremiah (Ch. 51) Isaiah (21) and Revelations (14, 18). Babylon being the nation that carried Israel away captive and the prophets declared that it had deceived the world (made it drunk, made the nations mad) and vengeance will come:
Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul: be not cut off in her iniquity; for this is the time of the LORD’S vengeance; he will render unto her a recompence.
7Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD’S hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad.
Rev. 18 in particular details the greed, merchandising, profits from transporting goods, and in vivid terms pictures their responses when they realize from afar that Babylon is burning. Then it squarely lames the blood of “all that were slain” upon this.
Apart from characterizing the city as a woman (very thinly disguised cultural hatred of women and their sexuality), it seems to me the analogy of drunkenness applies. One of the quotes on this post literally says, “has the nation gone mad?” Long ago, pre-internet, pre-all this — the same sentiment comes out. Notice the contrast between the Merchants — but habitation of “foul spirits” (birds also signifies spirits). I cannot think of anything much more foul than and industry which sells children, with funds collected from the community at large, while promising to help them. And which, when these children then report how they were handled, jails them (happened in the Franklin Coverup), or when it’s well-known that children are both disappearing and/or dying in foster care, the system simply seeks for more clients. The system also currently (custody matters) jails mothers for protesting abuse, or for intervening by fleeing — rather than by the officially sanctioned method, which is having someone ordered into a program, like batterers intervention, treatment for sexual addictions, or other reportedly effective programs which get state adn federal funding.
(*I found another one yesterday, a continuation of one already found allegedly cheating, demanding payments in cash, in 1999, their charitable report is of doing over $6 million of business in Sacramento — California’s capital; the CEO earns $172,000 to oversee this, and psychiatric services of over $200K to one of the Board Directors. It is the largest single contractor for these things. I will report on it, too.).
MERCHANDISING, described . .. .
<< Revelation 18 >>
King James Version
1And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. 2And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. 3For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
The merchants are waxed rich. . . .. not all the inhabitants. I’m posting a chunk of this (short chapter) for effect — and notice, it’s those that have investments, that own ships, that tule nations, that have goods to sell — that are benefitting; not those who made the ships, or the goods This is the Corporate & Government sectors. The final verse notes that in her (sic) are all the slain of the earth.
There’s a truth to this — for what other reasons to nations go to war, or do people kill each other, besides individually, men may kill for jealousy or feeling betrayed. But usually, it’s for greed. The language is yes, pre-occupied with “fornication” and rejoicing in the destruction of a city (built by men, not women) characterized as female.
And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, 10Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
11And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: 12The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, 13And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.
14And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all. 15The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing,
16And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! 17For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, 18And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city! 19And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate. 20Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.
21And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. 22And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee;
{Industries, including the entertainment industry, that supported the merchants and kings…}}
23And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived. 24And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.
There’s some truth to this. In 2011, we are watching a globally-designed (by the great men of the earth) monetary system based on strong-arm collection from wage-earners (income tax, child support enforcement also) and with jails and police force to back up the intimidation, shuddering and crumbling — it has expanded beyond the weight it can bear, and never was to hot on accountability either — which helped increase the wealth of some of the “great men of the earth.”
And yes, this is getting people of all ages killed, including people that spoke out against the injustice and what would happen if it didnt’ stop (cf. prophets) and those who simply lived ethcial lives within their means, without devising ways to get rich illegally (tax evasion) or massively rich (multiple income streams), believing in stead in the merits and honesty of working — a job, or a profession — to produce a product or honest service. And they are losing their houses, and sometimes, offspring, while helping bail out banks. The people who helped create the larger and larger income gap do not LIVE in the neighborhoods they helped design, with each other, for others. In far off places (institutions, Institutes, at conferences, in on-line webinars, and on Congressional and other committees) — they design and plan yet more ways to control the population, either social science, behavioral change programs, or basically the threat of prison for noncompliance, and (let me just say it, OK?), abstinence programs – and no indication the leaders of our country pushing this are even faithful to their own wives ,whichever wife it may be at the time. Marriage promotion programs, fatherhood promotion, and one-stop-justice centers — all a public expense with corporate injections.
And I have seen so many out of compliance corporations in the past year, I cannot count. California Healthy Marriage Coalition, I admit, really got under my skin when I saw the two or three corporate suspensions, a Unification church staff member, that Bill Coffin & Dennis Stoica (and others) worked together to get more grants after what proof of any benefit from the first rounds?
So yes, at a certain level, I can see the truth in the angry prophecies of a future day of accountability from The Lord. Some of this is simply about ethics.
I mean no offence to the many good foster care families that I’ll assume (?) are out there, and not making news headlines. Still, the system you are part of, and taking payment from, has its priorities backwards. It’s simply true of institutions — unlike families, which seem to have a certain natural limit (barring polygamy) — they seek to perpetuate and expand, infinitely, and when the society allows this, they do.
From “Massachusetts New” Political — May 5, 2000 (per url)
Adoption Bonuses: The Money Behind the Madness
DSS and affiliates rewarded for breaking up families
By Nev Moore
Massachusetts NewsChild “protection” is one of the biggest businesses in the country. We spend $12 billion a year on it.
The money goes to tens of thousands of a) state employees, b) collateral professionals, such as lawyers, court personnel, court investigators, evaluators and guardians, judges, and c) DSS contracted vendors such as counselors, therapists, more “evaluators”, junk psychologists, residential facilities, foster parents, adoptive parents, MSPCC, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, YMCA, etc. This newspaper is not big enough to list all of the people in this state who have a job, draw a paycheck, or make their profits off the kids in DSS custody.
In this article I explain the financial infrastructure that provides the motivation for DSS to take people’s children – and not give them back.
In 1974 Walter Mondale promoted the Child Abuse and Prevention Act which began feeding massive amounts of federal funding to states to set up programs to combat child abuse and neglect. From that came Child “Protective” Services, as we know it today. After the bill passed, Mondale himself expressed concerns that it could be misused. He worried that it could lead states to create a “business” in dealing with children.
Then in 1997 President Clinton passed the “Adoption and Safe Families Act.” The public relations campaign promoted it as a way to help abused and neglected children who languished in foster care for years, often being shuffled among dozens of foster homes, never having a real home and family. In a press release from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services dated November 24, 1999, it refers to “President Clinton’s initiative to double by 2002 the number of children in foster care who are adopted or otherwise permanently placed.”
Fiscal Appropriations for “Promoting Safe and Stable Families” for FY2011 was $565,000,000, Appropriations, $468,000,000.
It all sounded so heartwarming. We, the American public, are so easily led. We love to buy stereotypes; we just eat them up, no questions asked. But, my mother, bless her heart, taught me from the time I was young to “consider the source.” In the stereotype that we’ve been sold about kids in foster care, we picture a forlorn, hollow-eyed child, thin and pale, looking up at us beseechingly through a dirt streaked face. Unconsciously, we pull up old pictures from Life magazine of children in Appalachia in the 1930s. We think of orphans and children abandoned by parents who look like Manson family members. We play a nostalgic movie in our heads of the little fellow shyly walking across an emerald green, manicured lawn to meet Ward and June Cleaver, his new adoptive parents, who lead him into their lovely suburban home. We imagine the little tyke’s eyes growing as big as saucers as the Cleavers show him his very own room, full of toys and sports gear. And we just feel so gosh darn good about ourselves.
In other words, what sells it to the public is a good, warm, fuzzy feeling about helping strangers. Open the pocketbooks…..
Now it’s time to wake up to the reality of the adoption business.
Very few children who are being used to supply the adoption market are hollow-eyed tykes from Appalachia. Very few are crack babies from the projects. [Oh… you thought those were the children they were saving? Think again]. When you are marketing a product you have to provide a desirable product that sells. In the adoption business that would be nice kids with reasonably good genetics who clean up good.
. . . .
With the implementation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, President Clinton tried to make himself look like a humanitarian who is responsible for saving the abused and neglected children. The drive of this initiative is to offer cash “bonuses” to states for every child they have adopted out of foster care, with the goal of doubling their adoptions by 2002, and sustaining that for each subsequent year. They actually call them “adoption incentive bonuses,” to promote the adoption of children.
“A Whole New Industry — A Sweet Marketing Scheme”:
Where to Find the Children
A whole new industry was put into motion. A sweet marketing scheme that even Bill Gates could envy. Now, if you have a basket of apples, and people start giving you $100 per apple, what are you going to do? Make sure that you have an unlimited supply of apples, right?
The United States Department of Health & Human Services administers Child Protective Services. To accompany the ASF Act, the President requested, by executive memorandum, an initiative entitled Adoption 2002, to be implemented and managed by Health & Human Services. The initiative not only gives the cash adoption bonuses to the states, it also provides cash adoption subsidies to adoptive parents until the children turn eighteen.
If Clinton had run this through the normal legislative processes, and gotten a public vote — would it have passed? I bet lots of parents who lost children properly to the system ALREADY — would’ve voted NO!
Everybody makes money. If anyone really believes that these people are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, then I’ve got some bad news for you. The fact that this program is run by HHS, ordered from the very top, explains why the citizens who are victims of DSS get no response from their legislators. It explains why no one in the Administration cares about the abuse and fatalities of children in the “care” of DSS, and no one wants to hear about the broken arms, verbal abuse, or rapes. They are just business casualties. It explains why the legislators I’ve talked to for the past three years look at me with pity. Because I’m preaching to the already damned.
The legislators have forgotten who funds their paychecks and who they need to account to, as has the Governor. Because it isn’t the President. It’s us.
What an interesting government policy when compared to the welfare program that the same child’s mother may have been on before losing her children, and in which she may not own anything, must prove that she has no money in the bank; no boats, real estate, stocks or bonds; and cannot even own a car that is safe to drive worth over $1000. This is all so she can collect $539 per month for herself and two children. The foster parent who gets her children gets $820 plus. We spit on the mother on welfare as a parasite who is bleeding the taxpayers, yet we hold the foster and adoptive parents [who are bleeding ten times as much from the taxpayers] up as saints. The adoptive and foster parents aren’t subjected to psychological evaluations, ink blot tests, MMPI’s, drug & alcohol evaluations, or urine screens as the parents are.
Adoption subsidies may be negotiated on a case by case basis. [Anyone ever tried to “negotiate” with the Welfare Department?] There are many e-mail lists and books published to teach adoptive parents how to negotiate to maximize their subsidies. As one pro writes on an e-mail list: “We receive a subsidy for our kids of $1,900 per month plus another $500 from the State of Florida. We are trying to adopt three more teens and we will get subsidies for them, too. It sure helps out with the bills.”
I can’t help but wonder why we don’t give this same level of support to the children’s parents in the first place?
The writer points out, correctly:
So, if the natural parents were given the incredible incentives and services listed above that are provided to the adoptive parents, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the causes for removing children in the first place would be eliminated? How many less children would enter foster care in the first place? The child protective budget would be reduced from $12 billion to around $4 billion. Granted, tens of thousands of social workers, administrators, lawyers, juvenile court personnel, therapists, and foster parents would be out of business, but we would have safe, healthy, intact families, which are the foundation of any society.
Thank God for writers like this, who in the article recommends boycotting a US stamp which sports a National Adoption Month, and concludes:
“I know that I’m feeling pretty smug and superior about being part of such a socially advanced and compassionate society. How about you?”
“Remember that children in foster care serve many public purposes — not good ones — but they do. They are being USED, and it’s hardly surprising. Children are big bucks — they can be trafficked to serve legislator’s (and others’) perverse passions, and in the process enabling very profitable blackmail of the same. They can be apparently disposed of easier after use than children with involved biological parents and relatives. They can be used to bill the public for unnecessary pharmaceuticals more easily than kids in the home can be, although from what I read, there’s too much of that going on. How many unknown deaths or adverse reactions result from over-dosing kids in foster care? When inappropriately photographed as minors (sometimes without their knowledge), this pornography has a market, too.
Are there good foster, and really bad parents? Obviously. But just as obviously, the system is ripe for abuse. And it’s SYSTEMS we have to watch out for as citizens — or lose it all. Is this country about material prosperity — absent due process? — or about liberty, which will allow individuals to band together freely and seek their mutual prosperity and safety?
When daily survival keeps the average and poor too busy to monitor those with multiple streams of income and time to lobby and devise favorable legislation for favorite projects (or simply by pass the legal process, as too many Presidents have done) — then we are going to compartmentalize the best of humanity away. I see this as an institutional matter — and as such, more people need to stop letting others direct the institutions that direct their lives, and manipulate different segments of society to fight each other.
Justice doesn’t happen without some accountability, whether one believes in a just highest power (God) — or justice underlying the principles by which the universe operates — it seems to me that mass abuse of the young (and using adults as breeding stock) would be its own prophecy of a system and society that cannot survive, that is going to implode, explode, be taken over — or all three.
This article is 11 years old, and I don’t think I could’ve said it much better.
+ + + + + + + +
Trouble with TAGGS.hhs.gov — the free HHS Database for the Public:
The only database available to the public (for free) to really track its grants system — is obviously inaccurate, hard to manipulate even by people familiar with database use (let alone others).
HHS/ACF recently (Oct 2011) announced over $119 million of grant awards — without providing the grant# in the announcement, and (when this was later looked up, by me) it turns out the last names of all principal investigators of said grants — were omitted from the database, having been replaced by first names only! I.e., a grant overseen by a John Smith would read in the printout “John John,” as I showed earlier.
Moreover, TAGGS.HHS.GOV allows search by grantee identifiers such as EIN# and DUNS# — but many grants lack DUNS. The most obvious searchable numeric identifier of any grantee — is not available to search on in the Taggs database under “Advanced Search.”
CFDA# Selections
The website drop-down-type menu showing which of the multitude of program identifiers (CFDA#s) available to track — for those curious about what’s being done within a state, or inter-state — is narrow, long, one can key in a CFDA#, but not search by CFDA title. For example — in this post, I’m talking about Adoption and Foster Care.
To look up which grant programs (CFDA#s) are involved I would have to either already know them, or scroll down the entire list looking for clues.
The list has two columns — it could have been made searchable by either column, or key-sensitive by either column (i.e., if I typed in “healthy marriage” or “Adoption” — the cursor forwards to the first occurrence of it).
The “Award Search Menu” has a list of all these, and one can select them all — but not copy them all, which seems offensive to common sense! Try it yourself (see link). They are not all visible at once, even. The menu which allows one to search by CFDA numbers (select by year and state) requires one to somehow know which numbers first — and no visual reference for them on the page. Why not?
Here’s a recent grant announcment from “Grants.gov”:
| 04/27/2011 | Infant Adoption Awareness Training Grants | Administration for Children and Families |
If I go about 4 different places, the CFDA# it falls under will show up:
Funding Opportunity Title: Infant Adoption Awareness Training Grants Funding Opportunity Number (FON): HHS-2011-ACF-ACYF-CG-0170 Program Office: Administration on Children, Youth and Families Funding Type: Discretionary Funding Category: Cooperative Agreement Announcement Type: Modification CFDA#: 93.254 Post Date: 06/02/2011 Application Due Date: 06/27/2011
Then, I could search CFDA 93254 by state, region, or locality — but would not get a numeric identifier of the grantee in the results!
In searching AWARD/CFDA# (and not selecting state or year), I come up with a chart showing this total:
| Page Award Actions Count: 50 | Award Actions Amount for this Page: | $ 62,965,046 | |||||
| Total of 95 Award Actions for 28 Awards | Total Amount for all Award Actions: | $ 140,269,924 | |||||
The results are displayed by individual award#s and zip codes — but not States! — are shown. So, if one has a photographic awareness of all 50 states by zip code, one might recognize where the awards went. Awards to a few key groups show up in different zip codes; here are some of them:
(1) Adoption Exchange Assoc. (MD)
Total Actions (under grantee) $ 39,674,027
| Recipient: | ADOPTION EXCHANGE ASSOCIATION |
| Address: | 8015 CORPORATE DRIVE SUITE C BALTIMORE, MD 21236-5917 |
| Country Name: | United States of America |
| County Name: | BALTIMORE |
| HHS Region: | 3 |
| Type: | Other Social Services Organization |
| Class: | Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organizations |
Showing: 1 – 18 of 18 Award Actions (1995 – 2011)
| Total of all award actions: | $ 39,674,027 |
Includes programtitles such as:
| 2005 | 90XW0010 | HURRICANE KATRINA RELIEF | 1 | 0 | ACF | 09-29-2005 | DUNS# 140230892 | $ 600,000 |
| 2002 | 90CQ0001 | THE COLLABORATION TO ADOPTUSKIDS | 1 | 0 | ACF | 09-04-2002 | 140230892 | $ 4,438,959 |
| FY | Award Number | Award Title | Budget Year of Support | Award Code | Agency | Action Issue Date | DUNS Number | Amount This Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 90CQ0002 | ADOPTUSKIDS | 2 | 0 | ACF | 09-16-2008 | 140230892 | $ 3,669,500 |
(2) Harmony Adoptions of Tennessee, Inc.
