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

…I’ve left many Forewords to show how often I’ve felt it necessary to refer to this page; this next is January 26, 2022.  I’ve got the page down to about 15,500 words from its original Feb. 2018 (as off-ramped from Home Page) format.

I begin by talking, in several marked sections (different color schemes) onto this page, but scroll down, you’ll see the links and images to authorizing legislation and much more.  Take it as my indicator how important this is to “get” (understand).  It is a counter-balance to propaganda and it should cut through some of the debate and confusion surrounding this field.

I can point to several much more elegant (visually) websites for a domestic violence statewide advocacy website (and certainly the larger, regionalized and “distributed subject matter/ multi-culturally sensitive/politically much more correct” resources, nt one of which varies from the overall schema:  Family Prevention/Domestic Violence Prevention/Child Abuse Prevention programs can and often do collaborate and are trained by “fatherhood practitioners,” and receive fatherhood funds in addition to prevention funds (at least at the resource center level I’ve identified often), and empathetic-talking male batterers-intervention or (substitute a more current, nicer name) providers who were from the start influential in driving the ENTIRE “coordinated community response” infrastructure (run through privatized, and often privately-conferencing tax-exempt organizations) to insist that the behavioral modification element be embedded — and they’re the nice guys because of it –while playing “both sides” of an artificially constructed policy fence.

Individual women / survivors who may happen to discover this and call it out on social media are of course flagged as not being cooperative enough, critiqued for “attacking” such nice service providers, and in general questioning the motives of those protecting a very specific, public-funded turf whose existence depends on concealing its presence from battered mothers, abused children.  Who these are, generally, can be seen by following conferences, books, and the globe-trotting quality used to spread credibility abroad where it’s found wanting at home (USA).  //LGH.

What I just said about the “empathetic men welcome by domestic violence organization leadership and, through association with the latter, generally, “protective mothers” organizations or movements. I’ve been outing several on this blog since 2012, 2014 and now some of the California contingent is running overseas for moral support (i.e., Australia), as well as I see, replicating policies in, at least, Connecticut (California Protective Parents Association incorporated in 1999; Connecticut Protective Moms (spun of statewide DV org, it seems) only incorporated in summer 2020 — so no tax returns yet.  However, CPPA doesn’t generally file full-sized tax returns either, although wants to be the leaders in federalizing the family courts USA prior to actually bringing under the global (UN) control, and turning this country back into, so it seems, a colonized country (at a minimum part of the Commonwealth).  This absolutely effects parental rights, and individual civil and legal rights because of the UN CRC — but that’s not the topic of this page, nor do I attempt to prove it on this page.  I have posted previously on the topic — for some of that (I do not post ALL I know or research, obviously), see my Tables (plural) of Contents.  I barely posted in 2021, so none for that year yet…

This next section also continues my Jan. 2022 update:

Below ‘Blog Navigation’ with some images explaining the new (2018) formats is another mini-section of “Nov. 2019 updates,” and some more “BLOG Navigation” under it before I get into the hardcore (sic), drilled-down, linked-up substance of the page.

I keep returning to this page as so few other places on-line even come close to laying ot the basic organization of the domestic violence field and exposing its built-in strategic “blind spots” which seem unique to the USA while [from the start, I eventually discovered] attempting to internationalize the field, that this page documents.  I’d like it to be more readable as a point of reference; I certainly have no interest in re-writing [attempting to summarize in oversimplified sound-bytes] in response to social-media questions displaying ignorance of the overall layout from people who’ve already demonstrated a lack of will to look into it. So I’m working on this page layout (and content), again //LGH March 4, 2020.

..”Foreword” on Page Updates:

This page is important enough to this blog to have its own place on my top right side-bar widget:

Some BLOG NAVIGATION BASICS review here…

(Image added to this page, Nov. 5, 2019, however it’s been on the sidebar (though without the short-link, which I’m adding now)  for a long time)…//LGH

THIS page’s Title and shortlink**:

Consolidated Control of DV Advocacy by Feminist Leadership Refusing to Identify, by Name and Financing, The Opposition Entities. Subtitle: Personal Relevance to a Post-DV-Intervention, Unprosecuted, Child-Stealing Event by Ex-Batterer case in the SF Bay Area. [a PAGE, Publ. Feb. 2, 2018]: (Case-sensitive shortlink (all parts of it) ends “/PsBXH-8rg”).**

Its parent page and shortlink** is my blog “Front Page”: LGH Top Picks, Themes, Tables of Contents, and Why My Gravatar is a Blue Jay taking Flight. (New Jan. 11, 2018). (short-link ends “/PsBXH-8o0″ (Last character is a zero), however, if you simply type in “FamilyCourtMatters.org” it’s pretty hard to miss).

• For posts (vs. pages) the shortlink protocol for this blog is “psBXH-” (lower-case “p”).  For pages, it’s upper-case “P”.
• The Front page never changes unless I revise it.  The ‘Current Posts” page does, i.e., as I add posts…

(**Add that case-sensitive, 9-character string [starting with the “P“] including the “-“, to:  “http:(double-forward-slash)wp(dot)me(forward-slash)”

as in example on image above.  My Front Page also illustrates the short-link PAGE vs. POST protocol.)

NOVEMBER, 2019, FORMAT UPDATES:

(I updated because of format changes, but this small section also contains some helpful summary worth a read-through).

Some BLOG NAVIGATION BASICS, cont’d.

I’ll probably continue using “Front” or “Home” page interchangeably. I’d call it a home page, but the blog domain calls it a front page.

For a reminder, the “parent page” to the one you’re reading now is also the new Front/Home page, from which you can access the “Posts” page where all posts will display, most recent on top (right-hand image).

New “Go To” widget provides direct links for Blog Navigation. Top right just under the Archive (Calendar) as you can see.

Since setting this up, I’ve also added — right under the Archives and current month’s Calendar —  a convenient “Go-To” widget with titles (active links to) for all three pages shown above plus another* to the top of right sidebar. That’s another way to access Current Posts page if you’re not on it, or Front Page, if you were browsing the posts and want to go back. (For how that looks, see nearby second image, left side). *(“New to Blog?…” a subset of new Home/Front page is mercifully short; basically just a list with links of “formerly sticky Top 10” posts. With some abstracts)
…Reference to all this was getting complicated on the blog’s new Front (Home) page, but I still want to talk about it again.

In the intro here, I reference the consolidated control (first part of above title), but do not discuss at length or go (again) through documentation.  The main point of this page is in the Subtitle.

In 2016 and 2017 I documented much of the consolidated control topic for the larger statewide (“CADV” or “Coalition Against Domestic Violence”) organizations, those taking HHS grants, and the “Special Issue” or chosen “National Resource Centers“*

• [[*That’s a link  to U.S. Code › Title 42 › Chapter 110 › § 10410, that is, 42 U.S. Code § 10410 from Legal Information Institute, or “LII” at law.cornell/edu/uscode (etc.).  Remember to read the “About LII” tab and any disclaimers on being the most recent version..]

as funded 1984ff under the “FVPSA” (Family Violence Prevention and Services Act) which was implemented — and this is key to understanding it — through the US Department of Health and Human Services which had just been formed (separated from HEW) only in 1980.

It took me a while to realize that the larger funding to key “DV  or FV (Family Violence) Prevention” groups I’d already been observing, and their felt presence on-line as other websites continually referred/linked readers, with personal messages to those who might be in abusive relationships or know someone who was, to them, was written into the funding law itself, specifically.

I posted this new (to me) information almost as soon as I saw it, having previously a general awareness acquired over time of how some of those groups were collaborating, operating, and having looked also at (sampled in detail) most of their tax returns.  This shows that by design, by law, greater control was centralized, if you will, regionally, NOT at the state level even with statewide organizations.

45 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) from Cornell’s “LII”

That last paragraph (in condensed form) will be repeated below because in between I talk generally about federal department (gov’t) and nonprofit (= the corporate, private sector) consolidation as an ongoing process and theme and as the larger environment within which the consolidated/coordinated, “state-wide-coalition-based” domestic (family) violence prevention financing and programming operates, as does also USDOJ-based VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) funding, which came up a decade later. There are significant logical and special-interest problems with this overall model which reveal, I believe, a different overall agenda than that being openly advertised, which openly advertised rationale (for coordinated, centralized control of DV prevention systems) is basically justified as <>urgent problem-solving and <>conserving scarce federal / state / local governmental resources.

LGH Former posts on Consolidatn of DV Prevention Orgs (2017Feb-Mar) (There are more, however. Look for “FVPSA” in a post title.

42 U.S.C. 10401 (FVPSA) is itself Title III to Public Law shown at bottom. (per Cornell’s LII)

H.R. 1904 (which became public law in question), 1984

Self-explanatory, recommended read summary, incl. of Title III (which was the FVPSA) below on original site.