Total awards (this grantee) 2007-2011: $ 5,434,761
(From the TN Corporations Search Site):
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Website claims they were founded in 1996
Founded in 1996, Harmony Adoptions is a licensed, non-profit adoption agency offering programs nationally recognized for their clinical design, implementation and exceptional outcomes. We are highly trained and passionate about our work and we make a difference in the lives of children and families. Our greatest joy is when a child comes home to their forever family. Our work continues as we support them all along the journey.
The Healthy Marriage, Healthy Family (HMHF) program is a federally-funded program through the Children’s Bureau and was launched in 2006. HMHF was developed in hopes that, by stabilizing the relationship between caregivers, the entire household will stabilize which would result in fewer disrupted placements. By utilizing the existing statewide ASAP (Adoption Support and Preservation) program, HMHF is able to reach, train, and support resource (foster) families and adoptive families across the entire state of Tennessee.
In the TAGG grant (incidentally) the title of this program is mis-spelled for this grantee
NCCSdataweb shows they do have an EIN# Purpose indicates a focus on orphans:
“TO ARRANGE FOR THE PLACEMENT OF ORPHAN CHILDREN LIVING IN THE US AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES WITH ADOPTIVE PARENTS AND TO PROVIDE COUNSELING AND SUPPORT” but the Infant Adoption Awareness Training is focused on pregnant women — not orphans.
| 621772291 | Harmony Adoptions of Tennessee Inc | 5,546,738 | 700,199 | 2010 |
| Recipient: | Harmony Adoptions of Tennessee, Inc. |
| Address: | 131 Cherokee Heights Drive MARYVILLE, TN 37801-5413 |
| Country Name: | United States of America |
| County Name: | BLOUNT |
| HHS Region: | 4 |
| Type: | Other Social Services Organization |
| Class: | Non-Profit Public Non-Government Organizations |
| FY | Award Number | Award Title | Budget Year of Support | Award Code | Agency | Action Issue Date | DUNS Number | Amount This Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 90CG2659 | INFANT ADOPTION AWARES TRAINING PROGRAM | 2 | 0 | ACF | 07-27-2007 | 104115238 | $ 1,013,434 |
| 2007 | 90CO1032 | THE HEATLHY MARRAIGE, HEALTHY FAMILY PROJECT | 2 | 0 | ACF | 06-18-2007 | 104115238 | $ 247,451 |
The words “Awareness (one series), “Healthy” and “Marriage” were misspelled. I wonder if there were similar errors or switching of #s in the amount$ columns…. The misspelling was not corrected for years of grants recordings….four years, to be exact…..
The Exec Director of “Harmony” (earns about $88K) also shows up (former?)University of Tennessee Legal Clinic Director:
Pamela L. Wolf – LCSW, MSW Founder and Executive Director of Harmony
Pam’s focus is the provision of quality services to children and families. As an instructor at the University of Tennessee Legal Clinic, Pam worked to identify comprehensive solutions for homeless families. Pam developed ‘The Parent Refuge’, a program designed to support single mothers. Following the adoption of her daughter, Pam founded Harmony Adoptions. Harmony provides comprehensive adoption services to adoptive families, birth families, adoptees and the community at large. Pam provides leadership for the Infant Adoption. Training Initiative (IATI) and is active with Harmony’s Adoption Support and Preservation (ASAP) program. Both programs tap into Pam’s passion for promoting comprehensive adoption services with her enthusiasm for education
Another director of Harmony in TN notes her background:
Pam Frye – Adoption Services Director for Harmony
She Received her MS in Educational Psychology, Community Counseling from the University of Tennessee. Pam comes to Harmony from the Helen Ross McNabb Center, where she spent 15 years counseling children and their families. Pam has a special interest in the needs of both rural and urban children. She and husband Kevin adopted their daughter from China. Pam’s work at Harmony combines her passions – meeting the needs of children, counseling, and parental education.
Among other things, the Helen Ross McNabb Center partners with TN Dept. of DCFS to help place children in Foster Care…
Foster Care Services
Helen Ross McNabb Center Foster Care and Adoption Program is a therapeutic foster care program operated in conjunction with the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.
These children have been removed from their homes (and if they do not have appropriate relatives in their own family) are placed in protective custody of the state due to abuse, neglect, unruliness or delinquency. The program recruits and trains caring, structured foster homes to help these children who enter custody with a multitude of problems and needs. . . .A Helen Ross McNabb foster care specialist is a trained case manager with a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in the children and families field. The specialist will help the foster family with behavioral interventions if the children exhibit any behavioral issues
The site — which is named Infant Adoption Training Initiative (pretty clearly after the grant series) features three of the recipients from TAGGS, and is copyrighted by them:
Copyright © 2005-2007 Spaulding for Children, Harmony & Arizona’s Children Association.
All rights reserved. Privacy & Terms of Use / ADA Statement
In fact, the initiative is pretty well described as simply a grant program from HHS, and 5 recipients are listed:
What is the Infant Adoption Awareness Training Program?
The Infant Adoption Training Initiative is funded by a grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services. Our Understanding Infant Adoption training program is designed to help health care professionals serving pregnant women and teens discuss adoption as an option with patients and clients who are not sure that they want to parent the child.
(3) Latino Family Institute (CA, Los Angeles area)
Total awards (grantee) since 2000 = $9,947,145
| Recipient: | LATINO FAMILY INSTITUTE |
| Address: | 1501 W. CAMERON AVENUE STE 240 WEST COVINA, CA 91790-2724 |
| Country Name: | United States of America |
| County Name: | LOS ANGELES |
| HHS Region: | 9 |
| Type: | Other Social Services Organization |
| Class: | Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organization |
The first two awards show recruitment:
| FY | Award Number | Award Title | Budget Year of Support | Award Code | Agency | Action Issue Date | DUNS Number | Amount This Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 90CO0905 | LATINO RECRUITMENT AND ADOPTION INNOVATIONS | 1 | 0 | ACF | 09-14-2000 | 042325063 | $ 250,000 |
| Fiscal Year 2000 Total: | $ 250,000 | |||||||
| Total of all award actions: | $ 9,997,145 |
They incorporated in California 1996 (same year as welfare reform, before Harmony — above):
| Entity Number | Date Filed | Status | Entity Name | Agent for Service of Process |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1967025 | 04/18/1996 | ACTIVE | LATINO FAMILY INSTITUTE, INC. | MARIA L. QUINTANILLA |
Their charitable status is also current, although there are no returns (state or federal) showing past the year 2007 in California for this amount: EIN#
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| 954587747 |
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Their programs include Adoption, Foster Care, Kinship Care, Infant Adoption Awareness Training (above), Abandoned Infants Assistance, etc.:
Latino Family Institute is an Adoption, Foster Care, and Family Support agency dedicated to improving social welfare conditions leading to increased family functioning. We enrich society’s foundation by advocating for and implementing culturally effective interventions that elevate the collective well-being of our families.
Vision Statement:
The Latino Family Institute seeks to advance social welfare conditions facing Spanish dominant families. Our vision for every child to have love and permanency in their family of origin. We aspire to preserve the integrity of Latin American cultures among adoptive families and to promote kinship adoptions as a preferred alternative to family integration. We envision a social environment that is sensitive to the complex needs of children in Foster Care and one that is active in reducing the vulnerabilities of such delicate families.
Innovative Recruitment Strategies: The Latino Family Institute
A number of programs have received Adoption Opportunities grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Children’s Bureau to carry out demonstration projects designed to improve outcomes for children adopted from foster care. One highly successful program highlighted here illustrates how these grants can be used to find permanent families for specific groups of children, in this case—Latino children in Los Angeles.
In 2000, the Latino Family Institute (LFI) received a 3-year grant from the Children’s Bureau to place 40 Latino children with families. By the end of the project period, the results spoke for themselves: 69 Latino children had been placed in adoptive homes, and 198 prospective Latino families had been recruited. In addition, the awareness of the need for adoptive homes had been heightened in the Latino community, and more than 200 child welfare professionals had received training on using culturally responsive approaches to recruitment and placement.
…
Since the end of funding, LFI has continued to provide adoption services and was able to expand programs after receiving additional Federal grants. In 2005, LFI opened a new office following the award of the Abandoned Infants Assistance grant targeting families impacted by substance abuse and HIV/AIDS. In 2007, LFI finalized 76 adoptions. Currently, LFI conducts the Infant Adoption Awareness Training Program {{also an HHS-supported project}} in California and Puerto Rico.
(the group is new to me, but it appears to draw on a number of existing grant programs already):NLFFI LOCALLY
At the community level, the Institute provides culturally competent curriculum, social and educational services with programs designed to:
- Influence men to become strong Fathers and responsible men
- Assist men is healing and preventing the issue of Domestic Violence
- Strengthen and preserve families
- Address the Issue of Community and Gang Violence
- Promote Rites of passage and Youth Mentoring
- Address the issue of Teen Pregnancy prevention
- Provide culturally competent health and mental health services
About President Obama’s Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative
The White House Initiative on Fatherhood & Mentoring Initiative recognizes that engaged and involved fathers have an incredibly positive effect on the lives of their children. The Initiative is a national call to action to address fatherlessness in America and includes the following steps:
• The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and the Office of Public Engagement will host community forums on fatherhood and personal responsibility around the country, in concert with local groups.
• Organizations and Individuals who sign up for the Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative will receive e-newsletters featuring articles, tips and resources from prominent leaders in the fatherhood and family fields and information about model programs.
• Organizations supporting the Initiative will work to have an impact on responsible fatherhood, from local forums with the National Parent Teachers Association to community trainings by the National Fatherhood Leaders Group (NFLG). Partners from the National PTA to the head of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities have signed up to advance the President’s Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative in communities around the country.
In addition there is another nonprofit in Maryland serving the region to coordinate information and efforts to adopt:
http://www.adoptionsupport.org/about/index.php
(In MD a page full of corporations (incl. Forfeited, Suspended & Dissolved names) shows how popular the “Adoptions” field indeed is ….) (EIN# 52-2100734, it does exist; year 2009 reporting $766K contributions & grants plus $716K program services — not bad (the previous year, the program services far exceeded the grants). This, too, is incorporated as of 1998:
| (Dept. ID) | Entity Name | Entity Detail | Status | ||
| (D04974622) | CENTER FOR ADOPTION SUPPORT AND EDUCATION, INC. | General Info. | Amendments | Personal Property | INCORPORATED |
This too (per my EIN TAGGS search) got HHS support, starting in the year 2000. As of 2001, faith-based groups (see my last post!) could apply, too, in fact no doubt encouraged to….
| Recipient: | THE CENTER FOR ADOPTION SUPPORT & EDUCATION, INC. |
| Address: | 11120 NEW HAMPSHIRE AVE-STE205 SILVER SPRING, MD 20904 (very busy address appears to be right opposite huge hospital? and many other businesses at same street address) |
| Country Name: | United States of America |
| County Name: | MONTGOMERY |
| HHS Region: | 3 |
| Type: | Other Social Services Organization |
| Class: | Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organizations |
| Recipient Name | City | State | ZIP Code | County | DUNS Number | Sum of Awards |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| THE CENTER FOR ADOPTION SUPPORT & EDUCATION, INC. | SILVER SPRING | MD | 20904 | MONTGOMERY | $ 900,000 |
WHAT A SHAME THERE ARE NOT MORE HHS GRANTS OR PRO BONO GROUPS TO SUPPORT PROTECTION OF SINGLE MOTHERS FROM INAPPROPRIATELY LOSING THEIR CHILDREN TO ABUSIVE PARTNERS, OR TO THE FOSTER CARE SYSTEM. THE CHILD SUPPORT SYSTEM HAS VIRTUALLY FUNDED AN ATTACK ON THE STATUS OF SINGLE MOTHERS LEAVING ABUSE, AND IT IS MANAGED BY THE SAME ENTITY, HHS.. . ..
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
GRANTS INCENTIVIZE — SO THEY AND THE NONPROFITS GETTING THEM SHOULD BE MONITORED BY THE PUBLIC — BECAUSE THERE IS A PERVERSE INCENTIVE NOT TO MONITOR TOO OFTEN.
This 8,400 word grant began with the following section. What’s above here is (per my style) lengthy intro, combining my lookups with a statement of position. What’s BELOW is what inspired the post.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Grants and Programs Incentivize Action & Attract Traffic. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Their original purposes can be great — but once set up, the infrastructure is going to want customers. Consider the father that apparenty spent a year in jail apart from his family, innocently, and the WHY wouldn’t have been unearthed unless they’d filed a lawsuit — as I blogged last October, in Courthouse Forum News: Franklin County (PA) OCYF gets sued in Federal Court by Pennsylvania Couple.
By ERIN MCAULEYHARRISBURG, Pa. (CN) – Parents say they lost custody of their children, were identified as child abusers and the father was jailed for more than a year because doctors and state officials falsely attributed their 4-month-old daughter’s childhood stroke and congenital rickets to child abuse.
Jamel Billups and Jacqueline Rosario, who are black, sued the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Franklin County and its Office of Children, Youth and Families and a long list of individuals, in Federal Court.
The parents say that when their daughter, L.B., suffered a stroke and showed signs of rickets on Oct. 19, 2009, the Child Safety team at Penn State Hershey Medical Centerfalsely blamed her condition on child abuse, and the state then seized her and her 2-year-old brother, T.R., and sent them to foster homes.
About the context:
The parents say the Franklin County Office of Children, Youth and Families “has a policy of relying upon doctors affiliated with the American Academy Pediatrics, whose opinions are tainted by a burden shifting medical presumption that the cause of any intracranial injury in a child under the age of one year is caused by abuse unless the parents provide an accidental explanation, to perform the medical investigation into whether injuries suspected to have been caused by child abuse were, in fact, caused by child abuse.”
They claim that agents of the Office of Children, Youth and Families, defendants Tammie Lay and Dawn M. Watson, “failed to conduct their own independent non-presumption tainted investigation” and “relied exclusively upon the conclusion of defendant Penn State’s Child Safety Team and defendants [Drs. Mark S.] Dias, [Kathryn R.] Crowell and [Arabinda K.] Choudhary that L.B.’s intracranial hemorrhages were caused by abuse on the afternoon of October 19, 2009 and rib fractures were caused by abuse 4 to 8 weeks prior to her hospitalization without conducting any independent medical review or confirmation of their own.”
It is horrible that this child suffered injuries. However, there’s another kind of parent education program which might have been appropriate also:
They say that despite medical knowledge that Vitamin D deficiency can lead to rickets and weak bones in African Americans, Penn State’s Child Safety Team failed to require that L.B.’s blood be tested for abnormal clotting factors or that the child’s or mother’s blood be tested for vitamin D deficiency.
Another Doctor, Charles Pragnell — from outside the US — writes consistently on the problem with medical malpractice in presuming abuse, when it may or may not have been:
How children are suffering harm by those with a duty to protect them.
By Charles Pragnell
The abuse of children is a horrendous and unacceptable crime in any society and it is correct that when such acts occur, immediate protection is available for the children and appropriate action is taken in regard to the offenders.
However, what is also unacceptable is the high level of false accusation of child abuse which also has abusive effects on children and the families who are falsely accused.