Feel free to browse my (especially 2017) Table of Contents titles for more posts on that situation.  I may include other specific earlier post titles and dates in the coming subsidiary page which deals with the existence of a well-designed situation (model, strategy, “business plan” if you will) about which there has been a collective silence on the part of (most) nonprofits organized, so say their websites, to stop or address the domestic violence issues, specifically regarding violence against women. Here are just a few, but not the ones on the FVSPA (nearby image, from Table of Contents)

While I say, “feminist leadership controls,” (<=meaning the verb, not plural noun), common sense says, for any nonprofit corporation, regardless of the cause, in effect the funders (or a lack of funders) actually control the nonprofit.  In this case (statewide DV Coalitions and National Resource Centers) this control was mostly the US Government; the feminist leadership running the various organizations in coordinated network with each others’ groups led their respective organizations or projects.  Because of that coordination and centralization, when the CENTRALIZED SYSTEM gets a key concept (or value, principle, or programming) seriously wrong — it has an amplified effect.

That’s why it’s not just someone else’s matter.  It’s a matter of basic government, and symptom of the system of tax receipts from employees + tax-exempt status.

This gets more than complex when the nonprofits appear to be formed by already collaborating major wealth in the first place.

How to tell [an organization] started truly at the grassroots from [an organization] pre-fabbed, pre-planned, and with an agenda which may or may not be revealed (to the public) as soon as possible?  In other words, when you’re actually dealing with a “front” group? I have no formula, but can observe — unfortunately that observation is often in hindsight {reviewing corporate filings, tax returns and websites} — particularly when some {causes, campaigns or organizations} choose to start out as projects, or using fiscal agents, or if separately incorporated, keeping the revenues well under $50K (so as to avoid requirement to fill out a full tax return, allowing of a Form 990-N electronic postcard instead.  Or, at least declaring their revenues are under $50K.

Using Form 990-N conceals basic information and details about the people, activities, any subcontractors (etc.) or related entities, of the nonprofit in question) from most readers or inquirers, i.e., the public.  In other words, you can’t observe things before they show up observable, and I’m talking not just websites but also financials, and that discrepancy puts the public at a disadvantage from the wealthiest sectors’ (plural) who are intent, so it’s said, on eradicating a series of bad things.

Eradication is usually done tax-exempt and coordinated with others in the same social niche agreeing which smaller fish (or projects) to fund  to bring about, as came up in one here, “Re-Imagining Social Change.”

[Next Section  finally removed Jan., 2022; may be republished separately, link below this part identifying that content].  Thanks for your patience, as I know I have often tweeted links to this page for lack of a better summary on my blog (or available to the public elsewhere…)  The material removed begins like this:]]

(In a jointly authored (with The California Endowment, a $3.4B assets foundation) study called “Redefining Expectations for Place-Based Philanthropy,” referenced below here, I discovered a nonprofit named simply “FSG” formed only in 2005, working with and serving “the big guys” (consulting), tax-exempt of course.

FSG logo.

“Solving social problems requires leaders from foundations, businesses nonprofits, and governments to reimagine the systems and relationships that shape our**world.  We strive for a deep understanding of how to create social change.” (Self description from “We’re FSG” website, image just below).

Almost everyone type of person is on there EXCEPT individual human beings with legal rights as citizens, including to vote with a reasonable expectation that the elected leaders be ethical and respect (at least for the USA) the Constitution of the United States of America:  how does “re-imagining the systems and relationships” with zero reference to the existence of laws fit into that “representative government” perspective?

NEW POST IS: FSG, Inc. – Reimagining (and Accelerating) Social Change, 2005f in Boston. EIN#202776974. [Section moved here Jan. 22, 2022]. (short-link ending “–dtd”). Note: you’re reading a PAGE.  I’m moving its innards (middle section) to a POST which will be published as if new material. I may supplement a bit, but it’s not news — I’d written it out here, a few years earlier.  In fact, before I had to flee California suddenly, as a senior, relating to fiduciary abuse.

All drafts become accurate and active only once posted.  I may not publish immediately; so the above link may not become active immediately.  //LGH Jan. 22, 2022.

Moving on, I’m skipping the fullness (ramification, etc.) of the above USDOJ drill-down, and for the “Redefining Place-Based Philanthropy,” 2014 article, have left a quote and two images here, and off-ramped the rest (I wrote up in the process of looking it up) into a new post.

Coordination has also been a big term within the domestic violence community, as put forth originally?? by the late Ellen Pence (Domestic Abuse Intervention Program).  “CCR” response to domestic violence — Coordinated Community Response.  

Next up on this page, the coordination of the DV advocacy agencies, in the 1980s under HHS-implemented “FVPSA” and in the 1990s under “VAWA” — and related governmental or nonprofit significant events of the time.
///LGH 1-31-2018.

Regarding: “Building Healthy Communities, Community Change Initiatives (CCIs):  TCE (The California Endowment)” total gross assets, currently $3.4 billion (it’s a big one, but nowhere so large as the Ford Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, or the various Soros / Open Society foundations (individually or taken together). Just a point of reference here, won’t fit on this page.

Notice the underlined detail in one of the images below the next quote from “REDEFINING EXPECTATIONS FOR PLACE-BASED PHILANTHROPY, with ramifications for anything involving protection from violence towards women, and the DV field, or anything also potentially “feminist” as in, promoting specifically the needs of and basic rights for women.  Also, that this report itself, referring to the “past three decades) 1984-94, 1994-2004, 2004-2014 approximately). In other words, the push for “Place-based philanthropy” not only with nonprofits consolidating, and, separately (observable elsewhere) government sectors consolidating according to desired “outcomes” but both working together on specific projects to achieve “massive social change…”

Redefining Expectations for Place-Based Philanthropy in “The Foundation Review 2014, (vol) 6:4” [43pp]Introduction: The Need for Local DataMany funders over the past three decades have decided to engage in place-based philanthropy as a way to concentrate investments in a specific locality in order to achieve measurable changes that advance their goals. Some of these place- based strategies are referred to as comprehensive community initiatives or community-change initiatives (CCIs), which are characterized by having “adopted a comprehensive approach to neighborhood change and worked according to community building principles that value resident engagement and community capacity building” (Kubisch, Auspos, Brown, & Dewar, 2010, p. vi).Studies of past CCIs largely conclude that these well-intentioned efforts have not lived up to the transformative expectations of their designers (Kubisch, et al., 2010) … (etc. you have the link).

(Final page: author descriptions): Katelyn P. Mack, M.S., is an associate director at FSG. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Katelyn P. Mack, FSG, 123 Mission Street, 8th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 (email: Katelyn.Mack@fsg. org). | Hallie Preskill, Ph.D., is a managing director at FSG. James Keddy M.A., is chief learning officer at The California Endowment. | Moninder-Mona K. Jhawar, M.P.H., is evaluation manager at The California Endowment.  {{ or “”TCE”}}

The authors (above) as you can see are half (two) from TCE (a single large tax-exempt foundation) and, listed first, half (two) from “FSG,” formed only only in 2005, which I also looked up — it’s a San Francisco “mission-driven” consulting firm (but operating as a 501©3) and lists its ideology and powerful funders and partners for creating massive social change by collaborating “cross-sector” — business, government, and the civil sector must cooperate because these problems are so huge and interdependent… FSG also on its website wishes to thank its many important sponsors (“Funders and Partners“) while mentioning it’s a 501©3 corporation (but, not posting its financials, or referencing an EIN# anywhere).

Click Here for Full Article (43pp), This is part of p2. See reference to “men of boys and color” as typical, ongoing focus. see funders of TCE and of FSG (consulting firm, 501©3 who together authored this 2014-published report), found at GIArts.org (a NY-based, well-heeled 501©3 serving Grantmakers (In the Arts)

Click Here for Full Article (43pp), P.1. The California Endowment + FSG (SF-based consulting firm + 501©3) who together authored this 2014-published, TCE-commissioned report), published in Foundation Review, but also posted here at (a NY-based, well-heeled 501©3 serving Grantmakers (In the Arts)

@@@###@@@

Prodding or drilling-down a little beyond the surface in many projects often hits the “watering” (funding stream) tables from common sources which may provide as valid an explanation for the few positive results shown in, for example, stopping this insane ongoing anger towards women as either women, or as unfairly advantaged each and every time some social service sector helps them, including helps them escape abusive control of their lives, and get on their own feet, safely, afterwards.

Reminder:  We live in times when the emphasis on government service agencies, too, are focused on cross-departmental coordination and cooperation, at least within the executive branches (i.e., HHS, DOJ, DOE, DOL, etc.).  Similarly, and probably earlier, but you’d have to check, the largest philanthropies are also focusing on networking together, sometimes under their own selective umbrella organizations, to focus money on a chosen cause. Or this could be done with a single, extremely well-endowed foundation also.  The coordination is often focused on place, and also often focused on boys and men, and/or boys and men of color, especially.