According to statistical evidence in 1992 and 1997, over two-thirds of reports of child abuse in the U.K. have NO substantive basis i.e. False and wrongful accusations. [Dept of Health Statistics]. Similar proportions of false accusations were evident during the same time period in the United States of America and in Australia. There is evidence that false accusations of child abuse are occurring for mistaken, mischievous, and malicious reasons.
The current unproven medical theory which is resulting in many hundreds of families being wrongly accused of child abuse is Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy [MSBP], which is causing immense disruption, distress, and harm to children throughout the U.K. In these cases, physicians and social workers allege that parents (usually mothers) have fabricated or induced an illness in their child, yet on examination of such cases it can be found that the children have and are suffering serious illnesses. Groups which seem to have been particularly targeted for such accusations are families with children with Autism, Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD] or Cystic Fibrosis. In other cases children have suffered adverse reactions to vaccines, or from medically prescribed drugs which have not been clinically tested on children by manufacturers prior to widespread distribution, or from birth injuries.
[[In other words, parents — esp. mothers — properly seeking medical care for their children, sometimes single, sometimes married — are told “it’s all in your head — you are the sick party, you have “Munchhausen’s by proxy” (search my blog)]].
Pragnell’s article seems to cover some factors relevant in the Franklin County Case…
Prosser’s research indicated that the major faults in child protection investigations are :-
- The social workers perceived that abuse had occurred and the accused as guilty from the beginning of the investigation;
- Thereafter the investigators only sought confirmatory evidence of their assumptions and disregarded evidence which would have cast doubt on the allegations;
- Poor recording of evidence;
- Inappropriate interpretations by investigators of statements or actions;
- Idiosyncratic behaviour and interpretation of policies by investigators;
- Investigators focusing on a single piece of evidence and ignoring contrasting sets of evidence;
- Confusion over what constitutes a medical indicator of abuse and a “natural” condition [apparent in MSBP cases];
- High status doctors (consultant) having substantial influence over other investigators. [apparent in MSBP cases];
- Experts deviating from their areas of expertise [apparent in MSBP cases
Prosser identified three major areas of significant concern –
- “The imbalance of power within the investigating agencies;
- The abandonment of professional codes of conduct and practice by some investigators; and
- The failure of the system to adequately acknowledge or compensate the wrongly accused family for the trauma and losses suffered. This latter point is reflected in the statements of some child protection professionals who openly proclaim, “Who cares if nine innocents suffer, as long as we get the guilty one!”.
Finally, Prosser declares, “It is clear that the problem of false accusations remains endemic in both countries”. (U.K. and the U.S.A.).
When it comes to the case in Pennsylvania — I’ll bet the authorities had not expected to be questioned or challenged by a lawsuit! But we can see the suit mentions the over-reliance on the “American Academy of Pediatrics” (AAP). Well – the AAP just happened to be part of the cooperative agreement with Mark S. Dias’ (P.I.) project here! (See below): This is a financial and professional relationship.
(These quotes are from the Courthouse News Article, cont’d)
. . . About the Child Safety Team member’s expert testimony:
The parents add that Dr. Crowell, a member of the Penn State Child Safety Team, “qualified as an expert in child abuse for the first time in her life at the dependency hearing for L.B. and T.R on December 18, 2009. Defendant Crowell was qualified as an expert in child abuse for the second time in her life at Jamel’s preliminary criminal hearing on December 28, 2009. Dr. Crowell acknowledged under oath at Jamel’s criminal trial that she misrepresented medical evidence critical to L.B.’s case when she testified at Jamel’s preliminary hearing.”
She was a doctor, obviously — but was she an expert in identifying child abuse?
Thirty paragraphs later, the parents say that Dr. Crowell “testified falsely that L.B. had ‘an extensive screening’ for ‘coagulation problems’ and ‘an extensive screening for bleeding disorders’ that were ‘normal’ and that L.B.’s ‘metabolic workup was normal.’”
(LGH) Reminder: The Child Safety Team had only been started a few months earlier. Within one month of them being assembled, they had a black father in jail and two kids in foster care, erroneously. The bail was set too high for this man to get out of jail. How many times do we hear of people being quickly sprung from jail after domestic violence? (or sent to diversionary programs instead of jail). See my Toms River article for an example of this, when the woman victim was an employee of the DYFS herself…. But in this case, they kept the father.
This next part, if true, is disgraceful. A medical doctor testifying FOR the family suffered restrictions that ones from the prosecution did not. First, they point out that some doctors (for the prosecution) had liability insurance; while one wishing to testify FOR the family, did not:
The parents say that Crowell was also “paid by, and enjoyed the liability insurance, of Penn State” and was never their daughter’s treating physician.
(I looked up the HHS award for this, principal investigator Mark S. Dias. This nonprofit hospital is a major grants recipient; most of the awards seem for technical clinical research…)
Showing: 1 – 9 of 9 Award Actions
Recipient: MILTON S HERSHEY MEDICAL CENTER
Recipient ZIP Code: 17033-2360
| FY | Award Number | Award Title | Budget Year of Support | CFDA Number | Agency | Action Issue Date | Amount This Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | U49CE001274 | PENNSYLVANIA ABUSIVE HEAD TRAUMA PREVENTION PROGRAM | 5 | 93.136 | CDC | 07-20-2011 | $ 492,537 |
| 2010 | U49CE001274 | PENNSYLVANIA ABUSIVE HEAD TRAUMA PREVENTION PROGRAM | 3 | 93.136 | CDC | 01-26-2010 | $ 0 |
| 2010 | U49CE001274 | PENNSYLVANIA ABUSIVE HEAD TRAUMA PREVENTION PROGRAM | 4 | 93.136 | CDC | 07-14-2010 | $ 608,903 |
| 2010 | U49CE001274 | PENNSYLVANIA ABUSIVE HEAD TRAUMA PREVENTION PROGRAM | 4 | 93.136 | CDC | 07-19-2010 | $ 0 |
| 2009 | U49CE001274 | PENNSYLVANIA ABUSIVE HEAD TRAUMA PREVENTION PROGRAM | 2 | 93.136 | CDC | 10-08-2008 | $ 0 |
| 2009 | U49CE001274 | PENNSYLVANIA ABUSIVE HEAD TRAUMA PREVENTION PROGRAM | 2 | 93.136 | CDC | 05-04-2009 | $ 0 |
| 2009 | U49CE001274 | PENNSYLVANIA ABUSIVE HEAD TRAUMA PREVENTION PROGRAM | 3 | 93.136 | CDC | 08-03-2009 | $ 554,142 |
| 2008 | U49CE001274 | PENNSYLVANIA ABUSIVE HEAD TRAUMA PREVENTION PROGRAM | 2 | 93.136 | CDC | 09-09-2008 | $ 554,920 |
| 2007 | U49CE001274 | PENNSYLVANIA ABUSIVE HEAD TRAUMA PREVENTION PROGRAM | 1 | 93.136 | CDC | 09-10-2007 | $ 561,414 |
| Award Actions Count: 9 | Award Actions Subtotal: | $ 2,771,91 | |||||
The anticipated program enrollment was 300,000; it is an intervention program and as described, participants were voluntary:
This study is enrolling participants by invitation only.First Received on July 30, 2008. Last Updated on July 31, 2008 History of Changes
Sponsor: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Collaborators: Pennsylvania Department of Health
American Academy of PediatricsInformation provided by: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00727116 Purpose
This project is designed to evaluate a statewide, hospital-based parent education program to prevent abusive head trauma (AHT) in Pennsylvania, and investigate the additional effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of “booster” sessions of parent education delivered to parents at primary care provider offices in central Pennsylvania.
Specific Aims:
- Assess the effectiveness of an established statewide program of hospital-based postnatal parent education about violent infant shaking, provided at a single consistent point in time between the infant’s birth and hospital discharge, in reducing the incidence of AHT.
- Identify while [[I believe they mean “which“]] component(s) are the most important mediators of the intervention’s effectiveness; determine whether the intervention effect is more directly related to changes in perpetrator or caregiver behavior; and determine the effectiveness of the intervention among various socioeconomic groups.
- Determine the cost effectiveness of the hospital-based program.
- Establish the feasibility, additional costs, and effectiveness of a combined program of repeated exposure delivered both post-natally in the hospital and during follow up 2-, 4- and 6-month outpatient health maintenance visits with the pediatric care provider.
| Condition | Intervention |
|---|---|
| Injury Traumatic Brain Injury Child Abuse |
Behavioral: PA Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program: State-wide Behavioral: PA Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program Booster: Central PA |
| Study Type: | Interventional |
| Study Design: | Allocation: Non-Randomized Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment Masking: Open Label Primary Purpose: Prevention |
| Official Title: | Pennsylvania Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program |
- Incidence of abusive head trauma in infants [ Time Frame: 3 years ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
| Estimated Enrollment: | 300000 |
| Study Start Date: | January 2008 |
This sounds like an excellent program, and obviously knowledge about the danger of shaking babies in anger is vital. But in application — something happened, which resulted in an innocently jailed father, and children wrongfully in foster care, for a year!
Detailed Description:
Upon the birth of the child, all parents (mothers, and whenever possible, fathers or father figures) will be asked to read written materials and view an 8-minute video on the dangers of violent infant shaking. Parents will be asked to voluntarily sign a commitment statement affirming their receipt and understanding of the materials; these commitment statements will be sent to the Principal Investigator. A random subset of parent participants will be asked to voluntarily answer a short questionnaire about their impressions of the materials. In addition, 31 counties in central Pennsylvania will be randomly divided into two groups. In 15 counties, the hospital-based intervention will remain as described above. In the other 16 counties, all primary care providers having offices in those counties will be asked to provide all parents of newborns at the 2-, 4-, and 6-month immunization visits.
Investigators
Principal Investigator: Mark Dias, MD, FAAP Penn State University Hershey Medical Center
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Did the additional state incentives for foster care parents play a role above as well? Jail Dad, Mother separated from children, kids in foster care.
I focus more on the family court system (which is abusive to families, and the public through violations of due process, and more), moreso than “child abuse,” foster care, or adoption per se. However, this system sometimes ends up with kids in foster care because one parent kills the other (one in jail, the other deceased) for a variety of reasons. Then headlines also show cases of children escaping from brutalization in foster care, or dying in there. Both happen.
And there seems there is no longer any question that children have been trafficked for sex abuse and used as entertainment by high-profile politicians, in numbers unknown — as the Franklin Coverup (Nebraska, Larry King, John DeCamp reporting, victim Paul Bonacci testifying, an investigator’s plane shot down in mid air (killing him and his son) as he returned with photos from an interview, involvement of Nebraska Boys’ Town, etc.). No one normal can continue life “as normal” and retain an awareness of these activities, in our country; for sheer emotional survival, we back-burner it, and then believe that somehow CPS and other agencies will take care of the dirty business. Yet in the subsequent investigation, the now grown Paul Bonacci was awarded $1 million for damages, yet not asked to identify the Congressional leaders involved!
This article is too disturbing, and not “casual conversation.” As the point of THIS post is to expose the incentives for putting children needlessly into foster care and up for adoption — and to show an article neatly summarizing it from the year 2000 — let me just post the opening paragraph of the 2005 Article, detailing what is a curious lack of investigation by the highest investigatory powers in the US, or among them (not including Homeland Security, post 2001). This is the summary of the matter — and please keep it in mind when one becomes aware of the immense foster care industry: As this is talking about destinations of vulnerable kids and how they really cannot get out on their own, safely, once in this ring. As posted on TomFlocco.com (this was shared with me, I didn’t look it up):
The Justice Department, acting through the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Omaha, emerges from the record of the Franklin investigations not so much as a party to the cover-up, but as its coordinator. Rigging grand juries, harassment of witnesses, incitement to perjury and tampering with evidence -federal personnel were seen to apply all of those techniques in the Franklin case. (John W. DeCamp, Esq., The Franklin Cover-up, Second Edition, January 2005)
Bless the Beasts and the Children
Photographer for White House child sex ring arrested after Thompson suicide
by Tom Flocco
WASHINGTON—March 13, 2005—TomFlocco.com—Photographer Russell E. “Rusty” Nelson was recently arrested two days after journalist Hunter Thompson reportedly committed suicide four weeks ago on February 10, according to two phone interviews with attorney John DeCamp last week.Nelson was allegedly employed by a former Republican Party activist to take pictures of current or retired U.S. House-Senate members and other prominent government officials engaging in sexual criminality by receiving or committing sodomy and other sex acts on children during the Reagan-Bush 41 administrations.
In other words, most likely for blackmail purposes…. Now this photographer was arrested after the journalist committed suicide:
Hunter Thompson’s death and the news blackout of Rusty Nelson’s simultaneous arrest raise questions that someone may be attempting to limit Nelson’s freedom or threaten him, since according to testimony, both men had allegedly witnessed homosexual prostitution and pedophile criminal acts in a suppressed but far-reaching child sex-ring probe closely linked to Senate and House members–but also former President George H. W. Bush. [In U.S. District Court testimony, Rusty Nelson told Judge Warren Urbom he took 20,000 to 30,000 pictures, 2-5-1999, p.52]
Pedophile victim Paul Bonacci–kidnapped and forced into sex slavery between the ages of 6 and 17–told U.S. District Court Judge Warren Urbom in sworn testimony [pp.105, 124-126] on February 5, 1999: “Where were the parties?…down in Washington, DC…and that was for sex…There was sex between adult men and other adult men but most of it had to do with young boys and young girls with the older folks…specifically for sex with minors…Also in Washington, DC, there were parties after a party…there were a lot of parties where there would be senators and congressmen who had nothing to do with the sexual stuff. But there were some senators and congressmen who stayed for the [pedophile sex] parties afterwards…on a lot of the trips he took us on he had us, I mean, I met some people that I don’t feel comfortable telling their name because I don’t want to — …Q: Are you scared?…Yes…”
DeCamp, a former Nebraska state senator and decorated Vietnam War vet, told TomFlocco.com “there are tons of pictures still left; law enforcement is currently looking for them,” adding, “you can also assume there are senators and congressmen implicated; otherwise this would not be such a big issue.” But no federal official has stepped forward to protect Rusty Nelson’s life, as Congress would be reluctant to hold hearings or force a federal prosecutor to probe its own members for sex acts with children–still punishable by law.
I’m saying this because society keeps thinking someone else is going to protect both children and adults (women specifically) from abuse. While my case has no foster care, adoption efforts, or child abuse allegations in it — the principles remain. How many times do people have to reach out for help, only to find out most entities (including individual families & relatives!) — have their own priorities, and when one gets down to it, will sacrifice up to a point, but are not willing to literally sacrifice their comfort, and — most important — their myth that this country, where they live (sometimes quite nicely) is fundamentally just and good. And that their TAXES are paid in order to delegate life’s tough problems to others, who are handling it pretty well.
Nope.
This is why I came to the conclusion (after years of this) that the best defence is a good offence; that although independence, self-sufficiency, and the ability to physically defend onesself are resented by systems that profit and exist on constant streams of the needy, SEEKING THIS STATE is always better – for all! — than seeking protection.
The Tom Flocco article (2005) states clearly testimony from the abused children, trafficked in one case through foster parents in Nebraska, connections to George Bush Senior and intentional use of these photos to get favorable legislation passed in Congress. If there was opposition, Larry King could blackmail the opposing side. The situation is entirely sick:
..If they wanted to get something passed through the legislature, he would put some people that were against it in a compromising position. By using us boys and girls…Judge Urbom: Was this by your being the sexual partner of that person?…Yes…Judge Urbom: …Any estimates of how often you participated as the sexual partner of one of these persons that he wanted to get some kind of control over?…There were times when it would be four or five in a night…on probably a couple thousand times…sometimes dozens of times with the same person…” [U.S. District Court testimony, 2-5-1999, pp. 146-151]
Curiously, Paul Bonacci told investigators that the sex ring was based out of Offutt U.S. Air Force Base near Omaha, having been taken there to be abused since he was three years old in 1970. At Offutt, Paul said he was “trained” by tortures, heavy drugging and sexual degradation. [Offutt AFB played a major role immediately following the 9/11 attacks as George W. Bush made the base his post-attack headquarters for a short period.]
(There is testimony from young women also on the article).