Open Societies Foundations to Join with 10 Philanthropies to Support Young Men of Color (from its website, June 5, 2014.  See next quote and a closing image from the article, which gives some scope of stakeholders, and some timelines:

NEW YORK—The Open Society Foundations today joined leading philanthropies to build upon our own longstanding work to identify and address barriers to opportunity for boys and men of color.The 11 philanthropies’ work will complement the Obama Administration’s recently announced My Brother’s Keeper initiative. This new alignment of a broad range of stakeholders will identify promising policy and programmatic approaches, support innovators and activists, and help to change the damaging narratives that unfairly cast these young men in a negative light. All told, the alignment has enormous potential to help young boys and men of color.  …The Open Society Foundations’ long-standing commitment to help young boys and men of color achieve their goals and dreams despite significant socioeconomic hurdles has been reflected in Campaign for Black Male Achievement (CBMA). Launched in 2008, CBMA has focused on long-term investment in improving the life outcomes of black boys and men including through mentoring, expansion of educational opportunities, and development of common-sense school discipline policies to educate and support children rather than punish them. The campaign also launched the Institute for Black Male Achievement, which is dedicated to strengthening the capacity of leaders and organizations committed to this important work.

CBMA’s work complemented OSF’s substantial investments in reforming the criminal justice system, and promoting full civic, economic, and political participation for communities of color and immigrants in the United States.

Collaborative approaches also have real traction in improving the life outcomes of boys and men of color.

The New York City Young Men’s Initiative, a $127-million, three-year partnership between New York City, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Open Society Foundations, uses a range of programs and approaches to eliminate systemic barriers faced by young black and Latino men and boys. The broadened philanthropic engagement, reflected in the establishment of the Executives’ Alliance to Expand Opportunities for Boys and Men of Color—OSF is a founding member—has identified other promising approaches, which will form the basis of some of the efforts going forward.

As part of today’s announcement with 10 leading philanthropies, the Open Society Foundations will take a few immediate steps. These will be supplemented as specific initiatives are further defined by the philanthropic collaborative.

(see link for the list…. here’s the list of the 10 leading philanthropies it’s joining (with OSF, that’s 11):

My strong opinions populate this image. They are, however, based on research over a number of years, including at one point on the OSF (plural), and a general awareness of the dangers of privatizing government on the basis that it’s not doing a good enough job, while exercising some of the same privileges (such as tax-exempt status) OF government.

….The eleven foundations include the Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The California Endowment, Ford Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Kapor Center for Social Impact, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Returning to the main theme:

• As promised, next quote is a repeated paragraph from on this page above and signals … [[Some editing in progress, Feb. 9, 2020//LGH; patience!]]  @@@@@ returning the focus to DV prevention policies, and laws with corresponding federal appropriations to implement the policies:
• Much of the consolidated control topic I documented in 2016 and 2017 for the larger statewide organizations, those taking HHS grants, and the “Special Issue” or chosen “National Resource Centers” as funded 1984ff under the “FVPSA” (Family Violence Prevention and Services Act) which was implemented — and this is key to understanding it — through the US Department of Health and Human Services which had just been formed (separated from HEW) only in 1980.  [[See ALLgov.com to check; click “read more” under “History” tab, or check elsewhere for this fact.]]
• Size of HHS (from ALLgov.com), also a gentle reminder (for how current, see that link):

One of the largest civilian departments in the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) oversees the implementation of numerous health and welfare-related programs. HHS’ budget accounts for almost one out of every four federal dollars, and it administers more grant dollars than all other federal agencies combined. HHS’ Medicare program is the nation’s largest health insurer, handling more than 1 billion claims per year. Medicare and Medicaid together provide health care insurance for 25% of Americans. Many HHS-funded services are provided at the local level by state or county agencies or through private sector grantees. With its large size also has come a large number of troubles and controversies involving birth control, prescription drugs, food safety and more.

• Reminder — and this ALSO is key to understanding — that the Violence Against Women Act, featuring discretionary grants (the majority) from the US DOJ (NOT US HHS) came about 10 years later.  The key DV Organizations work with an awareness of both the 1984 HHS funding AND the 1994 VAWA-authorized funding.  QUESTION: If the 1984 HHS funding was not doing its job properly then why not call attention to this and analyze why not? Or, IF it WAS, then why not instead, work with  or within it?   INSTEAD — one movement (spearheaded by certain nonprofits, including (so its pages said) the Family VIolence Prevention Fund pretended the other didn’t really exist, while pushing for passage of the VAWA, I guess.
• Meanwhile, in guess whose Presidential Administration 1992-1998, after a number of years of Republican Presidencies, 1996 being a key election year, the Republican “Contract with America” was pushing for a restructuring of welfare, against which then-President Clinton with his Welfare Reform Task Forces, and other advisers, pushed back. In this context, the  “Welfare Reform” was in effect holding ANY federal Congressional Budget Authorization Act hostage to working out a compromise situation so that a Republican-controlled Congress (both houses) would pass it, and a Democratic President would actually sign it.
• Searched for simple lists of Presidents + Their terms, 1970s – about 2000;  I needed Images I could annotate …found two websites, took screenshots, and annotated them with these key events (1980, 1984, 1994, 1996…)
• A Guardian.UK list showing each year (dated to just before Election Day before Obama’s second term) gives the timeline and political parties.
• Another one shows President, Vice President, Party (color-coded…) and their terms: [Citation: Kelly, Martin. (2018, January 13). Chart of the Presidents and Vice Presidents. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/presidents-and-vice-presidents-chart-4051729].**
• The first image is more heavily annotated, point (by me) is to get and retain a general concept of the timeline corresponding to which party or President was in power, and relating to specific changes in handling the “domestic violence” issues.  Also because at a certain point the second one wouldn’t take any more “Text” inserts, and I’d already made the notes on the first one…
• **Fineprint on this website leads me to stick a footnote on this page.   Although I was just looking for a timeline of Presidents, among the top search results was one the “ThoughtCo.com” brand, fine print characterized as:
• “ThoughtCo is a Dotdash brand and part of the IAC family of websites.”
  

  DotDash offices in NYC, Chicago, and SF

  

  An image, a few figures, a few characteristics (target audiences)…

  (I see one of six brands.  Notice, no link to “IAC family of Websites is so conveniently provided.  Moral of the story — do you know, any given year, who owns your mass-media platforms? How hard is it, really, to pause a few moments, perhaps just minutes, in passing to observe?….)

  Taking (perhaps a half hour) myself, I added a ThoughtCo.com~  DotDash ~ IAC Family of Websites footnote to this post.  It may be off-ramped later, leaving a link to new location here.  A second discussion / Footnote precedes it, which relates to a 1999 purchase by a British company (founded in 1918) of an American one (CMP Media, Inc.) formed in the 1970s, for $920M.  The privately controlled (through owning 68% of stock, after 1996 public offering) profits then were channeled into charity, which (one of those nonprofits, and the interlocking character of them) was where I first found about it.  If you’ve heard of “PRNewswire” “PCWeek” InfoWorld,” etc.  — some of those publications were involved.  Previously blogged herein, probably in late 2016 and relating to “transformative” education nonprofits as aligned with each other.  (Gerard & Lilo Leeds, Michael, later Daniel Leeds are among the family members).

• UPDATE March 2020; I off-ramped (transplanted) the “Mind your Media” material to this post, published February 2020 as noted below:

  Post Title: Major Transform/Reform Campaigns [Regardless of Cause] Involve Branded, On-line Media Platforms. Keep an Eye on Who Owns Which Brands & Platforms: Do Periodic Drill-downs.. [Publ. Feb. 12, 2020, but Media Drill-Downs from my Feb. 2018 Page ‘Consolidated Control of DV Advocacy’]. (shortlink ends “-c9y, about 12,800 words; expect some post-publication edits, to add tags and for more fluency between sections.  Last revised Feb. 14th).

  [I’ll add this link also to the Footnote/s on this subject, which are also incorporated into that post.]