Perhaps keep this in mind when you are writing a Congressperson asking for help regarding child abuse. WHY such a huge industry? When a child wefare worker “Walters” reported, credibly — the report was ignored, as below:
Presidential indiscretions–or criminal acts?
According to a Nebraska state police report, Nebraska Foster Care Review Board letter to the Attorney General, Nebraska Senate’s Franklin committee investigative report, and a 50-page report by Omaha’s Boys Town welfare case officer Mrs. Julie Walters,
by my count, that’s 4 sources!
pedophile victims Nelly and Kimberly Webb detailed a massive child sex, homosexual and pornography operation run out of Nebraska by Larry King–but with close ties directly to the Congress and the White House. . . .
(paragraphs later, not easy reading):
In spite of four polygraph tests administered by a Nebraska state trooper who said he was convinced Nelly was telling the truth, in December, 1990, a Washington country, Nebraska judge [David Quist, I believe] ignored Julie Walter’s 50-page report, numerous debriefings of the girls by foster care officials and youth workers stating the sisters told the truth–specifically about George Bush Sr., and dismissed all charges against their foster parents Jarrett and Barbara Webb, who Nelly and Kimberly said had allowed them to be abused.
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Did you ever wonder where all these abusive parents came from? Who raised them? Since Child Abuse is obviously a heinous crime, why are there so many participants? What is it about human nature that we collectively don’t understand about ourselves, such that there’s still a booming industry in Child Protection?
Why would a state Senator and her husband have to die while exposing this industry in Georgia? This is the conclusion several people have come to who were close to the Schaefers, although the Georgia Bureau of Investigation quickly labeled it a murder/suicide. (see HERE, among other places).
I am simply coloring this section GREEN, regarding the Schaefer’s CPS expository work (with its links underlined) in green, to distinguish from what follows, after which we can end this difficult post – for a holiday season. Perhaps state by state individuals can do their own work — but it must be shared, as obviously children are being flown OUT of state for trafficking purposes too. In the long run, this also becomes a FINANCIAL issue, as also the Franklin Coverup was — as in Franklin Credit Union. Larry King did time for embezzlement, not child abuse. It seems the two go together, and if major child traffickers are caught for money crimes, not child trafficking crimes — but it stops them — perhaps that’s a message on which direction to investigate. Quite honestly, I don’t think most of us can handle the vicarious trauma even of consciousness of how far down is the ugliness (within America, ruling circles). But, what is the cost of living unconscious lives? Or our delayed bill when what we can’t face now, comes back stronger, later, and right next door?
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Regardless of how the couple may have died, former Senator Nancy Schaefer lived the last couple of years of her life dedicated to helping children and families who were victimized by the very government agencies that were supposed to be helping them.
Mrs. Schaefer had found during the last few years that:
– Georgia housed children in a foster home with a known pedophile who molested the children.
– Habersham County failed to remove six children from a home where they were being abused and tortured.
– Georgia turned two girls over to a California father who had a pornographic video business.
A report that she produced on these remarkable cases can be found at the fight CPS web site:
http://fightcps.com/pdf/TheCorruptBusinessOfChildProtectiveServices.pdf
Nancy Schaefer was 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
More details on the video she was working on can be found on the Alex Jones Channel of You Tube at:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=WILLIAM+FAIN&aq=f
In addition, former Senator Schaefer led opposition to HB582 and SB304. These two bills, introduced by her fellow Republicans, would have likely increased child sex trafficking if passed during the 2009 or 2010 sessions. These bills would have made it legal for teenagers to participate in certain illicit acts. The bills would have effectively removed the legal authority that police have to pick up teenagers and get them into protective custody so that they can no longer be pimped for those acts.
PV Pop-Quiz: Who were the idiotic State Reps sponsoring HB 582 (analysis of HB 582 here by Sue Ella Deadwyler) in the 2009-2010 Legislative Session, and who were the idiotic State Senators sponsoring SB 304 (op-ed here on SB 304)? Inquiring minds should find out for themselves
The age of consent in Georgia is 16.
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Yet another AFCC-style wet dream… Someone needs to mop up around here. [‘Conflict Happens'[like in the Seal Beach massacre?]/High-Conflict Institute’, Publ. Nov. 16, 2011]
This Image from Oct. 2011 AFCC Regional Training Conference“ (“Pdf” of full conference brochure from AFCCnet.org website~~>)Working with Violent and High-Conflict Families: A Race with No Winners” in Indianapolis added during May 2018 post update. The phrase “high conflict” (no hyphen, only) used 18 times in the brochure. For a change, the word “alienation” was used only twice…
Yet another AFCC-style wet dream… Someone needs to mop up around here. [‘Conflict Happens'[like in the Seal Beach massacre?]/High-Conflict Institute’, Publ. Nov. 16, 2011] (Case-sensitive shortlink here ends “-UD”)
(Some format & minor amount of content updates (such as the image to the right and some others and post title extension starting at the ‘[” added May 14, 2018: I had occasion to reference this post on Twitter). Almost 24,000 words, but still important basic reading though originally written barely two years into this blog:
HAVE YOU HEARD THE LATEST LANGUAGE BLIP FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF FAMILY & CONCILIATION COURTS CULT?
From the “High Conflict Institute”
“CONFLICT HAPPENS“
No longer are DIVORCEs or FAMILIES “high-conflict” but “People” are. In fact, the issues are not the issues either.
When someone comes up to you with an issue — he or she (<=the usual application) doesn’t really mean what s/he says and is not to be taken at face value (ask the forensic psychologists). The REAL problem with family courts isn’t the family courts, and it isn’t even high-conflict families, or high conflict all by its rocky-mountain-high* self. The REAL problem is high-conflict people. Buy this book [“Splitting”] to know if you’re dealing with one:
AFCC 47th Annual (2010, Denver), Traversing the Trail of Alienation
<=**AFCC 47th Conference, Denver, CO, June 2010 (“Traversing the Trail of Alienation,” a trail with “Mile-High Conflict and Mountains of Emotions”)
Promo for “Splitting” from New Harbinger Publications
Bill Eddy image from publications page, Click image to enlarge. Note his affiliations.
Randi Krieger, from publications page (for “Splitting” book out 2011)
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Splitting
Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder
By authors: Bill Eddy LCSW, JD, Randi Kreger
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This book is advertised with others on alienation at the NCRC (more, below), as they are in the same professional circles. In fact, it appears he’s on the payroll here (2018 comments: link was to Canadian Bar Association. Search of “high-conflict” brought up just 3 articles, but not accessible without sign-up, which I didn’t at this point). (or is “Senior Family Mediator”) as well as his own split-off “High conflict institute” (see last sentence at the link I just provided).
Books by William Eddy, LCSW, Esq.
Bill Eddy provides Divorce and Family Law Mediation at NCRC as well as training for family law attorneys and other professionals at the High Conflict Institute. Please visit HCI atwww.highconflictinstitute.com for more information on Mr. Eddy’s trainings. He has written numerous books on the subjects of families and high conflict personalities, listed below.
- High Conflict People in Legal Disputes
- Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing a Borderline or Narcissist
- Understanding & Managing High Conflict Personalities (DVD Set)
- Don’t Alienate The Kids! Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High Conflict Divorce
- It’s All Your Fault!
Bill sure was ahead of his AFCC time. While others were simply developing and lobbying for more parenting coordinator rights in Florida, Texas, and wherever — he was writing this book explaining that the Issue is not the Issue, and all the conflict in the family law venue really comes from disordered personalities in the court system.
Protect Yourself from Manipulation, False Accusations, and Abuse
Divorce is difficult under the best of circumstances. When your spouse has borderline personality disorder (BPD), narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), or is manipulative, divorcing can be especially complicated. While people with these tendencies may initially appear convincing and even charming to lawyers and judges, you know better—many of these “persuasive blamers” leverage false accusations, attempt to manipulate others, launch verbal and physical attacks, and do everything they can to get their way.
Splitting is your legal and psychological guide to safely navigating a high-conflict divorce from an unpredictable spouse. Written by Bill Eddy, a family lawyer, therapist, and divorce mediator, and Randi Kreger, coauthor of the BPD classic Stop Walking on Eggshells, this book includes all of the critical information you need to work through the process of divorce in an emotionally balanced, productive way.
I find it odd that he’s working with the author of “Stop walking on Eggshells” which someone gave me about halfway through the divorce fiasco, post-restraining order. They meant well, but like Lundy Bancroft’s “Why Does He DO That” — and regardless of some truths it may have held, neither one (conveniently) mentions the custody racket, financial incentive, fatherhood funding, welfare reform or in short anything which would give me a concise narrative of why the courts don’t take death threats followed by family suicide, or a stalking combined with previous death threats and violence, seriously — and insisted on psychologizing all terms.
People who have lived with this (and I acknowledge it exists) don’t need guides — they need out of the relationship.
Which is precisely what people working with the organization Mr. Eddy helps market through, are not going to let happen. Nope. If we wish to detach from a borderline personality, abuser, or simply an ex (and birth happened in there somewhere), we WILL be forced, most likely, to deal with an AFCC-devotee somewhere along the way — or most of the way along the way.
I have the book “Stop Walking on Eggshells” and it didn’t take to long to recognize it was an updated rebuttal of a 1970s feminist classic, (shown in 2005 version) Women and Madness (by Phyllis Chesler, PhD)
(Link expired: but see 12/31/1972 Review by Adrienne Rich. Reading it again now (2018) with my perspective, both experientially in the American family courts (post-battering interventions, 21st century) and having read so much anti-woman, anti-mother, values-driven (garbage) from the same sources she critiqued originally in this book, I have to basically agree. (I also FYI had this book as a young woman).
It asks:
Why are so many women in therapy, on psychiatric medication, or in mental hospitals? Who decides these women are mad? Why do therapists have the power to deem a woman mentally ill when she asserts herself sexually, economically, or intellectually? Why are women pathologized, but not treated, when they exhibit a normal human response to abuse and stress – including the lifelong stress of second-class citizenship?
Phyllis Chesler confronts questions like these and persuasively argues that double standards of mental health and illness exist and that women are often punitively labeled as a function of gender, race, class, or sexual preference. Based on in-depth interviews with patients and an analysis of women’s roles in myths and history, Women and Madness is an incomparable work.
Originally published in 1972, this classic has sold over two-and-a-half million copies. Passionate and informative, with a new introduction that examines the trauma of psychiatric labeling and envisions a psychology of liberation for the ages, this special twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Women and Madness remains frighteningly up-to-date.
By now there should also be one called “Children and Madness,” for the labeling children get when they report abuse, when they are active and assertive, and when they need to be controlled after any of the above. That’s been documented elsewhere, and comes under
Psychotropic Drug Abuse in Foster Care Costs Government Billions :
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Exodus Lessons @ Passover — Phyllis Chesler . . .Let’s Reflect
What does it take to free an entire nation, men, women and the little ones, from slavery? Besides the help of God?
I can’t think of anyone more appropriate to write on this topic — and many others — than feminist author Dr. Phyllis Chesler, who has dedicated the article below to her parents.
I dedicate this post to my children, my daughters, and hope anything they have gone through will produce insight, reflection and above all, honesty about the world they live in, and the value of respecting others’ understanding of the Abrahamic religions as they relate to history, politics, and their places as women.
Also to a Christian woman, fairly young (30s? 40s?), a mother of several children and one still breastfeeding I met a few months ago. At the time, she appeared in semi-shock, and very distressed.
Why?
She’d separated from violence in the home, had gotten a restraining order, for physical protection. ….The courts (i.e., whichever judge signed the order), predictably father-friendly, shared-parenting friendly and unbelievably cruel — had put her nursing baby on a 48 hours on, 48 hours off. She was still attending the same church as her husband and the children’s father. In order to honor this restraining order — and fail to acknowledge the abuse — they had her excluded from the sanctuary, and him sitting up front, in the place of honor. Why? I imagine money was a factor…. Churches have to pay mortgages, and they are most definitely patriarchal. It’s behavior like that, like covering up mistreatment of wives and playing the system of laws in our land in reverse — that has me too disgusted with churches to attend, any more. That church has already been judged, in my eyes, and will probably have to give an account in any resurrection, for how they handled their own, in this world….
This woman, this mother, may not run across this post, but she knows who she is, and I want to remind her that if Moses’ mother found a way in terrible times, with the help of the living God (not a fake one, not just empty religious traditions), she can too. Any God worth worshipping will see — like Moses did, like Moses’ mother did, like Pharaoh’s daughter did — what’s really going on, and can part seas, and make a way out, can prepare an Exodus from the insanity….
PASSOVER
I barely noticed Passover. I plan to barely notice it’s Easter weekend, either — except nominally. I don’t do “congregations” these days. Holidays without family have definitely lost their flavor, and holidays within the family were also times of trauma and pressure when we all lived under one roof. They are times of danger, trauma, or isolation for many, or facades for others — when home is not a safe place.
However, thinking about its significance, and in light of turbulence Africa, Arabian Peninsula MidEast, I’m going to acknowledge it this year. The center of this post is from an article by Dr. Phyllis Chesler — and she is not responsible for how I may have fleshed it out, stuck it on a family law blog, and added my own interpretations of meanings before, after and some commentary inbetween. I do not even know all the terms used in the post, but the message seems universal, and current.
EXODUS
Exodus, and the lives of Joseph, Pharaoh, Moses — the concept of slavery and escaping it — are my tradition of faith enriched by understanding of violence in the home, and whether this intent to break a (woman’s) spirit works — or fails. I understand, as her article discusses, marvelling at how there was no “mensch” (person of spirit, compassion, humanity and true princely FIRE) to do anything much about this abuse, and I know understand how it’s actually profitable to maintain within the United States.
Exodus is set in a regime-change for the Israelites in Egypt — and the new regime both hated and feared the descendants of Joseph and his brothers. While appreciating their labor, they feared their fertility and determined, based on fear, to keep the upper hand.
To understand the parallels today, one has to have read the U.S. Congressional Record authorizing fatherhood legislation targeted at low-income urban black men and women. I was shocked when I began to read and comprehend that this came from a select group of rulers who literally feared being out-reproduced, as well as fearing and hating women (feminism in particular). It has been indeed a regime change and sea-change (Administration changes?) over here as well. I cannot convey this in a single post, but have sensed and seen it over time.
For example, when in 2000, in Ohio, A “Commission on Fatherhood” is legislated into existence, of the six members from the state representatives and senators, fully half “must be from legislative districts that include a county or part of a county that is among the one-third of counties in this state with the highest number per capita of households headed by females.” . . . . And when a recent population study of 4,000 women over a 27-year time span also breaks it down by race:
…The data included detail on individual men in each household, capturing what demographers call “relationship churning.” For nonresidential relationships, Dorius triangulated information from mother and child reports to establish common paternity.
She found that having children by different fathers was more common among minority women, with 59 percent of African American mothers, 35 percent of Hispanic mothers and 22 percent of white mothers with two or more children reporting multiple partner fertility. Women who were not living with a man when they gave birth and those with low income and less education were also more likely to have children by different men.
But she also found that multiple partner fertility is surprisingly common at all levels of income and education and is frequently tied to marriage and divorce rather than just single parenthood.
I have a problem with populations described as to their breeding habits: “multiple-partner fertility” studies such as:
Copyright © 2010 Population Association of AmericaLAURA TACH, RONALD MINCY, and KATHRYN EDINLaura Tach, Department of Sociology, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; e-mail:….Ronald Mincy, School of Social Work, Columbia University.Kathryn Edin, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University.
Besides this being one class (highly educated and in positioned in universities and/or with funding to conduct such studies) studying another class, the pre-occupation with how different races breed and at which rates, gets a little obsessive — it’s a close cousin to eugenics, and a distance offspring of what Exodus 1 talks about in the fear of the “foreign” population of slaves in the land:
Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 10Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. 13So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves 14and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.
I see & sense the fear of too many poor people, the fear of too many brown people having too many babies {Take a look at the U.S. Congress and see what I mean}, and at its bottom line, also a severe fear of feminism and women. Yet despite that fear, there is no fear of keeping such people in low-wage jobs (and their kids in daycare), and inadequate schools, such as these people would not send their own children to. (etc.)….. As if this were not enough, when they separate, they must run the gauntlet of custody and mental health evaluations.