• 

  TheGuardianUK’s 2012 US Presidents List (Excerpt, annotated for FCM) 1972-2001 | (cont’d “GWB,Jr.” comment for 2001): By 2003, GWB (thru USDOJ grants) endorses the “family justice center” program model against family violence, with attention to including pastors and the faith leadership in the One-Stop Justice Shops…

• 

  “Kelly, Martin. (2018, January 13). Chart of the Presidents and Vice Presidents. Retrieved from ThoughtCo.com…-4051729″ and annotated by me

• Take a look, remembering that 1980 = HEW becomes HHHS and US Dept. of Educ (first major such restructuring since 1953 and that HHS has since expanded “exponentially” and is the largest grant-making federal agency, today…); 1984 – FVPSA passes and in 1994 – VAWA passes, creating a new office under the DOJ to implement it. Meanwhile, HOWEVER, and with a view towards targeting the larger HHS as grantmaker, a nonprofit in 1994 “The National Fatherhood Initiative” is also created, which quickly develops (or already had) revolving-door relationships with leadership of HHS itself.
• However, the 1980s marked a rise of children’s and fathers’ rights organizations nationally also, paralleling the HHS-funded DV/Family Prevention consolidation through writing into its grantmaking “winners and losers” in the funding, under FVPSA.
• To believe, still, that these were not reacting to the 1970s feminist organizations, particularly “NOW,” to no-fault divorce law (Calif. 1970) and such is not reasonable. In addition, by the 1980s, the Internet was becoming more widely available, and with it potential awareness (as groups continued to advertise and run campaigns for their causes) of who else is out there working AGAINST one’s cause.
• On the FVPSA I have posted on (2016 or 2017), reading from Cornell.Law.Edu quoting its details, but I saw the major size discrepancies years earlier while looking at the TAGGS.HHS.gov grants database.  The statewide coalitions distribute funding, but the amounts they receive from HHS is far smaller than those designated as “DV National Resource Centers,” even though what some of those resource centers are doing is primarily providing well-developed websites with re-purposed information and publications.  Which a survivor, for example, is free to wade through in hopes of some help to understand the problems she (in the case of such) might be facing in the family court systems — in terms it was less than fond of, and increasingly (since the 1970s — another “professional courtesy secret it seems — ) capable of innocculating the courtrooms against taking it seriously in the new, problem-solving, healthy-relationship-focused language of behavioral modification and treatment programming.
• So, while survivors unaware of that system and how it was set in place and in motion, would be speaking in the rhetoric of domestic violence and practical terms against it being counter-intuitive to good parenting, etc.  and, predictably, losing custody of their children to former abusers entirely (if protesting too hard), or watching progressive — or sudden, violent — destruction of their lives and hope for a different future — while being forced to co-parent with them, as managed, and supervised by the family court judges and others working with them, i.e., “community referrals to services.” ….[Incomplete sentence here, noticed Feb. 2020.  Read in the larger context.]
• So, Noticing who were those national or special-issue (family-violence-deterrent) resource centers, and what key assumptions and philosophies they espouse/d (NCJFCJ, Duluth, Minnesota’s DAIP, the Family Violence Prevention Fund in SF (Now ‘Futures without Violence’), the Texas National DV Hotline, and some others), is also important to understanding why NONE of them are going to openly bite the hand that feeds them and report on the harmful impact of PRWORA funding on the family law outcomes, by design, and later entrenched in “HMRF” funding, which, as the HHS is far larger than the USDOJ, is also larger than anything designated and distributed through the US DOJ/OVW. ++~~++~~++~~
• The impact of PRWORA was reported by feminist groups, at times, but typically in terms of not enough childcare, food stamps/cash aid towards poor women (i.e., in terms of progressive politics), NOT in terms of how grants to single state agencies, for use by the states “at will” to meet PRWORA goals, including design and program support for “Alternate methods” of coming to custody and visitation decisions — which indirectly fed both the judges’ association of NCJFCJ, and the programming pushed SINCE ABOUT 1980, through DAIP (Coordinated Community Response, Supervised Visitation), and the other private, nonprofit, “Trade” association (501©3)  notable for involvement of family court judge membership and very activist membership it has been throughout — the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts.
• …which in its programming and continual emphasis on “international, interdisciplinary” doesn’t even display allegiance to US institutions, priorities, or concepts when it comes to the social service or mental health sector, which I caught them quoting (and in more than a few aspects), found from an earlier post herein.

• 

  Already published, this is an excerpt from my recent Page (not post) on the Nat’l Children’s Alliance. Relates to some recent work on the other pages..

• “We acknowledge the centuries-old British Social Service System as the model for social work here in the US.”
• Meanwhile, AFCC people from California are flown out to train their UK “dispute resolution” professionals in new techniques, which (like Kid’s Turn) thinly conceal their identity as AFCC programming and long-term agenda (I’m thinking particularly of Pauline Tesler, from (Marin? County) just north of San Francisco and “Collaborative Divorce”; there is an upcoming page on which this is included, dealing with the impact of various conventions and treaties against international parental kidnapping as it relates to preventing escape from domestic violence.
• I found the article referencing Ms. Tesler training British lawyers in collaborative law back in 2005 in looking for another person, Angela Lake-Carroll, featured in a March 2015 UK Ministry of Justice statement referencing her.  This information specifically on UK charities and movements to increase and expand mediation, ADR (Alternate Dispute Resolution), etc. is juxtaposed in my pending page with the information (others’ writings) on international kidnapping treaties, in part because an oft-quoted piece on this (written in the 1980s by Dorothy S. Huntington, Ph.D. — also referenced as an early designer of the Kids’ Turn curriculum (see my Front Page also for reference to this)) was writing as employed on a special project by a well-known (to be AFCC-affiliated) Center for the Family in Transition in California.
• Of the only two people (both women) mentioned in that statement (link just below), the other was identifiably AFCC (Janet Walker). So was/is Tesler, although the article neglects to mention it, as does Tesler’s current “linkedIn” and/or, as I recall, bio blurb on her website.  In promoting collaborative law, the natural thing to do:  form an “International” nonprofit, appropriate the subject matter as one’s specialty (with others of similar persuasion), and run accredited trainings, so others may use the logo and form their own “collaborative practice” nonprofits named, for example, after more local geography.  It’s a business model for professionals associated with the family courts….
• March 2015 UK Ministry of Justice “Gov’t Response to Voice of the Child Advisory Group” (in dispute resolution processes) It’s 8 pages (p9 blank). (Referencing Angela Lake-Carroll and Janet Walker, specifically).

• You may be splitting up, but things don’t have to fall apart  (Sun. March 13, 2005 in The Guardian)The end of a marriage need not cost the earth. Jon Robins looks at a new alternative to punishing litigation [quoted below]

• I continue to be amazed at how many places the Kids Turn curriculum coming out of SF shows up being run by other organizations, even after that nonprofit merged out of existence in 2014.  Be prepared to hear more of those “drill-downs.”

• Reference to all this was getting complicated on the blog’s new Front (Home) page, but I still want to talk about it again.
• I’ve been working on a follow-up page on two organizations mentioned here.  It’s well underway for publication by the end of this week, if not sooner, to be designated, with this one, “children” of the Front page, the “parent.” (The blog also uses the terms “parent/children” regarding pages.  Too bad it doesn’t allow the same designation for posts…). One reason for the separation is length, but the other is that this is Personal Relevance — a different (and for me, harder to do well) type of writing.
• The two organizations were both founded this century; neither is that large, but both are significant enough to detail out.  I was aware of the older one while still dealing with the aftermath of my own family law case + child-stealing events; the other one was formed even later, but locally to me.  After this blog was started, I at times contacted — but as an individual, or as this blog author — leadership — by phone, comments to an on-line promo of the new nonprofit in one case.  I have met some of the leadership at a conference or seminar over time,  as a survivor, but doubt any would recognize me by name.
• After enough brush-offs, and it becoming clear I was not on the same page as the “broken courts/flawed practices” coalition (sic), I quit trying to beat down the doors of such organizations (although I have since walked through another one affiliated through board membership). It’s clear enough where they stand on acknowledging expertise outside their “colleagues” or constructive feedback from the field that says “you’re way off-track and it seems you know it…”
• By now, I’ll bet some are, however, aware of this blog and its stance on certain issues within this field.