The entire network of fatherhood grants, funding, preaching, resource centers, nonprofits and legislation speaks of this. This is not the 70s any more and feminism must GO! Libertarians and Tea Party, and a lot of religious groups are also poised to help it do so…. The linkage of “Patriotism” with “Patriarchal” often leaves no safe place or community for those women who love civil rights, justice, AND their God. And staying alive. Between the social scientists/demographers, and the religious fundamentalist “divorce is a crime” groups…
Which brings up this question:
Can Atheists Handle Religious-based Misogyny by ignoring its roots?
Progressive, liberal, secular, etc. advocates and groups really do not comprehend what fires the religious mind to kill its own, and others. They mistrust religion and miss its strengths. Our country has foolishly thought that the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives is some sort of social solution to stop violence and poverty — failing to realize where some of the same tax-exempt groups cause more of it, if one is a woman, or a child. I find this very disturbing and short-sighted. For more, see Don Eberly & origins of the “National Fatherhood Initiative.” He was co-founder. Wade Horn was the HHS connection. Don Eberly was the “Office of Faith-Based” connection…
It truly takes people who have lived in these systems to change them, but moreover, takes a readiness to accept them as they truly are — and in the case of Egypt, the Exodus accont shows a genocidal Pharaoh who feared the fertility of the same slaves who built up the infrastructure, the monuments.
Consider Moses, Consider the first Passover:
As Dr. Chesler discusses the duality (Jewish/Egyptian) of Yosef and Moshe (Joseph and Moses, obviously) and how they might have responded to their own identities, I am thinking how her own status as a Jewish feminist unafraid to confront honor killings as honor killings, to warn, and to stand in her own strengths, knowledge, faith, and experiences — to talk about these things, still relevant today.
Below the writing, I’m putting another map to show how religiously isolated Israel is in the uproar now happening across northern Africa, Arabian Peninsula, and the Middle East. This is no small matter for any woman, of faith or no faith, to consider.
Map = for reference only….
http://www.mideastweb.org/maps.htm
The Exodus’ Lessons
by Phyllis Chesler
Israel National News
April 18, 2011http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/975/the-exodus-lessons
…
Time is short and the Jews are, as usual, in trouble. What does the Exodus teach us about what to do?Yes, the Jews are in trouble both today and long ago, when we were slaves in Egypt. Apparently, Jews can be in trouble both as slaves and as citizens of our own Jewish state and as citizens of the world in an era in which a Jewish state exists. It’s like a bad Jewish joke.
In Egypt, we are literally enslaved and we cannot save ourselves. We need God to save us –and God chooses a redeemer for us. This is how we, the “Hebrews” are pulled out of “Mitzrayim.”
We have many midwives who free us from the narrow place of affliction so that we can be born as God’s people.
Moshe is not raised like all the other Hebrew slaves. In a memorable act of civil disobedience, Pharaoh’s own daughter saves the infant who cried out.
Let’s not forget, in this age where the word “mother” is almost a curse-word in the courts (and not on our current President’s radar, or vocabulary often, even when talking about families and children and parents, or for that matter his own mothers, that the earlier act of civil disobedience was by Moshe’s mother — who refused to kill her firstborn. The practice of the day was oppression (slavery), and the oppressors feared the fertility of the enslaved. So, the law of the land was genocide; the midwives disobeyed, and Pharaoh had set out the order:
(EXODUS 2)
And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. 2And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. 3And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. 4And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.
Never underestimate a committed mother with her firstborn…. She put her life on the line to keep her son alive…disobeying a direct command from the Pharoah to all, and this command was to murder your own offspring. Can we imagine this? Suppose it was you — or us? What would you do?
For such a patriarchal book to credit Moshe’s mother — and not both parents — is telling. Both were Levites — but would the father have been so brave, or approved? Pharoah’s daughter risked disapproval -too — did she risk her life? Just thought I’d mention this. Back to Dr. Chesler’s writing:
For this act of hesed, or merciful kindness, she is midrashically and rabbinically re-named “Bat’ya, because by this act she becomes God’s daughter too. Pharaoh’s daughter adopts Moshe and raises him as if he is an Egyptian prince.
Moshe is a more evolved version of Yosef: someone who is both a Jew and an Egyptian. He is a Jew who knows his way around the larger, non-Jewish world –but he is also a Jew who breaks with that world with wrenching and utter finality. Ultimately, even though he has grown up away from his Jewish family, Moshe, rather paradoxically, remains close to, even dependent upon, his Jewish brother and sister, Aaraon and Miriam.
In a sense, Moshe is also the anti-Yosef. Yosef is born and reared as a Jew and remains a Jew–but he also becomes a powerful and assimilated Egyptian. Moshe is born as a Jew but is reared mainly as an Egyptian. Yosef helps Egypt store up food against a coming famine and Moshe is part of God’s plan to “spoil” Egypt and to render her bare of food, food sources, first-borns, gold, silver, and clothing which are all given or lent to the Hebrews–or are really, all back pay for the 210 years of slavery.
Still, it is Moshe-the-Egyptian who becomes miraculously Jewish and who becomes God’s greatest intimate.
How do we know that Moshe is Egyptian royalty? Moshe has unlimited access to Pharaoh’s palace. No one stops him when he enters. One wonders if his adoptive mother Bat’ya is still there; does she accompany him to his meetings with Pharaoh?
. . . . .
Therefore, this much is clear: Moshe has not been enslaved. He has, in fact, been reared as a Prince. This is very important. He has not been broken by slavery. He is not afflicted with “kotzer ruach,” a shortness of spirit , a lack of generosity, indeed an absence of humanity which slavery and oppression causes. He is fully entitled. (We find the phrase in Vaera 6:9 and I will return to it shortly).
What kind of spirit does it take to retain humanity while enslaved? To not let it get to destroying one’s insides, hardening them?
Perhaps Moshe was even more arrogant than Yosef–although his alleged speech impediment speaks to us of his having also been marked by trauma, loss, “differentness.” In fact, Moshe never exactly fits in anywhere except in his relationship to God and in God’s plan.
I have not been through anything like this, did not live through the Holocaust, and have not been under a law of the land that requires genocide, human sacrifice of babies, to a dictatorship, a king….But I do know trauma, loss, and the “differentness” that comes from going through the family law courts, USA (west coast, even….) and stigma that comes from having had custody switched after leaving a personal hell, abuse & violence in the home like I thought didn’t exist in the second half of the 20th century.
I take courage that it’s possible to not fit in anywhere, and still be a leader, and to change society…
In Shmot 2:11-2:12, Moshe sees, he really sees, a fellow Eyptian (an “eesh Mitzri”) beating a Hebrew slave to death. Moshe first looks around. He turns “coh v’coh,” this way and that way. Some say that he is looking to see whether any other Egyptians are there watching him before he kills the Egyptian taskmaster and buries him in the sand. Others suggest that he is looking within himself as well. Who am I? Am I an Egyptian or a Hebrew? What must I do?
(More on this question, below….)
I do not think that Moshe is afraid of another Egyptian. He is a Prince and can possibly get away with murder. I think that Moshe does not yet understand what slavery is and can do. Moshe waits–but he sees that there is “no man” there among the Hebrews, no one who will come to his brother’s aid.
On the question of Moshe’s turning “coh v’coh,” Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi of Mecklenburg,** in his Ha-ketav Veha-kabalah, notes that “Moses thought that one of the other Hebrew slaves who were standing there would rise up against the Egyptian taskmaster and would save their brother whom he was beating to death.” But he saw that there was no man.” (Ain Eeesh). Moses saw that there was no “real man,” no mensch (“gever b’govreen”) amongst them, and no one was paying attention to the distress of his brethren to try and save him.”
Now, let me turn to a few important things that are specific to the end of the story. Bo is the parasha in which God unleashes the last three plagues: locusts, darkness, and the killing of the first-born and it is the parasha in which we gain our freedom.
However, as important, we also receive our first mitzvot, or holy deeds, (12:2) not as an individual, not as a family, not even as a tribe, but as a “nation.” We are given Rosh Chodesh to observe. We begin to count, and therefore control our own time, something that slaves cannot do. We are also told to observe the first Pesach, to teach it to our children, and to remember it as a festival forever after.
Here is where we are told to do so even before we leave Egypt and certainly before we receive the Torah. In this sense, Bo is an early precursor to “Na’aseh v’ Nishma” which we say in Dvarim and partly say while standing at Sinai. “We will do, and we will then listen or hear or learn.”
Finally, most interestingly: When Moshe asks Pharaoh for permission to leave for three days to worship our God, Moshe says that everyone must come: the old people, the young people, both the sons and the daughters. Moshe understood that both daughters and sons, women and men, are crucial in God’s worship.
As we continue to wrestle with Moshe’s duality in terms of his being both a quintessential Egyptian and a quintessential Jew, let us ask: Did Moshe learn that women were crucial for worship from the fact that women were priestesses in Egypt and that many of Egypt’s multiple Gods were also Goddesses–or was Moshe prescient, did he understand that one day, Judaism would have women Torah and Talmud scholars, women rabbinic pleaders and kashrut supervisors, women-only davenning groups and a Jewish society in which both women and men are viewed as important in Shabbos service?
Possibly Moshe remembered that his mother had saved his life. Possibly Moshe remember that Pharaoh’s daughter had continued to save his life, too. Perhaps he’d learned of the civil disobedience of the midwives who refused to kill all sons, who found a way to JUST NOT PARTICIPATE IN GENOCIDE OF THEIR OWN…. Bridging two traditions, he claimed the one of courage, the one whose God was not a dictator, who didn’t enslave nations to build monuments to himself… Who knows?
What a tremendous tradition, complex to this day as, and important to understand from more than one viewpoint, including the feminine as well, which certain Protestant Evangelical what-nots still fear, as we speak… NOW and certain others are still partially clueless as to this, despite efforts to stop abuse of women and children.
I will leave you with this question.
I want to thank Nechama Leibowitz, Rabbis Michael Shmidman and Avi Weiss, and my friend and teacher, Rivka Haut, for their ideas and support.
This learning is dedicated to the memory of my parents and grandparents. May their memories be for a blessing.
Thanks to them for you, Phyllis Chesler…
Here’s another map from “GULF/2000” It’s too small print to read, but the complexity of religion shows how small Judaism remains in this area of the world (green vs. Orange, overall).
This map found at: http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/images/maps/Mid_East_Religion_sm.jpg
A more simplified version shows Israel in a sea of green, representing Islam….
Arab-Israeli Conflict – Role of Religion
From “Israel Science and Technology Homepage”
“Map of Arab countries and Israel. note that Israel is a tiny island in a sea of Arab countries”
I don’t want to further dilute this message, or this evening, but quoting the page, but it is worth considering — and again, as a woman, a worldwide Islamic empire is simply not a good idea. Empires, in general, have not been too kindly to women and children, no matter who or where they are.
{{Format note — the bold print paragraphs below, read as regular type. Cannot seem to adjust it this evening, will try again tomorrow, laptop has been acting up today.}}
“http://www.science.co.il/arab-israeli-conflict-2.asp:
Many Islamist groups already declare that their aim is to re-establish one Muslim Nation (Islamic ummah) encompassing all Muslim nations, ruled by Islamic law replacing secular governments. Many Arab, as well as non-Arab countries, such as Iran and Afganisthan are examples of this trend. The mass demonstrations of support for Osama bin Laden in many Arab countries are popular expressions of support for this wish for global Islamic unity.In historical perspective, the wish of Islamists for global rule is reminiscent of the communist ideology to establish a “world nation of proletariat” (the communist slogan was “Workers of the world unite!”). It is significant that at the peak of the power of the USSR empire, the Arab countries were strong natural allies of the USSR against the West.Like any ideology that wishes to establish a totalitarian global rule, Islamic Arab-fundamentalism presents a serious threat to the community of nations, including the non-Arab Muslim nations, such as Turkish republics.While the role of Christianity as a force in shaping International affairs has decreased, the role of Islamic Empire in shaping International affairs has greatly increased as a result of several factors:
- Expansion of the Islamic Empire as noted above
- Strong Arab electorates in European capitals formed by Arabs who emigrated mostly from North Africa (over 6 million Arabs in France alone)
- The need to appease Arabs because of their financial power and control of global petrol prices
- Combination of age-old anti-Semitism (remember European collaboration with Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews!) with Arab interests in the Middle against Israel.
Meanwhile, back in the USA, people are fighting and arguing psychology, custody, and “PAS” throughout the family court system, our own idolatrous government has proclaimed “family” as a new idol (hypocrites! How many wars, so far? Wars definitely break up families….) and our CEO (President Obama) didn’t even mention “women” (half the population), or anything about them, as a topic in his 2011 State of the Union Address. Whitehouse.gov barely says “mothers” in connection with “Families” on its issues page. “father” on the other hand, is mentioned 4 times: See:
Strengthen Families
President Obama was raised by a single parent (which gender? Male or female? If Female, how come not “his mother”???) (the “how come” probably relates to campaign financing…..) and knows the difficulties that young people face when their fathers are absent. He is committed to responsible fatherhood, by supporting fathers (not mothers) who stand by their (ownership, much?) families and encouraging young men to work towards good jobs in promising career pathways. The President has also proposed an historic investment in providing home visits to low-income, first-time parents by trained professionals. The President and First Lady are also committed to ensuring that children have nutritious meals to eat at home and at school, so that they grow up healthy and strong.
Overentitled men are being exploited by the mental health professionals and psychologists in the “Family Court” (how many shades away from Shari’a? ????), conflict-reduction, forced-shared-parenting, and etc. This is absolutely distracting and weakening the entire nation, and if it doesn’t wake up — serves ’em right, I say! When it comes to entire nations, generally speaking, it’s leaders that will take a nation down, not the common man, the masses — who bad leaders fear and seek to manipulate, control, and particularly control the breeders among the masses, male & female.
These leaders should take a lesson from Egypt, and remember Moses’ mother, a Levite — who were the priestly class. But she was a woman….They should remember that gain and wealth gotten by a few hundred years of slavery will backfire….and can take down a nation — if there IS a God that hears, if there is justice, if there is a limit to evil. It was Moses’ mother, not father, who goes on record as saving his life in a creative way, eventually leading an enslaved nation out of Egypt, and perpetuating the religion that has Israel, at this present day, surrounded by Islam….which hates it.
So Let’s remember Moses, Exodus, the Passover Lamb (scapegoat), and let’s be prepared, feet shod, looking to the future with hope and vision, but not forgetting where we came from. and who got us out of slavery (and, US, colonization/ taxation without representation…).
Let’s recognize the character of the times and the lands we (individually) live in. And that any future is going to require women, including Mothers, of vision and courage, including courage to spare their children from insane, destructive, genocidal government policies based on the desire for glory & immortality (I’m thinking of the Pyramids..), and rooted, many times, in simple greed & paganism — excuse me, I mean, materialism…. What is all that stuff FOR? and how much of it is really needed? Who built it? Freedom is better, including freedom from debt. Let’s remember that to worship ANY God properly, one needs women….I think about how Moshe was adopted of Pharaoh, and the religion stemming from the covenant in the wilderness talks about God adopting Israel. The compassion in his life was framed by women, certainly…. Whereas Joseph’s own brothers, out of jealousy, sold him into slavery…
Moses/ Moshe had both worlds, could’ve chosen to stay as an adoptive prince. But instead, he chose ethics and stood against an entire nation that dealt in unbelieveable slavery and glorification of death in pursuit of immorality. No thanks!
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Happy New Year: What Rhetoric Are You? Father, Mother, or Mediator
(1)
-
Mothers, supposedly — go to A battered MOTHERS conference. BMCC, New York, weekend of Jan. 6th-9th.
Look up “Battered Mothers’ Custody Conference” (8th year).
(2)
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Fathers, supposedly — should go to a FATHERHOOD summit (conference) . Minnesota, a Monday-Tuesday combo, January 24th-25th.