• This “Personal Relevance” section has some overlap (so marked, below) and, to the readers, what I call “anecdotal narrative” on my own situation.  No, I am not posting any specific names or the family law case number.  The more objective witness and testimony of what’s happening (even for those who may have access to court records in multiple cases, including mine), I believe is the overall corporate/organizational records, which is where the main energies in this blog have gone to.
• The ability to both “drill down” on specifics, and remember them, while the wisdom to look up (state, federal activities, policies) periodically,  should be innate to living in the USA; most people pay taxes and all kinds of registration and service fees to support government entities; knowing how they interact with each other, AND with the private (incl. non-profit) sector is basic literacy.
• Only by pro-active “looking” can one guard against becoming a passive consumer, i.e., “patsy” as funder, for policies sold under rhetoric which sounds good and have merit as problems, or causes , but which can and are often used as bait to sell faulty solutions.
• Yes, you read that right, faulty solutions. Referring both to the DV State coalitions and “National Resource Center” organizations overall, in the larger context, and to the specific solutions of the two organizations I referenced above who are not statewide coalitions, but are working along the same ideologies and who are, judging by tax returns, “barely there” compared to who they’re up against. BUT, then there’s the networking and friends bringing in friends and referring to friends, in hopes the right people will get lost in those referrals and adopt the language and blindspots of the referring organizations.
• That such following may involve individuals with their own lives and legal results at stake, charging (or funding some to charge for them) thick brick walls the organization knows exist and are government-backed and major tax-exempt foundations (billion-dollar ones)-backed also, doesn’t seem to matter.  Or that it may incorporate accepting ridiculous and unsupported sound-bytes (i.e. falsehoods) as part of the battle call against batterers.  I have specific billion-dollar, privately-controlled foundations with longstanding positioning to influence government policies regarding domestic violence and specifically, violence against women,  in mind, but talking about them is not the main purpose of this page. For a sample, go look up the 50 largest charities in the nation.  Their presence is noted, ongoing, throughout this blog and I’ve been blogging since 2009.
• One clue is when any organization calls itself (or whoever the plural “we” refers to in such a small entity) “National Thought Leaders” which one of the two has. Among the colleagues of the National Thought Leader hoping to correct court cases where battered or abused mothers have seen children re-allocated to the household of their (sometimes also the children’s) former abusers, is another one whose short name is simply, year after year, and less than modestly I say, “The Leadership Council…”  The self-label shows up on a website recently, and in the context of solicitation for money, volunteers, and help with publicity; in the form of downloadable branding accessories available for free on the website.  
• 
• Be that as it may, I am posting this next section as my personal expression, of the experience I witnessed as a forced participant (i.e., involving my family, by which I mean both direct (biological) children, their father I was married to, and others who chose to get involved in certain passive/aggressive ways which became progressively clearer as I learned what the “endgame” was), and which might show why I still blog.  
• Many organizations though new, or small, still can have board members representing yet other organizations forming collaborations, networks, common statements of the basic problems to be solved, and often, common languages to describe it in seeking or promoting specific solutions to the problem AS DEFINED by themselves, collectively, which is the case here, too.
• Some of the history and thus work lives, C.V.’s, and professional qualifications indicating expert status on this topic, go back to the 1980s.  Yet my calendar (cell phone, computer, and general awareness) reminds me we are NOT in the 1980s, and my research documents (doesn’t just allege) that parallel and conflicting ah, “developments” deliberately countering the rising DV Leadership, some pre-dating the 1960s, significant ones in the mid-1960s, and still bearing fruit in the 1980s, 1990s, and of course still this century are major parts of the story — just the parts not being told and typically even referenced or mentioned by name, on their websites and sometimes not even in their conferences dealing with “The Problem” by the coordinated, networked, so-called “DV” organizations.   Terms: When I say “major” some of the qualifiers might be: size of backing organizations, size of federal backing through grants and contracts, positioning (i.e., overseeing distributions of those grants), and the presence of key or favored recipients, nationwide, making sub-recipients widely dispersed and harder to number, identify, or grasp the impact of without research-level (ongoing) project work.
• If the rest of that story were told truthfully and in its larger context, with specific supporting details, it would, I believe (and because I’ve looked, I say, DOES) cast in a new light, and call into question the current directions of the networked “ops” and intents of the entire, consolidated network of DV Prevention organizations and for most of the older ones, the purpose of individuals having founded them, founded others, and influenced the “domestic violence” field, which gained momentum since the 1980s, or some, the 1970s and is continuing “business as usual” regardless of the nonprofit involved, this century.
• Some, but not all, of those founders have been lawyers and law professors, which is it seems a good platform now from which to spin off nonprofits in the field, now that it’s been established and is progressing on a track, and I say, diversionary, side-track, chosen decades ago.

• Some new web pages (by a Washington,DC-based DV organization, DV LEAP), whose founder is associated with George Washington University as a law professor, and subsequent situations have surfaced which might help me explain the situation a bit better; for example why, perhaps, a California one based on similar theme and, it seems, solutions, (FVAP) started up eight years later (2012), immediately engaging some of the most problematic## personnel, locally, in this field as directors of the nonprofit is following in the footsteps.
• The California one started, literally, out of UCBerkeley School of Law and as associated with a long-term lecturer in the field of domestic violence, both of which, I’ll get to below.
• ## By “problematic” I mean for maintaining a true “professional courtesy” SILENCE on the identity, activities, scope of connectivity, and obvious agenda of a private professional association with personnel in several states (AFCC), and particularly in California’s Judicial Council (the head of the judicial system in the state and controlling the courts in one of the largest states in the country).  This is a problem for many of us.  It’s an ongoing public platform and basis for forming nonprofit after nonprofit, periodically merging them, or spinning new ones off, for those involved.
• The problem of the collective silence is why women, specifically, like myself must do blogs and consistently publish on-line documentation like this while others seek to co-opt the language “domestic violence advocacy and prevention” and insist on continuing to try to “fix” the family court agenda through basic, years-long censorship and chronic omission of material they know about, but choose not to explore or publicize.  This advocacy and prevention activity — there’s hardly any contortion involved any more in avoiding mention of the names — when addressing or soliciting the public, posts the problem in over-simplistic terms (facilitating censorship), when full disclosure would provide significant arguments against the statement of the problem, and as a consequence, of the solutions these networks advocate for.
• That both “sides” of the staged gender wars (male/female as federally, speaking the USA, AND privately funded) are just unaware of each other is no longer a tenable view to hold.  Plenty still hold it, but that’s no example of thinking straight! It puts one into dissociative mode — where manipulation is easier.
• Perhaps this view might have been before word started getting out on the internet about the other organizations, and about the censorship of ONGOING discussions in private roundtables excluding informed “voices from the street” except where the nonprofits’ (plural) agenda is subscribed to.
• My position is that even a few voices are still VOICES showing that disagreement, and possible other interpretations of “the problem” exist.  That’s why I keep blogging. As you can see by the number of followers (minimal, considering the length of the blog), I’m not doing it for popularity, and I am not personally positioned (or funded) to BOTH work on promoting the blog, monetizing it in some way, and producing it in halfway reasonable and documented format.
• THIS KIND OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE “PREVENTION” LEADERSHIP, ADVOCACY, THEN, IS JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH for THOSE FACING THE REALITIES, DECADE AFTER DECADE, GENERATION AFTER GENERATION.
• MORE HONEST AND ETHICAL (AND LESS TUNNEL-VISION, LESS ARROGANT FOR MAINTAINING THAT TUNNEL VISION (BLINDERS ON) LEADERSHIP IS REQUIRED IF THE GENUINE PURPOSE IS TO DEAL WITH DOMESTIC VIOLENCE OR EVEN STOP IT.
• HOW MANY OF THIS LEADERSHIP ARE FROM THE CLASSES THEY REPRESENT, ARE MOTHERS, HAVE MARRIED AND DIVORCED WITH CHILDREN AND WITH PHYSICAL BATTERING AND HIGH-LETHALITY ABUSE INVOLVED IN ONE OR MORE OF THE RELATIONSHIPS, HAVE DEALT FOR YEARS WITH ABUSE IN THE HOME, WITH MINOR CHILDREN ALSO IN THE HOME?
• OF THOSE, HOW MANY THEN ALSO HAD TO WADE THROUGH THE FAMILY COURT SYSTEM IN THE 1990’s, 2000’s, AND NOW THE 2010’s? I’M THINKING, AS TO THE ORIGINAL MENTORS OR “FOUNDING MOTHERS” — NOT MANY, BASED ON AGES ALONE.
• While some of us are being held for years in that created system (the family law system which focuses on relationships, community referrals to treatments for failure to properly “co-parent” and such), the collected so-called feminist* leadership, continuing to operate not from current evolved and expanded realities of the family court, but from definitions obtained sometime back in the 1980s and definitions/analyses to this day absent the accounting for the contributions of the fathers’ and children’s rights nonprofits amd their influence obtaining federal marriage/fatherhood grants, not to mention absent reference to the federal grants themselves, developed in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, (not to mention absence reference to the AFCC as an association re-framing the definition of domestic violence AGAINST the way these wish it to be taken, according to their writings) continues to make it harder than ever for mothers with children in the United States of America to reasonably expect to safely exit abusive relationships WITH children and move on, within a reasonably short time, even if a few years long when it comes to divorce, to productive lives as members of their community, parents, providers, and workers.
• (“*so-called feminist leadership” – the term “feminist” is tricky.  Several organizations seem to align themselves with causes concerning women primarily and are often (though if one looks beyond staff to board of directors, are not always) seemingly run by powerful and well-connected women professionals (J.D. or Ph.D./Psy.D., etc.). The genuine impression is that of concern for women with children within the family court environment, and particularly women whose history includes violence towards themselves, or towards their children. They LOOK to be feminist, although may not directly call themselves such as, for example, might the National Organization for Women, or NYC-based Legal Momentum formerly The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund  (some images below).
• What’s truly “feminist” about withholding significant vocabulary, and facts, from presentation of a cause?  How is this in women’s (OR men’s, for that matter) interest?  That’s not ‘feminist’!
• For example, (as to “feminist leadership” not specifically “DV Advocacy/Leadership”), it’s still clear from a review of the Legal Momentum home and history pages (not my first) they are aware of many primary issues, also of PRWORA and TANF, of impact on custody, work, and housing for victims of domestic violence with children.
• But somehow in describing all of this in a timeline there is not one reference to the existence of HHS’ “HMRF Funding” (let alone access/visitation funding) as having impact on custody decision-making in a gender-biased manner.  Let alone that some of the domestic violence organizations have been in on that (HMRF) funding stream, including some also enthusiastic about each new round of the Violence Against Women Act (1994, 2000, etc.).  Legal Momentum has obviously been active for decades and covering critical issues, but I find it odd that not a word is breathed about the federal incentives at the social services level as passed 1996ff (about the time of VAWA, not long after it) for women to lose custody to their batterers.  Mostly, a straight progressive platform is maintained.
• The overall message here is that those battered women/mothers whose politics might not be straight-line, 100%, full-tilt progressive, from top to bottom, I guess, can “go jump in the lake.”  A similar message having already been sent (us) from the conservative side for not valuing “family” to the point of laying down our lives, literally, for it, and waiting patiently while they are being destroyed, and while some, year after year, are also  simply being murdered, with their children, or their children are being, sometimes with their fathers (i.e., familicides) in the context, and in the process of protesting abuse, or of settling divorce and custody matters, and while cooperatively co-parenting with such men.
• When reading those particular history pages, I see there’s till not even a “whiff” of (a passing odor, brief, gentle gust of) the opposing organizations or federal funding streams. Or of international, multi-disciplinary associations promoting forced treatments for “parental alienation,” and forced-reunification therapy, or ‘supervised visitation extortion’ (etc.)
• [I believe I should review this again separately, but am below including two (only) images showing Legal Momentum’s  support of the VAWA act and pushing for its passage (1991, 1994) under the two showing the top and bottom of home page.]
• That’s what I mean by “professional-courtesy mutual silence” and at some levels, the “Good Cop/Bad Cop” game played out around gender.  As legitimate as many of the issues listed there are are. So I’ll say it again:
• While some of us are being held for years in that created system (the family law system which focuses on relationships, community referrals to treatments for failure to properly “co-parent” and such), the collected so-called feminist* leadership … continues to make it harder than ever for mothers with children in the United States of America to reasonably expect to safely exit abusive relationships WITH children and move on, within a reasonably short time, even if a few years long when it comes to divorce, to productive lives as members of their community, parents, providers, and workers.###

• 

  Legal Momentum (formerly Women’s Legal Defense & Educ Fund) acknowledging they’ve helped shape laws and policy affecting gender equality, and that they’re properly implemented.

• 

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

• 

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

• 

  Legal Momentum (formerly Women’s Legal Defense & Educ Fund). Click and enlarge to see there’s an awareness of (and support for) the Violence Against Women Act.

• And if we can’t do that, how, really, have we escaped domestic, or family, violence other than with our physical lives?  Escaped physically — just not with our legal rights, freedom of choice (so long as choices involving minor children are also reasonable and valid for others not dealing with ex-abusers..), and not restored to full-human-being status legally, from which the abusers/batterers sought to remove us, illegally, in the first place…
• I think this illustrates why lawyers, even ground-breaking, courageous, and no one can ignore, accomplished, women lawyers addressing a critical woman’s issue (although not ONLY women’s issue) particularly as organized with higher loyalties to each other than to those they claim to defend — can and should be consulted on these issues but they absolutely should not be leading the cause.
• This page’s title, again:Consolidated Control of DV Advocacy by Feminist Leadership Refusing to Identify, by Name and Financing, The Opposition Entities. Subtitle: Personal Relevance to a Post-DV Intervention, Unprosecuted, Child-Stealing Event by Ex-Batterer case in the SF Bay Area: (@Feb. 2, 2018, case-sensitive shortlink (all parts of it!) ends “-8rg.”)(minus the final “.” URLS don’t end with “.” typically)
• My personal relevance (per second half, after “Subtitle” as promised) narrative continues below this next section, which was copied, with overlapping text, links and an image or so, from the Front page.
• ~ ~ ~ABOVE is Page INTRODUCTION.  BELOW is a SECTION from  FRONT/HOME PAGE (where it may have somewhat different phrasing, b.ut same basic info and structure). ~ ~ ~
• (Section background marked light-blue inside green borders here, to differentiate, but not on Home Page.

• PERSONAL RELEVANCE / MY SITUATION

  I was the “left-behind,” not the abducting parent —  we exist; we are not always making headlines (less so the older any child is) but courts tracking runaway kids after they are ordered out of their mothers’ lives still are, and reunification programs for them are being actively promoted by AFCC membership, as I have posted recently.  I remember reading the Faulkner article at the time and (apparently, mistakenly) believing it might be considered relevant, in the subsequent family court hearings, to something I’d just witnessed involving my own children.  At the time, however, I was not aware and awake to the organizations and federal grants behind the innate conflicts between the family law system and the criminal (penal code) law.

  Again, I did not flee with our children and had no intention to.  Even after this event, I stuck around and tried to resolve this legally, with attention to the criminal element, the unsupported statements of the statements — and to do this while in trauma from the event, having no legitimate answer to give the many local connections our children had established with others, or myself as a working mother with current clients, which had specifically been chosen to further my children’s associations, and leverage location and work to support their, at the time I still had hope, “home stretch” towards college on scholarships.

  And while attempting to locate and regain even phone contact with our children.

  I was not the only individual impacted by the event involving the children. It ripped up other networks, specifically, professional/work ones and tested deep friendships I’d developed AFTER escaping in-home domestic violence the previous decade.

  Compounding the sense of distress, alarm, and fear at the time was the conflict between declared positions on domestic violence with the experience of it post-child-stealing event by ex-batterer…

  I sensed, saw, felt this in our case earlier years also, within the courts, particularly each time I talked (separately, because of the prior domestic violence restraining order) to a court-appointed mediator, but personally witnessing the legal, judicial, and law enforcement basic NON-response to a child abduction left “credibility” to the system nowhere to hide — without adequately explaining WHY have such extensive operations (family courts, district attorneys and what seemed like dozens of nonprofit advocacy groups in the immediate area claiming concern about domestic violence, experts (as if we dealing personally with it weren’t good enough witnesses…), writers, lawyers, and politically active women, in particular, often quoted after each new related headline involving blood (of the “it bleeds, it leads…” and domestic violence-involved) when such an easy task (from law enforcement perspective, in our case) in preventing abduction, prevention was just bypassed. To see the results doesn’t explain the motivation, the incentives, or how and why might such behaviors be showing up in the public institutions.

  …Let alone that the motive — not just for a father who’d previously maintained control through a combination of battering AND economic coercion AND threats (i.e., classic “domestic violence”) while we were together.. — but systemically just might be money, and it might be coordinated beyond the local level, or that private associations had already set up camp in public office within the State, and were working to coordinate this not just statewide or nationwide, but internationally, too, and that for this purpose, “Family Law” suits them just fine.

  The above paragraph is my way of acknowledging having been almost unconscious, at the time, of how public/private partnerships in government actually work, or thinking deeply or seriously about who pays whom to the point of being able to document and diagram it. I had, instead, been thinking and working (as best possible) like a professional — minding my own personal business – and a wife (although a battered one) and a mother with already plenty on the table.. I understood financial statements, but I certainly wasn’t researching federal grants to nonprofits working in the service of government, or making a habit of browsing their tax returns!

  Or (from the judge returning children to the parent from whom they were abducted FIRST, then dealing with the arguments), there was an attempt during the actual event to get CPS involved simply because my ex disagreed with the court order — but without allegations or any proof of abuse or risk to the children on record. (i.e., my kids into the foster care system) leaving me to respond to either that implicit threat — on the spot and while in serious PTSD because of it– or trust that something might be resolved within the family law system.  To repeat:  the threat of needlessly involving Child Protective Services (no allegations of abuse were on the record) was used to discourage my continued pursuit of armed and legally entitled (through existing court order) law enforcement prevention of the direct violation of a custody order taking place in front of them and instead steering the situation back to the family law system.  Which was inaccessible except first going through a court-appointed mediator (!!).  Mediation prior to family court proceedings has been MANDATORY in California since 1981. 

  It seems that the officers in two neighboring counties already had some prior practice in dismissing mothers’ complaints and concerns. 