Possibly because Family Law professional attendees, can get professional CLE credit for attending on a weekday, while some people, attending, might lose a job for absenteeism. Pay close attention to the repetitive use of the word “father” throughout this conference, because in the 3rd one, some of the same characters are likely to be found at, or helping present at, or sponsor, etc. a conference claiming Gender has nothing to do with all this. (See #3, below)
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Thomas.loc.gov ~~ “The Little Engine that Could,” possibly Charge Uphill
This post is personal, philosophical, reflective, anecdotal, and doesn’t pretend to any scientific standard.
HOWEVER, this season, I do recommend U.S. Moms and Dads (and others) give themselves “The Little Engine That Could..” This is not a pep talk, but a search engine by the name oScreen Optionsf “THOMAS,” launched in 1995, and good thing, too!
About Thomas:
“Thomas” tells you what your elected representatives in the U.S. Congress have said and have done. its syntax cannot be harder than a foreign language to learn. In responding to pleas (from women’s groups) in various states to help this or that railroaded family law case, using DV terms, I have time and again noticed that these same DV (Domestic Violence) nonprofit agencies persist in absolute ignorance of what’s going on in their own state affecting these cases, and has been for almost a decade. They speak only their own language, and debate only segments of oppositional languages. This is a distraction. Why should I spend my (precious) time helping people who are not coachable?
This same 104th Congress slipped through a welfare reform “addendum” that basically compromised the due process in the courts for an “outcome-based” legal process. It was a slick maneuver by “fatherhood practitioner” Ron Haskins (as I heard this), to divert TANF funding to bring back Dads in order to (ostensibly) collect/enforce child support.
This spawned all kinds of demonstration projects, subject BY LAW primarily to the Secretary of Health and Human Serivces. Following suit, various states appointed Fatherhood Commissions that are so thoroughly entrenched in government, only a fool (which we have been) would believe that court cases are won or lost on the evidence as compared to criminal laws, when criminal behavior has been identified. It took me almost losing my life (and losing a lot that was central to it) to somehow unearth this information — and comprehend the significance of it.
Domestic Violence is known to cause death, sometimes, poverty usually, and homelessness, a lot. It is one reason many women who have been involved with a partner separate from that partner, or try to. Our lovely government response to do this was to create parallel, and conflicting systems of grants (which basically cancel each other out), split the proceeds between cronies, and work with family court also, to split more proceeds examining and evaluating the failures these policies have created. The wording justifying what I just said is found at “45 CFR 303.109.”
http://cfr.vlex.com/vid/303-109-monitoring-funded-visitation-19934173
and the syntax “45 CFR 303.109” can be learned by anyone able to text “lmao” or “lol,” and is a good deal more useful..
I learned that my own government now defines what “family” is. (1995-1996 Congress):
S.1209 — Responsible Parenthood Act of 1995 (Introduced in Senate – IS)
S 1209 IS104th CONGRESS1st SessionSEC. 8. DEFINITION OF FAMILY.
Section 501(b) (42 U.S.C. 701(b)) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
`(5) The term `family’ means a child under the age of 19, the biological or adoptive parents of the child, the legal guardian of the child, or a responsible relative or caretaker with whom the child regularly resides, the siblings of the child, and other individuals living in the child’s home.’.
Probably it’s a good idea to speak the same language. Thomas.gov is where one can learn “GovSpeak,” and listen in on how elected leaders talk about the electorate (i.e., US).
We’d better learn about “PROWA” act, Title III, Subtitle “I” (alpha), Section 381.”
The day after tomorrow is the 15th anniversary of that particular conference report.
In my next “life,” I plan to schedule time to pay much better attention to politicians, in their own words — not from “CNN” or “Town Halls,” but on the record. The Congressional Record!
CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 4, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1995 (House of Representatives – December 21, 1995)
Subtitle I–Enhancing Responsibility and Opportunity for Non-Residential Parents
Sec. 381. Grants to States for access and visitation programs.
HERE, “Enhancing Responsibility and Opportunity for Non-Residential Parents”
is 1997 Secretary of Health & Human Services, Donna Shalala’s form letter to Governors describing this (by now, Section 391, not 381) same subtitle welfare reform plan.
[OCSE heading reads:] Giving Hope and Support to America’s Children
Secretary, DHHS Letter to Governors
Grants to States for Access and VisitationThe Honorable
Dear Governor
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
of 1996 (P.L. 104-193) provides up to $10 million annually for grants
to the states for access and visitation programs. The authority
contained in Title III, Subtitle I – Enhancing Responsibility and
Opportunity for Non-Residential Parents (which adds Section 469B to
the Social Security Act) presents an opportunity to address problems
that have caused much pain and suffering for parents and children
alike.The statutory language contains very general guidance for states on
what are considered appropriate activities to be carried out with the
grant funds. The grants are “to enable states to establish and
administer programs to support and facilitate noncustodial parents’
access to and visitation of their children.” Eligible activities
include but are not limited to mediation, counseling, education,
development of parenting plans, visitation enforcement, and
development of guidelines for visitation and alternative custody
arrangements.The amount of the grant for each state for a fiscal year will be an
amount equal to the lesser of 90 percent of State expenditures during
the fiscal year for eligible activities or an allotment. The
allotment formula derives from the ratio of the number of children in
the state living with only one biological parent in relation to the
total number of such children in all states. The amount of the
allotment available to the state will exhibit this same ratio to
$10,000,000. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) will
adjust the allotments to ensure that there is a minimum allotment
amount of $50,000 per state for fede
ral fiscal year 1997.The ACF is charged with the responsibility of issuing regulations
setting forth how states “shall monitor, evaluate, and report on such
programs.” Within ACF, program administration will reside with the
Office of Child Support Enforcement.States have considerable flexibility in determining appropriate
administrative arrangements. The grants may be used to create or
enhance state-run programs or to fund grants or contracts with
courts, local public agencies, or nonprofit private entities.
Programs do not have to operate statewide.{{this is where cronyism and backroom deals are invited in..}}
As a first step, we ask that you designate a single state agency with
whom we will interact on a continuing basis in launching and carrying
out this new responsibility. Again, the choice of agency is a matter
within your discretion.*** Your selection and the name and title of an
appropriate official within the designated agency should be
communicated in writing at your earliest convenience to David Gray
Ross, Deputy Director of our Office of Child Support Enforcement at
901 D street SW, 4th Floor Washington D.C. 20447.We look forward to fashioning a partnership in this new program, a
program with the potential to positively impact the lives of children
and their parents. {{Note pretense of gender neutrality.}}If any questions should arise, they may be
directed to Judge Ross at 202-401-9370.Sincerely,
Donna E. Shalala
***In hindsight, this is “brilliant” centralization of control, removing it yet further from the courts’ concept of “due process.” Congress, blaming poor mothers for their poverty, and the welfare program for its own existence, votes in language of fatherhood into public law. Anyone who failed to pay attention didn’t notice a single head of a single U.S. Dept (the Secretary) reaching to Governors, to a single state agency to radically transform business as usual. I hate to bring this up, but Congress is now, and was then, majority white (Caucasian) males. Men are not a majority in the U.S. (women are), and whites of either gender are not a majority on the globe. Nor would I expect that the average white male Congressperson has experienced poverty, even if his father did. I sincerely doubt that whites of any gender or nationality represent the bulk of the world’s poor, but it’s likely they have started the bulk of the world’s wars, and genocides, including some in Africa.
And I am getting tired of this. Let these people (Congress) practice what they preach! They preach “jobs” (certainly in this bill) but themselves have often inherited wealth. Their own jobs are on the backs of taxpayers. Foundations don’t pay taxes, nor do nonprofits. Accordingly (above) promising to “help” “the public.” (say, who??) they innately bond with their own and funnel grants to them, also. I’m tired of the two-tiered information system: One for those with savvy (& internet) and another for those still stupid enough to trust — versus monitor daily — their public servants to be as hardworking, ethical, or honest as those whose wages pay them.
At that (1997) time in my life, the words “welfare” meant being not shot, or stabbed, or slapped, thrown, etc. and learning to live with enough caution to avoid this. I was actually working FT, and learning Internet (self-taught) which was not safe to use at home while still married. Little did I know that even then, plans were in place to put back into our lives fathers who had committed crimes against us, because by virtue of showing up single and temporarily poor, a way to keep us permanently poor by compromising BOTH child support AND safety was winding its way through Congress, and into the courts (etc.):
The natural offspring of “National Fatherhood Initiative” and President Clinton’s 1995 Fatherhood Executive memo — let alone “fatherhood.gov,” and so forth, are state-based “Fatherhood Comissions.” I discovered Hawaii, then Ohio, and any googling fool can see that Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, etc., are all ga-ga about “fathers.” And mothers go to court like lambs to the slaughter, unaware of how things work in their own government:
Here are just a few. I’m not even going to link them all for readers. A search takes only seconds — do your own!:
- MARYLAND: The Commission on Responsible Fatherhood was created by the Welfare Innovation Act of 2001 (Chapter 395, Acts of 2001). Its charge was to make Marylanders aware of the problems that face a child raised without the presence of a responsible father. Obstacles that keep responsible fathers from being involved in their children’s lives were to be identified and strategies to encourage responsible fatherhood were to be devised by the Commission.The Commission last met in September 2002.
- Major F. Riddick, Jr., Chair (chosen by Governor)Appointed by Governor: David A. Engle, 2002; Joseph T. Jones, 2002; Ronald B. Mincy, Ph.D., 2002; Jeffrey M. Johnson, Ph.D., 2003; David L. Levy, Esq., 2003; Elaine A. Anderson, Ph.D., 2004; Thomas R. Rider.Nominated by Senate President: one vacancyNominated by House Speaker: Rudolph C. CaneEx officio: T. Eloise Foster, Secretary of Budget & Management; Georges C. Benjamin, M.D., Secretary of Health & Mental Hygiene; {{“Mental Hygiene”??? Makes me shudder, almost}} Denese F. Maker, designee of Secretary of Human Resources; John P. O’Connor, Secretary of Labor, Licensing, & Regulation; Nancy S. Grasmick, Ph.D., State Superintendent of Schools; Bonnie A. Kirkland, Esq., Special Secretary for Children, Youth, and Families.
- FLORIDA — bone up on the language. Fatherhood Programs launched in multiple states (yet are supposedly “grassroots”?? When it’s not expected low-income, or court-litgating mothers are present, the language is strikingly honest.
:
According to the Urban Institute, about two-thirds of the nearly 11 million American fathers who do not live with their children fail to pay child support.1 Therefore it is no surprise that children who grow up fatherless are five times more likely to be poor.2
First Generation Fatherhood Programs
Fatherhood programs are not, in fact, new. The first large-scale program, Parents’ Fair Share (PFS), was launched in the early 1990’s, when the fatherhood movement was just beginning to take shape in the national arena. Although the program was largely a disappointment, its shortcomings have provided valuable lessons to a new generation of practitioners.
{{A new generation of “practitioners” — on whom? Of what? WITH what? This is symptomatic of what happens when public income is used to practice on the unsuspecting…Failure is no deterrent to trying again … at public expense…Money was diverted, and is still, from helping custodial mothers to failed projects on helping NON-custodial fathers. }}
The Parents’ Fair Share demonstration project was an employment and training program aimed at increasing the earnings of non-custodial fathers unable to pay child support due to lack of or low income. Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, and private sponsors, PFS opened its doors in cities in seven states: California, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennesse
If you’re going to do something government style, start big and fail big, and keep on failing — after all, the infrastructure (producing failure) represents a substantial investment. ….of OPM (Other People’s Money) .
OK, I cannot keep up this blog with this [slow, slow, laptop] computer, and as the years of my life spent on this issue of survival continue to spin forward. I am marking it at 18-20 years (one full generation) of stripping off values, family, income, and respect for nearly any institution I’ve sought help from.
I have come to the conclusion that the act of seeking help, in current climate, sends out an ultrasonic distress signal that attracts vultures and other predators with specially developed sonar to hear these calls. The language of “help” implies the right to refuse it, or to promise, and fail to deliver. No can do! !!! Swooping in, talking “advocacy,” they do indeed advocate — for programs endorsed by their nonprofit, agency, or foundation-funded goals, which are rarely more than a 50% match with the woman’s goals, which are to get HERSELF and her FAMILY (kids) free from abuse by specific personnel. AFTER which, she/they may go on to transform society, eradicate oppression, and stop all family violence – – — — if they choose to.
Most noncustodial women I know simply triumph by virtue of simply surviving (they are somehow still breathing), generally having lost contact with their children entirely after trying to protest legal abuse through the family law venue. Exhausted (and I’m just about there, too), they may not become zealots (or professionals) for the cause, but rather wish their own lives back, and a little privacy. It’s a shame, because otherwise, we could learn from their lessons more directly, rather than learn by theories developed in a far-off laboratory or website or conference.
Assuming my comment will be approved, I discuss this on a “RightsforMother” post called “DV by Proxy.” I was struck by the continual characterization women adopt — of themselves — as losers (of custody), battered, enduring abuse, suffering, and wrongly diagnosing their own problems! This was from a group (also specializing in the psychological terminology field) called “The Leadership Council,” whom I have already begged to drop the endless debates about “parental alienation” and instead pool some of their resources (resources I don’t have, despite having endorsed this language previously) to something more useful to women in my situation. Similarly, another g roup calling itself “Center for Judicial Excellence” refuses to address the money trail, and another one called “Family Violence Prevention Fund” is itself right on the money — receiving grants from the fatherhood movements in the name of “family” and (appropriately to this funding) just about deleting any positive usage, or graphic presence, of the word “mother” on their website. (see my 10-31-2010 post).
Look to nature for examples of how human beings behave at different times — the analogies really do apply!
Clumping together with others seeking help identifies one as part of a “bait ball,” and is bad advice.
Language is critical to freedom, and corruption of it is a supreme tool for stealing from others, for initiating war, and for maintaining systems of slavery. In order to perceive any set of parables or beliefs, one must be willing to step outside them and look with another set. As with spectacles / glasses, the combined lenses give a clearer picture.
Whoever (collectively speaking) spoke, wrote, assembled, and preached what is now known as “the Bible,” essentially, “The Book,” fully understood the importance of parables, authority, and systems of logic and language to unite people. Also going with this was a code of ethics, and one of the most negative assessments of human nature without “God,” seen almost anywhere. According to the Bible, people are helpless, clueless, corrupt, and in need of redemption from birth onwards. The history of bringing people “out of bondage” (Egypt) and calling them to become a new people is filled with prophets scolding recalcitrant children, and predicting their failure; they must just hold on til “the Christ” came and by virtue of believing their own savior would come, or on Him when he did come, or on him after he came — is their salvation. Apart from this, we are helpless babies.
I was not raised with this book, but looking at a family (one of the kind the government would laud to the skies, and pours millions into making sure that children have one), a nuclear family with adequate housing, education, and even college, based on a father’s income and a mother’s mothering, plus a public school education for most of the kids — even as an adolescent, I knew this was an ethically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually bankrupt model.
Both my parents grew up poor, and by diligence and personal development (plus, I can say, elements of fortune), did what is called “well.” Like many such families who did “well,” after the nest was empty, my father, and many of his colleagues, dumped their faithful wives, who’d fulfilled their purposes, for a younger model — or at least a different model. Meanwhile, the kids who saw this cleared out, and took off separately. Such was the “nuclear” family in changing times. We split like ball bearings dropped on smooth glass, and went and became professionals.
My mother went back to school, and work, succeeding at that, and from what I can tell, never suffered financial lack the entire rest of her life. AND, never developed a passion in work, or a passion in life afterwards (as we children did). My father apparently (circumstances are still something of a mystery to me) responded to his divorce by trying on a number of different women (including a rebound wife), squandering a lot of what he’d earned, and finally resettled on my mother again. Then, a few days after retirement, he died suddenly. My mother never (that I know of) dated, remarried, or did a whole lot more than mildly exist in her communities.
As we had as a nuclear family, she existed, beautifully, and did things that women of her class did in those days. She did not communicate much, and had no particular wisdom to pass on to the next generation. Perhaps she got wore out from this particular husband. I see my mother as a shut-down woman, whose personality came out in certain circumstances, but was not really welcome in the family home.