  …especially as it occurred in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to a major player in the Violence Against Women Act passage (Futures without Violence, current name), and to one of the early “Family Justice Centers” also featuring its protective function, and an area long home to well-known domestic violence experts such as UCBerkeley “Lecturer in Domestic Violence Law/Director of [DV] Practicum” Nancy K.D. Lemon <==CV) who, literally, helped write the early DV curriculum, casebooks  — and, notably, existing (California) penal code criminalizing child-stealing by one parent EXCEPT with provisions for if that parent had been a victim of domestic violence. (I found the law after the event, not before…)…

  

  C.V. for Nancy KD Lemon from law.berkeley.edu

  **** Ms. Lemon passed the California Bar in 1980 (UCBerkeley Boalt Hall), as you can see, has been working at UCBerkeley in this field since 1988; has a BA from UCSanta Cruz in Women’s Studies (a major she helped create) and helped create the nation’s first domestic violence law curriculum, while also working with a battered women’s groups, and over time, many well-known organizations in the field (Family Violence Education Fund, now Futures without Violence; California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, the Family Violence Law Center (before it was incorporated into the Alameda County Family Justice Center ca. 2005); Battered Women’s Justice Project (before it “came out” ca. Sept. 2011 or 2013, as its own entity, spun off from Duluth, MN’s “Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs” formed in 1980); Lemon has been published alongside Joan Zorza (of DVLeap), Legal Momentum, and many others.  Including the NCJFCJ, which is both a membership (focused on juvenile and family court judges) and a charitable organization formed (per main org’s tax returns) in 1975 in Nevada. See that link to CV near image or above (same link) with attention to years, organizations, and co-authors or editors.

• ~ ~ ~ 
• The latest nonprofit referenced in Nancy KD Lemon’s CV and calling itself at least in that CV an “agency,” the Family Violence Appellate Project (or “FVAP.” 2012ff, see image, EIN# is 454726212) was presenting in a significant violence prevention conference before it had even incorporated as a business (2/2012) and registered with the state as a charity (as I recall); reported $200K revenue in its first year of existence, and its original address was at UC Berkeley Law School, although there was no official relationship with the university.  Like predecessors in the field, and another organization focused primarily on the Appeals level (DVLEAP), the FVAP I see does not report on the AFCC in its networks, the federal HHS grants especially since 1996 PRWORA (typically) to promote fatherhood, the access/visitation grants (1988) to promote not only means to increase noncustodial (in practice, primarily fathers is meant) parenting time.
• DVLEAP has (I see since I last checked) a new website with less print, larger print, and more photos.  It also illustrates an assessment and prescription based on keeping the focus on (1) the behavior of the batterer, and (2) lack of resources for abuse victims to appeal their decisions.  The website also further emphasizes, although it’s not been exactly a secret over the years, allegiance to the “Leadership Council on Interpersonal Violence”‘s classic (though wildly understated) the “58,000 children a year” proclamation.  The Leadership Council as a nonprofit, barely exists, but as to networking and presenting plenty (particularly with the Battered Mothers Custody Conference (“BMCC,”) over the years which, historically (it started in 2003) is not an organization — but a conference with original starters, ongoing presenters, and taking place yearly. Here are some pictorials from DVLEAP’s “The Problem” page, but as noted near top of this blog, this will be another subsidiary page, soon.
• And this DVLEAP website is itself (as I learned the laborious way — through use of ‘Internet Archive” (WayBack Machine saves snapshots of past versions of pages over time) by process of elimination from the most recent available snapshot, seems to have been constructed within the last quarter of 2017 only — while using links that had changed as far back as October, 2012. All of which is another reason I decided to blog it (I don’t believe I have ever posted specifically on this group).
• Image display/navigation: These are presented, with captions previously written, as an image gallery displaying as circles.  I’m somewhat new to the function, which you can tell in part by how many I incorporated into the home page!  Click on any one to start and move to the next one by clicking on the image. I will discuss the “analysis” and logic (sic) part of the image’s, and approach this represents separately as well as how DV LEAP’s “helpful” of “DV Organizations/National Resources” under the rather grand title, “Legal Resource Library” for referrals (as they cannot take most cases, vet cases for which ones to take, and are still so small an outfit) — of which several are dead ends, defunct, and expired links.  As you can see (though in light print, small size) the motto now is “Making the Law Work for Survivors of Domestic Violence.”
• By definition, this bypasses almost entirely the role of the federal department incentives, particularly HHS, in impacting custody results, and discourages investigations into when or where inappropriate use of those grants, distributed widely to nonprofits (and various university centers) for many years now, may have inherently corrupted the courts and people within the courts, or contracting with them, in which “the law” is exercised.
• I am also going to show, in the subsidiary post, that hoping, or positive “benefit of the doubt” assumption that these experts and (self-proclaimed) National Thought Leaders, weren’t alert or aware enough to recognize what women such as myself figured out within a short period of having been given even a HINT of the existence of those grants… Sincerity is impressive, and maybe we are dealing with great sincerity and compassion here.  However, we are NOT dealing with very good analysis, OR, the humility to admit it.  And I recall that sincerity is persuasive, and for those stranded or distressed within the court system, a warm shoulder, arm, hero, or empathetic lawyer, particularly, can be compelling — but wisdom still says, remember to check the facts, consider that in any cause, there are usually some not being mentioned.
• Any lawyer also knows how critical getting the facts, and getting them on the record is — it’s called “discovery.” Information can be subpoenaed, and the opposition will work hard to either not produce it, or minimize, argue for a different interpretation those that are produced, and so forth.  They are TRAINED to do this, and to handle the forms designed to get that information out and on the record.
• In this blog, although the sectors I’m looking at are different, obviously I am doing the same thing — only “the record” happens to be this blog.  (These images will be repeated in the accompanying page).

• 

  

  

  

  Very bottom (main content area) of the “The Problem” Page…

  

  DVLEAP.org, bottom margin: Have a magnifying glass? In this case, it won’t help anyhow (links direct elsewhere on site).

• I’ve reached out by phone and on-line comment on an (as I call, UCB-related) article promoting the new FVAP, asking why no reference to these things is typically found, and linking back to this website under my username, without getting an answer. After years of getting no straight answer from many well-known, feminist leadership with a reputation in the domestic violence field, repeatedly (many but not all of whom are lawyers), during which time I continued to study the situation individually, and at times with others, and work on this blog, I’ve been left to deduce my answers from the available evidence, over time.  Through most of these years, other life tasks included continuing to handle the situation which I call “aftermath” of leaving domestic violence, and later, of the child-stealing event which occurred after previous protections had first, been made ineffective via court-appointed mediator, then despite maintaining some serious functionality and professional success (i.e., an ongoing work life, obviously necessary when child support could not be relied on) despite the removed protections, the aftermath of the child-stealing event.
• Having those personal tasks to deal with year after year, in nontraditional manners and with systemic denial that there isn’t, actually, post-separation protection enough to even maintain boundaries for women with children in such situations should let people know why not all survivors are effectively beating down the doors of their “forebears” in the field, considered, experts, after a number of dismissals or non-responses.
• I hope it will also let the public realize that, despite women who ARE at times making the conference circuits for “warm body” testimony in support of some of the DV, (excuse me, I forgot the updated terminology), FAMILY violence prevention or advocacy groups, and their websites, newsletters, and letters to Congress on how the federal government should step in and fix the family courts…redeeming, as it were, that system itself, these groups may not represent most women with children who have been battered and were thereafter funneled into family court gauntlet and related matters.
• Some of the “why not” may be found by looking at the original board of directors (and with whom they were already working, including notably an existing family justice center).  The project is also working consistently to train up new lawyers in the same perspective (which would preclude criticizing the Family Justice Center model, apparently even referencing the Association of Family or Conciliation Courts, or getting logically and economically — other than by “lack of representation at the appeals level” and yet more untrained lawyers and judges in the field — for victims, and their lack of finances to pay for their own lawyers.
• Reviewing again (as I did when it was first formed) some of the founding documents (incl. bio blurbs, which represents some powerful lawyers/professors (such as Herma Kay Hill, on faculty since 1960), and though not fiscally related to UCBerkeley School of law, some of its employees and some of its law students), one can see why acknowledging that an internationally connected membership organization whose membership focuses on family law judges, law professors, lawyers, custody evaluators, mediators and dispute resolution professionals (etc.) who are particularly antagonistic to prosecuting domestic violence through the criminal system, and prone to minimizing or diluting its definition within the civil realm, and making money off the resulting confusion and inherent, ongoing conflict of standards, might and would be contrary to the FVAP agenda, as well as to the overall agenda of the collected and collaborating organizations and leadership in the domestic violence field. Although as you can see by the name, the preferred designation is “Family” not “Domestic” in association with Violence.

• How was this parental child-stealing event in our own family line handled*?
• *meaning, by the courts and (as it obviously relates) child support system and law enforcement witnessing and openly facilitating it (tacit permission by refusing to intervene).
• Witnesses to this open facilitation included: my ex, our children, his girlfriend, and myself.  The message was definitely not lost on him — as from that point on, court orders were violated, even when revised in his favor, not obeyed. [[continued below, in part.  Look for more bullets like these]]
• In apparently the usual manner in cases, I suppose, where no existing family wealth to be drained is perceived by the courts.
• Then, as in previous years (twice) we were fast-tracked through the family mediator, and a GAL added mid-year, while the local child support agency, which had some seriously relevant information and potential motivation for the abduction, twiddled its thumbs and repeatedly rescheduled failed attempts to serve the abducting father, even though it had:  his home address; the daughters’ school, address, and the dates and times of repeated appearances in family court where he could’ve been easily served for the prices of a process server, and a short trip on the commuter rail, even.  In short, when a mother was involved, somehow the agency couldn’t do its job, although I was repeatedly told I was free (with what funds?) to hire a private attorney to do their job…
• No getting TO the family court judge without going THROUGH the court-appointed family mediator — and this case had indications of having been steered to the same one over several years.  Said mediator dismissed the child-stealing as irrelevant, failed to provide even an intake form (which would’ve allowed me to check the “child-stealing” and “domestic violence” marks on it).  The mediator’s report was not delivered til a few minutes (!) before the hearing and he (notably) recommended custody-switch, although weeks before my ex’s own attempt to get custody “ex parte” based on three false claims I was an abduction threat, had quit a job, and had not enrolled the children in school (all false) had been denied.  My ex at this time didn’t have stable housing except so long as he stayed on the “good side” of a religious woman he’d picked up and moved in with (without informing me or the courts beforehand), and was at the time about $10,000 in arrears on child support, a considerable accomplishment because it was set low to start with.  The woman had no legal obligations to support him or our children, but apparently was hoping for (another) husband.  When he wasn’t forthcoming (I heard, years later from) she threw him out — but kept our mutual children, concealing that no father (thus no legal guardian) even lived in the home.  When the second minor child turned 18, that one was thrown out, too (by which time I’d discovered the abandonment and was attempting to handle THAT with DA’s offices and the courts, again….).
• Some details from around that time, cont’d. (I have no desire to relive it step by step!!)
• The court orders initially allowed for contact with me (who’d become overnight “noncustodial in this manner), but from that point forward became unenforceable — for which I was unprepared emotionally, financially, or physically.
• This became quickly evident, but still spun out progressively over about a year and a half, while the order also progressively reduced my court-ordered contact.
• [One incident] I was still stalked while out in public, mid-day, minding my own business, even at that point not having any court-ordered contact with our children not long after the overnight event stealing them.  This occurred outside a place where my ex, then a sole custodial father and apparently (still?) unemployed,  had no known business.
• This was witnessed and documented by an employee of a public location (not retail), as well as my PTSD response at the time.  I was terrified (the place had only one known exit door, but the employee showed me a back door and watched til I got to the car, drove in fright to a police station and was told to go back (very near) the scene of the stalking and wait for police, who then sarcastically mocked me on the street, in a neighborhood where I was known to work and might be known by face, and simply refused to write it up.
• I got a written statement from the public employee, at this point, DNR how soon after, but not long.
• The state of ongoing trauma resulting from this whole series of events, and being forced to face the family courts for what they were — “could give a damn” about domestic violence, except switching custody to the abuser, churning (prolonging), it would seem in this cases, steering, the case, making ongoing excuses for criminal behavior, questionable management of the case from the presiding judge/s.
• The same year, cases IN THE SAME VICINITY and involving many similar characteristics, resulted in femicide; one occurred on a mid-week morning, the other (where the body wasn’t discovered until the conviction) on a court-ordered visitation with which the mother had complied.  There were others, but walking past the headlines — which the same family court: judges, GAL, Facilitators, mediators, etc. also had to walk past — on the way to one after another court hearing, attempting to “reason” with the child support agency, who at that time had just begun to take note of arrears over $10,000, but refused to follow through after having made an “agreement” to do (not much) — the sense of “What the ____???” accounts for this, while dealing with the sense of betrayal and trauma, ongoing — gradually refocused my life from its previously productive, positive, pro-active course AS IF living in a free country where these could be done without specific retaliations for doing so, to finding out what was driving the family courts to ignore domestic violence when we all know that there was (and had been for a decade):
• a USDOJ Office on Violence Against Women, set up to implement the 1994 VAWA act;
• Laws against domestic violence (both criminal and civil) in place, for decades now
• Public proclamation of policy of a “rebuttable presumption against custody… going to a batterer” in this state.  (Others first, and I continued to report on this blog, how the courts manage to point that there is this deterrent, then get around it under a different section of the family code, in California, “Conciliation” sector.  I didn’t know that then, however.
• As many have, an experiential awareness that the concept of “domestic violence intervention” existed by the issuance of restraining orders against it.
• For an entire court system to go “brain-dead” when faced with clear, and acknowledged (I refer to on our record, at the beginning of the incident) evidence that actions that if prosecuted by the District Attorney would be punishable by a $10,000 fine and jail time had just taken place….. this shows up the system itself, or at a minimum, those several types of professionals involved in this apparently typical pattern for survivors from abuse with minor children….is corrupt. It is playing a game of “pretend.”
• I’d like to add that the judge presiding over the child-stealing incident, and the later GAL assigned, were both women.  About a year later, another hearing was held retroactively reducing child support arrears to the (now, custodial and NO joint legal custody involving me any more) back to within a month of the original event (!), suspending all intercepts (which I wasn’t properly informed of at the time), as well as (from the start of the incident) suspending current payments which, given the imapct on my work life also — within one year, it became a matter of Either/or — EITHER I continue to seek justice within the family law system and risk immediately homelessness OR I retain housing, and forget seeing my children in the near future, or hunting for some individual or agency which might do so.
• The other response, I should add, noted to this situation, was the disappearing act of the nonprofit DV agencies which had supported the initial filing of the civil protective order in the first place.  At the time, and in previous years, when the kidnapping had already been threatened and seemed a real possibility, I noticed their resistance to accountability, including refusal to provide evidence for me of my attendance and, in general, anyone to come to court for a hearing.  Once, one person from a local DV nonprofit came to my second attempt (pre-child-stealing) to obtain a restraining order AFTER living two years without one was increasingly frightening and interfering, actively, with my getting to and from work as a single mother, retrieving children from visitation, and in effect, my only known recourse at the time, and as I’d been told originally, when my ex refused to return the children, seek help from law enforcement to get them back in time for, say, school the next morning…
• This hearing turned with a support person turned out to be a continuance only; it was the only one of as I recall, several hearings at the time in an action I’d initiated to return a safety zone around my (a) home and (b) work life, and © to nail down in writing where the father actually was living, which due to recent incidents (i.e., trauma surrounding retrieval of the children), seemed to be, not at his address on record.  Meaning, that during the WEEKLY exchanges of our children for his visitation, they were apparently not sleeping at his own stated residence, but several cities further away.  Some of these were only 24 hour visitations, and it was wearing on the children’s full schedule at the time.
• Understanding WHERE some of this craziness (from our perspective; from another perspective, it’s policy, and a business plan) comes from, and how this relates to the movement of funding (macro and micro) from the public to the private, court-affiliated sectors, and how it was set up and organized through professional associations, has helped me over time get past the “shock, betrayal with confusion” response mode and to not just reporting, but telling the others parts of this story.
• I note again — the typical authorities people turn to for such information, experts on the grants system, working with the courts, and publishing in journals such as are readable on-line from time to time — are not talking about it.
• That’s all I want to say on this for now.  Though it’s been years, I still find this kind of writing the hardest.

FOOTNOTED MATERIAL ON MEDIA CONSOLIDATION/BUYOUTS  IS being DETACHED from this PAGE & RE-PUBLISHED (pretty much as is) as a new post Feb. 9-10, 2020 (approximately), i.e., OFF-RAMPED.  Link provided here once it’s published.*** Brief description in section under this color scheme.//LGH Feb. 9, 2020.

*** Here’s that link (next mini-section within this footnote).  I published it, but didn’t get back here to add the link to this page until today, March 4, 2020.  However anyone following this blog or me on Twitter (@LetUsGetHonest) or viewing “Last Ten” (“Most Recent”) LGH Posts widget [section] on the Blog Sidebar were notified. //LGH.

To go back to the top of this page, click on the following link to its title:

[Text and image copied from top of the page Feb. 9, 2020 during page edit (“haircut”)…]
This page is important enough to this blog to have its own place on my top right side-bar widget:

(Image added to this page, Nov. 5, 2019, however it’s been on the sidebar (though without the short-link, which I’m adding now)  for a long time)…//LGH

THIS page’s Title and shortlink**:

Consolidated Control of DV Advocacy by Feminist Leadership Refusing to Identify, by Name and Financing, The Opposition Entities. Subtitle: Personal Relevance to a Post-DV-Intervention, Unprosecuted, Child-Stealing Event by Ex-Batterer case in the SF Bay Area. [a PAGE, Publ. Feb. 2, 2018]: (Case-sensitive shortlink (all parts of it) ends “/PsBXH-8rg”).**

Its parent page and shortlink** is my blog “Front Page”: LGH Top Picks, Themes, Tables of Contents, and Why My Gravatar is a Blue Jay taking Flight. (New Jan. 11, 2018). (short-link ends “/PsBXH-8o0″ (Last character is a zero), however, if you simply type in “FamilyCourtMatters.org” it’s pretty hard to miss). …