The chief inheritance I can speak of is the example that there’s got to be something worth dedicating one’s life to besides profession, and that one can win much, and be a failure in life from another perspective.
Now I am close to the age at which she was dumped, however in a society which dumps certain mothers AS mothers, sometimes from the hospital, other than that, from the Early Childhood stages. Some classes are allowed to keep their children at home and nurture them, but most are not. Of those classes, chances are the stay-at-home dedicated mother (and I’ve known many of them, living in diverse communities — urban, suburban, etc. — over the years) will still be dumped, if not bankrupted, should divorce be done. Too often, that work is not valued, but her children are valuable, and the fights over them will fund another generation of family court professionals and their cronies. Fathers, expected to pay child support, will be recruited to get it abated through custody litigation aimed at preventing the welfare queen scenario. Kids will grow up — if they are lucky — without witnessing severe violence, repeated disruptions, or being farmed out to strangers (for pay) and neglected or abused in the process.
Mine have been. The restraining order that protected us briefly, long ago, was undone almost before it was out the gate. My family endorsed this, and gave what was a religious “shunning” for failing to switch abusers (rather than exit the abusive relationship). My kids’ child support was eliminated through custody switch, and I do believe that the father was exploited at a time of trauma for him, also, to enter into a custody fight when he didn’t even want the children. It took almost NO time for us to turn from two working parents who both had access to their children, me – because of a safety zone — being able to for once work in my profession, retain the income from it, and spend it without retaliation, and mostly on our children. I was allowed to make decisions about my own infrastructure (income-to-expense ratio, choice of housing, work, neighborhoods, associates) so as to become financially independent in work I loved, and had worked in prior to marriage; a scenario that allowed for parenting time and flexibility, because it was efficient.
The family of origin has never forgiven me for that — to date. I have been astonished, repeatedly, over the virulence. None of the family of origin has ever acknowledged any of the court rulings, verbally or in practice, but instead demanded I fork over my offspring, our offspring, as if they were for sale on the black market. The “rationale” for this was — solely — that I was a single mother. All other characteristics of the previous marriage, any academic or professional achievements (which were plenty enough), any work history, any LEGAL history (in the decade since), in fact virtually anything — is off the table for discussion.
While not a scientist, I have a healthy respect for “cause & effect,” and for whatever brief freedom from violence in my home that restraining order (much as I mock them as unenforceable, or certifiably insane — which they are — they DO sometimes provide a toe-hold out of the well of abuse) obtained. I have an appreciation for the need for LIBERTY and clearly understand that anyone financially enslaved is indeed a slave, and a beggar.
I do not know (and no longer care) what caused my particular family of origin to be so rigidly and viciously insisting that their “family” needs a scapegoat, and I must be it, apparently because of birth order. While they have mocked religion as for intellectual infants, I find (having some exposure to religion) that this attitude is itself infantile. An appreciation of the role of religion in politics, and in history, gives at least another language through which to understand the world, including some serious threats to its continued existence.
Repeatedly disrupting a household (notice, I didn’t say, FAMILY) is to repeatedly disrupt a CULTURE. Before people get their bearings, it’s time for another shakedown. This IS the family law system. It externalizes judgment to paid professionals, a cult of “experts” who themselves are many times operating from their own personal bad experiences in marriage or family, OR who are just crooks looking for an easy living (compared to being a family court litigant, for sure) in the world of prophetic psychological “diagnoses.” With heads in theory, and pre-occupied with the “scientific” evidentiary basis of it, they are blind to the real suffering, including death!, that this rains down on their subject matter.
I believe that this detachment from the “other” (professional/client) is as dangerous an attitude as Nazi-ism, eugenics, and the plantation mindset that a war was fought over, in the U.S., less than 100 years after we became a nation.
I first became aware of this detached language/perspective when looking up the educational backgrounds of some of the small, but VERY well positioned “Center for Policy Research” (all women). It became obvious that before completing college, the mindsets and career curve were set in place. This small organization has had a huge impact on the United States, for decades now. As kids beg, are abused by noncustodial parents who became custodial through the courts, as families are killed over “custody disputes” and kids get kidnapped, or flee with protective mothers overseas, and now are hauled back and their Moms jailed for doing this, as the next generation is growing up traumatized, rootless, and watching the U.S. version of a public flogging of (sorry, but I have to say), their mothers — they learn fast not to bond with those mothers, lest the same treatment be given them.
While the “Access/Visitation” funding to each state is supposed to protect the children through “supervised visitation centers,” in effect it is doing the exact opposite. Besides draining money from taxpayers, and often the affected parent (when such a parent must pay to see a child), these are in effect centers for experimentation / data collection / future studies on parent/child relationships. They are also tools to abuse the wrong parent, and can become also side-streams to a profiteering racket run by judges, retired judges, attorneys, or mediators, etc.
I have been blogging on this now for approximately a year and a half of joblessness through domestic violence, with the social safety net more tangled (and ineffective) than the abusive marriage, family of origin, family court process, associated religious (Christian) groups covering it up in order to retain THEIR corporate cash flow (from families/fathers/services of Moms & even kids). I have also just about explored (to my content) what most major DV agencies and (at least local) nonprofits are doing in this field.
They have their professional/funding niches, and will not compromise it for the sake of some lowly truths, including that more and more parents know the “scams” and including that no — and I do mean NO (zero) (nada) (zilch)(“squat”) — NO evidence that these are indeed making a long-term POSITIVE difference in the welfare of abused women IF . . .. IF . . . . . IF . . .. a father contacts (or already has connections), or is contacted by — some of the fatherhood groups running the racket in the courts.
It should not be about “fatherhood” or “motherhood” or “childhood.”
“Family” is a word. It is a concept, only, and its meaning is so loose as to be meaningless.
Moreover, all Americans should be aware of alternate (in)famous “families.” For example, see Jeff Sharlett’s writings on “The Family” in Arlington, VA. Or the Rev. Sun Myung Moon interpretation of himself and his wife as the True Parents of the world. Heck, the Mafia is a “family” enterprise, right? The word “Godfather” has two key concepts in it. Watch out which god, and what is being “fathered.”
Personal testimony:
But I am here to tell you that the model of “Dad, Mom and 2.5 children” is not all it’s cracked up to be. I successfully filled that model, through college, and marriage, married an abuser, got loose, lost all support systems and profession and contact with my daughters. I went from destitute to solvent (while RO was on), and was driven back to destitute — but with more debt and fewer workings years left — exclusively — and I stand by this — because of the abject failure of family, family law, law enforcement, faith institutions, and “domestic violence nonprofits” to simply do the logical things — practice what they preached, and openly inform their clients who they are and what they are in fact doing.
On this blog, as spotty and erratic as it is, I have told what are the UNTOLD facts of the operating system of the courts, and directed those who care to look, to websites that are NOT only:
fatherhood
motherhood
childhood
family
feminist, feminist-backlash language (essentially think; NOW vs. NFI)
DV language
Religious language
the language of psychology
etc.
And as a Christian, I say, it can be an idol, and is. Even Jesus had his family issues later in life, and was — come to think of it — at some point, run in a “female-headed household.” So — was he a failure? (those who say he actually existed) Did he make any lasting contributions to society? Did he run to drugs, violence, gangs, or become a male prostitute?
It should be about UNalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.
One cannot consider “Life” without considering economic systems; eating is intrinsic to life. Mortaging one’s time to a paycheck is one model of purchasing food. Selling goods and services is another. Owning businesses is another. Investing is another. So is stealing, selling one’s body – or someone else’s. Fewer and farther between in the US is growing one’s own food the norm. Centralization is the key word, and this includes of education.
When education doesn’t routinely include much more than how to learn to work a job (which is what the public schools generally speaking train children to do), not ethics, not how their own economic system works, and certainly not how government (actually “works”), it is training for obsolescence and a debt-ridden lifestyle, for a lifetime.
It’s rarely the “theory” so much as the “technology.” The pipelines.
The language to learn is the organizational language that our (U.S.) country has become. It is fascinating, and it will dispel some ignorance, myth, and false hopes. While it’s true, history is written in the terms of the conquerors, one can still check a variety of sources on nonprofits, foundations, institutes, and professional organizations. Language similarities are key.
Also, we have an under-utilized Library of Congress site, underutilized “TAGGS.hhs.gov” grants database for the Health and Human Services agency, although it, too, is incomplete and inaccurate — it shows trends. (I have not yet learned how to navigate the DOJ grants system), and it would really behoove Americans to keep track of (keep a binder on!) their own President’s STate of the Union addresses, and (my New Year’s Resolution) to start reading the Daily Digest of Congress.
They are elected representatives, and you (we) are “the people.” It has GOT to be a civic duty to make it clear, they represent us — and do not “own” us. While it’s acknowledged, many are “owned,” changing this has got to be a worthwhile fight.
In order to maintain any edge in this fight, more people have to stop sucking off the government teat(s) for their basic needs. More than Libertarians and Tea Partiers, who are going to dump off single mothers (and ethnic minorities) in the process.
I lived a moderate lifestyle all my working years, content within my profession centering around arts-based nonprofits working across a variety of venues as arts-based nonprofits do.
I worked, from college forward through marriage to filing of my domestic violence restraining order, I worked or was in FT school. I had roommates or lived alone, navigated work and housing changes successfully in different states, and added a second degree through a solid work-study experience, picking up more skills and developing personally.
Almost the first aspect of marriage was economic abuse (shutting me down as an economic entity whatsoever- item #1. Item #2 — pregnancy, #3 — physical assault & battery while present, plus psychological terrorism, #4 — dominance/threat model being established, either I was working to still beg (for basic needs for children and me), and/or begging to work (to obtain these through employment). I mistakenly allowed the first steps to economic control in part from shock, in part from no one around to stick up for me: family not close, religious groups did “religion,” and I had simply not run across this odd beast before:
- You must shut down your credit
because it had a balance. Next, was ”
- give me your ATM
.” Many liberal/progressives (I tended that way, sort of blending it in a balance, ideally, with faith — with a social justice flavor, etc.) just don’t “get” this. Their liberal progressivism doesn’t apply “within the family,” and when it comes with a personal cost, called risk. Someone else must bear that burden.
Possession of a wife quickly changes the attitude of certain men, and the community endorses it.
We are not talking “yearning for Zion” type enclaves — but the panoply of communities who literally see abuse, criminal behavior “out in the open” — but figure someone else will handle it.
It’s a shame I married someone afraid of independence, and it’s a shame I actually had enough curiosity about my family of origin to move within geographic range of them in the middle of my work life. There is no turning back those decisions, however, there is the hope to survive the worst ones, and re-take ground lost.
It is one thing to watch an entire set of associations not “turn the other cheek” but turn “deaf, blind, and dumb.” (Turn a blind eye….) towards wife-abuse and that’s what it is. It is violence against women because they are (married, in this case) women. Filed & labelled, it’s not their job.
But it is entirely another to get free from that one situation to face the same “deaf, dumb and blind” individuals proclaim loudly, “we see — now let us take over!” Any mother would turn outside that realm to the legal and nonprofit realm of help, while rebuilding her/their lives, especially income-based freedom.
Well, guess what. . .. those are no better, or more honest (trust me on that one, or gather more anecdotal evidence in your community!) The same process of “no thank you!” is essential. Rather than endlessly seeking help, women just have to, as we can, figure it out and pursue our own priorities. For me, the language of liberty-self-sufficiency, self-determination, and self-defense are FIRST. This is not “selfish” at all! It’s responsible citizenship, and responsible parenting; a good role model.
However, it does bring one into conflict with almost every entrenched system on the planet, as manifested in one’s local county court system, as run from (whoever runs) Washington, D.C.
Here, still, is a great example of sleuthing on a particular case from 2002. Scroll down below the blood and guts reporting on a disillusioned sniper (!!) / estranged Dad . . . . to this same individual’s “Devoted Dads” connection.
I will be “obnoxious” and paste paragraphs here to illustrate the scope of this problem. I have spoken at least once to the author, and understand she, too, has expended years exhorting others to follow these leads, and is likely exhausted and ready to regain her personal life.
Me too. This data-rich (proofreading-poor) blog is my part. I can’t live on air, and my “access” concerns right now include to healthy food, which is basically unavailable through Food Stamps (invasive, restrictive, massive, and suspicious of recipients. Certain items, such as healthy oils, or nutritional supplements to deal with the ongoing stresses of job loss through legal abuse, even after child loss, etc., are unavailable. I committed no crime to deserve this! Nor did other women in this situation through these same policies. Except the “crime” of not paying attention. Again, Give the Gift of “Thomas” — “Train” yourself and teach others this “Toolset.”
Analyzing the background of the 2002 DC Sniper, by Cindy Ross:
For a summary of how FR groups and their court allies obtain — and misuse — federal program grant funds through DHHS (Access/Visitation programs, DOJ (Arbitration/Mediation) programs, Responsible Fatherhood Programs, Co-Parenting Programs, and other mislabeled court-based federally sponsored “Family Services”, please see my summary, originally posted at NewsMakingNews.com in July, 2002, “Family Court Corruption”.
URL: http://newsmakingnews.com/ross7,8,02familycourtcorruption.htmNAFCJ has obtained program documents regarding the Responsible Fatherhood programs, which show that Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)/Welfare programs are being used to recruit abusive men — including incarcerated criminals — into fathers’ groups, where they are provided with “benefits” including free or low cost legal services to assist them with getting custody and getting child support obligations reduced or eliminated.
NAFCJ has been working with legislators across the country, requesting an investigation at the federal level into Fatherhood and related Child Support Enforcement Program, Access to Visitation Enforcement and Welfare Program fraud. One of the primary programs we have looked into, is the “Devoted Dads” program in Tacoma, Washington.
NAFCJ has determined that John Muhammad’s former attorney, John Mills, is an attorney for — and his legal assistant, Mario Young provided paralegal services to “indigent clients” at — the Devoted Dads program: (See Footnote following this article which excerpts the relevant PDF FILE (Adobe Acrobat required).
URL: http://auditor.co.pierce.wa.us/Elections/Archives/September2001/VP_pdf/fire6pos1.pdfDevoted Dads is funded by the Metropolitan Development Council. According to NAFCJ Washington State Director Martha Jacobson, Devoted Dads received at least 1.3 million dollars in federal grants between May 1998 and May 2000. On 8-5-02, in a tape recorded interview with Ms. Jacobson, Doug Swanberg of the Metropolitan Development Council confirmed that Mr. Mills was the “part time attorney” for Devoted Dads. This suggests that John Muhammad — a “homeless” dad who abducted his kids and then applied for Welfare in Tacoma — was not only a personal client of Mr. Mills, but was one of the “indigent clients” being provided services and “benefits” through the Devoted Dads program.
Ms. Jacobson has also obtained copies of correspondence between Doug Swanberg and David Arnaudo. Mr. Arnaudo is the administrator of the $10 million in federal access grants to the states, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who gave a presentation entitled “How to Obtain Access/Visitation Grants” at the Children’s Rights Council National Conference in 1999. URL: http://www.vix.com/crc/conf/
Children’s Rights Council is the same organization identified by NAFCJ as the “umbrella” organization of the Fathers’ Rights movement, which is cross affiliated with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC). As described in my article “Family Court Corruption”, CRC/AFCC crafted “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS) methodology — working with “experts” who advocate pedophilia and incest — as the means to assist child molesters and other abusive men get out of both criminal prosecution and child support obligations, while punishing mothers in supervised visitation and jail for reporting abuse.
I continue to be thankful for people who dedicated their investigation talents (probably for free) to dig up this information, and leave a track record.
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
Children’s Institute, Project Fatherhood(tm), and Fatherhood Nonprofits that make you go “Huh?”
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(with respect to the late Dr. Hershel K. Swinger, I cannot respect using TANF and other funds to proselytize, and then cheating the California out of transparency and accountability).
(And I SURE as heck don’t respect anyone using the US Government to try to evangelize ANYone!)
This is a SHAMELESS transmigration from a long (project) I’ve been posting over at Scranton Political Times Kids for Cash thread. ALthough it’s actually in response to Joe Pilchesky having posted a SAVING DAMON case (from Southern Cal / San Diego area, and with full panoply of Protective Mothers Rhetoric and groups) on there. Totally out of character for him, but I then decided to look closer at the situation and open my big mouth.
(Better understood in the larger context) I feel sorry for mothers who are (like I was) led around by the nose to become activist before they activate common sense lookups of who they’re dealing with — both as advocates and as adversaries in the court system. For example — get this — Cindy Dumas had somehow a declaration (on her behalf) on “William Eddy” complaint form, but signed by Erik Fox, Ph.D. (who runs sexual abuser treatment programs all over, and actually recommended “abuse inoculation” treatment for Damon, Mom & Dad. I gather that hasn’t happened yet. [The Rest of This Comment on nonreporting [to California] $40million-budgetChildren’s Institute in Los Angeles, incl. its “Project Fatherhood(sm)”]: I’m trying to find out exactly what it is!
Things that make you go “Huh?” In that chart below (TAGGS list of “fatherhood” grantees — at least a few of them) notice the one “Children’s Institute, Inc.” of Los Angeles? Grant (for 2010) two different grants — $1,000,000 + $500,000 ??? That’s a hefty amount, right? I looked at this one before, and the pattern is just TO O o o o…. common: One has to usually check at least 3 to 4 sources AFTER seeing the HHS grant:
1. State Incorporation record (SOS),
2. State Charitable Record (if they’re a nonprofit or taking donations),
3. Sample check some IRS forms (I use “Foundationfinder” or “Nccsdataweb.urban.org”) — and actually look at a tax form (it gets easier with practice) . . . . and then
4. what does their website say as well?
Here we go: 1. California Corporation (Sec of State) registration — there are TWO with the exact same street address (which doesn’t match address on HHS grantee, either).
(per IRS form) 2009 salaries of key officers (5 highest) were plenty high: Mary Emmons (see corp. registration) — $310K; Nena Revoyr, $136K, Jeff Catania, $161K, Hershel Swinger, $167K, Kendis Heffley, $131K. (plus retirement & other income from this or related orgs.)). These are the US Trademarks still “LIVE” with the word “Fatherhood” in them. I didn’t find the one mentioned in the Children’s Institute descriptions, “Project Fatherhood” But it’s interesting one of them is from a PA corporation. You can see the details, including first use, whose idea it was and see that someone showed real forethought. Keeping in mind that welfare reform and the loosening up of federal aid to states for diversions into fatherhood & marriage promotion, both was anticipated — and happened in 1996.
Quite a few, eh? PROJECT FATHERHOOD // Dr. HERSHEL K. SWINGER was started in 1996:
July 8, 2011
Strengthening relationships between fathers and their at-risk children
Children’s Institute Hosts 4th Annual Fatherhood Solution Conference
(very nice youtube tribute to him at the link…)
“Due to the recent passing of Dr. Hershel K. Swinger, CII Senior Vice President and Founder of Project Fatherhood, the morning plenary was a special tribute to his life’s work and accomplishments. Project Fatherhood is a nationally-recognized program for disadvantaged fathers to become more engaged and effective parents.
“Speakers included Dr. Ken Canfield, president and founder of the<> National Center for Fathering; <> Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis, Director of Pepperdine University’s Culture and Trauma Research Lab, an expert on partner and child abuse and societal trauma due to racism, sexism and poverty; and <> Charles Lee-Johnson, MSW, CEO of the National Family Life and Education Center,…”
In reverse order:
EIN# 95-4423621 ; their charity is marked “CURRENT” however they haven’t filed an IRS with the state since 2007, or an RRF (state report) since 2008. Received a Deliquency warning 6/5/2008:
“WARNING OF IMPENDING TAX ASSESSMENT FOR WHICH YOU MAY BE PERSONALLY LIABLE ..The Attorney General has not received your organization’s annual report(s) as follows:…IRS Form 990, 990-PF, or 990-EZ report(s) for the year(s) ending: 06/30/03, 06/30/04, 06/30/06, and 06/30/07“
###
[spoiler]
IRS inconsistent between two sites (State AG vs 990finder). One year, the top 3 officers are receivng $65,73 & 95K; (is Joyce Johnson his wife?) another year, nothing, or something. The 2006 tax return at 990finder was stamped received in 2011; etc. etc. Very inconsistent. The “2009” filing below is an empty form, basically… They have no direct HHS grants but some of the RRF forms show they did receive two or three sources of gov’t support, inl. DCFS (note: they are dealing with foster care youth sometimes). Assets — two chevy vans; — ??
[/spoiler]
http://www.drthema.com/biography/
Dr. Bryant-Davis received her doctorate from Duke University in Clinical Psychology with a focus on the cultural context of trauma recovery, as well as the intersection of gender and racial identity. She completed her post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical Center’s Victims of Violence Program. From 2001-2004, she served as Senior Staff Psychologist and Coordinator of the Princeton University SHARE Program. Dr. Bryant-Davis is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University where she teaches on the topics of indivdiual and family development as well as intimate partner violence. She is a contributing author in the books The Psychology of Racism, The Complete Guide to Mental Health for Women, and Featuring Females: Feminist Analyses of the Media.
Dr. Bryant-Davis served for three years as an American Psychological Association representative to the United Nations where she advocated for mental health and human rights globally
MINISTRY:
Apparently also preaches at her brother’s Mega-Church also:
Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis is a licensed preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She preached her initial sermon at Empowerment Temple AME Church where the pastor is Rev. Jamal Harrison-Bryant.:
[spoiler]
“He is the leader of a new breed of ministers who embrace the idea of capitalizing on the ever-increasing marketplace of Internet and technological innovations to spread the gospel. With more than 7,500 members attending weekly services at Empowerment Temple in Baltimore, Maryland, and approximately 35,000 followers on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace, he believes that “God is not just in the church; He is also in technology.” His mission is to “empower people spiritually, develop them educationally, expose them culturally, activate them politically, and strengthen them economically.”
FAMILY: Bryant has four daughters Topaz, Grace, and twins Angel and Adore. They reside in Baltimore. He is also the brother of Thema Simone Bryant Davis.
Mega church pastor Jamal Harrison Bryant and his wife Gizelle are headed to divorce court. After 5 and a half years of marriage Gizelle Bryant filed for a divorce in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County on January 9. The clergyman [i.e. Jamal] also filed divorce papers in Baltimore City Court on the same day, the Baltimore Sun reports. . . . (then article launches into some more flattery….)
. . . Scandalous rumors of alleged affairs with several women have been rampant since the couple’s engagement. His supposed womanizing went overboard when he impregnated a church member said to be 17 at the time of the time of copulation. [“the time of copulation”?
]When accusations of this affair surfaced in the Summer of 2007, church leaders asked him to step down while they initiated an investigation and awaited paternity test results. Months after the investigation, Jamal Bryant remains the pastor of Empowerment Temple. Court records acquired from the Circuit Court of Maryland do indicate the pastor is the father of a least one other child who was born before he got married. The couple has a set of 1-year-old twins and a 3-year-old.
As Wikipedia shows, guess he had some of the “evangelizing” [Missionary Position?] (of other women while married) issues common to some in his field. Baltimore Sun article, 2/16/08 by Samathi Reddy:
Bryant and his wife, a former model, are known for their flashy lifestyle, which includes a Bentley and a multimillion-dollar Canton waterfront property. Their lifestyle has attracted criticism from those who say the church is more about his business enterprises and building wealth than religion. Her original divorce complaint stated that he earned more than $350,000 a year.
He is seeking a “limited divorce,” while his wife has requested an “absolute divorce,” according to papers filed in Baltimore Circuit Court. A limited divorce is a voluntary legal separation required in Maryland for a year before most absolute divorces. Absolute divorces, however, are allowed immediately under certain circumstances, such as adultery and cruelty. In Gizelle Bryant’s filing last month, she accuses her husband of adultery, cruel treatment and “excessively vicious conduct” that caused “reasonable apprehension of bodily suffering so as to render cohabitation unsafe.” [/spoiler]
One of MANY reasons I’m not too impressed with the concept of soliciting faith-based organizations to teach responsible fatherhood! However, Dr. Thema Harrison-Bryant is not her brother . . . . More background on their parents’ involvement in civil rights, time in Africa, social justice concern, leadership over many churches
“His efforts ( Back to Hershel K. Swinger of The Children’s Institute)
resulted in a major expansion of Project Fatherhood – through funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – to 50 organizations located in various parts of Los Angeles County.”(Very nice obituary in the LA times notes what he did):
Hershel K. Swinger dies at 72; founded a program to aid urban fathers
The clinical psychologist who taught at Cal State L.A. created Project Fatherhood, which has provided therapy, support and training for more than 7,000 low-income urban fathers since 1996.
June 12, 2011|By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times
Swinger, a clinical psychologist, was a senior vice president of Children’s Institute who taught counselor education and directed a state-funded child abuse prevention center at Cal State L.A. for many years.
He was the founder and senior director of Project Fatherhood, a program that has provided therapy, support and training for more than 7,000 low-income urban fathers since its inception 15 years ago. Under Swinger’s leadership, it received a $7.5-million federal grant in 2006 to replicate the program in 50 agencies in Los Angeles County. It was recognized as a model program by the Obama administration last year.
Familiar with studies showing that children with absent fathers are far more likely to be poor, abuse drugs, drop out of school and enter the criminal justice system, Swinger believed that focusing on the fathers was a crucial part of the solution.
No mention of “present mothers” or of the fact that since 1996, one of the most dangerous places to be as a mother is attempting to leave violence with children and having a father contest custody — in other words, the climate towards women because of these programs, has become literally hostile. If indeed those facts ARE so, who is to say or not say that the real cause was “father-absence” or not something else? Is that a universal truth, like gravity — or a social construction? It helps expand a grants program if you are on the advisory council to another foundation: Federal funding allowed Project Fatherhood SM to expand in 2006 across Los Angeles County. Now, through a community grants program*, small faith-based and community organizations have been empowered to replicate the Project Fatherhood SM model in their own neighborhoods. …*The Project Fatherhood SM Community Grants Program is part of the Responsible Fatherhood Initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance.
ORGANIZATION NAME
STATE
YEAR
TOTAL ASSETS
FORM
PAGES
EIN
Purpose of this group (KS location):
LIVE SEMINARS ON STRENGTHENING FATHERS. EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS PROVIDED FOR FATHERS. PROVIDE LEADERSHIP TRAINING FOR FATHERS. RESEARCH FOR ABOVE SERVICES. SEE ATTACHED SCHEDULE OF PROGRAMS.
One employee listed got $62K — that turns out to be severance pay:
“KEN CANFIELD, THE FOUNDER, RECEIVED PAYMENTS FOR SERVICES PROVIDED DURING 2007.
JIM MOORE RECEIVED PAYMENT IN ACCORDANCE WITH HIS SEVERANCE AGREEMENT. ($62K)”
The National Center for Fathering seeks to improve the well-being of children by promoting responsible fatherhood and equipping men to be more engaged in the lives of children. Programmingissummarizedinfourareas: Research,Training,ProgramsandResources.
Training (notice how many are trademarked. (from 2007 tax return: of its budget, $914K that year was “government grants.” So this is what our gov’t is sponsoring:
. TheNationalCenterforFatheringconductslivetrainingseminarstoequipmen for their role as fathers using its research-based curricula. Specific curricula developed by the National Center include : The 7 Secrets of Effective FathersTM,[+ Book, $12.99] Connecting With Your KidsTM Quenching the Father ThirstTM,Dads ofDestinyTM and R.E.A.D. to KidsTM The Center ‘s father training courses all include a version of its Personal Fathering Profile TM, a self-scored assessment that allows dads to compare their fathering practices with a national database. The Center also conducts train-the-trainer workshops to equip locally-based father trainers who work independently in their communities through faith-based,social service and other organizations to equip men.
I guess if all those fathers need train-train-trainers, maybe they ain’t nuttin’ but a hound-dog, and never will be, according to HHS!Either that, or there’s another reason for all this obsession.
Carey Casey honored as a “Champion of Change” – Watch Video
JUNE 12, 2012 BY CAREY CASEY 2 COMMENTS
As Father’s Day approaches there are so many reasons to be encouraged here at the Center … One big reason is an opportunity I had to visit the White House. I was one of ten people honored as “Champions of Change” in the field of fatherhood. This is an effort by the White House Office of Public Engagement and Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to promote positive fatherhood, and it’s my privilege to be there and talk about Championship Fathering … “from the White House to the outhouse,” as I always say. I am also humbled. I know that I … [Read More…]
(ET . . .CET. . . eRA). . . . here’s USPTO.gov — wonder how many of those “tm” items really are “tm” ed! Colorado State marketing a booklet ‘Connecting with your Kids” http://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Self_Help/CO_Parenting_Time_Book2004.pdf
Connecting With Your Kids
Copyright © Colorado Foundation for Families and Children
But it thanks Ken Sanders of (the) “Center on Fathering” and a “Colorado Fatherhood Connection”
Notice that in the MIDDLE of “fathers.com” top row of hyperlinks (to other pages) is “STORE” The store page kinda reminds me of the “cooperative parenting institute” store page (Termini & Boyan):
Championship Fathering Wristband 2 Models / Great for Father’s Day Give-Aways!
The 21-Day Dad’s Challengeby Carey Casey & 19 others
Championship Fathering by Carey Casey
52 Things Kids Need from a Dadby Jay Payleitner
52 Things Wives Need from Their Husbands by Jay Payleitner
Some are even on discount!
Monthly Specials For July
There now — that’s WAY better than actually helping custodial mothers and the children in their house DIRECTLy through, say, child support enforcement — or TANF (food stamps / cash aid) — or else, who knows what might happen? Mom might pick up a pair of extra underwear for her kids, and start feeling more, er independent than is appropriate for faith-based, er, churches… **Re: the woman’s version of abstinence education (for those who don’t know this already) is I guess the counterpart to “every man’s battle” which is aimed at men, and the most obvious of the 10 commandments (in sex realm), thou shalt not commit adultery & I guess thou shalt not covet . . .. http://everymansbattlevideo.com/
While I could care less about the original book, here’s what another Christian commentary says about it, which seems apt: “Psychoheresies”: http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/emb112.html [PAL Vol11N2 Apr-May ’03] “EMB is loaded with unsubstantiated information…There is no reference to research to support what Arterburn says. When important and critical statements like that are made, the reader is entitled to some proof beyond Arterburn’s personal experiences…” “Faulting Fred’s father is repeated and amplified throughout the book. It is sinful to give such details because it violates the commandment to honor one’s father. Such details also give the impression that it wasn’t really Fred’s fault that he sinned in this way. One gets the distinct impression that Fred is painting a picture of personal victimhood.“ “the authors do not just refer to these sinful activities by name; they spell out these sinful activities and explicitly express details of “ogling,” sexual dreaming, “sexualized acts,” and “rampant masturbation,” 
etc. Such explicit details feed the flesh and work to build camaraderie among those men involved in lust. …“ Author Stephen Arterburn is the founder of the chain of New Life Clinics (p. 3). The clinics are advertised on a number of pages in the book with a full-page ad on page 230. An underlying idea here is that, if the reader just can’t make it on his own with this self-help book, he can find help at one of these clinics. As far as insurance coverage is concerned, New Life Clinics function like other secular psychological and psychiatric clinics that dispense psychotherapy and drugs.
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Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up
July 3, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Posted in 1996 TANF PRWORA (cat. added 11/2011), Business Enterprise, Designer Families, Faith-based grantee scams, Funding Fathers - literally, Healthy Marriage Responsible Fatherhood (cat added 11/2011), HHS & HUD fraud, Organizations, Foundations, Associations NGO Hybrids, Where's Mom?
Tagged with AME mega-church, Childrens Institute (Los Angeles), Dr. Hershel K. Swinger, Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis, evangelists and splashy divorces, Every Mans Battle (psycho-heresy or just marketing?), fatherhood, HHS-TAGGS grants database, Manhood, men's rights, National Center for Fathering (KS), National Family and Education Center, Project Fatherhood, Read Them 990s!, Rev. Jamal Harrison-Bryant, social commentary, U.S. Govt $$ hard @ work..